- Kiren Rijiju thanks Congress for highlighting how roads have improved dramatically in Ladakh during NDA tenure OpIndia
- Rahul Gandhi Shines Spotlight On Bharat Jodo Says Couldn’t Visit Ladakh During Yatra India Today
- Congress leader Rahul who embarked on bike ride to celebrate father Rajiv Gandhi’s birthday spotted at Khalsar Times of India
- WATCH | Rahul Pays Tribute to Rajiv Gandhi at Pangong Tso; To Be In Ladakh Till Aug 25 News18
- Rahul Gandhi Fires Fresh Salvo At Modi Government, Rakes Up China’s Issue In Ladakh India Today
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: highlighting
The PFF 101: Highlighting the top 101 players from the 2022 NFL season | NFL News, Rankings and Statistics – Pro Football Focus
- The PFF 101: Highlighting the top 101 players from the 2022 NFL season | NFL News, Rankings and Statistics Pro Football Focus
- 2022 NFL rookie grades, NFC West: Seahawks’ postseason return fueled by talented first-year class NFL.com
- Redrafting 2022 NFL Draft: Brock Purdy goes in middle of Round 1, Sauce Gardner taken No. 1 overall CBS Sports
- 2022 NFL rookie grades, NFC South: Falcons and Saints hit on first-round wide receivers NFL.com
- Redrafting the 2022 NFL Draft: Brock Purdy goes in middle of Round 1, Sauce Gardner taken No. 1 overall CBS Sports
- View Full Coverage on Google News
SpaceX ships 200th Falcon second stage, highlighting the flip-side of booster reuse
SpaceX has built and shipped its 200th Falcon second stage, highlighting the often underappreciated rocket’s record of achievement on the ground and in flight.
Approximately 13 years ago, in late 2009 or early 2010, SpaceX shipped the first flightworthy prototype of the first iteration of its Falcon 9 second stage. In June 2010, Falcon 9 lifted off on its inaugural test flight and, with the help of that second stage, successfully launched a boilerplate mockup of Dragon spacecraft into orbit. Since Falcon 9’s surprising inaugural success, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets have launched another 187 times for a total of 188 launches and 189 assembled rockets. Every one of those launches has required a new second stage, and all but one (Crew Dragon’s In-Flight Abort test) required a new Merlin Vacuum engine.
While SpaceX is most famous for the successful realization of rapidly reusable Falcon boosters, the company’s overall success is also inextricably linked to Falcon second stages, which are and always will be expended after every launch. For every spectacular Falcon booster landing or reuse record, a Falcon second stage either unceremoniously burns up in Earth’s atmosphere or finds itself stranded in orbit. As a result, even as SpaceX’s reusability has allowed it to launch more than ever before with a fleet of just 10-20 Falcon boosters, the company has had to expand the production of Falcon second stages extraordinary levels.
SpaceX just completed its 188th Falcon 9/Heavy launch, so the 200th flightworthy second stage and Merlin Vacuum (MVac) engine are probably scheduled to launch sometime in January 2023. In the last 365 days, SpaceX’s Falcon rockets have completed 59 successful orbital launches. Every launch has required a new second stage, so SpaceX, on average, has consistently built, shipped, and tested a new Falcon second stage every 6.2 days for more than a year.
Thanks to SpaceX’s record-breaking 2022 launch cadence, which has resulted in Falcon 9 launching more in one calendar year than any other rocket in history, the Falcon second stage has likely become the most-produced orbital rocket stage in decades. Barring surprises, SpaceX is on track to achieve CEO Elon Musk’s goal of 60 Falcon launches in 2022. But SpaceX isn’t done yet, and CEO Elon Musk says that the company is targeting “up to 100 launches” in 2023. After nearly doubling between early and late 2021, that will require Falcon second stage production to increase another ~67% year-over-year.
In its 12.5-year career, Falcon 9 has suffered three failures. In October 2012, on its third launch, one of Falcon 9’s nine Merlin 1C booster engines failed in flight. The main mission – a Dragon cargo mission to the International Space Station – was saved by the second stage, which autonomously compensated for the lost performance, but a secondary payload (Orbcomm’s first OG2 satellite prototype) was lost as a result. In June 2015, a faulty strut inside Falcon 9’s second stage caused a helium pressure vessel to break loose and rupture, destroying the rocket mid-flight. And in September 2016, during a prelaunch static fire test, a similar pressure vessel inside an upgraded Falcon 9’s second stage spontaneously sparked, causing an explosion that destroyed the rocket while it was still on the ground.
