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June 5, 2023
Market analysts expressed concern that lingering economic uncertainty and an increasing amount of time since stimulus payments bolstered household finances could lower consumer willingness and ability to buy meat.
Consumer meat demand strength is one of the most important factors in determining livestock prices. The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and the market and government policy behavior that resulted during the return to relative normalcy, has made it difficult to gauge what has driven consumer meat purchasing behavior in recent years.
Examining weekly price behavior for six meat products at the wholesale level reveals that some of these concerns have come to fruition.
Meat production impact
Comparisons are made from the beginning of 2022 through mid-May 2023 against the average of 2017-19 for the same week of the year. (This eliminates the most dramatic short-term effects of the pandemic and provides a look at how demand for various meat products compares to its pre-pandemic level.)
While production levels are also key in determining market prices, there are not large deviations in beef, pork and chicken output for the period being considered.
U.S. beef production in 2022 was 5.8% larger than the 2017-19 average, compared to pork production that was 1.8% higher and chicken production that was up 8.2%. Beef production in the first quarter of 2023 was 6.7% above the first-quarter production average from 2017-19, similar to pork (+6.7%) and a little lower than chicken (+12.5%).
Although relative production levels do have a role to play in price determination, the supply differences observed between these species for the analysis period are not large enough to significantly affect price changes.
Problems for pork
Hog producers are currently struggling the most in terms of profitability, in some cases facing the worst bottom lines in the past 25 years.
Of the six products, we see that the pork belly primal experienced the largest price decline in recent weeks, with the pork loin also on a downward trend. It is interesting to note that with the exception of pork bellies, all other products maintained price levels above the 2017-19 average for every week since the beginning of 2022.
A little concerning for those in the cattle industry has been the steep decline in beef rib primal values thus far in 2023. The Choice beef chuck and loin primals remained relatively steady, along with the chicken composite wholesale value.
Short beef supply opportunity
With production growing as noted above, this has been one of the factors that helped most livestock producers weather the effects of much higher input costs.
The cattle industry is just entering a sustained period of reduced beef output. Recent USDA projections show a 5.4% decline in beef production for the second half of this year vs. 2022, and a further 8% output reduction in 2024.
These supply changes will place upward pressure on cattle prices, even if demand weakens a little more. What the industry needs to avoid is the sharp drop in demand that the pork industry is currently navigating.
Although consumers tend to cut back on higher-value products when finances get tight, beef demand thus far remains a bright spot.
Brown is a livestock economist with the University of Missouri. He grew up on a diversified farm in northwest Missouri.
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NSBA President and CEO Todd McCracken joined Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) in calling on the Senate to enact legislation to spur small-business growth. The Small Business Jobs Act, if passed in its entirety, would provide much-needed access to capital for small businesses and would—for tax year 2010—level the playing field for self-employed individuals who currently pay an additional 15.3 percent tax on the cost of their health insurance due to an unfair and inexplicable loophole in the tax code.
"NSBA is pleased to support the Small Business Jobs Act, particularly the provision that would enable the self-employed to realize the full tax benefit on the cost of their health insurance,” stated Todd McCracken, NSBA president. “Furthermore, I strongly urge Congress to retain the Small Business Lending Fund language in this bill, which stands to improve the credit crunch currently hampering small-business job creation."
The Small Business Jobs Act also would include an NSBA-backed extension, through 2010, of the highly successful stimulus bill provisions that provided a 90 percent guarantee on U.S. Small Business Administration 7(a) loans and eliminated borrower fees on both 7(a) and 504 loans.
NSBA has been advocating for a Small Business Lending Fund since early 2009, and cautions lawmakers that small businesses, the job-creation drivers of the U.S. economy, may not be able to hold on much longer. According to the 2010 NSBA Mid-Year Economic Report, due out next week, 80 percent of small businesses have been impacted by the credit crunch and the number of businesses unable to garner adequate financing rose to 41 percent in the last six months.
Please click here for more on the Small Business Jobs Act.

