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It appears like Google is making some serious efforts to stop people from getting scammed from third-party repair stores that some times charge more money from customers and deliver cheap quality replacements. The software giant now blocks ads from third-party repair shops in various locations.
According to a report from PCMag, Jonathan Strange who has a phone repair store in Montgomery, Alabama has been noticing a decline in the online visibility of his business establishment since Google is not accepting his ads anymore. The report also states that Mr.Strange’s store had been getting some attention until they lost ad promotions since the nearest Apple Store was about 100 miles away.
“Probably 70 or 80 percent of our customers come from Google. That’s not just us, but all across the repair industry. That’s how much power [Google has] over us“, said Mr. Strange.
His statement is quite true since most of us simply Google the nearest repair store when a gadget gets broken. While Google’s move will effectively reduce scammers, it also affects the reach of legit repair stores.
Matt Ham, owner of seven Computer Repair Doctor shops in various parts of the US had a similar experience. “There’s no substitute for Google. The consumer behavior is the same: They break their phone, they Google for iPhone repair near me“, said Ham.
These small companies usually buy keywords like “iPhone repair,” “computer repair,” and “laptop repair” so that users would see their shop first when they search for repair stores after breaking their laptop or smartphone.
It is quite unfair how Google has stopped just small companies from placing ads. Major brands like Best Buy, Verizon are still allowed to promote and run ads, according to the report.
Other than being unfair to small companies, showing just the big businesses in the search results will make the user spend more money and dedicate more time to get a repair done as these stores could be far from his/her home. Also, major stores will straightaway recommend replacing the phone with a new one even for minor issues like battery replacement.
“Google is severely handicapping repair businesses, prioritizing purchases over repair and reuse, and deciding which companies customers can turn to when they need to fix electronics,” iFixit wrote to the US Federal Trade Commission.
Making things even worse, iPhones will show a service warning if you replace its battery from any place other than the Apple Store which is another hit on third-party repair stores. What do you think of this situation? Let us know in the comments.


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Posted: 2017-10-13 05:30
Most of us have gone on dates with strangers from the internet at some point. But even if you met your date IRL, it’s a good idea to give them a Google Voice number when you start chatting, Rucker says. Google Voice lets users generate phone numbers for free and use them to set up other secure chat services like WhatsApp or Signal. A user can easily turn off her Google Voice number and get a new one if her date turns out to be a creep—and she won’t have to go to the trouble of changing her real number and redistributing it to all her friends.
Three years after acquiring the MIT robotics lab Boston Dynamics, makers of Atlas and other scary bots , Alphabet (Google’s parent company) is selling it off to Softbank , a Japanese telecommunications company already known for its less terrifying robots like Pepper that might soon be getting some impressive upgrades. It turns out that posting YouTube videos of nightmare-inducing robots isn’t as profitable as once hoped.
But will Softbank take the same approach that Google did and just let Boston Dynamics and Schaft develop advanced robots for the sake of pushing the field forward? Or does it plan to merge them with its existing robotics teams in hopes of making robots like Pepper and NAO more appealing to consumers? R& D is expensive, and it’s safe to assume that Boston Dynamics and Schaft didn’t come cheap, so the company will almost certainly carefully balance both approaches, which means your dreams of a robot butler are suddenly a lot closer to becoming reality.
Courts have sometimes viewed all passwords as equal, faulting a victim whose partner hacked her Facebook because she had shared an Amazon password with him. The court questioned whether one password could be considered private, given that she had shared other accounts, Rucker explained. “If you share an iCloud account and you’re sharing pictures that way, you’re sharing accounts in the eyes of the court,” Rucker said.
Back in February, Boston Dynamics revealed a bot called Handle , a two-wheeled version of Atlas that the lab’s founder, Marc Raibert, claimed could be built and sold much cheaper than bots like Atlas. By that point Alphabet was already shopping Boston Dynamics and Schaft around as part of cost-saving and restructuring initiatives that saw other moonshot projects getting axed as well. And many suspected that Handle, who had undoubtedly been in development for a while already, was only revealed as a way to sweeten the pot for potential buyers.
In a press release issued about the acquisition, Softbank’s Chairman & CEO Masayoshi Son praised the work Boston Dynamics has done. “Smart robotics are going to be a key driver of the next stage of the Information Revolution, and Marc and his team at Boston Dynamics are the clear technology leaders in advanced dynamic robots. I am thrilled to welcome them to the SoftBank family and look forward to supporting them as they continue to advance the field of robotics and explore applications that can help make life easier, safer and more fulfilling.”
Alphabet has reportedly been trying to sell off its robot division for almost a year now, with companies like Amazon and Toyota initially suspected as possible buyers. While Boston Dynamics has been responsible for creating some of the most advanced robots ever developed, including the humanoid Atlas , and the four-legged Spot and Big-Dog , advanced technologies don’t come cheap. The reality is that Alphabet was still staring down years of expensive R& D before it could profitably sell its robotic creations, and Boston Dynamics and Schaft became victims of the company’s efforts to scale back its bleeding-edge moonshot investments.

domain: news


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Funding Ding Ding
Ever wish that Wikipedia was more easily searchable from your old cellphone, or that the site’s mobile page came in more languages? Perhaps not, at least if you’re a smartphone-carrying, English speaking citizen of the capital-w West. On the other hand, if you’re one of the millions of people coming online via more Read More
Thre.ad, a New York City-based social network that lets users share street style through “threads” of photos, is in the process of raising a $760,000 debt round, according to the startup’s amended Form D filing on FormDs.com.
As Thre.ad co-founder and CEO Mimi Nguyen explained to Betabeat by email, the social network lets users spot and tag photos with brands and styles and share it with the rest of the Thre.ad community. “If Twitter and Instagram had a baby, it would be thre.ad!” Ms. Nguyen told the Huffington Post when the company launched in private beta in November. Sounds more like democratizing The Sartorialist to us, with the idea of turning anyone with a smartphone into a style spotter.


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On December 3rd, 1994, Sony unveiled its highly anticipated PlayStation game console to the world. Today, well over two decades later, the company is reintroducing the iconic system in the form of a very cute miniature version.
Dubbed the ‘PlayStation Classic’, this new, reimagined console is bundled with an HDMI cable, two PS1 controllers, and 20 pre-loaded “genre-defining titles,” including Jumping Flash, Wild Arms, Ridge Racer Type 4, Tekken 3, and Final Fantasy VII.
The PlayStation Classic, which is touted as “45% smaller than the original PlayStation,” is now available for pre-order at select retailers, including GameStop and BestBuy for just $100. Considering its modern features and attractive price point, Sony hopes to reintroduce the game-changing platform to a completely new generation that would have otherwise gone without it. What’s more, by replicating the console’s looks, controllers, and original packaging, the Japanese tech giant hopes to also woo long-time PlayStation fans.
This latest announcement proves that the gaming industry as a whole is on the same nostalgia wave as other industries. Just last week we reported that Nintendo is planning to launch a set of NES controllers for its Switch console. Going further, a California-based gaming startup known as Playmaji is launching a ‘virtual console‘ that emulates the Playstation 1, Sega Saturn, SNES, and other vintage consoles.
According to sources, Sony plans to officially launch the PlayStation Classic on December 3rd, a full 24 years after its inaugural launch. Sony says they will unveil additional titles and details in the coming weeks.


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Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing franchise series, which highlights brands that are new to or aggressively expanding via franchising. Is your restaurant starting to franchise? Email us at [email protected].
Jinya Ramen Bar CEO and founder Tomo Takahashi grew up in the restaurant business. His family owned a restaurant in Japan, instilling in him an appreciation for traditional Japanese cooking that inspired his own entrepreneurial pursuits.
In 2000, Takahashi opened his first Jinya in Tokyo. Between 2002 and 2008, Takahashi operated six more locations in Tokyo, but it was a lifelong dream to own a restaurant in the U.S., said Mike LaRue, Jinya Ramen Bar’s VP of franchise sales.
In 2010, he created Jinya Holdings and opened his first Jinya Ramen Bar in Los Angeles. Three years later, when Jinya Ramen Bar had three restaurants in L.A., Takahashi started franchising the concept. Famed food critic Jonathan Gould wrote a piece about Jinya, which helped kick off demand for the chain, LaRue said. Franchising took off, and the company currently boasts 52 units with over 170 restaurants in the works.
Jinya Ramen Bar offers a menu that lists recognizable ingredients in English, which appeals to Americans, LaRue said. In addition to ramen, the restaurant also offers small plates, rice bowls, curry, salads and mini tacos.
“Everyone has an initial perceived notion of what ramen is,” LaRue said. “People who’ve never been to a Jinya [restaurant] … glace around and it’s crazy. Ninety-eight percent of the feedback is almost this quote: ‘Wow this is not what I expected.’”
Jinya Ramen Bar operates its corporate structure in the spirit of kaizen, which is the Japanese term for continuous improvement. That push for excellence includes finding ways to support franchisees success, LaRue said.
The company uses secret shoppers and assessments to ensure quality and consistency of menu execution and customer service. Jinya Ramen Bar also has a technology stack to support franchisees, including Placer.AI to help with real estate development, NCR Aloha for its point-of-sales system, and Olo, which it added last year, for digital ordering. The company uses Yext for listing review analytics and Hyperlocology as its marketing partner.
“From a technology perspective, we’re always looking to bring in the next best thing that is going to tie into what’s going to put our franchisees in the best position to be successful, whether it’s online ordering … [or] third-party delivery,” LaRue said.
Takahashi’s goal is to eventually open 25 U.S. units annually. Last year, Jinya opened eight and is on its way to opening 10 to 15 this year and 25 in 2024. Jinya Ramen Bar locations are typically 2,800 square feet, and AUVs for 2022 were $2.85 million. The top third of stores reported AUVs of over $4 million.
Development plans: The chain has a little over 170 units in various stages of development, which will be developed within the next eight to 10 years. The company opened eight last year and is on track to open 10 to 15 this year and is slated to reach 25 new units in 2024, LaRue said.
The company is targeting various markets throughout the country, with a cluster of stores forthcoming in the Mid-Atlantic region. LaRue said there are a lot of growth opportunities in the Southeast, and stores are expected to open in Tennessee, Florida, South Carolina and throughout Texas. The brand still has territory available for franchisees in the Northeast, Upper Midwest, Northwest and California, he said.
Ideal franchisees: Jinya Ramen Bar is looking for multi-unit franchisees that have experience in operating casual dining restaurants, LaRue said.
Franchise quick facts
- Minimum liquidity: $1 million
- Minimum net worth: $2 million
- Franchise fee: $40,000 (but expected to go up to $50,000 with 2023 FDD)
- Royalty fee: 5%
- National ad fund: 1%
- Local ad spend: 2%


