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nadisabug · 3 years

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How They React To You Gaining Weight pt 2

Pairing: Tanaka Ryuunosuke / Nishinoya Yuu / Kenma Kozume x gn! reader

Genre: hurt/comfort

Warnings: suggestive content 16+ only pls

Word Count: 1k

A/N: I hope this is to your liking!!

Part 1 // Haikyuu Masterlist

Tanaka R.

Tanaka thought the world of you

That much was clear

At least to him

He would compliment you constantly

He would sing your praises to anyone who would listen

And those that wouldn’t too

So you being dissatisfied with yourself is a foreign concept to him

I mean you were so perfect?

What possibly could be wrong with you?

So when he finds you crying in your shared bedroom, he doesn’t know what to do

“Baby what’s wrong?” He gushes and rushes to your side. He had only left for a moment, to make breakfast, and had come back to tell you it was ready. You were supposed to be getting dressed, but your pants lay in a crumpled pile on the floor.

“T-they… they don’t fit,” you sobbed. When you looked at Ryu he felt something in him break. You looked so sad it killed him. He looked down at the pants and put two and two together.

“Oh, well, you have other pants-” He attempted to remedy the situation, but that just made you crumple even more.

“That’s not the point! I am so… so fat!” At that you sink to the floor and resume sobbing.

Ryu panics at this point. He wasn’t sure what to do at all. So he just knelt down next to you and held you.

You let him, turning into his chest and sobbing.

He held you for a while, just letting you cry it out. After the crying subsided, you asked him a question.

“Do you still love me?”

Tanaka was again blown away.

“Yes of course baby, I could never not love you!” He asserted, pulling you tighter to his chest.

“Even though…” You voice trailed off. You couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Of course, what do you take me for? I love you and I think you are perfect no matter what you weigh. And I will always think that.”

You smiled up at him.

“Thank you, love.”

“Of course. Now let’s get you dressed, I don’t think I can stand seeing you half dressed for much longer without doing anything.”

You laughed and smacked his chest. “You animal!”

“Only for you, babe,” he smiled.

Nishinoya Y.

Just like Tanaka he thought you were the entire world, moon, sun, stars, it fucking all.

It. All.

He loved bragging to his coworkers about you

He’s the guy who would have pictures of you everywhere

In his wallet, his phone, his workspace, everywhere

He’s never had a problem from you with it too

Until you gain some weight and start feeling insecure

“I just don’t want you to use that picture,” you sighed as you continued folding clothes.

“But… why?” Yuu asked, clearly confused. “You look so good in it.”

“No I don’t,” you sighed, again.

“You always look good,” Yuu scoffed. “What do you mean you don’t look good, of course you look good, it’s impossible for you to not look good so why would you say that you don’t look good-”

“Because, Yuu, I look fat.” You finally snapped and glared at him. He looked at you and down to the photo then back up.

“Huh.”

“That’s it? Just a ‘huh’?”

“Well, I mean I guess so.”

“You’re agreeing?” You cried hysterically, the pants you were folding long forgotten.

“I mean yeah, but you still look good.”

You blinked. You weren’t sure how to take this. Usually your friends and significant others would disagree, fight back, but Yuu wasn’t. He was agreeing and asserting that you still looked good and it was… refreshing. Honestly it was more comforting than the lies other people would tell you.

“I… okay. Sure.”

“Nah, I won’t use that picture if it makes you uncomfortable. But I just want you to know you still look good. You always look good.”

“Say it again,” you smiled.

“You always look good.”

Kenma K.

Kozume wasn’t as expressive as the others

He didn’t brag that much about you to other people, mainly because that would require socialization

But

He and his followers on Twitch loved you

They loved your short cameos and supported your relationship 11100%

And Kozume loved having you there

He loved showing you off to the chat, a whole ‘yeah that’s my s/o’ vibe

And they recently asked for a q&a session with you both for one of the streams

“I just don’t want to do it.”

“Why?” Kozume asked, not looking up from his switch. He had relocated from the bedroom to the counter while you were making dinner and had asked the question. He had expected a simple yes, but today was different for some reason.

“I just don’t want to be on camera.”

“You’ve never had a problem being on camera before?”

“Well that was before-” you froze as you almost revealed to him the reason. It was so hard lying to him, you naturally just wanted to tell him the truth.

“Before?” You turned around to see that he had laid his switch to the side and was staring intently at you.

Fuck it. You sighed, “Before I gained weight.”

Kozume blinked at you.

“Why would that make it so that you can’t go on camera?”

“Because ‘Zume, I am sure you don’t want your millions of fans seeing me all bloated and fat and gross.”

“You’re not gross,” Kozume rolled his eyes. “Besides I do want my millions of fans to see you so that they can cry about how jealous they are,” he smirked.

“Kozume!”

“What?”

You paused, biting your lip. In that space of time, Kozume got up and wrapped his arms around you from behind and nuzzled his face into your neck. “Even now?”

“Hmm?” He hummed.

“You want to show me off even now?”

“Of course, baby. Always.”

And you smiled, feeling a little better than before.

Taglist: {OPEN}

#tanaka x reader #tanaka ryunosuke x reader #tanaka ryuu x reader #haikyuu tanaka ryuunosuke #nishinoya x reader #nishinoya yu x reader #haikyuu nishinoya #kenma x reader #kenma kozume x reader #haikyuu kenma kozume #hqhangoutnet #haikyuucafe

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lustforyuu · 3 years

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ummm kenma using toys on you, like he's streaming and you have to keep quiet but this is you're fourth orgasm and omg-

warnings: afab!reader, sex toys, overstimulation, twitch streamer!kenma

“hhh, ‘zume.. too much..” you whined softly, approaching your fourth orgasm in under an hour.

kenma’s eyes were fixated on his computer screen, as he played a first person shooter game for his viewers. he let out an almost unnoticeable huff and turned up the clit vibrator to its highest settting, not caring about your pleads.

you muffled your cries, as you came and drenched the bedsheets in your cum. tears rolled down your eyes, too sensitive to continue this torture.

“okay, i’m heading out, guys. thanks for joining the stream,” kenma ended the stream and closed twitch. he turned to you and scoffed at the sight of you twitching from your numerous orgasms.

“punishment time, slut.”

#[ 📨 ] — incoming message #[ 🌙 ] — thisnoodlewritesao3 #[ 💛 ] — kenma kozume #haikyuu!! smut #hq!! smut #kenma smut #kenma kozume smut

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musterniillustrates · 6 years

Photo

Hey I just wanted to let you know that I recognized one of your designs on a poster in Zumes. (The store is in Riverhead NY)

I love your Marigold tarot and I wanted to let you know in case you didn’t give the company permission to use the design.

thank you for the heads up also why the fuck are people like this

#lazy garbage jerks!!!!#plagarism #submission

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bentinsley · 3 years

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Okay, Pals & Gals!!

More on my -- Ben Tinsley's -- ongoing BLONDE ASSASSIN Kickstarter!

Assisted by my colleagues Jason Dube, Phil Lockler and Jake Tinsley, (and, as always, special thanks to Stef Wilson )I bring you the following development:

Blonde Assassin print by Zume - Just when you think you see all of the Blonde Assassin, we offer a full frontal heart attack print (5" x 7") giving you her victim's last delicious look. (This image is not for the faint.) Only $10 to Add-on to any physical tier.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1772025338/the-blonde-assassin-comic-book

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un-enfant-immature · 4 years

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As tech layoffs surge, some support emerges for those without a job

The massive surge of COVID-19-related layoffs has put tech in a unique position. While the startup world is facing layoffs itself, it is also trying to help get people back to work.

