The Ritz-Carlton is proud to announce it has been named the top luxury brand by the J.D. Power 2022 North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index Study for a second consecutive year, representing the highest guest satisfaction rating among travelers in the study’s luxury segment. The Ritz-Carlton has achieved first place for 7 out of the last 8 years.
“We are thrilled to once again receive this coveted recognition, which shows that through continued innovation and exceptional service we are delivering a memorable experience and exceeding the expectations of our guests,” said Donna McNamara, Vice President and Global Brand Leader for The Ritz-Carlton. “This achievement is also a reflection of the hard work and genuine care provided by our Ladies and Gentlemen at our hotels around the world, as their commitment to our guests is at the heart of every stay.”
The North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index (NAGSI) Study, now in its 26th year, measures customer satisfaction from approximately 34,000 hotel guests for stays in North America between May 2020 and May 2021. J.D. Power is a global leader in consumer insights, advisory services and data and analytics, and has delivered incisive industry intelligence on customer interactions with brands and products for more than 50 years.
(From left to right) Yimenu Weldeyes Adefris, technical support assistant with the LGEME Gulf SVC Team and Ryu Kwang-jin, Master of LGEME Tech Support & Training Team
As a young boy growing up in Ethiopia, Yimenu Weldeyes Adefris always knew he wanted a career in technology. But with fierce competition and limited local opportunities to gain the required skills and knowledge, it seemed highly likely that he may never get the chance.
LG-KOICA Hope TVET College, located in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, was co-founded by LG Electronics and the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) to help give passionate and capable young Ethiopians, like Yimenu, the tools needed to succeed in the tech industry. A graduate of the school, Yimenu now works as a full-time technical support assistant with LG Electronics Middle East (LGEME).
Not only was he top of his class at LG-KOICA Hope TVET College for three consecutive years, Yimenu was also recognized by the school’s faculty as an “excellent student.” After completing his studies in 2018, he worked for two years as an intern at LGEME, earning selection to his current role of technical support assistant in 2020.
“I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to attend LG-KOICA Hope TVET College and for the ongoing career opportunities and professional growth I’ve enjoyed since joining LG,” he remarked. “I thank the college and the company for helping to make my childhood dream a reality.”
“I applied to LG-KOICA Hope TVET College at my mother’s recommendation,” he continued. “At first, studying was very difficult because there was so much to take in and I was also working part-time,” he added. “But, the guidance I received from the instructors and advisors there really helped me to push through, giving me the confidence and the foundation of knowledge I needed to succeed professionally.”
In addition to offering vocational training covering the repair and servicing of various electronics products, including home appliances, the college also offers comprehensive courses in information and communication technologies. Graduates of LG-KOICA have earned a reputation for being workforce-ready and for being innovative thinkers: a sought-after trait that LG actively fosters in all of its employees – and students – worldwide.
Although he learned much from and admired all of his instructors at the school, Yimenu formed a special bond with LG master technician, Ryu Kwang-jin. “Mr. Ryu definitely increased my passion for and understanding of technology and continues to be a role model and mentor for me,” Yimenu noted. “It’s because of him that I strive every day to become a better technician. One day, I hope to become a master technician, just like Mr. Ryu.”
Yimenu gives much of the credit for being the top performer in his class to Ryu. Inspired by his mentor, he spent much of his time outside the classroom applying his growing skill-base at home. The budding technician dismantled (and put back together) the family TV, doing the same with his mother’s mobile phone and various other devices around the house. Seeing the young man’s enthusiasm and aptitude for technology, Ryu recommended Yimenu take advanced courses to help him accelerate and expand his competencies. Today, having learned how to repair practically every LG home appliance and B2B product, he is currently in charge of technical support for 12 countries, including the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar.
To further his understanding of LG’s latest technical services and support processes, Yimenu recently traveled to South Korea to visit the company’s home base. There, he was reunited with his teacher and mentor.
“He is full of passion for technology,” said Ryu, recalling Yimenu as a shy but spirited student. “I wanted to help him fulfill his enormous potential and make his dreams come true. I believe he can become a great LG master technician. I am very proud to have taught him, but even more so to see his continued growth, both professionally and personally.”
