Monthly Archives: July 2020

Carlo Ancelotti has given a further indication that he is ready to revamp the Everton squad this summer by declaring that there will be an evolution of the club during the close season.

Ancelotti steadied the ship on his arrival on Merseyside during the winter and briefly raised hopes of European qualification. However, results and performances in recent weeks have exposed deeps flaws that remain in the squad.

The impact of Covid-19 and Financial Fair Play may limit just how much Ancelotti can spend in the transfer window, but the Italian insists that things will definitely change for the better.

It will be, for sure, an evolution of the club. Everton wants to make the next step, which is to improve.

We will finish in 11th or 12th this season, but for sure next season we have to go up, there is no other way.

We need better quality, better ambition, better motivation and more passion.

He also confirmed that he would meet with Marcel Brands and the clubs hierarchy to discuss transfer targets next week.

We decided to go to the end of the season and after that, as Ive said a lot of times, we have time to prepare for the new season. We are going to meet next week and make a plan for the future.

Ancelotti was also asked about the impact of Richarlison, who joined the club from Watford two years ago today and scored his 15th goal of the season in the win at Sheffield United earlier this week.

I think in the period Ive been here hes done really well. Of course hes young and has to improve, but he has all the qualities that we need. Hes one of our best players.

The next step is to have more control of the ball, sometimes he loses it too easily. Nothing has to change with his efficiency in the box. He is really good in the box, but he also has to be good outside the box.

Another player who stood out at Bramall Lane was Jarrad Branthwaite, who put in an assured performance in the centre of defence on what was the 18-year-olds first senior start for the club.

Ancelotti has been impressed with how the teenager has adapted to senior football since stepping up to work with the first team.

He has worked with us in the last months and improved a lot. We are really impressed with him, above all how he is able to manage the pressure that he has. His character is good.

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There will be an evolution at Everton this summer - Ancelotti sets out ambitions - Royal Blue Mersey

Photo: Paining of Stalin in the Joseph Stalin Museum, by Andrew Milligan sumo, via Flick (cropped).

Michael Egnor points out that Totalitarianism Is Darwinism Applied to Politics, citing Hannah Arendts famous book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, which draws the connection. The Nazis, as well as Marx and Engels, all drew from Darwins well.

Jonathan Wells notes that another figure in the totalitarian tradition was influenced by evolution from a very early age. As a boy, Joseph Stalin

talked about books all the time. If he coveted a volume, he was happy to steal it from another schoolboy and run home with it. When he was about thirteen, Lado Ketskhoveli took him to a little bookshop in Gori where he paid a five kopeck subscription and borrowed a book that was probably DarwinsOrigin of Species. Stalin read it all night, forgetting to sleep, until Keke [his mother] found him. Time to go to bed, she said. Go to sleep dawn is breaking. I loved the book so much, Mummy, I couldnt stop reading. As his reading intensified, his piety wavered. One day Soso [Stalin] and some friends, including Grisha Glurjidze, lay on the grass in town talking about the injustice of there being rich and poor when he amazed all of them by suddenly saying, Gods not unjust, he doesnt actually exist. Weve been deceived. If God existed, hed have made the world more just. Soso, how can you say such things? exclaimed Grisha. Ill lend you a book and youll see. He presented Glurjidze with a copy of Darwin.

The idea of an organic movement in history, sketched by Darwin, leads to thinking that seeks to seize control of society and forcibly direct that movement. Arendt needed a thick book to explain why. The case of Stalin, influential reading by a 13-year-old, is much more direct.

Read the original here:

How Darwin Shaped the Young Joseph Stalin - Discovery Institute

With Xbox finally showing off gameplay for Halo Infinite, the sixth mainline entry in the popular first-person shooter franchise, we figured it would be the perfect time to go back and chart the series' evolution. From 2001's Halo: Combat Evolved to 2020's Halo Infinite, the franchise has seen quite a few changes over the years.

In the video above, Persia details those changes over the course of Halo's six mainline entries, throwing in a few words for the franchise's notable spin-offs, Halo 3: ODST and Halo Reach. Some of the changes have been narrative driven--Halo 2, for example, introduced a new playable character in the Arbiter. However, some changes were more gameplay-focused, like Halo 3's introduction of split screen co-op in the main campaign.

Halo hasn't merely changed on the campaign side either--it's multiplayer has seen numerous overhauls over the course of the franchise's history. Halo 3: ODST, for instance, introduced a brand-new horde mode called Firefight and dropped dual-wielding altogether. But there have been more transformative changes as well, the most notable of which has to be Forge mode. Not only did Forge mode open up the floor for the community to create its own maps, the addition led to the creation of game types that were so popular that developers Bungie and 343 Industries would go on to recognize them as permanent game modes, like Grifball.