Back at the end of 2019, the SoftBank-backed belt-tightening period led to a flurry of crowdsourced spreadsheets with employee names from companies like Oyo, WeWork, Zume and more. The spreadsheets popped up as a bet on the network effect, with the ultimate goal of hoping the sheets land in the hands of a recruiter looking to hire one of hundreds laid off. Now, as COVID-19 cripples the economy, layoffs have surged dramatically past that one period.

On one end, we’ve reported on numbers of tech companies cutting staff, from Oyo, to ZipRecruiter, to TripActions. But on the other, brighter end, we’ve also seen the rise of platforms to connect those laid off and pledges from employers to not fire any employees during this trying time.

In a world where people are laid off on Zoom, tech’s efforts to give community, and a course of action, to those laid off is undeniably important.

So many start-ups have done or are planning layoffs that at this point it would be easier to list the ones that *haven't* cut staff.

So here are some places trying to help laid off employees:

— erin griffith (@eringriffith) April 2, 2020

The current climate of the pandemic, and the massive unemployment that has resulted, means that a spreadsheet with a long list of employee names and unverified contact information doesn’t cut it.

Shannon Anderson, the director of talent at Madrona Venture Group in Seattle, saw her firm’s portfolio companies struggling with layoffs and the changing economy. Two of the portfolio companies, Textio and Rover, laid off staff, along with a number of other companies.

“We wanted to anticipate a reduction in force across the ecosystem,” said Anderson. “It’s a global problem.”

So, to help boost the network of those laid off, Anderson reached out to a number of HR leaders, including Chris Brownridge, the founder of Silver Lining, a job platform for those who have been laid off. He started Silver Lining after he shut down his startup last summer and had to lay off his staff of 20.

“I felt the pain [of layoffs] from the employer side, and it is painful for the employer, especially when you care about [your workers],” he said back in January. “I don’t want to keep seeing spreadsheets thrown around; I think that is not the right answer. We need a standardized way to deal with it, with a community behind it.”

Silver Lining is a platform that lets candidates submit profiles for recruiters from top companies to review. Job seekers on the site range from architects, UX designers, engineers, community managers and more.

Then COVID-19 spread across the world, forcing people to stay home and spend less. The economy’s downturn unevenly impacted companies around the world: where layoffs exist for the travel sector, usage surges exist for the remote work companies. But as a whole, the labor force is struggling, with 6.6 million Americans filing for unemployment just last week alone.

Madrona said it is donating a portion of its budget to help Silver Lining offer more services to those laid off. The firm declined to share the total amount of the donation.

Silver Lining will also now offer coaching, resume writing and emotional support to folks on the platform, Brownridge says. Thanks to donations from Madrona, Skytap, Bandwidth, Voodle, Female Founders Alliance and more, the site is free to use.

The uptick in layoffs has led Boston-based Drafted, a referral startup, to launch a product called the Layoff Network to help those who have been laid off. The startup previously was sending out a newsletter, Layoff List, of weekly list of layoffs with spreadsheets hyperlinked. During the SoftBank layoffs, Olivia Clark, the creator of the newsletter, noticed a surge in traffic — more than 1,000 recruiters subscribed.

Now she says traffic is “up 2,000%” and, in just two weeks, Drafted’s engineering team has productized that newsletter into a job search network.

The Layoff Network connects with recruiters people who have been recommended by their colleagues and “endorsed” for their skills. If you’re laid off, you can sign up and create a profile and ask a previous employer or colleague to recommend you. Clark says this is similar to LinkedIn’s “endorse” feature to make sure the people are credible.

Once the person has been endorsed, they will be added to a talent feed. That is where recruiters can search for nominees, job titles, companies or locations. Unlike a spreadsheet, this is clearly easier to navigate and adds another layer of human touch.

Clark says that the platform will be free for individuals who have been laid off, and who are recruiting or hiring. Drafted has a paid enterprise level that is for organizations that are conducting mass layoffs and want to provide support for former employees.

The grassroots efforts are vast and diverse. Here’s a list that posts companies that are actively hiring. Here’s a list for Canadian tech workers, and one for Colorado’s tech scene. And here’s a live tracker of startups that have issued layoffs, started by the team over at Human Interest, a startup that has nothing to do with layoffs.

Megan Murphy, who created Chicago Superstars for those laid off from the Chicago tech scene, has not received donations or support yet. As the number of unemployed people increases, Murphy says she’s noticing a lack of clarity on which companies are hiring, and which job postings are still active. If a company was hiring for a position in January, it might not be anymore (to help keep costs down).

“I can’t waste time crafting cover letters and custom resumes for jobs that won’t actually move forward,” she said. “There are tons of crowdsourced tools trying to flag who’s actually hiring still, while others are trying to flag who’s instituted a hiring freeze or laid people off, and in the meantime, company career pages aren’t up to date. We need one source of truth — and right now nobody’s really set up to do that.”

1575 Remote Jobs From 100+ Companies Hiring Remotely: https://t.co/pMk38QwvDX

— Brianne Kimmel (@briannekimmel) March 24, 2020

For now, Murphy says she’s getting creative in her own search, and asking for others to do the same. “Virtual communities and experiences are about to be more important than ever.” She notes guerrilla Slack channels and Reddit as an example of organic communication.

As for how she’s able to keep up with the demand of people needing help for their next job? Murphy, who is looking for a job herself after getting laid off, says she has fewer interviews from potential employers, so she’s been able to help those reaching out.

The work done by these entrepreneurs scratches at the same hope that lies within the hundreds of lines of contact information within a crowdsourced layoff spreadsheet: a need for a community in a trying time. And these days, more than most, remind us of the power of having a group of people together in the first place.

#TechCrunch

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cdrforea · 4 years

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As tech layoffs surge, some support emerges for those without a job – smarthometec

New Post has been published on https://bestedevices.com/as-tech-layoffs-surge-some-support-emerges-for-those-without-a-job-smarthometec.html

As tech layoffs surge, some support emerges for those without a job – smarthometec

The massive increase in layoffs related to COVID-19 has placed the technology in a unique position. While the startup world itself faces layoffs, it also tries to get people back to work.

At the end of 2019, the belt tightening phase supported by SoftBank led to a flood of crowdsourcing tables with employee names of companies like Oyo, WeWork, Zume and others. The spreadsheets appeared as a bet on the network effect, with the ultimate goal of hoping that the spreadsheets would end up in the hands of a recruiter who wanted to hire one of hundreds of layoffs. Now that COVID-19 is crippling the economy, layoffs have increased dramatically after this one period.

On the one hand, we reported on the number of tech companies that are cutting staff Oyoto ZipRecruiterto TripActions. On the other hand, we also saw the rise of platforms to connect the layoffs and Promises from employers not to lay off workers during this difficult period.

In a world where Zoom is firing people, the efforts of technology to offer the fired community and action are undoubtedly important.

So many startups have made layoffs or plan to do so that at this point it would be easier to list those who * don't * cut staff.

Here are some places that try to help laid-off employees:

– Erin Griffin (@eringriffith) April 2, 2020

The current pandemic climate and the resulting massive unemployment mean that a table with a long list of employee names and unchecked contact information doesn't help.

Shannon Anderson, director of talent at Madrona Venture Group in Seattle, saw that her company's portfolio companies were struggling with layoffs and the changing economy. Two of the portfolio companies, Textio and Rover, fired employees along with a number of other companies.

"We wanted to expect a reduction in power across the ecosystem," said Anderson. "It is a global problem."

To strengthen the layoff network, Anderson turned to a number of human resources managers, including Chris Brownridge, the founder of Silver Lining, a job platform for the laidoff. He started Silver Lining after closing his startup last summer and firing his 20 employees.

