BACKLASH: NFL Loses First Sponsor, Tells Cameramen Not To Shoot Booing Crowds

The backlash against the NFL allowing players to kneel during the National Anthem is now hitting the league in the pocketbook, as payday lender “Check Into Cash” CEO and owner of Hardwick Clothing Allan Jones has decided to yank all advertising from the NFL – tweeting”Our companies will not condone unpatriotic behavior!”

In a followup statement, Jones said “For the 29 states we operate in, this isn’t much to them, but it’s a lot to us. The Tombras Group is our ad agency in Knoxville and our national media buyer for both TV and radio (for Check Into Cash) and don’t look for Hardwick on the NFL either,”

Noting to see here!

In order to shield TV audiences from in-stadium backlash, NFL camera operators have been instructed to avoid crowd shots during last weekend’s games to avoid capturing images of fans counterprotesting the protests – according to Sporting News.

By covering one of the most significant days in NFL history with rose-colored glasses, the networks cheated viewers. We got an incomplete picture of what really happened in stadiums on Sunday and Monday.

Yes, the main television focus should have been on the players, coaches and owners sitting, kneeling or linking arms. But fans hold the ultimate power over the networks and the league, and they were missing in action during coverage.

CBS denied that they instructed the camera operators to look away, however viewers have taken notice of networks using up-close, ground-up shots of players, coaches and owners – conspicuously avoiding images of fans during the national anthem.

Not to worry, I’ve got your booing right here:

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Streaming device manufacturer Roku ($ROKU) sprinted higher in its Thursday IPO. Priced at $14, the company raked in at least $219 million. Shares jumped as much as 68% to close at $23.50, leaving the company with a $2.23 billion valuation.

The company which started out as a secret Netflix hardware project, which they still carry, is now directly integrated into next gen televisions from Sharp, Hitachi, RCA, TCL, and several other brands – one of which I just bought two weeks ago to use with an Amazon Firestick and over-the-air antenna.

After firing up the TV – I no longer need the firestick, as the Roku user interface is app-based and can launch Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Streaming, as well as a ton of other ala carte apps such as HBO-Go.

Enough about hardware…

Roku’s software side of the business is growing at nearly a triple-digit clip.

Their operating makes money in three ways – selling ads, revenue-sharing agreements with content providers, and subscriptions purchased via its operating system. They company also makes 5% licensing the technology to others.

“[Licensing fees are] probably the place that has the most significant revenue recognition around it,” said Roku CFO Steven Louden, adding “Our licensing fees—we have multiyear deals with TV brands as well as service operators through our Roku Power program. We actually have almost $70 million in deferred revenue on the balance sheet, which is a lot of value.”

Roku Chief Executive Anthony Wood said in an interview that the company will keep riding the wave of television content moving online and away from the cable bundle.

“When we sign up a customer to a subscription service or Hulu or Netflix, we get a revenue share as well,” Wood said.

Filings with the SEC show sales growth of 91% in the first six months of 2017 vs. last year.

“What’s important in the evolution of the company is the platform business is becoming a greater and greater portion of Roku,” Louden told MarketWatch in a telephone interview Thursday. “It’s now 80% of our gross profit and I think it’s great proof-point for investors about really what the Roku business model is about.”

Industry experts agree – software is where it’s at

With hardware margins shrinking, Roku executives have received praise for recognizing that software and licensing is where it’s at:

“What [executives] were able to do was recognize their hardware business model was not a long-term smashing success and manage to change, and not to have a giant dip in the process moving from the hardware to the platform and have some decent margins along the way,” said Barrett Daniels, Chief Executive of Nextstep, a San Francisco company that helps private firms go public. “The good part of the business is really growing.”

Solid Execs? 

Daniels told MarketWatch he was ‘pleasantly surprised’ that according to Roku’s S-1 filing, Roku executives didn’t stuff their pockets with massive stock grants, and the company’s financials appear to be ‘well-managed,’ adding that he thinks the company went public at the right time.

“Unlike Evan Spiegel at Snap—large stock grants are actually pretty common—the executives don’t seem to be robbing the place. I think they’ve done a very responsible job.”

Roku Chief Executive Anthony Wood said in an interview that the company will keep riding the wave of television content moving online and away from the cable bundle.

“When we sign up a customer to a subscription service or Hulu or Netflix, we get a revenue share as well,” Wood said.

Current conditions

In the six months ending June 30, Roku had around 15.1 million active accounts, according to Yahoo Finance, with around 6.74 billion hours of content streamed.

That said, the company has been pumping massive amounts of cash into R&D – posting a net loss of $15.5 million vs. $14.1 million in the same quarter last year.

