Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Lewis Hamilton will struggle to break Nico Rosberg - Allan McNish


CoWorker"s Listen to Hamilton for the First Time! (Bonus)

Lewis Hamilton"s difficult start to the season has set the 2016 World Championship up beautifully.

Hamilton is 39 points behind Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg, who has won all three races after problems for the world champion in all of them.

With 18 races to go, that is by no means an insurmountable challenge - but it is the effect it will have on the protagonists that makes the season so interesting now.

How Hamilton v Rosberg could play out

It is crucial that the Briton does not become frustrated and let the problems he has had get to him.

The key thing for him is to do what he does best - which is to qualify well and race from the front.

Hamilton"s problem is that, even if he starts winning, if Rosberg just keeps picking up second places and the odd win when Hamilton has problems, it is going to take a long time to catch him up.

And Hamilton? Five, for Mercedes during 2014

That gives the German something to play on - and he may well want to emphasise that comfort zone whenever he can.

But some statistics help keep things in perspective:

  • If Hamilton wins every race from now on, with Rosberg second, the Briton will be leading the championship after the British Grand Prix in six races" time.
  • In 2014, Hamilton made up deficits of a cumulative total of 83 points over the season - and still won the title by 67 points - which also included the one-off double points in Abu Dhabi.

However, Rosberg is stronger and more comfortable than he has ever been before. He has six wins in a row now, dating back to last year"s Mexican Grand Prix.

If he wins in Russia this weekend, he will be joint-second in the all-time list of consecutive victories with Alberto Ascari and Michael Schumacher, and he has a confidence and a feel about him that suggests he is in a good place right now.

Rosberg has a momentum that can take him on for another few races and I never liked allowing my team-mates that advantage.

Hamilton will come back I"m sure - but I reckon it will be harder for him than it was in 2014.

Could Red Bull and Ferrari get involved? Unreliability is no longer an option for Ferrari. Oh, and neither is crashing into each other

Another concern for Hamilton is that the competition faced by Mercedes is far stiffer than it has been for the past two years.

That can play in Hamilton"s favour - if he wins and a Ferrari or a Red Bull can get in between him and Rosberg, he will close the gap faster. But of course it can work the other way round as well.

Mercedes say that they face a genuine threat from Ferrari - that the Italian team are every bit as quick as them but have just had three messy races. I"m sceptical about that claim; I think there is a bit of game going on.

Ferrari are closer this year than they were last, there is no doubt about that. But equally there is no question that the Mercedes is the best car - not only the fastest but also the most consistent. Mercedes have got that little bit in hand that makes all the difference - and that makes it hard to tell exactly how much faster than anyone else they are.

Yes, it has looked close from time to time over the weekends this year. But when it matters, bang, Mercedes have turned up the wick and put the car on the front row.

It looks to me as if they still have a 0.4-0.5 seconds advantage over everyone else and I suspect that if Ferrari do get to where Mercedes are, then Mercedes have the potential to take another step forward.

I believe Mercedes are talking up their rivals for two reasons: to take attention away from the fact that they are dominating again, even if not by as much as before; and to keep everyone in their team focused, so no-one sits back and relaxes and takes things for granted.

I"ve said it before, but to have a chance, Ferrari have got to qualify on the front row with the Mercedes and give themselves the potential to get among them.

When they do that, Mercedes are vulnerable. But it is easier said than done.

Ferrari will start to feel the pressure The Chinese Grand Prix tangle that happened in front of the president of Ferrari? Vettel"s fault

Everything was rosy at Ferrari last year following Sebastian Vettel"s arrival and a big step forward in performance from a traumatic 2014.

As ever, you get a one-season honeymoon period, which is over now. The time since Ferrari last won a world title just keeps on getting longer and nothing puts the pressure on more than the big boss turning up, as president Sergio Marchionne did in China.

He made it clear it is imperative the team start winning. Marchionne is a businessman with a very hard edge to him and he needs to see a return on his investment.

There is no fear of Ferrari having the carpet pulled from underneath them. Nevertheless, Marchionne"s presence in China, a huge market for their car sales, was a very clear statement - so it was a tad embarrassing, after showing good pace in qualifying, for the two drivers to crash into each other.

Vettel was very critical of Red Bull"s Daniil Kvyat following that incident at the first corner in Shanghai but for me it was clearly Vettel"s fault.

He did not see Kvyat coming until it was too late. The door was open - there was easily a car"s width between the kerb and the Ferrari.

Kvyat was under a bit of pressure himself after two poor races in Australia and Bahrain, and being comprehensively out-qualified by team-mate Daniel Ricciardo in China too. He needed to start delivering. He stuck his nose in, was completely alongside, and Vettel sort of got caught between a rock and a hard place, with team-mate Kimi Raikkonen coming back towards the line after running wide earlier in the corner.

