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un-enfant-immature · 5 years

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Transportation Weekly: Amazon’s secret acquisition and all the AV feels

Welcome to Transportation Weekly; I’m your host Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch. I cover all the ways people and goods move from Point A to Point B — today and in the future — whether it’s by bike, bus, scooter, car, train, truck, robotaxi or rocket. Sure, let’s include hyperloop and eVTOLs, or air taxis, too.

Yup, another transportation newsletter. But I promise this one will be different. Here’s how.

Newsletters can be great mediums for curated news — a place that rounds up all the important articles a reader might have missed in any given week. We want to do a bit more.

We’re doubling down on the analysis and adding a heaping scoop of original reporting and well, scoops. You can expect Q&As with the most interesting people in transportation, insider tips, and data from that white paper you didn’t have time to read. This isn’t a lone effort either. TechCrunch senior reporter Megan Rose Dickey, who has been writing about micro mobility since before the scooter boom times of 2017, will be weighing in each week in our “Tiny But Mighty Mobility” section below. Follow her @meganrosedickey.

Consider this a soft launch. There might be content you like or something you hate. Feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] to share those thoughts, opinions, or tips.

Eventually, we’ll have a way for readers to sign up and have Transportation Weekly delivered each week via email. For now, follow me on Twitter @kirstenkorosec to ensure you see it each week.

Now, let’s get to the good stuff.

ONM …

There are OEMs in the automotive world. And here, (wait for it) there are ONMs — original news manufacturers.

This is where investigative reporting, enterprise pieces and analysis on transportation will live.

We promised scoops in Transportation Weekly and here is one. If you don’t know journalist Mark Harris, you should. He’s an intrepid gumshoeing reporter who TechCrunch has been lucky enough to hire as a freelancer. Follow him @meharris.

Amazon quietly acquired robotics company Dispatch to build Scout

Remember way back in January when Amazon introduced Scout, their autonomous delivery bot? There was speculation at the time that Amazon had bought the Estonian-based company Starship Technologies. Harris did some investigating and discovered some of the intellectual property and technology behind Scout likely came from a small San Francisco startup called Dispatch that Amazon stealthily acquired in 2017.

It’s time to stop thinking about Amazon as just an e-commerce company. It’s a gigantic logistics company, probably the biggest on the planet, with a keen interest — and the cash to pursue those interests — in automation. Think beyond Scout. In fact, wander on down this post to the deal of the week.

Dig In

Each week, transportation weekly will spend a little extra time on an approach, policy, tech or the people behind it in our ‘Dig In” section. We’ll run the occasional column here, too.

This week features a conversation with Dmitri Dolgov, the CTO and VP of engineering at Waymo, the former Google self-driving project that spun out to become a business under Alphabet.

Ten years ago, right around now, about a dozen engineers started working on Project Chauffeur, which would turn into the Google self-driving project and eventually become an official company called Waymo. Along the way, the project would give rise to a number of high-profile engineers who would go on to create their own companies. It’s a list that includes Aurora co-founder Chris Urmson, Argo AI co-founder Bryan Salesky and Anthony Levandowski, who helped launch Otto and more recently Pronto.ai.

What might be less known is that many of those in the original dozen are still at Waymo, including Dolgov, Andrew Chatham, Dirk Haehnel, Nathaniel Fairfield and Mike Montemerlo.

Dolgov and I talked about the early days, challenges and what’s next. A couple of things that stood out during our chat.

There is a huge difference between having a prototype that can do something once or twice or four times versus building a product that people can start using in their daily lives. And it is, especially in this field, very easy to make progress on these kinds of one-off challenges.

Dolgov’s take on how engineers viewed the potential of the project 10 years ago …

I also use our cars every day to get around, this is how I got to work today. This is how I run errands around here in Mountain View and Palo Alto.

A little bird …

We hear a lot. But we’re not selfish. Let’s share. An early investor, or investors, in Bird appear to be selling some of their shares in the scooter company, per a tip backed up by data over at secondary trading platform EquityZen. That’s not crazy considering the company is valued at $2 billion-ish. Seed investors should take some money off the table once a company reaches that valuation.

We’ve heard that David Sacks at Craft Ventures hasn’t sold a single Bird share. We hear Tusk Ventures hasn’t sold, either. That leaves a few others, including Goldcrest Capital, which was the lone seed investor, and then Series A participants Lead Edge Capital, M13, and Valor Equity Partners.

Got a tip or overheard something in the world of transportation? Email me or send a direct message to @kirstenkorosec.

While you’re over at Twitter, check out this cheeky account @SDElevator. We can’t guarantee how much of the content is actually “overheard” and how much is manufactured for the laughs, but it’s a fun account to peruse from time to time.

“Is this really the state of VC today?” https://t.co/GmPhv3FN6q

— SelfDrivingElevator (@SDElevator) February 7, 2019

Another new entrant to the mobility parody genre is @HeardinMobilty.

Deal of the week

There’s so much to choose from this week, but Aurora’s more than $530 million Series B funding round announced Thursday morning is the winner.

The upshot? It’s not just that Aurora is now valued at more than $2.5 billion. The primary investors in the round — Sequoia as lead and “significant” investments from Amazon and T. Rowe Price — suggests Aurora’s full self-driving stack is headed for other uses beyond shuttling people around in autonomous vehicles. Perhaps delivery is next.

And believe it or not, the type of investor in this round tells me that we can expect another capital raise. Yes, Aurora has lots of runway now as well as three publicly named customers. But investors like Sequoia, which led the round and whose partner Carl Eschenbach is joining Aurora’s board, T. Rowe Price and Amazon along with repeaters like Index Ventures (general partner Mike Volpi is also on the board) have patience, access to cash and long-term strategic thinking. Expect more from them.

Other deals that got our attention this week:

Lime raises $310 million

Self-driving truck startup Ike raises $52 million

Tesla’s acquisition of Maxwell Technologies for $218 million

Online car retail platform BrumBrum raises $23 million led by Accel

Car subscription service Cluno raises $28 million led by Valar Ventures, the firm founded by Peter Thiel

Snapshot

Speaking of deals and Tesla … the automaker’s $218 million acquisition this month of Maxwell Technologies got me thinking about companies it has targeted in the past.

So, we went ahead and built a handy chart to provide a snapshot view of some of Tesla’s noteworthy acquisitions.

One note: Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted in 2018 that the company had acquired trucking carrier companies to help improve its delivery logistics. We’ve dug in and have yet to land on the company, or companies, Tesla acquired.

The deals that got away are just as interesting. That list includes a reported $325 million offer to buy Simbol Materials, the startup that was extracting small amounts of lithium near the Salton Sea east of San Diego.

Tiny but mighty mobility

Between Lime’s $310 million Series D round and the seemingly never-ending battle to operate electric scooters in San Francisco, it’s clear that micro mobility is not so micro.