For Ethiopian youngsters who dream of following in his footsteps and carving out a successful career in their chosen field, Yimenu has some advice of his own to impart: “Keep challenging yourselves to become better people, pursue your dreams and listen to those with the experience and wisdom to help guide you. When you work hard and believe, anything is possible.”
A case study demonstrates how eBay’s Notification Engineering team optimizes a streaming system in a microservice architecture to support high-throughput broadcast notifications.
Streaming systems in event-driven microservice architecture are often compared with distributed data processing frameworks, such as Flink and Spark etc., in terms of technical design choices. At eBay, we have built a high-throughput event streaming platform in microservices architecture where eBay’s partners can subscribe to eBay’s business events such as product feeds updates, bid status changes and item shipment information, and receive push notifications in real time. Here’s a high-level illustration of the data flow:
Figure 1: The high level data flow of the business event streaming
The external event subscriber creates the notification subscription through the eBay Notification Public API.
The subscription is saved as part of the notification configuration metadata.
The event producer publishes the event through RESTful API or message queue.
The raw event is delivered to the event streaming platform.
The event streaming platform resolves the subscriptions from the metadata store and performs complex event processing.
The event is delivered to the event subscriber via HTTP push.
Broadcast notification was a significant, though not the only, challenge during this project. The domain team requires our event streaming platform to push broadcast notifications to 20,000 subscribers in real time. For unicast notification, we can fetch the subscription from the database, process the notification and dispatch it to the recipient. However, for broadcast notification, loading all 20,000 subscriptions from the database and processing them is a time-consuming task which also blocks the event processing thread until it finishes, thus increasing the overall latency. This approach is not nearly optimal, so we decided to rethink it.
One option we considered is to offload the long-running task to a distributed stream/batch processing system such as Flink or Spark. There are a couple of considerations in this option:
The kind of event processing we’re handling is not stateful computation; it mainly involves enriching the raw event with several blocking-service calls.
The microservice architecture ecosystem in eBay is mature and comprehensive. It covers everything from integration with internal services to development lifecycle management (a mature CI/CD pipeline, managed application framework upgrade, reliable alerting and monitoring platform, etc.).
Adopting such streaming systems is suboptimal and unconvincing for this case, though we do use Flink in our analytics, and also means giving up all the conveniences brought by the ecosystem. Furthermore, the problem we’re facing now is not microservice architecture specific: Even if we adopted another streaming system, the scale of the problem would not change — we still need to think about the decomposition and optimization of a long-running task.
Reconstructable Data Partitioning Strategy
Instead of trying to fetch the subscriptions all at once, let’s consider breaking down this long-running task into subtasks. Each task can only fetch a subset of the subscriptions, with all the subtasks together encompassing the entire subscription dataset. Various strategies exist for the dataset partitioning, such as by the hashing of some data fields, or by pagination. But these options are not efficient for reconstruction. For example, to reconstruct the data at page index 200, we need to sort the entire dataset and iterate until the 200th page is reached. (This is the behavior for our database, though it may vary across database implementations.) We’re seeking a way to partition the dataset that can efficiently reconstruct the partition for the purpose of task distribution and reprocessing (more about this in later sections).
The subscription is created with an UTC timestamp, which is chronologically ordered and indexed (time series data). It is a good candidate for the partition criteria, because it does not change once created. Supposing the subscription dataset S has n subscriptions in total, each is created at timestamp ti, where i is the i-th subscription created for this topic. If we sort all the subscriptions in chronological order and group the subscription at a window size of m, we can get a matrix of subscriptions where each row is a subscription group:
We can also derive an immutable time windowWk composed by the first timestamp and last timestamp from the subscription group:
Based on this partition strategy, the process of sending a broadcast notification at scale can be broken down into two phases:
Splitting the broadcast task into subtasks which each contains a corresponding time window.
Processing the subtasks concurrently.
This seems to be a step forward: Fetching the time window is a much more lightweight task than fetching all the subscriptions, and the subtasks can now be processed concurrently.
