Spoiler alert, if you like parody Twitter accounts without knowing the background behind them, turn away now.
Well, you read the headline anyway… The New York Times has unmasked the genius behind @GSElevator, a popular account that tweets gossip, opinions and anecdotes that are purportedly overheard in an elevator at Goldman Sachs to 625,000 followers.
#1: With your Visa card, you can win Super Bowl tickets for life. #2: With my Amex, I can buy Super Bowl tickets for life.
— GS Elevator Gossip (@GSElevator) January 31, 2014
The person landed a book deal thanks to his Twitter account, but he’s not a Goldman Sachs employee:
The author is a 34-year-old former bond executive who lives in Texas. His name is John Lefevre.
He had tried to remain anonymous, scrubbing the Internet of mentions of his name and pictures of himself on all but a handful of sites. Some people had already speculated that @GSElevator was not hanging around the halls of Goldman.
Upon being contacted late last week after several weeks of reporting uncovered his identity, he confirmed his alter ego. “Frankly, I’m surprised it has taken this long,” he said by phone. “I knew this day would come.”
➤ @GSElevator Tattletale Exposed (He Was Not in the Goldman Elevator) [New York Times]
Thumbnail image via hxdbzxy / Shutterstock
Korean smartphone manufacturer LG has been announcing a series of new smartphones aimed at different target audiences, as it seeks to spread its net as far and wide as it can to rake up overall sales of its devices.
Today, it took the wraps off the F70 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, a 4.5-inch mid-tier smartphone targeted squarely at new LTE customers. This comes as LG says it is intent on expanding its footprint in 4G markets.
The F70 is powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core processor and features a removable 2,440mAh battery that LG claims “has the largest capacity in its class” so users can tap on LTE without having to recharge mid-day. It runs on Android 4.4 KitKat, comes with 1GB RAM and has a 5-megapixel rear camera.
LG’s latest device also features its Easy Home launcher, which simplifies the home screen while increasing the size of icons and fonts — and it also comes equipped with LG’s newest UX feature, Knock Code, which allows users to power on and unlock their smartphone by tapping a personalized pattern on the screen.
Images via LG
Troubled Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, once the largest of its kind, has disappeared from the Internet after its website went offline following rumors that it is battling insolvency.
Here’s what we’re seeing when we visit mtgox.com: nothing but white space.
There is clearly something seriously wrong going on at the company. Before the website went down, there were reports that Mt. Gox had disabled all trading on its site in a hint that it may be planning major restructuring.
A Mt. Gox customer posted a screenshot on Reddit that showed trading had been disabled:
Separately, we found that the company was not allowing new users to register for an account on the site, before it went down:
This sudden disappearance of the site comes less than an hour after the heads of six of the world’s biggest Bitcoin exchanges penned a letter in response to reports of Mt. Gox’s impending insolvency.
There has been much talk that Mt. Gox is struggling financially, having been beset by technical issues. The company has not commented on those claims, but the joint letter — which was initially titled ‘Joint Statement Regarding the Insolvency of Mt.Gox’ but now reads ‘Joint Statement Regarding MtGox’ – promises to learn from “the trust squandered by the failings of Mt. Gox”:
Responsible bitcoin exchanges are working together and are committed to the future of bitcoin and the security of all customer funds. As part of the effort to re-assure customers, the following services will be coordinating efforts over the coming days to publicly reassure customers and the general public that all funds continue to be held in a safe and secure manner: Coinbase, Kraken, BitStamp, Circle, and BTC China.
We strongly believe in transparent, thoughtful, and comprehensive consumer protection measures. We pledge to lead the way.
This is unlikely to be the end for Mt. Gox, however. A report suggests shows that the company has acquired Gox.com, hinting that it may relaunch a rebooted service on the domain under a new brand.
Mt. Gox has consistently traded below the market valuation for months due to security concerns. The threat that the site might be hacked or was heading for insolvency was motivation enough for some customers to cash out at a far lower rate in order to ensure that their Bitcoin holdings — which are locked inside Mt. Gox — were sold for something and not lost forever.
Update: Interestingly, a document that it is claimed leaked out of Mt. Gox is circulating within the Bitcoin community. The contents is not confirmed but it does suggest that 750,000 bitcoins (worth around $375 million using today’s valuation) belonging to the company’s customer base have been lost.
There are also big hints that the company is being acquired:
— Ed Guiness (@KiwiCoder) February 25, 2014
Headline image via Zack Copley / Flickr
Over at Chart LeaderLines in Excel 2010 or earlier I posted some code that draws leader-lines on charts just like Excel 2013 does.
Unfortunately that title was misleading in regards to the or earlier bit: Eric said that the code isn’t working at all in XL07, and Jon Acampora advised that the DataLabel.Height and DataLabel.Width properties are not available in XL07.
Andy Pope had a crafty workaround for this:
The trick to getting datalabel width and height is to force the data label off of the chart by setting left and top to chartarea width and height. The data labels will not actually go out of the chart so by reading the new left and top properties you can calculate the differences.
So I whipped up some functions to get the datalabel height and width:
Function dlHeight_2010(dl As DataLabel)
dlHeight_2010 = dl.Height
End Function
dlHeight_2010 = dl.Height
End Function
Function dlWidth_2010(dl As DataLabel)
dlWidth_2010 = dl.Width
End Function
Function dlHeight_Pre2010(dl As DataLabel)
Dim dlTop As Long
dlTop = dl.Top
dl.Top = ActiveChart.ChartArea.Height
dlHeight_Pre2010 = dl.Top – ActiveChart.ChartArea.Top
dl.Top = dlTop
End Function
Function dlwidth_Pre2010(dl As DataLabel)
Dim dlleft As Long
dlleft = dl.Left
dl.Left = ActiveChart.ChartArea.Width
dlwidth_Pre2010 = dl.Left – ActiveChart.ChartArea.Left
dl.Left = dlleft
End Function
They are all separate functions because if I lumped them together in one, it wouldn’t compile on pre-2010 machines. So I call these from the main code with this:
If Application.Version = 14 Then
dlHeight_2010 dl
dlWidth_2010 dl
dlHeight_2010 dl
dlWidth_2010 dl
ElseIf Application.Version < 14 Then
dlHeight_Pre2010 dl
dlwidth_Pre2010 dl
End If
I’ve updated my leaderlines code to use these. If I comment out the stuff relating to 2010 and force Excel to use the pre2010 functions then it seems to work perfectly. But I asked a buddy to try it in his 2007 installation, and he advises that it doesn’t work…it just deletes the chart leader lines without redrawing them.
Anyone with 2007 or earlier fancy taking this for a spin, and advising where I might have gone off the rails?
Mucho Gracious.
Leader lines_20140225 v7