“I don’t like that they are losing cash, but if you wait for a cash flow positive tech company, you may have to wait for a full solar eclipse to come around again,” said Brian Hamilton, founder of data firm Sageworks.

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The liberal science community has a moral dilemma on its hands following today’s announcement that the United States is partnering with Russia on a NASA-led project to build a lunar station.

On one hand, the international base for lunar exploration will serve as a “gateway to deep space and the lunar surface,” according to NASA.

On the other hand, Russia is involved – which means they’ll undoubtedly slit our throats in space, populate the surface of the moon, build a moon cannon – having read Heinlein, and fire silicon, magnesium, and aluminum-rich moon rocks at the United States. Once we are obliterated, Russia will invade the country and enslave all surviving Americans in moon-rock crushing factories.

Pretending not to be evil, Igor Komarov, Roscosmos’s general director, stated that Russia, the United States and other participants agreed it was important to work using unified standards to avoid future problems in space, citing Sandra Bullock’s movie “Gravity” in the process.

“Roscosmos and NASA have already agreed on standards for a docking unit of the future station,” the Russian space agency said.

AFP reports:

“Taking into account the country’s extensive experience in developing docking units, the station’s future elements — as well as standards for life-support systems — will be created using Russian designs.”

NASA said it planned to expand human presence into the solar system using its new deep space exploration transportation systems, the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft.

– ‘Better to fly together’ –

Russia and the United States also discussed using Moscow’s Proton-M and Angara rockets as well as other spacecraft to help create the infrastructure of the lunar spaceport, the Russian statement said, adding that the main works were slated to begin in the mid-2020s.

“The station will be a serious platform for future research,” said Komarov.

Igor Lisov, editor at Space News, told AFP of Russia’s potential contribution: “We are offering carriers for flights to a lunar orbiting station, we are offering our docking units or their components,” he said, adding Russia had vast experience in creating life-support systems.

“That is a rather significant contribution.”

Unfortunately, this will be our doom…

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JPMorgan Chase was ordered to pay over $4 billion in damages to the widow and family of a deceased American Airlines executive.

The six person Dallas jury, which deliberated for over four hours on Monday night, found that the bank committed fraud, breached its fiduciary duty and broke a fee agreement with widow Jo Hopper and her two stepchildren after their father, Max Hopper, died with an estate worth $19 million but no will. Hopper was described as an “airline technology innovator” by the family’s law firm, pioneering such inventions as the SABRE reservation system.

The bank was hired in 2010 to administer Hopper’s estate, failing miserably… “Instead of independently and impartially collecting and dividing the estate’s assets, the bank took years to release basic interests in art, home furnishings, jewelry, and notably, Mr. Hopper’s collection of 6,700 golf putters and 900 bottles of wine,” the family’s lawyers said in the statement. “Some of the interests in the assets were not released for more than five years.”

Hopper’s widow, Jo Hopper, issued a statement:

“The nation’s largest bank horribly mistreated me and this verdict provides protection to others from being mistreated by banks that think they’re too powerful to be held accountable,” said Hopper in a statement. “The country’s largest bank, people we are supposed to trust with our livelihood, abused my family and me out of sheer ineptitude and greed. I’m blessed that I have the resources to hold JP Morgan accountable so other widows who don’t have the same resources will be better protected in the future.”

Billions!

The court’s verdict form revealed that jurors originally awarded $8 billion in punitive damages against JPMorgan Chase, however widow Jo Hopper’s attorney Alan Loewinshon said in an interview that some of that may be duplication of some of the damage findings. The family was originally seeking $2 billion in punitive damages.

Via ZeroHedge: 

As a result, he said, the punitive damage award could end up being “somewhere between $4 billion and $8 billion.” The verdict form also shows jurors were advised to consider factors including “the net worth of JPMorgan.” JPM has a market cap of about $330 billion.

At the lower end of that range, the jury’s award would erase almost two-thirds of the $6.6 billion profit that JPMorgan generated globally during the second quarter. According to Bloomberg, it would rank high among the largest sanctions ever levied against the bank – somewhere between the $2.6 billion it agreed to pay in 2014 for allegedly failing to stop Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, and a $13 billion settlement it reached with government authorities in 2013 for its handling of mortgage bonds that fueled the financial crisis.

“Mrs. Hopper asked the jury to send a message loud enough for JP Morgan to hear it all the way to Park Avenue in Manhattan,” said Loewinsohn, “Hopefully, that message has been received.”