Boost Query Performance via Materialized View
Even though the query for generating the time window is faster than fetching all the data, it still takes linear time proportional to the number of the subscriptions. Generating all the time windows for 20,000 subscriptions is still quite time-consuming. If we have an even larger number of subscriptions, it will take more iterations from application to the database to obtain the complete list of time windows, and eventually this will become the next slow query. Given the property of the createdAt timestamp is immutable and monotonically increasing, then with a constant window size, the historical time windows should always be the same. We only need to care about updating the last time window when new subscriptions are created. We can create a materialized view containing all the time windows which is refreshed on new subscription creation. So instead of generating the time windows on demand, we can directly fetch the already-generated time windows from the view and this takes a constant time.
Figure 2: Fetching time windows from a materialized view.
In the above illustration:
The subscription table insertions will trigger a refresh on the materialized view. (You can actually only refresh the last row if you implement this through a table.)
The event processor directly fetches the time windows from the view.
The materialized view we’re talking about here does not rely on a specific database implementation; if a given database does not support it, it can be simulated by using a database table or a distributed in-memory data grid. (In such cases, you need to handle the refresh on your own.)
Reactive Event Processing Pipeline
After breaking down the long-running broadcast task into many subtasks, we are able to process these subtasks in parallel. However, a typical event processing pipeline is usually composed of multiple processing stages. This usually involves orchestrating multiple processing units to form a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph), and controlling concurrency levels in each processing unit. This is admittedly difficult and performance optimization is particularly tricky. We have tried to build the entire pipeline using Java Concurrency API and Reactive Streams API, and we chose Reactive Streams. The goal we’re trying to achieve here is to build an asynchronous, non-blocking event processing pipeline that can maximize the event processing performance. The Reactive Streams implementation offers a rich set of operators and supports operations such as asynchronous parallel transformation, stream fan-in and fan-out, grouping, windowing, buffering and more, which laid the foundation for our parallel processing pipelines. Combined with a reactive message queue client, we can build an end-to-end reactive pipeline with built-in flow control based on backpressure.
Figure 3: A end-to-end reactive event processing pipeline.
The above illustration depicts an end-to-end reactive pipeline:
The pipeline ingests the inbound events through a reactive data connector with built-in backpressure.
Inside the pipeline, parallel transformation, buffering, non-blocking service calls and more are composed together with Reactive Streams operators.
The processed events flow into the downstream message queue using the same reactive data connector.
Distributed Event Processing
Now we have built a reactive event-processing pipeline which processes the broadcast notification subtasks in parallel. However, even with a window size of 200, 20,000 subscriptions can end up with 200 subtasks. The parallelism of a thread pool is limited by the number of CPU cores, and so an oversizing thread pool can diminish the marginal benefits. The ideal solution is to distribute these subtasks over to the cluster and utilize the cluster’s computing capabilities. The broadcast subtask is a simple fire-and-forget style processing, so we can leverage a message queue for the task distribution.
Figure 4. Task distribution via message queue
The distributed event processing steps are as follows:
An event processor instance receives raw events from the upstream message queue.
The event processor instance queries the materialized view for all the subscriptions partitions (time windows).
The event processor instance generates subtasks for each time window and sends them to the message queue transactionally.
The instances of the cluster receive the tasks with partition information (time window) inside.
The consumer of the subtask fetches the subscriptions within the time window.
The consumer of the subtask fans out the notifications for each subscription.
After this optimization, when receiving a broadcast notification from upstream, the event processor only needs to:
Split the task into subtasks.
Submit the subtasks to the task queue.
Acknowledge back to the message broker.
After this optimization, the message consumption timeout issue has gone. This optimization also confirms the value of a reconstructable partitioning strategy.
