[unable to retrieve full-text content]
Mentor Rocks 2020 opens with Who's Bad News-Herald.com
Until the Nets win an NBA title, this was the high point of the team’s history in Brooklyn ...
Brooklyn is making a clean sweep tonight: Brooklyn will sign Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and DeAndre Jordan, league sources tell ESPN.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) June 30, 2019
There were hints of course the week before that it could happen but when the Woj Bomb of Woj Bombs exploded, long-time Nets fans laughed (uproariously), cried (shamelessly) and in general felt the Brooklyn Nets had finally arrived. Sean Marks, architect of the Nets resurgence, was deified.
And now ... a year later?
At the moment, it’s not so good. The three players who agreed to sign a year ago are all out. Kevin Durant, who no one (okay, maybe a few of us) expected to play, is still rehabbing. Kyrie Irving, who played only 20 games, is too, after shoulder surgery. And just a day before the anniversary, DeAndre Jordan announced he has tested positive for a disease no one could have imagined a year ago, joining the player who recruited Irving, Spencer Dinwiddie...
BUT WAIT! As Joe Johnson said in another context five years ago, It’s not that bad here!
For openers, KD and Kyrie are still Nets (last I checked) and are expected to be fully healthy come November when teams return to camp for the 2020-21 season. Caris LeVert when asked to carry the load did so with aplomb, racking up his first 50-point game and first triple double in a four-game stretch before the shutdown. Dinwiddie is in good spirits despite his symptoms. Not to mention, Jarrett Allen, Joe Harris, Nicolas Claxton, etc. etc.
The Nets are in very, very good shape going forward. Despite everything that’s happened since last October, they have a roster built to win and win big. Other than Joe Harris (and probably Tyler Johnson), all of their key players are under contract for two or more years. They have at least one first and one second rounder in every draft going forward.
While their payroll is high, so are their resources. Their owner is the second wealthiest in the NBA and he’s said he plans to devote more of his time, attention and money to his sports teams. They play in New York in one of the NBA’s best and most modern arenas, practice in what is arguably the best training center. And that front office that brought you KD and Kyrie, drafted LeVert and developed Dinwiddie and Harris is still intact.
Their reputation in the league is better than it’s ever been. Players want to play in Brooklyn, for an organization with a record of unmatched compassion and community involvement, exemplified by owners Joe and Clara Wu Tsai’s gift of 2,000 ventilators and hundreds of thousands of Personal Protective Equipment and his endorsement of peaceful demonstrations at Barclays Center.
Their hometown, Brooklyn, is not only hip or cool or hip hop. It’s been steeled by its experience as the epicenter of both a worldwide pandemic and of New York’s outrage at the killings of young black men and women. “Brooklyn Strong” is not a marketing slogan. It is a fact.
Yes, there are blemishes. The dumping of Kenny Atkinson was not among the organization’s finest moments. There were and continue to be recriminations about how it hurt the culture that is the cornerstone of it all. Not to mention that the organization will have a critical decision in replacing him ... and soon. Some still sting —or worse— over Tsai’s defense of China’s reaction to Daryl Morey’s tweet.
Compared to other teams, even their health situation is not that bad. Four Kings have tested positive. Three Pelicans, too. The biggest star to test positive in this round is Nikola Jokic, not a Net.
So, in thinking about the past, present and future of the franchise, it’s good to take a breath ... and a sip. On this dark evening of pandemics and protests, think back to how you felt a year ago. Laugh a little, cry some too if you want. But know, it’s not that bad here!
The Byton M-Byte electric SUV
Boosted by generous government subsidies to build electric vehicles, a new crop of electric carmakers has emerged in China over the past few years. Among the most well known are Byton, Nio and Xpeng Motors. However, breaking into the world's biggest auto market and following in Tesla's lead has proved to be a daunting task for the young EV startups.
Automaker Byton, which hoped to bring its futuristic M-Byte SUV to the market by this year, announced that it is suspending its operations for the next 6 months, beginning on July 1.
The news was first reported by The Detroit Bureau. Byton spokesman Dave Buchko told the Detroit-based news outlet on Monday that virtually all of the company's employees around the world will be let go.
"The company is going to suspend operations on July 1 for six months," said Buchko. The board of directors and top management are looking to find a way to move the company forward."
Byton is suspending operations to review its business operations amid China's cooling auto market. However, sources inside and outside of the company said that the chances Byton will emerge from its self-imposed hiatus seems unlikely.
Two years ago, Byton completed a Series-B fundraising round of $500 million from multiple major investors that include Chinese automaker FAW Group, Tus-Holdings and battery manufactuerer CATL. The funding round was used to fund progress in mass production, R&D and product development of the electric M-Byte SUV.
Byton attracted attention around the world after it first debuted its M-Byte concept at CES in Las Vegas in Jan 2018. The fully-electric SUV featured an instrument panel with a 48-inch widescreen display, giving the driver and passenger a wealth of vehicle information and infotainment options. Byton called it a "Shared Experience Display."
The M-Byte's Shared Experience Display is a unique feature and included a steering wheel display .
The M-Byte also had other advanced features such as an intuitive access feature in the M-Byte, which uses face recognition technology to unlock the doors when a driver approaches. Other tech included a rearview camera which replaced the conventional glass rearview mirror.
Byton teamed up with automotive supplier Bosch on powertrain, brake and driver assistance systems for the M-Byte.
The company followed up the M-Byte concept with a production version at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January.
In Aug 2018, Byton announced it was working with autonomous driving startup Aurora to outfit its vehicles with self-driving technology. Aurora was founded by Chris Urmson, the former head of Google's self-driving car program.
Also in 2018, Byton announced Byton the opening of its global headquarters in Nanjing, China, an R&D center in Silicon Valley, as well as a design center in Munich, Germany.
Byton co-founders Dr. Carsten Breitfeld (L) and Dr. Daniel Kirchert present the M-Byte concept EV at CES 2018 in Las Vegas.
Byton recently completed its factory in China and was granted a license from China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to begin vehicle production. Byton was even able to build a handful of M-Byte vehicles to gain its license.
