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Uber and Lyft unlikely to see recovery anytime soon, says analyst

Angelo Zino of Equity Research tells CNBC's Squawk Box Asia that Uber and Lyft will not likely see significant recovery until a vaccine is found amid the uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic.




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Denver restaurant group owner: We're still unsure of what "reopening" looks like in this new reality

Frank Bonanno, the owner of the Bonanno Concepts restaurant group in Denver, discusses how the industry will attempt to reopen gradually Colorado lifts some lockdown measures, including transforming the dining experience.




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'Bubble' stocks like Beyond Meat and Peloton were supposed to blow up, but the opposite happened

Bubble-like tech stocks remain among the biggest winners this year, and their strength pushed the Nasdaq Composite into positive territory on Thursday.




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Fed's Barkin doubts likelihood of negative rates even though the market is pricing them in

Traders on Thursday priced in a negative federal funds rate by December 2020, lasting at least to January 2022




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Masimo CEO says its remote oxygen monitors were made to mitigate diseases like coronavirus

Masimo CEO Joe Kiani discussed how the medical device maker's telehealth systems can be useful in the fight against coronavirus.




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Cramer's lightning round: 'I do not like the bank stocks'

"Mad Money" host Jim Cramer rings the lightning round bell, which means he's giving his answers to callers' stock questions at rapid speed.




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'It was suddenly Cyber Monday' — Etsy CEO says sales spiked 79% in April

"When the CDC changed its [face mask] guidelines ... we all of a sudden saw overwhelming amounts of demand come on to our site," Etsy CEO Josh Silverman told CNBC.




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Wildlife habitat destruction and deforestation will cause more deadly pandemics like coronavirus, scientists warn

Habitat destruction like deforestation and agricultural development on wildland are increasingly forcing disease-carrying wild animals closer to humans, allowing new strains of infectious diseases to thrive.




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AT&T will likely be broken up and will move on from WarnerMedia, analyst Craig Moffett predicts

Craig Moffett said on CNBC's "Squawk Box" that AT&T will eventually separate its telecom business from its media business.




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Wall Street bulls and bears fight over what the economic recovery from coronavirus will look like

Strategists debate how long it will take to contain the coronavirus outbreak as it hits the United States and roils markets.




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Peloton sales surge 66%, as more people buy bikes during coronavirus pandemic; shares jump

Peloton's revenue surged 66% during the fiscal third quarter, as more people purchased its fitness equipment and tuned into its live classes, to try to break a sweat while stuck at home during the coronavirus pandemic.




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Seeing spike in demand for sedatives and painkillers, Fresenius CFO says

Rachel Empey, CFO of Fresenius, outlines how the healthcare firm's earnings are being impacted by the coronavirus crisis.




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A point-of-sale system like Square on steroids

A New York City cowboy boot store may sell classic styles, but it's been improving its sales by using technology and analytics on the Bindo POS iPad app.




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Opinion: Hollywood couldn't script a plotline like what's happening in oil right now

Keeping up with all the recent twists and turns in the oil market is difficult. Here's where things stand as what could be a pivotal week gets underway.




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Repurposing existing drugs to treat coronavirus will likely be quicker than a vaccine, scientists claim

A team of international experts said that while there was no "magic bullet" for treating Covid-19, successfully identifying a drug that could treat the virus was likely to take less time than rolling out a vaccine.




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Vice President Mike Pence's press secretary tests positive for coronavirus

Katie Miller, the Pence press secretary, also handled communications for the coronavirus task force. The news came a day after the revelation that a personal valet for President Trump tested positive.




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Options trader bets $4 million on a major volatility spike

Stocks are breaking out to new all-time highs, but one trader is betting that more volatility is right around the corner.




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Cramer: Coronavirus could propel plant-based Beyond Meat into a giant like Amazon or Facebook

Plant-based protein is not a passing fad, CNBC's Jim Cramer said.




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Gutierrez: There is nothing like preparing workers for what is coming

Albright Stonebridge Group Chair Carlos Gutierrez and CNBC's Rick Santelli discuss technology in the covid-19 era, global supply chains and economic decoupling.




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Roche CEO says it is 'very likely' people develop immunity after recovering from coronavirus

Roche CEO Severin Schwan said more research is needed to prove people gain immunity from Covid-19 infections.




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Greece's strict fiscal targets will likely be relaxed in 2021 as well, minister says

Greece might be spared from having to hit strict fiscal targets related to previous bailouts next year, a government official told CNBC, given the ongoing health and economic crises.




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UK general election more likely than second Brexit referendum: Professor

Cedomir Nestorovic, professor of geopolitics at ESSEC Business School, predicts that U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May's second Brexit deal will likely be rejected Monday, creating further scope for a near-term general election.