Lime, a shared electric scooter and bikeshare startup, has now raised north of $800 million in total funding, surpassing key competitor Bird’s total funding of $415 million. Thanks to this week’s round of funding, Lime’s micromobility business is now worth $2.4 billion.

Lime currently operates its bikes and scooters in more than 100 cities worldwide. Over in San Francisco, however, Lime has yet to deploy any of its modes of transportation. Since last March, there’s been an ongoing battle among scooter operators to deploy their services in the city. The city ultimately selected Skip and Scoot for the pilot programs, leaving the likes of Lime, Uber’s JUMP and Spin to appeal the decision.

A neutral hearing officer has since determined SF’s process for determining scooter operators was fair, but the silver lining for the likes of JUMP, Spin and most likely, Lime, is that the city may open up its pilot program to allow additional operators beginning in April.

Notable reads

Two recent studies got my attention.

The first is from Bike Pittsburgh, an advocacy group and partner of Uber, that published the findings from its latest AV survey based on responses from local residents. The last time they conducted a similar survey was in 2017.

The takeaway: people there, who are among the most exposed to autonomous vehicles due to all the AV testing on public roads, are getting used to it. A bit more than 48 percent of respondents said they approve of public AV testing in Pittsburgh, down slightly from 49 percent approval rating in 2017.

21.21% somewhat approve

11.62% neutral

10.73% somewhat disapprove

8.73% disapprove

One standout result was surrounding responses about the fatal accident in Tempe, Arizona involving a self-driving Uber that struck and killed pedestrian Elaine Herzberg in March 2018. Survey participants were asked “As a pedestrian or a bicyclist how did this change event and it’s outcome change your opinion about sharing the road with AVs?”

Some 60 percent of respondents claimed no change in their opinion, with another 37 percent claiming that it negatively changed their opinion. Nearly 3 percent claimed their opinion changed positively toward the technology.

Bike Pittsburgh noted that the survey elicited passionate open-ended responses.

“The incident did not turn too many people off of AV technology in general,” according to Bike Pittsburgh. “Rather it did lead to a growing distrust of the companies themselves, specifically with Uber and how they handled the fatality.”

The other study, Securing the Modern Vehicle: A Study of Automotive Industry Cybersecurity Practices, was released by Synopsys, Inc.and SAE International.

The results, based on a survey of global automotive manufacturers and suppliers conducted by Ponemon Institute, doesn’t assuage my concerns. If anything, it puts me on alert.

84% of automotive professionals have concerns that their organizations’ cybersecurity practices are not keeping pace with evolving technologies

30% of organizations don’t have an established cybersecurity program or team

63% test less than half of the automotive technology they develop for security vulnerabilities.

Testing and deployments

Pilots, pilots everywhere. A couple of interesting mobility pilots and deployments stand out.

Optimus Ride, the Boston-based MIT spinoff, has made a deal with Brookfield Properties to provide rides in its small self-driving vehicles at Halley Rise – a new $1.4 billion mixed-use development in Virginia.

This is an example of where we see self-driving vehicles headed — for now. Small deployments that are narrowly focused in geography with a predictable customer base are the emerging trend of 2019. Expect more of them.

And there’s a reason why, these are the kinds of pilots that will deliver the data needed to improve their technology, as well as test out business models —gotta figure out how to money with AVs eventually — hone in fleet operational efficiency, placate existing investors while attracting new ones, and recruit talent.

Another deployment in the more conventional ride-hailing side of mobility is with Beat, the startup that has focused its efforts on Latin America.

Beat was founded by Nikos Drandakis in 2011 initially as Taxibeat. The startup acquired by Daimler’s mytaxi in February 2017 and Drandakis still runs the show. The company was focused on Europe but shifted to Latin America, and it’s made all the difference. (Beat is still available in Athens, Greece.) Beat has launched in Lima, Peru, Santiago, Chile and Bogota, Colombia and now boasts 200,000 registered drivers.

Now it’s moving into Mexico, where more competitors exist. The company just started registering and screening drivers in Mexico City as it prepares to offer rides for passengers this month.

TechCrunch spoke at length with Drandakis. Look out for a deeper dive soon.

Until next week, nos vemos.

#TechCrunch

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scienceblogtumbler · 4 years

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Students’ shoebox-sized satellite gets green light for launch

Most graduating seniors expect to write a final thesis, or perhaps co-author a paper or present a poster or talk at an academic conference.

By the time Paul Köttering graduates from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2021, he and his team hope to have launched a satellite.

Despite the shelter-in-place mandate during the coronavirus epidemic — Köttering is spending the remainder of the semester at his parents’ home in London — he and a team of UC Berkeley undergraduates are huddling weekly via Zoom in preparation for the launch next year of a shoebox-sized experiment to test new satellite navigation technology that is based on campus research.

This past February, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced that it would cover the costs of the launch — up to $300,000 — through the CubeSat Launch Initiative, which focuses on flying small experiments as auxiliary rocket payloads.

To actually build the satellite, the UC Berkeley team is raising about $15,000 dollars through crowdfunding and the campus’s Big Give campaign, and seeking donations of equipment from numerous manufacturers. They’ve already received a $4,950 grant from the UC Berkeley Student Technology Fund.

“The NASA grant is just for the launch, so we have still got to supply and manufacture the satellite ourselves,” said Kӧttering, a junior majoring in applied mathematics and physics. “Luckily, the cost of CubeSats has dropped significantly over the past three to four years. The communications systems, power systems, control systems — a lot of those are just off-the-shelf, commercial parts, so they are quite cheap. The payload itself is the more expensive item, but again, a lot of that comes from in-kind donations from companies.”

Junior Paul Kӧttering, sheltering-in-place in London. (Photo courtesy of Paul Kӧttering)

Called QubeSat, or quantum CubeSat, the group’s satellite will test a new type of gyroscope based on quantum mechanical interactions in imperfect diamonds. The diamond gyroscope was invented in the UC Berkeley laboratory of physicist Dmitry Budker, a Professor of the Graduate School who is now also at the Helmholtz Institute at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany.

The student team is part of an undergraduate aerospace club called Space Technologies at Cal (STAC) that has already flown experiments aboard balloons and the International Space Station — an impressive record for a group that started only four years ago. Some of the group’s graduates have gone on to work for SpaceX, Boeing and other aerospace companies.

Boasting about 65 members from a range of majors, including physics, math, engineering, chemistry and environmental sciences, they’re currently working on four projects they hope will push innovative new space technologies.

“UC Berkeley doesn’t have an aerospace program, and it is great that there are students that are that motivated,” said David Sundkvist, a researcher at UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL) who is one of the group’s mentors. “Their project definitely was a winner because it is interesting, and it also has synergy with the whole campus in that it comes from Berkeley research. I think that made it possible for them to win this slot on the launch manifest, definitely.”