Unfortunately for Mrs. Hopper, the Jury’s massive award is unlikely to hold up on appeal. Punitive damage verdicts such as Hopper’s are often reduced substantially thanks to a Supreme Court ruling that court awards can’t be disproportionate to the actual damages incurred. In Hopper’s case, the actual damage award was less than $5 million.

“Clearly the award far exceeds any possible interpretation of Texas tort reform statutes,” said JPMorgan Chase spokesman Andrew Gray, adding “There has been no judgment entered by the court based on this verdict.”

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Proud communist and Westpoint graduate Spenser Rapone infiltrated the military academy after finding inspiration in Chelsea Manning’s infiltration of the U.S. Government, according to a post Rapone made on Reddit in a thread about Manning.

Rapone wrote “I’m currently an infantry officer at Ft. Drum, NY assigned to the same brigade that she [Manning] was while enlisted. Every single day I think of the contradictions of being a communist while in this organization, and her courage and tenacity gives me strength to continue the long march through the institutions.

Notably, Manning was also in the 10th Mountain Division.

The “long march” refers to a strategy of undermining government via infiltration and subversion – a phrase coined by Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci.

The Daily Caller has more:

From his Reddit post and Twitter history, it seems clear Rapone was a dedicated communist and posted about developing a new manual on guerrilla warfare, presumably for use in the U.S.

“I read Che’s Guerrilla Warfare (★★★★) a month or two back,” Rapone said early this year. “An essential text, although, as Che would say, specific to a certain historical context. I’d suggest Marighella’s Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla (★★★★) after finishing Che’s work. I myself need to read Mao’s On Guerrilla Warfare here soon enough. But, I suppose, more than anything else, the task at hand for all of us is to produce our own text on guerrilla warfare, in the days ahead, yes?”

 

Rapone is no fan of Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, calling him a “vile, evil fuck.”

@ByYourLogic Was so pumped for you to go in on Mattis on the latest ep. Definitely the most vile, evil fuck in the current administration

— Commie Bebop? (@punkproletarian) June 8, 2017

Richard Rapone, Spenser’s father – Treasurer for Lawrence County, PA, disavowed his son’s “political views and overall politics,” stating that he is “very disappointed in the direction he has chosen and as his father it greatly saddens me.”

According to Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, “Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”

The maximum punishment for violating Article 88 is dismissal from the military, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and prison for a year. Something tells me Rapone’s going to be a cult hero to the radical left.

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When the whole “fake news” meme spread during the election to try and explain Trump’s massive support, news outlets were hard pressed to produce actual examples of the propaganda they so vehemently claimed was influencing the election.

The Washington Post was instrumental in seeding the phrase when they published a story in April, 2016 about pro-Trump websites spreading misinformation, implying that misinformation was poisoning voters against Hillary Clinton.

Then in November, WaPo featured the exploits of fake-news hoaxer Paul Horner, “the 38-year-old impresario of a Facebook fake-news empire,” who – according to WaPo “made his living off viral news hoaxes for several years. He has twice convinced the Internet that he’s British graffiti artist Banksy; he also published the very viral, very fake news of a Yelp vs. “South Park” lawsuit last year.”

In 2011, Horner was arrested on multiple drug-related and money laundering charges after being caught with an estimated $15,000 in narcotics.

Horner also performed stand-up at “The Lost Leaf” club, occasionally dressed up as “Fappy the Anti-Masturbation Dolphin,” a satirical Christian character bent on educating children about the dangers of masturbation and benefits of GMOs.

In March of 2016, a fake-news story Horner published about paid protestors at Trump rallies was tweeted by Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and Eric Trump. While an undercover investigation by James O’Keefe of Project Veritas later revealed the existence of paid protestors – the article by Horner was a fabrication.

After the election, Horner claimed “I think Donald Trump is in the White House because of me.”

And now, he’s dead

10 months after being spotlighted by WaPo as the shining example of fake news that swung the election, Paul Horner is dead.

AP reports:

A leading purveyor of fake news in the 2016 presidential election has died outside Phoenix at the age of 38.

Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Mark Casey said Tuesday authorities discovered Paul Horner dead in his bed on Sept. 18.

Casey said the Maricopa County medical examiner performed an autopsy which showed there were no signs of foul play. He said Horner had a history of prescription drug abuse and that “evidence at the scene suggested this could be an accidental overdose.”

The Horner family is still waiting on toxicology reports, and the case will remain open until the cause of death is finalized.

A tragic end for a man who certainly wasn’t paid to produce fake news to fit a narrative and then suicided. Pour one out for Fappy. /s

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Get ready for more information overload! Twitter is beta testing a 280-character limit among a “single-digit percentage” of its 328 million users who will be randomly chosen, according to the company – so, millions of people.