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Virtual banking will help banks like Standard Chartered cut costs: Fund manager

Virtual banks may compete with traditional banks, but they also help lenders like Standard Chartered cut costs, says Paul Pong of Pegasus Fund Managers.




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Mike Bloomberg takes aim at Trump in Super Bowl ad buy

Mike Bloomberg is taking aim at President Trump with a TV ad buy that could be worth $10 million. Bloomberg's plan to run an ad during the National Football League's most watched game of the season comes as he focuses his attention on the delegate-rich Super Tuesday states. Their primaries are scheduled for March 3.




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Here's how Mike Bloomberg's campaign spending may help him qualify for debates

Mike Bloomberg is outspending his rivals in the race to become the 2020 Democratic Presidential Nominee. His campaign spent $188 million during the fourth quarter of 2019. That's more money than any of his democratic competitors have raised over the entirety of this election cycle. But there's another big difference between those candidates and Bloomberg. Bloomberg didn't compete in the Iowa caucuses. Here's why and how he may still qualify for upcoming debates.




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Sing like a canary! The whistling consultant who taught Romanian noir gangsters a tune

For his latest drama, Corneliu Porumboiu revived a language unique to the valleys of La Gomera in the Canary Islands; a steep learning curve for his actors – and our writer

Try to imagine the least film-noir scene possible and you might come up with a group of five-year-olds learning to whistle. It is late morning, pre-lockdown, in a classroom at Nereida Díaz Abreu school on La Gomera in the Canary Islands, and the teacher – a bent knuckle crammed in his mouth – is relaying instructions in a piercing, swooping, set of whistles. The kids look quizzically skywards, then collapse in hysterics, although most eventually nail it.

“Touch your left ear with your right hand,” the teacher reiterates in Spanish.

Related: The Whistlers (La Gomera) review – thrilling Romanian corrupt-cop noir

We say to the kids: when you go to Tenerife and say you’re from La Gomera, people will ask you if you can whistle

Continue reading...




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The Arctic Circle: A hike from Lloyds Hotel to Lilliehöökbreen

Here is our trip log from Sunday, October 7:


Sunday 07.10 – Day 7

Lloyds Hotel – Lilliehöökbreen – North

-3/4°C Celsius, almost no wind in the morning, clear sky, beautiful sunrise. More wind in the evening going from WNW 2, to N 2-3 and later NW 4.

09:30 - Morning landing Lloyds hotel – Hike to Lilliehöökbreen.

11:15 – Anchor up Lloyds Hotel.

13:30 – Anchor down Lilliehöökbreen.

14:30 – Hikers back on board (Piet still smiling).

16:30 - Afternoon zodiac cruises Lilliehöökbreen.

19:00 - Going North.

Our leader, Sarah Gerats, kept this log for us throughout the trip… And October 7 was one of my favorite days. I woke that morning and, as happened most mornings, came out on deck to a view I'd never seen before.


If you take a close look at the middle of this picture — maybe click on it to make it bigger and more detailed — you might see an orange rectangle. This is a hut that's been decorated and painted orange. It's called Lloyds Hotel, and it is definitely the fanciest hut on Spitsbergen — though maybe more of a tourist destination then a destination for any anyone actually seeking shelter. You can read more about its history here.

We climbed aboard the zodiacs and crossed onto land to visit it.





I, for one, was less interested in the evidence of human activity inside the hut, and more interested in the COMPLETELY GINORMOUS polar bear prints outside the hut. They were fresh, for this was new snow.


This sight — evidence of a polar bear (or three or four) recently shuffling through — was quite common on our journey.


This time we got a special treat: evidence that it had lain down and rolled around :o)


I think it's time to introduce you to our wonderful, kickass guides, who always knew how to read the prints in the snow. Emma, Sarah, Åshild, and Kristin were our guides and guards, our organizers, our friends, our helpers, and our protectors. Any time we went on land, they were there with rifles, ensuring our safety in the land of polar bears.They had so much to share about the landscape, the environment, the animals, the history. They were wonderful storytellers and guides! And of course, Nemo was very, um, helpful as well. :o)


After exploring Lloyd's Hotel, we split into two groups. Some stayed put, working or enjoying the scenery, then returning to the ship. The rest of us set off on an 8km (5 mi) hike across the base of the fjord where we'd landed. See the little arrow I drew on the map below? That shows where we hiked, in this northwestern section of Spitsbergen.

Click here to check this out on Google Maps and see more details about where we were.

As we moved away from shore, we saw the Antigua sail off — abandoning us! Not really. The ship was circling the fjord to pick us up on the other side. Even knowing that, though, it was strange to see her go.

We hiked through spectacular terrain. Click on any of these to make them bigger and more focused.


The snow was pretty deep, but also very, very dry. It made for easier hiking than a snow-free terrain, for we were on a rocky moraine of loose stones much of the time. The snow evened out the terrain for us.