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Researchers have developed a new robotic muscle that is 1,000 times stronger than a human's, thanks to a material with a wide range of properties. Vanadium dioxide has been the belle of the ball in the materials world, prized for its ability to change size, shape and physical identity. Now, material enthusiasts can add muscle power to the list of those extraordinary attributes. See also: Andy Rubin's Next Big Thing at Google: Robots Led by Junqiao Wu, a physicist with joint appointments at the U.S.
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Why do some alt-protein products succeed while others fizzle?
According Jack Bobo, a long-time food industry consultant and author of the new book “Why Smart People Make Bad Food Choices“, it’s a matter of timing and what customer segment you are targeting at a particular evolutionary stage of a market.
“One of the biggest challenges that most food companies have is how do you go from being a product for the innovator or early adopter to scaling to the early majority,” said Bobo in an interview with Marina Schmidt for the Red to Green podcast. “And that’s important, because that’s the moment when your relationship to the consumer changes.”
Bobo points to the early success of the Impossible Burger and how a more established company such as a Monsanto would not have had the same success. That’s because, according to Bobo, the early adopter consumer who embraces the very different product that the Impossible Burger may simply not have wanted it from a big multinational like Monsanto.
And while post-mortems may have pointed to the fact the hypothetical Monsanto burger was labeled as a genetically modified product (GMO), Bobo thinks it’s more about the company and its relationship with a particular consumer. Early adopters were okay with the buzzy Impossible, in spite of its long and exotic ingredient list.
But that relationship is changing as Impossible grows says Bobo.
“When Impossible Foods went from being $20 a burger in high end restaurants and only rich people could afford it to going into 18,000 Burger Kings when poor people could afford it, that’s the day the pushback happened,” said Bobo.
As companies grow and scale, Bobo believes one of their biggest challenges will be making that transition and figuring out how to the bridge that divide when it comes to market positioning.
It’s “important to understand that that’s the moment right when you’re trying to go from early adopter and innovator to early majority is the moment of risk because your relationship to the consumer changes.”
You can listen to the conversation between Schmidt and Bobo below by clicking play or finding it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get podcasts. You can also read the full transcript below.
Jack, good to be talking to you.
Jack A Bobo
Yeah, it’s great to be here.
So I’ve looked into some of the speeches that you have done on the topic of how to communicate alternative proteins. Let’s start on more of a general level. So how do you see alternative proteins being communicated in the field?
Jack A Bobo
Well today, there’s a lot of conversation around health and wellness in these foods. And yet when consumers look at the ingredients, there’s a little bit of a disconnect between how the products are marketed and perhaps some of the reality of the products. But I also see that a lot of products are developed by people who are doing it because they are animal rights activists or that they have a particular philosophical view of the world.
You know, they’re trying to create a world that’s free of, perhaps, animal agriculture. And they’re so passionate about that, that they want to market their products based on the beliefs that they have, which is perfectly reasonable. But that doesn’t always resonate with people who don’t share their beliefs.
And so it sort of leaves one with the question: if you’re trying to sell a product, do you only want to sell it to people who believe the way you believe, or do you want to sell it to everybody? And that’s a question I think that these new companies need to answer for themselves.
So in a previous interview, Isha Datar was saying that we should avoid the trap of veganism and vegetarianism. So it’s not a trap in and of itself. It’s more a trap because it got a bad rep like being vegan and I know that because I was vegan for a while myself. It’s kind of controversial and it becomes this that splits people apart in a way.
So would you say that it’s crucial for alt protein companies to get out of this sub-category?
Jack A Bobo
Well, in the end, I feel like companies have to make their own decisions. But what I do is I advise companies that are interested in reaching a broader audience and are trying to de-escalate the tension in the food system. Some people just want to throw bombs and get things going and mix it up.
And you know, that’s a choice, but for many companies, they know that some of these larger food companies are their investors and are potentially going to be partners, are going to acquire them. And so, you have to think about, what is your long-term strategy, not just your short term.
And so I’m often called by venture capitalists who say, hey, we’ve got this company, and the CEO has gotten themselves into a little bit of trouble. Can you help them to talk about their products in a way that’s genuine and authentic, but doesn’t create the pushback that makes it harder for them to achieve their goals?
And so, I’m happy to do that because I tell people that my personal mission is to de-escalate the tension in our food system so that we can all go about our business of saving the planet in our own way.
Okay, Jack, so you are talking about de-escalating the tension within our food system. Well, that goes against the grain of a lot of communication that we’re seeing so far where there’s actually also a sort of excitement of we are revolutionizing the whole food industry. We are putting everything upside down. And it also creates a sense of coolness. Like it’s cool to be part of something that’s revolutionary and to possibly be a consumer of something that is putting everything upside down. So how do you marry these two concepts of something being cool, and at the same time, you don’t want to create all the friction.
Jack A Bobo
Things are often cool because you’re part of a group and being part of a group, you know, the more insular the group is, the more unique you feel. And so, there’s a question about, do you only want to reach the innovators or the innovators and the early adopters, or do you want to reach everybody in the food chain?
And so, by the time you reach everybody in the food chain, it’s not going to be the same kind of buzz that you’re going to have, when you’re Oatly, you know, and you’re just hitting the market. And so one of the biggest challenges that most food companies have, or startups, is how do you go from being a product for the innovator and the early adopter to scaling to the early majority. And that’s important because that’s the moment when your relationship to the consumer changes. And I can give you an example. So think about, for a moment, what would have happened if a company like Monsanto had created the Impossible Burger? I think we could guess that it probably would have failed. And if you had read the newspaper articles after it, every article would have said, what were they thinking? Nobody will ever buy a GMO burger. Well, of course that’s not actually true. So it’s like everybody would have assumed that’s why it failed, but it might’ve failed because people didn’t want it from a large multinational company.
And so, the reason people think things happen, and the reason they actually happen can be quite different. That’s an important lesson because when Impossible Foods went from being $20 a burger in high-end restaurants and only rich people could afford it, to going into 18,000 Burger Kings when poor people could afford it, well that’s the day the pushback happened. It didn’t happen when rich people were buying GMO burgers that were ultra processed. It happened when it actually reached the masses. So, that’s important to understand that that’s the moment, right? When you’re trying to go from early adopter and innovator to early majority is the moment of risk, because your relationship to the consumer changes, and every company that wants to scale has to bridge that divide.
And they have to understand how to position their product, not just for the early adopter, but for a larger audience. And if you don’t do that, what happens is, I talk to startup CEOs all the time that say “this big company came in and stole my market.” No, they didn’t. They have the majority and you have the early adopters and the innovators, and you never made bridge the gap. You left that market to somebody else.
So understanding that is important. And for large companies, it’s important as well, because if they want to play in this space, they should know who is their audience as well. They might not want to try to target the early adopter and the innovator. They might want to target that early majority. I can give you two examples. People often talk about Chobani coming along and just crushing Yoplait in the yogurt wars. And in business schools, they talk about how Yoplait just didn’t see Greek yogurt coming. They missed this opportunity, but if they had come out with a Greek yogurt, consumers might’ve said, what’s this, this is not sweet.
This isn’t what we expect of the brand. So it still could have failed. And the fact that Chobani succeeded was that it brought a different product that was inconsistent with the early product. We see another example of how a big food company did get there first. Quaker Oats actually came out with oat milk a year before Oatly really made a splash in the United States.
So they were there first. I’m sure they can make a pretty decent product if they want to. They’ve got, you know, endless money to throw at it. The problem is that the innovator walked into the grocery store and looked around, saw oat milk on the shelf from Quaker Oats. And they thought, oh my God, can there be a more boring product? What are these guys thinking? And they walked right out and the early majority, well, they don’t buy new stuff.
And so there just was no consumer for Quaker Oats. They killed the product in January of 2020. That’s the month they should have introduced the product and they might’ve owned the oat milk world.
So the diffusion of innovation is what that’s based on and companies should understand what that means for them.
Jack, that’s a really fascinating point because what the first part of what you were just talking about, it says that right now, if you look at the market, a lot of companies feel that cultivated meat is going to be very successful. Overall, there is a rather positive view on it also amongst the general public.
At least that’s the impression you can sometimes get, but then if there’s a go-to market and that works out pretty fine, it will probably in the mass media reach, mostly the innovators, the ones that are actually interested in the topic enough to follow it. So obviously there will be a good response.
However, when then cell-cultured meat gets more traction and reaches the broader population, that’s where we should expect the issues coming up. And how much do you see topics like demonstrations, self-proclaimed health gurus, fake news, conspiracy theories around cultivated meat to be something of concern?
Jack A Bobo
So I’m less worried about fake news and people attacking the industry because maybe it’s unhealthy or unnatural. I’m more worried about the self-inflicted wounds of the industry itself because how the industry talks about the product relates to consumer psychology. And if there’s a conversation about making the products cheaper than regular beef, in order to drive out animal agriculture, you end up with two situations.
One, if your goal is to eliminate animal agriculture, you’re going to get pushback from that industry. So you’re going to have to fight that. The second thing is that if you were saying that you were going to do that and you’re going to make it cheaper. Well, that makes a conventional hamburger the premium product.
So, as soon as you reach that inflection point, all of the early adopters and innovators who were driving consumption of the product, they just move back and say, you know, I really just want artisanal beef. You know, I want grass fed because you’re changing the perception of the product. So your goal is to become a commodity that wealthy people don’t want.
And will then be piling on the fact that it’s ultra processed and all of these other things. It’s worth keeping in mind that consumers are not fixed in their beliefs. If you’ll go back to 2019, Beyond Meat was the biggest IPO of the year, but the biggest diet trend was clean eating, which is all about whole foods.
And so, at the same time for consumers, the biggest diet can be whole foods and the biggest IPO can be ultra processed foods, right? So the world is big enough for both of these ideas to co-exist, but it does influence how consumers think about those products.
So, with making it into a commodity, I mean, we need to also think about cultivated meat or alternative proteins, in terms of the separate brands. So there could be one brand which actually becomes the commodity brand, whereas another brand will stay more high-priced, more premium.
So does it actually really make sense to think about the whole field as becoming a commodity?
Jack A Bobo
It does, if in the minds of the consumer, these are just cheap products. So before you can get that differentiation, you have already convinced the consumer that these products are cheap. Right now that’s what the messaging is all about. We’re going to be cheaper, cheaper, cheaper. Instead of talking about, we deliver quality products that are going to be affordable. It’s the same thing from an economic standpoint, but it’s very different from a psychology standpoint. I think we also need to remember and keep in mind the bigger goal. We need to increase protein production by between 50 and a hundred percent by 2050.
So that means if we have a $2 trillion protein market today, it’s going to increase to $3 to $4 trillion by 2050. I think it’s quite unlikely that the alternative protein market is going to grow to a $2 trillion market in 2050, let alone a $4 trillion market. So, the reality is that what we’re really talking about is how much of that future growth will be captured by the alternative protein industry.
So, yeah, there’s competition with animal agriculture, but it’s competition for market share that doesn’t yet exist. By positioning these companies as a threat to the future of the livestock industry, I mean, you know, if that’s the industry you’re in, why wouldn’t you respond? If somebody says, they’re going to take away your job, why wouldn’t you want to protest that?
We saw that in the cell-based meat market in the United States; 28 states tried to ban the use of the term meat for a product that did not yet exist. And that’s entirely because producers took seriously the threats to take away their jobs.
Okay. So, the question is actually whether the whole alternative protein meat industry would drop their fights against the conventional meat industry and say, well, we are just creating a tastier product, a better product, communicating from a classic food standpoint, how you would communicate most food products in terms of attractiveness to the consumer, would that actually eliminate the threat to the conventional meat industry, because it’s still there, right? Even if we don’t talk about it.
