CocuSocial was founded on a simple premise: traditional cooking classes, while fun, are usually way too expensive and intensive. This means that many potential customers may be scared away by thinking they can’t afford a cooking class or it’s going to be geared towards participants with a higher skill set. And this is partially true – classes at places like Sur la Table can… Read More
July 28, 2017
On May 24th, I wrote a post titled Shifting To Maker Mode For The Summer. I had full intentions of making this shift around Memorial Day and sustaining it until Labor Day.
I have completely failed at this. While Iâm managed to stay off social media and read a lot more than watch TV, I massively underestimated the amount of transactional activity Iâd have this summer. On Monday mornings, when Iâd look at my schedule for the week, Iâd see a wall of blue through Friday, starting early in the morning and going until dinner time. My goal was to have nothing scheduled until 1 pm with an upper bound at 5 pm, but this ended up being an epic fail. And, as a bonus, Iâve had a dinner almost every night between Monday and Thursday so far this summer (thatâs not a good thing.) Iâve had a few days that werenât completely full, but theyâve ended up being catch-up days.
The next few of weeks are more of the same. So, Iâve accepted that Maker Mode is not happening this summer.
Iâve got two books in process: Give First and Startup Communities 2. I wrote 15,000 words on Give First in March but havenât opened my Scrivener file since. I have a co-author (Ian Hathaway) work is hard at work on the first draft of Startup Communities 2, so at least heâs making progress, but I havenât even started holding up my part of that particular bargain.
Iâm am running and have committed to do the Run Crazy Horse marathon in South Dakota in October. The running has been great for my body and even better for my mental health, so thatâs good.
I feel deep equanimity around this. In the past, Iâd be frustrated with myself for not getting in gear. But in hindsight, itâs clear that maker mode wasnât realistic given the other work commitments I have along with all of the episodic stuff that regularly comes up in my work life. Snoopy continues to be my guide on this particular journey.
Also published on Medium.
Mesh Wi-Fi router company Eero wants to provide an easy way for consumers to connect and connect with all the smart devices in their home. As it looks to build more intelligence around how those devices interact, the company has acqui-hired the team behind smart home management app Thington. Read More
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Most would agree that the worst part of traveling is timing the hotel check in. Either you get off a redeye and have to figure out what to do all day while waiting to check in, or you arrive late at night and waste money paying for a room you didn’t get to use all day. Enter HotelFlex. Part of Y Combinator’s summer 2017 batch, the startup wants to change the way hotels operate… Read More
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Steven Kotler is a performance expert and the coauthor of "Stealing Fire." In this video, Kotler explains why Google relies on creating group-flow states, and how Larry Page and Sergey Brin used Burning Man to find the right CEO. Following is a transcript of the video.
Google used Burning Man to find a CEO because they were interested in finding a CEO who's familiar with group flow.
So one of the things that happens at Burning Man â and there's recent research out of Oxford that sort of backs this up â is that Burning Man alters consciousness in a very particular way and it drops people into a state of group flow.
So, flow is a peak-performance state. It's an individual performing at their peak. Group flow is simply a team performing at their peak, and everybody has some familiarity with this. If youâve ever taken part in a great brainstorming session, where ideas are kind of bouncing everywhere â you're really reaching ripe, smart conclusions.
If youâve seen a fourth-quarter comeback in football. If you saw what the Patriots did in the Super Bowl. Thatâs group flow in action.
Google has relied very heavily since their inception on creating group-flow states. And when they were looking for a new CEO, they needed a way to screen for this, and it doesn't show up on most resumes.
They had a long history with Burning Man. From the very beginning, Larry and Sergey have been kind of rabid attendees. The center atrium at Google for years was decorated with pictures of Googlers at Burning Man, spinning fire, doing various things.
They had blown through and alienated like 50 different CEOs in the valley they tried to interview, and they found out that Eric Schmidt had actually been to Burning Man. So they bumped him to the top of their list, they took him to Burning Man to see how he would do. They wanted to know was he going to be able to let go of his ego, merge with the team, or was he going to stand in its way? And it turns out he passed the test, and the result is one of the most pivotal CEO hires in the modern era.
Get the latest Google stock price here.
A final decision on a proposed â¬850 million (£758 million) Apple data centre in Athenry, Ireland, has been pushed back to mid-October, The Irish Times reports.