"I have felt the pain (from layoffs) on the part of the employer, and it is painful for the employer, especially if you take care of (your employees)," he said in January. "I don't want spreadsheets to be thrown around. I think that's not the right answer. We need a standardized way of dealing with it, with a community behind it."

Silver Lining is a platform that allows candidates to submit profiles for recruiters from top companies for review. The job seekers on the website range from architects, UX designers, engineers, community managers and more.

Then COVID-19 spread around the world, forcing people to stay home and spend less. The economic downturn has had an uneven impact on companies around the world: where redundancies exist for the travel sector, there are spurts of use for remote workers. Overall, however, the workforce has problems. Last week alone, 6.6 million Americans registered unemployment.

Madrona said that she is donating part of her budget to help Silver Lining offer more services to layoffs. The company declined to share the total amount of the donation.

Silver Lining will now also offer coaching, resume and emotional support to people on the platform, Brownridge says. Thanks to donations from Madrona, Skytap, Bandwidth, Voodle, the Female Founders Alliance and others, the website can be used free of charge.

The increase in layoffs has resulted in Boston-based Drafted, a referral startup, launching a product called Layoff Network to help the layoffs. The startup previously sent a newsletter, discharge list, with a weekly list of layoffs with hyperlinks to spreadsheets. During the SoftBank layoffs, Olivia Clark, the newsletter's creator, noticed an increase in traffic – more than 1,000 recruiters signed up.

Now she says traffic has increased 2,000%, and in just two weeks, Drafted's engineering team has turned this newsletter into a job search network.

The layoff network connects with recruiters who have been recommended by their peers and “approved” for their skills. If you are fired, you can sign up and create a profile and ask a previous employer or colleague to recommend you. According to Clark, this is similar to LinkedIn's "advocate" feature to ensure that people are credible.

Once approved, the person is added to a talent feed. Recruiters can search for candidates, job titles, companies or locations here. Unlike a table, this navigation is much easier and adds another level of human touch.

Clark says the platform will be free for layoffs who are recruiting or hiring. Drafted has a paid corporate level for organizations that want to mass layoffs and support former employees.

The basic efforts are large and varied. Here is a list of companies that are actively hiring. Here is a list for Canadian technicians and one for the Colorado tech scene. And here's a live tracker of startups that have made layoffs started by the team at Human Interest, a startup that has nothing to do with layoffs.

Megan Murphy, who created Chicago superstars for the Chicago tech scene, has not yet received any donation or support. As the number of unemployed increases, Murphy notes that there is a lack of clarity about which companies are hiring and which job vacancies are still active. If a company hires a job in January, it may no longer be the case (to keep costs down).

"I can't waste time writing cover letters and custom resumes for jobs that don't really evolve," she said. "There are tons of crowdsourcing tools out there trying to identify who is actually hiring while others are trying to identify who initiated a hiring freeze or lay off employees, and in the meantime the company's career pages are not up to date." We need a source of truth – and at the moment nobody is really prepared for it. "

At the moment, Murphy says she's getting creative on her own search and asking others to do the same. "Virtual communities and experiences are becoming more important than ever." She names guerrilla slack channels and reddit as examples of organic communication.

How can she keep up with the demand from people who need help with their next job? Murphy, who is looking for a job herself after being released, says she has fewer interviews with potential employers, so she was able to help those who sign up.

The work of these entrepreneurs is scratching the same hope that lies in the hundreds of contact information in a crowdsourcing table for layoffs: the need for a community in a difficult time. And these days remind us more than most of the power of having a group of people together.

#emerges #job #layoffs #smarthometec #Support #surge #tech #News

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coopdigitalnewsletter · 4 years

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19 Feb 2020: Food on the go and 15 minute grocery delivery. Workers first. Electronic voting. Conditions for success and failure.

Hello, this is the Co-op Digital newsletter - it looks at what's happening in the internet/digital world and how it's relevant to the Co-op, to retail businesses, and most importantly to people, communities and society. Thank you for reading - send ideas and feedback to @rod on Twitter. Please tell a friend about it!

[Image: Sainsbury’s]

Food on the go and 15 minute grocery delivery

Sainsbury’s launches its first “food on the go” store - it will open 10 stores with in-store “perch” seating. Can a convenience store successfully do slower “consume in store” food alongside faster “grab and go” food? Starbucks and fast food suggest it is possible, if the format’s right.

Sainsbury’s, Frasers and Shoe Zone plead for business rates reform.

Russian search giant Yandex is planning 15-minute grocery delivery in Moscow: a network of bike couriers will deliver items from a 2,000 item inventory at a network of 200 small warehouses to Muscovites with urgent grocery needs.

Overview of the market - The Retail Bible - this is a sales pitch but @dresserman is always worth a read. He should do the same forensic documentation of apps, websites and delivery trucks as he does for in-store.

Workers first: Breakroom

Breakroom wants to “help 100M people find the right job, and raise the standard of all hourly work”. It’s fascinating looking at the performance of retailers in various sectors - you can find out if you’d like that front-line retail job. For instance: employee reviews of convenience stores. The feedback also has plenty of lessons for employers. (And Breakroom are hiring right now.)

Elsewhere in hiring, The Body Shop is trying “open hiring” and will hire the first person who applies for any retail job. And the UK Gov plans much tighter immigration controls for “low skilled” workers, which will affect agriculture and other industries.

Conditions for success and failure in digital teams

Two good reads from Public Digital. Jamie Arnold on Conditions for success:

“Don’t build an app, build a team Empower a team to meet the needs of the user. Make sure they can do this free from the imposition of political constraints to avoid building a product or service that suboptimally reflects the shape or behaviours of the current organisation. Trust the team to own their process and choose the tools they wish to work with.”

And a great thread on conditions for failure: “top 10 systemic blockers to Internet-era ways of working in your org”. (See also: PD’s newsletter, currently written by Co-op Digital’s Amy McNichol.)

Electronic voting

MIT researchers released a paper criticising Voatz (pdf), a remote-voting app used in several districts and territories in the US. Voatz’s response felt a bit prickly - it would have been better to refute the criticisms with clearer evidence. The US Gov also looked at Voatz and raised its eyebrow a couple of times. If correctness and auditability will be critical features of your service, then perhaps the name alone is a red flag: “voatz” might imply a certain… casualness to some readers?

Walking: given enough eyeballs, the map is the territory

Legislation says that all walking paths in England and Wales must be recorded (mapped) by local authorities by 2026, if they’re to retain their rights of way in future. Problem: the new maps are missing a lot of paths. So a community of walkers are comparing the big new map to old maps to see which old paths need to be reinstated. It’s an admirable crowd-working effort.

(Is this the kind of thing that machine learning should be able to help with? It’s a constrained image recognition problem: look for things like this on the old map and then if they’re not also described on the new map add them, or tell someone about it.)

Stuffed crust

A snapshot of venture-capital-fuelled techno-exuberance in a piece on struggling “pizzatech” startup Zume Pizza:

“Just, what a closed loop it is. You run a pizza delivery business. You craft a pitch calculated to convince Masayoshi Son [of massive venture fund SoftBank] that your pizza delivery business will change the world. You meet with Masayoshi Son. He convinces you that you will change the world. Now you are all believers, all in it together. He hands you piles of money. You go home and weep to your friends, “I am going to change the world.” The friends are like “wait what with the pizzas?” But it is too late for skepticism, you have the money, the robots are in the trucks, they are fanning out across town, the cheese is everywhere, they cannot turn back.”

Other news

Consequence scanning - “a way for organisations to consider the potential consequences of their product or service on people, communities and the planet [...] an opportunity to mitigate or address potential harms or disasters before they happen”.