Jack A Bobo
Yeah, but the beef guys talk to the pork guys and talk to the poultry guys every day. And yet, if you look at beef consumption in America, it’s down dramatically over the last 30 or 40 years. And almost a hundred percent of that loss has been to the benefit of the poultry industry, right? So they’re strongly fighting with each other for market share.
And they’re also able to get along as individuals. So my belief is that the animal ag industry is perfectly happy to have competition and it may even win some market share, but it’s how you talk about it that really matters. And I think a good example of that is the former use of the term clean meat to talk about cultivated meat, cultured meat, cell based meat.
And that was the original term that was being proposed. The Good Food Institute had done a lot of research that said, that’s the term that consumers like most. The problem is that they were doing it because they felt like it was kind of like clean energy, and it was going to be safer a product hopefully, and that it was going to be better for the planet.
The problem is that, when you say that the cultivated meat is clean, you’re suggesting that the current meat is dirty, which is something they actually kind of liked that that implication was there. But it’s also suggesting that it’s unethical and most consumers don’t want to be having a conversation about ethics at the moment they’re taking a bite of food. So when you bring ethics into the conversation, you force people to deal with cognitive dissonance. And that’s how PETA and other organizations approach it. You know, how can you pet a puppy and eat a pig? And they want to create that dissonance because some people will say, I guess that’s right, I should stop eating meat.
But if you don’t go along, if people don’t agree with you, then you get something called reactance. And that’s where people will intentionally try to fight and undermine what you’re doing. Because you say they’re an evil person and people don’t believe that they’re evil people.
So it’s not at all surprising. Reactants can take many forms. It could be that they go out and eat a double quarter pounder to stick it in your face. It could be that they try to pass legislation that bans the use of the term meat for your product. And so that’s why I spent about 10 months working with the cultivated meat industry to get them, ultimately, to agree that they wouldn’t use that term anymore.
And, you know, I think that that was really helpful in deescalating some of that tension that had existed.
Yeah, I mean, you are also known as the guy who stopped the term clean meat. So maybe there is a legacy of communication. Once upon a time there weren’t good alternatives either. It was you eat animal-based products or you don’t. And now we are entering a new era where it actually becomes a viable option, both in terms of taste and price to have alternatives.
In the first era, the conversation was a lot about morals and ethics. You should stop eating that because it’s bad. And how do you see our shift to having alternatives impacting our communication around it?
Jack A Bobo
There’s definitely been a shift and right now we have this interesting situation where, most of the alternative protein products on the market are plant-based alternative proteins and you have a bit of a disconnect. Ninety plus percent of consumers say they’re trying these products because they believe that they’re healthier. And yet most of these products are not healthy or not much healthier than the traditional beef. That disconnect, I think, is a bit of a risk to the industry. If you allow consumers to have that misconception, because consumers may feel tricked ultimately if they realize that they’re doing that, that they’re eating products that they think are healthier, that aren’t.
This gets into something called the halo effect, which is that once we think a product has one good quality, we just assume that all of the qualities are good. That’s why if you put low fat on a package or you say, low-calorie, people will eat an entire bag of low fat cookies.
Well, low fat doesn’t mean there aren’t calories. And it doesn’t mean there aren’t even more calories in the product. But people just assume that. If they have these misunderstandings and then they don’t use the product in the way that it really was intended to, then they may not achieve their personal goal.
And if the products don’t deliver on their brand promise, then they’re not going to be successful in the long run. So that’s why it’s really important for the messaging to help bring the consumer back to the actual brand promise and not allow them to sort of misunderstand what the brand stands for.
So now let’s say the brand promise that we have discussed so far, it is not replacing the animal agriculture. It is not talking about ethics. It is not being the healthier product. At least I think that’s a point that can be argued about like, depending on how much one beliefs that conventional meat and processed conventional meat is bad.
It’s always a question of comparison, but let’s assume that we’re not talking about health. So Jack, what should we talk about?
Jack A Bobo
So it doesn’t mean that you can’t talk about the benefits of your product. It doesn’t mean that you can’t talk about that your company is a company that stands for improving the health of the planet. You can still talk about what your product is doing to be a better product for the planet.
It’s just, once you start comparing it in a way that brings in additional moral and ethical values; you can elevate your product without trying to lower the other product. And I’ll give you an example. So a couple summers ago, Perfect Day came out with samples for their ice cream, and, I’m sure that the first thing that happened is that the journalists called up the dairy industry because they wanted to hear what does the dairy industry think about this new product?
And so if I were the dairy industry and I was being called to ask to comment on a product like Perfect Day, the easy thing to do would be to bash it as being unnatural, right? That’s just a natural response. But what you could say is, we were really interested in hearing about this development.
We believe that it validates the nutrition of dairy proteins. We believe consumers will continue to be interested in the full range of proteins in a glass of milk. And we feel like it’s a completely natural product. In other words, they could try to elevate dairy instead of trying to drag down Perfect Day.
I think that would have been a more effective response to the consumer than trying to undermine Perfect Day or these alternative proteins. So elevating your product, I think, is always taking the high ground versus trying to denigrate the opposition. Oatly talks all the time about how they’re growing so fast and they’re laying waste to the dairy industry by expanding, and the reality is that they’re mostly taking market share from almond milk.
And almond milk mostly took market share from soy milk. There might be some dairy that’s losing market share because of what they’re doing, but probably 95% of their gain is at the expense of their alternative protein competitors. So if you position your product as delivering this benefit for reducing animal ag and you’re not actually doing it, you know, again, I think that may be your goal, but if you’re not achieving your goal, then I think one should be careful about doing it.
You know, isn’t it enough to produce a product that has a better environmental footprint or that’s showing that you’re doing your part to make the planet a better place. I think that’s what consumers mostly care about.
So, I think that the idea is that these smaller startups have to decide what they’re going to be when they grow up. You know, they will either scale as independent companies or they will scale through partnership, or they will scale through acquisition. And that means that they’re going to work within the food system one way or another. If an alternative protein company wants to really dominate and, you know, be 20% of the market for, you know, protein, they’re going to be big food, right.
You know, you can’t sell, you know, $10 billion worth of product and not be a big food company. And so if you position big food as the enemy, well, that just means some other small alternative protein’s going to come along and say, we’re not big food. You know, we’re not Beyond Mea with a $10 billion market cap, you know, we’re really the small guy.
And then you end up fighting with companies within your own sphere for the alternative protein market.
So pretty much the red line and all that you’re talking about is you could call it non-confrontational in a way. What if somebody says, well, but that’s boring. Like people like the attention, people like the friction, that’s what gets press. That’s what gets you interviews. So what would you answer to that?
Jack A Bobo
It’s okay to have some tension, a little bit of pressure, you know. Friction is the place where people get excited, as you say, but there’s a difference between making a controversial remark every once in a while and having a marketing strategy that is intended to create pushback that ultimately makes it harder for you to do what you’re trying to do.
Every one of these companies at some point will have to realize that the language they’re using can achieve one goal, but it might undermine another goal. And if the alternative protein industry continues to talk in terms of cheapness, they will achieve their goal of becoming cheaper and nobody will want their product.
Hmm. That’s very, very controversial because that seems to be the end goal in a way. As soon as it has achieved price parity, or is cheaper than the conventional meat sources, isn’t that also the point at which it becomes a mass product?
Jack A Bobo
So I was reading a tweet by somebody from the Breakthrough Institute and they said that if alternative protein could replace ground beef, that American agriculture gas emissions would reduce by one sixth. And so I wrote back and I said, well, if you eliminate ground beef and you’re still producing steak, where does all the beef go?
Because you’re still producing it. And they said, oh, it’ll just get exported. Right. So eliminating ground beef, doesn’t eliminate ground beef. It just relocates it someplace else. So, I mean, again, we need to understand the economics of this. As long as there’s the same amount of steak in the world, there will always be exactly the same amount of ground beef in the world.
It’ll just go someplace else. And it might go someplace that actually needs more animal protein. And so maybe that’s a good thing, but the conversation around eliminating it, you know, we could produce no hamburger in America. We could export a hundred percent of it, but you didn’t eliminate hamburger. You just moved it someplace else.
As long as the same amount of steak exists in the world, there will always be the same amount of hamburger; it’s a by-product of steak. So all you can do is drive the price of hamburger down. You can’t make it disappear. Companies would give away hamburger if it didn’t have any value, right? If you couldn’t sell it someplace else cheaper, and people still wanted to buy steak. That’s the whole problem with this cheapness argument; is that hamburger can become cheaper and cheaper and cheaper as long as people still buy steak, because it’s a by-product. So, it will find a market somewhere.
Okay. Okay. Okay. But then we also need to replace a steak, that’s the core of this argument. Like you cannot just replace hamburgers because it’s being made out of the whole cow. If you need the steak, you need a certain part of the cow.
You still need a certain amount of cows that are not going anywhere. So we need to also replace steak to reduce actual cow production.
Jack A Bobo
And that’s if we were actually going to reduce animal agriculture, but you’ve got a $2 trillion opportunity that exists before you have to have this conversation. So, you know, in many ways the conversation is a threat to the livestock industry. That’s a theoretical threat that isn’t a real threat. And so why are we spending so much time and energy talking about something that can’t happen? Or if it does happen, won’t happen for 20 or 30 years. If you’re really telling people I’m going to put you out of business, but you’re not actually going to do it. Why would you create that kind of ill will? Alternatively, we could talk about, we need to produce 50% to 100% more protein, and we need to do it using a smaller environmental footprint than we do today. And what we need is the livestock industry to be dramatically more environmentally friendly than it is today. And we need to produce additional protein that is more environmentally friendly than if we just scaled animal agriculture. If we’ve achieved that, if we’ve gotten to 2050, without cutting down our forests and draining our rivers and our lakes and our aquifers, then we can have a conversation over who’s going to actually then control the market. But we have such a big task ahead of us that it doesn’t even involve anybody going out of business.
Yeah, that’s quite funny. Especially from cultivated meat companies. I mean, yeah, it’s early in the development. I think Paul Shapiro in the first episode we have had on Red to Green, he was saying something along the lines of cultured meat has been like five years away for an indefinite amount of time. Always in five years, we may say, well, it’s five years away and then it keeps moving on. So, it’s this thought concept structure, all of the pieces in your arguments fit together and they build up on each other. Is there something that we haven’t covered yet on that.
Jack A Bobo
Yeah. So that’s a good question. I think, you know, understanding consumer psychology is just going to be very important to these companies. So, I would encourage all of the companies in this space to think about what this means. Just to give one example, we didn’t talk about insects.
I don’t know if your listeners think about insect protein at all, but this idea of cognitive dissonance is on display with some of the companies in this space. So, you’ll have some alternative protein companies that create the cricket bar and they put the cricket right there on the package and they’re telling the consumer “you’re eating insects.” Now consumers have to get over that sense of disgust that insects create for many Western consumers in order to appreciate their product.
On the other hand, you have other energy bars like the Jungle Bar, which says insect powered on the label, but it’s not really that noticeable. And they’re giving the consumer permission to eat the product without having to think about the fact that it’s made of insects. So they’re not lying about it. They’re not hiding it, but they’re giving you permission to not worry about it. And so when we think about how you want to position products in the future, think about what Eat Just is doing with their alternative egg product. They’re not trying to convince me to eat yellow peas, and they’re not trying to convince me to eat mung beans.
They’re giving me an egg substitute. So why is it so important that insect protein be called insect protein? Why not just give me a super, protein bar and if it tastes great and it accomplishes its goal, isn’t that just good enough? So too often, I think we get hung up on our own technology and our own innovation.
And that’s often not the thing that’s going to drive the consumer success of your product.
