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By DEVNA BOSE and JOHN SEEWER “Wanted” posters with the names and faces of health care executives have been popping up on the streets of New York. Hit lists with images of bullets are circulating online with warnings that industry leaders should be afraid. Related Articles National News | How to protect your communications through encryption National News | Military service academies see drop in reported sexual assaults after alarming surge National News | Unidentified drones spotted flying at locations across NYC, including LaGuardia Airport National News | About 2.6 million Stanley cups recalled after malfunctions caused burns. Is your mug included? National News | Woman who falsely accused Duke lacrosse players of rape in 2006 publicly admits she lied The apparent targeted killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the menacing threats that followed have sent a shudder through corporate America and the health care industry in particular, leading to increased security for executives and some workers. In the week since the brazen shooting , health insurers have removed information about their top executives from company websites, canceled in-person meetings with shareholders and advised all employees to work from home temporarily. An internal New York Police Department bulletin warned this week that the online vitriol that followed the shooting could signal an immediate “elevated threat.” Police fear that the Dec. 4 shooting could “inspire a variety of extremists and grievance-driven malicious actors to violence,” according to the bulletin, which was obtained by The Associated Press. “Wanted” posters pasted to parking meters and construction site fences in Manhattan included photos of health care executives and the words “Deny, defend, depose” — similar to a phrase scrawled on bullets found near Thompson’s body and echoing those used by insurance industry critics . Thompson’s wife, Paulette, told NBC News last week that he told her some people had been threatening him and suggested the threats may have involved issues with insurance coverage. Investigators believe the shooting suspect, Luigi Mangione , may have been motivated by hostility toward health insurers. They are studying his writings about a previous back injury, and his disdain for corporate America and the U.S. health care system. Mangione’s lawyer has cautioned against prejudging the case. Mangione, 26, has remained jailed in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested Monday . Manhattan prosecutors are working to bring him to New York to face a murder charge. UnitedHealthcare’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group, said this week it was working with law enforcement to ensure a safe work environment and to reinforce security guidelines and building access policies, a spokesperson said. The company has taken down photos, names and biographies for its top executives from its websites, a spokesperson said. Other organizations, including CVS, the parent company for insurance giant Aetna, have taken similar actions. Government health insurance provider Centene Corp. has announced that its investor day will be held online, rather than in-person as originally planned. Medica, a Minnesota-based nonprofit health care firm, said last week it was temporarily closing its six offices for security reasons and would have its employees work from home. Heightened security measures likely will make health care companies and their leaders more inaccessible to their policyholders, said former Cigna executive Wendell Potter. “And understandably so, with this act of violence. There’s no assurance that this won’t happen again,” said Potter, who’s now an advocate for health care reform. Private security firms and consultants have been in high demand, fielding calls almost immediately after the shooting from companies across a range of industries, including manufacturing and finance. Companies have long faced security risks and grappled with how far to take precautions for high-profile executives. But these recent threats sparked by Thompson’s killing should not be ignored, said Dave Komendat, a former security chief for Boeing who now heads his own risk-management company. “The tone and tenor is different. The social reaction to this tragedy is different. And so I think that people need to take this seriously,” Komendat said. Just over a quarter of the companies in the Fortune 500 reported spending money to protect their CEOs and top executives. Of those, the median payment for personal security doubled over the last three years to just under $100,000. Hours after the shooting, Komendat was on a call with dozens of chief security officers from big corporations, and there have been many similar meetings since, hosted by security groups or law enforcement agencies assessing the threats, he said. “It just takes one person who is motivated by a poster — who may have experienced something in their life through one of these companies that was harmful,” Komendat said. Associated Press reporters Wyatte Grantham-Philips in New York and Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco, contributed to this report.