Caching with Task Affinity
The performance and reliability of our event processing pipeline can be severely negatively impacted by the latency of external service calls and database queries. The subscription data and most of the configuration metadata, once created, don’t change often. Ideally, we can cache them as much as possible, to reduce the amount of external calls. The round-robin method of task assignment loses the data affinity; We can use a customized task assignment strategy to always bind a specific subtask (immutable time window) to a partition index. As a result, the event processor instance, which is also assigned to a specific partition, always processes the subscriptions from certain time windows. This creates the opportunity to cache the result of external calls inside the instance local memory, due to the limited data size, below is a illustration of task distribution:
Figure 5. Task distribution with partition affinity
The event processor instance receives the broadcast task and splits it into a subtask list with indexes.
Each task is sent to the partition with an index of task_index % partition_count.
Each event processor instance is assigned to a specific partition, only receiving a certain list of subtasks.
In a parallelized event processing pipeline, operators running in parallel may access the cache at the same time, before the key-value mapping even exists and may direct all traffic from the read-through cache to the backend services – the cache stampede. There are various ways to solve this, such as prefilling the cache or locking at the application layer. We can implement this by ourselves or using Caffeine’s AsyncCache: the first request of a key builds a mapping with a CompletableFuture as the value, which will asynchronously block the read until the CompletableFuture completes.
After all of the above optimizations, we solved the challenge of broadcasting notifications. We also ended up with a scalable, near-optimal (most computations are cached) event streaming platform that still leverages eBay’s microservices ecosystem.
Conclusion
In this article, we have walked through various optimizations applied to the event streaming platform to support large-scale, real-time broadcast push notification. The techniques we talked about in this article also apply to long-running task optimization in microservice architecture. Our experience demonstrated that building stream processing systems on top of a microservices architecture can benefit from the rich and mature ecosystem while achieving high performance.
References
Wampler, Dean. n.d. “Fast Data Architectures for Streaming Applications,” 58.
Kleppmann, Martin. n.d. “Making Sense of Stream Processing,” 183.
Woodcliff Lake, NJ Woodcliff Lake, N.J. – July 15, 2022 . . . Connor De Phillippi qualified the No. 25 BMW M Team RLL BMW M4 GT3 third in the GTD PRO class but following a failure of post-qualifying technical inspection will start at the rear of the 15-car GT class field in tomorrow’s two-hour-and-forty-minute Northeast Grand Prix. De Phillippi posted a 51.227- minute lap around the 1.5-mile, 7-turn Lime Rock Park circuit, only .148 seconds behind the pole-sitting No. 9 Porsche 911 GT3R. The BMW was moved to the rear of the field for failing to meet the minimum ride height. De Phillippi will co-drive with John Edwards tomorrow. The pair stands sixth in GTD PRO class driver point standings with a season’s-best third place finish at Laguna Seca earlier this year.
In the GTD class, Robby Foley posted the fourth fastest time with a 51.490- minute lap. He will co-drive the No. 96 Turner Motorsport BMW M4 GT3 tomorrow with Bill Auberlen. The No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3, of Bryan Sellers and Madison Snow, will start seventh, following Snow’s 51.651-minute qualifying lap. Sellers and Snow lead the GTD class Sprint Cup Championship points standings. Auberlen and Foley stand fourth in Sprint Cup points.
Connor De Phillippi – BMW M Team RLL, No. 25 MOTUL BMW M4 GT3 (P3): “We made a few improvements in the second practice session and squeezed as much as we could from our qualifying package. Success tomorrow will be a result of clever strategy and quick out laps after each pit stop.”
The two-hour-and-forty-minute FCP Euro Northeast Grand Prix takes the green flag at 3:05 p.m. tomorrow and will be broadcast on USA beginning at 5 p.m. ET. IMSA Radio also provides a flag-to-flag broadcast.
BMW Group in America BMW of North America, LLC has been present in the United States since 1975. Rolls-Royce Motor Cars NA, LLC began distributing vehicles in 2003. The BMW Group in the United States has grown to include marketing, sales, and financial service organizations for the BMW brand of motor vehicles, including motorcycles, the MINI brand, and Rolls-Royce Motor Cars; Designworks, a strategic design consultancy based in California; a technology office in Silicon Valley and various other operations throughout the country. BMW Manufacturing Co., LLC in South Carolina is the BMW Group global center of competence for BMW X models and manufactures the X3, X4, X5, X6 and X7 Sports Activity Vehicles. The BMW Group sales organization is represented in the U.S. through networks of 350 BMW passenger car and BMW Sports Activity Vehicle centers,146 BMW motorcycle retailers, 105 MINI passenger car dealers, and 38 Rolls-Royce Motor Car dealers. BMW (US) Holding Corp., the BMW Group’s sales headquarters for North America, is located in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey.