The QubeSat team plans to use some of the unique facilities available at SSL, including the vacuum chambers needed to test the spaceworthiness of the satellite.

The CURIE mission consists of two CubeSats separated by a few kilometers and equipped with large antennas to measure radio emissions from coronal mass ejections. Using interferometry, UC Berkeley space scientist David Sundkvist hopes to pinpoint where the emissions come from. (Graphic courtesy of David Sundkvist)

Sundkvist is leading his own CubeSat project, the CubeSat Radio Interferometry Experiment (CURIE), which also received good news in February: It, too, is guaranteed a launch slot in the next few years, with similar funding from NASA. The CURIE — with a budget of $3.2 million, in addition to the launch subsidy — involves two identical satellites that will try for the first time to do radio interferometry in space. Interferometry, which integrates data from two separate radio antennas — for CURIE, the satellite receivers will be a couple of kilometers apart in Earth’s orbit — should more precisely pinpoint and track radio emissions from huge solar eruptions, called coronal mass ejections, that hurtle toward Earth and can disrupt communications satellites or even endanger astronauts in space.

Diamonds are for navigation

Kӧttering got involved in the CubeSat project after hearing about the great experiences of other STAC members, including sophomore Vidish Gupta, who, as a freshman, worked alongside seniors to design an experiment that flew a year ago on the Blue Origin rocket to the edge of space and back. During the trip, the automated experiment recorded roundworms — C. elegans, commonly found in biology labs — as they revived under little to no gravity, or microgravity. The team is still analyzing those results.

The QubeSat team meets weekly via Zoom to discuss the satellite design and prepare to begin building it for a 2021 launch. Left to right, starting at the top row, are Justin Chen, Vidish Gupta, Edmund Chen, Drake Lin, Max Burns, Paul Köttering, Yuki Ito, Saisaran Kidambi, Bianca Monique Luansing, Bhavesh Kalisetti, Megan Yu, Joon Park and Sally Peng. Team member Krishnakumar Bhattaram is not pictured. (Image courtesy of Vidish Gupta)

Before applying for the NASA funds, that 15-member CubeSat team explored various possible experiments — it was looking for something small, cheap, but innovative — before settling a year ago on its final proposal: to test a quantum gyroscope.

“The small-satellite community is becoming very, very large and keeps CubeSats very popular,” said Gupta, the project lead who is majoring in electrical engineering and computer sciences and will be building electronics for QubeSat. “We saw there were a couple of different technologies that are still kind of holding this back, and one of the big ones was a gyroscope technology for controlling the satellite, since you need to know where you are and the direction you’re going.”

To make the sensors, synthetic diamonds are blasted with nitrogen, some of which kick out carbon atoms and take their places, creating nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers that have weird properties. One of these properties, studied by Budker’s group for more than 10 years, is that the NV centers’ atomic spins are very sensitive to magnetic fields. Magnetometers based on NV diamonds have already been launched to measure small changes in Earth’s magnetic field.

The NV-diamond, a quantum gyroscope, will sit in the middle of the magnetic coils, which will be encased in a box that blocks outside magnetic fields, which would interfere with the measurements. (Diagram by STAC team)

The QubeSat team plans to employ another quantum characteristic of NV centers: The spins of the nitrogen atoms precess or wobble in a magnetic field, like the wobble of a spinning top, and the frequency of that precession changes with the atoms’ orientation. The team’s experiment will incorporate a tiny, solid-state laser to excite the NV centers, a radio frequency generator to ping the atoms and a photodiode to detect the light they emit. The intensity of the emitted light provides a measure of the 3D orientation of the spacecraft.

“In comparison to more traditional onboard micromechanical gyroscopes, quantum gyroscopes provide improved resolution, improved drift stability and increased temperature operational range,” Kӧttering said. “QubeSat’s upcoming mission will allow us to evaluate the effect of the harsh space environment — including extreme temperatures, radiation and magnetic field variation — that could affect the gyroscopes’ performance in small-scale spaceflight.”

One of Budker’s former postdoctoral fellows, Andrey Jarmola, who is advising the QubeSat team, points out that the team’s attempt to demonstrate the diamond gyroscope in a satellite is ambitious. He and his colleagues are only now showing that the diamond gyroscope — what he called a nuclear magnetic resonance gyroscope — works in the lab.

But the stability and sensitivity of diamond gyroscopes promise to be better than those of the standard MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) gyroscopes in our cellphones, automobile airbag sensors and image stabilizers in cameras. And unlike other sensitive gyroscopes, diamond gyroscopes can be miniaturized and use less power.

“The number of applications of gyroscopes is just enormous. They are used in all mobile devices and for navigation for both the military and industry. It is a huge market,” Jarmola said, noting that he has invited some of the team members to work on the project in the lab in UC Berkeley’s physics department. “The students are very enthusiastic, and I really like consulting them and the idea of working with them in the future.”

Enthusiasm, dedication and ambition are hallmarks of the QubeSat team and the other STAC teams, which are working on high altitude balloon, microgravity and artificial intelligence lunar rover experiments.

Sophomore Vidish Gupta working on the design for QubeSat’s main flight computer at his home in Los Angeles. (Photo courtesy of Vidish Gupta)

“The reason why STAC exists is because there is no aerospace department on campus,” said Kӧttering, who is among many students and faculty lobbying UC Berkeley to create such a department. “There is no major or minor, so we try and act as a community in a place where all the students interested in aerospace can come, get involved, actually get hands on project experience, get their project hopefully flown or launched and also really develop those skills.”

And this group on campus is passionate about making space accessible to all — it’s the goal of the growing NewSpace movement — including future undergraduates in fields such as science, technology, math and engineering (STEM).

“QubeSat’s secondary goal is to increase the accessibility of space and to inspire STEM education. The QubeSat team and the larger STAC community hope to introduce high school and college students to our work though community outreach in the East Bay, giving them the support and inspiration to pursue microsatellite projects and careers in the burgeoning NewSpace era,” Kӧttering said.

source https://scienceblog.com/515945/students-shoebox-sized-satellite-gets-green-light-for-launch/

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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Russia Troops Patrol Between Turkish and Syrian Forces, Filling an American Void https://nyti.ms/2MBlQYQ

Russia Savors U.S. Missteps in Syria, and Seizes Opportunity

President Trump’s erratic moves are letting Russia seize the role of peacemaker — and deal-maker — in Syria.

By Anton Troianovski | Published Oct. 14, 2019 Updated Oct. 15, 2019, 5:44 PM ET |New York Times | Posted October 15, 2019 6:25 PM ET |

MOSCOW — These have been disastrous weeks for American foreign policy, a popular presenter on Russia’s state television told viewers on Sunday night with an I-told-you-so smirk.