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Cybertruck Values Have Cratered And Are Still DroppingSimple Hack May Help Your Christmas Decorations Survive Holidays Do you love decorating for Christmas? Do you love putting your Christmas tree up as the centerpiece of your Holiday decorations? Do you have pets? Do your pets go after your Christmas tree decorations? Especially if you have a cat this can be a tough time of year because cats love to play with Christmas trees and the Christmas decor. So I stumbled across this simple "life hack" that you can do with little work or expense that may just save those special Christmas ornaments from being a cat play toy this winter. According to an article from Hometalk.com , this simple "Holiday Hack" can help you keep cats from swiping your Christmas ornaments off your Christmas tree. So here is what you can do. Holiday Hack Cats love to go after your tree but you can outsmart them using a simple home remedy like "Vicks". Cats dislike strong aromas like menthol (Vicks) and citrus. So having just a little Vicks near your ornaments may deter them from going after the ornaments. First, get a pack of the little felt chair leg pads. The small felt circles with a sticky side on the back. Rub "Vicks" or use an essential oil (Menthol or Citrus) on the felt. Stick the pack on the back or bottom of your Christmas ornaments. Now the ornaments have this scent when your kitty goes near your tree. See how this hack works for you. The smell of Vicks in winter is actually very nice. Let us know if you tried this holiday hack and if it worked for you. Merry Christmas. LOOK: 25 over-the-top Christmas displays from across America To help get everyone in the mood for the upcoming holiday season, Stacker compiled a list of some of the most over-the-top Christmas displays across America. Gallery Credit: Annalise Mantz & Madison Troyer LOOK: Holiday gift crazes and fads of the past century Stacker compiled a list of toy crazes from the past 100 years. Gallery Credit: Jennnifer Billock
I don’t imagine many people would contradict me if I said that Halcro’s Eclipse power amplifier – in either its or stereo version – is the most immediately recognisable amplifier in the world. It is so recognisable that in a pitch-black room it can quickly and easily be identified by touch alone. The Halcro Eclipse is also – albeit this time arguably – the most beautiful amplifier in the world, which is undoubtedly one of the reasons it has featured on the front covers of so many hi-fi magazines around the world, including here in Australia. The story behind the amplifier’s design is also one of the most interesting and unusual in audio. The intellect behind Halcro’s creation, and indeed the brand’s name, was South African physicist and engineer Dr Bruce Halcro Candy (you can see why he used his middle name!), who after founding the company and becoming world-famous for the very first amplifier he built (the Halcro dm58) was then head-hunted by Minelab, famous for its hand-held metal detectors, after which the company languished as no more than a listing in the Australian government’s official register of company names. It languished on that list until one sunny Saturday morning, when Lance Hewitt, who had been Candy’s lead engineer, was adding to his collection of vinyl at a South Australian record store. The store’s owner, who knew that Hewitt had formerly worked for Halcro, introduced him to Mike Kirkham of Magenta Audio, an Australian audio equipment importer, retailer and distributor who also happened to be at the record store buying vinyl that very same morning. Hewitt told Kirkham not only that he had been personally responsible for building and testing Halcro amplifiers but also that he happened to know that all of the circuit diagrams, PCBs and tooling required to build them were gathering dust in a storage facility – indeed, one not far from where they were chatting. The result of this serendipitous Saturday morning meet was that Halcro became resurrected as a going entity. Kirkham contacted Dr Peter Foster, a friend of his who holds a PhD in physics from the University of Adelaide and was formerly a Senior Laser Physicist at Norseld Pty Ltd and a Guest Scientist at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. The result was the trio founding a new company, Longwood Audio, which in 2015 acquired all of Halcro’s assets, including the brand name, the company’s portfolio of patents and the all-essential machine tooling along with a batch of unsold mothballed stock. Foster is now Longwood Audio’s CEO; Kirkham is its Head of Sales and Marketing; and Hewitt is in charge of development and manufacturing. Build & technology The ‘look’ of the Eclipse Stereo is directly copied from the design of the original Halcro dm38, which was the work of Adelaide designers Tony Kearney and Max Dickison. Candy’s brief to them was