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing BMW’s partner, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, based in Indianapolis, Indiana and co-owned by three-time INDYCAR Champion and 1986 Indianapolis 500 winner Bobby Rahal, former CBS Late Show host David Letterman and Mi-Jack co-owner Mike Lanigan, has been competing for over three decades. Prior to the start of their 31st season of competition in 2022, the team had compiled 54 victories, 66 poles, 222 podium finishes, three series championships (1992, 2010, 2011), claimed two Indianapolis 500 victories (Buddy Rice in 2004, Takuma Sato in 2020) and two Rolex 24 at Daytona victories. In 2009 the team joined BMW of North America to campaign the new BMW M3 in the American Le Mans Series. The following year the team won both the Manufacturer and Team Championships in the GT category and swept all three GT titles – Manufacturer, Team, and Driver – in 2011. In 2012, the team finished second in the Team Championship and third in the Manufacturer Championship and in 2013, the team finished second in the Driver, Team, and Manufacturer Championship. From 2014 to 2021, BMW Team RLL competed in the GTLM class of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship with a two-car program and brought their total to 22 wins – including the 2019 and 2020 Rolex 24 at Daytona endurance races, 28 poles and 94 podium finishes prior to the start of the 2022 season. The team earned second-place finishes in the Manufacturer, Team, and Driver championships in 2015 and 2017 and were the 2020 Michelin North American Endurance Champions. For 2022, BMW M Team RLL will compete in the GTD Pro class while simultaneously ramping up for a two-car program in the much-anticipated GTP class of IMSA for 2023.
A year after the devastating flood, the Ahr valley region in Germany still resembles a construction site and claims settlements in some cases are still being resolved. Allianz’s Versicherungs AG Board Member Jochen Haug explains why this is the case and why he sees “light at the end of the tunnel.”
the low-pressure weather system Bernd devastated parts of Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands, causing an unprecedented catastrophe that claimed the lives of more than 180 people. Particularly affected was the Ahr valley in Western Germany, with entire villages destroyed by the flood.
A year later, the region still resembles a construction site and claims settlements in some cases are still being resolved. Allianz Versicherungs AG’s Board Member Jochen Haug explains why this is the case and why he still sees “light at the end of the tunnel.”
Mr Haug, looking back now, a year on from these events, what is your first thought?
The scale of the disaster was extreme and not comparable to other serious events we have seen here in recent years. I was particularly affected by the immense human tragedy that came from the disaster. You only really realize what that means when you are on site. I had spoken to many customers and there were many who had lost family members, friends, or neighbors. Our local representatives were also severely affected, with their families, houses or agencies caught up in the flooding. The stories heard from people who experienced this night and the following days will not be forgotten.
But what also impressed me very much was the great generosity. Whether it was tidying up, furnishing emergency kitchens, or making monetary or in-kind donations, the response was incredible.
What were the challenges in settling claims?
Immediately after the disaster, we had to think in a completely new way: in the Ahr valley, the infrastructure was destroyed, entire areas were cut off, with no phone or internet connection. How can we reach our customers and representatives? Who is affected and how? What is needed urgently? That was a completely new situation for us.
The very next day, we pulled together our claims adjusters from all over Germany and sent them to the affected regions. It was clear to us that we had to prioritize. A flooded cellar is a nuisance for the customer and here too a quick and uncomplicated claims settlement was important. But others were left with nothing. Either their houses were badly damaged or no longer standing at all. So we initiated an immediate payment of up to 10,000 euros for a claim report from severely affected customers – without any proof having to be submitted. …we initiated an immediate payment of up to 10,000 euros for a claim report from severely affected customers – without any proof having to be submitted.