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Oritz Gaming’s new offering has been unveiled during G2E 2015 in Las Vegas this week.
With the launch of Oritz Gaming’s new offering, the multi-national company is solidifying its position of a global leader.
Oritz Gaming’s new offering includes new game types, cabinets, systems and a diversity of options for any gaming platform. Thanks to the new expanded product lines Oritz Gaming is showing versatility to supply end-to-end gaming solutions in the constantly changing market.
The interactive division of Oritz Gaming, Oritz Interactive, was a featured sponsor of the iGaming sessions that took place during the G2E events on Monday. Oritz Gaming and Oritz Interactive have they own booths at the show.
Maurilio Silva, Ortiz Gaming President:
Oritz Gaming’s new offering commercials and huge kiosks are placed in the seminar hall, showing the global reach of the company in the industry.
Ortiz Gaming’s booth 3267, and Ortiz Interactive’s 3867 is sure to be a must see. Global Gaming Expo (G2E) 2015 tradeshow in Las Vegas opened its doors on September 30th. The G2E opens its doors to thousands of operators, manufacturers, suppliers and top-executives from all over the world.


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NEW DELHI: Three days after WhatsApp
was passed, the US-based company on Monday faced a barrage of complaints from the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) and others over the policy update, which has prompted a global outcry and led some users to switch to rival apps Telegram
, and other group companies. Though it clarified the changes would not affect personal conversations of its users, BEUC and eight of its members criticised the policy changes and filed complaints with the European Commission
and the European network of consumer authorities, claiming WhatsApp was unfairly pressuring users to accept the new policies. “The content of these notifications, their nature, timing and recurrence put an undue pressure on users and impair their freedom of choice. As such, they are a breach of the EU Directive
on Unfair Commercial Practices,” the groups said in a joint statement. “WhatsApp has failed to explain in plain and intelligible language the nature of the changes... This ambiguity amounts to a breach of EU consumer law which obliges companies to use clear & transparent contract terms and commercial communications,” they said.
Facebook said BEUC has got the issue wrong. “BEUC’s action is based on a misunderstanding of the purpose and effect of the update to our terms of service,” a spokesperson said. “The update does not expand our ability to share data with Facebook, and does not impact the privacy of your messages with friends or family, wherever they are in the world. We would welcome an opportunity to explain the update to BEUC to clarify what it means for people.” The consumer groups urged the European network of consumer authorities & EU data protection authorities to work together to address the privacy and consumer rights concerns.


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Apple is reportedly asking artists to join its Apple Music platform and offering them a penny for every stream, which is currently twice as much as what Spotify is giving. In addition, the Cupertino-based company says that 52 percent of subscription revenue will be given through record labels.
The letter reveals details for Apple Music artists and how they’ll be paid for joining the service. Wall Street Journal made mention of how Apple said that they believe in ‘paying every creator the same rate, that a play has a value and that creators should never have to pay to promote their music’.
The letter further specifies how 52% of all subscription revenue in Apple Music goes to record labels. In comparison, Spotify has a more complex system as some users can opt for the ad-supported free tier.
Spotify is said to pay up to 53 percent of subscription revenue, but the average cost only comes to half a cent.
For lighting, electrical, signage, and technology solutions that allow you to do more call Sverige Energy today at +4(670) 4122522.


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Hyderabad, Mar 8 (UNI) The Centre is working out plans to replicate the business model of the National Dairy Development Board in export-oriented sectors including leather goods, organic coffee and handicrafts to boost exports and remove regional disparities, Union Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh said today.
With Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu mainly contributing to the high economic growth, the Centre was concentrating on reducing the regional disparities by promoting NDDB model for providing livelihood opportunities for the people in the backward areas, he noted while kicking off the Asia final of the Global Social Venture Competition organised by the Indian School of Business in association with four other leading business schools in the world.
The NDDB model was the most successful business model helping the country to become a major producer of milk and milk products from being a net importer of milk, he pointed out.
''We want to replicate the NDDB model in other sectors with good export potential like handicrafts and leather goods and create jobs for marginalised people,'' he said.
The Ministry was working with tribal women Self-Help Groups in the naxalite-prone agency areas of Visakhapatnam district to produce at least 4,000 tonnes of ''organic coffee'' for the niche export market.
He stressed the need for creating more job opportunities for disadvantaged sections by promoting exports of traditional products like, coffee, tea, rubber, coconut, which accouunted for two per cent of the country's exports of 150 billion, dollars.
UNI SM ROY AK RN1939


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Britain will allow international travel to resume from May 17 but is limiting the number of destinations open for quarantine-free holidays to just 12 countries as it cautiously emerges from lockdown restrictions.
Malta, like most of Europe was placed on the Amber List. Only Portugal, Iceland, Gibraltar and Faroe Islands were on the Green List.
Travellers will be permitted to visit amber list countries, but must be prepared to spend 10 days quarantining at home upon their return to the UK. They must also provide a negative Covid test result before departing for British shores, plus pay to take two PCR tests on arrival: one on day two and one on day eight. Private PCR tests in the UK cost £120 on average, although prices are becoming increasingly competitive, with one firm confirming it would be providing them for just under £50.
Although being on the amber rather than the green list will come as a blow to European destinations reliant on tourism, there is light at the end of the tunnel, according to travel industry insiders. The lists are expected to be reviewed and updated every three weeks.
The Independent UK