A verdict was expected to be passed on July 30 but the Courts Service reportedly confirmed on Wednesday that the case would not now be heard until October 12.
Ciarán Cannon, Minister of State for the Diaspora and International Development, told Business Insider that he was "very annoyed," adding that "most are still hopeful of a positive outcome."
But local resident Paul Keane, who is a member of the Athenry for Apple Facebook group, said: "Some have totally lost hope and more are now more fearful of a complete loss of confidence in investment for the west and long term damage to the country simply because we couldn't get our act together."
Athenry residents are concerned whether Apple will ever be allowed to build the data centre, which would bring jobs and investment to the small town on the west coast of Ireland.
Apple first announced the data centre in February 2015. At the time, it said it intended to spend â¬1.7 billion (£1.5 billion) on a data centre in Ireland and another in Denmark, with each one costing â¬850 million (£752 million).
People of Athenry showing their support for Apple's data centre.Ciaran CannonThe Denmark data centre is expected to go live later this year but the project on the west coast of Ireland, just outside a small town called Athenry in County Galway, is yet to start.
Apple wants to build eight data halls on a 500-acre site in Derrydonnell Forest, which is owned by state-sponsored forestry firm Coillte, and situated roughly three miles from Athenry.
Galway County Council granted Apple planning permission in September 2015 but eight objectors took the issue to local planning body An Bord Pleanála. Following public hearings in Galway last summer, An Bord Pleanála gave Apple the go-ahead to build the facility in August.
But local residents Sinéad Fitzpatrick, Allan Daly, and Wicklow landowner Brian McDonagh asked the High Court for a judicial review on environmental grounds, something that could delay the project by a year and a half.
Apple managed to get the case fast-tracked through Ireland's Commercial Court after it filed a request last November but a final decision is yet to be passed. Around the same time, thousands of people in Athenry marched in favour of the data centre.
Earlier this month, Apple announced that it is planning to build another data centre in Denmark as it struggles to get the Irish data centre off the ground.
Apple wants to use the data centres to store European user data and to help power online services, including the iTunes Store, the App Store, iMessage, Maps, and Siri for customers across Europe.
A still from a video suggesting that Julian Assange is dead and has been replaced by a CGI model. Storm Watch/YouTube
Most people trust what they watch â but that won't always be the case. Tech is being developed that will make it easy to create fake video footage of public figures or audio of their voice. The developments aren't perfect yet, but they threaten to turbo-charge "fake news" and boost hoaxes online. In years to come, people will need to be far more skeptical about the media they see.LONDON â Late last year, some WikiLeaks supporters were growing concerned: What had happened to Julian Assange?
The then-45-year-old founder of the anti-secrecy publisher was no stranger to controversy. Since 2012, he has sheltered in the Ecuadorian Embassy in Knightsbridge, London, following allegations of sexual assault. (He denies them, and argues the case against him is politically motivated.) But the publication of leaked emails from Democratic Party officials in the run-up to the US presidential election saw Assange wield unprecedented influence while at the centre of a global media firestorm.
A definitely alive Julian Assange, standing on the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. PA Images
After the election, though, suspicions were growing that something had happened to him. Worried supporters highlighted his lack of public appearances since October, and produced exhaustive timelines detailing his activities and apparent "disappearance." They combined their efforts to solve the mystery together, on the Reddit community r/rWhereIsAssange.
Video interviews and photos of Assange were closely scrutinised amid speculation that they might have been modified with computer-generated imagery (CGI) â or faked entirely, as at least one YouTube analysis alleged.
"We need to look at the many glitches in that interview, and there were many for sure. Either terrible editing went on or CGI or whatever was just not fluid enough to make the grade. We need to understand why Assange's head looked like a cut and paste to his suit," one amateur sleuth wrote on Reddit.
Another investigator took an alternative approach: "I plan on watching the interview totally sober, and then vaping a whole bunch of weed and re-watching. I find that I can spot CGI or irregularities incredibly easily when I am really high."
This is not normal behaviour. When watching newsreel, or a clip of an interview on Facebook, most people don't give much thought as to whether the footage is real. They don't closely scrutinise it for evidence of elaborate CGI forgery.
But these concerns may not be confined to the paranoid fringes of the internet forever.