As a result, while problems with Falcon second stages have technically caused both of Falcon 9’s only catastrophic failures, it’s still true that a free-flying Falcon second stage has never failed in flight. The same is true for the second stage’s Merlin Vacuum engine: over hundreds of burns and more than 70,000 seconds of operation, MVac has never failed in flight.
After Falcon 9’s successful November 3rd, 2022 launch of the Eutelsat Hotbird 13G communications satellite, SpaceX’s Falcon rocket family has completed 160 launches without failure, arguably making it the most reliable rocket family in history. To achieve that feat with its partially-reusable Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, SpaceX has had to master reusable and expendable orbital rockets to a degree that only a few other companies or space agencies in history can claim to have matched or exceeded, and that none have achieved simultaneously.
Makeup Giant Ulta Goes Woke Highlighting ‘Trans Girl’ Dylan Mulvaney, Customer Base of Real Women Revolts – PJ Media
Ulta may be regretting whatever marketing “genius” came up with this idea. In a recent post on Twitter, Ulta highlighted a podcast with two grown men in makeup and wigs chatting about what it’s like to be a “girl.” The makeup giant’s target audience is obviously women. It’s probably a safe bet that over 90% of Ulta’s customers are women. The choice to put men in drag in the marketing material for a company geared toward women is backfiring big time.
#Womanface and #BoycottUlta are trending on Twitter, and the ratio of angry women telling Ulta they’re taking their business elsewhere is off the charts. It got so bad that Ulta turned off commenting on the thread.
The headline “Trans Girls Can Do It All!” really irked many women who see grown men pretending to be “girls” as a weird sexual fetish that has nothing to do with being female and everything to do with men appropriating femaleness for their own titillation. This is straight-up autogynephilia, and it’s obvious and not amusing to women in any way.
Trans 👏 Girls 👏 Can 👏 Do 👏It 👏 All! Tune into the latest episode of The Beauty Of… where host @DavidLopezzz sits down with guest Dylan Mulvaney to chat all things girlhood 💝 Watch now: https://t.co/tCRfEryYkZ pic.twitter.com/uaXJqEBQI9
— Ulta Beauty (@ultabeauty) October 13, 2022
The term “womanface” refers to the correlation to the offensiveness of blackface, a thing no company would ever dream of putting in their marketing materials. But women appear to be one demographic no one has to worry about offending with gross caricatures and mockery. The trans activists have made sure that women’s voices are completely silenced in the face of male dominance as long as the males are wearing dresses.
Teen girls have been punished for asking males to leave their locker room while they are changing. Women are being told we are not allowed to listen to the instincts that tell us when danger is near or we are “transphobic.” And now makeup companies want us to roll over and buy their products as they put these money-grubbing frauds in the spotlight and demand we agree with them that the emperor is wearing fantastic threads when he is really naked.
Maybe the reign of trans terror is finally ending as women find their voices again and say loudly and proudly, “NO MORE.” We will not be told we aren’t allowed to have our private spaces, our dignity, our titles, and our sex. Being a woman is a biological experience. It is not a feeling. A man cannot be a “mother,” and we aren’t going to pretend like this is okay anymore. Our daughters deserve their sports back and the right to change in a locker room without fear. They deserve the right to privacy in the bathroom without the threat of males encroaching on their spaces as they deal with the challenges of being female, like periods.
Enough is enough.
Mandy Stadtmiller made a video with the thousands of angry responses before Ulta shut off commenting.
This is a short film I just made called, “@ultabeauty’s Hidden Replies Tell Women Exactly What They Think of Them.” I do hope you enjoy it and spread the word! pic.twitter.com/elUCQpfsww
— Mandy Stadtmiller (@mandystadt) October 15, 2022
The fact that #Womanface is trending and thousands of accounts critical of this clown show are not being booted off the platform for saying what we are all thinking is a positive sign. Here are some of the best ones.
“Imagine being a brand who’s [sic] target demographic is women and then highlighting MEN engaging in misogyny and the appropriation of womenhood. [sic] Pathetic #WomanFace,” said Gina Fonesca.
“Last I checked, makeup, ponytails and nylons do not make someone a woman, and adult men definitely cannot become little girls. #boycottulta #WomanFace #TransWomenAreMen,” tweeted “FemaleAthlete.”