Amazon says it "regrets" that suspect child car seats were on sale on its UK store, and says it has removed them - not the first time this has happened.

I stumbled across a huge Airbnb scam that’s taking over London - how some people are gaming the Airbnb platform to run short stays with fake reviews, and hotels without having to meet those pesky regulations. (Airbnb is spending $150m on “safety initiatives”.)

Robots guarding the perimeters of building sites. Yes.

Co-op Digital news and events

Public events, most of them at Federation House:

Conscious Entrepreneurs - Wed 19 Feb 12pm.

People, Progress & Responsible Tech: Where's the humanity in tech's future? - Wed 19 Feb 6pm.

Mini-SPA Conference 2020 Leeds - Fri 21 Feb 9:30am-4:40pm at St George's Conference Centre, 60 Great George Street LS1 3DL

Open Data Manchester: Black software (explores racial injustice & the professionals & hobbyists of color who helped build the internet) - Wed 18 Mar 6.30pm.

Returners/Re-trainers (about successful initiatives to create better routes for women returners/re-trainers) - Thu 26 Mar 11.30am

Internal events:

Targeted Marketing (CRM) and Data Ecosystem show & tell - Wed 19 Feb 3pm at Angel Sq 13th floor breakout.

Membership show & tell - Fri 21 Feb 3pm at Fed 6 kitchen.

Delivery community of practice - Mon 24 Feb 1.30pm.

Service design community of practice - Tue 25 Feb 12pm at Fed 5-04.

Co-operate show & tell - Wed 26 Feb 2pm at Angel Sq 8th floor red core breakout.

Data management show & tell - Thu 27 Feb 2.30pm at Angel Sq 13th floor breakout.

Membership show & tell - Fri 28 Feb 3pm at Fed 6 kitchen.

More events at Federation House - and you can contact the events team at [email protected]. And TechNW has a useful calendar of events happening in the North West.

Thank you for reading

Thank you, beloved readers and contributors. Please continue to send ideas, questions, corrections, improvements, etc to the newsletterbot’s typing entity @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading, please tell a friend!

If you want to find out more about Co-op Digital, follow us @CoopDigital on Twitter and read the Co-op Digital Blog. Previous newsletters.

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getlostinasia · 7 years

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Ikigai: A Japanese concept to improve work and life For Japanese workers in big cities, a typical work day begins with a state called sushi-zume, a term which likens commuters squeezed into a crowded train car to tightly packed grains of rice in sushi. Essentially, ikigai is the reason why you get up in the morning The stress doesn’t stop there. The country’s notorious work culture ensures most people put in long hours at the office, governed by strict hierarchical rules. Overwork is not uncommon and the last trains home on weekdays around midnight are filled with people in suits. How do they manage? The secret may have to do with what Japanese call ikigai. There is no direct English translation, but it’s a term that embodies the idea of happiness in living. Essentially, ikigai is the reason why you get up in the morning. You may also like: Can you work yourself to death? Is this the secret to Swedish success? ‘We had to give them bonuses’ to leave early To those in the West who are more familiar with the concept of ikigai, it’s often associated with a Venn diagram with four overlapping qualities: what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. For Japanese however, the idea is slightly different. One’s ikigai may have nothing to do with income. In fact, in a survey of 2,000 Japanese men and women conducted by Central Research Services in 2010, just 31% of recipients considered work as their ikigai. Someone’s value in life can be work – but is certainly not limited to that. A closer look In a 2001 research paper on ikigai, co-author Akihiro Hasegawa, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at Toyo Eiwa University, placed the word ikigai as part of everyday Japanese language. It is composed of two words: iki, which means life and gai, whichdescribes value or worth. According to Hasegawa, the origin of the word ikigai goes back to the Heian period (794 to 1185). “Gai comes from the word kai (“shell” in Japanese) which were deemed highly valuable, and from there ikigai derived as a word that means value in living.” There are other words that use kai: yarigai or hatarakigai which mean the value of doing and the value of working. Ikigai can be thought of as a comprehensive concept that incorporates such values in life. There are many books in Japan devoted to ikigai, but one in particular is considered definitive: Ikigai-ni-tsuite (About Ikigai), published in 1966. The book’s author, psychiatrist Mieko Kamiya, explains that as a word, ikigai is similar to “happiness” but has a subtle difference in its nuance. Ikigai is what allows you to look forward to the future even if you’re miserable right now. Japanese people believe that the sum of small joys in everyday life results in more fulfilling life as a whole Hasegawa points out that in English, the word life means both lifetime and everyday life. So, ikigai translated as life’s purpose sounds very grand. “But in Japan we have jinsei, which means lifetime and seikatsu, which means everyday life,” he says. The concept of ikigai aligns more to seikatsu and, through his research, Hasegawa discovered that Japanese people believe that the sum of small joys in everyday life results in more fulfilling life as a whole. A concept for longevity? Japan has some of the longest-living citizens in the world – 87 years for women and 81 for men, according to the country’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. Could this concept of ikigai contribute to longevity? Author Dan Buettner believes it does. He's the author of Blue Zones: Lessons on Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest, and has travelled the globe exploring long-lived communities around the world, which he calls “blue zones”. One such zone is Okinawa, a remote island with a remarkably high number of centenarians. While a unique diet likely has a lot to do with residents’ longevity, Buettner says ikigai also plays a part. “Older people are celebrated, they feel obligated to pass on their wisdom to younger generations,” he says. This gives them a purpose in life outside of themselves, in service to their communities. According to Buettner, the concept of ikigai is not exclusive to Okinawans: “there might not be a word for it but in all four blue zones such as Sardinia and Nicoya Peninsula, the same concept exists among people living long lives.” Buettner suggests making three lists: your values, things you like to do, and things you are good at. The cross section of the three lists is your ikigai. But, knowing your ikigai alone is not enough. Simply put, you need an outlet. Ikigai is “purpose in action,” he says. For 92-year-old Tomi Menaka, her ikigai is to dance and sing with her peers in the KBG84 dance troupe, she told the Mainichi newspaper. For others, it might be work itself. Take action In a culture where the value of the team supercedes the individual, Japanese workers are driven by being useful to others, being thanked, and being esteemed by their colleagues, says Toshimitsu Sowa, CEO of HR consulting firm Jinzai Kenkyusho. CEO of executive recruiting firm Probity Global Search Yuko Takato spends her days with highly qualified people who consider work as their ikigai and, according to Takato, they all have one thing in common: they are motivated and quick to take action. “If you want to start a company but you are scared to dive into the unknown, go and see someone who is already doing something similar to what you have in mind.” By seeing your plans in action, Takato says, “it will give you confidence that you can do it too”. Think smaller That’s not to say that working harder and longer are key tenets of the ikigai philosophy – nearly a quarter of Japanese employees work more than 80 hours of overtime a month, and with tragic outcomes – the phenomenon of karoshi (death from overwork) claims more than 2,000 lives a year. Ikigai is about feeling your work makes a difference in people’s lives Rather, ikigai is about feeling your work makes a difference in people’s lives. How people find meaning in their work is a topic of much interest to management experts. One research paper by Wharton management professor Adam Grant explained that what motivates employees is “doing work that affects the well-being of others” and to “see or meet the people affected by their work.” In one experiment, cold callers at the University of Michigan who spent time with a recipient of the scholarship they were trying to raise money for brought in 171% more money when compared with those who were merely working the phone. The simple act of meeting a student beneficiary provided meaning to the fundraisers and boosted their performance. This applies to life in general. Instead of trying to tackle world hunger, you can start small by helping someone around you, like a local volunteering group. Diversify your ikigai Retirement can bring a huge sense of loss and emptiness for those who find their ikigai in work. This can be especially true for athletes, who have relatively shorter careers. Champion hurdler Dai Tamesue, who retired in 2012, said in a recent interview that the fundamental question he asked after he retired was: “what was it that I wanted to achieve by playing sports?” “For me, what I wanted to achieve through competing in track and field was to change people’s perceptions”. After retiring, he started a company that supports sports-related business. Tamesue’s story shows the malleable nature of ikigai and how it can be applied. When retirement comes, it is helpful to have a clear understanding of why you do what you do beyond collecting a payslip. By being mindful of this concept, it might just help you live a more fulfilling life. To comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Capital, please head over to our Facebook page or message us onTwitter. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter called "If You Only Read 6 Things This Week". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Capital and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

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pogueman · 7 years

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The pizza-making robots that want to change the world

yahoo

HBO’s comedy “Silicon Valley” makes fun of the way even boring startup tech companies adopt the same mission statement: “To make the world a better place.”

