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Happy Memorial Day weekend everyone! We celebrated by heading out of favorite patio for an afternoon of networking and fun. The weather was great and Pho Ba Co wasn’t that busy since it was a long weekend. On this edition of Dot Com Pho, Chris Voss shows what a pants down audience is, I show off a gadget of the week that silences the outside world, our dot com babe shows how to properly wear a Bluetooth mic, and the Chris Voss Show shows off more gadgets. Anyone is welcome to join us for Dot Com Pho. follow me on Twitter to find the time and location of the next one. Be the first to comment... Related Posts:Dot Com Pho – Epic Sweats EditionDot Com Pho – Apple Halloween EditionCute Teen Removes Very Tight PantsNew GoPro Hero3 Black EditionDot Com Pho – The Olympic Edition

Michael…Bolton? Yes, the ACTUAL Michael Bolton, and not a software engineer at Initech, has opened up in a telling interview with Huffington Post. He just so happens to have a biography coming out as well, titled ‘The Soul of it All’. Bolton opened up during the interview, talking about how he trekked across country in the 60′s at the age of 14. Calls it a miracle that he survived those experiences. Did a large amount of drugs, even claiming to smoke banana peels. He grew up in a poor family, with his parents divorced. He started getting involved in music at the age of 13-14, after being involved in sports before then. Received his first record deal at age 16. It took Bolton 18 years after that first deal before he received his first big hit. He said his first record deal felt like he’d signed with the Yankees. One of his early works was writing and producing songs for Cher. He shows his humorous side, talking about his experience working with The Lonely Island and doing his rendition of Captain Jack Sparrow. Bolton started out in rock and roll circles. He actually worked with Paul Stanley in one of the first bands he was a part of, called Blackjack. Bolton also reveals his ties with Kanye West, and how he had to ask his daughters who he was before working with him. He spent a good portion of the interview providing advice to those looking to get into a music career. He says to work with a voice coach, and just continue to work at it. Talent and passion can’t get you as far as you need to and compares it to training for the Olympics. Bolton even talked about his sex life, with this direct quote form his book, “Unlike Santa, the tooth fairy, and the Easter bunny, sex was real. Soon other girls were more than willing to get naked with me. I was stunned at my luck. I’ll be forever grateful that my first was a patient, kind, gifted, and enthusiastic instructor. Once she’d introduced me to the glories of sex, I realized what I’d been missing in my first precious thirteen years of life. I had to make up for lost time. So I immediately asked when we could do it again” He then talks about dating stars Nicollete Sheridan and Teri Hatcher. Bolton then gives his opinion about the current state of music, and talks about his thoughts about Justin Timberlake, and says he could have a Frank Sinatra like career before all is said and done. And just in case you were wondering what Bolton thinks about Office Space, he’s pushing for Mike Judge to make a sequel and hopes he can star in it.

Social networks can drive sales. Just how much is that share worth though? The answer may surprise you.

So Heineken, the brand that brought us this and this, has done it again. This time round, Heineken drinkers in Mexico City were approached by a woman and given the immediate choice of racing for a flight to Wembley for this morning’s Champions League Final leaving just two hours later. Best of all, hours after the Champions League Final ended, the video was already uploaded. The post Heineken – good decision appeared first on mUmBRELLA.

The end of May is typically filled with smiling, happy high school seniors looking forward to their next step in life, and celebrate graduation. For Southwest Onslow High School, they are left in mourning as one of their own has died, drowning while swimming with friends. Star QB Shak Pershey was found 2am Friday morning, after he was reported missing at 7pm the night prior off the coast of North Topsail Beach. Pershey was a well liked student, who led his school to a 1-AA state championship during his senior year. According to Yahoo Sports, Pershey passed for 1,149 yards and 13 touchdowns, rushed for 929 yards and 18 touchdowns. Pershey played both sides of the ball and came up with five interceptions on defense, along 73 tackles. He also returned kicks on special team, taking back 3 for touchdowns. Along with his athletic prowess, those who have spoke of his memory have mentioned the young man’s character and how he was loved by all of those in his community. He had plans to attend Chowan University after graduation. WNCT | 9 On Your Side Greenville NC