Lewis Hamilton is the only driver to win in Russia - although there have only been two Russian GPs so far

Kvyat was quite right to defend himself from Vettel"s criticisms, which I suspect were founded in frustration at having the chance to challenge Mercedes taken away, and embarrassment at crashing into his team-mate in front of the Ferrari president.

Ferrari used more engine development "tokens" than anyone over the winter - 23, leaving only nine for the rest of the season. They are also reputedly considering bringing an engine upgrade to Russia, which with their engine failures in Australia for Raikkonen and Bahrain for Vettel was not expected.

It is possibly a consequence of their realisation that they need to get some traction against Mercedes.

Red Bull are also looking threatening. The chassis looks good, the drivers are sniffing around the podium, and there is a big Renault engine upgrade due in Canada in June.

We will then see whether Mercedes" claims that the competition are close are true, or whether they then make another step forward. Which I suspect they will.

Williams looking to the future

Progress from Ferrari and Red Bull means Williams are slipping back. We saw in the first races of the season that their race pace is not where it needs to be, meaning their chances of finishing third in the championship for the third consecutive year already look slim.

In the circumstances, this is not that surprising. Williams have limited resources compared with the top teams and they have to marshal them carefully.

They have to balance their efforts on the new regulations for 2017, which is a big technical change and a huge investment of manpower and finances, with their energies for this season and car development.

In their situation, focusing more on 2017 is a good plan, because an advantage at the beginning of a new set of regulations can pay dividends for two or three years. Any progress this year will only last for one.

Good call: With a smaller budget than the big teams, now would be the time for Williams to focus their development on the new car for 2017Still a need for 2017 rule changes

Off track, Mercedes have reiterated their view that F1 is making a mistake in speeding the cars up for 2017 with new rules.

But the reasons why F1 bosses decided upon a wholesale change - which Mercedes initially backed - still apply. The argument for the rule changes was that the drivers needed to be challenged more and the cars needed to be faster and sexier, and back closer to the historic lap-time high of 2004-05.

Back then, drivers were in awe of the cars - and would be tested to their physical limits every time they drove them. That is not the case now.

Mercedes have pointed out that qualifying times this year are now back at 2004-05 levels. Well, that is partly true. In Bahrain, pole was the fastest ever, and in Australia it was just 0.3 seconds off.

Chinese GP: Is Nico Rosberg looking unstoppable?

But it was not in China - there, pole was still three seconds off the fastest ever.

That was because Shanghai is the circuit on which power has the smallest effect on lap timeout of the first four races. The 2016 cars are making up much of their lap time on those of 10 years ago on the straights - where they are much faster. That is an impressive fact in itself. But they remain a lot slower in the corners.

And in the races the situation is even starker because of the need to manage the Pirelli tyres to such a large extent.

Comparing this year"s race fastest laps to the fastest ever looks like this:

  • Australia - 4.9 seconds slower
  • Bahrain - 3.0secs
  • China - 7.6secs

In other words, the reasons to change the rules and make the cars faster - so the drivers and fans are in awe of F1 again - remain as relevant as ever.

Allan McNish was talking to BBC Sport"s Andrew Benson

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/36130559

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Leicester City fans denied chance to watch remaining away games on big screens at King Power Stadium


Leicester City 4-0 Swansea City - Riyad Mahrez & Leonardo Ulloa Post-Match Interview 24.04.2016

The club are allowed to screen both matches within the hospitality areas of the King Power Stadium and announced they would do so on Saturday. But the Keith Weller Lounge, Walkers Hall and 1884 Sports Bar are only able to accommodate 1,600 fans per game.

Tickets for the screenings cost 5 for adults and 3 for under-18s and include a free bottle of beer or a bottle of water, with all profits donated to the LCFC Foxes Foundation.

Saturdays announcement followed a petition set up by two supporters, Kris and Donna Robinson, for the club and Leicester City Council to erect screens outside the King Power Stadium or elsewhere in the city to show the teams matches for the rest of the season.

A spokesman for the council said: LCFC has decided to show the two away fixtures on screens at the King Power stadium. Also, many pubs both in the city centre and other, neighbourhood family pubs, have paid very high commercial rates to screen the matches.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2016/04/25/leicester-city-fans-denied-permission--to-watch-remaining-away-g/

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Monday, April 25, 2016

The Flyers Gave Away Shirts to Remind Philadelphia Fans to "Stay Classy"


BRADIO-Flyers【TVアニメ「デス・パレード」OP曲】(OFFICIAL VIDEO)

Photo: Flyers

During Game Three, Flyers fans showed boorish behavior that eventually turned violent during the Caps 6-1 win. Fans threw the organizations promotional giveaway, plastic light-up bracelets, onto the ice, one of which struck Caps defenseman Dmitry Orlov in the face. Orlov had been getting medical attention after getting checked boarded by Pierre-douard Bellemare. Minutes later, the fans were given a minor penalty and were criticized by PA announcer Lou Nolan.