The sun was low behind us for the entire hike. If you see the sun in a picture, I'm looking back.


Our way was mostly flat, but every once in a while, we climbed a steep hill. The light was brilliant, everything white and blue! And lavender, pink, gray, if you looked closer.


At one point, Nemo was sorely tempted by this duck, who taunted him as he tried to walk out onto the thin ice and grab it. Sarah, Nemo's person, could not get him to desist. So we all took a little break and enjoyed resting, eating snacks, and watching the show :o). (The duck was fine. The duck was in charge the whole time really.)


Our path skirted the frozen edges of two beautiful lakes, this one crossed with the tracks of an Arctic fox.


I included the picture below because in the foreground, you can see what I mean about the terrain of loose stones. It's exactly the same backdrop as above, actually, but I'm standing at a higher point, so the sun is more visible.



Near the end of our hike, we climbed a steep ridge…


And there below us was another fjord, a glacier, and, waiting for us, the Antigua. Such a beautiful sight on a freezing day, after a long walk. I stood and stared, breathing fresh air, for a long time. As I watched, I heard her anchor fall — a familiar metallic clicking that was SO much louder on our ridge, echoing around the fjord, than it ever was from inside the ship.


And that was our hike from Lloyds Hotel to Lilliehöökbreen! If you're curious about the place in the log where it says "Piet still smiling," well, you may remember from a previous post that Piet was our chef. And we got home very late for lunch :o). But he fed us a delicious feast anyway.

I'll post another adventure soon! Maybe those zodiac cruises mentioned in the log, or maybe an explanation of some of our exciting activities on deck.




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Starcom: Nexus, and What It’s Like to Live with an Indie Game Developer

Today Kevin’s game, Starcom: Nexus, releases in Early Access on Steam. It’s a thing of beauty, and also a lot of fun. If you like games that take you into outer space where you get to explore mysterious worlds, build a powerful ship, and explode bad guys, you should buy it, and play it, and let your gamer friends know about it. Yes, I’m biased, but reviewers and streamers  - who are not his spouse  - also love it :o). (FYI those last two links go to youtube streaming vids.)



***

Conversation at the dinner table:

Kevin: How was your day?

Me: Okay, I guess. I still can’t figure out how to get this girl to accidentally set her house on fire, then cause an explosion and get stuck in a window grille.

Kevin: I believe in you.

Me: Thank you. How was your day?

Kevin: Okay. When my enemy ships get within a certain distance of each other, they spontaneously explode.

Me: Oh!

Kevin: It’s not supposed to happen. It’s a bug.

Me: Oh.

Kevin: I can’t figure it out.

Me: I believe in you!

***


There are a lot of similarities between the work Kevin and I do. We both create complicated worlds with characters and plots. We’re both entertainers.

Meet your commander.

We have some processes in common: for example, we both study the books/games we love, then try to learn from them. We both think about the things we don’t like in other books/games, then try to come up with alternatives we prefer. We both know how to wear the creator hat; then switch to the reader/gamer hat, reading/playing our own project with a critical eye; then go back to the creator hat to fix what isn’t working. We’re both extremely familiar with the phenomenon wherein you change one little thing, then a ripple effect passes through the entire work, complicating/breaking things in ways you didn’t anticipate.

Meet the Ulooquo, an underwater alien race.

We can also get similarly overwhelmed by our own projects. I’ve talked a lot on the blog about how a book has many parts, and writing a book involves many jobs. Well, a game has SO many parts. It has music and art, visual effects, numerous interfaces, plot and character, mysteries and rewards. It must be able to support and absorb the choices of individual gamers, over which the creator has no control. It has SO many (literally) moving parts!



We also both work by ourselves for years on self-directed projects… then put our creations out into the world, hoping they’ll find the people who will love them.

These similarities are deep. They help us to understand each other’s frustrations and joys, and support each other meaningfully. This is awesome. However, I want to talk a little bit about the differences, which are many.

For example, in my writing career, I have an agent. She connects me to an editor who helps me craft the right words. Then, my editor works with my publisher to create a beautiful physical book, publicize and market that book, and sell that book for me.

An indie game developer, on the other hand, does everything himself, in an extremely saturated market with a lot of roadblocks. He can hire other people to help. Kevin hired a composer and an artist, to help him with his music and his characters (like the Commander and the Ulooquo above). He hired a marketing consultant to do a few things too. But he worked closely with those people, because he knew exactly what he wanted. And everything else has been the work of his own hands. He’s done SO much marketing and publicity work on his own that’s made me appreciate my own marketing and publicity departments even more than I did before. Self-promotion in a saturated market is really, really hard. It’s also stressful for a guy who happens to be humble and was raised with the good-old New England ethos of not bragging about himself :o).