But serial entrepreneur and former Microsoft executive Alex Garden isn’t shy about stating his new company’s path to making the world a better place—through pizza. It’s not just any pizza, though. Zume pizzas are made by robots, and they’re cooked in pizza ovens inside delivery trucks.

Alex Garden (right) treats me to the finished product.

“One of the founding principles of this company is that every American has a right to a healthy meal they can afford,” he told me. “If you look at pizza, what is it? It’s high-quality bread, and high-quality organic vegetables, and meats and cheeses. All of these things are things that are good for you in moderation. And the number of calories really is a function of how much sugar is in the food. Zume Pizza is half the calories per slice, roughly half the cholesterol and half the fat, of any of the national leading chains.”

How? “The main reason is sugar,” says Garden, whose pizzas range in price from $10 for a cheese to $20 for a pineapple express.

“We don’t put any extra sugar in the sauce. We don’t put any extra sugar in the dough. And we let our dough age for 24 hours; during that process, the fermentation of the dough further reduces the sugar in it.”

He also has much to say about where he gets his ingredients—directly from the providers, without the warehouses and distribution channels that, say, Pizza Hut (YUM) or Domino’s (DPZ) employ. He uses software—predictive algorithms—to know what he’ll need when. He makes his sausage and tomato sauce in-house.

But that’s not the most headline-grabbing feature of Zume pizza, which was founded in 2015 and currently delivers in Mountain View, California, and surrounding areas. The biggest feature is the robots.

The robots

Inside the Zume kitchen, robots are displacing more human workers every passing month. These days, one robot presses out the dough into the familiar flattened circle; a second and third (Pepe and Giorgio) squirt tomato sauce or white sauce onto each pie; a fourth (Marta) spreads the sauce around (“perfectly, but not too perfectly,” Garden says). Humans apply the toppings, but then a fourth machine (Bruno) scoops up the pizza from the conveyor belt and delicately lays it into the baking oven; a fifth (Leonardo) chops it neatly into eight slices with a single, 200-pounds-of-force stroke.

Pepe squirts tomato sauce all day long.

Eventually, Garden and his cofounder Julia Collins intend to replace all of the humans in their pizza shop.

The robots are fun to watch—as long as you can avoid thinking, “This is what the end of human employment looks like.”

But Garden insists that replacing the people is also part of making the world a better place.

“The automation exists so that we can eliminate boring, repetitive jobs, and provide a more rewarding work environment for our employees,” he says. “And it exists so that we can buy higher quality ingredients. That’s the reason why we use it.”

For example, he says, “taking a pizza off of a production line and putting it into an 800-degree oven is actually not particularly rewarding, and it’s also quite dangerous. So we found a way to automate that work now that was previously done by a person.

“So what happens to the person? Well, good news. We’re a high-growth company. We have people who’ve moved from a role in the kitchen to other roles—to customer support or to finance. You come in and prove that you can work the Zume way, and we make a lifetime commitment to you in return.”

The math still didn’t work for me. “But today, 100 people work here,” I said. “If you didn’t have the robots, it would be 115.”

“That is true,” he replied, “but here’s the point you have to consider. If you took a national competitor that we compete against, what percentage of their workforce are making the absolute rock-bottom minimum wage for the place they work? $7 an hour, $7.50 an hour? Do they have benefits? Is it a safe job? What hours are they working?

“Every employee in this company makes a minimum of $15 an hour. Everyone gets full medical, dental, vision [insurance] for them and for their families. And everyone, when they hit their six-month mark, becomes a shareholder. So you can make an argument that the absolute number of employed people is the way to go; we don’t believe that.”

In half a second, this machine cuts the 14-inch pizza into 8 slices.

Inside the box

Garden and his team have obsessed over every aspect of the American pizza-delivery system—including the box. Zume’s pizza is excellent, but the box is a masterpiece. (“So you redesigned the box?” I asked him. His reply: “We didn’t redesign the box. We designed the box.”)

It’s made of compressed sugar cane (!), so it’s compostable, biodegradable, and collapsible—you can fold it up to fit your compost or trash can. Garden says that it also keeps the pizza warmer, keeps it dry, and prevents it from getting soggy, thanks to eight narrow channels below the pizza, like spokes. They conduct moisture down and away from the crust, pooling in a shallow well under the middle. “Your hands will be completely clean after you eat a Zume pizza, because there’s no grease or sogginess anywhere.”

(This I found hard to believe. But as my family discovered when we ate Zume pizza that night, it’s absolutely true: Our fingers were not greasy.)

The most thought-through pizza box in America.

The box’s lid slips under the lower box, which (a) creates a nice little stand and (b) doesn’t occupy your entire table with the ugly, greasy open lid, as a regular box does.

It even has shallow round depressions that match depressions in the top of the lid, so that stacked boxes sort of interlock. “With one hand, you can carry five pizzas and walk around, and there’s no hope of them falling over,” Garden points out.

The truck concept

But Alex Garden isn’t finished yet. He’s also reinvented the delivery truck.

Each one contains 28 or 56 individual pizza ovens. By consulting GPS, the truck fires up the oven when it’s four minutes away from your house, so that the pizza is coming out of the oven as the truck arrives.

The pizzas cook in their own little ovens–in the truck.

That cook-en-route system might sound like it was designed to give you freshly baked pizza, but it was actually Garden’s solution to a knotty governmental problem: It’s against the law for workers to cook food in a truck while it’s moving.

The solution, of course, was to automate the cooking while in motion. No person is involved, and so no laws are broken.

Laws also dictate, by the way, that a food truck must contain a three-compartment sink—for washing utensils, spatulas, and so on. Garden didn’t want to devote precious oven space to some sink apparatus. So he came up with a utensil-free truck. As the pizza finishes cooking, it ejects from its oven like a CD from its player, and goes directly into the Zume pizza box. “No one ever touches the food,” he says, and so there’s no need for a sink in the truck.

Predictive pizza

The part of Zume’s master plan that I found hardest to believe was that often, your pizza is on its truck before you even order it. Garden says that Zume’s AI software predicts what pizzas its customers will order, when, and pre-loads them onto the truck. How could he possibly know what his customers will order?

“Do you order pizza?” he asked me.

Yes, I told him.

“And how often would you say when you order pizza, you get the same thing you got last time?”

“Probably 95 percent of the time,” I admitted.

“Usually on the same day that week? Yeah. That makes you like most of the other people in the country. So if you think about that…Plus things like, when there’s a game you get more orders; when it’s hot out, you get fewer orders; you sell a lot more cheese pizza around 6:00 p.m. than you do at 9:00 p.m.; [you get spikes during] political debates; and another three or four dozen factors that we take into consideration when we’re predicting volume.

