<ul><li>Times and Google have a long-standing partnership on Google Ad Manager.</li><li><keyword id="9451639" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="m360">M360</keyword> is a complete hosting and monetization platform that has quickly scaled up and now serves 25 Million MAUs outside of the <keyword id="51757" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="TIMES-INTERNET">Times Internet</keyword> group.</li></ul>M360, Times Internet’s <keyword id="10013190" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="turnkey-publishing">turnkey publishing</keyword> and monetization platform, has partnered with Google as a Google Ad Manager partner. M360 will now be able to monetize publisher inventory using the Google Ad Manager platform. Times and Google have a long-standing partnership on Google Ad Manager. Made in India, M360 is a complete hosting and monetization platform that has quickly scaled up and now serves 25 Million MAUs outside of the Times Internet group. Apart from Google Ad Manager, M360 also leverages Times Internet’s homegrown premium ad-network, Colombia Audience Network, to provide leading advertisers and agencies to achieve performance for their marketing objectives at scale across a wide variety of ad formats and audience segments. Speaking on what this partnership means for M360 and Google, Puneet Gupt, COO - Times Internet said, “M360 aims to bring technological advancements in digital publishing to the smallest of the publishers allowing them to focus on bringing great content to their readers. We are happy to join hands with Google to provide enhanced monetization capabilities to Indian publishers on the M360 platform” “We’ve been working very closely with the Google team since the inception of M360 platform 8 months ago and this partnership is a testament of the strong synergy in building a comprehensive publishing platform for publishers who are looking to scale their revenues and engage their users. Our product has become a de facto platform for publishers looking to create, monetize and engage their readership through a seamless ad and content experiences across all platforms” said <keyword id="9451641" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="arjun-satya">Arjun Satya</keyword>, Co-founder - M360. “We have had a strong partnership with Times across multiple areas, and today we’re excited to be extending it even further. We hope this initiative will inspire other publishers to build on their digital journey, so that together we can grow the digital publisher ecosystem in India,” said Ryu Hirayama, Director and Head of APAC Partnership Solutions, Google. M360’s hosting and CMS helps media organizations create a fast loading, non-intrusive ad and content portal which leads to higher CPMs for the same ad inventory. M360 runs over a state-of-the-art personalization engine, giving publishers an edge to engage and retain their audiences. This personalization engine leverages billions of combinations across 60k user attributes to recommend the best possible content and ads, all in real-time. M360 has also launched an integrated push notifications and newsletter management service for publishers to engage with their users effectively. Publishers shifting from their current hosting to M360 platform have seen anywhere from 30% to 160% lift their Page CPM within a few weeks of migrating from traditional hosting solutions. <div type="image" title="m360" msid="78359366" hostid="261"></div> With COVID-19 reducing ad revenue for publishers, M360’s partnership with Google for deploying Google Ad Manager will help publisher owners on M360 scale their revenues while incurring zero engineering and IT costs by paying a small subscription fee for M360 platform for hosting and CMS for fast-loading personalized sites.

Times Internet's M360 partners with Google to enable effective monetization for digital publishers