“One of the things that bothers me the most is that these men want to claim womanhood and oppression but they have no problem marginalizing women who have a problem with it. No one gets nastier to women than a man claiming to be [a] woman who gets called out. #boycottulta #womanface,” wrote CaitieCat.
Is this what you think “girlhood” is? pic.twitter.com/gCzIcCORDG
— Dr. Che Bolludo esq. (@InvestingMerc) October 15, 2022
Women’s Declaration International took the opportunity to scoop up all the new converts to gender-critical feminism with this tweet asking women to sign the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights.
If you find #womanface offensive and want to help fight the new misogyny, please read and sign the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights: https://t.co/8C8U8lyEod pic.twitter.com/sm468cR6ed
— WDI.USA (@WDI_USA) October 16, 2022
My favorite response so far has been this one from Arté.
I didn’t go through 41 weeks + 1 day of pregnancy, 47hrs labour, 18 months breastfeeding, cracked nipples/ teeth marks, sleepless nights, being shat on and ALLLLLL of that, for men LARPing as women to get to call themselves “mum” and I get “chest feeder”and “uterus haver”. Nah…
— Arté ♀️🦖 (@varindeus) October 15, 2022
Word. It’s way beyond time that women stand up together and fight back against the misogynistic movement seeking to remove all of our sex-based rights. They’ve already codified it into law in many places, and our daughters no longer have the right to complain about males in their locker rooms and bathrooms in public schools. It is an outrage, and it must stop now.
Yale professor monitoring companies still doing business in Russia ups the ante by highlighting those that are now ‘digging in’
The Yale professor who is monitoring companies that are still doing business in Russia following its unprovoked invasion of neighboring Ukraine has upped the ante by reclassifying the list into five categories with the fifth titled “digging in” — or defying public demands for exit.
Some 39 companies, including Koch Industries Inc., packaging company Ball Corp.
BLL,
+1.60%
and cybersecurity company Cloudflare Inc.
NET,
-3.91%,
remain in that category four weeks after the start of the attack.
More than 450 companies have announced plans to pull out or curtail their activities since the list was first published by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and his research team at the Yale School of Management. The situation remains fluid for now, with the Yale team updating the list on a daily basis.
See: Yale professor is keeping tabs on companies still operating in Russia despite Ukraine invasion — and many have now pulled out
“The idea here is to bring the Russian economy to a standstill,” Sonnenfeld told MarketWatch. “That’s what Gandhi did [in India], it’s how Ceaușescu was removed from power in Romania, [and] it’s what led to the fall of P.W. Botha in South Africa and led to Nelson Mandela’s freedom.
“It was critical in all those cases to have voluntary business blockades work in tandem with economic sanctions, so the people can hear that they are becoming pariahs and things are not what their leaders are telling them. … It’s a much tighter circle when the whole global economy takes part.”
Koch, the Wichita, Kan., company run by billionaire Republican megadonor Charles Koch, was explicit about its intention in a statement last week signed by Chief Operating Officer Dave Robertson. The Robertson statement said Koch would continue to operate its two Russian glass facilities, which are owned by Guardian Industries, a company acquired in 2017.
“While Guardian’s business in Russia is a very small part of Koch, we will not walk away from our employees there or hand over these manufacturing facilities to the Russian government so it can operate and benefit from them (which is what The Wall Street Journal has reported they would do),” Robertson said.
See: Koch Industries breaks silence on Russia operations — and says it will continue to operate its two glass factories there
The executive acknowledged the “horrific and abhorrent aggression against Ukraine,” which he called an “affront to humanity.”
But that was not enough to persuade Koch to pull out of Russia, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged companies to do when he addressed the U.S. Congress by video link last week.
“All American companies must leave [the Russian] market immediately because it is flooded with our blood,” Zelensky said.
See also: Facebook, Google, Amazon and more marked Black History Month with fanfare — after donating to lawmakers who blocked voting-rights bills
Sonnenfeld described the Koch statement as “pathetic” and said it “reveals that all they care about is the loss of assets.”
Outside of “digging in,” the Yale list’s other four categories are “withdraw,” which is used for those companies taking a clean break from Russia; “suspension,” for companies that are temporarily curtailing activities, while keeping their return options open; “scaling back,” or reducing some activities while continuing others; and “buying time,” for companies that are holding off on new investments, while continuing most business.
For the full list of companies: Visit the Yale School of Management website
Companies that opt to dig in are facing substantial reputational risk at a time when younger people, in particular, expect companies to reflect their values and are willing and able to mobilize against them when corporate behavior disappoints, said Sonnenfeld.