Authored by Ron Unz, originally posted at The American Conservative, In mid-March, the Wall Street Journal carried a long discussion of the origins of the Bretton Woods system, the international financial framework that governed the Western world for decades after World War II. A photo showed the two individuals who negotiated that agreement. Britain was represented by John Maynard Keynes, a towering economic figure of that era. America’s representative was Harry Dexter White, assistant secretary of the Treasury and long a central architect of American economic policy, given that his nominal superior, Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., was a gentleman farmer with no background in finance. White was also a Communist agent. Such a situation was hardly unique in American government during the 1930s and 1940s. For example, when a dying Franklin Roosevelt negotiated the outlines of postwar Europe with Joseph Stalin at the 1945 Yalta summit, one of his important advisors was Alger Hiss, a State Department official whose primary loyalty was to the Soviet side. Over the last 20 years, John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and other scholars have conclusively established that many dozens or even hundreds of Soviet agents once honeycombed the key policy staffs and nuclear research facilities of our federal government, constituting a total presence perhaps approaching the scale suggested by Sen. Joseph McCarthy, whose often unsubstantiated charges tended to damage the credibility of his position. The Cold War ended over two decades ago and Communism has been relegated to merely an unpleasant chapter in the history books, so today these facts are hardly much disputed. For example, liberal Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein matter-of-factly referred to White as a “Soviet spy” in the title of his column on our postwar financial system. But during the actual period when America’s government was heavily influenced by Communist agents, such accusations were widely denounced as “Red-baiting” or ridiculed as right-wing conspiracy paranoia by many of our most influential journalists and publications. In 1982 liberal icon Susan Sontag ruefully acknowledged that for decades the subscribers to the lowbrow Readers Digest had received a more realistic view of the world than those who drew their knowledge from the elite liberal publications favored by her fellow intellectuals. I myself came of age near the end of the Cold War and always vaguely assumed that such lurid tales of espionage were wildly exaggerated. I was wrong. The notion of the American government being infiltrated and substantially controlled by agents of a foreign power has been the stuff of endless Hollywood movies and television shows, but for various reasons such popular channels have never been employed to bring the true-life historical example to wide attention. I doubt if even one American in a hundred today is familiar with the name “Harry Dexter White” or dozens of similar agents. The realization that the world is often quite different from what is presented in our leading newspapers and magazines is not an easy conclusion for most educated Americans to accept, or at least that was true in my own case. For decades, I have closely read the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and one or two other major newspapers every morning, supplemented by a wide variety of weekly or monthly opinion magazines. Their biases in certain areas had always been apparent to me. But I felt confident that by comparing and contrasting the claims of these different publications and applying some common sense, I could obtain a reasonably accurate version of reality. I was mistaken. Aside from the evidence of our own senses, almost everything we know about the past or the news of today comes from bits of ink on paper or colored pixels on a screen, and fortunately over the last decade or two the growth of the Internet has vastly widened the range of information available to us in that latter category. Even if t