Shirly and Erez Weinstein had in many ways achieved the American dream. They immigrated to the United States from Israel in the early aughts, bought a house in the suburbs of Atlanta with access to high-quality public schools for their two kids, and excelled in their tech careers. There was just one problem: They weren't happy."Our life was just really busy," Shirly Weinstein told me. "Work, school, after-school — we hardly had any down time or time as a family."They also weren't satisfied with the education options for their kids. "We wanted something more from school," Erez Weinstein said. "We tried Montessori, charter, public, but all these different options felt like more of the same."The kids felt similarly. "Life was boring," Ella, their 11-year-old daughter, told me. So, to shake things up, in 2018 the family sold most of their possessions, bought an RV, and started traveling full time around the US and abroad while homeschooling.For the next four years, the kids did not attend formal classes, instead learning from their experiences in different countries, and did occasional academic work on digital platforms like Khan Academy. Then, in 2022, the family learned about <a href="https://www.boundless.life/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Boundless Life</a>, a startup trying to build a global network for <a href="https://www.insider.com/we-travel-four-months-every-year-support-schooling-2023-2">digital-nomad families</a>, complete with built-in community, project-based education, and furnished homes where families live for three months at a time.While the phrase "<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/partying-yachts-drugs-remote-work-destroying-worlds-most-instagrammable-destinations-2021-7">digital nomad</a>" might conjure an image of a single 27-year-old software engineer writing code from a hostel in Chiang Mai, Thailand, Boundless Life — which has locations in Portugal, Indonesia, Italy, and Greece — targets a different demographic of long-term travelers: parents and their elementary-school-age children. The startup's aim, according to its cofounder Mauro Repacci, is to allow parents "the freedom to travel as a single person might, but with your kids."Boundless Life is one of a handful of programs — like the <a href="https://www.greenschool.org/bali/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Green School</a> in Bali and <a href="https://www.thehiveadventure.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Hive</a> in the Dominican Republic — that cater primarily to international students and their remote-working parents. While there isn't great data on it, experts I spoke with say that only a small fraction of the estimated 35 million global digital nomads are traveling with children — which makes sense. Whether figuring out school or supporting kids' ability to maintain lasting friendships, many parents are wary of uprooting their families' lives for long-term travel.But with the growth of remote work and newfound energy to reimagine education in response to the coronavirus pandemic, businesses are jumping at the opportunity to make "nomading" with children a real possibility.<hr />Last summer I visited the Boundless campus in Sintra, Portugal. When I arrived by train from Lisbon, it was easy to see why the company had chosen the medieval mountain town as its pilot location. The Moorish castles and orange clay roofs give the town a classic European charm, and it has just the right amount of creature comforts and English-speaking waitstaff to please less adventurous travelers. At just shy of 400,000 inhabitants, Sintra is also big enough to absorb the 25 Boundless families without the expats dominating all the local haunts. <div type="image" title="A chef preparing a meal in a kitchen with a mosaic tile floor." height="1536" width="2048" msid="104016349" hostid="261"></div>The Boundless community, which includes families from around the world, felt a bit like a family camp. Families each had their own private accommodations scattered throughout the city, but they frequently spent time at one another's apartments for meals and aperitifs. Parents went out for afternoon espressos and lingered at school drop-off to chat about business opportunities before heading to a mosaic-tiled coworking space replete with WiFi and Portuguese custard tarts.In the school, a remodeled two-story building blocks away from Sintra's castles, mixed-aged groups of students hunched over tubs of water to learn about density and volume. For lunch, the kids ate organic meals provided by a local chef. After school, kids from different families entertained themselves in the cobblestone streets and parks under light adult supervision. Tim, a freelance computer programmer from Ohio, joined Boundless in 2022 after taking his kids out of school at the start of COVID. "The school said 'Zoom Kindergarten,' and I said screw that," he told me.One couple from Seattle — Edward, a marketing consultant, and Jessica, an entrepreneur — not only pulled their four kids under 13 out of school to sign on with Boundless Life, but they also persuaded another family to join them for the experiment. "We wanted to travel, but you can't babysit a 1-year-old and homeschool a 7-year-old at the same time," Jessica said. "Education was the question. If we could figure out the education piece, the rest would fall into place."According to Boundless' cofounder and head of education, Rekha Magon, Boundless' vision is for families to hop to Sintra for a semester and then to Italy's Tuscany region for another, all while their children progress through the same curriculum, which extends from preschool to age 12. "Education should be removed from a single building and exist in the world," she told me. <blockquote class="pullquote-wrapper pullquote-right"><q class="pullquote-quotation">I've had more social interactions in the past week than months back home — and I didn't have to send a single email to coordinate.</q></blockquote>This was perfect for the Weinsteins, who consider themselves part of the <a href="https://www.insider.com/what-is-worldschooling-why-do-parents-choose-it-2022-8">worldschooling</a> movement — a growing community of families who have decided to eschew traditional education in favor of long-term travel and "learning from the school of life," as Erez Weinstein told me.Compared with all the education options they had tried in Atlanta, Boundless was the first school that seemed to align with their desire for project-based learning with a global perspective. "If Boundless had locations all over the world, we would be set," Shirly Weinstein said. "It's beyond travel. It's experiencing the world." And while the kids seemed to be thriving, perhaps the true beneficiaries were the parents. As one Boundless parent told me, "I've had more social interactions in the past week than months back home — and I didn't have to send a single email to coordinate."Boundless had recreated the village.<hr />As a Brazilian from Montreal with Italian ancestry, Mauro Repacci is a fitting founder for a company that promotes global citizenship. The idea for Boundless came about after Repacci and his cofounder Marcos Carvalho sold their previous company, a home-buying platform called NestReady, and were looking to take a sabbatical. It was the summer of 2021. COVID restrictions were loosening and the built-up demand for travel was palpable."During the pandemic, like many people, we started to ask how we wanted to live our life, how we wanted to raise our kids," Repacci told me. "And we felt like we were limiting ourselves by staying in the same country for a long time." He added, "We felt something was missing." He started to tell friends about his aspiration to travel and take time off — perhaps a few months in Costa Rica, another few in Europe or Southeast Asia. His friends were intrigued by the idea of long-term travel but had hesitations about their kids falling behind in school.