However, Byton's plans were derailed by the global coronavirus pandemic and the company was forced to suspend its operations along with the rest of China auto industry. With few buyers for its electric M-Byte, Byton's path forward proved difficult.
"Without a revenue stream, we just hit the wall," Buchko told The Detroit Bureau.
However, Byton's troubles began to surface in April 2019, when Chairman and Co-founder Dr. Carsten Breitfeld announced he was leaving the company. Sources said at the time that Byton was having difficulty finding its planned expansion in the Chinese market, causing tensions inside the company, which led to Dr Breitfeld's departure.
Dr. Breitfeld, who co-founded Byton in 2017, was a former engineer who spent 20 years at BMW, including more than 10 years as BMW Group vice president. He was the former head of the BMW i8 program.
In April, Byton confirmed it would furlough about half of the 450 employees at its U.S. operations. Now its appears they won't be coming back to work.
My brain is like a conveyor belt in an empty sushi restaurant.
My thoughts are the pieces of sushi that have been going around the belt forever, getting old and rancid, because there’s no one in the restaurant except me, and I hate sushi.
Except that’s not entirely true. I don’t mind the kind without raw fish. Tempura rolls are actually pretty tasty. So I eat the tempura rolls (a.k.a. the good thoughts) whenever they come along.
But sometimes, they never come along.
So what do I do? I need to eat, so I grab an old piece of sushi and I start eating it. And it tastes terrible. And it makes me feel sick. But I feel like I have no choice because I haven’t seen a tempura roll in ages, and I’m afraid I’ll never see one again. So I keep eating bad sushi, and I keep feeling worse and worse. Sometimes I even end up in the hospital from eating so much rotten sushi.
Every now and then, tempura rolls show up, and I’m overjoyed. I gobble them up and start to think, “Maybe, just maybe, there will only be tempura rolls from now on.”
The streak of good sushi might last for days, or it might only last for minutes, or seconds. Eventually the stinky stuff appears on the belt again, and the cycle continues.
—
What are my options here? I’m @$!#*%& sick of bad sushi.
Solution 1: Just wait. Let the bad sushi pass. Notice it, but don’t pick it up. Trust that the good stuff will come. Have faith that there’s a cook back there, in an unseen kitchen, and when they see that no one’s eating the bad stuff, they throw it away and replace it with hot, fresh tempura rolls.
Note: The cook is probably you, and you don’t even know it. Or if you prefer, the cook is God. Or the cook is the Universe itself. Whatever analogy suits your fancy.
Related: 3 Unrealistic Expectations to Let Go of When Parenting During Quarantine
Anyway, that’s a pretty good solution. You might have to go hungry for a bit while you wait. But the good sushi will come.
—
Today, I thought of an even better idea.
Solution 2: Consciously become the cook. Notice (but don’t pick up) the old sushi passing by and say to yourself, “I want the good stuff now. And I deserve it, @$!#*%& it!”
Then imagine what the good sushi looks like, how it smells and how it tastes. Remember how much you enjoyed it the last time you had it. Be grateful for how good it tastes and how lucky you are to have tasted it at some point in your life. Because we’ve all had it. It may have been a long time ago, but we know how it feels to eat the good sushi.
And that’s all it takes. You’ve made good sushi, and it’s on the conveyor belt in front of you. Eat it! Bad pieces will still appear, but with conviction and intention (are those the same thing? I don’t know, but they sound good together), you can keep making delicious tempura rolls.
Related: My Routine Is a Blessing, but It's Also the Bane of My Existence
You might get a bit tired from all of the conviction and intention. You might need a break (every cook needs a break), and that’s fine. Just go back to Solution 1: Watch the rotten stuff go by, without picking it up and trust the other cook. The bigger, omnipresent, invisible cook who brings good food when we’re too tired to make it ourselves.
Note: Again, that other cook is you. Or the part of you with endless energy and hope, because of its connection (on an unseen level) to an infinite source of wisdom and love.
—
Whoa.
That got a bit intense. Are you still with me? Thank you for reading this and (hopefully) forgiving me for getting super meta (-phorical and -physical).
And if you like raw fish (or rancid fish), I apologize. Feel free to substitute the sushi metaphor for something else that resonates with you. Like an airport carousel with an endless line of painfully heavy baggage. (That’s a pretty good one, actually. Maybe I’ll do another version with an airport metaphor.)
In the meantime, I wish you all the best on your own personal journey towards peace of mind.
Ricky Martin Reveals New Album 'Pausa' Helped Him Manage Anxiety
The 'Anxiety Guilt' I Have About Not Attending Protests
The Type of Horror That Helps Me Take Control of My Anxiety
7 Reasons the COVID-19 Pandemic Might Be Making You Exhausted
Welcome to this week’s edition of “The Good, the Bad, the Ugly,” where we are continuing to preview some of the more intriguing position groups in the Mountain West. Over the last few weeks, we have previewed quarterbacks and running backs. This week, we will be looking at the best wide receiver groups in the conference.
The Good:
Boise State
The Broncos are now three for three in the “Good” category. I believe that the wide receiver group is the most talented unit on this team. Khalil Shakir led the team with 63 catches last year and could approach triple digits in his senior season. The Broncos also return CT Thomas who has 97 career catches, and Octavius Evans is finally healthy enough to become the elite receiver he is expected to be. Boise State also has Stefan Cobbs, Shea Whiting, Khyeem Waleed, and Latrell Caples, all of whom were considered elite recruits.
Colorado State
The Rams might be the only team in the conference that has similar wide receiver talent to Boise State, and they might have the best wide receiver in the conference in Warren Jackson. Jackson was all-conference last season and should put up spectacular numbers in 2020. The Rams also return their number two and three receivers in Dante Wright and Nate Craig-Myers. This offense should be fun to watch.
Hawaii
I am going to be honest, I am not completely comfortable with this pick for a couple of reasons. The Rainbow Warriors are losing a ton of talent, and we really don’t know what their offense is going to look like. They will have to rely on the speed and shiftiness of their receivers. Smart, Stovall, and Victory should form a formidable trio and do enough to keep this offense exciting.