Yeah, quite interesting. So I’m saying interesting a lot because there are a lot of interesting points here. How would you say uh, we should be dealing with that in the cultivated meat space? We have the issue that it is a new technology and people are demanding to understand what they eat. They want to know what they put inside their body and it’s novel.
There’s so many questions to be answered. So it’s like a Pandora’s box. And there’s also an argument for being very transparent on it because as I think Britta, Britta from LegenDairy has said in one of the interviews GMOs, for example, partially has got a bad reputation because there has been a lot of unclear information around it and big corporations in that sense sparking a sense of skepticism around what are they doing there? What are they up to? So there’s a need for transparency, but how do we balance that with the need of being appealing?
Jack A Bobo
Yeah. So there are a few different ways to think about it. You know, one of the problems with GMOs is that they happened at a unique moment in time. For all of human history, consumers just did not care how we produce food. You know, they weren’t thinking about pesticides. They weren’t thinking about tilling practices.
They just didn’t care. And so I think the seed companies were slow to realize the world had changed and that consumers actually knew their name. And so that was a learning process. But I think we know now how important transparency is. And the thing is that you can’t be transparent after you’re asked about transparency.
You need to be transparent before anybody asks you the question. And so I give you an example, there were people at McDonald’s who were trying to convince the company to put their ingredients on the web, and, they just didn’t feel like they needed to do it, that it was important, but they eventually relented and they put all of their ingredients on the website and nobody visited the website.
And so the executives are like what the heck’s going on? You know, we did what you asked us to do and nobody’s visiting the site. And the response from the comms guys was, yeah, that’s great. Because when you ask people, they’re just happy knowing it exists, they’re happy knowing they could visit that website.
And so concerns about the ingredients declined just by making something available that nobody ever visited.
Jack A Bobo
And so, you know, you want to make sure that your product is as transparent as you’re capable of being. And, you know, then when somebody says, well, what’s in your product, you’re like, well, it’s right here.
And there’s not really as much for them to get upset about because you’ve already answered the question before it was even asked, but there’s no amount of information you can provide when you don’t have trust. You know? I mean, think about it. If somebody asks, you know, is it safe to eat clean meat and you don’t trust me?
And I say, well, there are a thousand papers that demonstrate the safety of the product. You’re gonna be like, I don’t want to see your research because I don’t trust you. On the other hand, if you do trust me and I say, oh, I’ve got a thousand papers that show that clean cell based meat is safe.
You’re like, oh, that’s good enough for me. So, you know, in almost no situation is science really relevant. It’s always the trust that’s relevant. Now it should be backed by science, but you know, science at the beginning of a conversation, just polarizes the audience. Those who agree with you agree with you more.
And those who disagree, disagree more.
Yeah, it’s also quite fascinating how science itself has become more of a controversial topic in terms of people losing trust in institutions and our scientific process. So Isha Datar, in one of the other interviews, she was saying that her impression is that consumer research is possibly unhelpful because consumers, I’ll quote, “we are being informed by what consumers say, but consumers are always just recycling past experiences.” And another quote “I’m not so sure that companies should be not targeting their audience from the beginning.”
So on the one hand, the argument that consumer research is possibly going in the wrong direction and just making uninspiring marketing campaigns on the other hand that companies should zoom in on their target audience and that maybe a company decides to zoom in on the health people and another one on the ones that are into flavor and taste and weird experiences, et cetera, et cetera, segmenting their market and focusing on one niche of the market.
What would you respond to that?
Jack A Bobo
So I’ll start with the first on consumer research. I think she’s absolutely right that you have to be very cautious in what lessons you take from consumer research. Consumer research is still important, but I’ll give you an example. A few years ago, PepsiCo did a ton of research according to their vice president for science and research.
And the person said the single reason that consumers are no longer drinking diet soda is because of aspartame. That’s the reason, we figured it out. They took aspartame out of the product. Well, 10 months later, they had to put it back because it turns out that the reason that consumers said they didn’t want the product, wasn’t the real reason.
And it turns out consumers just didn’t know why they weren’t drinking diet soda anymore, but they had been hearing a lot about aspartame. And so consumers who still drink diet soda, they actually liked the product. Consumers who weren’t drinking it, they didn’t even know why they didn’t like it. And so, you know, so that’s part of the cautionary tale.
But social listening is still critically important. You know, it’s important to understand what people are saying, but you need to know also what people are doing because what people say they do and what they actually do aren’t always the same thing. But also actions eventually lead to thoughts, not thoughts lead to actions.
And so we need to actually realize that consumers often get it backwards. You know, we choose a product because a friend was using the product, but then when you asked me why I never say, oh, because I just want to be like my friends, you say, oh, because it’s better for the planet. Or, I hear that it’s more nutritious. The reason we give isn’t necessarily the reason that motivated us.
To your question about segmentation, I think that’s critical. The world does not need 20 plant-based burgers that all do the same thing, all taste a lot like conventional hamburger. We need a cheaper version. We need the mid price. We need a premium product. But we certainly, you know, one company could deliver all of those things. So, if the industry is going to remain vibrant and include a lot of different segments, you know, they’re going to be needing to deliver different things to the consumer.
And that could be health. That could be nutrition. That could be sustainability. That could be local, you know, so there are a lot of different ways of competing that are separate from just tasting a lot like beef.
And do you think that the nomenclature topic is chewed through.
Jack A Bobo
Um, I think that, you know, there’s too much attention paid to nomenclature. As long as the nomenclature doesn’t do harm, I think you’re just fine because people may know that the Impossible Burger or the Beyond Burger is plant-based, but it’s still branded as the Impossible Burger. It will be a Memphis Meat burger. And, you know, maybe it’ll have a little footnote that says it’s cultivated, but you’ll be leading with branding. And so I don’t worry as much about that as long as it’s not counterproductive. So clean meat had to go cultivated cell based, you know, uh, cultured, I think that’s much less relevant.
Your points are quite unusual in that sense. And I do appreciate that. What are common push backs that you get or questions that you get regarding those , um, that we should maybe address?
Jack A Bobo
Um, so, you know, there’s often pushback, but I’m taking the long view that the more there’s fighting within the industry about cell based versus plant-based versus animal, the more we’re really undermining consumer confidence in our food system. Just to give one example, we, you know, we talk about the importance of alternative proteins and creating a sustainable future. If you look at what the World Resources Institute has said, they show like the menu of change necessary to create that sustainable future. And they focus on reducing food waste, shifting diets, alternative proteins, all of those different things.
And yet when you look at their bar graph, 61% of the improvements to our food system that must occur to get to the sustainable future are already baked into their assessment based on historic trends in traditional agriculture. So 61% of the improvements we need to do are going to happen because of big food and traditional ag that we’re already denigrating.
And yet they’re going to do 61% of the work. Why not look at it as they’re doing two thirds of the work and now these alternative protein companies and others are going to help to fill the gap? It’s that sustainable future I’m trying to get to. And we can each play our part in getting there.
But if we spend our time and energy trying to tear down the other guy, then they don’t get to do their work, you know? So they spend communication dollars fighting you and you spend it fighting them instead of spending money on R&D and research and efforts to actually improve your product and help the consumer to understand it.
Is there anything that you would like to communicate that we haven’t touched upon?
Jack A Bobo
So one thing I would encourage people to think about my new book that’s coming out, Why Smart People Make Bad Food Choices, that’ll be available in bookstores on May 11th. It’s currently available for pre-order on Amazon and other places. But I mentioned it because the first third of the book is all about consumer psychology.
So to come to the ending questions, Jack, if you would have $50 million, in what businesses or initiatives would you invest in?
Jack A Bobo
I’m not the sort of person who places a bet on single industries or segments. I’m more of a total stock market kind of investor. You know, I want to help as many companies as possible to explore their opportunities, to improve the planet.
And I’m just confident that some of them will succeed. The next 30 years are not just the most important 30 years there have ever been in the history of the planet. The next 30 years are the most important 30 years there will ever be. If we can get to 2050 without screwing up the planet in many ways, we’re going to be good forever.
That’s how important this moment is.
We touched upon quite a few but what is another controversial opinion regarding food tech or agriculture that you hold that people may be surprised by?
Jack A Bobo
Well, you know, we’ve talked a lot about the importance of alternative proteins and things, but I’ve also worked with the dairy industry and the livestock industry. I think it’s important that we encourage those industries to be more productive and that we actually recognize how far they’ve come. The farmer today, the livestock producer today, is wildly more productive than they were 30 or 40 years ago. And there’s this feeling that agriculture is bad and getting worse, but by most measures, agriculture is good and getting better. And that’s important because if ag is bad and getting worse, farmers are the problem to solve.
If ag is getting good and getting better, but not fast enough, that means farmers are the solution to our problem.
If you tell 95% of people in the food system, that they’re the problem, why are they going to work with you? You know, why are they going to try to do things better? If we were producing food today the way we did in 1960 with the same technologies, we would have to have 1 billion hectors of additional farmland. That’s more than 25% of all the forest on the planet would have been cut down in order to produce the food that we have. So it’s hard for people to wrap their minds around the fact that agriculture is the number one driver of deforestation. And it’s the number one savior of forest. Those two things can be true at exactly the same time.
Wow. Well, couldn’t one say that it’s not necessarily the farmer that’s the problem. It’s just then the system, that’s the problem. The incentive to have a very nature-unfriendly production system and incentive to do monocultures, to drive away small-scale farmers and replace them with large scale productions.
Jack A Bobo
So I would say that, yes, but I don’t see that as the problem. I see that as an important feature in the system. So yeah, this is certainly a controversial one. It’s about trade-offs. If all of the farmers are small, they’re going to be less productive. If they’re less productive, food prices will be higher.
And if food prices are higher, more people will be hungry. The system we have has all of the negative consequences, you know, 40% of all the land on earth is devoted to agriculture. 70% of all freshwater goes to ag. 80% of deforestation is caused by ag. So those are things all true. But today only about seven or 8% of the people on the planet go to bed hungry.
But 30 or 50 years ago, a third of all the people on the planet went to bed hungry. And so that’s, you know, taking billions of people out of poverty is on the plus side. The green revolution had lots of negative environmental consequences, but it saved a billion lives. So there will always be trade offs.
The more intensively you produce food, the worse it is for your local environment, but the fewer forests get cut down in Brazil and Indonesia. So, you can’t have a system that’s based only on small farming. You know, Europe is driving towards that but their 2030 goal of having 25% of agriculture be organic, well, based on their own assessments, that means they’re going to produce 8% less food.
So if Europe produces 8% less food, who’s going to feed them? Well, the number one exporter to Europe is Brazil. Europe already imports 70% of its animal feed needs. So, you know, it takes a land mass the size of the agricultural land of Germany to produce soybeans for Europe. So Europe has exported its environmental footprint to arguably the most bio-diverse country on the planet.
If Europe were feeding itself, there would be no deforestation in Brazil. So, that’s a choice, you know. But Europe has more forest today than it did a hundred years ago. You know, one, because they’re wildly more productive, but two because they’re exporting their footprint. Our local sustainability comes at the cost of global sustainability. Global sustainability comes at the cost of local. And what I mean is an organic system may be better for the local environment, but if I need 20% more food someplace else, that’s a problem somewhere else.
And intensive agriculture may have run off and eutrophication of water and all of those negative consequences, but it is protecting forest someplace else. Anytime you scale an idea, it will come with some costs.
Oh, well, we could keep talking for another six hours easily. I wouldn’t run out of things to talk to you about. And how can listeners connect with you?
Jack A Bobo
So there are a few ways. My website is futurityfood.com. That’s futurityfood.com. There’s also LinkedIn where you can find me and you can always send me an email. You can put it in the comments, but it’s just firstname.lastname@example.org. I’m also on Twitter and Instagram.
Wonderful Jack. It was really a pleasure to have you on.
Jack A Bobo
Yeah. This has been a lot of fun. Thanks for having me.