The United States essentially turned its back on Ukraine amid the impeachment inquiry, the TV host Dmitri Kiselyov said in his marquee weekly show. Then, Washington abandoned the Syrian Kurds.

“The Kurds themselves again picked the wrong patron,” Mr. Kiselyov said. “The United States, of course, is an unreliable partner.”

As the Middle East reels from President Trump’s erratic foreign policy, Russia is savoring a fresh chance to build its status as a resurgent world power and cast itself as a force for stability. The withdrawal of United States troops from northeastern Syria, coupled with Turkey’s incursion, is allowing Russia to play the part of responsible peacemaker and to present a contrast to what many in the region see as unstable leadership from Washington.

It’s too soon to tell whether Russia will be able to manage the new volatility in Syria, just as it’s not clear if the impeachment furor over Ukraine will help the Kremlin’s interests in Eastern Europe. But as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia landed in Saudi Arabia on Monday for a state visit to one of America’s most important allies, it appeared clear that Mr. Trump’s moves in recent months were helping him make the case that Moscow, not Washington, was the more dependable actor on the world stage.

Revelations of White House pressure on President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to launch investigations that could help Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign provided new fodder for long-running Kremlin arguments about the dangers of doing business with the United States.

Ukrainian officials who counted on the United States for help have now become pawns both for Republicans who want to damage former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Democrats who want to impeach Mr. Trump, the Russian prime minister, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said this month.

“I certainly don’t envy Mr. Zelensky,” Mr. Medvedev said in a televised interview. “He’s found himself between the rock of the Democratic Party and the hard place of the Republican Party.”

In Syria, Russia stuck by its ally, President Bashar al-Assad, even as the American strategy shifted. Russia’s often brutal airstrikes against the Assad regime’s foes helped turn the tide in the Syrian war and establish Moscow as a key power player in the Middle East.

As if to drive home the point, Mr. Putin landed in Riyadh on Monday for a rare state visit to Saudi Arabia, one of America’s closest allies in the region. His armored limousine flanked by an honorary Saudi horse guard, Mr. Putin arrived for talks with King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman focusing on regional security, oil prices and business deals.

“Russia is becoming an important player in the region — whether one likes it or not, it is a fact,” Prince Khalid bin Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Britain, said in a public discussion at a London think tank on Monday. “The Russians do to a certain extent understand the East better than the West does.”

The Syrian Kurds, previously allied with the United States in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria, announced a new deal on Sunday with the Russian-backed government of Mr. Assad in Damascus. The agreement came after Mr. Trump abruptly withdrew American troops in the region and Turkey mounted an incursion into Syrian Kurdish territory.

Turkey appears to have coordinated its actions to some extent with the Russians, who are now left to manage any potential clash between Turkey — which considers some of the Syrian Kurdish fighters terrorists — and Mr. Assad’s forces now moving into Kurdish territory.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey spoke with Mr. Putin by phone last week before mounting the invasion, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov said on Monday that lines of communication were open between the Russian and Turkish militaries.

In the short term, Mr. Trump’s withdrawal is a win for Russia because it expands the territory under Mr. Assad’s control. Going forward, the situation presents new tests and potential rewards for Russia’s military and foreign policy apparatus, which critics say is already overextended.

Russia will have to confront the threat posed by Islamic State militants and supporters who had been detained by the Kurds and are now at risk of fleeing. Some relatives of Islamic State fighters have already fled detention.

Mr. Putin said last week that thousands of those fighters originally hail from Russia and other former Soviet republics, presenting a serious security risk because they may seek to return home.

Russia will also have to broker a longer-term agreement between Damascus and the Kurds while working to prevent fighting between Mr. Erdogan’s and Mr. Assad’s forces, said Andrei Kortunov, head of the Russian International Affairs Council, a research group that advises the Kremlin.

“There are a lot of pitfalls here and it’s not totally clear how to realize this, but it would be an achievement,” Mr. Kortunov said. “It would demonstrate a certain superiority of Russian tactics over the American, and this would be noted in the region, and not only in the region.”

To be sure, even if developments in Syria and Ukraine present Mr. Putin with tactical and propaganda victories, his aggressive foreign policy of recent years means that Russia’s image will likely remain tarnished in much of the world for a long time to come.

In Ukraine, for all the discomfort with Mr. Trump’s actions, Russia is still largely viewed as a hostile, occupying power. In Western Europe and the United States, Russian election interference and assassination campaigns shocked many voters. And people around the world were horrified by Russia’s air campaign in Syria, which included the deliberate bombing of hospitals.

But Mr. Putin appears to be betting that he can boost Russia’s global standing by playing to other countries’ individual interests in a world in which the Trump administration’s moves have left many traditional American allies in dismay.

“Russia will never be friends with one country against another,” Mr. Putin said in an interview with two Arab news networks and the Kremlin-controlled channel RT Arabic that aired on Sunday. “We build bilateral relations that rely on positive trends generated by our contacts; we do not build alliances against anyone.”

David Kirkpatrick contributed reporting from London.

*********

Winners and Losers in Trump’s Troop Withdrawal From Syria

For months, analysts have outlined how such a move would risk upsetting the fragile balance of power in a complex war.

BY Megan Special | Published October 15, 2019, 10:47 AM ET | New York Times | Posted October 15, 625 PM ET |

An earlier version of this article was published on Dec. 21, after President Trump said he wanted to withdraw American troops from Syria.

President Trump’s abrupt announcement last week that the United States would withdraw its troops from northeastern Syria has already begun to shift the power dynamic in a country that has endured years of war involving a tangled set of international actors.

The announcement preceded a Turkish incursion that turned what had been a largely peaceful Kurdish-administered stretch of northeastern Syria into a new flash point. Analysts and some of Mr. Trump’s own advisers had warned of this exact outcome for months, after he first teased the idea of a withdrawal.

Here are some of the parties that have the most to gain or lose.

The Winners:

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, along with Russia and Iran

President Bashar al-Assad and his chief international backers, Russia and Iran, all stand to benefit from the troop withdrawal, which clears the way for Mr. Assad to tighten his once-tenuous grip on his battered country.

Mr. al-Assad has long vowed to retake large stretches of territory lost in the country’s eight-year civil war. That appears to be taking place now, with Syrian government forces aligning with the Kurdish-led militia that the United States abandoned upon its withdrawal and re-entering parts of the northeast where they had been absent for years.

In addition, the two biggest threats to Mr. al-Assad’s leadership have been substantially weakened by years of war: the Islamic State, thanks largely to an American-led coalition that fought the militants; and the myriad rebel groups that tried to overthrow the Syrian government.