The essentials could be bought and a hotel room or a holiday apartment could be rented. In addition, our representatives pointed out that everything was wet and there was no electricity. With the help of our Allianz Handwerkerservice (handyman service; English), we bought around 2,000 drying machines and more than 100 generator sets and transported them to our customers in the region. Our local representatives organized the distribution because they knew where the equipment was urgently needed.
It sounds like everything was perfectly planned.
Of course, we are prepared for severe natural disasters. But Bernd posed special challenges and showed us where we needed to change or adapt our processes. In order to make quick decisions, we set up a cross-functional crisis unit. For example, the decision to purchase emergency power generators and drying equipment could be made without large coordination loops. Our representatives on-site recorded the damage to the customers.
But how do we ensure that these reports and the information on what is most urgently needed get to Allianz and the crisis unit on time? Again, this was a situation haven’t experienced before.
Office employees drove or ran to the villages to pick up the documents because sometimes the places were not yet accessible by car. It was an extreme situation. All of this was, on an emotional level, enormously stressful for everyone on-site. That’s why we set up a psychological support hotline that gave our customers, employees, and representatives a space to talk about their experiences.
A year has passed since; have all related claims been completed in the meantime?
Motor vehicle and household contents damage are almost completely closed and, in the case of building damage, more than 80 percent of claims have been completed. With the missing almost 20 percent, we are on the right track and assume that the essential restoration and housing of the buildings will be carried out by the end of the year.
Here, one must not forget that a destroyed or washed away vehicle or household items can be easily paid out as a total loss. With a damaged or destroyed building, the situation is different. Should and may it be rebuilt in the same place? When is the building permit available? Electricity and water connections as well as the public infrastructure must first be restored before further steps can be planned. A complete drying of a building takes months, provided there is electricity and a drying device. Many craftsmen in the region were affected themselves and order books were oftentimes full.
With the help of Allianz Handwerkerservice we were also able to provide support from other regions of Germany and the necessary material must also be available and accessible. But, as one customer we spoke with in a video report (see above) said: “You see a light at the end of the tunnel.”
Canon Inc. announced today the launch, in markets outside of Japan1, of the CXDI-Elite series of wireless digital radiography (DR2) devices, including the CXDI-720C Wireless sensor unit.
The CXDI-Elite sensor unit CXDI-720C Wireless (left: front / right: rear)
Example of the device in use
In recent years, there has been growing need for DR devices that provide both ease-of-use in a variety of imaging scenarios as well as higher image quality to support greater diagnostic accuracy. In addition, as such technology continues to evolve, there is a concerted effort to minimize patients’ radiation dosage.
With the aim of meeting such needs for a wide range of customers, Canon has launched two new series of devices under its CXDI brand of DR devices—the CXDI-Pro series, which features enhanced basic functionality and ease-of-use, and the CXDI-Elite series that provides even greater performance and functionality. The new half-cassette size CXDI-720C Wireless unit realizes superb basic functionality while delivering both high sensitivity and high image quality, as well as built-in support for X-ray dosage control, assisting medical professionals in their diagnostic work.
The CXDI-Elite series is Canon’s first digital X-ray imaging system to utilize Built-in AEC Assistance3 technology designed for general X-ray imaging. With this proprietary technology, the device’s X-ray image sensor uses identical elements that are simultaneously capable of performing either image generation or real-time detection of the pixel value corresponding to emitted X-rays, notifying the X-ray generator when pixel value reaches a preset value. By providing such feedback, the technology helps enable greater control over X-ray dosage.
The new series also utilizes Canon’s Intelligent NR4 image processing technology, which decreases signal noise compared with conventional processing technologies, reducing unnecessary noise and graininess while maintaining the level of signal strength required for imaging.
4CXDI Control Software (version 3.10 and later) available as an optional purchase. Intelligent NR uses AI technology at the design stage of signal noise reduction processing. The product itself does not learn with AI from acquired images. For more information, please refer to the press release from March 23, 2022.
Tudum is back! The global virtual event that garnered over 25 million views from Netflix fans in 184 countries around the world last year is returning Saturday, September 24 with five global events in 24 hours.