“Then we look at it neighborhood by neighborhood. Perhaps there’s a neighborhood that really likes Hawaiian pizza, there’s another neighborhood who really likes pepperoni pizza. So we have all of these signals and they give us the ability to predict about 95% of the time what people are going to order, before they do.”

And what if there’s a run on pineapple pizza on a weird day?

“We have what we called field reloading, which is giving the trucks more inventory in flight. It’s almost like air-to-air refueling in the Air Force.”

Zume vs the World

Zume just expanded from one location to two. Next year, all of California; then to the whole country; then the world.

That’s the plan, anyway.

Will Zume’s robots and lofty goals really make the world a better place?

Well, already they’re making the world a better pizza—and that’s a good start.

More from David Pogue:

Is through-the-air charging a hoax?

Electrify your existing bike in 2 minutes with these ingenious wheels

Marty Cooper, inventor of the cellphone: The next step is implantables

The David Pogue Review: Windows 10 Creators Update

Now I get it: Bitcoin

David Pogue’s search for the world’s best air-travel app

The little-known iPhone feature that lets blind people see with their fingers

David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, welcomes nontoxic comments in the comments section below. On the web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s @pogue. On email, he’s [email protected]. You can read all his articles here, or you can sign up to get his columns by email.

#tech #_uuid:c588b8b8-9b70-3129-818f-1e52b3f94b3b #Pogue #David Pogue #_lmsid:a077000000BAh3wAAD #_revsp:yahoofinance.com #$DPZ #$YUM #_author:David Pogue

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mastcomm · 4 years

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DealBook: Delta Plans to Go Carbon Neutral. Yes, You Read That Right.

Good morning. We quantified the extent of Tesla’s legal troubles, so you don’t have to. (Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.)

How Delta will cut its carbon footprint

Ed Bastian, Delta Air Lines’ C.E.O., will announce this morning an ambitious plan to become the first U.S. airline to go carbon neutral. The company pledges to spend at least $1 billion over the next decade to buy emission offsets and invest in more efficient planes, new fuel sources and carbon-capture technologies.

The bulk of its money is most likely going toward offsets, because the industry will be reliant on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. (After all, Elon Musk hasn’t proposed building electric planes just yet.)

Andrew’s take: This is a huge step that will probably generate public good will for Delta and put pressure on other airlines, many of which probably can’t afford similar programs. But the sustainability of buying offsets for a decade is an open question. Also, what constitutes an offset and how to measure and meaningfully track their progress will be a challenge. And what happens when the economy sags, or Mr. Bastian is no longer C.E.O.? Will the program survive?

Some background reading: Air travel accounts for only about 2.5 percent of global carbon emissions, but forecasts suggest that the industry’s greenhouse-gas output will triple by 2050.

____________________________

Today’s DealBook Briefing was written by Andrew Ross Sorkin in New York and Michael J. de la Merced and Jason Karaian in London.

____________________________

‘It doesn’t make sense to raise money’ (until it does)

There are no half-measures with Elon Musk. Yesterday proved that yet again, when Tesla released a big batch of news, with something for everyone.

The electric carmaker is selling $2 billion worth of stock, just two weeks after Mr. Musk told investors it “doesn’t make sense” to raise more money. Given the rapid run-up in its share price — the stock has more than doubled so far this year — it seems silly not to take advantage, especially since the company also plans to at least double its capex spending this year.

But Tesla also disclosed a new S.E.C. investigation into its “regular financing arrangements.” At the same time, it announced the end of a 2017 inquiry by the S.E.C. into production estimates that it had made for the Model 3 sedan.

Convoluted legal entanglements are the new normal for Mr. Musk’s company, judging by the space Tesla takes to explain them in its annual reports:

So what? Tesla’s shares rose nearly 5 percent yesterday.

How to build a socially conscious investment portfolio

Where to begin? The NYT’s Ron Lieber put together a primer on how to invest more responsibly, or sustainably, or whatever the latest pitch is from the burgeoning E.S.G. investment industry. (E.S.G. stands for Environmental, Social and Governance, for the uninitiated.)

Ron’s take:

This is a lot to take in, but there’s no need to move your entire net worth all at once. Start small, maybe with your workplace 401(k), before you tackle any other accounts.

And if the fluid definition of E.S.G. starts to make you feel paralyzed or even cynical, like this is all just so much green-washed pablum, that’s understandable. There is no perfect company, and every fund manager must make trade-offs.

Speaking of fund managers, a new report by Morningstar examined the E.S.G. voting records of large fund groups over the past five years. Among the most supportive of such resolutions were DWS, Blackstone and Pimco; among the least were DFA, Vanguard and BlackRock. (What gives, Larry?)

Bezos scores a win over Trump in the cloud court fight

A federal judge temporarily blocked Microsoft from working on a $10 billion cloud-computing contract for the Pentagon, handing a victory to Amazon, the runner-up in that competition.

• Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith of the Court of Federal Claims enjoined Microsoft from beginning work on the so-called JEDI contract, which was set to begin this month.

• Amazon had been the front-runner to win the contract, and claimed that it was blackballed by President Trump.

• “The decision adds to the acrimony surrounding the lucrative deal, which was a major prize in the technology industry,” Kate Conger of the NYT writes.

The big question is what Amazon showed the judge to win that stay. Judge Campbell-Smith’s opinion is sealed, so we don’t know — and may not for a while, if ever.

Emails were said to spur inquiry into Barclays’s chief

British financial regulators opened an investigation into what Jes Staley, Barclays’s C.E.O., disclosed about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein thanks to an unexpected source: emails supplied by JPMorgan Chase. The FT pieced it together, citing unnamed sources:

The emails between the two men — dating back to Mr. Staley’s time as an executive at JPMorgan when Epstein was a client of the bank — suggested their relationship was friendlier than claimed by Mr. Staley, who had categorised the association as professional, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The cache was provided by JPMorgan to U.S. regulators, who passed it to their counterparts in the U.K., the people added. Epstein was until 2013 a key client of JPMorgan’s private bank, which Mr. Staley used to run.

The FT’s Lex column is pessimistic about Mr. Staley’s odds of survival: “The Barclays board, led by chairman Nigel Higgins, has stated Mr. Staley ‘retains the full confidence of the board.’ Whatever that sounds like to an American, in Europe that usually means the opposite.”

Sorry, New Yorkers: The fight over Global Entry isn’t over

President Trump and Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York met yesterday to end a spat over immigration that has limited New York road warriors’ access to expedited airport security lines. They haven’t found common ground yet.

The context: The Department of Homeland Security closed access to Trusted Traveler programs, including Global Entry, after New York passed a law that blocks federal immigration agencies from viewing the state’s D.M.V. records.

What happened: Mr. Cuomo offered to let federal agencies access only the D.M.V. records of applicants for Trusted Traveler programs. No dice.

The fallout: New Yorkers — including many DealBook readers who have complained to us — won’t be able to renew their Global Entry status.

Revolving door

Hope Hicks has stepped down as chief communications officer at Fox to rejoin the White House as a counselor to President Trump.

Ellen Naughton, Google’s head of human resources, is quitting.

Yelp has hired David Schwarzbach from Optimizely as its new C.F.O.

Jimmy Asci, who was WeWork’s head of global communications until last fall, has returned to the P.R. consultancy Teneo as a senior managing director.

UBS has formally begun the search for a successor to its C.E.O., Sergio Ermotti.