Russia also stands to benefit. After Mr. Trump announced his intentions in December, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia applauded the decision. Russia has contributed about 5,000 troops and a few dozen aircraft to prop up Mr. al-Assad’s government, which secured Moscow’s strategically important naval facility in the Syrian city of Tartus on the Mediterranean Sea. Russia has also expanded its military footprint in Syria during the war.

“It certainly helps the Russians, who have benefited tremendously from a quite limited investment in Syria,” Jon B. Alterman, director and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, warned in December.

Russia’s alliance with Syria has also bolstered Moscow’s broader influence in the Middle East.

“They re-established themselves as a global player when the conclusion had been that the glory days of the Soviet Union were dead and gone,” Mr. Alterman said.

Joost Hiltermann, the Middle East director of the International Crisis Group, a conflict and foreign policy research organization, said that so far, the impact of the American withdrawal from northeastern Syria has been anything but surprising.

“Russia is the clear winner of the latest developments,” he said. “Russia as the hegemonic power in Syria, that is now the coming reality.”

Iran likewise plays an outsize role in Syria as the international ally with the most invested in the country and the most at stake. During the war, Iran embedded itself in Syria through its fighters and proxies, redrawing the strategic map of the Middle East.

It has sent thousands of forces to fight on the ground and deployed drones and precision weapons to help keep Mr. al-Assad in power. That secured an all-important land bridge through Syria to supply weapons to Hezbollah, Iran’s militia ally in Lebanon that is a steadfast enemy of Israel.

Iran also trained and equipped Shiite Syrian fighters aligned with Mr. al-Assad, while strengthening ties with allies in Iraq and Lebanon and aiming to build a united front in the event of a new war with Israel.

For Mr. al-Assad, the American withdrawal means the path forward for Syria is likely to be shaped largely by forces sympathetic to his government and its interests.

TURKEY

Turkey and the United States, which are NATO allies, have frequently found themselves at odds in Syria, even though both opposed Mr. al-Assad’s government. And the United States’ backing of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or S.D.F. — a militia that Washington views as the most capable of pushing back Islamic State militants — long vexed Turkey.

Turkey has battled Kurdish separatists domestically since the 1980s and has described the rising power of Kurds along its border in northern Syria as a threat.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey had long threatened military intervention against the Kurdish forces in Syria, but America’s presence in the country’s northeast was a major barrier.

The exit of American troops left Turkey open to taking that action, and it launched a long-anticipated cross-border assault on the S.D.F. last week.

The ISLAMIC STATE

“We have won against ISIS,” Mr. Trump declared in a video published in December, when he first announced his intention to withdraw American troops from Syria.

He has repeated that mantra many times since, but experts — including some of Mr. Trump’s own staff and coalition partners — disagreed from the start. Though the militants lost the sweeping territory that they had held at the height of their power, the withdrawal of American troops removes one of the group’s main adversaries.

Brett McGurk, who once served as Mr. Trump’s special envoy in the fight against ISIS, said in December that the battle against the group was not over and needed to be a longer-term initiative.

This week, Mr. McGurk said his concerns had proved warranted.

“Trump seems to believe it’s easy to raise an army and fight an enemy like ISIS. It’s not,” he said in a tweet on Sunday. “It takes years of work, and it may be impossible now as the world sees a historic success upended in six days.”

There are also fears that the chaos of the Turkish incursion will divert the resources of the Kurdish forces who have been managing the detention of tens of thousands of ISIS fighters and their families in the region.

Local officials say that around 500 ISIS sympathizers took advantage of the mayhem in one detention center and escaped this week.

The Losers:

SYRIAN KURDS

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces is one of the groups most immediately affected by America’s withdrawal from Syria.

Despite having been important American allies in the fight against ISIS, the Kurdish-led group was left virtually abandoned when Mr. Trump announced the withdrawal, effectively clearing the way for Turkey to target its fighters.

The Kurdish forces, which carved out an enclave in northeastern Syria during the war, are losing territory and control as a result of Mr. Trump’s move.

At least 133 S.D.F. fighters have been killed in the Turkish offensive, according to a Syrian monitoring group, and the militia is being forced from areas it had controlled for years.

The withdrawal has also left the Kurdish fighters searching for new allies, and for that they turned to the Syrian government forces of Mr. al-Assad, a longtime American foe.

Many Americans who fought alongside or supported the Kurdish-led forces have expressed shame over Mr. Trump’s decision.

Among them was Mr. McGurk, the former Trump special envoy. In a series of Twitter posts, he excoriated the president for the withdrawal and noted that the Kurdish-led militia were fighting, and dying.

“Bottom line: it’s shameful to leave partners to their fate and the mercies of hostile actors with no thought, plan or process in place,” he wrote. “I wish my former SDF colleagues the best as they find new patrons.”

CIVILIANS

Civilians have borne the brunt of the Syrian conflict for years, with millions displaced from their homes and millions of others who fled the country struggling abroad as refugees.

Aid groups have warned for months that further destabilization in northern Syrian could set off yet another humanitarian disaster in the region, and there are already signals that such a crisis is emerging.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has provided humanitarian assistance in Syria for years, warned that the Turkish offensive was having a “devastating impact” on civilians.

In a statement, the organization described tens of thousands of people fleeing towns and villages near the Turkish border, with hundreds of thousands of others also at risk of being displaced. The organization also warned of the potential for water shortages if infrastructure is damaged.

António Guterres, the United Nations’ secretary general, called for an immediate de-escalation of the fighting. In a statement on Monday, he cited the risks to civilians in the area and noted that civilian casualties had already been reported.

Mr. Guterres urged in the statement that “civilians not taking part in hostilities must be protected at all times” and that “civilian infrastructure must be protected in accordance with international humanitarian law.”

“Sustained, unimpeded and safe humanitarian access to civilians in need must be guaranteed,” he said.

**********

Russia Troops Patrol Between Turkish and Syrian Forces, Filling an American Void

The announcement signaled that Russia is moving to fill a security vacuum left by the U.S. withdrawal and illustrates the loss of American influence in the war.

By Carlotta Gall and Patrick Kingsley | Published Oct. 15, 2019 Updated 3:24 PM ET | New York Times | Posted October 15, 2019 6:30 PM ET |

CEYLANPINAR, Turkey — Russia said on Tuesday that its military units were patrolling territory in northern Syria vacated by the Americans following the withdrawal ordered by President Trump, underscoring the sudden loss of United States influence in the eight-year-old Syria war.

The Americans had until Monday maintained two military bases in the area, and Russia’s announcement signaled that Moscow, the Syrian government’s most important ally, was moving to fill a security void left by the withdrawal of both the American military and its partners in their effort to destroy the Islamic State and its Syrian base.

Videos circulating on social media appeared to show a Russian-speaking man filming himself walking around a recently evacuated United States military base in northern Syria, punctuating the message that the Russians were now in charge.