CGI and artificial intelligence (AI) are developing at a rapid pace, and in the coming years, it will become ever-more easy for hoaxsters and propagandists to create fake audio and video â creating the potential for unprecedented doubt over the authenticity of visual media.
"The output we see from these models ... are still crude and easily identified as forgeries, but it seems to be only a matter of refinement for them to become harder to discern as such," Francis Tseng, co-publisher of The New Inquiry and a curator of a project tracking how technology can distort reality, told Business Insider.
"So we'll see the quality go up, and like with other technologies, the costs will go down and the technology will become accessible to more people."
Early tech demos are a sign of what is to come
We're already living in an era of "fake news." President Trump frequently lashes out online at the "phony" news media. Hoax outlets are created by Macedonian teenagers to make a quick buck from ad revenue, and their stories go massively viral on platforms like Facebook. Public trust in the media has fallen to an all-time low.
But a string of tech demos and apps highlight how this problem seems likely to get much worse.
Earlier in July, University of Washington researchers made headlines when they used AI to produce a fake video of President Obama speaking, built by analysing tens of hours of footage of his past speeches. In this demo, called "Synthesizing Obama," the fake Obama's lips were synched to audio from another of his speeches â but it could have come from anywhere.
In a similar demo from 2016, "Face2face," researchers were able to take existing video footage of high-profile political figures including George W. Bush, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump and make their facial expressions mimic those of a human actor, all in real time.
Even your voice isn't safe. Lyrebird is voice-mimicking software that can take audio of someone speaking and use it to synthesise a digital version of their voice â something it showed off to disconcerting effect with demos of Hillary Clinton, Obama, and Trump promoting it. It's currently in development, and Adobe â the company behind Photoshop â is also developing similar tools, under the name "Project Voco."
And once you start to combine these technologies, things get really interesting â or worrying. Someone could synthesise a speech from President Trump using Lyrebird, then make a fake version of him generated with "Synthesising Obama"-style software deliver it.
You can quite literally put words into the mouth of any public figure.
It could undermine trust in everything you watch
Developers of this technology are awake to the dangerous possibilities of this tech. "Making these kinds of video manipulation tools widely available will have strong social implications. That is also the reason why we do not make our software or source code publically available," Justus Thies, who helped to develop Face2face, told Business Insider.
"[Imagine] kids having access to such a software â they would lift cyberbullying to a whole new level. You can also assume that the number of fake news will increase."
A still from a YouTube demo of 'Synthesizing Obama.' Supasorn Suwajanakorn/YouTube
Supasorn Suwajanakorn, a researcher on "Synthesising Obama," agreed that it could be used to produce fraudulent material â but argues it could also lead to more skepticism among ordinary people: "It could potentially be used to create fake videos when combined with technology that can generate a person-specific voice. On the other hand, if such tools are widespread and well-known, people can be more cautious about treating video as a strong evidence. People know Photoshop exists, and no one simply believes photos. This could happen with videos."
This was echoed by Yaroslav Goncharov, CEO of photo-editing app FaceApp. People will just have to learn to stop taking videos at face value, he argued: "If ordinary people can create such content themselves, I hope it will make people pay more attention to verifying any information they consume. Right now, a lot of heavily modified/fake content is produced and it goes under the radar."
US President Donald Trump. Thomson Reuters
He added: "Before printers were available, people could assign much high credibility to printed materials than to handwritten ones. Now when most people have a printer at home, they won't believe in something just because it is printed."
There's a flipside to the fact that it will become easy to make photo-realistic fraudulent video: It will also cast some doubts on even legitimate footage. If a politician or celebrity is caught saying or doing something untoward, there will be an increasing chance they decide to argue the entire video is fabricated "fake news".
In October 2016, President Trump's presidential campaign was rocked by the "Access Hollywood" tape â audio of him discussing groping women, including the now-infamous line: "Grab them by the pussy." What if he could have semi-credibly claimed the entire thing was just an AI-powered forgery?
It's not all bad, however: Just think of the entertainment!
So should conscientious developers swear off this technology altogether? Not so fast â there are also numerous positive use-cases, from entertainment to video gaming.