Nevada
Elijah Cooks and Romeo Doubs will form a lethal 1-2 combo for Carson Strong and company. There are some depth concerns for the Wolf Pack, but the development of Carson Strong and a favorable schedule should help this wide receiver group be one of the best in the Mountain West.
San Jose State
I think this unit will take a step back in 2020 with the departure of Bailey Gaither. However, there is still this guy named Tre Walker. Walker is a special talent who really shined last season. Isaiah Hamilton is a capable number two receiver who will benefit from the double teams that Walker is sure to face.
The Bad:
UNLV
Randal Grimes is coming off of a solid 2019, but there really aren’t a lot of of dynamic receivers returning for the Rebels. However, it wouldn’t shock me if this unit exceeded expectations under Arroyo.
San Diego State
Kobe Smith and Jesse Matthews put up some respectable numbers in 2019, but it is hard seeing either one of those guys emerge as one of the Mountain West’s elite receivers. After Smith and Matthews there isn’t much to be excited about at wide receiver. But who knows, maybe a change at quarterback and a new head coach will make things interesting.
Fresno State
The success of this unit is going to depend on the development of Jalen Cropper. Cropper was underutilized as a true freshman, but has the skill set to be an elite receiver. The Bulldogs do return the majority of their talent, but the stats just aren’t there to put them in the “Good” category. Maybe a new quarterback will make all the difference.
New Mexico
The Lobos really didn’t throw the ball around that much last year, and recruiting the wide receiver position hasn’t been easy to do considering their recent history on offense. Gonzalez and his staff will likely implement an offense that throws the ball a little more, but they will still be run heavy. The Lobos return their top two receivers.
Utah State
I’ve been told that I am wrong about the 2020 Aggies on multiple occasions, but losing Siaosi Mariner is a significant loss. Jordan Nathan and Deven Thompkins are nice receivers, but Utah State does not have the elite number one receiver that their new quarterback will need.
The Ugly:
Air Force
The Falcons lost both Geraud Sanders and Benjamin Waters, the only two receivers with more than 10 catches. As we have learned, Air Force is not really concerned with developing elite pass catchers. But, when you lost your top two receivers and have nobody else on the roster with double digit career catches, it is hard to land in any other category.
Wyoming
The Cowboys bring back a lot of intriguing talent on offense, but if there is one glaring weakness, it is at wide receiver. They didn’t have a receiver come close to 500 yards, and their top two receivers have graduated. This position group will have to exceed expectations, because opposing defenses are going to load the box to stop the run.
That’s it for this edition of “The Good, the Bad, the Ugly.” Next week, we will be previewing the tight end position.
Salvatore Palella is often credited as the man who brought electric scooters to Italy. Less known is his attempt to bring ride-sharing to the blockchain.
In June 2019, Italian Minister of Transportation Danilo Toninelli granted a decree to allow micro-mobility businesses to operate in cities that decided to participate in an e-scooter trial, at Palella’s urging. That’s the story the serial entrepreneur tells of his startup Helbiz, the “first sharing electric scooter company” in the country. Or at least, the first one partially funded by cryptocurrency.
With a fleet of 8,000 scooters in Italy alone, and offices reportedly in New York, Milan, Madrid, Belgrade and Singapore, Helbiz is well-positioned in a buoyant industry.
In June 2019, the company announced plans for an initial public offering (IPO) through a dual listing on Nasdaq and AIM Italia, an exchange dedicated to small, high-growth firms. It would be a notable exit in an industry that exploded in popularity in 2017 but has yet to find long-term profitability.
Instead of cheering, however, Helbiz’s early investors have filed a lawsuit. In a complaint seeking class action status, filed June 18 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, 20,000 investors claim Palella, Helbiz and several co-conspirators are liable for breach of contract regarding the startup’s fundraising model.
On the urban and suburban sidewalks, e-scooters have been a highly contested battleground for venture capitalists. Market leaders Lime and Bird rode the everything-is-tech-if-it’s-an-app wave to unicorn status. But Helbiz, founded in 2015, took a different route: an initial coin offering (ICO).
In 2017, in the midst of the ICO boom, Palella began promoting HelbizCoin (HBZ) and its associated blockchain platform as a peer-to-peer solution to reinvent the ride-sharing economy. Capitalizing on the mania over crowd-sharing businesses and crypto, Palella raised nearly $40 million from small investors, he said at the time.
Unlike other ICO projects that have been brought to court – usually over securities law violations – plaintiffs behind the class action are accusing Palella, Helbiz, et al. of breaking their promise to use this utility token as advertised.
“When they sold this token, they made promises about how it would be used on the platform. They took the money and broke the promises. That kind of misconduct is at least a breach of contract and could very well amount to fraud,” said Michael Kanovitz, a civil rights attorney of the litigating firm Loevy & Loevy.
Kanovitz’s argument focuses on promises Palella allegedly made to investors before, during and after the token sale regarding the use of HelbizCoin on its software platform. According to the complaint, Helbiz planned to use the capital raised from its ICO to build a “smartphone-based vehicle rental platform” – at that time envisioned to expand from scooters to cars to seaplanes, which would function entirely on HBZ.
“At no point did the white paper disclose any intent to allow rentals on the Helbiz platform in any currency other than HelbizCoin,” the complaint claims. Though the project’s original white paper did say the “choice to create a native token for Helbiz transactions is not casual… [T]he conclusion of our careful analysis was that only a native token allows Helbiz to optimize for the [company’s] objectives,” the plaintiffs note.
Helbiz responded with a written statement saying the “lawsuit filed last week against Helbiz Inc., Salvatore Palella and others is baseless and the claims, including the breach of contract claim, are without merit.”
The case “is highly unusual,” said Jason Gottlieb, a partner at Morrison Cohen. Gottlieb maintains a database of cryptocurrency lawsuits and found the vast majority of token projects are brought to court under securities violations. It’s a pattern of litigation other skilled observers have noticed.
“Typically, they just get sued for securities fraud or regular old fraud,” said Nic Carter, a partner at Castle Island Ventures and frequent contributor to CoinDesk.