If you're looking to catch up on Halo's story prior to the Holiday 2020 release of Halo Infinite, then your best bet is picking up Halo: The Master Chief Collection. The collection contains Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 2 Anniversary, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Halo Reach, and Halo 4. Other than Halo 5: Guardians, that's every game that Persia talks about in the video above.

Read the original here:

The Evolution Of Halo's Gameplay - GameSpot

The global supply chain, as we know it today, is a manifestation of incremental technological improvements over centuries. The latest of such step changes have stemmed from the widespread adoption of trucking, containerization and computerization beginning in the 1960s. As a result, raw materials, work in progress (WIP), and finished goods could be shipped and delivered around the world at scale, effectively creating an improvement in the so-called holy trinity of supply chain along the dimensions of cost, quality and delivery.

China, with its entry into World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, supercharged the global supply chain by positioning itself as factory to the world with the countrys vast workforce and world-class infrastructure.

For many supply chain specialists who subscribe to the just in time (JIT) manufacturing methodology invented by the Japanese in the 1970s, the way to maximize the holy trinity triangle is through reduction of inventory and WIP. For industries with complex and long value chains, such as automotive and semiconductors, where there is a significant pressure to achieve cost advantage by sourcing materials and ferrying WIP across multiple geographies, unfettered interconnectivity is key to success. However, recent trade tensions between the US and China, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, have highlighted that this supply chain model is increasingly untenable.

Two changing forces in Asia-Pacific

First, the Asia-Pacific middle class population, already exceeding 1 billion, is forecasted to comprise 66% of the worlds middle class population by 2030. The continued prosperity for this new consumer class will challenge the long-held concept that consumption typically takes place in the West and production relegated to the East. As a result, China, as the largest economy in the region, will continue to have a profound impact on how the global supply chain is restructured.

Second, the current worldwide wave of populism has prompted policy actions to reverse globalization efforts, such as enacting stiff tariffs, the fragmentation of trade blocs, and even the possibility of currency wars. In other words, the low-friction environment the world enjoyed with the movement of physical goods and raw materials across borders can no longer be taken for granted, and is subject to impulsive change.

Reality check for Asia-Pacific supply chain

The latest EY Capital Confidence Barometer report provides a glimpse into how proactive Asia-Pacific executives are in rethinking their supply chains relative to their global counterparts. From the survey, 67% of Asia-Pacific respondents are taking steps to change supply chains compared to 52% of global respondents. The Asia-Pacific cohort is actually ahead in most measures of recovery planning, where:

At first glance, the stance of Asia-Pacific business leaders in making changes to their supply chains appears to conflict with the attitudes of foreign businesses in China, specifically. A recent survey conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce in China suggests 84% of survey respondents have no plan to relocate their manufacturing operations out of China, down from 92% in 2017 and 90% in 2018.

The story becomes clearer when probed beyond the initial numbers. For these multinational businesses, their attempt to diversify their supply chain operations actually began several years earlier, as trade tensions between the US and China were heating up. On the other hand, labour cost in China has been increasing steadily thanks to four decades of uninterrupted growth. In fact, China's continued efforts to move up the value chain, combined with a massive domestic consumer market, are the deciding factors for many firms to adopt the China + 1 approach to supply chain management.

The first global pandemic in more than 100 years, COVID-19 has spread throughout the world at an unprecedented speed. At the time of writing, 4.5 million cases have been confirmed and more than 300,000 people have died due to the virus.

As countries seek to recover, some of the more long-term economic, business, environmental, societal and technological challenges and opportunities are just beginning to become visible.

To help all stakeholders communities, governments, businesses and individuals understand the emerging risks and follow-on effects generated by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the World Economic Forum, in collaboration with Marsh and McLennan and Zurich Insurance Group, has launched its COVID-19 Risks Outlook: A Preliminary Mapping and its Implications - a companion for decision-makers, building on the Forums annual Global Risks Report.

The report reveals that the economic impact of COVID-19 is dominating companies risks perceptions.

Companies are invited to join the Forums work to help manage the identified emerging risks of COVID-19 across industries to shape a better future. Read the full COVID-19 Risks Outlook: A Preliminary Mapping and its Implications report here, and our impact story with further information.

For products and tasks that are labour-intensive and add low value, businesses actively diversify their operations to other regional locations, such as Bangladesh, Cambodia and Pakistan with garment manufacturing, Vietnam with electronics, and increasingly Thailand and Indonesia with toys. To maintain productivity and profit margins, factories in China have to accelerate their adoption of digital transformation and automation, where production robots, 5G communication links for Internet of Things (IoT) devices, systems software with artificial intelligence, and digital capabilities will play a key role.