<div type="image" title="Sintra portugal" height="1333" width="2000" msid="104016352" hostid="261"></div>Repacci and Carvalho started a WhatsApp group with dozens of friends and friends of friends who were all trying to figure out how to make long-term travel work with kids. They researched international schools and looked into the feasibility of hiring a private tutor to travel with them full time. Their brainstorming quickly transformed into a business idea. According to Lona Alia, the head of revenue for the nomad-travel-insurance provider SafetyWing, several factors have led to the growth of digital-nomad families. "There's remote work, the availability of high-speed internet, flexible schooling, and Airbnb," Alia, who is part of a digital-nomad family herself, told me. But perhaps the biggest factor is a cultural shift toward the value of experiences, Alia said. "Many people are realizing that the traditional path of acquiring material goods isn't necessarily the key to happiness, and are instead choosing to invest in experiences, such as travel."For the Boundless founders, figuring out the education piece of the puzzle was key. For families to actually be able to make the leap, Boundless would need a curriculum that was rigorous enough to adhere to parents' standards and flexible enough so families could bounce between locales without their kids falling behind. To solve the problem, Repacci and Carvalho brought on their head of education, Magon, and head of brand and product, Elina Zois. Boundless decided to base its educational model on the Nordic Baccalaureate, an interdisciplinary curriculum based on the Finnish education system that emphasizes project-based work, experiential learning, and cultural immersion. Classrooms are multiage and class sizes are kept small — fewer than 15 kids a class for students under 6 and fewer than 18 for those ages 6 to 12. During my visit, the school felt like a more expansive definition of what an education could be. Learning was not limited by the four walls of the classroom — it took place in parks, pottery studios, restaurants, and museums. Several educators I spoke with were skeptical about how the Boundless framework would translate into meaningful learning experiences for students from a range of academic needs, and how students would be able to integrate their Boundless experience if they transitioned back into more traditional school environments.<div type="image" title="An outdoor play area" height="1536" width="2048" msid="104016355" hostid="261"></div>But parents I met told me Boundless had sparked a level of intellectual curiosity in its children that spilled over to "normal life" upon returning stateside. "Getting to try out a different type of school was life-changing," one parent said. After returning to US public school this year, they said their kids were doing better than they had before doing Boundless. "Not because anything is better at their school this year than last year, but because they are different," the parent said.The company serves about 85 families and 250 kids during any given semester. But despite some early success, Boundless Education, like the organization itself, is still very much a startup. The school isn't accredited — though it's undergoing the accreditation process — and the administration is still figuring out the kinks, like how to quantitatively measure student growth and how to cater to older and more advanced students' needs.There are also financial and cultural barriers to joining Boundless. For one, there's the price. It costs the equivalent of about $1,600 a child, a month, to take part in Boundless Education, and the equivalent of $460 a parent, a month, for coworking and concierge services — and that doesn't include the cost of housing. Though participants were relatively diverse racially and culturally, most of the families I met in Sintra were high earners from North America.Plus, there are cultural and logistical challenges to picking up your family and living around the world for months at a time. Boundless advises families on how to obtain digital-nomad visas for countries that offer them, but the prospect of working abroad long term can be challenging depending on your country of origin. "The biggest barriers to more people nomading are in-laws, grandparents, and a lack of imagination," Andreas Wil Gerdes, a leader in the worldschooling movement, said. "For 200 years, the majority of people have lived in a work-centric model of existence. Finally, people are going back to a life-centric model, but it will take time to catch on."Gerdes is generally supportive of Boundless' mission but commented that the company served a limited slice of those who might be able to benefit from living and learning abroad. "Boundless is the brain-dead solution for people who don't want to have to make any decisions," he said. "But it's a step in the right direction."<hr />On my last night in Sintra, the Boundless families gathered together at Praia de Maçãs, a beach 20 minutes from downtown. Kids dashed in and out of the waves, occasionally running to shore to grab a snack or tug at their parents' trunks. "How long have you guys known each other?" I asked a few preteens who were building castles in the sand. "I dunno. A few days," one said, barely looking up.Standing there on the edge of the European continent, I realized that although Boundless is cloaked in the sheen of a venture-backed startup, the business is actually a return to a more collective form of child-rearing. Sure, there's an app that parents use to interact, a curriculum that uses the UN sustainability goals for lesson plans, and a business model that's a response to a global workforce trend. But as I immersed myself in this network of families who were loosely looking after one another's children, Boundless felt more retro-chic than modern. <blockquote class="pullquote-wrapper pullquote-breakout"><q class="pullquote-quotation">I came to Sintra thinking Boundless might be too good to be true, but perhaps that was a failure of my own imagination.</q></blockquote>After leaving the beach, I joined the families for pizza at an outdoor restaurant. There were no iPads at the dinner table or calendar invites needed to organize the get-together. In a community full of families, conversations were not dominated by talk of academic tutors and afterschool programs. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. I came to Sintra thinking Boundless might be too good to be true, but perhaps that was a failure of my own imagination. Maybe I, like so many others, am still too attached to the idea that school ought to look like 20 students facing the same way in a classroom for seven hours a day. Sure, Boundless is an expensive, turn-key study-abroad experience for elementary-school-age children and their parents, but it's also a refreshing take on what it means to give a child an education, which, <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-alarming-state-of-the-american-student-in-2022/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">especially in America</a>, is in need of a refresh.Certainly there are risks of uprooting children from their routines and communities. Programs like Boundless may not be attractive or accessible to everyone, and it's unclear whether Boundless will be able to scale its programming to meet the growing demand. But when I think about the atomization of our modern lives, each of us cordoned off in our little boxes made of ticky-tack, learning from textbooks and digital apps, I see Boundless as a welcome alternative. Perhaps the world is the classroom we've been waiting for.<hr /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/simone-stolzoff">Simone Stolzoff</a> is a writer and author from San Francisco. His debut book, <a href="https://affiliate.insider.com?amazonTrackingID=biauto-62117-20&amp;h=df736b25edacfa9fdc3b129d6c816075ed25285cfdf414fa075f97ee7d1a0486&amp;postID=64fa0771261711ba2f6156b2&amp;postSlug=digital-nomad-families-travel-abroad-kids-school-boundless-life-2023-9&amp;site=bi&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FGood-Enough-Job-Reclaiming-Life%2Fdp%2F059353896X%2Fref%3Dcm_cr_arp_mb_bdcrb_top%3Fie%3DUTF8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work</a>, was published by Penguin Random House earlier this year.

