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Canada's C-Suite flocks to emerging audio app Clubhouse, but long-term appeal unclear – Toronto Star

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TORONTO – When earnings season rolls around, Duncan Fulton spends days preparing for calls with media, analysts and investors, but hardly ever gets a chance to deliver his messages directly to the people who frequent his Tim Hortons coffee shops or Popeyes drive-thrus.

That changed in February when the chief operating officer of Restaurant Brands International joined chief executive Jose Cil on Clubhouse — an emerging audio platform that gives anyone with an iPhone and an app the ability to host and access discussions on every topic imaginable.

“It’s like reimagined talk radio with calls, but we are the producer,” said Fulton, who hosted an “open kitchen” talk the day after RBI released its latest quarterly earnings.

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“Our guests don’t care about our adjusted EBITDA. They care about real stuff, about our food, our brands, and so we said, ‘Why don’t we use Clubhouse?’”

Fulton and Cil are the latest Canadian executives to turn to the app started by San Francisco serial entrepreneurs Paul Davidson and Rohan Seth last spring as a new way to host public conversations.

As COVID-19 spread throughout the globe and lockdowns kept millions of people at home, executives from top venture capital and tech firms began to jockey for access to the invite-only audio platform.

By the start of 2021, hundreds of business leaders and other Canadians had joined Clubhouse, which has offered increasing numbers of invites since late last year.

Members have been able to hear SpaceX CEO Elon Musk discuss whether he believes in aliens, Shopify executives Tobi Lutke and Harley Finkelstein wax poetic about entrepreneurship and Wattpad founder Allen Lau talk about his recent decision to sell the company.

“It’s really democratizing corporate Canada and corporate America in a way,” says Fulton, “because normally consumers wouldn’t get this access to senior business leaders.”

He pitched a Clubhouse talk to Cil after being introduced to the platform by Ottawa restaurateur Stephen Beckta, who got his invite from Finkelstein.

After dipping into music conversations, Fulton found he liked the exploratory nature of the platform and that moderators have control over who can speak and when.

“If you’re a business leader that wants the safety of not taking questions, you can still go on there, share your views, and there’s lots of people that are happy to not participate, not ask questions and just listen,” he said.

Richard Lachman, a digital media professor at Ryerson University, agreed the platform can be helpful for executives wanting to manage their image, but said users will quickly drop out of conversations if a speaker is boring them or recognize when someone is too scripted.

Though executives go through media training, he said a few “embarrassments” will likely arise on the app if people don’t know how to respond to “aggressive” questions or can’t kick someone out of a discussion fast enough.

While the app doesn’t overtly market itself as private, its invite-only nature has built a casual atmosphere, even as its userbase grows.

Clubhouse did not respond to a request for comment, but has a “rule” banning transcribing, recording or sharing personal information heard on the app. The company recently removed a bot it found sneaking into discussions to restream them to people without the app.

Still, a quick search on social media reveals dozens of recordings and quotes from the app available online.

Prominent venture capitalists faced criticism last year when audio leaked of them ridiculing New York Times journalist Taylor Lorenz and complaining that so-called cancel culture — sometimes described as withdrawing support for someone caught misbehaving or using outmoded language and expressions — had gone too far.

There have also been privacy complaints from users who opted not to give the app access to their contact lists, but say it is detecting their sign-ups and alerting friends whose numbers they have stored.

Once on the app, some users reported they stumbled upon misogyny and racism in discussions, despite rules against abuse and bullying and a feature to report problematic users.

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“Some of the challenges (Clubhouse) is facing is that this content is very unmoderated and we are not in 2003 in (Facebook founder) Mark Zuckerberg’s dorm room, pretending that anything we make we know where it’ll go and we’ll just let the market figure it out,” said Lachman.

“We know what might happen. Online spaces can be incredibly toxic, they can be harsh and we know that things can be taken out context very quickly and easily duplicated on other platforms.”

Despite the issues, Deepak Anand, chief executive of medical cannabis company Materia Ventures, joined the app. He hosts several pot discussions on it every week, but is careful in his approach.

He doesn’t share anything on Clubhouse he wouldn’t be comfortable with if it were leaked, but has seen several instances of people not realizing how public the app is.

“People generally like to share more than they normally would on the platform because it’s easy to get carried away and it almost seems like you’re having a conversation with friends,” he said.

Among the positives, Anand saysClubhouse has helped him discover new ways to network while stuck at home during the pandemic and increased his social media followers.

He’s unsure the app will continue to be his go-to because a competitor, Twitter Spaces, has caught his eye.

Tech Crunch reported that users who mined Twitter’s coding have found Spaces, which is still in pilot mode, experimenting with ways to embed tweets into discussions, offer transcription for users with disabilities and enhance blocking capabilities.

Facebook is said to be developing a similar platform, but hasn’t formally released any details.

The number of emerging audio apps and the flood of new Clubhouse users will make it even tougher for executives to stand out, Lachman predicted.

“This might have value right now, but in a year or two from now, that might get lost.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 1, 2021.