“Even though the substance of the complaint hints at fraud, the plaintiffs notably decided not to include any fraud claims, under the securities laws or otherwise,” Jake Chervinsky, general counsel at DeFi startup Compound, said. Offering an explanation for the novel legal strategy, he said that securities claims might be “time-barred,” or past the statute of limitations, which in this case is one year.
According to Chervinsky, many ICOs were conducted under SAFT, or “simple agreement for future tokens,” guidance, an investment contract that complies with securities regulations. It usually provides disclaimers of liability and mandatory arbitration clauses, essentially nullifying a potential “breach of contract claim.”
Helbiz wasn’t issued under SAFT guidance, “so common law claims like breach of contract may be viable,” Chervinsky said. In fact, this “gambit” may make it easier to bring a case to court, which otherwise would have to meet relatively strict securities fraud pleading standards, Gottlieb said.
Kanovitz, acting for the plaintiffs, said the legal team could add claims of securities violations after discovery, a period where evidence is gathered from the defendants. While the SAFT is “indeterminate,” meaning it can only be applied on a case-by-case basis, the plaintiffs could instead apply the Howey Test, a fact-intensive interpretation of financial assets outlined by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, to ascertain whether digital assets are securities.
Helbiz seemed to suggest that its token sale would not fall under securities law: “The HBZ coin is a utility token and should not be viewed as a share of stock in any company,” reads the company statement, provided by Marcy Simon from the firm Agent of Change.
“They are claiming it is a utility token and not a security,” Kanovitz said. “Our focus for now is on the defendants’ broken promises and the misrepresentations they made along the way. They owe coin holders money for breaking their promises, regardless of whether they should also have registered as a security.”
Helbiz denies these claims, and said, “HBZ coin fulfilled all of its obligations and integrated directly into the Helbiz application,” according to its statement.
Here’s the crux of Kanovitz’s argument. At launch, the platform accepted only fiat payments, breaking the promise that investors were sold on. Further, a parallel crypto payments integration at a later date received little use, “thereby strongly undercutting the value proposition on which the coins had been marketed,” the court document reads.
Helbiz agrees the token was unpopular, claiming “less than 2,100 rides were ever taken over [two] years with the HBZ coin,” but that it fulfilled its obligation to “seamlessly integrate” it into the application.
The claimants allege Palella successfully built the Helbiz platform using funds raised in a January pre-sale and crowd sale extending between February and March 2018. Helbiz issued 520 million tokens to investors paying an average approximately $0.15 per coin, court filings said.
Helbiz refutes these claims and said the “vast majority of funding for the development of the platform and the acquisition of the fleet came from this and other private investments by shareholders in Helbiz Inc.”
The application has been downloaded 100,000 times, and Helbiz has a presence in cities across Italy, Spain, Portugal, among other European countries, as well as a foothold in several U.S. cities.
One anonymous claimant, who said he purchased upwards of $10,000 worth of HBZ, said he believed in the soundness of the project and the fundamental rules of tokenomics it represented. Meaning that if the platform grew in popularity, the demand and, therefore, price for HelbizCoin would increase.
It was these economic fundamentals on which Palella allegedly based his prediction that HBZ would eventually soar to $10 each – a 6,566% return from its ICO price – according to the court document. At that time, CoinMarketCap was a sea of green, with thousands of tokens gaining marketshare. This market exuberance, coupled with images of Palella and his supermodel partner jet-setting around the world, made it easy to ignore rational, economic thinking and buy into Helbiz’s token and the vision it represented, the trader said.
That was by design, the plaintiffs argue. The 62-page document outlines several supposed instances of false advertising, deceptive statements as well as the expropriation of investor money to fund Palella’s lavish lifestyle. These includes a non-existent deal with Alibaba as well as plans for “a flying Helbiz drone taxi that would revolutionize urban travel.” Plaintiffs argue these wild claims were a way to “pacify” investors growing antsy over the slow development of the project.
At the time the token project was announced, Helbiz pitched itself as “a seamless car sharing solution,” according to a preserved version of its website found on the Wayback Machine. Like many startups, the vision shifted, at one point involving crowdsourced yachts and private jets, to what would become solely a “last mile” transportation tech startup with a fleet of scooters and bikes.
Throughout this transition, Palella is said to have encouraged investors to hold onto the token or buy more as its price plummeted – while he and his co-conspirators allegedly sold their stakes, according to the complaint. This practice is often referred to as a “pump and dump.”
At 4:25 a.m. on May 7, 2018, for instance, Palella allegedly tweeted, “If you sell even a single $HBZ for under $1 before the platform has launched in July, you have really not understood the scale of the project from day 1. It is always a choice to sell, but you should REMOVE crypto investor from your bio then.” The message has since been deleted.
Palella denies he sold large quantities of the token for himself or that the ICO brought in anything more than $1.5 – 1.6 million. This last point is contradicted by several statements he made to the media – including in Bitcoin Magazine, Ansa Magazine and Nasdaq – posts on professional and personal social media accounts, as well as information provided by Etherscan, a tool that tracks immutable blockchain records.
“Just when we were close to the launch [of Helbiz], the cryptocurrencies exploded… [W]e decided to create our cryptocurrency with an initial coin offering raising 38 million dollars,” [Google Translate], Palella told Ansa in an article published June 6, 2018.
Helbiz has not clarified the discrepancy between statements but “will be addressing that matter with the court,” Simon said, relaying the message.
In addition to the primary claim of breach of contract, plaintiffs also accuse the defendants of a second charge of “trespass and conversion of chattels” for threatening to destroy the project’s governing smart contract, found at 0xe34e1944e776f39b9252790a0527ebda647ae668.
In May, the firm announced it would destroy all the tokens by the end of July, citing a lack of use. The original blog post has since been deleted, Kanovitz said, but can be found using the Internet Archive. Plaintiffs argue this move is an attempt to “extinguish” the token holder’s rights over the company.
Helbiz said the token doesn’t confer ownership over the company, an argument that has precedence. “One of the worst aspects of ICO tokens was that they didn’t give holders any right or title to the underlying business,” Chervinsky said, adding, “It’s interesting to see the plaintiffs ask for [legal remedy] giving them ownership of Helbiz in its entirety.”