President Trump decided last week to abruptly yank American forces from a Kurdish enclave of northern Syria, ending a longstanding alliance with Syrian Kurdish fighters regarded by Turkey as terrorists. Turkey’s military then invaded, driving tens of thousands of civilians from their homes and forcing the Syrian Kurdish fighters to align themselves with the Syrian military in a stunning switch of allegiances for survival.

In a sign of the concern for the safety of the remaining American troops in Syria, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke on Monday with his Russian counterpart about the deteriorating security in the country’s northeast.

The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that its military police, which had already established a presence in other parts of Syria, were patrolling along a line of contact separating Syrian and Turkish forces, who have been racing to control large parts of northern Syria since the Turkish invasion began last Wednesday.

The Russians were patrolling near the strategically important city of Manbij, vacated by the Americans and Syrian Kurds and now occupied Syrian government troops. The statement also said Russian troops were coordinating “with the Turkish side.”

Where Russian and Syrian Army forces are located in northern Syria

The developments came as a spokesman for the United States-led coalition said on Twitter that its forces, which include French and British soldiers, had left Manbij. “Coalition forces are executing a deliberate withdrawal from northeast Syria,” Col. Myles B. Caggins wrote. “We are out of Manbij.”

Russia and Turkey will soon be the only foreign armies in the area.

Syria’s state broadcaster also reported that Syrian government troops had deployed inside Manbij, as Turkish-led forces advanced in the countryside outside the city. Elsewhere, Kurdish-led fighters attempted to retake another important town near the Turkish border, Ras al-Ain, from Turkish-led forces.

Heavy fire from machine guns could be heard to the south and southwest of Ras al-Ain and from the Turkish border town of Ceylanpinar, which is less than a mile from the fighting. Turkish artillery pounded an eastern suburb of the Syrian settlement midmorning, raising clouds of smoke above low farmhouses and pistachio groves.

As of Tuesday, fighting in Ras al-Ain and other areas of northern Syria has forced at least 160,000 people from their homes, according to United Nations estimates. The Kurdish authorities put the figure at 270,000.

Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw from northern Syria drew global condemnation, left Kurdish fighters feeling betrayed, and raised the possibility that the president had made a strategic blunder that would open a volatile new chapter in the war. Experts on the region warned that the withdrawal of American troops would embolden Russia, Iran and the Islamic State.

Abandoned by the Americans, and quickly losing land to the Turkish force, the Kurdish authorities sought protection from the Syrian government and Russia.

Since the Kurdish authorities asked the government of President Bashar al-Assad for assistance, thousands of Syrian Army troops have flooded into northern Syria for the first time since the government lost control of the region several years ago.

But Syrian government troops have stayed clear of the border region near Ras al-Ain, where Kurdish troops fight on alone. Instead, government forces have deployed to other strategic positions, such as Manbij, to help alleviate pressure on Kurdish fighters on the front line.

The last-minute alliance comes at great cost to the Kurdish authorities, who are effectively giving up self-rule.

Syrian Kurdish militias established a system of self-rule in northern Syria in 2012, when the chaos of the Syrian civil war gave them the chance to create a sliver of autonomous territory free of central government influence.

The fighters greatly expanded their territory after they partnered with an international military coalition, led by the United States, to push the Islamic State from the area.

After the Kurdish-led fighters captured ISIS territory, they assumed responsibility for its governance, eventually controlling roughly a quarter of the Syrian landmass. They have also been guarding thousands of ISIS fighters and their families, hundreds of whom fled a detention camp in Ras al-Ain after Turkish-led forces bombed the surrounding area.

The Kurds’ control of the land in Syria enraged Turkey, since the militia is an offshoot of a guerrilla group that has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state. Turkey has long pressed the United States to abandon its alliance with Kurdish fighters so Turkish troops could enter Syria and force the Kurds from territory close to the border.

Washington rebuffed Turkey’s requests for several years, maintaining a de facto peacekeeping presence along the border near Ras al-Ain, the town at the center of the fighting on Friday. But that changed last week, when Mr. Trump made a sudden decision to withdraw troops — first from that particular area, and later from all of northern Syria.

In Britain, meanwhile, a day after foreign ministers from all 28 European Union member states agreed unanimously to stop selling arms to Turkey — the first time the bloc has reached such a decision about a NATO ally — Britain announced a pause in such ties with Turkey.

Dominic Raab, Britain’s foreign secretary, told the House of Commons on Tuesday that “no further export licenses to Turkey for items which might be used in military operations in Syria will be granted” until the government had conducted a review.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has made clear he will not bow to pressure to halt the offensive. “We will soon secure the region from Manbij to the border with Iraq,” he said on Tuesday during a visit to Azerbaijan, referring to the 230-mile expanse of territory.

Carlotta Gall reported from Ceylanpinar, and Patrick Kingsley from Istanbul. Reporting was contributed by Anton Troianovski from Moscow, Iliana Magra from London and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

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nextstepelectric · 5 years

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find electrician near me London Ontario

Contents

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toomanysinks · 5 years

Text

Transportation Weekly: Amazon’s secret acquisition and all the AV feels

Yup, another transportation newsletter. But I promise this one will be different. Here’s how.

Newsletters can be great mediums for curated news — a place that rounds up all the important articles a reader might have missed in any given week. We want to do a bit more.

Consider this a soft launch. There might be content you like or something you hate. Feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] to share those thoughts, opinions, or tips.

Eventually, we’ll have a way for readers to sign up and have Transportation Weekly delivered each week via email. For now, follow me on Twitter @kirstenkorosec to ensure you see it each week.

Now, let’s get to the good stuff.

ONM …

There are OEMs in the automotive world. And here, (wait for it) there are ONMs — original news manufacturers.

This is where investigative reporting, enterprise pieces and analysis on transportation will live.

Amazon quietly acquired robotics company Dispatch to build Scout

Dig In

Each week, transportation weekly will spend a little extra time on an approach, policy, tech or the people behind it in our ‘Dig In” section. We’ll run the occasional column here, too.

This week features a conversation with Dmitri Dolgov, the CTO and VP of engineering at Waymo, the former Google self-driving project that spun out to become a business under Alphabet.

What might be less known is that many of those in the original dozen are still at Waymo, including Dolgov, Andrew Chatham, Dirk Haehnel, Nathaniel Fairfield and Mike Montemerlo.

Dolgov and I talked about the early days, challenges and what’s next. A couple of things that stood out during our chat.

Dolgov’s take on how engineers viewed the potential of the project 10 years ago …

I also use our cars every day to get around, this is how I got to work today. This is how I run errands around here in Mountain View and Palo Alto.

A little bird …

Got a tip or overheard something in the world of transportation? Email me or send a direct message to @kirstenkorosec.