“Our research shows us that the character limit is a major cause of frustration for people tweeting in English,” Twitter said in a blog post. “When people don’t have to cram their thoughts into 140 characters and actually have some to spare, we see more people Tweeting — which is awesome!”

For an example of a 280 character tweet, see below:

This is a small change, but a big move for us. 140 was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character SMS limit. Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence! https://t.co/TuHj51MsTu

— jack (@jack) September 26, 2017

Via WaPo:

The company declined to comment directly on how it’s choosing those people or why it changed its mind about its 140-character limit. But in a company blog post, product manager Aliza Rosen and senior software engineer Ikuhiro Ihara said the team started looking into the restrictions of the 140-character limit after noticing differences among languages.

Some languages — specifically Chinese, Japanese and Korean — allow for greater expression in fewer characters, Rosen and Ihara said.

“We see that a small percent of tweets sent in Japanese have 140 characters (only 0.4%). But in English, a much higher percentage of tweets have 140 characters (9%). Most Japanese tweets are 15 characters while most English tweets are 34,” the post said.

The 280-character test will roll out in all languages except for Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

Workarounds that worked

For Twitter users who need to say more than 140 characters will allow, common workarounds include posting an image of a longer text, and the use of “twitterstorms” – lengthy screeds which notify readers that there’s more to come with fractions, such as (1/12) to signal 12 incoming posts.

A 280 character limit will obviously cut that in half.

Removing a point of contention

While Twitter acknowledges that some users may have an emotional attachment to short tweets, the company notes that having to cram your thoughts into a few sentences may in fact be deterring people from tweeting.

“in all markets, when people don’t have to cram their thoughts into 140 characters and actually have some to spare, we see more people tweeting — which is awesome!”

In other words, Twitter has found that removing this pain point — even if it means giving up something that has been core to its identity — can help it reach more people who will then use its product more. And, ultimately, that’s what Twitter has been seeking for years: a way to gain more users and to make its quirky ways easier to understand.

I know one guy who would be OK with a platform-wide increase:

#280characters pic.twitter.com/wmDT2J8VRI

— Rep. Steven Smith (@RepStevenSmith) September 26, 2017

Thoughts on the proposed change from around the Twitterverse: 

Personally, I think #280characters is a bad idea. Twitter's about being smart and thrifty. Use your brain. Say what you need in 140 or gtfo.

— Mike P Williams ? (@Mike_P_Williams) September 26, 2017

What tweets with #280characters look like pic.twitter.com/F4IWScUQK2

— TrivWorks (@TrivWorks) September 26, 2017

F*ck 280 characters. We want an edit button. It's the only thing that will separate the humans from the bots #280Characters #TuesdayThoughts

— Humpty Trumpy (@TrumpsToDoList) September 26, 2017

How many characters do you prefer? #280characters

— Andrew Goldman (@AndrewGoldman_I) September 26, 2017

 

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Amazon is setting up to eat Twilio’s lunch in the cloud messaging space with the quiet launch of two-way text messaging through Amazon Web Services (AWS) Pinpoint.

“AWS Pinpoint users can now programmaticaly respond to their end-users’ text messages. Users can provision both short codes and long codes (10-digit phone numbers) which send inbound messages to an SNS topic.”

Twilio provides a variety of cloud-based telecom, texting, and user-authentication services – operating entirely through the Amazon Web Services platform. Up until May, for example, Uber in-app notifications primarily used Twilio SMS architecture – previously accounting for 12 percent of $TWLO revenue until the ridesharing giant announced a shift away from Twilio.

The company also manages the two-factor login for Intuit’s tax service, as well as an internal messaging system for the Coca-Cola Co.

Amazon’s announcement sent Twilio stock down over 6% in trade on Tuesday.

Unfortunately for Twilio, which went public at $15 and hit a high of $64 last year before enduring a rocky 2017, there are several fatal flaws in their business model – namely compressed margins and competition.

Via Yahoo Finance: 

TWLO is losing money. Still. In fact, its losses are widening. FY14 net loss was $26.76 million. FY15 net loss was $38.9 million. FY16 loss was $41.3 million. So far this year, through two quarters, TWLO stock has a net loss of $21.32 million.

Free cash flow for TWLO stock has also been negative: $18.4 million in FY14, $20.5 million in FY15, and $24.26 million in FY16. So far this year it is negative $10.9 million.

Every TWLO stock bull will point to revenue growth, and show that it tripled from FY14 to FY16, and has a run-rate increase of 35% this year. Yeah, and I’ll point out that despite that tripling of revenue, R&D and SG&A spend also tripled.