that, to ensure the correct operation of the amplifier, the electronics had to be separated into four heavily shielded modules – an audio power module, an audio drive module, an inductor module and a power supply module – and that, in order to remove the heat passively without using fans, the heatsinks for the output devices had to be extraordinarily large. Those very design elements have been incorporated in the Eclipse Stereo. One important change, however, has been in the execution of the heatsink design. the original’s design was microphonic so that at certain frequencies it could vibrate so significantly that its resonances were audible in the listening room. The heatsinks on the Eclipse Stereo, however, are non-resonant by virtue of being completely redesigned. The new design sees each section fabricated from up to 10mm-thick folded aluminium, with the winged sections fully damped and the joins connecting the horizontal chambers to the wing sections. The non-wooden sections of the chassis now come in either a ‘Standard’ powder-coat finish or a premium hand-painted ‘Signature’ finish, too. If you are at all familiar with Halcro amplifiers, you will already have an inkling of how large the Eclipse Stereo’s chassis is; if you’re not, let me point out that a person of average height, when standing upright, will not need to lean down to touch one of the amplifier’s vertical wings. Checking out the amplifier’s proportions in the images accompanying this review should also give you an idea of how wide the amplifier is, but just to make it perfectly clear, the Halcro Eclipse Stereo power amplifier is not only 79cm tall but also as wide as it is deep (40cm). It’s not lightweight either, tipping the scales at 62kg. (And, when eyeing the images, don’t miss the fact that the shape of the chassis actually forms the capital letter ‘H’, which is pretty clever!) The internal circuitry of the Halcro Eclipse Stereo inherits DNA from the original Halcro dm38, as well as from the , but according to Hewitt, while some things have been lost (such as the current mode inputs), many other aspects of the circuitry have been improved – some are the natural result of improvements in technology, some are the result of improvements in circuit layouts, and some are the result of research and development by Longwood Audio itself, for which Hewitt says the company has been awarded four patents. Candy was always secretive about the circuitry of the Halcro dm38, and Longwood Audio is continuing this tradition. CEO Peter Foster told Paul Miller of : “We never release schematics [and] every circuit has the component designators engraved off and the boards are coated in an epoxy layer to further mask what’s going on”. he was nonetheless able to glean the following information about the Eclipse Stereo: “ ” Further details of how the circuit might work are revealed in US Patent 6,600,367, which was granted to Candy and is currently assigned to Longwood Audio: " " Also interesting are some of the patent’s citations, which reference an active bias circuit for operating push-pull amplifiers in Class A mode (granted to one Nelson Pass), a distortion-free complemented error feedback amplifier method (granted to James Strickland), and reducing amplifier distortion by comparison of input and feedback from output (granted to Barry Elliot Porter). The patent also directly cites one Douglas H. Self. (For readers who are unfamiliar with these names, any audio engineer asked to name the world’s top five audio amplifier designers of the last 50 years would include three of those names.) Input and output connections are made on the module at the top of the amplifier, at the rear. The Eclipse Stereo has both unbalanced (via gold-plated RCA) and balanced (via gold-plated XLR) inputs, plus a ‘low gain’ unbalanced input. The speaker cable terminals are absolutely huge, and while they’re supposed to be combination spade/banana types, the only way I could see to use banana plugs was to remove the rubberised cap on the knob – but I wasn’t prepared to risk damaging it trying to pry it off! Halcro has built several sophisticated automated protection systems into the Eclipse Stereo to prevent it from being damaged by a variety of issues that could impact its performance, covering everything from power supply stability to problems that could affect the output stages. Longwood Audio says that the Halcro Eclipse Stereo amplifier “ ”. Even the standby switch is air-pressure activated rather than a traditional electrical switch, to minimise interference. It’s good that there’s such a high level of overkill on the protection front, because the company’s secrecy about its circuits, including the values of the components used in those circuits, would mean that any fault could only be addressed by a technician with insider knowledge. Otherwise, the amplifier would need to be returned to South Australia – and given its size and weight, that would be rather an expensive exercise! Listening sessions My first audio experience of the Halcro Eclipse Stereo