“Gen Z are very careful about where they shop, whom they buy from and where they invest,” he said.
When Yale first published its list in late February, the stock market was down about 5% on the day, but the stocks of the companies on the list were down anywhere from 12% to 32%, he said.
The response from companies was also unusual, in that the first to announce plans to withdraw from Russia were energy companies, “who have not always been on the right side of social-justice issues,” said Sonnenfeld.
That sector was followed by professional services, from the Big 3 accounting firms to Accenture, McKinsey and those engaged in the legal profession, “firms that would often rather jump off a cliff than get involved in political issues,” in Sonnenfeld’s view.
“It’s impressive that these companies have made these decisions independently — it was not mandated or even encouraged by trade associations, who have been disappointingly mute,” said Sonnenfeld.
Some of the international companies that have changed course this week and withdrawn from Russia include French car maker Renault
RNO,
+0.68%,
which announced it would halt operations at its Moscow plant on Wednesday. Renault, which has a partnership with AvtoVAZ, Russia’s biggest car maker, was facing calls for a boycott of its products on social media.
See: Production halted at AvtoVAZ factory making Russia’s iconic Lada cars
The Swiss-based global food company Nestlé
NESN,
-0.88%
bowed to similar pressure and said it would suspend sales of its KitKat and Nesquik brands in Russia. The company had said last week that it was not profiting from its Russian activities.
White House Competition Council to host second meeting Monday, highlighting progress on pricing
On Monday at the White House, the group is expected to highlight efforts to lower prices for Americans on a range of products and services from meat to hearing aids to pricy iPhone fixes.
The council was established by a July 2021 executive order and held its inaugural meeting last September. It consists of high-level administration officials across agencies, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, among other top officials representing nine departments and seven agencies, who will be present for the meeting.
The steps a White House can take to drive prices down are limited, but Monday’s event signals ongoing efforts to show the American people the administration is focused on easing prices, something Biden says is a top priority as he enters his second year in office.
Key inflation measures reflect record high prices from the gas pump to the grocery store shelves. A December CNN poll conducted by SSRS found that 72% of Americans say the government is doing too little to reduce inflation. Fifty-four percent of respondents reported that they have changed the groceries they buy in order to stay within budget. Fewer say they have cut back significantly on driving (43%), changed where they shop (39%) or had difficulty finding affordable housing (26%).
Biden’s competition executive order, National Economic Council Director Brian Deese said in July, was based on “a very simple but important intuition, which is that having fair and open competition is a fundamental ingredient of a healthy capitalist economy. It’s what actually drives better outcomes, lower prices, higher wages, more innovation, more economic growth.”
“And so the core goal of this executive order is to reset across the entire executive branch a focus on where, in what ways, can we encourage healthy competition in service of achieving those outcomes: lower prices, higher wages, more innovation?” Deese told Bloomberg’s Masters in Business podcast at the time the order was signed.
Promoting more competition is one mechanism that the administration feels it can use to expand the productive capacity of the economy and ultimately lower prices for consumers, National Economic Council Deputy Director Bharat Ramamurti told CNN in an interview. Monday’s event, he said, “will serve to highlight all the progress that has been made in just the roughly six months since executive order was issued.”
The agencies present Monday will outline their top priorities for the next six months and “explain exactly how they’re going to accomplish those things over time,” he said.
Ramamurti said recent actions on hearing aids, a policy on the right to repair, efforts to block recent mergers and encouraging competition in the broadband internet space were examples of progress led by Biden’s executive order and the competition council that would be touted at Monday’s meeting.
The Department of Health and Human Services put the wheels in motion to let Americans purchase hearing aids over the counter without a prescription, releasing proposed rules in October. The Federal Trade Commission announced a policy for the idea of right to repair — which, among other products and companies, eases restrictions to let iPhone users repair their own devices using repair manuals Apple will post on its devices, something Apple adopted voluntarily following the policy’s announcement.
The administration is also ramping up efforts to “challenge and block illegal mergers that would raise prices for consumers,” an administration official citing a recent Department of Justice-blocked mega-merger on insurance companies and a Surface Transportation Board setback to a railroad merger. Other enforcement agencies, the White House said, are updating their merger enforcement tools and guidelines.
Looking ahead, Ramamurti suggested that increasing competition for broadband internet would be a top priority to lower Americans’ internet bills, noting funding for broadband access in the bipartisan infrastructure package and making it harder for landlords to sign exclusivity agreements with cable providers.