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Nearly two years after bringing ray tracing to the mainstream with its Turing cards, Nvidia has been hard at work preparing for the successor to its popular RTX 2080 flagship.
The RTX 3000 series will use a new Ampere architecture that debuted on Nvidia’s DGX A100 supercomputers, marking the first time that the company will use a 7nm manufacturing process for its GPU.
Like Turing before it, the Ampere-powered RTX 3000 card is expected to bring even better graphics performance to gamers and workstations, but the most notable upgrade for PC enthusiasts will be bottleneck-free ray tracing capabilities. Here’s everything we know about it so far.
Nvidia has been tight-lipped about the launch of its RTX 3080 graphics cards, and the ongoing global health pandemic increases the uncertainty. Absent an official announcement or guidance from Nvidia, industry observers speculate that the RTX 3000 cards could launch as early as fall 2020.
It’s been reported that the Ampere cards are currently undergoing a Design Validation Test, or DVT, and mass production could begin as early as August. If all goes well, an announcement could happen in September, according to TweakTown‘s revised launch timeline estimate.
Historically, Nvidia staggers the launch of a new consumer GPU family, and we expect this will be the case again. This means that the flagship and top-tier cards — such as the RTX 3080 and RTX 3080 Ti, the latter of which potentially could be renamed under the RTX Titan branding — could debut first, with more budget-friendly options, including the RTX 3070 and 3060, arriving at a later date that could stretch into early 2021.
This timeline would match what Nvidia used for the launch of the RTX 2080, which was announced in August two years ago.
Nvidia’s new RTX lineup represents the premium segment of gaming and workstation graphics cards, and the new RTX 3000 series are expected to command a hefty price. For reference, Nvidia’s RTX 2080 Ti retails for $1,199 and the RTX 2080 Super costs $699. The RTX 3080 likely will be priced at the premium end of the spectrum.
In the past, there was a big price jump moving between Nvidia graphics generations — the Turing cards were more expensive than the Pascal cards that they replaced — and this could again be the case. However, there are rumors that Nvidia may be moving manufacturing from TSMC to Samsung. This move could give Nvidia access to Samsung’s 7nm extreme ultraviolet, or EUV, process, which could reduce manufacturing costs. The accuracy of that rumor is unclear, however.
Gamers with a smaller budget for an upgrade shouldn’t be discouraged. The RTX 2060 currently starts at $299, and the upgraded RTX 3060 likely will be similarly priced. The midrange RTX 2070 is priced at $499.
These lower-priced cards will help Nvidia compete against AMD’s forthcoming lineup of RDNA 2 graphics. Additionally, a leaked benchmark from earlier this year showed an unknown Radeon GPU outperforming Nvidia’s RTX 2080 Ti by 17%. More competitive performance from its rival may force Nvidia to engage in a price war with the release of the RTX 3080.
Nvidia’s Ampere architecture will appear in multiple varieties of graphics cards. The first such card was unveiled in May at Nvidia’s online Graphics Technology Conference in the form of the A100 for data centers and the DGX A100 supercomputer. The company Ampere the largest 7nm chip ever built, saying it was designed for better A.I. performance.
The RTX 3000 series will likely use the same 7nm architecture that debuted on the data center version, which would bring better power efficiency. An earlier Taipei Times report suggested that this new architecture could result in up to a 50% uplift in GPU performance, while at the same time reducing power consumption by one-half compared to Turing.
YouTube channel Moore’s Law is Dead reported that the RTX 3080 should put Nvidia in the performance lead once again, as it’s capable of 21 teraflops of performance, or nine more teraflops than what is possible on the Xbox Series X. When it comes to gaming, Nvidia’s RTX 3000 series cards will show that PC gaming still commands a performance lead over consoles.
Several variants of consumer Ampere are expected, though there are some conflicts in their numbering scheme based on early leaks. The GA102 is widely believed to be the version used for the RTX 3090, which could debut under the RTX Titan branding, the RTX 3080 Ti or Super variant, and the standard RTX 3080. The Titan version could get up to 24GB of memory, while the enhanced Ti or Super-branded card will come with 12GB of memory, and the standard 3080 will ship with 10GB of VRAM.
A separate leak from Twitter user KittyCorgi, however, shows the 3080 series bearing the GA103 model number. Regardless of how they’re labeled, the performance of these cards isn’t contested.
Hardwareleaks posted a leaked 3DMark Time Spy score of what is believed to have been obtained with the RTX 3080 Ti. The score of 18,257 points represents a 30% performance improvement over the RTX 2080 Ti. In a recent tweet, @kkatcorgi suggested a 20% generational performance uplift, though it wasn’t clear which benchmarking method or utility was used to obtain this figure. This could in turn lead to the 3080 Ti gaining 40% better graphics performance than the 2080 Ti, according to Notebookcheck, which would allow the new card to render games in 4K at 60fps with ease.
For comparison, earlier leaked benchmarks for AMD’s Big Navi GPU, which uses the company’s RDNA 2 architecture, suggested that the card performs just 10% to 15% better than Nvidia’s RTX 2080 Ti. If accurate, this would mean that the RTX 3080 Ti could outperform AMD’s next-gen graphics for serious gamers, and place Big Navi’s performance more in line with the non-Ti variant of the RTX 3080.
While the generational improvement in performance is expected for a new GPU family, the RTX 3080 Ti is also expected to perform significantly better at ray tracing, the hallmark feature of the RTX family, and an area of struggle for the current RTX 2000 series.
Ampere’s improvements with artificial intelligence and DLSS should help improve ray tracing performance, especially when games are rendered at higher resolutions. The card is also expected to come with 108 ray tracing acceleration cores, more than double the 48 ray tracing acceleration cores supported by the RTX 2080 Super.
Along with the card’s new double-sided PC board design, Nvidia is rumored to use a new traversal coprocessor to help improve ray tracing performance. This coprocessor would be the GPU’s ray tracing chip, according to Tweak Town, and could serve to unite the RT cores under one silicon.
It’s unclear how this architecture will play out, and if Nvidia will offload all or some of the ray tracing demands to this traversal coprocessor, but gamers should be able to expect much better performance in games with ray tracing enabled, especially at enhanced game settings in high resolution.
Clock speeds are reported to be around 2.2GHz, and we’ve heard rumors that the card will come with 18GB of video memory. A recent leak suggested a boost clock speed of only 1,935MHz, and it’s unclear at this time if this will change or if Nvidia has made enough improvements in efficiency that a higher speed isn’t required.
A leaked specs sheet for the RTX 3080 Ti posted by Twitter user CyberCatPunk revealed that the card will come with 5,376 CUDA cores and support 12GB GDDR6 memory running at 18 bps. The TDP for the card is stated as 320 watts.
The card is said to be PCIe 4.0-complaint and will feature three DisplayPort 2.0 ports, one HDMI 2.1, and one USB-C port.
For gamers, though, the killer feature of Ampere-based GPUs will be support for next-generation deep learning super sampling DLSS 3.0 specifications for any game that is rendered using TAA, or temporal anti-aliasing, techniques. The implementation of DLSS 3.0 support still requires Game Ready drivers, but it will still be easier for developers to bring DLSS into their game with some code work involved. For gamers, this will result in increased performance in games, and Nvidia is rumored to enable DLSS 3.0 out of the box by default, according to the Moore’s Law is Dead YouTube channel.
In terms of the card’s overall package, the RTX 3080 could debut with a new and controversial design. Leaked images depict a new cooling system for the dual-fan design on the card. Rather than having both fans on the same side, the fans are placed on opposite sides. Although the fins that envelope the card likely serve to dissipate heat, online readers noted that this gives the RTX 3000 series a cooler-like appearance.
More recently leaked images reveal that Nvidia could be moving toward a new 12-pin PCIe power interface system for the high-end graphics card that’s capable of delivering up to 600 watts of power. Early rumors suggest that Nvidia’s flagship cards will require at least 400 watts of power. The new 12-pin interface would be used on Nvidia GPUs with PG142 board numbers, which is speculated for the higher-end 3000 series, including the RTX 3080 Ti/RTX 3090, RTX 3080, RTX 3070 Ti/RTX 3070, according to Wccftech.
A schematic on Chinese tech site FCPOWERUP shows the power interface, which looks like a single connector with two stacked six-pin connectors joined together. This leads some in the tech community to speculate that gamers who may not want to shell out extra for the 12-pin connector can still join two six-pin connectors together. However, this solution would require an extra cable, which would not only make the inside of your tower look cluttered but could present new thermal challenges where airflow is concerned, especially given the higher power requirements of the card.
The most optimal solution, it appears, would be for upgraders to also upgrade their power supplies to accommodate the new connector and satisfy the higher power requirements of Nvidia’s flagship cards. This, however, would add to the cost of upgrading an existing PC build. The publication also detailed a separate four-pin interface adjacent to the new 12-pin power connector, though the purpose of that connector is unknown at this time.
Hopefully, if rumors of a fall launch pan out, we won’t have too much longer to learn more about Nvidia’s next big thing.
- AMD RDNA 2 graphics: Everything we know so far
- Nvidia Ampere graphics cards: Everything we know so far
- Cheap Nvidia RTX graphic cards won’t likely launch in 2020
- GeForce RTX 3080 leak reveals Nvidia’s controversial design concept
- AMD Radeon VII vs. Nvidia RTX 2080


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To our lululemon community,
The impact of COVID-19 is difficult to process as we navigate the uncertainty of the situation on a daily basis. People are the heart of lululemon, and through this period, we are committed to doing right by our teams, guests, and global communities.
lululemon has recently taken a number of actions and initiatives to support our people, including closing our stores in North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Malaysia, establishing a Global Relief Pay plan for our employees, and creating a $2 million Ambassador Relief Fund to assist ambassador-run sweat studios with basic operating costs.
As we continue to work through these unprecedented times, we are taking several proactive measures to support our lululemon family:
• We have extended our temporary store closures until it is safe to reopen each location, and will keep store employees on payroll through June 1, whether our stores reopen or remain closed.
• For the next three months, our Senior Leadership Team will reduce their salaries by 20 percent, and all members of the Board of Directors will forgo their cash retainer. The cost savings will be used to establish the new We Stand Together Fund to aid employees affected by the current COVID-19 crisis who are facing hardships and challenges in their lives.
Our website and mobile app, as well as our Community Carries On
offerings, remain available across all regions.
We have implemented enhanced health and safety measures to ensure the protection of our teams in our distribution centers, and we are so grateful to them for their work and dedication.
We will continue to monitor the situation, make the best decisions we can for our people and our business, and keep connecting with our communities.
Please take care of yourselves and each other.


