This episode of Getting Lost With Ian Sams brings us to Bear Mtn. and the annual Hot Dawgs and Hand Rails competition. Ian skates and talks about his season and then shoots up to the contest. Erik Leon drops hammers. Some girl in red shorts shows off her butt. It's a good time.
Getting Lost With Ian Sams Episode 5 from Arbor Collective on Vimeo.
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — An explosion that injured an American guest in one of the ritziest hotels in Myanmar's main city was caused by a small, homemade time bomb placed in her room, police said Tuesday.
It was the most high-profile in a series of low-intensity explosions that the government alleges is an attempt to tarnish the image of the budding democracy as it emerges from decades of oppressive military rule.
Officials said the attacks appear to be organized, with a restaurant, two bus stops, Buddhist temples and a market all targeted within the last week.
No one has claimed responsibility.
The crude device that went off just before midnight Monday at the Traders Hotel — popular among foreign tourists, businesspeople and visiting government officials — was hidden in the bathroom in an American family's room on the ninth floor.
The 43-year-old woman was wounded but her husband and two children, aged 5 and 7, escaped injury.
There was no indication they had been targeted.
Police officer Myint Htwe said three suspects linked to the explosion in the heart of Yangon had been detained. A fourth suspect, apparently captured on the hotel's security camera, was seized by authorities in Mon state, according to state-run TV.
Small bombings occurred frequently in Myanmar during 50 years of military rule, most often blamed on armed exiled groups or ethnic rebels. But they have been rare since the nominally civilian government of President Thein Sein took office in 2011 and started implementing political and economic reforms.
Many activists and rights groups, however, say Myanmar is still far from free.
There have been at least seven bomb blasts since Friday, leaving several people wounded.
Hours after the Traders Hotel attack, a small bomb went off in Saggaing near Mandalay in the restaurant of a hotel used by tourists, and another followed soon after in Taw Oo Pone Nya Shin Pagoda, said police officer Tin Maung Aye. He said no one was hurt.
In earlier attacks some bombs were attached underneath trucks or hidden in bags.
The reasons behind the bombings remained a mystery late Tuesday.
"Given the frequency and location of these blasts it's reasonable to assume the effort was organized," said Matthew Smith, a Myanmar expert who directs the advocacy group Fortify Rights. "But if the perpetrators intended to send a clear message, they failed."
The government speculated the bombings were being organized by individuals or groups who want to smear the country's image as it prepares to take leadership of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations regional grouping in 2014.
It is also hosting the Southeast Asian Games, a showcase sporting event, later this year.
"Someone or some organization" wants to "make the international community misunderstand the situation of stability and peace in Myanmar," said Ko Ko Hlaing, a political adviser to the president.
He ticked off a wide range of potential suspects, from political dissidents to groups unsatisfied with recent reforms. Religious extremists inside the country could not be ruled out, he said, nor could terrorists coming from outside to wage jihad.
The government is still fighting Kachin and other scattered ethnic groups and the country has been struggling with sectarian violence between Buddhists and Muslims.
Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who now serves as the opposition leader in parliament, called the attacks "deliberate acts to create panic."
She said it was important that authorities "urgently expose" those responsible.
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Associated Press writers Aye Aye Win, Esther Htusan and Todd Pitman contributed to this report.
If you're one of those non-conformists who uses Microsoft's Outlook.com email service on an Android phone, you'll definitely want to hit up the source link at the bottom of this post: Microsoft just updated its Outlook app for Android with a bunch of new features, including some that users have been ...
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/eW5KFByzL8w/Shares of Netflix surged 8 percent on Monday after reports surfaced that cable operators were considering embedding the video-streamer's service into set-top boxes.
The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with discussions, said Netflix is talking to Comcast and Suddenlink Communications, and Bloomberg later reported talks are underway with Charter Communications and Cox Communications, as well.
Netflix stock on Tuesday rose $23.51 a share to $324.36 on volume that was more than twice the average.