WHAT: Tune in for an exciting day of exclusive news, never-before-seen footage, trailers, and first looks, as well as interviews with Netflix’s biggest stars and creators. The free virtual event is a celebration of Netflix fandom and is dedicated to sharing the scoop on over 100 fan favorite shows, films and specials from across the globe.
WHEN: On September 24, Tudum will span four continents with five events, taking fans on a whirlwind trip around the world:
At 11:00 am KST (7:00 pm PT September 23), Tudum kicks off with an exciting show out of Korea.
At 11:00 am IST (10:30 pm PT September 23), fans will be treated to a fun look at what’s ahead from India.
At 10:00 am PT, fans will get exclusive news from our shows, movies and games coming out of the United States and Europe, as well as an additional event which previews the great entertainment coming from Latin America.
At 1:00 pm JST September 25 (9:00 pm PT September 24), our stars from Japan will close out Tudum with a celebration of our Japanese entertainment.
WHERE: Tudum: A Netflix Global Fan Event will be available across Netflix YouTube channels in a number of different languages. Visit Netflix’s official fan site, Tudum.com/event, for the latest news from this global fan event, and stay tuned for details about our title and celebrity lineup in early September. Mark your calendars now for September 24!
Today, at the Zwickau vehicle plant, Volkswagen commissioned the first fast-charging park in Saxony, which is supplied with energy largely from a so-called power storage container (PSC). The PSC is a type of enormous electricity storage unit and consists of 96 cell modules with a net capacity of 570 kWh. The advantage is that fast-charging infrastructure can be built nearly anywhere, even if in places with a low-capacity grid connection. Residential areas are one example of where this could be used. Additionally, this solution is sustainable: all cell modules in the PSC were formerly installed as batteries in pre-production models of the ID.302 and ID.403 and have now been given a second purpose. With the pilot project, Volkswagen Sachsen is putting its technology expertise on display, which goes beyond the manufacturing of its six all-electric vehicles. Two other central German companies – AW Automotive and Automotive Research – were involved in the realization of the project.
Karen Kutzner, managing director for finance and controlling at Volkswagen Sachsen: “Reusing batteries is important for the future and it’s closely linked to the acceleration in the trend toward electric mobility. With the power storage container, Volkswagen Sachsen is demonstrating a practical, cost-effective and useful case to enable cell modules at the end of their service lives to have a second life. This automotive power bank could be used wherever the capacity of the grid connection is too low but there is demand for powerful charging infrastructure. Innovative ideas like this could provide renewed impetus for the critical buildup of fast-charging infrastructure.”
As a large battery storage unit, the PSC offers a cost-effective alternative to a transformer station. It enables large quantities of energy to be provided in a short time without overburdening the electricity grid. Another advantage is that the temporary storage of energy allows for high basic costs that would otherwise be incurred during standby operation, even when no vehicles are charging, to be avoided. The automotive power bank could therefore enable HPC infrastructure to be built in the future where previously only AC charging at a maximum of 11 kW has been possible, for instance in residential areas. For fast-charging parks with high-power chargers (HPCs), transformer stations are normally installed with a connection to a powerful medium-voltage grid that operate 24 hours a day and require a significant initial investment. This is accompanied by an average charging time of only a few hours per day.
The charging park at the west gate of the Zwickau plant is made up of four charging stations, each with an output of 150 kW, which can also be divided into two outputs of 75 kW. This means that up to eight vehicles can charge at the same time. The electricity comes from the adjacent photovoltaic installation, among other sources. Because Volkswagen Sachsen has been purchasing green electricity since 2017, all vehicles are therefore charged with 100% renewable energy. Three fast-charging parks will be in operation on the plant grounds by the end of the year.
Audi – early adopter
For the PSC, Volkswagen Sachsen is relying on a solution that Audi already successfully used as part of the Audi charging hub in the urban area in Nuremberg. The container cubes consist of used lithium-ion batteries from disassembled Audi test vehicles that are used as buffer storage for direct-current (DC) electricity.
A limited-edition lineup of mysteriously flavored Fanta beverages will leave fans asking, “What the Fanta?! (WTF)”.