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Given the amount of skepticism directed at Huffpo in its early days — and at Armstrong when AOL bought Huffpo for $300 million in 2011 — this performance is sweet vindication.
(Armstrong reminded everyone how, when he announced the Huffpo deal, AOL stock instantly dropped.)
At recent digital media valuations, "hundreds of millions" of revenue would give Huffpo an impressive valuation.
Vox Media just closed a recent financing at close to a $400 million valuation, or about 7X this year's estimated revenue.
At even 6-times this year's revenue, revenue of, say, $200 million would Huffington Post worth north of $1 billion.
Huffington Post's US business is nicely profitable, Armstrong also said. Overall, the company is investing aggressively in international editions and is on its way to becoming a truly global news brand.
Disclosure: I run a digital media company, so I certainly wasn't unhappy to hear this!


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Bitcoin Price Prediction for 2018 - FX Empire
Digibyte Price Prediction 2018 and Beyond - bitdegree.orgShare: PotCoin is a peer-to-peer Cryptocurrency. PotCoin works very much the same way as the Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Price Prediction Today, Future Price Prediction
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Here's What the Experts Say About Bitcoin in 2018 - Inverse
The Bitcoin story - WIRED
A Goldman Sachs economist has joined the list of those concerned with the impact.
Bitcoin Price Prediction: Expect Price to Double by the
I fully expect Bitcoin price to crash in 2018, but not from current levels.
Blockchain, Virtual Reality Are Among Adobe's Top 10
Bitcoin: Analyst Makes Big Predictions For 2018 - News BTC
Bitcoin Price Prediction For Tomorrow And Month. - 30 RATES
Bitcoin: What Does 2018 Hold In Store? | Investopedia
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Bitcoin Price to Hit $100,000 in 2018, Predicts Saxo Bank
Cryptocurrency Forecast, Bitcoin and Altcoin PredictionWhat fueled the cryptocurrency craze, why Wall Street is joining the party, and whether the Bitcoin bubble will pop.
With the spectacular market performance of cryptocurrencies lately, investors are now.
He also commented that despite the low prices that Bitcoin registered during 2018, Bitcoin trading on the platform had been.Bitcoin predictions from esteemed blockchain experts on what trends and developments to look out for in 2018-- from widespread consumer adoption of crypto.Cryptocurrency Price Prediction with Long Term and Short Term Chart 2018, 2019.