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Microsoft abandons Yahoo acquisition
'We believe the economics demanded by Yahoo do not make sense for us,' Ballmer says
IDG News Service - Microsoft Corp. has dropped its nearly three-month-long pursuit of Yahoo Inc., ending a historic acquisition attempt whose failure takes Microsoft back to square one in its quest to boost its online business to better compete against Google Inc.
"We continue to believe that our proposed acquisition made sense for Microsoft, Yahoo and the market as a whole. Our goal in pursuing a combination with Yahoo was to provide greater choice and innovation in the marketplace and create real value for our respective stockholders and employees," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in a statement distributed early Saturday evening.
In response, Yahoo issued a statement reiterating its position that Microsoft's offer was too low. It also said that many Yahoo shareholders agreed with its position.
"Yahoo is profitable, growing and executing well on its strategic plan to capture the large opportunities in the relatively young online advertising market," Roy Bostock, the chairman of Yahoo's board, said in the statement.
Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang said that "with the distraction of Microsoft's unsolicited proposal now behind us," Yahoo can continue with "the most important transition in our history."
Microsoft said it had raised its initial bid by about $5 billion, but that didn't convince Yahoo to accept the revised offer. "After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal," Ballmer said.
All parties with a stake in the deal had been waiting for Microsoft to announce its next move after Yahoo failed to agree to a deal by last Saturday, the deadline Microsoft had set three weeks earlier.
But Microsoft stayed silent for days, as observers speculated whether it would walk away or prepare a hostile takeover. However, on Friday, anonymously sourced reports in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times said that Microsoft and Yahoo had turned a corner and were for the first time negotiating merger terms in earnest.
Ultimately, it seems that Microsoft's management, fatigued by Yahoo's resistance and demands, decided that engaging in a proxy fight to oust Yahoo's directors would be an arduous and nasty process. After all, for Microsoft, the goal of the massive acquisition was to quickly become a mightier competitor to Google in online advertising.
As soon as Microsoft announced its bid for Yahoo on Feb. 1 -- valued at $44.6 billion at the time -- Yahoo's management began seeking and considering alternatives, while its stock began to rise from the latest prebid price of $19.18.
By the time Yahoo's board formally rejected the unsolicited offer on Feb. 11, saying it undervalued the company, Yahoo's stock price had risen to $29.87, erasing the offer's premium. The next day, Microsoft hinted in a letter to Yahoo that it wouldn't shy away from attempting a hostile takeover.
Meanwhile, several media reports appeared -- all attributed to anonymous sources -- that Yahoo co-founder Yang was holding conversations with Google, AOL, Disney and News Corp., exploring alternative deals that would strengthen Yahoo's business and thus relieve the pressure to accept Microsoft's offer.
On April 5, Microsoft, clearly impatient, threatened Yahoo's board with a proxy battle if it wouldn't agree to a buyout in the next three weeks. That deadline passed last Saturday.
No alternative deal ever materialized for Yahoo, except for a very limited, albeit eyebrow-raising, test in which Yahoo ran Google ads along with some search engine results on Yahoo.com. Observers speculated that the test, announced on April 9, could lead to a full-blown outsourcing of Yahoo's search ad business to Google, a move that financial analysts said could boost Yahoo's revenue. Press reports last week indicated that Yahoo and Google might still enter into such a deal.
Yahoo also made overt maneuvers to buy itself time. For example, on March 5, Yahoo lifted the following week's deadline for nominating directors to its board in an attempt to discourage Microsoft from launching a proxy fight to replace the current board with members willing to approve its Yahoo acquisition bid.
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Swiss National Bank is not in favor of issuing a retail CBDC.
The Swiss National Bank does not see any overall benefit from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) to be used by the general public and used in day-to-day transactions, governing board member Andrea Maechler said on Tuesday. “We believe the risks outweigh the benefits,” Maechler told a financial conference held in Frankfurt, saying a retail CBDC meant central banks taking on the risks carried by the private sector and increased the risk of bank runs.
“Financial inclusion was also not a sufficient argument for CBDCs in Switzerland.”
Financial inclusion was also not a sufficient argument for CBDCs in Switzerland, Maechler said, with almost 100% of the country’s working population having access to bank accounts, while cash was still widely used. “This does not mean the SNB is not interested in CBDC, but our focus is to look at the role that wholesale CBDCs could play,” Maechler said, referring to their use in transactions between financial institutions like banks.
SNB used digital currency to settle transactions involving five commercial banks.
Switzerland’s central bank revealed last week that it had successfully used digital currency to settle transactions involving five commercial banks. That was the latest trial of the technology in wholesale markets. The trial, called Project Helvetia, is expected to bring the introduction of central bank digital currencies a step nearer in Switzerland, which has conducted some of the most advanced central bank digital currency (CBDC) experiments in Europe. Central banks worldwide have stepped up work on CBDCs to make existing payment systems more efficient and counter the challenge from cryptocurrencies, with research focusing on versions for both wholesale and retail use.


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Today Google held its second quarter earnings call and, in between announcing things like revenue and staffing numbers, El Goog threw us a few stats concerning Android. First up, activations: Google CEO Larry Page announced that there are now 550,000 Android devices activated every day, which is 50,000 more than Google was seeing just a hair over two weeks ago. The number crunch doesn't stop there, though, as it's been revealed that Google's little green robot is now present on a total of 130 million devices.
Obviously all those products need something to download, and thankfully the Android Market has plenty of apps to offer. Google said that there are now 250,000 apps available in the Market, a number which doesn't include content from third-party app stores. To date, the Android Market has served up six billion app downloads.
Finally, Google touched a bit on its new social network, Google+. Larry Page said that the service now has 10 million registered users and that those users are sharing and receiving one billion items every day. One of the most popular features of Google+ is Circles, which allows a person to organize the people that he or she knows into different groups.
Those are all pretty impressive figures, and they really show how far Android has come since its arrival alongside the G1 way back in 2008. Apple's iOS may still have a bit of a lead in terms of total devices, but Android is far and away the market share leader here in the U.S. when it comes to the smartphone world. And now that it's got 550,000 devices being activated every day (and that number is always growing), Google's little robot doesn't appear to be slowing down.
Via TechCrunch (1), (2), IntoMobile


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Around two million people use the service and the problem has also affected customers of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Ulster Bank, which are part of the same group.
All the banks belong to RBS Group, which apologised to customers and said it was working to fix the problems which have prevented people from logging in.
The hitch is thought to have started at around 7am and is the latest technical problem to have beset the group, starting with a huge IT meltdown last summer.
A spokeswoman for RBS could not say how many customers have been affected, although both personal and business users have been hit by the problems, which have struck just before the busy Easter weekend as people make plans to get away.
There are more than two million active users of the app among RBS and NatWest personal banking customers alone, with 13 million log-ins taking place each week.
The latest IT issues come just three weeks after a hardware fault prevented RBS Group customers from using cash machines and also affected online and telephone banking services.
The group took a £175 million hit as a result of last summer’s IT chaos which left NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland and Ulster Bank customers locked out of their accounts. The bulk of the redress costs related to Ulster Bank, where the problems took weeks longer to clear up.
A statement from RBS Group said: “We are aware of a technical problem this morning which is preventing customers from logging in to our mobile banking applications.
“We are working to fix the problem and apologise to customers for the inconvenience caused. No other systems are affected.”
The collapse also comes just weeks after the bank unveiled a new mobile banking feature for RBS/NatWest customers called Pay Your Contacts, which allows them to send payments of up to £100 to anyone with a Visa card, by entering their mobile number.
Last October, NatWest had to suspend another feature on its mobile phone app called GetCash, after the service was subject to a spate of “phishing” attacks by fraudsters.
The GetCash service, which allows customers to withdraw cash without using a debit card, was later re-instated after security was beefed up.
Customers vented their anger at being let down again by the group’s technology.
One Twitter user wrote: “No access to my iPhone app think it’s time to change banks!”
Another said: “The one day I’m desperate to use the NatWest app it’s broken, get it together people.”
Pointing out the bank’s previous IT problems, another Twitter user wrote: “How many chances do they want? After last time you would think they’ve learned.”
A spokeswoman for consumer group Which? said the problems will raise wider questions about “how robust and up to date banks’ IT systems are”.
She said: “Consumers and businesses alike rely on mobile banking services to access their accounts and consumers will rightly want to be assured that their money is accessible and safe at all times.”


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Singapore Technologies Telemedia Pte. Ltd. (STT) and Telekom Malaysia Bhd. (TM International) will buy a 47.7 per cent stake in Indian mobile carrier Idea Cellular Ltd. for US$390 million, the companies announced Friday.
The transaction, which will help STT and TM International become players in India’s growing mobile phone market, should be completed in the first quarter of 2005, the companies said. STT will take 60 per cent of the stake and TM International will take 40 per cent, they said.
Most of the stake is being acquired from U.S.-based Cingular Wireless LLC, which said on Saturday that it is selling its 32.9 per cent share of Idea Cellular to the two companies for about US$200 million. The stake was originally acquired by AT&T Wireless Services Inc., which recently merged with Cingular. Cingular is a joint venture between SBC Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp.
Idea Cellular’s other major shareholders are Tata Industries Ltd. and the Aditya Birla Management Corp. Ltd., both based in India. Their stakes will remain unchanged, with Aditya Birla holding 26.3 per cent and Tata owning 24.7 per cent, the companies said.
Idea Cellular is based in Pune, in Maharashtra state.


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You may have heard some shouts and rumors about this new technology called 3D printing.
Hybrid or electric? That's a question many green car drivers ask themselves when they consider what vehicle to purchase.
Toyota's latest concept car is dubbed the Smart Insect and is somewhat reminiscent of a Smart car, if only a tad smaller.
When electric cars first started generating buzz, I couldn't help but wonder if they heralded the end of performance automobiles.
Biofuels were under the microscope all summer in the U.S. due to drought-prompted concerns about the bite they can take out of food supplies.
Certain concept cars stand out because of some slick green technology that could someday make it into actual production.
We love tiny green houses here at EarthTechling and TG Daily.
Tiny little city cars aren't particularly common in the United States, at least not yet.
Choosing to eliminate (or even just minimize) your vehicle emissions is a big adjustment for most people.
It must be something in the air - last week, we brought you Richard Black’s Symbiotic Building concept, which essentially seeks to combine the modern office environment with a greenhouse.
Back in June, we brought you word that the Via Verde affordable housing complex had opened its doors to residents in the Bronx.
The bright minds of young college students and their mentors are at work again in the world of green technology.
One of the primary reasons many consumers shy away form electric vehicles is range anxiety, or the fear of a car battery running out of juice while still on the road.
Declining gas prices aren't denting sales of alternative fuel vehicles.
Green technologies often get a first vetting in the field through uses in areas of science or military.
Other avenues also exist, such as high performance racing for electric vehicles.
Tesla originally kicked off production of its electric vehicle line with the Roadster and only recently began selling its Model S four-door sedan.
Bringing EVs to mainstream consumers is a challenge the auto industry has yet to overcome.
Apple's decision to pull out of an environmental certification initiative may cost it millions in sales.
For many years, most of the fuel we've been burning in our automobiles has included 10% ethanol to reduce the amount of petroleum consumed in the United States.
Antarctica was once as warm as Iceland - warm enough for vegetation and even trees to thrive, a new study has found.