RELATED: Netflix in Talks to Offer Online Video Service via Comcast, Other US Pay TV Firms
Presumably, if a deal were to get done in the U.S. it would be similar to an arrangement Neflix recently struck with Virgin Media in the U.K. and Com Hem in Sweden. With those two -- at least initially -- only their subscribers who use TiVo set-top boxes will be able to access a Netflix app.
Netflix's goal, though, is more likely that the app be available on cable boxes in general, therefore making the on-demand streamer more of a partner to multi-systems operators and less a competitor.
"We would love to reduce the friction to the end consumer and to be available via the existing device in the home," Netflix CFO David Wells said this year at an investor conference.
A year from now, when the 2014 Nobel Prize in economics is being awarded, the S&P 500 will either be higher, lower or right where it is today. If you find that sort of statement to be useless, it's sort of how some in the investment world are viewing this morning's three-way award for "Trend-spotting in Asset Markets."
"It's interesting they picked those three together," says Andrew Wellington, chief investment officer at Lyrical Partners in the attached video, "because some of their theories contradict each other."
While he says the research of Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen and Robert Shiller all address a broad issue of how assets get priced in the market, the notion that things are predictably unpredictable isn't going change how he runs money.
For example, Wellington says that Fama's famous Efficient Market Hypothesis argues that it is impossible to beat the market by picking individual stocks, whereas the lesson from Shiller's work is that market trends can indeed be forecast over a three to five year period.
"It seems sort of counter-intuitive that the further out you go the easier it is to predict things," Wellington says, but concedes that the "volatility and variability" of short-term trading that's driven by emotion ultimately ebbs and markets revert back to their long-term averages. "Anytime you put a bunch of humans together you're going to get a bunch of mistakes, you're going to get emotion over-riding reasonable analysis."
For its part, the Nobel committee characterizes the impact of its choice this way:
"The work of the Laureates has affected not only academic research but also market practice. The fact that stock markets are very hard to predict in the short run, and that stock-picking is very difficult both in the short and the long run, has led to close examination of the performance by mutual funds...and the recent growth of index funds."
While that might seem like heresy to a stock-picking fund manager like Wellington, it's not thanks to the enviable performance of his lean and lightly turned Lyrical U.S. Value Equity Fund which holds just 34 stocks and changes names only about six times year.
"The growth of indexing has been a great benefit to what we do," he says. "S&P puts Exxon (XOM) and Apple (AAPL) in their index, not because they're good investments, but just because they're there, and just being there is not exactly the highest investment standard."
Wellington and Lyrical Partners have been able to capitalize on the short and long-term mistakes of other investors as well as all sorts of other market inefficiencies, and their results put them in a very small camp of asset managers that can claim to have beaten their benchmark. It's a claim that the overwhelming majority of active managers cannot make, and one reason why it doesn't take a Nobel laureate to figure out that markets are irrational, volatile and almost impossible for the average person to beat.
More from Breakout:
Default Countdown: Don't Let Fear Control Your Money, Says Lutz
Revenge of the Safe Havens: Day of Reckoning Will Come, Says Cuggino
Gold Crushed! 2013 Losses Now Over 20%
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books dealing with the subject of technology that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read.
The Secrets of Bezos: How Amazon Became the Everything Store
by Brad Stone, Bloomberg Businessweek
Brad Stone's book on Amazon and founder Jeff Bezos is set to be published next week, but Bloomberg Businessweek has offered an extensive look at what's in store with this cover story/excerpt from the author, including one of his biggest revelations. Drawn from interviews with hundreds of those who know or have worked with Bezos, the piece offers the most in-depth look yet at Amazon and its evolution into what Stone describes as the "Everything Store," as well as what Bezos himself is like to work for.