Remote work lets you travel the world. This startup helps you take your kids with you.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Cory Mills arrived in Congress with grenades and cast himself a champion of local law enforcement.</li><li>An Insider review found that the munitions company he cofounded had sold to foreign governments.</li></ul>Cory Mills landed in Congress like a grenade.Literally: At the start of this term, the freshman Republican from Florida handed out 40 mm grenades stamped with a GOP elephant to congressional colleagues."I am eager to get to work with you on behalf of the American people," he wrote in an accompanying note.The grenades were inert. But the stunt was in line with the type of guns-blazing, America-first rhetoric that Mills, an arms dealer, decorated Army combat veteran, and former military contractor, deployed during his campaign in Florida's 7th Congressional District.<blockquote class="twitter-tweet blockquote" data-lang="en" data-cards="" data-conversation="">—Morgan Phillips (@_phillipsmorgan) <a href="https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/1618648723764170753?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 26, 2023</a></blockquote>Mills, a cofounder of the munitions manufacturer and security contractor Pacem Solutions, positioned himself as a defender of police departments under attack from the "woke" Biden administration. In a 2022 campaign ad, Mills said he "backs the blue" and bragged that his company sold the tear gas that the police used to suppress recent racial-justice and abortion-rights protests.What Mills didn't advertise was Pacem's munitions contracts with foreign governments. Instead, Mills has refused to publicly disclose his connections and dealings with powers abroad while at the same time sitting on two committees overseeing foreign affairs and military spending — as well as wielding the power to vote on foreign arms deals.An Insider examination of his business dealings, though, found that Pacem has had deep ties to foreign governments and is struggling financially.Pacem has repeatedly courted munitions deals with foreign governments over during its nearly decade-long existence. A Saudi government-affiliated national security expo promoted Pacem as one of its featured vendors in 2019, with Mills' face posted across the event's social-media pages. Pacem also exhibited in Abu Dhabi that same year, at one of the largest weapons shows in the world.A representative for Mills refused to disclose all of the countries Pacem has sold munitions to. But Insider was able to identify multiple foreign buyers. In one major contract from 2015, Pacem and a partner UK munitions firm reached a $228 million arms deal with Iraq. Mills confirmed that deal, saying it was facilitated by the US Department of Defense and wasn't entirely paid out. <div type="image" title="fallujah iraq" height="2347" width="3129" msid="98740732" hostid="261"></div>Pacem has sold munitions to Ukraine and Colombia in recent years, according to three sources familiar with the matter, though it's unclear whether those sales are continuing.A spokesperson for Mills did not respond to repeated requests for a full accounting of the congressman's foreign dealings through Pacem. The company's chief legal officer, Joseph Schmitz, said all of Pacem's foreign munitions sales were approved by the State Department. Though Mills told Insider he had divested from the company, he was still listed as executive chair on the website of Pacem Solutions at publication time. Pacem Solutions removed the "Who We Are" page that listed Mills as executive chair after Insider published this article; Pacem's lawyer told Insider that the page was "outdated." Schmitz refused to tell Insider who owned the company but said it would be incorrect to publish that Cory Mills "owns 100% of Pacem Solutions and Pacem Defense."Mills' influence over American military spending while having ties to a munitions company poses the potential for conflicts of interest, an ethics watchdog said."It's an obvious conflict of interest, a no-brainer to anyone with common sense," said Don Sherman, the senior vice president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a left-leaning nonprofit advocating government ethics reform.Schmitz said Mills' ties to Pacem were "being vetted" by the House ethics committee. "Everything is above-board," he told Insider. The ethics committee's general counsel declined to confirm whether it was currently working to resolve Mills' relationship with Pacem.<h2>Pacem's troubled history</h2>An explosion ripped through the humid air of a small Florida panhandle town midmorning on September 14, 2018.Employees at Amtec Less-Lethal Systems, a riot-control-munitions manufacturer in Perry, Florida, had been assembling flash-bang strips. The blast, which federal workplace-safety inspectors indicated might have been caused by static electricity leaping onto explosive powder, immediately killed one worker and injured another so severely that he died the next week.One month later, Pacem Defense bought the business for $10 million. The explosion loomed over the start of Pacem's ownership of the facility. Repercussions from the incident have contributed to a slew of financial troubles dragging Pacem down.Mills' involvement in the defense and munitions world evolved out of his years in the armed forces and work