Face2face suggested its techniques could be used in post-production in the film industry, or for creating realistic avatars for gaming. In the announcement of "Synthesising Obama," it is suggested that it could be used to reduce bandwidth during video chats and teleconferencing. (Don't bother streaming video â just send audio and synthesise the visuals instead!) Products like Lyrebird and Project Voco, meanwhile, could help people with speech disorders synthesise fluent and realistic speech on demand.
And Tseng also posits the tech could be used to "foster a wide culture of DIY entertainment: people editing clips from movies but replacing the dialogue or other elements in scenes or entirely synthesizing new clips by emulating actors and actresses."
But, he warns, developers still have a responsibility to take political issues into account. "Software development as a profession has grown so rapidly through so many informal channels that there is not much of a professional culture of ethics to speak of. Other engineering professions have developed pretty robust ethical standards, and those hold up because engineers trained in those professions go through a limited number of formal channels which expose them to those ethics. The boon of programming education is its decentralization and wide accessibility, but this also means people often pick up the skills without the necessary ethical frameworks to accompany them."
He added: "Anyone involved in the development of technology, directly or indirectly, has a responsibility to consider these issues, outright refuse to implement problematic technologies, or subvert them in some way."
The entertainment industry, of course, has long used CGI for entertainment purposes â and it is acutely aware of what further developments could herald. In December 2016, "Star Wars: Rogue One" came out, featuring a surprise appearance from actor Peter Cushing.
It was a particularly surprising appearance because Cushing had been dead for 22 years. His image was reconstructed using CGI overlaid on a real actor.
Left: The real Peter Cushing. Right: A digital reconstruction, two decades after his death. Lucasfilm/Disney
It wasn't a perfect recreation, but the stunt grabbed headlines, and spooked some other celebrities. Reuters reported at the time that its release led to actors "scrambling to exert control over how their characters and images are portrayed in the hereafter," negotiating contracts on how their image may or may not be used even after they die.
In January 2017, Lucasfilm even had to deny that it was planning to incorporate a CGI Carrie Fisher into the upcoming movie "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" after rumours that the studio was planning to get around the actress' death in December 2016 by making a digital version of her.
It's time to start getting ready
It's undeniable that developments in the coming years will heighten challenges people will face in finding and responsibly sharing media. In trying to solve these new challenges, everyone â journalists, developers, tech platforms, and ordinary people â all may have a role to play.
Technology already exists to cryptographically sign footage captured by a camera, so it can be verified when required. News outlets and organisations could perhaps one day "sign" their footage, so anyone can check its authenticity. No matter how convincing the fake, if it's not cryptographically fingerprinted, viewers would know something was wrong.
Face2face suggests its findings could be built upon to help "detect inconsistencies" in media and help identify fraudulent imagery.
Thies argued that big tech platforms like Facebook will have a duty to proactively police for fraudulent media: "Social media companies as well as the classical media companies have the responsibility to develop and setup fraud detection systems to prevent spreading / shearing of misinformation."
And as Goncharov and others suggested, it may force ordinary people to be more skeptical, and not take video and audio at face value â much like they wouldn't with a photo or screenshot today.
In January 2017, Julian Assange read out a hash from the bitcoin blockchain (essentially a high-tech version of holding up today's newspaper) on a public livestream in a bid to prove he was still alive, and that the video hadn't been pre-recorded.
A decade from now, if recreating real-time imagery of public figures (or anyone else!) becomes trivial, such authentication may no longer be enough.
Jack Dorsey, cofounder and chief executive officer of Twitter. Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Good morning! Here is the tech news you need to know this Friday.
1. Amazon's earning report for the second quarter shows that the company fell short of Wall Street's expectations, despite higher-than-expected revenue of $38 billion (£29 billion), as opposed to the expected $37.2 billion (£28.4 billion). The firm's rapidly rising expenses brought its operating income down 51% from the same period last year to $628 million (£480 million).
2. Apple is officially killing the iPod nano and the iPod shuffle. The company refreshed its iPod lineup on Thursday, and cut out the only two models that don't run on the iOS operating system.
3. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos officially became the richest person on the planet, surpassing Bill Gates. His personal net worth is now estimated to be around $90 billion (£68 billion).
4. Twitter's report for its second quarter earnings mentioned that the company added zero new users over the last three months, and the stock fell 10% as a result. The company managed to beat Wall Street's expectations in terms of revenue, however, with $574 million (£438 million) versus an expected $537 million (£410 million).