Radiating in gleaming colors of blue, green, peach and orange, the beverages were formulated to fool senses and challenge tastebuds with opposite flavor notes. Different flavors will be available in different formats across retail and restaurant channels—including 20-oz. bottles, Coca-Cola Freestyle fountain dispensers and frozen formulations.
The “What the Fanta” campaign is anchored by the mystery “Blue” zero-sugar flavor in 20-oz. bottles, which will be available through February 2023. Others will only be available through August, and more enigmatic flavors will roll out in retail stores and restaurants over the coming months.
“Teens today are always looking for new experiences to engage in with their friends, but we know that they haven’t found much worth sharing about when it comes to soft drinks at convenience stores,” says Dane Callis, Senior Brand Manager, Fanta North America. “With ‘What the Fanta’, we’ve created a campaign that not only gives our fans new bold flavors to try—we’ve given them an opportunity to share in the fun and engage with each other across the country in a nationwide guessing game.”
Fanta is encouraging fans to join the conversation and guess the flavors by using #WhatTheFanta on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and other social media channels. The brand will reveal the mysterious flavors in fun, to-be-determined ways.
We are excited to announce a new exclusive content partnership with the PGA TOUR, DP World Tour and The R&A, organisers of The Open Championship, set to bring world-leading and inspiring golf content to the TikTok community.
This summer, these three organizations will be joining forces to help grow the game and bring it to new and diverse audiences. As part of the tie-up, fans can expect a wealth of content featuring some of its biggest stars, including behind-the-scenes clips and top tips from players.
With the Genesis Scottish Open co-sanctioned by the PGA TOUR and DP World Tour, followed by the 150(th) Open Championship, we have what promises to be a memorable fortnight in golf ahead of us. The TikTok community can share their excitement by joining in with a bespoke Hashtag Challenge from 6-15 July, which invites them to show how they are embracing golf this summer.
TikTok is already home to a burgeoning community of golf fans and players, from amateurs showing us their best putting skills all the way through to newly-crowned U.S. Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick (@mattfitz94) taking us along on his historic journey.
Golf-related content is also seeing a surge in popularity on TikTok, with the #Golf hashtag racking up an impressive 27 billion views to-date. Whether it’s swing tutorials or highlights from the world’s top players, TikTok is helping to showcase the very best of the sport across all levels.
Sanjit Sarkar, Strategic Partner Manager at TikTok said: “This partnership will give golf fans unique access to the game’s most iconic players and tournaments, while enabling the PGA TOUR, DP World Tour and Open Championships to grow and reach new audiences. It’s amazing to see how golf is taking off on TikTok and we want to keep bringing our community the best content from the sport they love. We can’t wait to see the creative ways people get involved in an exciting summer of golf.”
Ed Jones, Marketing & Communications Director (EMEA) at the PGA TOUR said: “We’re excited to launch #golf with TikTok alongside the DP World Tour and The Open ahead of what promises to be a memorable fortnight in golf. We want to see as many people as possible sharing their passion for the game and how they are getting involved, whether at home, at the driving range or out on the course. The campaign represents a fun and accessible platform to engage our fans, old and new.”
Will Pearson, Head of Content at the DP World Tour, said: “Between the historic co-sanctioned Genesis Scottish Open and The 150(th) Open Championship, this is a massive two weeks in golf and we are thrilled to be partnering with TikTok, the PGA TOUR and the R&A on the #golf campaign. TikTok has been a brilliant platform for us to reach a younger, broader audience and this collaboration enables us to continue that work.”
Want to get in on the action on the green? Check out these top golf accounts and creators to follow:
PGA TOUR (@pgatour): The official account of the PGA TOUR
DP World Tour (@dpworldtour): The official account of the DP World Tour
The Open (@theopen): The official account of The Open
PGA TOUR Champions (@PGAtourchampions): The official account of the PGA TOUR Champions
Matt Fitzpatrick (@Mattfitz94): Professional golfer and US Open Champion
Manolo (@Manoloteachesgolf): Golf instructor, helping our community advance their golfing skills
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