The same blog post, mentioned above, said participants in the ICO who have not sold their tokens on the secondary market will receive an equivalent amount of ETH paid during the ICO. Those who bought their coins on the secondary market have been offered approximately $.0002, the last exchange price, worth of ETH, per token.
“Essentially nothing,” the complaint reads. Helbiz said the repurchase price is set at a “200% premium to the current price of the HBZ coin.” The token lost 99% of its value in its first few months of trading.
“The offer is a sham, however, because no one, or almost no one, who bought in the ICO continued to hold their coins while the price was dropping almost 100-fold. They sold for what they could, never expecting that there would be a refund offer a year later, an offer made only after it was apparent that everyone had already bailed out on the coin,” the complaint continues.
The announcement to destroy the smart contract follows an initiative allegedly directed by the firm to get the tokens delisted from multiple exchanges. IDEX came forward and stated, “$HBZ has been de-listed due to team request.”
This is part of a picture plaintiffs paint of a company trying to distance itself from a failed token project ahead of an IPO. They cite numerous examples where HelbizCoin was marketed as an internal project, not a partner to the company, including on the company’s official website.
They allege that HBZCoin.com and Helbiz.com, the official sites for HelbizCoin and Helbiz the company, share a common IP address, domain name registrar and service to conceal the name of the person registering the site. The websites are also allegedly “housed in the same server farm in Kansas,” according to the complaint.
In its statement, Helbiz noted the tokens were “sold by HBZ Systems, a company that is not a party to the lawsuit,” insinuating that HBZ is the work of a third party, that was integrated with, but not of, Helbiz.
When asked if Palella indeed signed the original version of the white paper, his press agent declined to address the question directly, sending a statement reading: “Mr. Palella has always been transparent about his relationship with Helbiz Inc. and the HBZ coin.”
Kanovitz said the destruction of the smart contract and offer to return a fraction of invested funds is an attempt to hold “holders under duress.” He said that token holders paid for the construction of a business and ought to maintain some ownership in it.
As the complaint reads: “The coin and company were synonymous.”
It’s a novel argument, Jason Gottlieb, the crypto lawyer, said. “It will be interesting to see if this unusual approach gains any traction.”
June 30, 2020
Seed funding from the inaugural Wind River Startup Challenge (WRSC) will help five new businesses launch a series of ventures that will contribute to the economy of the Wind River Indian Reservation, Fremont County and Wyoming.
The five finalist teams that participated in the WRSC each will receive a portion of the $25,000 seed fund. The challenge, which took place virtually May 30, featured business pitches from the entrepreneurs. Dancers from the Wind River Indian Reservation opened the pitch program.
The National Science Foundation, through Wyoming EPSCoR (Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research), funds the startup challenge. Finalists received and can continue to access counseling and coaching from staff from the University of Wyoming’s Small Business Development Center, Central Wyoming College and UW’s IMPACT 307, with additional support from UW’s High Plains American Indian Research Institute.
“We are thrilled to have the participation from the entrepreneurs and congratulate them on making it to the final round,” says James Trosper, director of UW’s High Plains American Indian Research Institute. “Everyone put in a lot of hard work, and we encourage those who didn’t make the final to apply again in the future.”
Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribal entrepreneurs from the Wind River community originally submitted 20 business concepts. An independent judging panel selected the winners, as well as funding totals for each winning team to help push each business to its next step.
The winning teams are:
-- Heavy Hand Fencing, owned and operated by Kevin Goggles, which has 15 years of experience and offers quality fencing for ranchers, farmers and homeowners. Heavy Hand Fencing offers a variety of fencing options from chained link to barbed wire, and offers maintenance and repairs throughout the Wind River Indian Reservation region.
-- Reds Recon Automotive Detail, founded by Letara and Red Lebeau, which provides car-detailing services to residents and organizations in the community. Reds Recon proposes to expand to a permanent facility.
-- Taylor B’s T’s, founded by Taylor Bell, which highlights Native athletes, artists, activists and scholars on apparel, such as sports and casual wear. Clothing items will bear images of Wind River Indian Reservation Native-produced art, as well as local sports and academic stars and activists.
-- Intertribal Wellness, which is owned and operated by Denyse Bergie, a certified PN-L1 nutrition coach and CF-L2 trainer, and Mike Ute. With their 10-plus years of experience, Intertribal Wellness seeks to give clients access to a multifaceted wellness business that focuses on nutrition advice and coaching; efficient and proven adult physical fitness options; and youth physical fitness programs that are both impactful and enjoyable.
-- Wildflower Salon & Spa, established by Stephanie C’Hair, a certified cosmetologist. She plans a salon located on the Wind River Indian Reservation that will offer a variety of salon services, such as haircuts, lash extensions, and facials for both men and women.
Though the startup challenge was initially funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation and other donors, organizers are already taking steps to secure longer-term funding to continue the program and inspire more entrepreneurs to pursue their business ideas.
“We want to make sure others from Wind River can follow in their footsteps of this year’s winners and carry on the long-standing Native tradition of entrepreneurship and commerce,” Trosper says, indicating that there are efforts to make the Wind River Startup Challenge sustainable for years to come.
“Organizers and supporters of the Wind River Startup Challenge are currently examining ways to fund the challenge for the long term to ensure more residents of the reservation have this great opportunity,” Trosper adds.
The application period for next year's competition is set for early 2021. Wind River Indian Reservation residents are encouraged to apply with their business ideas for a chance to compete and pitch to help start and grow their businesses.
San Diego startup Koji, which has developed a template-based platform so non-techies can easily create interactive memes, games and other user generated content to post on social media, has raised $10 million in an initial round of venture capital funding.
The 12-employee company, headed by former Google and Veoh Networks executive Dmitry Shapiro, has assembled a collection of games templates, images, sound effects, icons, color palettes and other content for what it calls “remixing.”
The company believes user generated content from the Koji platform has the potential to dramatically expand the types of memes, games, interactive selfies and other creative things seen on social media feeds.
Behind the scenes, the company has developed software and templates so amateurs can easily remix and create their own mini apps without knowing how to code software. Shapiro said it typically takes just a few minutes to create a simple meme or game.
Advertisement
“It is sort of like TikTok except it is interactive,” said Shapiro.