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Government buy-in will be crucial for cultured meat firms looking to hit cost parity for their products by 2030, with experts claiming that it will be an uphill battle go head-to-head with traditional meat products in terms of price by the end of this...
Greek-Canadian plant-based cheese firm Nafsika’s Garden has set its sights on the Middle Eastern market, looking to take advantage of the home-cooking and vegan consumer trends in the region, with India also on its hitlist.
India-based Habbit Health and Nutrition has launched a range of what it claims to be ‘the healthiest ice creams on the planet’ dubbed Wise Creams, containing zero sugar, low fat content and no more than 50 calories per serving.
Singapore-based pili nuts specialist firm Pili Pushers is maximizing the natural health and wellness factor of its products by incorporating botanicals with nutritional and health benefts into its flavour creations.
Philippines MNC Century Pacific is adopting parallel B2B/B2C retail plans for its new plant-based brand unMEAT, with a focus on simplicity and affordability as it eyes international markets from ASEAN to the Middle East.
Upcoming hemp regulations set by the Food Safety and Security Authority of India (FSSAI) will be a crucial turning point for the local hemp and cannabis sector, unlocking its potential for use in the ‘next wave’ food and beverage products.
Australian F&B brands and retailers will need to ensure their business strategy encompasses sustainability, affordability and the identification of a right niche if they wish to achieve growth in what looks to be a ‘tough year ahead’, according to...
Nestle Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is striving to create more innovative products for the region, following the launch of Quality Street dates, while also pledging to double down on its sustainability efforts.


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Clothing, homewares and food retailer M&S has revealed plans to shutter a further 85 full-line stores amid a 9.9% drop in full-year profit.
In the year to 30 March, profit before tax for the group, not adjusted for exceptional items, declined to GBP523.2m (US$663.1m) from GBP580.9m which the retailer attributed to sales headwinds and the cost of store closures.
UK clothing and home sales were down 3.6% over the year, impacted by store closures, with like-for-like revenue down 1.6%. Gross margin, however, was up 20bps driven by 14% lower stock into sale.
Encouraging progress in the third quarter was constrained by weak availability in the fourth quarter as the retailer reported selling out of fast selling lines and experiencing supply issues.
Group revenue in the period slipped 3% to GBP10.4bn, while international revenue decreased by 13.4% at constant currency driven by the closure of stores in loss-making exit markets, and the sale of the business in Hong Kong to a franchise partner in December 2017. Excluding Hong Kong and exit markets, revenue grew by 1.1%.
Meanwhile, M&S said it had made good progress in tackling the previous issue the sector faced: too wide ranges and misjudgment of customer shopping preferences. While it has pruned options, introduced slimmer fits and more mid-sizes, to which the customer response has been very strong, it is facing several issues including a slow supply chain, which ultimately drove sales down.
“Creating a new range architecture in a business with weak processes, a slow supply chain and where buyers are building their confidence has proven challenging, and our sales both in store and online have been frustrated by poor availability in Q4,” it said. “Although we made good progress reducing overall stock levels, with stock cover down almost three weeks and stock into sale down 14% across the year, many popular lines have sold out prematurely because of the failure to increase the depth of buy and the slowness of the stock flow.”
But the group said despite the “teething problems” the customer response to the initial changes was “encouraging”. Its new denim launch produced an initial 20% sales uplift and sales of GBP15 women’s jeggings were up 30% over the campaign period.
Online, however, where the group is looking to bolster its presence, clothing and home revenues were 9.8% higher year-on-year, improving its online clothing market share by 0.3 percentage points.
“We are deep into the first phase of our transformation programme and continue to make good progress restoring the basics and fixing many of the legacy issues we face,” CEO Steve Rowe said. “As I have said, at this stage we are judging ourselves as much by the pace of change as by the trading outcomes and change will accelerate in the year ahead.
“Whilst there are green shoots, we have not been consistent in our delivery in a number of areas of the business. M&S is changing faster than at any time in my career – substantial changes across the business to our processes, ranges and operations and this has constrained this year’s performance, particularly in clothing and home. However, we remain on track with our transformation and are now well on the road to making M&S special again.”
Looking ahead, the retailer said in today’s statement, it currently expects to close about a further 85 full-line stores and about 25 Simply Food stores in addition to the 35 full-line stores closed at FY18/19.
Its strategy, it said, is as much about right-sizing, relocating and new openings as it is about closures.
“As such we anticipate our owned store base is likely to remain broadly level,” it said.
The news follows an announcement in January that M&S plans to close another 17 stores with the loss of more than 1,000 jobs, as part of a review of its portfolio aimed at returning the group to profitability. The high street giant had already outlined plans to shutter 100 stores by 2022.
Meanwhile, M&S said it expects to deliver a more marked reduction in options and range duplication, with a substantial increase in the number of GBP1m+ lines for autumn, a significant improvement in size ratios, further focus on style and fashion and additional investment in value. This will be reinforced by the update of the sub-brand strategy, including the re-launch of the Per Una range where the initial customer reaction to early changes has been positive.
“With the new range architecture, we will aim to shift to a ‘first price, right price’ trading philosophy, and further reduce the percentage of clothing and home sold at discount which remains too high.”
The group also said it has reduced the complexity of its logistics network and is at an early stage of modernising its supply chain network, technology and process and this remains a priority.
M&S said it remains in the difficult stages of its transformation programme and while it expects some improvement in trading in each of its major businesses in the year ahead, progress is likely to be second half weighted.
In clothing and home, net store closures are expected to reduce sales by c.3%, while gross margin is anticipated to be -25bps to +25bps.
Thomas Brereton, retail analyst at GlobalData, said despite the poor sales figures there are “tangible signs that M&S intends to remain a major player in both divisions in the long run.”
“Clothing and home is making similarly (to food) slow steps forwards, supported by online growth of 9.8%, with C&H l-f-l sales falling only 1.6% despite the closure of 26 full-line stores over the year, with M&S concurrently narrowing ranges in order to unify the otherwise fractured and confusing buying process.
“Given M&S’s eminence in UK retail, headlines will – at least for the next year – continue to focus on the rapid pace of store closures and M&S’s contribution to the high street “apocalypse”, with a further 85 full-line and 25 Simply Food stores expected to close over the course of the next year, with focus remaining on becoming a “digital first” retailer, with the upcoming restructuring of the Sparks loyalty scheme provided as an example. But for investors, M&S’s potential slide out of the FTSE 100 provides yet another warning bell for physical retail – those who fail to adapt to consumer’s ever-changing demands will not survive against the backdrop of the more agile market players.”
Richard Lim, chief executive at Retail Economics conceded: “Despite concurrent waves of political and economic upheaval, this is a mere distraction from the seismic structural shifts reshaping the retail trading environment. The business continues to struggle against the rapidly changing consumer environment and the race is on to pivot the business towards a more sustainable proposition that puts digital and experiences at its heart.
“The proposition remains lost amongst an increasingly competitive and dynamic market. The transformation needs to occur at a rapid pace, involving a reduction in the number of stores, repurposing space, reducing headcount and trying to leverage partnerships effectively if it is to survive this unprecedented era of disruption.”


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OFFERING up “one for everyone in the audience” for this year’s Late Late Toy Show will cost any business a minimum of €44,500.
RTE is preparing for a bumper festive pay day as brands part with huge money to get their name in lights on the highest rated show of the year.
This year’s Toy Show, on December 1, will be preceded by three highlights programmes to whet the nation’s appetite — and RTE is ready to cash in by exploiting its popularity.
Premium package advertisers are coughing up €60,000 for five spots during ad breaks, and if they want to choose a slot at the beginning or end of an intermission they’ll have to pay another €15,000.
The studio hand-out — made famous by Gay Byrne’s “one for everyone in the audience” catchphrase — must be worth at least €150 and the supplier has to provide 230 of them.
That comes to a minimum of €34,500 — and the business has to stump up €10,000 cash on top as well for the privilege.
Last year’s show pulled in an average audience of 1,572,000 viewers — with almost 92 per cent of TV-watching children tuning in and more than 80 per cent of viewers with kids.
But while the audience hand-outs are for sale, host Ryan Tubridy’s production crew pick the featured toys.
A spokesman said: “All of the toys and books featured in the Late Late Toy Show are chosen by editorial team based solely on editorial value including what the most popular toys are this Christmas and what the toy demonstrators have enjoyed using at home.
“The toys featured . . . are thoroughly researched by the editorial team.
"They begin researching the toys for the show in January, attending a huge toy fair in London to determine what is going to be popular this year.
“That is what drives what toys make it onto the show. To be clear, no payment whatsoever is received or has any influence on which toys feature in the editorial of the show.
“The only commercial element of the show is the audience prizes.
“The ‘one for everyone in audience’ studio audience prizes and the viewer prizes are promotional slots that RTE places a commercial value on.
“They are entirely separate from the editorial, toy demonstration part of the show and are clearly identified as such to the viewer.”
Yesterday, we told how Tubridy has revealed there’s a queue forming in RTE for his job — although he has not yet even considered whether he’ll extend his Late Late Show contract.


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Just like the first game, Destiny 2 will offer players on PlayStation 4 some exclusive content for a limited time.
A version of yesterday’s announcement trailer posted to Sony’s official channel confirmed that there will be exclusive content on PlayStation 4 until fall 2018. The trailer adds that details about this exclusive content will be shared in the summer.
Activision and Sony have had a deal in place since the release of Destiny back in 2014, offering PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 owners timed exclusive access to Strikes, PvP maps, and weapons.
Yesterday, Bungie announced that the first gameplay of the sequel will be revealed on March 30th at 10 a.m. PT.
Destiny 2 is expected to launch this fall for Xbox One and PlayStation 4. A PC release is also rumored, but is yet to be officially confirmed by Activision or Bungie.