Editor’s note: Matt Turck is a managing director of FirstMark Capital. Follow him on Twitter @mattturck. The emerging Internet of Things — essentially, the world of physical devices connected to the network/Internet, from your Fitbit or Nest to industrial machines — is experiencing a burst of activity and creativity that is getting entrepreneurs, VCs and the press equally excited. The space looks like a boisterous hodgepodge of smart hobbyists, new startups and large corporations that are eager to be a part of what could be a huge market, and all sorts of enabling products and technologies, some of which, including crowdfunding and 3D printing, are themselves far from established. (Click to enlarge) The chart to the right is an attempt at making sense of this frenetic activity. From bottom to top, I see three broad areas – building blocks, verticals and horizontals: Building Blocks The concept of the Internet of Things is not new (the term itself was coined in 1999), but it is now in the process of becoming a reality thanks to the confluence of several key factors. First, while still challenging, it is easier and cheaper than ever to produce hardware – some components are open sourced (e.g. Arduino microcontrollers); 3D printing helps with rapid prototyping; specialized providers like Dragon Innovation and PCH can handle key parts of the production process, and emerging marketplaces such as Grand St. help with distribution. Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter or Indiegogo considerably de-risk the early phase of creating hardware by establishing market demand and providing financing. Second, the world of wireless connectivity has dramatically evolved over the last few years. The mobile phone (or tablet), now a supercomputer in everyone’s hand, is becoming the universal remote control of the Internet of Things. Ubiquitous connectivity is becoming a reality (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 4G) and standards are starting to emerge (MQTT).  The slight irony of the “Internet of Things” moniker is that things are often connected via M2M (machine to machine) protocols rather than the Internet itself. Third, the Internet of Things is able to leverage an entire infrastructure that has emerged in related areas. Cloud computing enables the creation of “dumb” (simpler, cheaper) devices, with all the intelligence processed in the cloud. Big data tools, often open sourced (Hadoop), enable the processing of massive amounts of data captured by the devices and will play a crucial role in the space. Verticals Unlike the Big Data space, where the action is gradually moving from core infrastructure to vertical applications, the Internet of Things space is seeing a lot of early action directly at the vertical application level. Some notable players like Nest Labs seem to have adopted a deeply integrated vertical strategy where they control key pieces of the product, including both hardware and software, in order to have complete control over the end-user experience (a lot like Apple, which is not surprising considering the founders’ background). Beyond the Nest, home automation in general has become the central battlefield of the Internet of Things, with some of the most exciting startups in the space jockeying for position. Another hot consumer-facing area is obviously quantified self, which is playing a huge role in developing consumers’ awareness of the potential of the Internet of Things. Beyond consumer, B2B/enterprise vertical applications of the Internet of Things, fueled in part by robotics, hold considerable promise in a number of areas such as manufacturing, transportation, healthcare, retail and energy. Some of clearest revenue opportunities for IoT startups are in the enterprise area. Horizontals While a lot of the action is happening at the vertical application level, the ultimate prize for many ambitious players in the space is to become the software platform upon which all vertical applications in th

May 25 (Reuters) - Billionaire hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen is losing the financial support of Blackstone Group Inc , the largest outside investor in his embattled SAC Capital Advisors, which is yanking much of its client money, according to a letter reviewed by Reuters. A pension consultant, in a May 21 letter to clients, said Blackstone has notified Cohen that it intends to "fully redeem" a significant portion of the roughly $550 million the investment firm has invested with the $15 billion hedge fund. The letter from pension consulting firm Russell Investments said Blackstone submitted its redemption notice to SAC Capital sometime before May 15 because of ongoing concerns about the insider trading investigation that continues to engulf Cohen's fund. Blackstone's investment with SAC Capital is through several investment funds known as hedge fund of funds and also through separately managed accounts it maintains for clients. The decision to redeem from SAC Capital impacts only client money invested in its hedge fund of funds, according to the letter. It's not clear how much of the $550 million is in those hedge fund of funds and it is not clear what Blackstone is advising clients who have money in separately managed accounts that is invested with SAC Capital. Russell did say in the address to its pension clients that Blackstone "expects to receive 100 percent of investors' capital by year-end." Russell, which manages $173 billion in assets and oversees a number of index funds, also provides advice to pensions and institutional investors on where to invest their dollars in hedge funds. The timing of Blackstone's request to withdraw money from SAC Capital is critical because it came before the hedge fund told investors on May 17 that its cooperation with federal authorities was no longer unconditional. Soon after, news broke that federal prosecutors had issued grand jury subpoenas earlier this month to Cohen and several of his top executives, seeking their testimony about insider trading at the hedge fund. The decision by Blackstone, which has invested with SAC Capital for at least a decade, is a big blow to the 56-year-old fund manager, who is widely regarded as one of the most successful traders of his generation. Blackstone - which manages about $46 billion in hedge fund investments for public pensions, foundations, corporations and wealthy individuals - is seen as something of a bellwether for other investors in the $2.2 trillion hedge fund industry because of its stature. Representatives for Blackstone did not immediately respond when asked for comment on Saturday. An SAC Capital spokesman declined to comment. The letter from Russell Investments, which was reviewed by Reuters, made no mention of the subpoenas on Cohen and his executives and was sent after a Russell representative talked to a Blackstone executive about the redemption decision. The letter said Blackstone decided to submit a redemption notice to SAC Capital after reviewing the terms of a $616 million deal SAC Capital reached in March with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to settle allegations that the hedge fund's employees had engaged in insider trading in four stocks. Blackstone, according to the letter, said the settlement with the SEC "did not give additional comfort that the issues at-hand were resolved." A representative for Russell Investments did not respond to a request for comment about the letter from its Russell Research division. Outside investors in SAC Capital like Blackstone, who account for roughly $6.75 billion of the $15 billion managed by Cohen, have until June 3 to decide whether to submit redemption notices for the second quarter. In the first quarter, outside investors notified Cohen they intend to withdraw about $1.7 billion of that $6.75 billion by year's end. People close to SAC Capital said Cohen, who has roughly $8 billion of his money invested in SAC Capital, is bracing for another large round of redemption reques