While it’s easy today to share texts, images, videos and links on social media, it remains difficult for non-programmers to share remixed user generated content — or mini-apps — to post on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and other platforms.
For example, a game has been created for The Omelette Factory in Santee on Koji’s platform where players shoot a fried egg through a basketball hoop. The game is based on a template, with “asset packs” available on Koji enabling the basketball to be replaced with an egg, as well as other customized features.
The platform has been used by large brands, social media influencers and others to create games and interactive content that can be shared on social media and messaging apps, said Shapiro.
Advertisement
Koji offers micro-payment and other tools in its platform. Some firms that supply emojis and images on the platform charge a small fee, and some game makers offer in-game purchases. Koji takes a small cut of each of these transactions, which is how the company makes money, said Shapiro.
This latest funding round was led by Galaxy Interactive’s EOS VC Fund, which is a partnership between Galaxy Interactive and blockchain software publisher Block.one.
“Koji has the potential to catalyze the digital passion economy. By enabling brands, influencers and creatives to easily remix interactive content and share in the value created, we believe Koji will become the meeting point for makers everywhere,” said Richard Kim, Partner at Galaxy Interactive
Others who participated in the funding round include Bitkraft Ventures, Keshif Ventures, Next10 Ventures and Moonshots Capital.
Advertisement
Founded in 2016, Koji already had more than a dozen prominent angel investors. They include former Disney Chief Executive Michael Eisner, games and esports leader Modern Times Group, Google News head Richard Gingras, and Zynga founder Mark Pincus. Koji raised $6 million in April 2019 for individual investors.
“The ability for fans to create interactive experiences about their favorite entertainment is incredibly powerful,” said Eisner in a statement. “We’ve gone from fan art to fan fiction to social fan games and beyond. The opportunities for interactive storytelling are never ending.”
Before Koji, Shapiro spent four years as an executive at Google. Prior to that, he worked at MySpace and founded San Diego-based Veoh Networks — an early rival to YouTube and Hulu.
Veoh raised $70 million during its six years in operation, but a long-running legal battle with Universal Music over copyright infringement crippled the company — even though Veoh won in court, and its victory was upheld in two appeals.
Advertisement
In 2010, Veoh’s assets were sold to Qlipsol for an undisclosed price.
Shapiro sees Koji’s platform and the rise of so called mini-apps is akin to where YouTube was in its early days, when people questioned whether there was really a viable advertising market for user-generated videos.
But the audience for mini-apps is already demonstrated by WeChat, a popular messaging platform in China that has more than 2 million mini-apps in its ecosystem, he said.
With Koji, “any good media manager could make a game and share it on social media” to promote its brand, he said.
We already know this season, if it gets off the ground in the first place, is going to be unlike any baseball season we’ve ever seen. There are a whole lot of reasons for this, not the least of which being that there will almost certainly be totally empty stands in the background, but the biggest to me is simply the length. There are only going to be 60 games instead of the normal 162, and that is going to lead to some truly wild results. Anyone who watches baseball regularly knows just how much noise is involved in any individual small-sample stretch, and how anything can happen in 60 games.
Seemingly the most-cited example of this has been that the Nationals would not have made the playoffs last season if the season ended after 60 games. They, of course, went on to win the World Series. I also talked about the wildness of small sample sizes with respect to Sandy León and his MVP-caliber run in 2016.
I want to continue focusing on the small sample weirdness over the next couple of days, but focus on the players actually on the Red Sox roster. It is a fool’s errand to try and predict an individual player’s season in a normal, 162-game year. It is downright impossible for a 60-game season. But I was curious just how bad and how good it could get for players. There’s still no definitive answer to this, but we can look to the past to see how good and bad it has been.
So, with that, I looked at all of the regulars on the Red Sox roster, with today being focused on the pitchers, and tried to find their best and worst 60-game stretches of their career. Just like yesterday, I am including players who are both expected to play a significant role on the team if healthy and also have at least a couple years in the majors under their belt. So, that means no Ryan Weber, Josh Taylor and Darwinzon Hernandez, among others.
Good: July 17-September 19, 2019: 13 GS, 81 2⁄3 IP, 2.42 ERA, 83 K, 36 BB, .648 oppOPS
Bad: June 5-August 11, 2016: 11 GS, 58 2⁄3 IP, 5.68 ERA, 50 K, 22 BB, .850 oppOPS
Good: June 26-September 5, 2015: 13 GS, 78 IP, 3.46 ERA, 67 K, 29 BB, .623 oppOPS
Bad: May 1-July 1, 2016: 12 GS, 66 1⁄3 IP, 5.97 ERA, 48 K, 22 BB, .866 oppOPS
Good: July 31- September 1: 12 GS. 79 IP, 3.19 ERA, 56 K, 24 BB. .695 oppOPS
Bad: May 30-August 7, 2019: 12 GS, 64 IP, 6.61 ERA, 50 K, 22 BB, .844 oppOPS
Good: July 29-October 1, 2017: 11 GS, 58 2⁄3 IP, 3.22 ERA, 58 K, 18 BB, .735 oppOPS
Bad: June 27-September 4, 2016: 13 GS, 68 IP, 5.29 ERA, 70 K, 22 BB, .878 oppOPS
Good: June 8-August 17, 2019: 27 G, 28 2⁄3 IP, 1.88 ERA, 38 K, 14 BB, .465 oppOPS
Bad: July 23-September 29, 2018: 23 G, 23 2⁄3 IP, 4.18ERA, 19 K, 12 BB, .753 oppOPS
Good: March 29-June 3, 2018: 25 G, 25 2⁄3 IP, 2.10 ERA, 34 K, 12 BB, .459 oppOPS
Bad: June 2-August 5, 2019: 26 G, 21 2⁄3 IP, 7.48 ERA, 39 K, 16 BB, .772 oppOPS
Good: April 4-June 10, 2019: 28 G, 25 1⁄3 IP, 2.13 ERA, 31 K, 11 BB, .601 oppOPS
Bad: July 14-September 21, 2018: 25 G, 18 2⁄3 IP, 5.30 ERA, 22 K. 9 BB, .880 oppOPS
It would make sense for pitchers to have greater variance between their peaks and valleys over smaller sample sizes simply because they play fewer games than position players. This is particularly true of the few relievers who pitched enough to make this exercise. It would also seem to be particularly true of this crop of Red Sox pitchers as there really isn’t a consistent stud in the bunch, though most have pitched like one at one time or another. So, while it’s not likely, there’s some chance everyone puts it together all at once over 60 games. We can dream, can’t we? Between the pitchers here, the average ERAs (not accounting for innings) range from 2.63 on the good end to 5.79 on the bad end. Likewise, the opponents’ OPS’s range from .604 to .835.