Here’s another big difference: Kevin can release his game while it’s still in production, then use the feedback from early players to shape it and make it better. He can write code into the game that allows him to see how long players play; where they decide to drop out of the game; which options are being chosen more often than others. (He receives this information anonymously, in case you’re starting to worry that he can actually tell what you’re doing inside his game!) As a writer, I definitely don’t know where someone decides to abandon my book. Nor do I want to know, because once people are reading my book, it’s final! If everyone is bailing at a certain point, there’s nothing I can do about it. The words in my book are not going to change. Kevin’s game is more of a living, growing creature, even after it releases, and based on player reactions.

Another big difference is that while I am a wordsmith, Kevin is a programmer. A lot of the time, when I step into his office, he’s working with programming language on his many screens, and I don’t understand the smallest bit of it. My readers read my actual words. His gamers play a game built on a framework of programming that looks and feels very different from the actual game. He also works with a lot of complicated software (like, for 3D modeling) and does a lot of math. He uses trigonometry to [I just asked him to explain it and he said something about spaceships shooting at each other, vectors, and cosines. ???]. I can come home and tell him practically everything I struggled with at work that day. A lot of what he does is too technical for me to understand—though he is really good at creating analogies and explaining things to me when I ask (and when I'm not rushing to finish a blog post!).

Another difference is that he is a visual artist. For example, he created Entarq's Citadel below, which is one of the worlds his gamers get to explore.


Here's another.


Another difference:  I can do my work anywhere. All I need is my notebook and a pen. Kevin needs his fancy computer and his big monitors. So he works from home. Home office and self-employed means he’s working most of the time. Most mornings, he’s working by the time I get out of bed. By the time I leave for my office, he’s put hours in. I come home and he’s making me dinner; after dinner, he works for a few more hours. I go away on trips without him; he works while I’m gone! I always thought I worked really hard. I have a new standard now.

And now his work has created this beautiful, fun game that’s getting really positive attention from gamers and streamers :o). Today, you can buy it in Early Access, and become one of the players who contributes to what it will ultimately become.

And that's my little explanation of what it's like to live with an indie game developer. Check out the links if you’re interested! The trailer is below.




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Like Totally Whatever

Here are two vids. Watch them in order: Taylor Mali, then Melissa Lozada-Oliva. ♥







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Less like a slog

Yesterday was dreadful. I was a misery case for much of the day – no need to go into any details, I’m pretty sure we’d all have no trouble thinking up a few good reasons to feel crappy at present, … Continue reading




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Like watching paint dry (exactly)

Ken’s sweater is all done, but for the making up, and the neckband. Honestly, I can point at a million projects of my youth and tell you that the number one thing that stood between me and greatness back then … Continue reading





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Economist Thomas Piketty: Coronavirus Pandemic Has Exposed the "Violence of Social Inequality"

As nearly 30 million Americans have filed for unemployment in just six weeks and millions worldwide face hunger and poverty, we look at the global economic catastrophe triggered by the pandemic and its impact on the most vulnerable. As the World Food Programme warns of a massive spike in global hunger and more than 100 million people in cities worldwide could fall into poverty, can this crisis be a catalyst for change? We ask French economist Thomas Piketty. His 2014 internationally best-selling book, "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," looked at economic inequality and the necessity of wealth taxes. His new book, "Capital and Ideology," has been described as a manifesto for political change.




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May Day People's Strike! Target, Amazon, Instacart Workers Demand Safe Conditions & Pandemic Relief

This May Day, an unprecedented coalition of essential workers from Amazon, Instacart, Whole Foods, Walmart, Target and FedEx are calling out sick or walking out during their lunch break to demand better health and safety conditions, along with hazard pay. Others are joining them for May Day actions that include rent strikes, car caravan protests and online organizing calling for a "People's Bailout" and economic recovery plan that prioritizes workers. We speak with Kali Akuno, co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, which issued a call for a people's strike starting May 1. "The corporations and the government are willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of us," Akuno says. "We have to put people before profits."




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Reliance Jio Likely To Have Two More Investors In the Coming Days: Report

It seems that Reliance Jio is likely to garner more funds as two companies might invest in its platform in the coming days. Now, it has been reported that the US-based private equity firm General Atlantic is expected to invest about




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i like hearing my fat fucking stupid lips yap




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Filling In An IKEA Manual's Missing Words

Screw the four brackets into the four legs. If you find yourself screwing a fifth bracket into a fifth leg, something has gone terribly wrong.




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Merkel says Germany's re-opening will have 'emergency brake' in case Covid-19 spikes

Chancellor Angela Merkel announced steps on Wednesday to ease the coronavirus lockdown in Germany but at the same time launched an "emergency brake" mechanism allowing for renewed restrictions in case infections pick up again.