The speed read

Deals

• McClatchy, the publisher of newspapers like The Miami Herald, filed for bankruptcy protection. (NYT)

• New rules for reviewing foreign investment in U.S. companies include taking the privacy of American citizens into account. (WSJ)

• T. Rowe Price admits its investment in WeWork was a “debacle.” (FT)

Politics and policy

• Judy Shelton, one of President Trump’s nominees for the Fed’s board, got a bipartisan grilling in the Senate. (NYT)

• Ten Amazon employees who donated to Senator Bernie Sanders identified their occupation as “slave” or “slave labor.” (LA Times)

• Mike Bloomberg teams up with meme makers. What could go wrong? (NYT)

Tech

• The Justice Department charged Huawei with six counts of racketeering, escalating the Trump administration’s battle with the Chinese telecom giant. (WSJ)

• Oracle’s top weapon against Amazon and Google in Washington: Ken Glueck, its top lobbyist. (WSJ)

• How Zume, the pizza-making robot start-up backed by SoftBank, fell apart. (Business Insider)

Best of the rest

• The hot new Instagram community: personal finance gurus. (FT)

• Why Iran’s stock market is soaring even as its economy suffers. (NYT)

• Your weekend long read: How one California public servant is trying to help solve the state’s housing crisis. (NYT)

Thanks for reading! We’ll see you next week.

We’d love your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected].

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batreviewersblr-blog · 5 years

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Badminton: The Best Badminton Set 2018 (Buying Guide)

Winning a badminton game does not rely solely on how good you swing your arms. Your equipment equally matters. Your gear during the game is your partner and companion, one that should withstand your opponent and endure with you, win or lose.

With countless brands in the market, customers can easily get lost in making the right decision. We round up the top 5 best badminton sets to help you achieve that winning streak.

1. Park & Sun Sports Portable Indoor/Outdoor Badminton Net System

Our number 1 product on the list is Park & Sun Sports Portable Indoor/Outdoor Badminton Net System with Carrying Bag and Accessories: Professional Series. As the name suggests, this badminton set promises an ultimate badminton experience for professional players.

The complete set contains four aluminum rackets with rubber molded hand grips, three Grade-A cork-tipped nylon shuttlecocks, and three pieces of 1 ½ inches in diameter telescopic, aluminum poles with push-button locking system for easy and quick set-up.

There is a regulation size nylon blend net with 1-inch top and bottom net tapes, 6-inch side sleeves, and reinforced corners that ensure even net tension. To keep the net taut during rough play, the double guyline with tension rings help you make quick adjustments. A pre-measured boundary with a hand winder is also included to keep the installation hassle-free.

This entire set of rackets and accessories perfectly fits inside the complementary heavy-duty, polyester zippered bag with carrying handles. The portable, compact design of Park & Sun Sports Portable Indoor/Outdoor Badminton Professional Series saves carrying effort and storage space without compromising its durability and quality.

Suffice to say that through this pro-series set, Park & Sun conveniently brings badminton to your backyard!

2. Zume Games Portable Badminton Set

Next is Zume Games Portable Badminton Set. This outdoor badminton set caters to all age groups, both beginners or experienced.

You can take it wherever you go, may it be on a picnic gathering, in a park, or beach. Zume Games Badminton set is very convenient and easy to assemble, you can assemble it in less than a minute.

Cross out the need for stakes and other tools to make the net stand, thanks to its best feature which is the freestanding base design.

It is lightweight so that you can move it from one place to another. Moreover, the base also serves as a compact case for the four rackets, specifically two red and two green, a regulation net, and two pieces of shuttlecocks.

Zume portable badminton set caters 2-4 players, making it perfect for your family and friends’ weekend recreational bond. Its quick setup and take down makes it a mobile and an ideal badminton set for your fun outdoor activities.

Worry not because this set is durable and can withstand rust, weather, and water. It is mildew resistant too. The materials are made of plastic, and the hardware materials are crafted from stainless steel. The dual-purpose compact case has a carrying handle and is foldable too.

3. Yonex Leisure Badminton Set (4-pack)

Having the no.3 spot on our list is the Yonex Leisure Badminton Set (4-pack). It is a remarkable bundle of equipment for people of any age who want to have fun while sweating out.

Yonex, the maker of the durable badminton equipment in the industry crafted this complete set for beginners and average players who want to enhance their skills. For newbies, the solid, sturdy, and lightweight Yonex rackets are perfect for you. The price for the bundle set is also very reasonable considering the quality and the peace of mind that you'll get from the trusted brand.

Yonex Leisure Badminton Set (4-pack) comes with four rackets, two shuttlecocks, one set of poles, one net, and an easy-to-carry case. The mini-recreational net makes it possible to set up an indoor or outdoor badminton game.

Engage your friends in a competitive match anytime, anywhere. Or spend the weekend with your family playing badminton in your backyard or on a beach. You can also take this handy, portable, and compact badminton set when you travel. It avoids the hassle of borrowing a racket from others whenever you want a little warm-up.

4. Baden Champions Badminton Set

Going back to our list, at number four, we have the Baden Champions Badminton Set. This is suitable for novice players who are aspiring to become professional badminton players. Even those who already play professionally will find this brand a good choice.

The whole set is composed of four tournament level quality rackets, one regulation badminton net, and three high-quality nylon shuttlecocks. The regulation net, rackets and boundary lines come in optic yellow for better visibility during the game. The net hangs straight and the rackets are heavy-duty.

The Baden Champions Badminton Set also boasts of an easy set-up and takedown feature made possible by its powder-coated, heavy-duty and adjustable aluminum poles. It is so easy and quick to use that it only takes less than a minute to assemble everything. The stakes stand at 10 inches whereas poles are 1.5 inches tall.

The carrying nylon case of the Baden Champions Badminton Set is lightweight and convenient. It features a sturdy design and offers extra space for your personal belongings. The carrying case is made of premium weatherproof materials for problem-free storage and transportation.

The Baden Champions Badminton Set is ideal for 2-4 players, allowing family and friends to bond over a game of badminton during picnics, backyard reunions, family camps among others.

5. Baden Champions Volleyball Badminton Combo Set

Last on the list is Baden Champions Volleyball Badminton Combo Set. This versatile combo set is winning the lineup for backyard games. It is an ideal set for families and friends’ social events or even campings.

Baden Champions combo set completes all your needs such as regulation net for volleyball and badminton, two metal stakes and adjustable poles, two sets of badminton rackets, three pieces of goose feather shuttlecocks, and a boundary line, all of which amazingly fits in one carrying bag.

Assembling the net is just easy peasy and so is the taking down. Through the dual purpose regulation net, you may change your play type whenever you want to. The volleyball net is converted to the standard height of a badminton net.

The materials of all the items in Baden Champions Volleyball Badminton combo set are durable and made of high-quality materials. Tough enough because of its heavy-duty powder-coated poles and polyethylene nylon ropes. The carrying bag is weather-resistant and secured with a YKK zipper. It is also convenient for transportation. This set is perfect for beginners as it includes rules for badminton and volleyball. It will surely provide all the fun in your outdoor recreational activities.

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technato · 6 years

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The Hunt for Robot Unicorns

The robotics industry is rapidly evolving and expanding—who will be the next robot unicorns?

This is a guest post. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE.

Earlier this month I was in Denmark speaking at the R-18 robotics fair. Denmark is quite remarkable as, despite its size, it had two exits of robotics startups over US $100 million: Universal Robots and MiR, both acquired by U.S. electronics testing equipment maker Teradyne (currently valued around $7 billion).

The talk I gave covered our observations at HAX over the past five years from investing in over two dozen robotics startups, and meeting hundreds.

I started with a little robot-focused quiz. Let’s see how you fare!

Robot Quiz

1. Which is the #1 home robotics company in the world?

2. Which famous robot pet just got back on market?

3. Which robotics companies were acquired by SoftBank?

4. What are the world’s robot unicorns? (Private companies valued over $1 billion.)

05. Finally, as investors, the more important question for us is: Who are the next robot unicorns?

Easy? Let’s see!