5. The state of Wisconsin offered Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn about $3 billion (£2.3 billion) in subsidies to build a factory there. The company itself plans to add another $10 billion (£7.6 billion) on top of that taxpayers' money, with the aim to create 13,000 new jobs.
6. Amazon plans to keep its Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go services after it completes the $13.7 billion (£10.4 billion) acquisition of Whole Foods. The company still wants to experiment and offer its customers a number of choices to figure out the best way they want to shop for groceries, as it believes "there will be no one solution."
7. Google is buying a number of properties in Silicon Valley, with an overall expenditure of about $820 million (£626 million). The company said that it now has more than 72,000 employees, and is looking to expand in the Sunnyvale, California area to branch out from its main Mountain View campus.
8. Dropbox is getting closer to its initial public offering, and is working with financial giant Goldman Sachs on the papers to bring it on as a lead adviser. The file-hosting service was last valued in 2014 at $10 billion (£7.6 billion).
9. HPE CEO Megan Whitman publicly pulled herself out of the list of potential Uber CEO replacements, shooting down speculation that emerged in recent days. The businesswoman reinstated her commitment towards HPE, claiming that she is "not going anywhere."
10. Facebook unveiled version 2.1 of its Messenger app, which now includes support for built-in natural language processing (NLP) as well as a payment SDK. In chats between customers and brands or businesses, the NLP tool will automatically detect the context of a message and pass it along to a bot, which in turn will give the end user tailored, automatic responses.
An employee sorts freshly harvested cannabis buds at a medical marijuana plantation in northern Israel March 21, 2017. Picture taken March 21, 2017. REUTERS/Nir Elias
California's marijuana producers are growing eight times more than is needed for consumption, according to a report by Patrick McGreevy at the LA Times.Â
Growers would need to scale back, and it's going to be a painful process, said Hezekiah Allen, executive director of the California Growers Association, during a panel discussion at the Sacramento Press Club. The LA Times reported that a consultant in the audience estimated the pot glut at 12 times what's being consumed.
In 1996, California became the first US state to permit medicinal marijuana. Its residents voted in November to legalize the possession of one ounce of marijuana for recreational use. But it now faces a glut ahead of new regulations that ban exports as from Jan. 1.
A consequence of the glut, Allen added, is that some growers on the black market would export their product to other states, which is unlawful under federal law.
Seven states including neighboring Nevada, Arkansas, and Massachusetts legalized marijuana on election day last year. In all, 29 US states have legalized marijuana in some form, according to governing.com.
Scratch one name off the list for Uber's CEO search.
Meg Whitman, the CEO of HPE who has been reported to be among the final candidates in the running to lead Uber, said on Thursday that she is not planning to change jobs.
"I am not going anywhere," Whitman tweeted, noting that the "speculation of my future has become a distraction" in a series of tweets late Thursday.
"Uber's CEO will not be Meg Whitman," she said.Â
The comments come as Uber narrows down the list of finalists to take the reins of the ride-hailing company, which has been without a CEO since cofounder Travis Kalanick resigned in June after a series of controversies.Â
Bloomberg reported earlier this week that Whitman was among a group of less than six candidates still in the running for the top job, with a decision expected by September. And on Thursday Bloomberg reported that GE's outgoing CEO Jeff Immelt was also on the short list, with the company's board of directors due to meet on Thursday evening to discuss the search process and the final candidates.
Uber is the world's most valuable privately held tech startup, with a $69 billion valuation.Â
But the company has been rocked by several months of bad news and controversies, including allegations of sexual discrimination inside the company, reports of a toxic work culture and a high profile lawsuit in which the company stands accused of using stolen technology.
Here are Whitman's tweets disavowing any intention of moving to Uber:
(1/3) Normally I do not comment on rumors, but the speculation about my future and Uber has become a distraction.
(2/3) So let me make this as clear as I can. I am fully committed to HPE and plan to remain the company's CEO.
(3/3) We have a lot of work still to do at HPE and I am not going anywhere. Uber's CEO will not be Meg Whitman.
Visit Markets Insider for constantly updated market quotes for individual stocks, ETFs, indices, commodities and currencies traded around the world. Go Now!