as a private military contractor. He served in the US Army from 1999 to 2003, according to his discharge paperwork. During that time he was sent to Kosovo and Iraq, and he was awarded the Bronze Star.Mills later spent four years as a military contractor for Dyncorp, where he worked in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to his LinkedIn profile. On the campaign trail and in media interviews he has described being "blown up twice" while on assignment there. He subsequently worked for the federal contractors Chemonics International and Pax Mondial Ltd., before striking out on his own.In 2014, Mills and his wife, Rana Al Saadi, an Iraqi refugee who came to the US in 2008, founded Pacem. Mills described Pacem to Insider as a "turnkey solution," which encompasses global threat analysis, security services contracting, weapons sales, and training.The company appeared intent on quickly establishing a global footprint in the years after its founding. Pacem "delivered millions of defense products around the world to some of the most challenging regions," including explosive cartridges for use in grenade launchers, according to a press release it issued in 2018. Early archived copies of Pacem Solutions' website mention work with international development groups like USAID and showed pictures from Ukraine, Pakistan, and Iraq, among other places. Another archived page showed Pacem with offices in Kabul, Baghdad, and Islamabad.But since the acquisition of Amtec, Pacem appears to have lost value. Pacem Solutions and Pacem Defense are together now worth anywhere from $10 million down to just $2 million, according to a financial disclosure Mills filed in January — equal to or less than the price Pacem paid for Amtec alone.The Amtec explosion, which workplace-safety inspectors concluded was caused by inadequate safety controls, cost Pacem.Mills said the explosion, which occurred before Pacem acquired the company, underscored the need for a thorough intervention into Amtec's processes and facilities. Pacem poured at least $2 million into facility upgrades, Mills told a local news outlet, including improvements related to the explosion."We bought it knowing the company had issues, then we had our engineers redesign certain products that were not working well," Mills told Insider. Financially, COVID-19 also "slowed things down tremendously," he added. In a statement, Mills' spokesperson also said Pacem didn't lay off any employees and gave small raises during the pandemic.Pacem is also loaded with debt: It owes $48 million to a Canadian lender, nearly five times the company's highest potential valuation. Mills said the loan was funding research and development.There are additional issues that have dogged the company. In the past two years, the munitions plant has been forced to shut down twice for failing to pay workers' compensation insurance premiums, according to Florida's Department of Workers Compensation.Schmitz, Pacem's chief legal officer, confirmed the shutdowns but claimed the missed workers' compensation payments were an accidental oversight.Money woes aren't Pacem's only problem. In December 2020, the company blew up or burned several boxes of hazardous waste, according to two people familiar with the incident and a report from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The agency cited Pacem for improper storage and disposal of the waste.Schmitz told Insider that Pacem self-reported the incident and that it wasn't a "big deal," with "no environmental impact."<h2>International arms trader</h2>Mills' congressional campaign played up Pacem's contracts with local law enforcement, claiming that the "liberal media is crying" about the company supplying tear gas that was used against racial-justice protesters. These contracts with local law enforcement represent the bulk of Pacem's client volume, Mills told Insider.But a review of Pacem's contracts suggests its dealings with law enforcement are relatively small-dollar. The company sold roughly $1.3 million worth of tear gas to police departments from 2018 to mid-2021, it reported to a congressional oversight committee. The company sells other products to police departments, like flash bangs, that Congress didn't ask about.The size of those hundreds of tear-gas transactions pales in comparison with just one foreign arms deal identified by Insider.In 2015, Pacem, in partnership with the UK weapons dealer Chemring, signed a contract with the Iraqi government worth $228 million. The deal would have represented nearly 2.5% of the country's entire military expenditures that year, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks military spending. <div type="image" title="An American soldier with a strip of 40 mm grenade rounds slung over his shoulder." height="2367" width="3151" msid="98740733" hostid="261"></div>Mills said Pacem never received the full value of the contract, which he said was intended to provide "certain types of support in launching counteroffensives against ISIS to drive them out of Iraq." The Islamic State militant group was pushed out of key Iraqi cities before the contract was supposed to close, according to Mills.In 2016, an Iraqi auditing agency raised questions about whether it had overpaid for Pacem's services. Iraq's interior ministry "accepted the pricing and the specs supplied by the company for the product, without forming a