“Is this really the state of VC today?” https://t.co/GmPhv3FN6q

— SelfDrivingElevator (@SDElevator) February 7, 2019

Another new entrant to the mobility parody genre is @HeardinMobilty.

Deal of the week

There’s so much to choose from this week, but Aurora’s more than $530 million Series B funding round announced Thursday morning is the winner.

Other deals that got our attention this week:

Lime raises $310 million

Self-driving truck startup Ike raises $52 million

Tesla’s acquisition of Maxwell Technologies for $218 million

Online car retail platform BrumBrum raises $23 million led by Accel

Car subscription service Cluno raises $28 million led by Valar Ventures, the firm founded by Peter Thiel

Snapshot

Speaking of deals and Tesla … the automaker’s $218 million acquisition this month of Maxwell Technologies got me thinking about companies it has targeted in the past.

So, we went ahead and built a handy chart to provide a snapshot view of some of Tesla’s noteworthy acquisitions.

Tiny but mighty mobility

Between Lime’s $310 million Series D round and the seemingly never-ending battle to operate electric scooters in San Francisco, it’s clear that micro mobility is not so micro.

Notable reads

Two recent studies got my attention.

21.21% somewhat approve

11.62% neutral

10.73% somewhat disapprove

8.73% disapprove

Bike Pittsburgh noted that the survey elicited passionate open-ended responses.

The other study, Securing the Modern Vehicle: A Study of Automotive Industry Cybersecurity Practices, was released by Synopsys, Inc.and SAE International.

The results, based on a survey of global automotive manufacturers and suppliers conducted by Ponemon Institute, doesn’t assuage my concerns. If anything, it puts me on alert.

84% of automotive professionals have concerns that their organizations’ cybersecurity practices are not keeping pace with evolving technologies

30% of organizations don’t have an established cybersecurity program or team

63% test less than half of the automotive technology they develop for security vulnerabilities.

Testing and deployments

Pilots, pilots everywhere. A couple of interesting mobility pilots and deployments stand out.

Another deployment in the more conventional ride-hailing side of mobility is with Beat, the startup that has focused its efforts on Latin America.

Now it’s moving into Mexico, where more competitors exist. The company just started registering and screening drivers in Mexico City as it prepares to offer rides for passengers this month.

TechCrunch spoke at length with Drandakis. Look out for a deeper dive soon.

Until next week, nos vemos.

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/08/transportation-weekly-amazons-secret-acquisition-and-all-the-av-feels/

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fmservers · 5 years

Text

Transportation Weekly: Amazon’s secret acquisition and all the AV feels

Yup, another transportation newsletter. But I promise this one will be different. Here’s how.

Newsletters can be great mediums for curated news — a place that rounds up all the important articles a reader might have missed in any given week. We want to do a bit more.

Consider this a soft launch. There might be content you like or something you hate. Feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] to share those thoughts, opinions, or tips.

Eventually, we’ll have a way for readers to sign up and have Transportation Weekly delivered each week via email. For now, follow me on Twitter @kirstenkorosec to ensure you see it each week.

Now, let’s get to the good stuff.

ONM …

There are OEMs in the automotive world. And here, (wait for it) there are ONMs — original news manufacturers.

This is where investigative reporting, enterprise pieces and analysis on transportation will live.

Amazon quietly acquired robotics company Dispatch to build Scout

Dig In

Each week, transportation weekly will spend a little extra time on an approach, policy, tech or the people behind it in our ‘Dig In” section. We’ll run the occasional column here, too.

This week features a conversation with Dmitri Dolgov, the CTO and VP of engineering at Waymo, the former Google self-driving project that spun out to become a business under Alphabet.

What might be less known is that many of those in the original dozen are still at Waymo, including Dolgov, Andrew Chatham, Dirk Haehnel, Nathaniel Fairfield and Mike Montemerlo.

Dolgov and I talked about the early days, challenges and what’s next. A couple of things that stood out during our chat.

Dolgov’s take on how engineers viewed the potential of the project 10 years ago …

I also use our cars every day to get around, this is how I got to work today. This is how I run errands around here in Mountain View and Palo Alto.

A little bird …

Got a tip or overheard something in the world of transportation? Email me or send a direct message to @kirstenkorosec.

“Is this really the state of VC today?” https://t.co/GmPhv3FN6q

— SelfDrivingElevator (@SDElevator) February 7, 2019

Another new entrant to the mobility parody genre is @HeardinMobilty.

Deal of the week

There’s so much to choose from this week, but Aurora’s more than $530 million Series B funding round announced Thursday morning is the winner.

Other deals that got our attention this week:

Lime raises $310 million

Self-driving truck startup Ike raises $52 million

Tesla’s acquisition of Maxwell Technologies for $218 million

Online car retail platform BrumBrum raises $23 million led by Accel

Car subscription service Cluno raises $28 million led by Valar Ventures, the firm founded by Peter Thiel

Snapshot

Speaking of deals and Tesla … the automaker’s $218 million acquisition this month of Maxwell Technologies got me thinking about companies it has targeted in the past.

So, we went ahead and built a handy chart to provide a snapshot view of some of Tesla’s noteworthy acquisitions.

Tiny but mighty mobility

Between Lime’s $310 million Series D round and the seemingly never-ending battle to operate electric scooters in San Francisco, it’s clear that micro mobility is not so micro.

Notable reads

Two recent studies got my attention.

21.21% somewhat approve

11.62% neutral

10.73% somewhat disapprove

8.73% disapprove

Bike Pittsburgh noted that the survey elicited passionate open-ended responses.

The other study, Securing the Modern Vehicle: A Study of Automotive Industry Cybersecurity Practices, was released by Synopsys, Inc.and SAE International.

The results, based on a survey of global automotive manufacturers and suppliers conducted by Ponemon Institute, doesn’t assuage my concerns. If anything, it puts me on alert.

84% of automotive professionals have concerns that their organizations’ cybersecurity practices are not keeping pace with evolving technologies

30% of organizations don’t have an established cybersecurity program or team

63% test less than half of the automotive technology they develop for security vulnerabilities.

Testing and deployments

Pilots, pilots everywhere. A couple of interesting mobility pilots and deployments stand out.

Another deployment in the more conventional ride-hailing side of mobility is with Beat, the startup that has focused its efforts on Latin America.

Now it’s moving into Mexico, where more competitors exist. The company just started registering and screening drivers in Mexico City as it prepares to offer rides for passengers this month.

TechCrunch spoke at length with Drandakis. Look out for a deeper dive soon.

Until next week, nos vemos.

Via Kirsten Korosec https://techcrunch.com

#TechCrunch

0 notes

yahoo-puck-daddy-blog · 6 years

Text

Puck Daddy Bag of Mail: Ovechkin's ice time and Fleury's HOF credentials

yahoo

We’re two games in and this series feels wide open. Maybe that was inevitable.