Companies in this story: (TSX:QSR, TSX:SHOP)

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The Ultimate Recap of Sea Otter 2024 – Pinkbike.com

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Vittoria Releases New Peyote & Mezcal XC Race Tires
Maxxis Team Spec Aspen ST Tire
New DT Swiss 240 DEG Hubs
Kali Protectives’ New Full Face Helmets
Industry Nine’s SOLiX M Hubs & Wheelsets
Michelin’s Aggressive New Wild Enduro Tires
Praxis’ New Flat Pedals, Stem, & Carbon Bottle Cage
Transmission Cage Upgrades from Kogel, Ceramicspeed, and Cascade Components
Randoms Round 1 – Sea Otter 2024
Madrone Cycles’ SRAM Eagle Repair Kits & Prototype Derailleur
Vorsprung’s New Telum Coil Shock
EXT’s Vaia Inverted DH Fork & Updated Coil Shocks
Randoms Round 2: New Tools, Goggles, Grips, Racks, & More – Sea Otter 2024
What’s New in Women’s MTB Apparel at Sea Otter 2024
Even More Randoms – Sea Otter 2024
Randoms Round 3: Dario’s Treasures
What’s New for the Kids at Sea Otter 2024
Deity Releases New Stems, Grips, & Pedals
Dario’s Final Sea Otter Randoms
Brian’s Randoms from Sea Otter 2024

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With roots dating back to 1991, the Sea Otter Classic is one of the biggest biking events and tradeshows each year and brings together all sides of the biking industry from athletes to brands, spectators and consumers. Taking place in April in the sunny hills of Monterey, California, that means this event really feels like the official start to the biking season in North America. Christina Chappetta covers why it’s much different to an indoor European biking tradeshow, a World Cup racing weekend or even Crankworx mountain bike festival, in that it encompasses nearly ALL of the biking disciplines, including road cycling, enduro, downhill, dual slalom, XC, trials riding and more.

In the past fortnight, we have seen large amount of new tech releases. However, Sea Otter 2024 represents some of the first opportunities for many riders to see these things in the flesh, as well as take a deeper dive into what the product aims to do.
Welcome to a video summary from Day 2 of the Sea Otter Classic.
There are so many giveaways, interesting new products and colourful characters at Sea Otter Classic that it’s hard to stand out from the crowd. Ben Cathro takes a lap of the venue to find his favourites.



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Apple iPad Air 2024: Insider Makes Hasty U-Turn On New Feature – Forbes

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Well, that was quick. On May 18, a respected industry insider predicted a new display technology for the iPad Air that’s expected in the coming days—Apple just announced its latest special event.

The new 12.9-inch iPad Air, the report claimed, would have the same miniLED backlighting currently found on the larger iPad Pro, using the leftover inventory from the current Pro as that model switches to OLED. That was exciting news.

But now, Ross Young, the analyst who made the claim, has changed his mind. The new prediction, shared with paid subscribers only, is that the miniLED technology won’t be coming to the iPad Air, in either size.

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While it made sense that the inventory could be maximized in this way, it now “makes sense” that it won’t.

Young says that while he’d heard from supply chain sources that it would, he’d now had contact from “even more supply chain sources” that it won’t.

And the reason this change of heart now makes sense is that this miniLED technology is expensive, so it would be surprising if it made it to the iPad Air, which is more affordable than the Pro.

That’s not quite all the analyst shared. He also said that there are now reports of a new iPad coming later in the year. This is a 12.9-inch iPad, with miniLED backlighting and it could arrive between October and December this year.

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This is intriguing. What could it be? Assuming that the iPad Pro and iPad Air are released in May, it’s extremely unlikely either will be updated later in the year. And if the iPad Air isn’t pricey enough for miniLED to be included, what tablet could Apple be introducing that is the same size as the bigger Pro, with a pricey screen tech, which would sit between the Air and the Pro, it seems?

Young is highly reliable, but this seems slightly preposterous to me. The only other iPad in the range due a refresh is the regular iPad (at 12.9-inches, the iPad mini is clearly out of the picture) and that doesn’t seem likely either.

It seems to me that any regular iPad will almost certainly have the same screen size as now, 10.9 inches. The regular iPad only grew to this size screen in the current generation, and Apple almost never changes designs after one iteration.

Perhaps things will become clearer as the year goes on.

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Woman who left beaten dad on floor for 2 days was 'overwhelmed' with his care, judge told – CBC.ca

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A Calgary woman who abused her sick, 77-year-old father was “overwhelmed” at the task of caring for him, a judge heard Wednesday at a sentencing hearing. 

In January, Tara Picard, 52, pleaded guilty to charges of assault and failing to provide the necessaries of life after her father (whom CBC News is not naming) was found injured on a basement floor, where he’d been lying for two days. 

On Wednesday, prosecutor Donna Spaner and defence lawyer Shaun Leochko asked the judge to allow Picard to serve her sentence in the community under conditions as part of a conditional sentence order.

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Justice Indra Maharaj agreed to a two-year conditional sentence for Picard followed by a year of probation. 

“There is no doubt she became overwhelmed,” said Spaner in her submissions. “There is no question Ms. Picard has remorse.”

Leochko told the judge that caring for her father “was really more than [Picard] could handle.”

Maharaj heard that Picard is Indigenous and was the victim of abuse growing up. She lives in a sober dorm-style facility and is working with a mental health and addictions navigator, according to Leochko.

A ‘willingness to give back’

As part of the sentence, Picard must complete 300 hours of community service. 

Justice Maharaj commended Picard for “taking that on.”

“That shows me Ms. Picard sincerely does recognize what has happened here,” said the judge. 

“What I interpret from that is Ms. Picard’s willingness to give back to her community.”

During Picard’s plea, court heard that in November 2021, Picard and her father fought over his drinking. 

Nurses discover victim

The victim suffers from a number of medical issues, including diabetes, heart disease, dementia and alcoholism.

At the time, home-care registered nurses were assigned to help provide supplementary care.

Nurses found the victim wearing a soiled adult diaper and suffering from two black eyes with blood on his head. 

He told the nurses who discovered him that he’d been there for two days. 

Picard admitted she knew her father had fallen and she had “administered a number of physical blows.”

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