Three-quarters of the world’s inhabitants, including those
living in Hawaii, will be exposed to deadly heat waves by the end of the
century unless greenhouse gases are not substantially reduced,
according to a study published today in Nature Climate Change.
And even if bold action is taken to curtail emissions,
nearly half of the world’s population still faces living with the
dangerous hot spells, with tropical regions feeling the worst of it, the
study said.
“We’re left with a choice between bad and terrible,” said lead author Camilo Mora, a University of Hawaii professor.
In Hawaii, according to Mora, the extreme heat might last
two or three months at a time, driving residents and tourists indoors in
search of air-conditioned relief — all the while straining island power
grids.
The episodes will be reminiscent of the oppressive heat and
humidity felt here a few days each year now, he said, and for about a
week during the strong El Nino summer two years ago.
*** and now let's go to the know-nothing comments...
plainly_the_elder
14 hours ago
More fake news by the climate death cultists intended to grease the rails of the government grant gravy train.
[etc.]
Monday, June 19, 2017
Saturday, June 17, 2017
Oceanic no more
A household name for more than 50 years in local cable TV has signed off.
As of today the dominant cable TV system operator in the state has been re-branded as Spectrum, replacing Oceanic, which had served kamaaina customers since the 1960s.
Spectrum is the result of Charter Communications Inc. acquiring Time Warner Cable in a roughly $60 billion deal in May 2016. Charter has been converting Time Warner Cable customers in 28 states to its own service under the Spectrum brand since September, and Hawaii is the last market to undergo the changeover.
As part of the switch, Hawaii customers have the option to keep their existing service packages but also now have new packages to choose from. The Oceanic name, however, wasn’t retained despite a long association in the islands, where a series of mainland companies acquired and maintained the brand.
Oceanic was born as an outgrowth of developing Mililani in the 1960s. At the time, over-the-air TV service wouldn’t reach or wouldn’t be received well in Central Oahu, so Mililani’s developer Castle &Cooke Inc. established its own service initially called Mililani Cablevision.
Castle &Cooke’s real estate development arm, Oceanic Properties, decided to expand the business, and in 1968 announced plans to offer what was then known as cable community antenna television, or CATV, between downtown neighborhoods and Waialae-Kahala. What evolved was Oceanic Cablevision, which acquired competitors and grew to serve most of the state under a succession of different owners and variations of the Oceanic name.
Among those past owners were American Television and Communications Corp., Warner Cable and most recently Time Warner.
Kit Beuret, Oceanic’s director of public affairs from 1982 to 2002, recalled that under Time Warner there was a push to ditch the Oceanic name and streamline operations. Beuret and others at the company here argued against the plan.
“You know how it is with kamaaina businesses,” he said. “We really wanted to hang on to that brand. It was one of the most recognizable brands in Hawaii.”
There are no plans to change existing Hawaii service packages, said company spokesman Dennis Johnson. “We want to make this as smooth a transition as possible,” he said. “Current customers do not need to do anything.”
Local programming will be unchanged, including high school and University of Hawaii sports coverage, he added. UH sports programming will henceforth be known as Spectrum Sports, but the high school sports programming known as OC16 will retain the reference to Oceanic Cable in its new name, Spectrum OC16.
As of today the dominant cable TV system operator in the state has been re-branded as Spectrum, replacing Oceanic, which had served kamaaina customers since the 1960s.
Spectrum is the result of Charter Communications Inc. acquiring Time Warner Cable in a roughly $60 billion deal in May 2016. Charter has been converting Time Warner Cable customers in 28 states to its own service under the Spectrum brand since September, and Hawaii is the last market to undergo the changeover.
As part of the switch, Hawaii customers have the option to keep their existing service packages but also now have new packages to choose from. The Oceanic name, however, wasn’t retained despite a long association in the islands, where a series of mainland companies acquired and maintained the brand.
Oceanic was born as an outgrowth of developing Mililani in the 1960s. At the time, over-the-air TV service wouldn’t reach or wouldn’t be received well in Central Oahu, so Mililani’s developer Castle &Cooke Inc. established its own service initially called Mililani Cablevision.
Castle &Cooke’s real estate development arm, Oceanic Properties, decided to expand the business, and in 1968 announced plans to offer what was then known as cable community antenna television, or CATV, between downtown neighborhoods and Waialae-Kahala. What evolved was Oceanic Cablevision, which acquired competitors and grew to serve most of the state under a succession of different owners and variations of the Oceanic name.