during testing was by way of an initial warm-up using music from a band with which I have a love/hate relationship: GoGo Penguin. Delivering amazing sound for what is essentially just a trio (percussion, bass and keys), the band’s music has been described as a form of jazz for the modern age – but then again, is it? I love the sound but hate not being able to define exactly why it’s so mesmerisingly great, and find the group hard to recommend to others because their music is so polarising. What I can say with certainty is that it really helps if you are listening to their music through an amplifier with the high performance of the Eclipse Stereo. For example, the double-bass on (from the album ‘A Humdrum Star’) is not only beautifully captured in terms of sounding just like a double-bass should, but it’s also just a lovely bass line – so inventive that you really can’t foretell the next note, as you can with performances by many lesser bassists. In delivering this line so well, Nick Blacka provides a unique counterpoint to Chris Illingworth’s gloriously grand pianism, even though you can sometimes foretell what note Illingworth is going to play next because he plays so many that are the same! The complexity of the sound is jaw-dropping, and the scattergun drumming of Rob Turner (who’s since been replaced by Jon Scott) is epic, and beautifully delivered by the Halcro. On , the following track, you’ll hear Blacka’s double-bass sounding like nothing you’ve ever heard before, as he delivers miraculous high-frequency overtones that make a mockery of the instrument’s normally accepted frequency range. The Eclipse Stereo delivers the entire gamut perfectly – the delivery is sonically contiguous, despite the rarity of the nature of the sound. When the drum kit comes in, at about 1:30, the accuracy with which the amplifier delivers the kick drum sound in exact syncopation with the high-hat strikes, all while keeping each in its own sonic envelope, and with no unwanted overhang, is an object lesson in the importance of state-of-the-art amplification in an audio reproduction chain. The Halcro Eclipse also maintained the ‘airiness’ of the acoustic as a constant throughout – a subtlety that eludes lesser amplifiers. The buzzy, insect-like opening to highlighted for me the complete lack of background noise from the Eclipse Stereo’s circuitry – the amplifier makes no noise at all other than what is actually in the audio signal delivered to it. There is no low-frequency hum, no high-frequency hiss, and absolutely no modulation of the lowest-level background sounds on a track. Such sounds issue from an inky-black silence that is so silent it’s almost mesmerising in and of itself. The simplicity of the percussion and piano on this track is a musical antidote to what has gone before, and the crystalline clarity of the sound I heard from the Eclipse Stereo was simply amazing, a testament to the complete lack of audible distortion. I do need to warn you that I think GoGo Penguin has gone somewhat off-piste with their latest album, ‘Everything Is Going To Be OK’ – both sonically and musically – so if you want to hear what I heard, I recommend sticking with the four albums the band recorded with Blue Note, which include ‘Man Made Object’ and the aforementioned ‘A Humdrum Star’. If you’d rather test out the Halcro Eclipse Stereo’s enormous power reserves and bass delivery with music that’s not so ‘out there’, I recommend revisiting – or listening to for the first time! – Talking Heads’ 1983 classic album ‘Speaking In Tongues.’ The funky bass sound is deep and tight, and Chris Frantz’s drum, beautifully captured on this recording, sounds as real as can be. Obviously, you’d listen to opener at a high volume, but you should also crank up the dial while listening to in order to hear how well the Eclipse Stereo can deliver the eclectic and varied synthesizer sounds on this track at any volume level you care to listen at. Listen, too, to how well the left and right channels are separated. Indeed channel separation is so complete that I could easily have been convinced that I was auditioning a pair of Eclipse Monos instead! You can hear not only the channel separation but also the beautiful stereo imaging of the Eclipse Stereo on where the vocals are trademark Talking Heads timbre and the purity of the percussion sound is exemplary, particularly the ‘found instrument’ sounds delivered by David Van Tieghem. I had lots of fun working out the various ‘found instruments’ he was playing. I have often written in the pages of magazine that the piano is the best instrument with which to evaluate audio components due to its enormous pitch compass, supreme dynamics and the fact that it’s a stringed percussive instrument, and you could have no better music to hear all of this than that on French pianist Alexandre Tharaud’s 2009 recording of more than 70 works by Erik Satie. This, of course, includes the famous Gnossiennes, but here they are strangely interwoven with other lesser-known works, in such a way that it’s as if you’re hearing