SEATTLE (AP) — Thousands of bridges around the U.S. may be one freak accident or mistake away from collapse, even if the spans are deemed structurally sound. The crossings are kept standing by engineering design, not supported with brute strength or redundant protections like their more modern counterparts. Bridge regulators call the more risky spans "fracture critical," meaning that if a single, vital component of the bridge is compromised, it can crumple. Those vulnerable crossing carry millions of drivers every day. In Boston, a six-lane highway 1A near Logan airport includes a "fracture critical" bridge over Bennington Street. In northern Chicago, an I-90 pass that goes over Ashland Avenue is in the same category. An I-880 bridge over 5th Avenue in Oakland, Calif., is also on the list. Also in that category is the Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River north of Seattle, which collapsed into the water days ago after officials say an oversized truck load clipped the steel truss. Public officials have focused in recent years on the desperate need for money to repair thousands of bridges deemed structurally deficient, which typically means a major portion of the bridge is in poor condition or worse. But the bridge that collapsed Thursday is not in that deficient category, highlighting another major problem with the nation's infrastructure: Although it's rare, some bridges deemed to be fine structurally can still be crippled if they are struck hard enough in the wrong spot. "It probably is a bit of a fluke in that sense," said Charles Roeder, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Washington. While the I-5 truck's cargo suffered only minimal damage, it left chaos in its wake, with two vehicles catapulting off the edge of the broken bridge into the river below. Three people involved escaped with non-life threatening injuries. The most famous failure of a fracture critical bridge was the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis during rush hour on Aug. 1, 2007, killing 13 people and injuring more than 100 others. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the cause of the collapse was an error by the bridge's designers — a gusset plate, a key component of the bridge, was too thin. The plate was only half of the required one-inch thickness. Because the bridge's key structures lacked redundancy, where if one piece fails, there is another piece to prevent the bridge from falling, when the gusset plate broke, much of the bridge collapsed. Mark Rosenker, who was chairman of the NTSB during the I-35W bridge investigation, said the board looked into whether other fracture critical bridges were collapsing. They found a few cases, but not many, he said. "Today, they're still building fracture critical bridges with the belief that they're not going break," Rosenker said. Fracture critical bridges, like the I-5 span in Washington, are the result of Congress trying to cut corners to save money rather than a lack of engineering know-how, said Barry B. LePatner, a New York real estate attorney and author of "Too Big to Fall: America's Failing Infrastructure and the Way Forward." About 18,000 fracture critical bridges were built from the mid-1950s through the late 1970s in an effort to complete the nation's interstate highway system, which was launched under President Dwight Eisenhower, LePatner said in an interview. The fracture critical bridge designs were cheaper than bridges designed with redundancy, he said. Thousands of those bridges remain in use, according to an AP analysis. "They have been left hanging with little maintenance for four decades now," he said. "There is little political will and less political leadership to commit the tens of billions of dollars needed" to fix them. There has been little focus or urgency in specifically replacing the older "fracture critical" crossings, in part because there is a massive backlog of bridge repair work for thousands of bridges

When shown the magnificent run-up in Japanese equities over the past six months and asked why he is skeptical about the likely success of Abenomics, Mizuho's chief economist simply explains, "because I am not suffering from amnesia," as the rest of the market appears to be. He goes in this brief interview with the FT to explain there is nothing new here. We already saw massive fiscal expenditure in the 1990s (which failed to gain any real economic traction) and as far as quantitative easing, Ueno reminds his interviewer, we saw major QE between 2001 and 2006 (that failed), Furthermore, the so-called growth strategy, "every Japanese cabinet has undertaken such doctrines without any success." The discussion then switches from the dashing of hopes to the risks of the policy. Five minutes well spent this weekend to remind your momentum-driven recency-biased anchored view of the world that there is nothing new under the sun and moar is not always better...