1. Yes, it is iRobot.

Many got it right. Interestingly, the answer was different a few months ago, when China’s Ecovacs (the local “iRobot”) went public. Today, both have a market cap around $2.5 billion.

Image: Ecovacs

Ecovacs sells robots for cleaning floors and windows.

2. Of course it is Sony’s Aibo.

The previous versions, sold from 1999 and for seven years, sold 150,000 units. The new one sold about 10,000 units in three months, for about $3,000 each. It’s not a small number, but the price and utility remain in question.

3. The most famous is Boston Dynamics, which SoftBank bought from Google.

Photo: SoftBank Robotics

Pepper, a humanoid robot created by Aldebaran, a French robotics firm acquired by SoftBank.

One audience member remembered Aldebaran, the French company that gave us Pepper. While it is still the most sophisticated tablet holder in the PR world, Pepper is an indicatino that we are far from achieving the (antiquated?) vision of humanoid robots living with us. It is also telling that Boston Dynamics seems to still be struggling to find a market.

4. Robot unicorns? There are a few. Here are some examples (we are not counting electric cars nor space rockets here):

Images: Segway; UBTech; DJI; Desktop Metal

Which three of these four robot unicorns are Chinese?

Chinese startups have multiplied. These include Ninebot (Chinese owners of Segway and worth $1.5 billion), the drone champion DJI (worth an alleged $15 billion), and the little known UBTech, which makes STEM robots (estimated at $5 billion).

Adding digital fabrication machines, there is Carbon 3D and Desktop Metal from the United States.

Public companies don’t count but it’s still worth mentioning Japan’s Cyberdyne (an exoskeleton company worth $1.5 billion) and Germany’s Kuka (acquired by China’s appliances maker Midea for $4 billion).

5. Who the next unicorns are is harder to answer. See below for more.

Looking for the Next Robot Unicorns

It generally takes several years for a startup to reach unicorn status — all the more so in hardware, where atoms matter (no pun intended).

The big buzz these days is around autonomous vehicles. From cars it has spread to trucks, ships, forklifts, and more (including Elon Musk’s drone landing ships).

The autonomous truck startup Otto was acquired by Uber for over $600 million before winding down.

John Deere acquired Blue River Technology in 2017 for $305 million to automate the spraying of plants and weeds.

The forklift automation company Balyo, for instance, went public as a “small cap” in France and is now worth about $90 million.

GreyOrange, a startup building warehouse robots (a kind of “next-gen Kiva”) raised a remarkable $170 million. Even more remarkable: The company is from India.

VARD announced the building of an autonomous and electric container ship by 2020.

Photos: Otto; Vard; Balyo; GreyOrange; Blue River.

Clockwise: Otto truck, Vard ship, Balyo forklift, GreyOrange warehouser, Blue River precision sprayer

There is certainly more to do in this space but it has also become a very crowded field, with many car makers now battling it out or cooperating with tech giants.

So what are the areas with opportunities opened to startups? Fortunately, there are many!

Our core view at HAX is that robots will not only replace us but also work with us, teach us, and augment us

Service Automation: From Tasks to Stores

Zume operates pizza trucks that cook on the go. The driver is still a human, but the pizzaiolo is a robot. They raised $48 million.

Spyce is a restaurant that cooks meal bowls. The robots even clean their cooking equipment. They raised $26 million.

BingoBox is an automated convenience store chain. A kind of supercharged Amazon Go, based in China. They raised $95 million.

GymBox, a self-service gym chain in China, reportedly raised over $30 million.

Consumer Robots? The Dream Is Still Far

While vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers have spread and gradually commoditized, the wave of home robots has suffered a low tide.

Jibo (which raised $72 million) and Kuri have suffered from the rise of voice A.I. devices by Amazon, Google, and others.

One sector that weathered the storm is STEM education, often thanks to the support of government or school budgets. In China in particular, the effort dotes many schools with hundreds of thousands to raise the next generation of innovators.

Several HAX startups such as Makeblock (which raised a total $80 million, after a successful Kickstarter back in 2012) and the modular robotics startups Keyi Tech have benefited from this.

Buyers have also become more discerning beyond parental guilt or a school’s mandate: Keyi Tech won contracts with schools after robotics teachers noticed students learned a lot faster than with LEGO MindStorms, as they wasted no time on assembly and could focus on programming and animation.

We are also hopeful that robots combined with AI and machine learning will provide the ability to teach us. We made several investments in that direction.

Boring Robots

Many of us were fed science-fiction full of humanoid robots. Yet, making a robot with two usable arms still costs thousands. Instead, robots are spreading via the enterprise and industry, completing complex, dull, dangerous, or dirty jobs in often — purposely — unremarkable ways.

One such example of robot “hidden in plain sight” is Avidbots. The HAX-funded and Ontario-based startup operates and sells robots for commercial cleaning. The most remarkable about their robots is not only how efficient they are, but also how little attention they draw.

Like many Canadian startups, Avidbots, now with close to 100 staff, benefited from lower talent costs and tax breaks. Those advantages are significant over Silicon Valley, where operating has become a challenge, from recruiting challenges to high running costs.

Our portfolio quickly added a series of other machines, such as Simbe Robotics (supermarket inventory, by former Willow Garage staff), Viabot (outdoor cleaning), Plecobot (window-cleaning for buildings), and Youibot (vehicle inspection for safety and customs).

Photos: Simbe Robotics; Viabot; Plecobot; Youibot.

HAX loves unglamorous work. Clockwise from left: Simbe inventory robot, Viabot cleaning robot, Plecobot window-cleaning robot, and Youibot vehicle-inspection robot.

Industry Is Transforming

1. Cobots

In addition to modernizing with sensors, various industries are increasing their level of automation. When a robot offers positive ROI within 24 months it becomes a no-brainer.

Several startups have come to challenge the rise of cobots, often equipped with sensors or computer vision to perform advanced tasks, or exist alongside human workers (in this sector we invested in the China-based Elephant Robotics). When the cost is low, the key becomes customization and support. For this, being close to your customers becomes a tremendous advantage.

2. Desktop fabrication

I mentioned above Carbon 3D and Desktop Metal, but it doesn’t stop there: factory machines are shrinking in size and becoming smarter.

In our portfolio are a CNC desktop waterjet (WAZER), a knitting machine (Kniterate), and a weaving machine using 3D body scans to make custom garments (Unspun).

3. Human Augmentation

At the frontier between robotics and health are a number of companies, like exoskeleton companies Cyberdyne, Ekso Bionics, and ReWalk, but also novel approaches like Nuada, a HAX startup that makes a glove to provide assisted grip and avoid repetitive strain injuries.

Conclusion: Don’t Trust Mainstream Sci-Fi With Robots

William Gibson, the writer who coined “Cyberspace” back in 1982, said “it’s great when someone gets it right, but almost always it’s wrong.” Repeating the humanoid robot meme doesn’t make it more right.

What is happening, however, is that robots are spreading through the enterprise and industry, based on the old business principle known as “return on investment.” Rosie, C-3PO, the Terminator, and others can wait.

Benjamin Joffe (@benjaminjoffe) is a partner at HAX, the hardware investment program of SOSV, a global seed fund with US $400M assets under management. He spoke on hardware trends and startup ecosystems at over 200 events across 33 countries and is frequently quoted in media such as Forbes, Nature and TechCrunch. Before joining HAX, he founded Plus8Star, a strategy consultancy focused on Asian tech markets, and worked in telecom and gaming. Today, he splits his time between Europe, U.S., and Asia.

The Hunt for Robot Unicorns syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com

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