technical committee, or asking any of the official trusted consultants to write up specs and details of pricing that are up to date before moving forward to the contract procedure," Iraq's Federal Board of Supreme Audit wrote. Mills said the contracting process was above-board and overseen in part by the US Department of Defense.Pacem's overseas presence extends past the Iraq deal. The company has an office in Dubai, and in 2015 it also had offices in Islamabad and Kabul, according to an archived version of Pacem's website. Mills' wife, Rana, who is described on Pacem's website as the company's executive chairwoman, is the CEO of another Dubai-based company, Abdeen DMCC, according to her LinkedIn page. It's not clear what Abdeen does, and Rana did not respond to questions about Pacem's ownership or Abdeen DMCC.On its website, Pacem says it is "registered" to "legally work" in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kurdistan, Iraq, Ukraine, Kenya, Somaliland, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Brazil, Malaysia, and Dubai. Pacem appeared at the 2019 Saudi National Security and Risk Prevention Expo, an arms and defense sales convention, and the same year was an exhibitor at IDEX, a massive five-day weapons show in Abu Dhabi.Pacem appears to have invested in the Amtec facility at least in part to manufacture weapons for sale abroad, not at home. Mills wrote to a federal regulator in 2019 that he had upgraded Pacem's munitions plant to "manufacture a new energetic product that will serve our allies around the world."Before Pacem bought Amtec, Amtec had delivered on contracts for ammunition worth about $5.6 million with federal agencies, including the Defense Department and Bureau of Prisons. Since the acquisition closed in 2018, Pacem has delivered only $314,110 worth of munitions and consulting services to the US government, according to a federal contracting database. Some federal contracts are classified and may not be disclosed.In Congress, Mills sits on the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees, which oversee military spending and foreign weapons sales.Mills' oversight role "could have a huge impact on his business, his competitors writ large," Sherman said. But as it stands, there is no requirement for him to reveal the extent of his dealings with foreign governments.<h2>The arms dealer in Congress</h2>Mills leaned heavily on his endorsement from former President Donald Trump during his congressional campaign. Echoing Trump's election denial and anti-immigrant views, he voiced support for a temporary ban on immigration to the United States and <a href="https://www.orlandosentinel.com/politics/2022-election/os-ne-politics-2022-election-aarp-congressional-forum-20220729-3zvnpsvybbdvph4hnoitnlxwv4-story.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told the Orlando Sentinel</a> that he didn't view the Biden administration as legitimate.In Congress, Mills has sought to position himself as someone who understands American involvement in foreign conflicts from the ground up and align himself with Republicans who are skeptical of US military involvement abroad. He has excoriated the Biden administration for what he's described as its botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, and he's opposed additional American aid to Ukraine.Before he was even sworn in, Mills <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?524346-1/house-republicans-seek-audit-ukraine-funding" target="_blank" rel="noopener">appeared alongside</a> Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz at a December 2022 press conference touting a resolution to audit US funding for the war in Ukraine."We should not go around thinking that we're always the world's police, and have the answers," Mills said at the press conference, warning of the potential for "nuclear escalation" in Ukraine and an "axis of evil" between Russia, China and Iran.Mills also recently voted for an ill-fated resolution sponsored by Gaetz that would've ordered President Joe Biden to withdraw US troops from Syria, joining a coalition of intervention-skeptical Republicans and progressives.He's also waded into the culture wars, <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/863/text" target="_blank" rel="noopener">introducing a bill</a> aimed at preventing the supposed distribution of sexual material in schools.But so far, months into his freshman term, he's still best known for his grenades. Editor's note: March 23, 2023 — This story has been updated to remove a reference to Pacem's rubber bullets being used against protesters in Hong Kong in 2019. While a company that Pacem acquired in 2018 did supply less-lethal munitions to the Hong Kong government, Pacem said the sales took place before the acquisition. It has also been updated to include a comment from Pacem's chief legal officer, Joseph Schmitz, clarifying Pacem's current ownership. While Mills told Insider that he had divested from Pacem and Schmitz indicated that Mills was no longer the company's owner, after this story was published Schmitz clarified that he intended to say only that it would be inaccurate to describe Mills as the sole owner of Pacem Defense and Pacem Solutions. Editor's note: March 28, 2023 — This article has been updated to reflect that Pacem Solutions removed the page that listed Mills as an executive chair following publication.