Somehow this loser company is trading at a $2.8 billion valuation. That’s ridiculous. It comes on the heels of the Twilio May earnings report, which announced that Uber defected from using Twilio’s platform, accounting for 12% of revenues. It also lost WhatApp.

In April, Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research predicted Twilio’s demise:

TWLO has zero chance to survive against the ‘Scale-out’ pricing structure of AWS-Connect,” he said. “If history is any indication, AWS-Connect will resort to about two to three price cuts within 12 months, [and] TWLO has zero capacity to match the AWS-Connect Scale-out pricing. Pretty much TWLO is toast.”

Somebody get the paddles ready, this doesn’t look good.

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In the week since Hurricane Maria’s direct hit on Puerto Rico, dramatic footage of the devastation reveal the extent of the damage – leaving much of its population of 3.6 million without food, water, or power.

“This has been an unprecedented disaster, not only for Puerto Rico, but for all of the region…we need more help. We need more help with resources. We need more help with people being deployed so that we can get logistical support elsewhere.” –Gov. Ricardo Rosselló 

NOAA satellite footage from before and after the hurricane reveal the extent of the damage to Puerto Rico’s electrical grid:

Photos and footage

Before and after #irma / #maria shots of the #USVI. Things are much worse there and in Puerto Rico than people think. pic.twitter.com/obqjXxp2aL

— Eric Litman (@ericlitman) September 26, 2017

Before and after of Felix Nacho Milan baseball stadium in #Yabucoa #PuertoRico where landfall occurred. via: https://t.co/0PpO8b2stB pic.twitter.com/NzjEdBJ878

— Bill Karins (@BillKarins) September 21, 2017

Before and after picture of the Bayamon river in Puerto Rico #HurricaneMaria pic.twitter.com/HOnpfip3hv

— Aleck Cosme (@AleckCosme) September 20, 2017

Before and after photos of damages from #Maria in #PuertoRico taken by Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González. #HuracanMaria pic.twitter.com/ac0NyAEfLU

— Hurricane Info (@HurricaneData) September 21, 2017

This is Puerto Rico days after Hurricane Maria tore through the US territory: Flooded streets and long lines for gas https://t.co/Fk0hih910m pic.twitter.com/6W5sijGsbh

— CNN (@CNN) September 26, 2017

Majority of you know #PuertoRico is without power. Here are some of the modern conditions of #PuertoRico after #HurricaneMaria@cnn pic.twitter.com/MU0IH9TTwW

— Atlanta Black Star (@ATLBlackStar) September 26, 2017

Fortunately Nico is on the case

#HurricaneMaria @WeLoveDogsUSA @dogcelebration @Koksalakn
Nico the dog has been helping people clean up after the hurricane in #PuertoRico pic.twitter.com/VMTf8XJlir

— The Invisible Man (@invisibleman_17) September 26, 2017

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Around 50,000 islanders have been evacuated from Bali, Indonesia amid fears of an imminent volcanic eruption from Mount Agung.

Evacuation post #SiagaGunungAgung is in 9 distric; Karangasem, Buleleng, Klungkung, Bangli, Tabanan, Denpasar, Gianyar, Badung &Jembrana pic.twitter.com/Z49iOG0UCj

— Indonesian Red Cross (@palangmerah) September 25, 2017

The volcano has been shaking since August along with a rising threat level.

Bali’s Disaster Mitigation agency said 48,540 people had fled out of 60,000 living in the danger zone.

Via The Guardian

“There are still people who don’t want to be evacuated,” Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, an agency spokesman, said. “The reason is firstly, the mountain hasn’t erupted yet. Secondly, they are worried about their livestock.”

Officials announced the highest possible alert level on Friday after the increasing volcanic activity, and told people to stay at least 5.6 miles from the crater.

Evacuees have packed into temporary shelters or moved in with relatives. About 2,000 cows have been also moved from the flanks of the volcano.

Nengah Satiya left home with his wife three days ago, but said he had been returning from an evacuation centre to the danger zone to tend to his pigs and chickens.

“There are many livestock in our village but nobody is taking care of them,” he said. “We take turns going back to feed them.”

The Indonesian Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation said the mountain was still being rocked by hundreds of volcanic tremors.

Mt Agung is one of over 120 active volcanoes in Indonesia, previously erupting in 1963 when it killed over 1,000 people and spewed ashes as far as Indonesia’s capital of Jakarta, over 750 miles away.

MT AGUNG VOLCANO. 6PM 23/9/17 IT HAS BEGUN https://t.co/o9t7aE2byQ

— Leonhard Effendy (@OutAndAboutOn2) September 26, 2017

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