Those and other initiatives, a White House official said, “will give families more breathing room in their budgets in the medium term.”
The White House is clear-eyed that promoting competition isn’t going to solve the problem of inflation entirely — but says it’s a positive step that will provide some relief as the economy continues to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We’re arguing that in certain industries where there has been less competition and more consolidation, those big companies are better able to take advantage of the current situation and raise prices higher for longer. And it’s certainly not the only factor that is going into inflation … but it’s a factor,” Ramamurti said.
He continued, “And when the President says he is doing whatever he can to take on inflation to lower costs for families, this is one tool he has and he’s going to use it. It doesn’t solve every problem and it doesn’t make a difference in every industry, but if it makes a difference in a couple industries and helps alleviate some of the price pressures, he is going to do it.”
Apple Shares ‘Fumble’ Ad Highlighting iPhone 12 Ceramic Shield
Apple today shared a new ad that focuses on the iPhone 12’s durability, specifically highlighting the Ceramic Shield display, which is meant to be tougher than standard smartphone glass.
In the ad, a woman’s iPhone 12 slips out of her hand and she fumbles with it for several seconds before it flies out of her grip and lands on the ground, coming away unscathed.
“iPhone 12 with Ceramic Shield. Tougher than any smartphone glass. Relax, it’s the iPhone,” reads the video’s caption.
All of the iPhone 12 models feature Ceramic Shield OLED displays, which Apple says offers four times better drop protection than was available with prior iPhone models.
The Ceramic Shield material, which comes from Corning, is made by infusing nano-ceramic crystals into glass to improve durability. Though the Ceramic Shield seems to be better able to withstand drops than prior iPhone display technology, it is still prone to scratching.
Lil Baby Gives Powerful Grammy Performance Highlighting Police Brutality
CBS
Lil Baby used his platform at The Grammys to deliver a powerful message and highlight the problem of police brutality … even including a message to President Biden.
The rapper’s performance of his song “The Bigger Picture” looked more like a Hollywood production … opening with a scene of a black man getting gunned down by a police officer.
Social justice advocate Tamika Mallory and activist Killer Mike also made appearances during Lil Baby’s performance. Mallory delivered a personal message to President Biden, saying, “President Biden, we demand justice, equity, policy and everything else that freedom encompasses. We don’t need allies, we need accomplices.”
The song’s lyrics are based around the death and aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, including, “t’s too many mothers that’s grieving. They killing us for no reason. Been going on for too long to get even. Throw us in cages like dogs and hyenas.”
At one point, Lil Baby stood face-to-face with a police officer before getting on the hood of a car as fireworks lit up the sky behind him.
Lil Baby’s performance comes less than a week after jury selection for Derek Chauvin — the police officer on trial for the death of George Floyd — started in Minneapolis.
Intel mocks Apple in new campaign highlighting things users can’t do on a M1 Mac
Intel had a strong partnership with Apple since 2005 and although Apple now has Mac computers with its own chips, there are still some Macs being shipped with Intel processors. However, as the M1 chip has been praised for its performance and efficiency, Intel is now mocking Apple in a new campaign that highlights things users can’t do on a M1 Mac.
The new campaign has been running on Twitter and other websites claiming that there are some tasks that only Windows PCs can do. In one of the new ads, Intel says that “only a PC offers tablet mode, touch screen and stylus capabilities in a single device,” which is similar to what Microsoft does in Surface ads.
Another ad in the campaign is even more aggressive by claiming that Macs are not ideal for engineers and games, as Windows has a broader catalog of software and games than macOS. It even mentions that “if you can launch Rocket League, you’re not on a Mac” since the game was discontinued for macOS last year.
In addition to the web ads, the campaign also includes a paid video with YouTuber Jon Rettinger in which he points out advantages of having a regular laptop instead of a M1 MacBook, such as standard USB ports, touch screen, eGPU support, and working with two external displays.
Last week, Intel shared a slideshow of benchmark results comparing its 11th generation “Tiger Lake” i7 processor against Apple’s M1 chip in an attempt to show that Intel processors are more powerful than a chip that Apple built for low-power, fanless computers.
In the meantime, Apple says that the transition from Intel processors to Apple Silicon Chips is expected to be completed by the end of 2022, when the company will no longer have any Mac computers running on Intel. With that said, it’s clear that Intel has nothing left to lose with this campaign against Apple — the company has already lost everything it could.
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