Among those past owners were American Television and Communications Corp., Warner Cable and most recently Time Warner.
Kit Beuret, Oceanic’s director of public affairs from 1982 to 2002, recalled that under Time Warner there was a push to ditch the Oceanic name and streamline operations. Beuret and others at the company here argued against the plan.
“You know how it is with kamaaina businesses,” he said. “We really wanted to hang on to that brand. It was one of the most recognizable brands in Hawaii.”
There are no plans to change existing Hawaii service packages, said company spokesman Dennis Johnson. “We want to make this as smooth a transition as possible,” he said. “Current customers do not need to do anything.”
Local programming will be unchanged, including high school and University of Hawaii sports coverage, he added. UH sports programming will henceforth be known as Spectrum Sports, but the high school sports programming known as OC16 will retain the reference to Oceanic Cable in its new name, Spectrum OC16.
Wednesday, June 14, 2017
Netflix is bigger than cable
Netflix has, for the first time, surpassed cable in total subscribers according to Leichtman Research.
US cable companies have 48.61 million subscribers while Netflix has
just hit 50.85 million. The numbers don't count minor cable networks,
which could in themselves amount to 5% of total cable customers.
For many this won't be a surprise. Let's be honest, with Netflix having doubled its subscriber base - adding 27 million subs - over the last five years there was always going to come a time when it beat other services.
And the good news for cable is that this isn't having a massively detrimental effect on their numbers either. While cable subs are down by 4 million in the same five years that Netflix has seen huge growth, that's not a massive drop off. It's also worth bearing in mind that cable TV makes up only 50% of total TV viewership in pay TV. That said, Q1 2017 shows a net loss in subscriptions while Q1 2016 saw cable grow a little.
Satellite TV is doing okay, with around 38 million subscribers. Dish Network added 318,000 customers in Q1 with Direct TV stalling with gains that didn't outpace customer loses. Satellite is still growing faster than cable though.
Faster still though are the internet-delivered services like Sling TV and Direct TV now which have added 350,000 in Q1. These services now have 1.7 million customers between them, and it's likely that this segment will continue to see growth as customers move away from cable TV.
In total there are 93,319,187 subscribers to cable, satellite and internet streaming services in the US, which account for 95% of pay TV viewers. Netflix certainly isn't going to hit 100m US subscriptions anytime soon, and it's likely that it will hit a wall of some sort eventually. But if the service continues to improve and offer diverse programming it's likely that customers will feel as I do - that it's worth the modest monthly fee to have access to a library of great content.
For many this won't be a surprise. Let's be honest, with Netflix having doubled its subscriber base - adding 27 million subs - over the last five years there was always going to come a time when it beat other services.
And the good news for cable is that this isn't having a massively detrimental effect on their numbers either. While cable subs are down by 4 million in the same five years that Netflix has seen huge growth, that's not a massive drop off. It's also worth bearing in mind that cable TV makes up only 50% of total TV viewership in pay TV. That said, Q1 2017 shows a net loss in subscriptions while Q1 2016 saw cable grow a little.
Satellite TV is doing okay, with around 38 million subscribers. Dish Network added 318,000 customers in Q1 with Direct TV stalling with gains that didn't outpace customer loses. Satellite is still growing faster than cable though.
Faster still though are the internet-delivered services like Sling TV and Direct TV now which have added 350,000 in Q1. These services now have 1.7 million customers between them, and it's likely that this segment will continue to see growth as customers move away from cable TV.
In total there are 93,319,187 subscribers to cable, satellite and internet streaming services in the US, which account for 95% of pay TV viewers. Netflix certainly isn't going to hit 100m US subscriptions anytime soon, and it's likely that it will hit a wall of some sort eventually. But if the service continues to improve and offer diverse programming it's likely that customers will feel as I do - that it's worth the modest monthly fee to have access to a library of great content.
Saturday, June 10, 2017
the cheapo Fire tablet (what's missing?)
Sure the Fire tablet is a bargain at $50 (or sometimes even cheaper, it was like $33.33 on Black Friday). But there's no such thing as a free lunch. (Well, maybe there is, but in this case, no.)