The announcement at the National Peoples Congress in late May, where the Chinese government made an additional commitment totaling $1.4 trillion to new technology infrastructure in the next five years, reinforces the notion that China is doubling down on technology to reach its long-term prosperity goal. Sensing the opportunity for an acceleration in tech transformation, neighbouring countries are actively vying for the demand of low-value production left by China. The state of Haryana, for instance, is actively looking to encourage businesses to relocate production to India. Major Korean manufacturers have long established their production of electronic goods in Vietnam. For specialized electronic components such as hard disk drives (HDD), Thailand is already home to more than 70% of all production worldwide.

The new 3Rs for supply chain

The unexpected disruption from the current pandemic, despite its negative consequences, provides an unprecedented opportunity for businesses to act now by assessing business impacts in the near, medium, and long term. In an environment where demand changes rapidly and immediacy is expected, the supply chain of the future must not only continue to focus on cost, quality and delivery, but will also need to be designed with responsiveness, reconfiguration and resilience in mind.

Responsiveness: Systems respond to inputs from the external environment. The supply chain system relies upon inputs such as customer order volume, commodity prices and freight rates to act. Therefore, businesses should appreciate the value of obtaining real-time updates on these inputs by upgrading from the archaic systems that often involve phone calls and fax machines.

Reconfiguration: Diversifying ones supply chain is not as simple as building additional plants in other jurisdictions. It involves revamping and redesigning functions in the system to be more plug-and-play. For example, in the event of future pandemics and extreme events such as the flood in Thailand, could certain business functions like procurement and finance continue their operations from other less, or least affected locations? What are the necessary changes to enable that?

Resilience: Think bigger and be prepared to build resilience from the ground up, starting with organization structure, business processes and performance metrics to future-proof for the next disruptive event. There is no one-size-fits-all for what this looks like, as every business is different.

The views reflected in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the global EY organization or its member firms.

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Why the evolution of supply chains is picking up speed in Asia-Pacific - World Economic Forum

"PVEL's PQP supports technical due diligence and risk mitigation by helping buyers identify inverters and power electronics that meet their long-term expectations for energy yield, product life and functionality," commented Jenya Meydbray, CEO of PVEL.

Independent test lab, PV Evolution Labs (PVEL) has expanded its PV inverter reliability testing operations with a newly renovated South San Francisco laboratory to handle its PV Inverter Product Qualification Program (PQP) business and its PV Inverter Scorecard report that was first published in May, 2019.

"PVEL's PQP supports technical due diligence and risk mitigation by helping buyers identify inverters and power electronics that meet their long-term expectations for energy yield, product life and functionality," commented Jenya Meydbray, CEO of PVEL. "Our data drives granular energy yield and O&M models for solar projects of any scale, ultimately increasing investor confidence in an asset's economic performance."

PVEL said that previous inverter testing had been undertaken at its Berkeley, California headquarters but the new advanced inverter test centre had included equipment for plug-and-play evaluations of 600V, 1000V and 1500V products, spanning the entire spectrum of the market from a 320W microinverter to a 1500V string inverter.

"In the past 12 months, we have observed inverter failures accounting for nearly 80% of lost production in PV power plants before the interconnection point and a major portion of unscheduled maintenance costs," noted Joe Kastner, CEO of Radian Generation. "Understanding inverter quality and supply chain constraints are key to controlling and understanding these costs. Inverters are critical to the financial performance of solar power plants and PVEL's independent testing is a great tool for understanding inverter risk and informing procurement decisions."

System-level testing of ancillary equipment including rapid shutdown devices, optimizers and communications products are also to be carried out at the facility, according to PVEL.

Thomas Goetzl, vice president and general manager of Keysight Technologies' automotive and energy solutions, a leader in electronics laboratory testing equipment said, "PVEL deployed the most advanced power electronics testing and measurement technologies available for the upgraded lab. As one of the world's leading suppliers of electronics testing solutions, we can say that PVEL's revamped South San Francisco facility is among the most sophisticated inverter labs in the solar industry."

PVEL also expects to be able to conduct advanced evaluations of a product's ability to interface with the local utility grid in compliance with recent IEEE and California Rule 21 mandates.

The second edition of PVELs PV Inverter Scorecard report had been delayed, due in part to COVID-19 working restrictions, although the testing firm has not indicated when the second report will be published.

Tags: pvel, microinverters, string inverters, 1500vdc, pv inverters, pv power plants, california

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PV Evolution Labs expands operations to serve in-depth PV inverter reliability testing - PV-Tech