them for the first time. Indeed some of these works you may actually be hearing for the first time, because it was Satie, not John Cage, who invented the ‘prepared piano’, and unlike many pianists, Tharaud follows Satie’s instructions to the letter in by placing sheets of paper on the upper octave strings. I can’t say I liked the result, but the Eclipse Stereo certainly reproduced it faithfully. Elsewhere on this recording, Tharaud’s playful execution of Satie’s more conventional scores is certainly more entertaining than the performances delivered by more sedate pianists. Verdict The Halcro Eclipse Stereo is not only the most recognisable amplifier in the world, along with being one of the most beautiful, but it is also the quietest and has the lowest distortion of all. If you think that is part and parcel of what makes it one of the best-sounding amplifiers in the world, I’m not about to disagree. You may, however, be surprised to learn that the Eclipse Stereo is not one of the most expensive hi-fi amplifiers in the world. In fact, it’s not even close – dozens of its competitors have price tags in excess of $150,000! In light of this information, you should realise that the Halcro Eclipse Stereo could be considered good value even at twice its price. Laboratory Test Report Steve Holding, Newport Test Labs. Halcro rates the per-channel power output of the Eclipse Stereo as 180 watts into eight ohms and 350 watts into four ohms. With the Eclipse Stereo on its test bench, measured the 1kHz power output at 202 and 386 watts per channel into eight and four ohms respectively, so the power amplifier bettered its specification for both test loads. As you can see from the tabulated results, power output dropped to 196 watts into eight ohms when the test frequency was dropped down to 20Hz (when driving two channels), and to 365 watts when both channels were driven into four ohms at this same 20Hz frequency. While these are lower than the 1kHz power output results, they’re still comfortably higher than Halcro’s specification. measured the frequency response of the Eclipse Stereo as being 3dB down at 3.5Hz and 280kHz, so this is a very wide-band amplifier design. It’s also a superbly linear one, as evidenced by the 1dB down-points of 6.5Hz and 90kHz, meaning the normalised frequency response is 6.5Hz – 90kHz ±0.5dB. As you would expect, the frequency response was even flatter across the audio band. This response (Graph 1 above) shows that it’s around 0.1dB down at 20Hz and 20kHz, for a normalised response of 20Hz – 20kHz ±0.05dB. This frequency response was, as per industry standards, measured when the Eclipse Stereo was driving an eight-ohm test resistor. On this graph you would normally expect to find a second trace showing the amplifier’s response when driving a more complex load, one that simulates the load that a loudspeaker would present. In fact, that trace is there – you just can’t see it because it perfectly overlays the response into a resistor. This is the first time has ever measured this theoretically ‘perfect’ result! Separation between the two stereo channels was outstandingly good, as you can see from the accompanying result table – 86dB at 20Hz, 101dB at 1kHz, and 78dB at 20kHz. Also outstandingly good was the level matching of the two channels, with measuring a difference of just 0.01dB. Inter-channel phase accuracy was also exceptionally good, with errors of only 0.02° at 20Hz, 0.08° at 1kHz and 1.17° at 20kHz. The result at 20kHz may seem to be an outlier, but you should bear in mind that a result of 1.0° at this frequency would be a world-beating achievement. Measuring the level of distortion on an audio signal that is introduced by a Halcro amplifier is a near-impossible task because it is so low that it is supremely difficult to measure. You not only need a test instrument capable of making the measurement but also a signal generator that has lower distortion than both the amplifier and the test instrument. To illustrate the difficulty, look at Graph 2 above, which shows the distortion components inherent in the output of ’ best signal generator. You can see that there’s a second harmonic distortion component at –117dB (0.00014%), a third HD component at –122dB (0.00007%) and a fifth at –128dB (0.00003%). So if we used this generator to provide the signal to measure the Eclipse Stereo’s distortion and saw a result that exhibited these same distortion components, at around the same levels, we would know only that the Halcro was not adding unwanted distortion. Indeed this is exactly what we see in Graph 3, which shows the output spectrum of the Eclipse Stereo when it’s delivering this same 1kHz signal but amplified to a level of one watt into eight ohms. Essentially, the only difference is that the amplifier has added just a little distortion at 3kHz, so that it is at –120dB instead of –122dB. (The result was exactly the same when the Eclipse Stereo was driving a four-ohm load.) The other thing to note with Graph 3 (because it will be significant later) is that there is some