More than six months after the first case of the novel coronavirus was diagnosed in the U.S., and more than three months after we shut down large chunks of America's economy to stop the spread of the disease, cases are surging once again around the country. Areas that were largely spared the worst back in the spring — primarily states in the South, Southwest, and West Coast — are seeing cases surge to record levels. In the case of Florida, daily confirmed case counts nearly match New York's at the height of the crisis in early April.
And yet, while the rest of the developed world (and big chunks of the commentariat) stares in slack-jawed horror at American stupidity, most Americans aren't radically changing their behavior. One reason: Daily death counts have barely budged, which has led some observers — and key policymakers like Vice President Mike Pence — to cast doubt on the seriousness of the situation, or even to question whether the rise in cases is real.
But the surge is real, not an artifact of increased testing. We know this because the test positivity rate — the percentage of tests coming back positive — has surged along with an increase in cases. If the rate were falling even as cases rose, as was the case in New York over the course of the spring, that would be a sign that the rise in cases was largely or entirely an artifact of increased testing — casting a wider net was catching more cases even as the spread slowed. Since the opposite is true, we should reach the opposite conclusion: The rise in cases is not only real, but could well be an underestimate, with actual infections rising more rapidly than the testing infrastructure can track.
So why aren't death counts rising? Possibly it's just a matter of time. People don't die the moment they are infected, and over the next few weeks death counts may begin to rise (as they have already begun to do in Arizona). But there's an arguably more benign possibility, which some have seized on: that it's a consequence of changing demographics of the epidemic. Close to half the Americans who died from COVID-19 contracted the virus in nursing homes, mostly in the spring. The age profile of the recent surge looks quite different. The median age of those recently infected in Florida has dropped to 36. In California, a majority of those testing positive for the virus were under 50, while a majority of those who died were over 75. Maybe we're doing a better job of protecting the most vulnerable, even if we're doing a poor job of stopping the virus from spreading more generally.
But that word — "maybe" — is the problem. To make good policy, we need to know what's actually happening.
Infections are rising rapidly — but are they really hitting new record highs? Or are we still only partway up a slope that is gong to go much higher in relatively short order? Have the demographics of the epidemic changed dramatically? Or are we just seeing the full demographic picture more clearly than we were in the spring? To know the answers, we'd need to know what actually happened in the worst-hit areas of the country back in the spring, and also have a fine-grained picture of what's happening now.
Compare Florida's recent confirmed case counts with New York at its peak. Back in early April, New York state was confirming cases to the tune of 10,000 per day. But the test positivity rate at the time was over 40 percent. The situation was even worse in New York City, where the test positivity rate reached nearly 60 percent. It's likely that the overwhelming majority of cases were being missed, a supposition confirmed by studies of tests for antibodies that suggest approximately 20 percent of New York City residents got the virus at some point. Since only about 220,000 people in NYC ever tested positive for the virus, that means something like 85 percent of infections were missed.
What are the comparable numbers for Florida today? With a test positivity rate of 13 percent, there are definitely infections being missed — but what percentage? There's an enormous difference between a true rate of infection that is twice the confirmed case rate, and one that is five or 10 times as large. And just how different are the demographics of the epidemic in Florida now from the demographics of the epidemic in New York at its peak? Given how many infections were evidently missed in the spring, we'd need to look at the demographics of antibody studies in New York, and not just confirmed cases, to get a handle on that question.
Or consider Houston's stressed hospitals. They're experiencing a surge in cases involving much younger people who require ICU beds and oxygen — and they are already running out of beds and hiring additional staff. But back in the spring, New York was so overwhelmed with cases that the city was urging people reporting symptoms to stay home rather than go to the hospital. How many young people with serious symptoms might have been in New York hospitals if there had been any room to receive them?
Whether they admit it or not, large chunks of the United States are now following a policy that some argued for at the beginning of the epidemic: let the virus spread naturally through the population, but at a rate that the health-care system can manage. Following such a policy, you would expect cases to increase — indeed, a rise in cases would be a goal, whether acknowledged or not. I don't scoff at that choice; if California — which closed its economy early and has a "pro-science" Democratic government — couldn't avoid this summer surge, maybe it was unavoidable. But to make such a policy work, you have to know whether the health-care system can, in fact, manage the rate of spread that is occurring. And that means knowing more, not less, about what's going on.
Modeling has gotten a bad rap lately, in part due to high-profile "errors" like the reported White House projection of 3,000 deaths per day by the first of June. But while modeling is always uncertain, that doesn't make it any less vital. It means that models need to be analyzed for their weak points, and continuously improved. Most important, it means we need more data, constantly, to provide the basis for improving those models.
What's happened instead is that, in too many areas, we've turned our backs on data and analysis, and relied instead on hunches, magical thinking, and pure political expedience. Partly as a consequence, in an almost complete inversion of rational policy making, we've prioritized opening bars and tattoo parlors, which we could live without literally forever, while we're still debating whether we can open schools, which are essential to childhood health and development. The fundamental selfishness and bone-headed short-term thinking of our society could not be made more manifest.
Back in May, I argued that the United States had already failed in its fight to contain the coronavirus, and that we needed to make a plan for failure — a plan for how to live with the virus without seeing our economy, our health-care system, and our society unravel. But a plan for failure was going to take as much work as success would have, and I predicted we wouldn't put in the effort. Now that failure is obvious to all. We're about to see just what it costs not to have a plan for it.