The Flyers organization, who had planned to give the bracelets away again in Game Four, did not, opting to give away a tshirt with the Flyers logo filled up with words that they thought represented the team. Ahead of Game Six, the Flyers gave away another t-shirt, but this time it made light of the Flyers violence in Game Three. It featured Lou Nolan reminding fans to Stay Classy.

https://twitter.com/NHLFlyers/status/723970796146810880

Its reminiscent of Ron Burgandy in Anchorman.

Maybe asFlyers fans growangry late in the game, they mighthold this shirt up and think, Oh yeah, I probably shouldnt do this terrible thing Im about to do. Or they will tie the shirt around a plastic bottle, light it on fire, and hurl that onto the ice. One of the two will definitely happen.

Personally, I think this would have been a better shirt to give away.

You can buy it in our t-shirt store.

Full RMNB Coverage of Game Six

Source: http://www.russianmachineneverbreaks.com/2016/04/24/the-flyers-gave-away-shirts-to-remind-philadelphia-fans-to-stay-classy/

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Drake Posts "Views From the 6" Album Art, May Be Joined by Future on Summer Sixteen Tour


The Six Girls You"ll Date in College

While no dates have officially been released, Drake-- who shared the album cover for his upcoming Views From the 6 Sunday night (April 24)--will seemingly be joined by Futurefor a string of 2016 datesdubbedthe Summer Sixteen Tour, according to a web page that was temporarily live on Live Nation.

Everything We Know About Drake"s "Views From the 6" (So Far)

The event page, which has since been removed, listed only one tour stop (Detroit on Aug. 16), but had both Drake and Futures names on the lineup. A four-and-a-half day countdown until tickets go on sale the morning ofApril 29 was included.

Billboard has reached out to a rep for comment. In the meantime, check out the new album artwork below. (Photography credit goes toCaitlin Cronenberg, whileart direction was provided byNicky Orenstein.)

Drake and Future collaborated on 2015s What a Time to Be Alive. DrakesViews From the 6is due out in just a few days (April 29),while Futures latest release, Evol, arrived in February.

Source: http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/7341818/drake-views-from-the-6-album-art-summer-sixteen-tour-future

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Tennis podcast: Why Angelique Kerber is the Leicester City of tennis


Leicester City vs West Ham 2-2 2016 Full Extended Highlights

A year ago, Angelique Kerber was a solid but unspectacular player who scored the occasional impressive win, but seemed unlikely to threaten the very best players in the game for the biggest titles.

Now, after beating Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka to win the Australian Open, and arriving in Stuttgart to see her face on every poster, Kerber extended the impression that she is the best player in the world this year by winning the Porsche Open title.

In the Telegraphs latest Tennis Podcast, presenter David Law wonders if Kerber is the Leicester City of tennis, and will take the fairytale and run with it, winning further big titles along the way.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tennis/2016/04/25/tennis-podcast-why-angelique-kerber-is-the-leicester-city-of-ten/

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Lil Kim Season: The Original Queen Bee Is Backbut When Is That Album Coming?


Lil" Kim - Lighters Up

Rapper Lil Kim is back with another mixtape, seemingly flexing her chops before returning in a big way. But when will it really happen?

Lil Kim is back with a surprise mixtape. But is Lil Kim back?

After teasing it for days online, the Grammy-winning Brooklyn MC unveiled LilKim Season late Mondayher first mixtape in two years and a reminder that we havent seen an official studio album from the original Queen Bee since 2005s The n***d Truth.

Over 10 tracks, Lil Kim reclaims her fiery trademark flow with verses about crippling geopolitical issues and the state of America, lyrics promoting female empowerment in the face of institutionalized misogyny in her world and ours, and makes peace with her avowed nemesis, Nicki Minaj, the target of her wrath five years ago on the twice-as-long Black Friday mixtape.

Just kidding. Lil Kims back in the game rapping yet again about her badass boss b***h self, her riches, and her designer p***y, aka the evergreen topics that have always stocked Kims lyrical arsenal and probably will until the end of time. Here on Lil Kim Season, an amuse-bouche ostensibly designed to tempt fans palates for an actual new studio album, shes merely re-establishing her chops while quoting from a very current playlist of beats and chart-toppers.

If only Lil Kim Season wasnt such a mixed bag of mostly forgettable freestyles. She sets the tone in Fountain Bleu, a leadoff track in which Kim talks about her Bentleys, the Ferragamo and Givenchy in her closets, and not a whole lot more.