Rep. Cory Mills founded a company that sells arms to foreign governments. He won't say which ones.

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5339f07a6da811b11ff4bf5e-754-566/nyse-stock-broker.jpg" border="0" alt="nyse stock broker" /><a href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003673967/">Library of Congress</a>Stock brokers working at the New York Stock Exchange in 1963</div></div></div>Active investors have never had it better. 
Turnkey desktop trading programs have lowered fees to as little as $7 a trade, and there's never been more cheap or free information available to anyone interested in markets. 
It didn't used to be that way. 
We spoke with K.C. Grainger, a veteran broker now based in Montreal. He said the average commission in the late 1980s was $45, but that it could often climb much into the hundreds or thousands depending on the size of the order.
"The biggest firms got away with murder in these commissions," he said. "They could hire analysts to kowtow to brokers for commissions, and the commissions would go to pay the research department."
Now, he said, those research departments have been wiped out.
"With E-Trade or Scottrade, it's very difficult to hire anybody to do research coverage - there's no profits coming in," he said.
His remarks are backed up by historical data <a href="file:///Users/robwile/Downloads/SSRN-id313681.pdf">compiled in 2002 by Columbia Business School's Charles Jones</a>. Back then, the market was regraded as much more specialized, hence the higher costs. But those costs, as measured by the percentage of the value of the trade, have only been tumbling. 
<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5339f256ecad04c628e58c3a-1171-663/screen-shot-2014-03-31-at-6.54.18-pm.jpg" border="0" alt="nyse commissions" />SSRN</div></div></div>
Deutsche Bank's David Bianco recently published this chart showing average commissions per share.
<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5339f19f6bb3f7ea02e58c3b-805-562/screen-shot-2014-03-31-at-6.50.48-pm.jpg" border="0" alt="broker commissions" />Deutsche Bank</div></div></div>
These two use different metrics, but the overall conclusion is clear: it's now super cheap to buy and sell stocks.
This doesn't mean it's gotten easier to trade stocks. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-small-investors-really-lose-2014-3">As BI's Henry Blodget explained today</a>, there has probably never been a level playing field in the market.
But it does show that certain barriers to entry have been lowered.