Game 1 was a wild affair with a ton of goals from unexpected sources. Game 2 had less scoring, obviously, but equally surprising scorers. And boy have the games been chippy, too. Maybe that, too, was inevitable, given who these teams are and how they got here.

Mike asks: “Who’s a guy you think should be getting more ice time?”

I made this point in a WWL recently but the Caps aren’t using Alex Ovechkin as much as I would like.

He’s only averaging 18:13 per night, less than Backstrom and Oshie. A big chunk of that is on the power play, too. If you have Ovechkin and have the chance to put him over the boards more often than 18 minutes a night, I don’t know why you don’t take it.

Maybe you argue, “Well it was a road game and they want favorable matchups,” which I guess probably played a role. And because both games were close — a bad bounce or missed call away from going the other way in each case — you probably feel like you did everything more or less right. That’s hockey, yeah?

But man I gotta think emptying the tank on this guy since he’s got a max of five more games this season is probably a better idea than keeping something in reserve. Every once in a while, maybe you float what would normally be a Jakub Vrana shift Ovechkin’s way instead. What’s the big deal there?

Another guy on the Caps who should probably get more ice time: Andre Burakovsky, who has three assists in the series despite playing less than 25 minutes total. See what the guy can do!

Alex Ovechkin should be playing more. (Photo by Jeff Bottari/NHLI via Getty Images)

Jack asks: “If the Capitals win is everybody going to start using the 1-1-3 and become even more boring?”

I’d tend to doubt it.

Even if they win playing 1-1-3, it will be hard to argue that they won because they played 1-1-3. A lot of the copycat style — which absolutely exists — comes through easily ascribed narratives, like “the Bruins won because they were hard to play against” and “the Penguins won because they played fast hockey.” In reality, though, the teams that win the Cup more often just do so because they have a lot of talent, right?

I don’t think anyone’s under the illusion that the Caps have gotten this far because Barry Trotz became a systems genius after a putrid regular season in which they were one of the worst possession teams in the league. They have a goalie that got hot at the exact right time, and they have at least two Hall of Famers up front plus an incredible career year from John Carlson (who’s up to 95 points in 103 games this season).

T.J. Oshie is a pretty damn good forward and he’s probably the fourth-best one they have. This isn’t hard to figure out.

Michael asks: “Are we actually going to start seeing regression with MAF?”

Does seven goals against on 54 shots (.870) in two games not qualify? Honestly asking.

Pugs asks: “If Fleury wins another Cup and the Conn Smythe is he going to get in the Hall of Fame?”

“Will he?” and “Should he?” are two very different questions, but I honestly don’t know.

Because I would have bet Chris Osgood’s career earnings that Chris Osgood would have gotten into the Hall of Fame with relative ease, but he hasn’t (yet). There have been, to be fair, a lot of no-doubt HHOF guys becoming eligible the past few years, so I suppose this is a case of maybe there’s just not room for him.

Fleury is present-day Osgood.

“Meh” career numbers, 1.5 Cups as a starter right now (I’m counting last year, obviously). Horrible reputation in the playoffs until the last two seasons. And when he won his one full Cup, he wasn’t even that good. If Vegas wins it this year, it’ll be entirely because Fleury stood on his head for three rounds. The Conn Smythe will be well-earned.

But for me he’s not a Hall of Famer. I feel the same way about Osgood. Neither was ever considered anything resembling an elite goalie for more than a month or two. I’m not gonna look it up but I’m pretty sure Fleury’s only been a top-10 Vezina guy twice, and never cleared No. 7 in the league.

So yeah, if he gets Osgood’s rep as a coattail-rider, I think that’s well-earned. Hockey Men probably won’t see it that way, though.

Megan asks: “If Washington wins but Ovechkin doesn’t win the Conn Smythe, how long will we have to hear about how Crosby did win the Conn Smythe?”

I think if Washington wins it’s Holtby’s award to lose, right? But on the other hand, the romanticism of giving it to Ovechkin — who has been quite good in this postseason, to be fair — might be too big to ignore.

That’s not your question but I wanted to say that. It’s not like the guy has been a drag on team performance and they’re winning in spite of him. He’s a huge reason the Caps are here.

If he doesn’t win it, I honestly don’t think anyone will hold that against him. He’s been great and at this point I think everyone outside Vegas is rooting for him on some level.

Adam asks: “How much should fans appreciate Dmitry Orlov?”

A pretty good amount, I think. And they’ll probably get the chance to do just that after John Carlson gets a billion dollars a year this summer.

Orlov’s been sheltered a bit, for sure, but his underlying numbers and the eye test both suggest this is a guy who could do well in a bigger role. How big, I’m not sure, but he’s playing 24-plus minutes in these playoffs and the numbers are unequivocally good.

Because Washington almost certainly can’t retain Carlson, they’re gonna need someone to be the big man on their power play in his stead. Why not Orlov, baby!

Kyle asks: “Is there any justification to playing Tom Wilson in a top-line role and why is the answer no?”

Of course there is. He is, for better or worse (definitely worse) the second-best right wing on the team and, as I’ve said before, he’s not totally talentless.

Plus, you could put Oshie on that line instead of Wilson, but you understand the reasons why Trotz wouldn’t want to put almost all his offensive weapons on a single line. I’m a big believer in “find two guys who work well together and just give them a random player to work with after that,” and Trotz has now done that with both Ovechkin-Kuznetsov and Backstrom-Oshie.

You’d rather have that than make Backstrom lug Wilson around, which is your only other option if you put someone who is Not Wilson on the top line.

David asks: “So Vegas put Ryan Reaves on the ice with about 54 seconds left in the game down by a goal. I love Reaves…. but c’mon. Is there any logic behind this or did Vegas kinda screw themselves there?”

The logic, such as it is, goes thusly: Ryan Reaves scored a goal in Game 5 of the Western Conference final and Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final so he is an offensive weapon now.

Is that Gerard Gallant making a dumb mistake? Yes. Did it cost Vegas the tying goal? Probably not. I wouldn’t recommend that as a going-forward kinda thing but it’s 54 seconds when you only scored two goals in the previous 59:06.

It’s not something he should ever do again and all the people laughing at him for how silly it is to believe Reaves is some kind of hot shooter now are right to do it. But also, let’s not make too big of a deal here.

—

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

All stats via Corsica unless noted otherwise. Some questions in the mailbag are edited for clarity or to remove swear words, which are illegal to use.

More Stanley Cup Final coverage from Yahoo Sports

yahoo

#_revsp:21d636bb-8aa8-4731-9147-93a932d2b27a #_lmsid:a077000000CFoGyAAL #_author:Ryan Lambert #_uuid:b4358a59-6482-348c-b06f-9d3493c852a7

0 notes