So what's the downside of buying a Fire tablet vs. and ipad or Galaxy Tab? Well the first thing is that if you buy the cheapie version, there's an ad on the splash screen when the thing turns on. You have to flick it up to get rid of it. But the main thing is that it doesn't have all the apps.
I tried to install TBS on it today. Nope, not compatible with my tablet Amazon.com says, only with my Fire TVs.
I found that odd since I had TNT installed on my tablet. But when I tried to run it, it said there was an update available with no option to bypass the update. But then you try to install the update, it goes to the app store and the Watch TNT page. And guess what, not compatible with the Fire tablet either.
I'd say TBS and TNT are pretty big names for Amazon not to support.
Well, I guess it's possible to load Google Play on the Fire tablet, but I never tried it. But why bother when I can just use my ipad (other than the fact it's full of pictures and videos already)...
Then again, I guess I shouldn't complain. After all, I think I paid like only $40 for mine.
So what's the downside of buying a Fire tablet vs. and ipad or Galaxy Tab? Well the first thing is that if you buy the cheapie version, there's an ad on the splash screen when the thing turns on. You have to flick it up to get rid of it. But the main thing is that it doesn't have all the apps.
I tried to install TBS on it today. Nope, not compatible with my tablet Amazon.com says, only with my Fire TVs.
I found that odd since I had TNT installed on my tablet. But when I tried to run it, it said there was an update available with no option to bypass the update. But then you try to install the update, it goes to the app store and the Watch TNT page. And guess what, not compatible with the Fire tablet either.
I'd say TBS and TNT are pretty big names for Amazon not to support.
Well, I guess it's possible to load Google Play on the Fire tablet, but I never tried it. But why bother when I can just use my ipad (other than the fact it's full of pictures and videos already)...
Then again, I guess I shouldn't complain. After all, I think I paid like only $40 for mine.
Friday, June 09, 2017
more popular than cable
Internet video services are more popular than cable, according to a May study from Fluent LLC. that was reported by eMarketer. Fluent, a data and marketing company, found that 67% of U.S. internet users watch TV via a streaming service, a la Netflix Inc. (NFLX), Hulu and Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), while 61% have cable subscriptions at home.
Millennials, age 18 to 34, used streaming services at a higher rate and Netflix was the most popular service among them. According to the study, 77% of millennials said they use streaming services vs. 57% who have cable at home -- there's some cross over of people subscribing to both. For people aged 35 and older it was a more even split, with 65% using streaming services and 62% subscribing to cable.
Of the streaming services, Netflix was the most popular, with 48% of all respondents saying they use the service. Amazon and Hulu -- a joint venture by Comcast Corp. (CMCSA), Walt Disney Co. (DIS), 21st Century Fox Inc. (FOX) and Time Warner Inc. (TWX), were tied with 16%, followed by Alphabet Inc.-owned (GOOGL) YouTube Red's 11% share and HBO being popular among 10% of survey respondents.
More than 34% of people said low cost was the main factor in opting for a streaming service and for millennials the convenience of watching whenever and wherever was important for 29% of them, while 21% of nonmillennials said the same. And original content, which has been of increasing importance for companies, was a deciding factor for 18% of all respondents. Only 7% were interested in syndicated content.
Millennials, age 18 to 34, used streaming services at a higher rate and Netflix was the most popular service among them. According to the study, 77% of millennials said they use streaming services vs. 57% who have cable at home -- there's some cross over of people subscribing to both. For people aged 35 and older it was a more even split, with 65% using streaming services and 62% subscribing to cable.
Of the streaming services, Netflix was the most popular, with 48% of all respondents saying they use the service. Amazon and Hulu -- a joint venture by Comcast Corp. (CMCSA), Walt Disney Co. (DIS), 21st Century Fox Inc. (FOX) and Time Warner Inc. (TWX), were tied with 16%, followed by Alphabet Inc.-owned (GOOGL) YouTube Red's 11% share and HBO being popular among 10% of survey respondents.
More than 34% of people said low cost was the main factor in opting for a streaming service and for millennials the convenience of watching whenever and wherever was important for 29% of them, while 21% of nonmillennials said the same. And original content, which has been of increasing importance for companies, was a deciding factor for 18% of all respondents. Only 7% were interested in syndicated content.
-- via etrade (TWX)
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