Back In The Day, Brokers Got Away With Murder In Trading Commissions

One of the hottest topics in today’s tech industry is the "Internet of Things (IoT)."

	The IoT is a term used to describe a fully-connected world, where physical objects like refrigerators and cars – or even beer kegs – are linked to the Internet. That doesn’t simply mean browsing the Internet through these objects. It’s about monitoring data, improving security, and providing additional services to its users remotely.

	Jasper, founded in 2004, is considered one of the early pioneers in this area. It provides a cloud-based IoT platform for companies to connect its product to the Internet, essentially turning it into a complete service package. And thanks to companies like Jasper, more and more businesses are reaping the benefits of a truly connected world.

	Take Tesla, for example. In late 2013, Tesla had to update 29,000 of its Model S cars to fix a problem referred to as “excessive heating of the adapter.” To make these updates, Tesla didn’t need to physically see any of the cars. Using IoT technology, Tesla was able to make over-the-air software updates that immediately solved the problem. 

	“The consumers are not bothered, Tesla doesn’t have to recall the car, and everybody just has a better experience — isn’t that amazing?” said Jasper CEO Jahangir Mohammed in an interview with Business Insider.

	(Mohammed told us Tesla went through Jasper’s “platform” for these updates. But when we reached out to Tesla, they said they don’t have a relationship and Jasper is entirely unrelated to this software update).
 What’s arguably more amazing is the size of the business Jasper has been able to build over the last decade. It currently has more than 1,000 <keyword id="6356323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Enterprise">enterprise</keyword> clients across 120 countries. Its platform is pre-integrated to more than 100 mobile networks around the world. So far, Jasper has raised $205 million in venture capital and is now valued at roughly $1.4 billion. 

	“Our first slide when we raised money in 2004 read, ‘Service to connect things globally.’ And that’s exactly what we are doing now, 10 years later,” Mohammed said.

	We caught up with Mohammed to ask him more about his business and the IoT market in general. Here is our lightly edited interview:

	Business Insider: You started your company way before the 'Internet of Things' became such a key sector. What was the inspiration?

	Jahangir Mohammed: It all started on a fishing trip 10 years ago. Going to Tahoe, the ‘check engine’ light came up on my car. When I called customer service, they said I had to go all the way to Reno, which was three hours away. But when I got to Reno, all they did was reset my car in 20 minutes, and I was good to go. It cost me three hours of drive to get a simple fix! So that’s the very first incident that got me thinking, ‘Why is this car not connected?’ And then I started seeing so many different things that made sense to connect.

	BI: How far has the IoT come in everyday life?

	JM: I would say it’s still the 2nd inning. But the beauty of IoT is that it transforms products and things into services. We believe just about every business will become an IoT service business. And we’re seeing tremendous growth across many industries. The last couple years we grew 100%, and this year we’ll grow another 100%.

	BI: What exactly do you mean by turning it into a service?

	JM: Let me continue with the car example. At the very basic level, car companies can monitor engines and take immediate actions when there’s a problem, sometimes without even telling the customer.

	It can also improve safety and security for the customers. If the car is stolen, the nearest police station is alerted. If there’s an accident and an airbag goes off, an ambulance gets dispatched.

	And then you can set up a whole entertainment service in the car. The car would become a wifi hotspot and enable cloud music and stuff. The car becomes a very rich conduit for a variety of services. It’s completely transformed. This is the power of the Internet of Things.

	BI: Give us another example.

	JM: Heineken’s kegs are armed with our connection, so they become a connected service. They are always filled, and the freshness of the beer is always monitored. So Heineken can basically have an end-to-end visibility on the quality of beer that is actually reaching its end customer. 

	BI: And what role does Jasper play in this again?

	JM: So there are four pieces that come together to deliver IoT services. The first is the device, the actual thing. The second is the network that transports the bits and bites. The third is the application, or the thing that notifies the ambulance in the car example.

	The fourth element is what we call the Service IT. It’s what makes all three of these work together and become a service. That means activating/deactivating the service, metering usage and billing, provisioning services, and getting different parties together when they provide different services in the same object.

	Jasper does this Service IT. It’s a cloud-based software that is deeply integrated to mobile networks around the world. It’s basically a turnkey element for enterprises to become an IoT service business.

	BI: And you’re helping create a whole new market for businesses.

	JM: That’s right. We’re not going after anybody’s lunch. The IoT service is a new paradigm, and that’s why many people say this is a net economic value creator. For example, network operators sell their network through our platform, and that creates a new, growing revenue stream for them.

	BI: Tell us more about the $1.4 billion valuation. Any plans to go public?

	JM: The investors really liked that we are a pure play IoT company. And it’s not a speculative business. Every device we connect, we charge a fee. It’s a very simple and proven business model that has been running for 10 years.

	Our financials are solid. But the markets are favorable and I could raise more money to grow even more aggressively, so that would be a reason for us to go public.

	Correction: An earlier version of this story said Tesla uses Jasper's technology to deliver software updates. That was based on comments given to Business Insider from Jasper's CEO. Tesla responded to an inquiry from Business Insider after this story was published and said the two companies do not have a relationship and Tesla does not use Jasper's technology. Jasper's CEO also apologized for mischaracterizing his relationship with Tesla.

	 
	 
	Read more: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jasper-internet-of-things-service-2014-8#ixzz3A9QLW1L3">http://www.businessinsider.com/jasper-internet-of-things-service-2014-8#ixzz3A9QLW1L3</a>

You Searched For "turnkey publishing" and got 5 results

Times Internet's M360 partners with Google to enable effective monetization for digital publishers

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Remote work lets you travel the world. This startup helps you take your kids with you.

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Rep. Cory Mills founded a company that sells arms to foreign governments. He won't say which ones.

Jack Newsham,Katherine Long,Bryan Metzger,Azmi Haroun

Back In The Day, Brokers Got Away With Murder In Trading Commissions

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How 'Internet of Things' Startup Jasper Became A $1.4 Billion Business And Saves Companies Like Tesla From Catastrophes

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