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Wherever you look in the world right now, ultra-fast grocery delivery is booming. According to IGDThe fast – paced commercial sector in the UK is currently worth £ 1.4 billion, with the potential to more than double to £ 3.3 billion.
So with the rapid increase and investment in space that until recently was not even on the radar for many, what does this mean for wider retail and supply chains in the coming years? Examines Alex MacPherson, Director of Consultancy and Account Management Solutions at Manhattan Associates.
The 15 minute craze shop
We may be living in an era of demand, but when it came to grocery shopping missions, until recently, it was weekly made food store online. The IS addition The grocery store was still an analogue experience. With that, not only did the pandemic ‘s unprecedented disruption accelerate the adoption of online grocery, but it also created a whole new channel – the digitization of the good old corner shop experience.
The superfast grocery delivery companies – like Gorillas, GoPuff, Getir and Zapp – have all come in with flaming guns, boldly debuting their brands and taking the customer experience to new heights, it seems. they are unfazed by crowded, low-to-no people. -margin nature of space.
These fast delivery platforms are essentially acting as 21st a centenary version of a British institution, the corner shop, serving these convenience / crisis shopping missions.
Shoppers who need one or two ingredients for tonight’s dinner, who have worn nappies or beer, or who may be quarantined and struggling to find a suitable slot with one of the big grocers they can be. God-sent.
These new barriers are challenging the status quo and redefining presence. While a niche, it is extremely relevant in the current climate.
Central to the ability to deliver goods extremely fast (groceries or otherwise), is the idea of hyperlocal, delivery-only micro-fulfillment centers, known as ‘dark stores’ in the supply chain and logistics spaces.
Primarily found in groceries and vertical consumer goods packaging (to date), microcompliance uses automated processes and robotics to retrieve items from a compact storage center for more efficient picking.
Moving goods and the supply chain closer to the consumer means that an increasing number of retailers can now deliver and offer more flexible and faster delivery options within a specific radius of a ‘dark shop’ through a ‘dark warehouse’, by move goods and the supply chain closer to the consumer, where consumers were once shop – oriented. delivery robots or even ‘last mile’ automated delivery robots – a much greener alternative to jumping in a car to buy a pint of milk.
Micro-compliance is a ‘dark shop’ for a practical technology-based approach and strategic shift towards moving the supply chain closer to the consumer, and in the process of meeting the flexibility, speed and demand levels of the customer experience at many consumers (especially urban). today.
As brands around the globe begin to look at what the post-pandemic retail landscape looks like now, broader themes such as business agility and moving the supply chain closer to consumers are likely to be even more prominent.
Because micro-compliance centers and ‘dark shops’ meet these two key business requirements, technologies such as smart warehouse management and automation, as well as the platforms and software that allow smarter human-machine integration (in the new environments) this), probable success.
As the pandemic’s memory begins to deteriorate in the near future, and the current market forces that caused ultra – fast compliance also decline, technological advances and business rationale are likely to remain. to address these challenges. Just as ecommerce, omnichannel customer experience, smartphones and mobile internet have become commonplace in our daily lives, putting the jack back in the box will be challenging when it comes to ‘fast commerce’.
Business agility was fundamental to business success during 2020 and 2021. While many people are predicting the future role of the store, stores as we know them need to be more flexible and fast paced. to manage. change for consumers than ever before, no matter what the next transformational challenge.
While fast commerce is likely to remain a niche item in the online grocery channel, this does not mean that it must be ignored, as it has far – reaching implications for retail supply chains in general.
Whether it is the practical processes of micro-compliance (such as automation and integration of man and machine), transport modeling for the ‘last mile’ or the wider concept of moving supply chains closer to consumers, the impact of commercialization may fast to be there. felt far ahead, far beyond its 2022 operations milestone.
Fight for your fridge and the ultra-fast grocery boom –
Source link Fight for your fridge and the ultra-fast grocery boom –


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by Irwin M. Seltzer
(Editor’s Note: Here is a major media right-wing Republican publication that sees China’s ascendancy as inevitable. The author observes many of the same phenomena I did in yesterday’s article. But he comes to the wrong conclusion in his last paragraph. He tries to hold that there is still time for Washington to fix its own ills. But DC has neither the political will nor the stomach for draconian spending cuts in the Federal budget coupled with real downsizing of the Federal Government. Washington will be swept into the ashbin of history, and so too the “American Experiment.”)
The Chinese are playing grandmaster chess against an amateur America that can’t see beyond the second move. In a bipartisan display of geopolitical obtuseness, America continues its historic trade policy: It’s free trade, except occasional lapses into protectionism when a whinging constituent must be placated, with a reliance on the World Trade Organization to settle disputes (and believing it has won something of significance when the WTO sides with it in a dispute over such a key product as cheap tires). Occasional public complaints about China’s persistent undervaluation of the renminbi, but refusal to declare the regime a currency manipulator. And conferences, conferences, conferences. All very 20th century.
China is doing a very different thing. The Communist regime sees trade policy as merely one weapon in a war aimed at overtaking the United States as the world’s preeminent economic and, by extension, military power. The undervaluation of the renminbi is a necessary means of keeping China’s export machine running at full tilt so as to create jobs for the millions who are moving from the country to the nation’s cities. Lacking democratic legitimacy, the regime’s principal claim to the loyalty, or at least the submission of its people, is its ability to provide jobs and a rising standard of living, doubly important in this period of transition to a new generation of leaders in 2012. Americans chortle: that mercantilist program of subsidizing exports cannot be sustained forever, as the inflow of dollars will sooner or later trigger inflation. Right: indeed, that is already happening, and forcing the regime to adopt a variety of measures to curb credit and inflation.
But largely irrelevant in the longer term on which the Chinese are focused. By the time the Chinese decide they will have to allow the renminbi to appreciate, they will have accomplished two long-standing objectives. First, their vaults will be stuffed with an even larger hoard of American IOUs, enough to give them an important influence over U.S. foreign policy. “How do you deal toughly with your banker?” asked Hillary Clinton of the then-prime minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, at a luncheon last year. His answer is not recorded.
It is true that if the Chinese start to dump U.S. Treasuries and dollars, the value of their own piles of dollar-denominated assets would decline. But if the broader geopolitical objective were served, that would merely be a cost to consider as part of the military budget.
Second, by then the Chinese will have copied enough American and Western technology to be in less need of an undervalued renminbi—they will have made-in-China products that can dominate world markets even if their currency approximates its market value. The camels that trod the old Silk Road laden with spices and porcelain will have been replaced with air and sea freighters hauling solar panels and all sorts of goods based on copied technologies and purloined intellectual property. To cite just one example, the high-speed trains that China is now selling worldwide are based on technology brought to China by French, German and Japanese companies.
Every deal to tap the vast Chinese market comes with a requirement that they turn over their technology to the Chinese: nuclear plants, green energy products, autos will be made by American companies in China –until the Chinese complete construction of their copycat plants. The initial orders satisfy the American executives, their eyes focused on the next quarterly report. The Chinese, their eyes focused on 2020 and beyond, know that the technology in hand, they can duplicate the factories and techniques needed to dispense with the American capitalists. Westinghouse Electric recently turned over 75,000 documents to its Chinese customers as the initial part of the technology transfer to which it agreed as part of a deal to sell four nuclear plants to China. Nothing seems to have changed since Lenin observed, “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”
Consider, also, solar panels, a product that demonstrates the difference between Chinese and American attitudes. The Chinese agree with President Obama about one thing: solar panels are an increasingly important product and source of jobs. The main raw material is polysilicon, and when its price soared the Chinese made it a national priority to replace foreign supply sources. Government money was marshaled and, more important, the permitting process was short-circuited so that plants could go from ground-breaking to full production in a bit over a year; in the West that is a multi-year process. Result: China controls half the world market for solar-power equipment. In a demonstration of what many now take to be the superiority of state over market capitalism, the Chinese created this and other industries from scratch—and quickly.
There is worse. While Barack Obama and American supporters of free trade are congratulating themselves on negotiating a trade deal that will enable American carmakers to sell a few more cars to South Korea, the Chinese are establishing themselves in Africa, South America and the Middle East so as to lock up supplies of minerals, oil and food. The regime has already demonstrated that these moves on the world’s chess board are about more than money and trade balances. Offend them with some move on the world chessboard that does not suit them, and they ban the export of rare-earth minerals crucial to the manufacture of myriad products. Their control over the world’s supply—reports are that they control 95 percent of available supplies and are buying up undeveloped resources in Africa—is in part due to their willingness to bear the high environmental cost associated with the processing of these minerals in order to reap the benefits of control over the manufacturing output of Japanese and Western countries. American liberals and greens prefer a more pristine environment.
Still another problem is the difference in attitudes towards foreign investment. American policy discourages foreign investment by attempting to raise taxes on foreign earnings. Meanwhile China, having already invested massively in resource rich African countries such as Sudan, is turning its attention to Latin America. In Argentina alone China’s state-owned and subsidized companies have invested in oil and gas properties: copper, gold, silver and lithium mines; lands for soya production; and in port development to facilitate the large-scale shipment of these resources to China.
Then, of course there is India, a giant democratic country growing at a pace equal to or faster than China’s, and now the prize in the 21st century version of the Great Game. Barack Obama and an enormous trade delegation visited India and returned to trumpet success in working out trade deals worth an estimated $10 billion. This week Wen Jiabao, China’s premier, played one-upmanship and booked $16 billion in deals, financed by China’s banks, and announced he would open China’s markets to Indian goods as part of a plan to double trade between the countries to $100 billion annually by 2015.
Even more important are two additional factors, one economic, the other military. Beijing has its eye on the dollar. Not the jiggles in its value, although it complains about the threat QE2 poses to the value of the dollar and therefore to its dollar-denominated holdings. But on replacing the dollar as the world’s currency of choice. Countries can now invoice and settle trade deals in renminbi, which more and more will do as China gradually makes the currency more easily convertible. Economists at HSBC are guessing that within three to five years half of China’s trade with developing countries—that trade accounts for 55 percent of all of China’s trade—will be in renminbi, compared with 3 percent at present. No need for dollars.
Then there is the military consequence of all of this. China is becoming increasingly aggressive in asserting its territorial claims to the Senkaku Islands, now controlled by Japan, and to territories claimed by Vietnam and others in the South China Sea. It is building submarines and aircraft carriers and modernizing its navy, cyber-warfare capability, missiles, and anti-satellite weaponry. No surprise that Australia and other nations in the Asia-Pacific region are reviewing their policy of relying on America as a force capable of imposing stability on their region.
But there is good news, news that trumps all of these problems. Lawrence of Arabia, at least according to the David Lean film, countered Arab belief in inevitability with the retort, “Nothing is written.” So it is in the Sino-U.S. jockeying for supremacy. America remains the source of most of the world’s innovations and the home of most of its great entrepreneurs; unlike China, America is blessed with a relatively young population; bright Chinese still prefer to be educated at great American universities, and the American Dream remains a magnet for risk-takers looking for an opportunity to move up in the world; the American military is still the most potent in the world; and this nation is blessed with an abundance of natural resources. There is time to fix things: “The Chinese currency is still a long way from replacing the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency,” writes Chi Lo, CEO of HFT Investment Management in Hong Kong. All that is missing are sensible policies. And it truly is not written that we will continue to pursue the self-destructive policies of recent years.
© Copyright 2010 The Weekly Standard LLC