I need an Oscar nomination, she declares on her Beemix of Drakes Summer Sixteen, another otherwise unremarkable freestyle. It makes for an obvious pairing with her auto-crooning remix of Rihannas Work, in which the 41-year-old Kim celebrates her cougar status (f****n with this p***y I can put you on the map/f****n with this p***y I can take you out the trap).

Everyone who knows me knows Im a huge Drake fan, she explained to Billboard before debuting Lil Kim Season. Our relationship isnt that bigbut I don"t know him at all. Ive always been a huge Drake fan. I just love that song. When I first heard it, I was like, Oh, this song right here. But thats how I feel about most of the Drake songs I hear anyways. When it comes to music, he really cant do no wrong to me. That song was one of my favorites.I liked that a lot. Drake is in my top five right now, thats who I listen to all the time. I love Back 2 Back. My daughter sings Back 2 Back. I could name Drake songs for 30 minutes straight that I like.

Lil Kim spends half her mixtape tipping it to a handful of younger bucks, like on Mine, her track with everybodys sworn favorite, Kevin Gates. Over Panda she turns Desiigners ode to his treasured X6 to her own minked-out Tony Montana swag with the help of Maino, TLZ, and Dash. If you never knew you needed Lil Kims take on OT Genasiss Cut It, here you go.

A lots changed in the 10-plus years that studio Kims been absent, both for her and the industry she not only once dominated, but helped crossover into the mainstream. (Her sole Grammy trophy isnt for her collabs with folks like Biggie or Missy or 50 Cent, but shared with Pink, Mya, and Christina Aguilera for their 2002 anthem Lady Marmalade.)

Three years ago the erstwhile Kimberly Denise Jones stepped back from the limelight to have and raise a daughter, Royal Reign. The contentious custody battle that ensued with her ex, Mr. Papers, played out in public in bursts of contentiousness and, eventually, a friendly resolution. Who had time to hit the studio?

If anything, Lil Kim Season indicates that Kims got her sights set on returning in a big wayand that shes collecting collaborators who might help her achieve it. Shes already teasing Lil Kim Season 2, even if these days shes floating between labels with no official announced plans to release her next full album.

Her presence at the Yeezus Season 3 spectacular in February planted the seeds for a reunion she told Billboard shed be into (Id love to see what a song me and Kanye would sound like right now), while last years actual Bad Boy 20th anniversary performance at the BET Awards with Puff Daddy and Ma$e prefaced her reuniting with Diddy on Auction, with a video directed by the onetime king of rap videos, Hype Williams.

We did a lot of remixes with other songs to let people knowI never miss a step, even though Ive been away from the mainstreamand havent been in rotation with my music for so long, she said, explaining the onus for releasing her surprise EP.I want people to know that I have not missed a beat.

Source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/30/lil-kim-season-the-original-queen-bee-is-back-but-when-is-that-album-coming.html

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Someone built chatbots that talk like the characters from HBO"s "Silicon Valley"


Welcome to Silicon Valley

Long live Pied Piper.

Luka, a messaging app that builds all kinds of chatbots that dothings like makerestaurant reservations, rolled out three new bots this weekend, each mimicking a different character from HBOs Silicon Valley.

That means you can finally get advice from top-notch investors and entrepreneurs like Russ Three Commas Hanneman or Erlich Bachman, the coattail-riding co-founder of the shows main startup, Pied Piper.

Luka built the bots by analyzing all of the characters lines from the first two seasons of the show, said Luka CEO Eugenia Kuyda. The language is then dumped into a neural network dialogue model that learns the characters language patterns.

In other words, the bots are meant to feel like real people. They arent limited to a dozen canned responses, but can actually say things the character might say in any given situation, even if theyve never said that sentence or phrase before. At least thats the idea.

It sorta works, too. When I asked Bachman for a pizza recommendation this weekend, he replied, I dont give a f*ck, man. Go ask Yelp. Sounds about right!

Luka

The bots are a well-timed gimmick Silicon Valleys season 3 premiere airs on HBO tonight but the idea and the tech behind them are worth taking more seriously than Bachmans trash talk. Thats because Luka (and presumably other bot makers) want to make bots that mimic real-life people, not just fictitious television characters.

Imagine a bot that can pick up your conversational habits and personality and then talk to someone else on your behalf. Luka built these Silicon Valley bots on a relatively small amount of conversational data. In Hannemans, case it was just over 1,000 lines of text.

Think about those who tweet, speak and write every day, Kuyda wrote on Lukas blog. Their AIs will be significantly more powerful.

So watch out. Your bot is coming to replace you.

If you want to chat with the Silicon Valley characters, you can download Luka from the App Store for free and test them out for yourself.

  • Contact Kurt Wagner:
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Source: http://recode.net/2016/04/24/silicon-valley-hbo-chatbots-for-season-3-premier/

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