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Brexit blip fails to slow Bovis Homes
Bovis Homes is set for a record year in 2016, the board has revealed in a trading update.
Although there was a temporary hiatus in sales activity in the weeks after the EU referendum, it was not enough to knock the business off course. Reservations in place to achieve unit sales growth of more than 5% on 2015 and the average sale price is up 10%.
Chief executive David Ritchie said: "Another year of both growth in volume and increase in average sales price is expected to deliver record revenues for the group in 2016. As a result, we are on track to deliver increased profit and a further improvement in return on capital employed, in line with our expectations.
“We continue to trade well, drive production across all our sites, invest in our people and acquire high quality land outside London. Housing market fundamentals remain supportive despite greater market uncertainty and we continue to manage the business through the cycle to deliver sustainable shareholder returns."
However, there are warning signs: “The availability of labour remains a constraint on activity across the sector and whilst our sub-contract cost inflation rate has moderated since the second half of 2015, we continue to see market cost increases.”
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This article was published on 10 Nov 2016 (last updated on 10 Nov 2016).


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Following its launch in 2014, an evocative OMEGA Constellation Pluma has been unveiled with a newly designed mother-of-pearl dial.
The Constellation family has long been admired for its elegant yet understated design and is distinguished by the state-of-the-industry timepieces that combine innovation with style.
This year, OMEGA has unveiled an evocative interpretation of the Constellation Pluma with a light coral-coloured dial that is reminiscent of the warm sunshine on a summer day. Similar to its sisters, this 27 mm timepiece is decorated with 11 diamond indexes in 18K gold holders and a soft-wavy pattern that flows between the iconic claws on the bezel. Its polished and facetted central hour, minute and seconds hands are crafted from 18K gold and coated with white Super-LumiNova, so the time can be read in a variety of lighting conditions.
To celebrate OMEGA’s 20-year partnership with Cindy Crawford, the brand has created a campaign shot in London showcasing the new collection revealing a woman of enduring grace and beauty. Watch behind the scenes.


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The flotation of Deliveroo on Wednesday will value the company at £7.6bn after concerns over workers’ rights and volatile stock markets chipped more than £1bn off the top-end valuation.
Last week, the meal delivery service said its initial public offering could value the company at as much as £8.8bn. However, on Tuesday the company confirmed its shares had been priced at £3.90, which is the bottom of the range it had set out.
The price will give the company a market capitalisation of £7.6bn when the shares begin trading on Wednesday.
Although the listing is still expected to be biggest initial public offering in London for a decade, a number of leading fund managers are avoiding the shares owing to concerns about Deliveroo’s labour practices, which do not guarantee minimum pay rates for its couriers.
Along with other operators in the gig economy, Deliveroo, which is backed by Amazon, has faced legal challenges around the world from couriers and drivers seeking access to basic rights, such as minimum wages and holiday pay.
The listing will raise £1bn for the company and £500m for selling shareholders, including Amazon and Will Shu, the former investment banker who launched the service from his London flat in 2013.
Deliveroo has benefited from a surge in food home deliveries during the pandemic. On the back of the most recent lockdown the company said the total value of transactions processed on its platform increased by 130% year on year in January in the UK and Ireland, and by 112% in other markets.
The company said it had received “very significant demand from institutions across the globe” for its shares, adding. “The deal is covered multiple times throughout the range, led by three highly respected anchor investors,” it said in a statement.
It added: “Given volatile global market conditions for IPOs, Deliveroo is choosing to price responsibly and at an entry point that maximises long-term value for our new institutional and retail investors.”
Deliveroo has also given users of its service the chance to buy a piece of the company, setting aside £50m of shares for customers to buy. However, they will not be able to begin trading until next week when unconditional dealings begin.