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Is there a Petco stock IPO in 2021? What’s their stock price? When it comes to our pets, that’s a business that’ll never go out of style. Therefore, it’d be a good investment. The pet business is a billion dollar industry. Good people love to spoil their pets. We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on them at stores like Petco. So when is their stock coming?
Table of Contents
What Is Petco?
Even if you don’t have a pet, you’ve no doubt seen one of their 1500 locations that are scattered across the United States and Mexico. Petco was founded in San Diego, California 55 years ago in 1965. It remains one of the largest pet supply chains in the world. In 2018, Petco expanded into Canada via the Canadian Tire brand chain. They have over 500 stores in the Great White North. Petco even has a brand called Unleashed by Petco which has 85 locations of its own and specializes in spas and grooming; as well as an online shopping pickup destination for Petco.com.
The Petco Back Story
Petco started out as a mail-order veterinary supply store but eventually evolved into the consumer-based brand we know today. Petco is a huge supporter of pet adoption rather than selling. So they only hold fish, small reptiles, and small rodents for sale.
They don’t engage in the selling of cats or dogs. Back in 2005, Petco made a deal with PETA to end their sale of large birds as well. Petco operates under their company slogan which is “Think Adoption First”.
As a result, they’ve played a huge role in helping to reduce the selling of pets in pet stores and the operation of puppy mills across America. You may even recognize the brand as the name of the San Diego Padres’ baseball stadium: Petco Park.
Why You Should Care About a Petco Stock Price
Earlier this year, Petco announced that it was set to IPO on the NASDAQ exchange at some point in early 2021. You can find the Petco stock price under the ticker symbol $WOOF.
The IPO marks a return to the public exchange for Petco, who went private in the mid 90s. Then came close to another IPO back in 2015 before a private equity firm purchased the company.
Now, with the COVID-19 pandemic causing many of us to work from home, our four-legged friends have secretly been the biggest beneficiaries of the current quarantine.
Pet adoption has gone through the roof in 2020. And many shelters around America are having trouble keeping up with the demand. It’s estimated that pet ownership in the United States will grow by 4% in 2020.
And while this doesn’t seem like a substantial figure, that’s 4% of households that will need pet food, toys, grooming, and training that didn’t before.
What does that amount to? Petco believes it’ll create a total of $4 billion of additional pet supply spending in America alone.
It’s not as common to see older companies make their debuts on Wall Street. But Petco’s newest offering comes with a well-known and trusted brand as well as an established network of infrastructure across North America.
Petco is seeking a $6 billion valuation for its IPO. And is fresh off reporting a year-over-year rise in sales of nearly 10% over the first three quarters of 2020. It could be good for a Petco stock price.
There Are a Lot of Dogs in This Petco Stock Fight
The thing about Petco is that it’s not unique and is actually entering into quite a crowded market. Petco may have 1500 brick and mortar locations, but so what?
Not a lot of people are heading out to shop right now. And there are several well known options that people can already use to get their pet supplies online.
This remains the fundamental problem with a Petco stock IPO. Are many investors going to care? The landscape shows that tech companies are debuting and capturing massive growth in their stock price.
What chance does an old company like Petco have in attracting young investors? Here are a few companies that are already established in the pet supply sector.
What Is the Symbol for Petco Stock?
Petco stock is live! You can invest in it today. As a result, the stock symbol is $WOOF. Petco has the ability to be a great investment. Pet supplies will never be out of style. But there are many different ones to choose from these days. It’s not like it was when Petco first began. But they have lasted in spite of the online competition.
Chewy is the eCommerce leader in the pet supply industry. They’re currently owned by one of Petco’s main rivals in PetSmart. In 2019, Chewy reported total revenues of $4.85 billion.
A number that should only rise in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Chewy has several giant distribution centers around the United States. They also offer a service called Chewy Pharmacy.
Which is an online pharmacy for pet prescriptions. Chewy’s stock debuted in June of 2019 at $22 per share. At the end of the most recent trading session, the stock had nearly quadrupled to its current price level of $74.94 per share.
The owner of Chewy also owns PetSmart. They’re currently the leader in North American pet retail stores with over 1600 in the United States and Canada.
Although PetSmart isn’t currently a publicly traded company, it certainly has an eCommerce presence due to its ownership of Chewy.com. As well as its own website, PetSmart.com.
PetSmart doesn’t directly sell animals. But they do host various local shelters at their stores for adoption days where people can rescue animals in need of a home. They also offer services such as grooming, PetHotel, and Doggie Day Camp.
Amazon Stock Review (NASDAQ:AMZN)
It seems like Amazon is a rival for nearly every company. And pet supplies are of course no different. Amazon is probably more of a direct rival to Chewy given the eCommerce nature of the two platforms.
The ease and convenience of being an Amazon Prime member and receiving your purchase the next day or even sometimes on the same day, is difficult to beat.
Online sales of pet supplies is believed to make up about 24% of the total pet supplies sales this year. It’s only expected to grow in the future.
Not exactly an online pet supply retailer, but it sure is worth mentioning as an up and coming company that sells pet insurance. The emergence of Trupanion and other companies like Lemonade (NYSE:LMND) that offer pet insurance to owners is a sure-sign that pet ownership is officially a booming industry.
With the increase in pet ownership and adoption around the country, expect companies like Trupanion to continue to reap the benefits.
Can Petco Stock Compete?
As of right now it’s tough to say for sure. Petco is first and foremost a brick and mortar retailer. One that relies on its large number of stores and brand recognition to attract customers. The COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be a catalyst that has jump-started the pet supply industry. But much of this has benefited the eCommerce side of things. Once the pandemic is over, can we rely on people to go back to their old ways of shopping in-store rather than sticking with the convenience of online shopping?
PetSmart has more stores than Petco and already has an established brand in Canada as well. What does Petco have that will attract customers back to its stores?
Petco has an eCommerce presence but in the long-run can it compete with Amazon or Chewy? These are the questions investors will be asking when they think about investing in Petco and buying Petco stock.
Another issue that Petco has is that it still has over $3 billion in debt on its balance sheet. Something that generally turns investors away from a stock. It’s highly leveraged and owns a 5.5 times debt to equity number that could be the deciding factor for some investors.
Look, we all love our pets. And these days we definitely treat them more as humans than animals in our homes. Petco is capitalizing on the recent spike in pet ownership and the incoming tidal wave of pet supply sales that will accompany this boom.
For a pet supply retailer, there may be no better time than now to debut on Wall Street. High sales numbers and the explosion in pet ownership should attract investors enough in the short-term.
The long-term horizon could be a different story for Petco. As much of the retail sector shifts its focus to eCommerce platforms, stores with large brick and mortar infrastructure like Petco, matter less and less.
Just this year, another rival in the pet supply market, Pet Valu, closed all 358 locations as the COVID-19 pandemic forced them out of business. The reality is, if you don’t have a strong online presence in the retail space, it’s going to be difficult to survive; pandemic or no pandemic.
When turning to eCommerce, Petco has to face off with both Chewy and Amazon. Two online behemoths that will be near impossible to topple. With an expected continuous rise in pet supplies being bought online, Petco needs to step up its eCommerce game to compete with the likes of these companies.
Especially if it wants to continue to be one of the ladders in the pet supply industry. Added services like grooming, pharmacy and veterinary services, and dog training definitely help.
But more importantly Petco’s repeat subscription delivery service is a huge step in the right direction if it wants to compete with Chewy or Amazon. Growth investors may want to look elsewhere as Petco should be a steady stock. But maybe not one that we can expect to provide exponential returns anytime soon. If you’re looking for another stock that may IPO in the near future, check out IKEA stock!