All Is Fair in Love and Twitter This week's other big excerpt from a highly anticipated book offers a look behind the scenes at Twitter, from its founding to the tensions that grew as the company became the phenomenon it is today. Nick Bilton's book, Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal, will be published next month. | Apple Legend Bill Atkinson's New Mission: Save the Postcard Dan Farber profiles Bill Atkinson, who created MacPaint, HyperCard and the Macintosh's QuickDraw graphics system while at Apple, and is also an accomplished photographer -- something that's led to his latest effort, an iOS app that he hopes will help revive the art of the postcard. |
How Lavabit Melted Down By now, there's a good chance you've heard of Lavabit, the secure email service that garnered headlines when it was revealed that Edward Snowden used it, and yet more when Lavabit's founder decided to shut it down. In this piece for The New Yorker's Elements blog, Michael Phillips and Matt Buchanan explain just what happened that led to the latter. | What Will It Take To Find Life Elsewhere In The Universe? In this essay adapted from his new book, Five Billion Years of Solitude, Lee Billings examines the recent history of efforts to study the universe with the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes, as well as what else will be needed to search for possible life beyond our solar system. |
SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) — San Francisco 49ers linebacker Aldon Smith was charged Wednesday with three felony counts of illegal possession of an assault weapon, stemming from a party at his home in June 2012.
The Santa Clara County district attorney's office said in announcing the charges that Smith is expected to surrender on his own later this month. The 24-year-old Smith is on an indefinite leave of absence from the NFC champion Niners while undergoing treatment for substance abuse at an in-patient facility following a DUI arrest Sept. 20.
"We've been aware of the incident, the serious nature of it. We're all accountable for our actions, good and bad," 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh said Wednesday. "There's a process, due process, that will take place. I don't feel any need to comment further on it."
When asked whether Smith — who set a franchise record with 19½ sacks last season — would play again this year, Harbaugh said only, "I don't have any need to further comment on it."
On Monday, the coach said he had traded a few text messages with Smith, saying, "Heard that things are going very well, very positive reports back."
If convicted, Smith could face up to four years and four months in jail, the district attorney's office said.
"The preamble to the assault weapons law states that each assault weapon 'has such a high rate of fire and capacity for firepower that its function as a legitimate sports or recreational firearm is substantially outweighed by the danger that it can be used to kill and injure human beings,'" District Attorney Jeff Rosen said. "California's prohibition of these powerful weapons is not about hunting or target practice. It is about interrupting the long history of death, carnage and grief assault weapons have inflicted on California communities."
Smith also is likely to face a suspension from the NFL, perhaps pushed back to next season or after his legal issues are resolved.
The 49ers issued a statement Wednesday.
"The 49ers organization is aware of the recent developments with Aldon arising from an incident at his home in 2012," the team said. "We recognize the serious nature of this situation, as does Aldon, and will continue to monitor it closely. As this is an ongoing legal matter, we will have no further comment."
Last month, Smith and former teammate Delanie Walker were named in a lawsuit filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court by a Northern California man who said he was shot at a party at Smith's house on June 29, 2012.
The players charged a $10 admission and $5 per drink, the lawsuit said. Smith and now-Titans tight end Walker, 29, were allegedly intoxicated on Smith's balcony when they fired gunshots in the air while trying to end the party, the lawsuit said.
Before the 2012 home opener last September, Smith was the passenger in a car during an accident in Santa Clara County in which the driver swerved to avoid hitting a deer. Smith sustained a cut beneath his right eyebrow. He apologized and insisted he had grown up.
Smith, selected seventh overall in the 2011 draft out of Missouri, had previously been arrested on suspicion of DUI in January 2012 in Miami shortly after the 49ers lost in the NFC championship game.
He is on the reserve non-football injury list while in rehab, and there is no NFL minimum for number of games he must miss while on the list.
Smith played in a 27-7 home loss to the Colts on Sept. 22 and had five tackles just two days after he was arrested and jailed on suspicion of DUI and marijuana possession. Smith apologized for his behavior after the game.
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AP Freelance Writer Michael Wagaman contributed to this report.
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AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org