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On Tuesday, June 20, 2023, the price of petrol in Nigeria rose as petrol marketers in the country lifted the product above the expected depot price by 4.3%.
Table of Contents
In states like Lagos, this led to petrol being sold at N500, N12 higher than the N488 per litre price recommended by the NNPC. However, findings reveal that NNPC still sells the product to major marketers at N446.57 per litre.
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A report by Vanguard noted that Independent marketers lifting petrol at N490 ended up selling at N520 per litre at their stations. However, some marketers fixed their prices between N488 and N490 per litre, depending on the location.
Some operators who also bought the product were reselling at N515 per litre on the black market, while some marketers shut their gates to buyers, with others selling N550 per litre and N650 per litre in the areas of Maryland and Ikorodu, Lagos.
A report from NLC noted that the union has been working on an alternative fuel source, and by the time they are done, petrol will be left for the rich. He hinted that the NLC is working on the Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) which will be made available to Nigerians in a short period.
His promises have also been corroborated by the IPMAN Chairman, Chinedu Okoronkwo, who noted that the CNG, which will start selling between N100 to N110 per litre, will be rolled out to transporters and motorists in Nigeria before the end of June.
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The tension between the U.S. and China is still strong but it appears that it does not deter Apple from investing in “China” – specifically Taiwan. According to media sources, Apple plans to invest $330 million to build a factory in Taiwan, China. The development of MicroLED displays will become a “top priority.” The new Taiwan factory will produce LEDs and MicroLEDs for future iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, and other devices. For Apple, mini LEDs are only a viable alternative, the real target is MicroLED.
According to the report, Apple will partner with an LED manufacturer, Epistar, and LCD panel manufacturer, AU Optronics. The report highlights the advantages of Mini-LED and Micro LED screens over LCD and OLED displays. This includes thinner and more energy-efficient amongst other things. For example, the power consumption of a MicroLED screen is only one-tenth that of an LCD display. In addition, its color saturation is close to that of OLED panels.
Like OLED, micro-LED is self-luminous. However, compared with OLED, micro-LED can support higher brightness, higher dynamic range, and wider color gamut. Furthermore, it can also achieve faster update speed, wider viewing angle, and lower power consumption. These are the qualities that Apple hopes to achieve.
However, due to the difficulty of developing MicroLED technology, the early design will rely on Mini-LED (between traditional LED and MicroLED technology). Nevertheless, Apple still regards MicroLED technology as a “top priority” project.
Gizchina News of the week
Apple is working on alternatives to LCD and OLED panels
The emergence of the iPhone X marks the gradual shift of Apple phones to OLED panels. Nowadays, the proportion of the display screen in the BOM cost is quite high and Apple is preparing alternatives. Apple’s iPads and MacBook still use LCD displays. For these products, the company will probably shift to mini LED as soon as the first quarter of next year. Basically, a mini LED is still LCD but the finer backlight can achieve higher brightness, better grayscale, and contrast.
For its OLED products, the company will consider the MicroLED panel. This technology uses inorganic gallium nitride light-emitting materials, which have a longer life, higher brightness, and lower power consumption. The entire display module can also be thinner, but the disadvantage is that its production cost is high.
In other news, there are reports that Apple Watch’s OLED panels will still come from BOE and LG this year. Apparently, the company is not ready for the shift to a micro-LED display for its smartwatches.
As early as 2017, Apple already had a prototype product based on MicroLED, but sources said that the Apple Watch Series 6 will not arrive with a MicroLED panel. It will still use BOE OLED panel. The possible reason is that the production cost of MicroLED is not ideal.


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A Tesla engineer confirms that the video showing the merits of Tesla’s autonomous driving would have been fake. A statement that could damage the company’s reputation and change the course of the investigation after the death of Walter Huang in an accident aboard a Model X, on autopilot, in 2018.
Tesla has been working on developing its autonomous driving technology, called Autopilot, for many years. A system that came to the brand’s vehicles in 2015 and as standard in 2019 in all the brand’s new cars. If he was one of the first to propose this device, he was also under fire from critics on many occasions. Last October, the US justice system also launched an investigation, accusing Elon Musk of misleading his clients about Autopilot’s real capabilities.
A forceful revelation
But this isn’t the first time authorities have targeted Tesla. And for good reason, in 2021, an investigation had already been opened by the NHTSA after a series of accidents, including one fatality, that occurred while the autopilot was on. However, in 2016, Elon Musk stated loud and clear that the FSD (full self-driving) system, even a little more advanced, was “ probably better than a human driver and that the person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. She doesn’t do anything at all. The car drives itself« .
The words are then backed up by a 3 minute 46 minute video showing this device in action. We then see images of the interior and exterior of the car, which seems to perform perfectly, whatever the situation. Unless all this would be completely wrong. In any case, this declares Ashok Elluswamy, director of the division in charge of Autopilot. In a statement broadcast by the edgeIn fact, the engineer claims that this video would not show the actual capabilities of the car, but rather everything that would be possible with this system in the future.
A manipulated video?
In this way, the path of the route would have been pre-recorded and mapped in advance, the car not being able to plan its own trip. how to explain Bloomberg, Elon Musk would have closely monitored the operations, and would have written in an email that it was normal to exaggerate the capabilities, since it is a demo. Remote OTA updates were then planned, to bring these capabilities later, for customers. In addition, Elluswamy specifies that at the time the images were taken, the car was not able to analyze traffic lightscontrary to what is shown.
Already in 2021, former employees of the brand assured that the video was not entirely authentic. In fact, the brand would have hidden an accident that would have occurred during filming by deleting the images. Proof that the Autopilot would not be as efficient as the brand wants you to believe? Especially since for several years, the engineers in charge of the project have reservations about the certainty of Elon Musk about how this technology works.
Another alarming problem
Secondly, Mahmud HikmetHead of the company’s research and development department Ohm Automation highlights another concern. In his testimony, elluswamy claims to have never heard the acronym ODD (Operational design domain). However, this is a crucial element in the development of an autonomous car, as it defines the limits of the use of the autonomous driving system and limits its use at night or in the rain, for example, as in the Mercedes EQS. Which probably means that Autopilot and FSD don’t have ODD and were meant to be used anywhere, anytime.
However, there are currently laws governing the use of this technology. In Europe, autonomous driving level 3 can only be used on the road, at 60 or 130 km/h depending on the country. That is why the Mercedes Drive Pilot, although at level 3, is less advanced than the Tesla FSD, at level 2.
However, Tesla makes it clear in the manual, which specifies that ” Heading Assist is designed for use on roads with limited access ” and that “Failure to follow these instructions may result in damage and serious injuryeven fatal“. Thus, the brand cannot be accused of offering a 100% autonomous system and of deceiving customers.
The main criticism I’ve received from Tesla defenders has been that Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s head of autopilot software, not knowing the term “ODD” is a “gotcha.”
I’m going to tell you why this is MUCH worse than you think.
— Mahmood Hikmet (@MoodyHikmet) January 18, 2023
At the moment, in any case, there is no question of offering level 3 autonomous driving to its customers, while the FSD is still in beta testing. Proof that the brand isn’t really sure of its capabilities? However, according to a recent report, Autopilot is becoming more secure. But certifying the system at level 3, as in the EQS, implies many limitations. Because in this case, it is the manufacturer that is responsible in the event of an accident, and the limits of level 3 autonomous driving must be respected, in particular the maximum speed. Tesla doesn’t seem ready to take on these aspects yet.
But if Tesla’s systems don’t have ODD, it’s probably because the brand envisions that they can be used everywhere. In an interview with the investigator. Lex Friedmann Three years ago, Elon Musk mocked the acronym SDG, claiming it was ” Beautifull crazy girl let humans drive cars instead of machines.
However, autopilot seems to have a long way to go, even if this system would prevent 40 accidents per day. For its part, the FSD (Complete self-driving) may have to change its name, since California just introduced a law that prohibits Tesla from referring to this technology as autonomous driving.
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Bank of Japan Gov. Toshihiko Fukui on Tuesday voiced delight at having to wait two weeks to get his hands on the latest cell phone model.
“Demand was that strong,” Fukui told a regular news conference. “If companies work hard to provide new services and demand-generating products, customer demand will follow.”
A self-proclaimed aficionado of the latest cell phone products, Fukui later confided to The Japan Times that he had bought a NTT DoCoMo 505i phone, which features a digital camera, speedy access to traffic news and an option that allows users to program their video recorders to record television shows.
Fukui noted that the economy is departing from the model internalized over a 50-year period since the end of World War II.
It is becoming necessary for companies and banks to foster added value to raise profits, while market forces are increasingly being called upon to help determine interest rates to secure funding, he said.
But the Cabinet Office’s announcement that real gross domestic product logged 0.6 percent growth in the April-June quarter will not affect the central bank’s assessment that the economy is currently staying put.
“The past legacy of debt and excessive investments still weighs heavily on the Japanese economy,” Fukui said. “The economy will not shift into high-gear that quickly.”
More phones shipped
Kyodo News Domestic shipments of mobile phone handsets, including personal handy-phone system equipment, rose 19.4 percent in June from a year earlier to 4.878 million units, marking the eighth straight monthly gain, an industry association said Tuesday.
June was the fourth straight month in which such shipments topped 4 million units, the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association said.
Shipments of mobile phones excluding PHS handsets increased 19.6 percent to 4.744 million units, extending the rising streak to nine months, thanks to growth in demand for third-generation cell phones as well as a rise in shipments of units equipped with camera functions, the association said.
Shipments of PHS handsets alone rose 12.8 percent to 134,000 units, marking the fourth consecutive monthly gain and reflecting strong demand for handsets designed for data transmission, it said.
In the April-June period, overall shipments of mobile phone handsets rose 27 percent from the same period a year earlier to 13.203 million units.
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At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week, a number of companies announced they would be adding Google Assistant to their connected devices. But Google isn't giving up the fight for domination in the virtual assistant market, with some reports suggesting that Google had already won. After all, the younger, trendier Google Assistant was also deemed smarter and more intuitive a number of times by different analysts of late. The executive wants to get as many devices to use Alexa as possible, and he wants those devices to do as much as possible.
While not all the devices included in the 100 million figure are made by Amazon, it does emphasise the public's trust in the company's AI voice assistant, Alexa.
It is also probable that Amazon has sold more smart home devices than Google.
"Google Assistant handles the higher-order computing - knowing what's on the calendar, checking for updates, and so on", explains the company. However, it is unclear how many people use this feature on their smartphone. Over the a year ago, Google has added support for 22 new languages and 66 more countries, bringing the total to 30 languages and 80 countries.
The company said that its presence at CES is three times larger than it has been in 2018 and they also plan to show off the company's product launches "focused on showcasing the helpfulness of the Assistant across the home, auto and mobile devices".
Without providing specific numbers, Huffman said Google Home and Google Home Hub devices sold well throughout this past holiday season. Samsung said it will be opening up its 2019 QLED TV lineup to other voice assistants, such as Alexa or Google's Assistant. Faltering sales in China and questions about future iPhone shipments have bludgeoned Apple stock, sending it down about 6% to start the year.