Venture capitalists and other investors provide more than $400 million to grow Purdue startups; IPWatchdog ranks Purdue 3rd nationally in startup creation.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University will reach 275 startups within the coming fiscal year in startup creation. Providing strength and longevity to Purdue-affiliated startups is the more than $400 million dollars in support and investments the startups have brought to Indiana, much from venture capitalists.
“Venture capitalists are interested in companies with innovations that make an impact in the marketplace,” said Purdue alumnus Bruce Schechter, who co-founded Silicon Valley Boilermaker Innovation Group, SVBIG, to support Purdue’s startup creation.
According to the investment report “U.S. Startup Outlook 2019” by Silicon Valley Bank, 52% of startups’ funding comes from venture capitalists. The report states that VCs are entrepreneurs’ “go-to source for funding” and that VCs’ greatest interest is in startups developing technologies in artificial intelligence, big data, cybersecurity, life sciences and digital health.
“Those types of technologies are exactly what a research institution like Purdue excels in,” Schechter said. “That explains why they are and should be interested in investing in a university innovation.”
More than 100 countries around the globe use Purdue-patented technologies.
National and international corporations have invested $2.3 billion to acquire 10 Purdue startups, which are:
All of the acquired companies were founded on Purdue-patented technologies. The respected IPWatchdog Institute recently published a report covering an 11-year period of technology commercialization activities that lists Purdue University as third in the U.S. for startup creation. The report collected data by AUTM over the period of 2008-18. The information is reported annually by members to AUTM, a nonprofit organization that collects technology transfer data, among other things, from more than 800 universities, research centers, hospitals and government organizations around the globe. IPWatchdog excluded the University of Texas System and the University of California System from its study because those schools report startup data that include the state’s collective results and not individual university results.
Purdue also is ranked 13th globally for utility patents during the 2019 calendar year in a report published annually by the National Academy of Inventors and Intellectual Property Owners Association.
“What this means is that Purdue is being extremely efficient in its patent-filing strategy and that when faculty scientists publish peer-reviewed articles, their research is highly likely to be disclosed, patented and become a product to help people,” said Brooke Beier, vice president of the Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization. “As a land-grant university, Purdue’s greatest mission is to improve lives around the world and educate tomorrow’s leaders, and moving innovation to the market is an important part of that mission.”
Beier talks about the technology transfer process at Purdue at this video link.
The IPWatchdog report also recognized Purdue for its leadership and support for startups and for its societal impact through biotechnology innovations and economic development. In 2013, the Purdue Research Foundation created the Purdue Foundry, an entrepreneurship and commercialization hub whose professionals have helped more than 300 entrepreneurs create startups.
“We are doing something that matters. Not just for Purdue but for all universities that strive to turn technologies into products with impact,” said Greg Deason, senior vice president of entrepreneurship and place making for Purdue Research Foundation. “In startup creation we are converting life-changing technologies to the market that create new jobs, new opportunities and new ways to positively impact our global society.”
Deason talks about the startup creation process at Purdue at this video link.
The Purdue Foundry has worked with nearly 300 startups that generated around $400 million in funding and investments generated and more than 350 new jobs since 2013.
Purdue also is recognized in the report for the number of startups that have been acquired by larger companies. As listed above, major national or international companies acquired 10 Purdue startups including Endocyte Inc., which was acquired in 2018 for $2.1 billion by Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis AG.
Philip S. Low, the Purdue Ralph C. Corley Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, is a co-founder of Endocyte and several other promising startups based on Purdue innovations. Among these startups are On Target Laboratories Inc., a company developing tumor-targeted fluorescent dyes to help surgeons “see” cancer cells during surgeries. Another startup founded by Low and son Stewart Low is Novosteo Inc. Novosteo is developing an injectable drug to accelerate bone fracture repair and strengthen weak bones. It has raised more than $3 million. A fourth company co-founded by Low, Umoja Biopharma, has recently raised $8 million in startup funds to develop a promising immunotherapy for cancer.
“Like many researchers at Purdue and elsewhere, our strongest desire is to improve lives, and the best way we can do that is by moving our inventions to the public,” Low said. “It’s not an easy process, but it’s highly rewarding to know at the end of the day you are helping people live longer, healthier and happier lives.”
To support continued growth, Purdue is undertaking Discovery Park District, a $1 billion-plus transformation of an area adjacent to its campus that includes strong support to advance research, partnerships with global companies and startup creation. In the past two years, the district has been actively involved with long-term research and development collaborations with Rolls-Royce, Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories and Saab Global Defense and Security.
About IPWatchdog
Launched in October 1999, IPWatchdog has been a trusted resource on intellectual property for tens of millions of unique visitors for nearly two decades. Recognized as one of the leading sources for news, information, analysis and commentary in the patent and innovation industries, IPWatchdog.com has grown into the largest online intellectual property publication in the world, with 1,632,736 users in 2019, accounting for 2,678,318 sessions and 3,806,192 page views throughout 2019. IPWatchdog also offers growing coverage of matters relating to trade secrets, copyrights and trademarks.
About Purdue Research Foundation
The Purdue Research Foundation is a private, nonprofit foundation created to advance the mission of Purdue University. Established in 1930, the foundation accepts gifts; administers trusts; funds scholarships and grants; acquires property; protects Purdue's intellectual property; and promotes entrepreneurial activities on behalf of Purdue. The foundation manages the Purdue Foundry, Purdue Office of Technology Commercialization, Purdue Research Park, Purdue Technology Centers and University Development Office. The foundation received the 2019 Innovation and Economic Prosperity Universities Award for Place from the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. For more information on licensing a Purdue innovation, contact the Purdue Office of Technology Commercialization at otcip@prf.org. For more information about involvement and investment opportunities in startups based on a Purdue innovation, contact the Purdue Foundry at foundry@prf.org.
Writer:
Cynthia Sequin, casequin@prf.org
Sources:
Brooke Beier, blbeier@prf.org
Greg Deason, gwdeason@prf.org
Phil Low, plow@purdue.edu
Note to Journalists: Two videos and a photo are available in Google Drive at https://purdue.university/3eZ6ESI.
stratupnation.blogspot.com W ho can resist a good cardamom bun? I’ll always choose cardamom over cinnamon – it just feels much brighter an...