Purple, a Utah-based mattress startup, announced today it will merge with Global Partner Acquisition Corp (GPAC) in a deal that would value the company at $1.1 billion. The new deal is known as a “reverse merger” and would result in Purple becoming a publicly traded company overnight, but without the formal IPO process. Read More
Dropbox may be taking another step in its very slow shuffle toward an IPO, and is now working with Goldman Sachs to prepare documents that could be filed as soon as this year, according to a report by Bloomberg. The company is expected to hire Goldman Sachs as the lead advisor of the IPO process, according to the report. Read More
Just because Amazon will own Whole Foods, don't expect it to stop experimenting with its own cashier-less grocery stores and other grocery sales and delivery offerings.
Even after Amazon completes its planned $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods, the online retail giants plans to stick with Amazon Fresh, Amazon Go and its other efforts to reinvent the way consumers shop for food, the company said on Thursday.
In their first extended comments about the company's planned acquisition of the high-end grocery chain, Amazon officials said that they're still trying to see how customers want to shop for groceries. So the company has no plans to shut down any of its current experiments in grocery sales and delivery.
"We'll see how the customers respond," Brian Olsavsky, Amazon's chief financial officer, said on a conference call with analysts after Amazon announced its second quarter results. "We believe there will be no one solution."
Amazon announced last month it planned to purchase Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. The deal is pending approval by regulators.Â
But long before the deal, the e-commerce giant showed an interest in groceries. During the dot-com days, it invested in HomeGrocer, an early online grocery service. In 2007, it launched its own online grocery service called Amazon Fresh; it now makes deliveries in a select number of cities around the country and world. It also offers Prime Now, a service that allows customers to get groceries and other items delivered to their doorstep within hours of placing an order. And its been testing Amazon Go, a physical grocery store than allows customers to purchase items without having to interact with a cashier.Â
Amazon's first Go grocery store in Seattle is currently only open to Amazon employees. The store uses computer vision and payments technology so that shoppers can walk out with whatever they want.
Amazon will continue to experiment with different ways of offering groceries, Olsavsky said.Â
In the meantime, the company is "looking forward" to working with Whole Foods, he said.Â
"They're customer centric like us," he said.Â
Because Amazon hasn't completed its acquisition of Whole Foods, it didn't include the grocery chain's expected results in its third quarter guidance. Amazon's outlook for the current quarter, which the company offered along with disappointing earnings, was below Wall Street's expectations.
Visit Markets Insider for constantly updated market quotes for individual stocks, ETFs, indices, commodities and currencies traded around the world. Go Now!
Dropbox CEO Drew Houston may soon take his company to IPO. Steve Jennings / Stringer / Getty Images
Dropbox is inching closer to an IPO and is currently working with Goldman Sachs on the paperwork for an offering, Bloomberg reports.
The file hosting service, last valued at $10 billion in 2014, is close to hiring Goldman Sachs as a "lead adviser" for an IPO that could happen as early as this year, according to the report.Â
Goldman Sachs declined to comment to Business Insider. Dropbox did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It was reported in late June that Dropbox was in the market for underwriters, and was set to start interviewing investment banks in July.Â
Get the latest Goldman Sachs stock price here.
Up until late Wednesday it looked as though Viacom was very serious about acquiring Scripps Networks, which is valued at upwards of $11 billion. But now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Viacom is out of the Scripps sweepstakes, leaving Discovery Communications alone in the bidding.
That's a good thing for Viacom, because there are so many other things it could buy with that kind of money that have the potential to transform its business.
Reuters had been reporting that Viacom, which owns networks like MTV and Comedy Central, was willing to pay cash for Scripps, owner of networks like Food Network and HGTV. Putting aside whether a company saddled with loads of debt should be spending anywhere near that kind of money, the logic was as follows:
A Scripps/Viacom combo would help the entity negotiate with cable distributors like Comcast to make sure it gets distribution and good rates for its channels. Cable companies like Comcast pay networks like MTV a few bucks to carry them. Power players like ESPN can pull in over $9 per sub. Plus, the portfolio of networks in a Scripps/Viacom buffet would make the company a must buy with advertisers, as WSJ noted.In other words, Viacom was looking at Scripps as a way to shore up that sweet dual revenue cable model.