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This week on Microsoft: Here's what's new about the Surface Pro!
This week was important for Microsoft as it launched their new Surface Pro device alongside some cool accessories like a new Surface Pen which Microsoft claims it is the fastest digital pen on the planet. Also, they released a new Windows 10 China Government Edition that makes some concessions to keep Chinese officials happy. To learn more details, as well as other exciting news from Microsoft's ecosystem, read this week's recap:
Microsoft: the news of the week
These articles are this week's most important news in Microsoft's ecosystem:
Microsoft's Surface Pro Laptop Returns With Bigger Brains - At long last, Microsoft's launching a new Surface Pro. There's no numeral at the end this time: It's just Surface Pro, now and probably forever.
Microsoft's new Surface Pen is the "fastest digital pen on the planet" - But among the news is an all-new Surface Pen, which Surface chief Panos Panay said is the "fastest digital pen on the planet."
Microsoft has created a Surface USB-C dongle for 'people who love dongles' - While Panay isn't ready to add USB-C to Surface devices just yet, he thinks he has the answer: a dongle. "If you love Type-C, it means you love dongles," jokes Panay. "We're giving a dongle to people who love dongles."
Making sense of Microsoft's Surface lineup - The point of Surface is to build devices that define the premium PC market, where the profits are to be found for the entire Windows ecosystem. Microsoft has packed its Surface devices with features that it expects and even encourages its OEM partners to copy. In this case, imitation isn't just the sincerest form of flattery; it is a desired outcome.
Microsoft publishes video of its Surface Pro launch...in English - the company has published the launch on YouTube (in English), where you can catch Surface chief Panos Panay unveiling the new device, along with new Alcantara Type Covers and Surface Pens. You can watch the video below.
This is Microsoft's original vision for the Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL (exclusive) - Never before seen concept footage of the Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL finally showcase pen support, improved software features and more.
The Samsung S8 Dex Dock Works With Old Microsoft Lumia Phones - It turns out that the DeX Dock works for more than the Galaxy S8, with the Windows 10 powered Lumia 950 being able to use this dock to launch itself into Continuum.
Microsoft starts rolling out collaborative inking Whiteboard app - The app offers collaborative inking, geometry recognition, table conversion and automatic table shading, as well as exclusive capabilities for Office 365 subscribers.
Windows switch to Git almost complete: 8,500 commits and 1,760 builds each day - Back in February, Microsoft made the surprising announcement that the Windows development team was going to move to using the open source Git version control system for Windows development. A little over three months after that first revelation and about 90 percent of the Windows engineering team has made the switch.
Holographic Cortana Appliance: Working Concept - This is a concept Cortana appliance built by a passionate developer. He imagined what Microsoft's version of Alexa or Google Home would be like if they were to use the holographic AI sidekick from the Halo franchise.
Introducing "Mixer" - Formerly known as Beam, the service has now been rebranded Mixer. You can see what features this "new" service brings, in the video below.
Microsoft accuses Chinese 'gaming' website of hacking Xbox accounts - Microsoft has accused a Chinese gaming website of hacking Xbox accounts and illegally gaining virtual gaming currencies.
4K Streaming Comes to Amazon Video Xbox App - Many of Amazon's original shows — Sneaky Pete, Bosch, and The Grand Tour among them — are now available to stream in 4K. Netflix, Vudu, and Hulu also offer some shows in 4K, on Xbox One S.
Windows 10 China Government Edition allows China to control encryption and telemetry - The new version is called Windows 10 China Government Edition, and it makes some concessions to keep Chinese officials happy.
In a throwback to the '90s, NTFS bug lets anyone hang or crash Windows 7, 8.1 - Malicious users could use this to attack other people's machines by using one of the special filenames as an image source; the browser would try to access the bad file, and Windows would promptly fall over.


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Bank exec offers sunny look at United States economy
PORTSMOUTH — Americans aren't the only ones feeling the pain of this recession; many of the world's economies are suffering, too.
But the United States, and New Hampshire, might be among the first places to see some relief, the chief economist of the Royal Bank of Scotland told a group at the Sheraton Harborside Portsmouth on Tuesday.
The American economy is already showing signs of recovery, and New Hampshire is well-positioned to follow, said Ram Bhagavatula, a managing director of the Scottish bank, which owns Citizens Bank New Hampshire.
Bhagavatula, who billed his presentation "Outlook 2002: Healthier Than Advertised," said the American economy is producing some positive indicators — like improving consumer spending, an unemployment rate that, although higher than it was a year ago is still historically low, and low inflation — that lead him to believe the recession is on its way out.
"You should be expecting the economy to be responding right now, and I believe it is," he said.
Bhagavatula admitted he is more optimistic than some other economists, but he said the economy was already showing signs of rebounding before Sept. 11, and the damage done to the economy by the terrorist attacks was less devastating than some might have thought.
In fact, Bhagavatula said, the United States is two steps ahead of many nations — including the United Kingdom and countries in the European Monetary Union — and light years ahead of economies such as Japan's, which has wallowed in recession for years because of its government's poor fiscal policy.
By contrast, the United States has benefited from aggressive moves by the Federal Reserve, which has lowered key interest rates repeatedly in an effort to stimulate the economy. The positive effects of interest rate decreases early in 2001 were starting to take hold prior to Sept. 11, Bhagavatula said. Any improvements in the economy became stalled, however, when the attacks destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City, closing the stock market for several days. The Fed followed with another rate cut, and that has helped the nation rebound, he added.
"The story we're telling our customers is ... given what the Fed and the government has done, they should be optimistic," he said.
Bhagavatula predicts a growth in the economy of 3.5 percent to 4 percent in the first quarter of 2002, whereas many other economists have said the earliest recovery wouldn't be until midyear.
The economy is being aided in its recovery, Bhagavatula said, because its weakening after Sept. 11 was only temporary. Companies cut production and capacity immediately after the attacks, but strong automobile sales in October — spurred by offers of zero percent interest — did not slow significantly in January as some had predicted. Airlines cut capacity but at the same time lowered the threshold for profitability, which is now a goal expected in the second quarter.
"The underlying consumer sentiment is still positive," he said.
Overall, Bhagavatula said, it appears there's more demand for products and services than companies had predicted there would be post-Sept. 11. That will help the economy recover but could also promote inflation if the Fed does not continue to carefully monitor it. As a result, Bhagavatula predicts the Fed will tighten interest rates as 2002 progresses.
Citizens Bank hosted two forums Tuesday featuring Bhagavatula; the other was in Manchester. The event was aimed not only at educating people on the global economy, but also promoting the international banking services that Citizens can provide to businesses, including access to foreign currency, risk management advice and international money transfers.
"Certainly many companies in New Hampshire have made the most of (exporting)," said Kim Meader, Citizens Bank New Hampshire's chairman, chief executive officer and president.


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Red 5 Studios has at last launched FireFall, the premier MMOFPS bringing in all the elements RPG fans love with the action packed open world shooting action they deserve.
Posted on: Jul 29, 2014 Views: 107
Take on a giant lava worm in a volcano of doom! Yes seriously, FireFall is bringing the heat with this 20 player raid boss just in time for launch.
Posted on: Jul 22, 2014 Views: 49
Get a taste of Firefall’s story before it launches on July 29.
Posted on: Jul 16, 2014 Views: 14
FireFall reveals its redesigned new team based open world PvP battleground, Broken Peninsula, in this trailer.
Posted on: Jul 15, 2014 Views: 72
Red 5 Studio’s FireFall is finally pushing into release state on July 29th.
Posted on: Jul 08, 2014 Views: 77


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Siri's voice is instantly recognizable to Apple users. The virtual assistant has been making appointments and directing iPhone users to their closest coffee house since October of 2011. However, iPhone users might be shocked to hear about Siri's latest gig: advertising for Microsoft.
Microsoft's latest ad is using Siri's own voice to tell users about all the things the iOS personal assistant can't do. "Sorry, I don't update like that," she says as Microsoft's Live Tiles auto-update on a tablet nearby. "I'm sorry, I can only do one thing at a time," she says, as a user starts to multitask on the Windows 8 device. Siri eventually gives up on trying to keep up and suggests a few bars of 'Chopsticks' instead. Microsoft wraps up the ad by pointing out how expensive the iPad is compared to the Asus VivoTab Smart that's being used in the commercial.
Microsoft is no stranger to trashing its competitors these days. The company has been ragging on Google for months via its "Don't Get Scroogled" campaign and recently targeted Google Docs in two new commercials that labeled the service unstable, unreliable, and a gamble. Ouch.
Check out Microsoft's latest ad below:


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By Assemblymember Marie Waldron
November 28 is ‘Small Business Saturday,’ a day to patronize local small businesses. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy. Without them, our state and national economies will never recover.
My husband and I have owned our own small business for over 25 years, I know how hard it is to keep a business going in California. Costly, overbearing regulations, high taxes and fees, high rents, energy bills, all make doing business in this state a challenge. Now the pandemic has struck, with a disproportionate impact on small businesses throughout the state. Many have been forced to close or significantly curtail operations while their larger (essential) competitors often remain open. Many small businesses are just one more shut-down away from closing their doors permanently. We, their customers, should do all we can to make sure they remain open, for their sake and ours.
Our local small businesses make up 95% of the businesses in this region. They employ our family, friends and neighbors. The continuously changing orders to open, close, partially open and close again are wreaking havoc. Many of our favorite restaurants, shops, stores and other businesses will never open their doors again.
Small Business Saturday is an important reminder that small businesses are part of the very fabric of this region. They employ thousands, and give back so much to our communities. So on Small Business Saturday, make a purchase from a local vendor, and continue to support them over the holidays and throughout the year. Without them, the current pandemic-induced recession may become permanent and develop into a depression – that must not happen!
The Legislature goes back into session in January. I’ll be doing everything I can to ensure that California’s small businesses are allowed to operate safely and profitably -- just like their larger competitors.