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Airbnb has accused Daft.ie of using “inaccurate” data and creating “misleading assumptions” after research appeared to indicate that more properties in Dublin were available for tourist lettings than for those in need of long-term housing. An Airbnb spokesperson said: “This report uses inaccurate scraped data to make misleading assumptions about our community. “It is clear that the vast majority of entire home listings rented on Airbnb do not get close to that tipping point,” it said. The 550 properties that were booked for more than 160 nights on Airbnb in 2016 represent just 0.10287% of all housing units in Dublin. Since then, the group has looked at proposals for an appropriate regulatory approach for short-term tourism-related lettings and possible amendments to legislation.
Source: Irish Examiner May 16, 2018 23:03 UTC


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More than 100,000 claims by credit-card debtors that their contracts were unenforceable – because of a loophole in the Consumer Credit Act – have been put on hold pending settlement of a handful of selected test cases.
Judge Derek Halbert of Chester County Court froze litigation until precedents are set in the Commercial Court in London. Other courts across Britain are expected to follow suit.
Claimants are challenging agreements made before April 2007 on the grounds that they contain clauses in which important details were incorrectly drawn up.
As a result of Judge Halbert's ruling, consumers are being warned against using claims management companies, which promise borrowers the chance to write off their balances in return for a fee.
"It's understandable that people are being tempted by promises to clear debts. But this decision will wipe out any faint hope of an immediate resolution and consumers will be taking a significant risk by parting with any cash," says Daniella Lipszyc, a solicitor with the firm Ultimate Law.
Ms Lipszyc says that consumers should instead turn their attention to unfair credit card charges. "Consumers are far more likely to get money back on unfair credit card charges than see their balance wiped out," she says.
Under Office of Fair Trading guidelines, credit card firms should impose a fee of only £12 for missing a credit card repayment. However, in the past, providers have levied fees far in excess of this amount.


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Isle of Capri Casinos recently announced that it has expanded its board of directors and selected Gregory Kozicz for the new slot on the board. “I am pleased to welcome Greg to the board of directors,” says Chairman and CEO James Perry.
“Greg is committed to enhancing shareholder value and brings high professional and personal ethics consistent with the longstanding values of the company. We believe that his background and experiences will increase the overall effectiveness of the board of directors.”
Kozicz is president and CEO of St. Louis-based Alberici Corporation. His election to the Isle of Capri board must be approved by gaming regulators before being finalized.


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Adopt-A-Soldier Door County sent out care packages for the holidays to troops deployed overseas a month ago, but they have not yet gotten to local soldiers. President Nancy Hutchinson says the delay is taking longer than normal. Sometimes, during parts of the year when mail is light, packages are held over until there is enough to fill a whole pod to send to a unit. That shouldn’t be an issue around the holidays though. Hutchinson says she can’t track packages past Chicago’s O’Hare Airport but she does have an ace up her sleeve.
Beginning in 2020, care packages will go out only four times a year.


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UK retail sales declined less than expected in February, official figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Thursday 24 March showed. According to the ONS, the volume of retail sales fell 0.4% month-on-month in February, compared with a 2.3% gain in the previous month and analysts' expectations for a 1% decline, while the quantity bought in the retail industry rose 3.8% year-on-year last month, recording growth for the 34th consecutive month.
Average store prices, including petrol stations, fell by 2.5% in February 2016 compared with January 2015, the 20th consecutive month of year-on-year price falls, while the amount spent in the retail industry rose 1.4% year-on-year in January and 1.3% month-on-month.
Online sales remained strong in February, with the value of goods bought online increasing by 12.3% year-on-year in February 2016. On a month-on-month basis, however, online sales decreased by 1%.
The ONS added all store types, except textile, clothing and footwear stores showed increases in the quantity bought compared with February 2015, while all stores except textile, clothing and footwear stores and petrol stations showed increases in the amount spent year-on-year.
However, average store price compared with February 2015 fell across all kinds of stores last month.
"It's hard to see how the recovery in consumer spending can maintain its current momentum," said Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.
"The tighter fiscal squeeze, the recent moderation of firms' hiring plans and the looming pick-up in inflation all suggest that the spending recovery will lose its vim this year. We expect year-over-year growth in real household spending to ease to about 2.5% this year, from 3% in 2015."


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Peloton recently agreed to voluntarily recall certain treadmills over safety concerns.
Recalls & Safety Alerts
Kidde recently announced a recall for certain TruSense smoke alarms that may not be working properly.
Earlier this week, Faribault Foods issued a recall for canned black beans that might have compromised seals.
Earlier this week, Velvet Ice Cream issued a voluntary recall over listeria concerns.
JBS USA Food Company is recalling certain packages of beef products amid E. coli concerns.
Certain vitafusion gummy supplements are being recalled because they may contain metal.
Target is recalling certain infant teething toys that may pose a choking hazard.
Hostess SnoBalls are being recalled because they might contain undeclared allergens.
The CPSC is recalling certain baby seats that may pose a drowning hazard.


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State officials said today that they will offer a second round of appliance rebates this summer after would-be participants crashed a computer server then drained the program of all its funding in 2 1/2 hours.
Environmental Affairs Secretary Ian Bowles said today the state will also fund all of more than 12,700 rebate reservations placed on a waiting list after yesterday's first-come, first-served free-for-all.
Those on the waiting list will be notified by e-mail or mail in about one week explaining how to claim their rebate. The deadlines for buying appliances and submitting paperwork have been extended by one week to aid those customers on the waiting list, officials said.
The rebates totaled up to $250 for dishwashers, $200 for refrigerators, $175 for clothes washers and $50 for freezers. Many manufacturers and retailers were also offering add-on rebates of their own, dramatically lowering product costs.
Yesterday's rebate program, designed to encourage consumers to trade in energy-sucking appliances for more miserly ones, was funded with federal stimulus dollars.
The $5.5 million in rebates will help replace about 26,556 dishwashers, refrigerators, clothes washers and freezers, Bowles said.
Money for the summer rebate program will come from state funds, including the auction of carbon allowances under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and existing utility company funds for state energy efficiency programs.
Those awarded rebates yesterday and those placed on the waiting list must buy their appliances by May 12 and have their old inefficient ones picked up for recycling by June 26.