Here's the thing. Why double down on a business that is getting hit on two fronts? People are cutting the cord at an accelerated pace. And they are not watching live ad-supported TV at the level they used to.Â
Owning a bunch more cable channels than you used to isn't going to change either trend.
Viacom CEO Bob Bakish. Stuart Wilson/Getty Images
Viacom CEO Bob Bakish has been credited with unveiling a very disciplined strategy earlier this year when he announced that Viacom would focus it's energies on just six core channels, rather than a few dozen. Sounds very reasonable. But boil it down, and the plan he laid out was basically, "we're going to focus on linear TV, just not as much of it."
That's coming at a time when Viacom's youth-oriented network like Nickelodeon and MTV are feeling the pain of consumer media habits shifting more than others. It's unlikely that hoping for the next "Jersey Shore"-sized hit is going to change that. And yes, adding networks like HGTV to the mix bring an attractive audience. But you could argue that the kind of programming that Scripps networks specializes in, such as instructional food shows and DIY project shows, are the kind that easily get dropped from the average TV binger's diet.
Plus, as Recode's Ed Lee noted, that content of content is all over the web for free.
Thus, Viacom doesn't need to expand its fading cable empire. It needs to prep itself for the coming digital war. There are so many ways it could jumpstart such an effort with $11 billion, or far less. Such as:
1) Buy BuzzFeed. Reports are that the BuzzFeed turned down Disney a few years ago. And since then NBCUniversal has invested in the digital media company, so this may not be a realistic option. But its worth a discussion. In the near term, BuzzFeed's not nearly as lucrative as Scripps, but the company has a connection with a new generation of consumers and has shown a remarkable ability to launch new brands like Tasty seemingly overnight. Exactly the kinds of things Viacom should be doing.
2) Buy Spotify. This was BTIG Research media analyst Rich Greenfield's suggestion to Business Insider. That would give Viacom a direct-to-consumer subscription business that is music based. "That's the perfect fit," he said. There is the matter of Spotify's $13 billion valuation and pending IPO. But if you're going to splurge ...
3) Buy a bunch of digital media companies. Everyone in digital media is pivoting to video and wondering about consolidation and where to go next. That seems like the right conditions for a shopping spree. What would it cost for Viacom to snatch up Pop Sugar, Mic, Defy Media or Tastemade? Surely not $11 billion. You could maybe even collect all four. Throw in Cheddar for good measure.
None of these would solve the ratings or distribution challenges. But it would help get the company started on how to program and connect with the mobile-centric generation that is key to Viacom's future.
Michael Seto
4) Disrupt yourself. There's been lots of talk of Viacom joining forces with other cable companies to explore a cheaper, skinnier bundle for non sports fans. Do that! But in the meantime, why not launch your own direct to consumer Nickelodeon? You could call it Nickelodeon Go. That might annoy some of your distribution partners. But Viacom is already at odds with some of them. Otherwise, they're conceding this arena to Google, which has YouTube Kids. People will pay for Paw Patrol.
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5) Incubate you're own newbie brands.
Look at what CNN has done with its feel good social video brand Great Big Story, which was born on Facebook and is now aspiring to become an "over the top" cable net. That's only cost CNN $40 million! Where's Viacom's version of that?
6) Pull an Otter. As part of a joint venture known as Otter Media, AT&T has invested in digital video brands like Fullscreen and Crunchyroll, fostering their growth without having to run them or own them outright. Now the New York Post says Otter could be worth $1 billion. Seems like there's a playbook to follow here for Viacom.
7) Pull an Axel Springer. Similarly, the German media giant has invested in a slew of early stage US digital content companies, like Thrillist, NowThis and Mic. The dual benefit is that the company's traditional media businesses theoretically get to learn from the newer contenders, and if one hits it big, Axel gets a payoff. And who knows, if you like one, you can buy the whole thing (see Insider, Business).
8) Plunge into ad tech. This would be a major curveball. But one thing Viacom is credited with is being ahead of the pack in terms of data-driven TV ad targeting. What if the company purchased video ad tech players like Innovid or Videology and try to become the industry leader if and when TV ads are delivered dynamically to TV sets and mobile devices much like targeted web ads?
Roku
9) Buy Roku. Another left turn. But Roku is actually trending ahead of Google's Chromecast and Apple TV in terms of the devices people use to stream content on TV, according to eMarketer. The company is talking about a billion dollar IPO. What if Viacom could take advantage of Roku's real estate (the interface many use to navigate their TVs) and also the ads that Roku delivers to many TV apps?