noise visible at the bottom of the graph, however as you can see from the scale at the left, the noise is 140dB below the one-watt reference level, which is so low that it would be totally and completely inaudible under any conditions. Graph 4 shows distortion (and noise!) levels measured by when the Halcro Eclipse Stereo was delivering 1kHz into eight ohms at a power level of 20 watts. Again, you can see that the distortion ‘signature’ is essentially that of the test signal generator, so the Eclipse Stereo is not adding any distortion to the test signal itself. Note, too, that there is now no audio band noise visible on the graph, so the Halcro’s audio band noise is now well below 140dB. There is some noise visible (the single narrow peak at the extreme left of the graph), which is from the amplifier’s power supply, but it’s more than 120dB down. Again, the result when the Eclipse Stereo was tested into a four-ohm load at this frequency and power output was exactly the same as it was into the eight-ohm load. Graph 5 shows an extreme test case for distortion, which here is shown when the Eclipse Stereo is delivering 1kHz into an eight-ohm load at its full rated power (180 watts). The result is mind-bogglingly (and I mean that in its truest sense) good. As you would expect, there is absolutely zero noise in the output other than that tiny leakage from the power supply, and the distortion levels are almost unchanged from that shown in the one-watt and 20-watt graphs. The level of the third harmonic has risen slightly so that distortion component is now sitting at –117dB, which is 0.00014%. The fifth-order component has also risen by 1dB to –127dB (0.00004%). The result of ’ testing aligns with Halcro’s claims that the Eclipse Stereo’s THD levels are “better than –120dB”, a lever that it points out is “lower than 1000 parts per billion”. The distortion result shown in the accompanying test result table tells the THD story in an easily understandable numeric form: 0.00006%. The level of intermodulation distortion (CCIF-IMD) measured by is shown in Graph 6 above, when the Eclipse Stereo was delivering twin 19kHz and 20kHz test signals at a level of 20 watts into eight ohms. There are only two high-frequency sidebands, at 18kHz and 21kHz, that are each 110dB down and so would contribute 0.0003% to the output – insignificantly small. There is a tiny regenerated signal down at 1kHz too, but it is also insignificantly small – 117dB down, contributing only 0.00014%. All other signals are more than 120dB down, which is the level specified by Halcro for this particular test. The overall wide-band signal-to-noise ratios measured by were, as we’re sure you’ve already guessed from the noise floors shown in the graphs, spectacularly low. Noise relative to an output level of one watt was measured at –101dB unweighted, and –107dB A-weighted. We can’t think of a single amplifier the lab has measured that has ever come within cooee of returning a noise figure better than 100dB when referenced to this power level. The noise figures were better again for the measurement at rated output, with the Halcro returning results of –124dB unweighted, and –130dB A-weighted. As one who is ‘experienced in the art’ would expect from Graph 1, the output impedance of the Eclipse Stereo was incredibly low, with measuring it as 0.002 ohms at 1kHz, which is an order of magnitude better than almost all other amplifiers and means a damping factor of 4,000! Square wave testing reflected the results returned when measuring the Eclipse Stereo’s frequency response, with the tilt on the 100Hz square wave reflecting the –3dB point of 3.5Hz (Halcro specs it at 3Hz). There’s no bending so there’s no low-frequency phase shift. The waveform at 1kHz is so squared-off and clean that it may as well have been issued directly from the lab’s function generator, and is therefore a perfect result. At a 10kHz test frequency there is some rounding evident on the leading edge of the waveform, reflecting the high-frequency 3dB down-point of 280kHz, but the overall rise time shows a very, very fast slew rate. The Eclipse Stereo’s ability to drive extremely demanding loudspeakers, as well as electrostatic designs, is shown by its performance when delivering a 1kHz square wave into an eight-ohm resistor paralleled with a 2μF capacitor. That performance was outstandingly good, with the initial overshoot being less than one-quarter wave height, and the small amount of resultant ringing being damped within five cycles. This amplifier will be completely stable into any loudspeaker. We rather hope that this test report gives the average non-technical reader an appreciation of just how well this amplifier performed on test bench, but we suspect that ultimately it will be only those readers with a degree in electrical engineering who will truly appreciate the outstandingly high levels of performance delivered by Halcro’s Eclipse Stereo. It is a truly mind-bogglingly good amplifier!Belichick's bid to reshape UNC football latest sign of pro influence on college level