10) Buy Snapchat. Or sell to Snapchat. Neither will probably work. But hey.
11) Sell to Google or Amazon. We all will someday.
Xerox is a known stickler when it comes to its corporate trademark, but that's not new.
In light of longtime book critic Michiko Kakutani stepping down from her role Thursday, a reporter for  The New York Times tweeted out an amazingly anachronistic letter to the editor from an upset Xerox employee.Â
The typewriter-written letter, dated August 2, 1979, is directed to a mis-gendered "Mr. Michiko Kakutani" in response to an article in which Xerox's name is used as a verb.
âThere is no adjective 'xeroxed'. Rather, one should use copied, photocopied or duplicated," Maggie Lovaas, a field market analyst, wrote on official Xerox stationary. âIf in the future you wish to use the name Xerox, it should be used with a capital âXâ and no âedâ."
The article in question, titled "Pat Carroll Pat Carroll Pat Carroll," is a profile on the midcentury actress Pat Carroll. The author, Ms. Kakutani, verbifies the company's name while detailing the decor in Carroll's house.Â
"Miss Carroll's reconverted farmhouse has become something of a Steinian archive; it is filled with books by Stein and about Stein, as well as xeroxed Ph.D. theses and obscure literary journals devoted to that most famous of salonâkeepers," reads the piece.Â
(Delightfully, The New York Times 'xeroxed' the print issue from that day, and the original article can be found live on its website.)
Xerox continues the fight against trademark infringement through advertising, like this piece from 2011.XeroxIn the '70s, Xerox was a heavyweight in the photocopying game, stemming from its 1959 release of the first commercial machine, the Xerox 914.Â
But it's only caused headaches for those in charge of the corporation's trademark, which has since slipped into everyday use â no doubt thanks to the subtle acceptance of such verbiage by The New York Times' (now-defunct) copy desk. Â
While today the un-capitalized "xerox" is listed as a verb by Merriam-Webster, Xerox the corporation retains its policy, and continues to send letters of complaint.
"Xerox Corporation has never accepted the verbiage 'xeroxing.' Xerox continues to mount an aggressive campaign to protect Xerox as a copyrighted, trademark and not a generic verb," a spokesperson told Business Insider. "We place advertising to support this message and send letters when appropriate."
In a surprise announcement (even to some US defense officials) Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump tweeted that the military would no longer "allow or accept" transgender Americans, saying their service would cause "tremendous medical costs and disruption."
Sixteen countries, including the Czech Republic, Norway, and Israel, allow transgender service in the military. (Spain's and Thailand's forces also accept trans people, but only in administrative positions.)
The Canadian military took the opportunity to troll the USÂ with a tweet of its own:
Other high-ranking foreign military officials have expressed their opposition to Trump's move, as well.
Alex Burton, commander of the UK's Maritime Forces, said on Wednesday he is "so glad we are not going this way."
In an interview with Israel Army Radio, the former commander of the the Israel Defense Forces Manpower Command, Elazar Stern, said that a ban on transgender soldiers would be a waste of time.
"It makes us strong that we don't waste time on questions like this," Stern, now a member of Israel's parliament, said . "Itâs something to be proud of."
It is not clear if Trump's plan to reinstate the ban on transgender military service will become actual policy. US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Joseph Dunford wrote in a letter that there will be no change in trans policy until the military receives official counsel from the president, according to Reuters. Sources close to US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said he was "appalled" by Trump's tweets, the New York Times reported.
Senior officials in each branch of the military had supported barring trans soldiers leading up to Trump's announcement, the Military Times reports.
However, a number of politicians and veterans have strongly voiced opposition to the ban. Rep. Dan Kildee, a vice chair of the LGBT Equality Caucus, called the move a "slap in the face to the thousands of transgender Americans already serving in the military." Retired US Navy SEAL Kristin Beck, who is transgender, opposed Trump's statement on the cost of transgender people in military, saying "the money is negligible ... You're talking about .000001% of the military budget."
In an interview with Business Insider, she also said:Â "Let's meet face to face, and you tell me I'm not worthy. Transgender doesn't matter. Do your service."