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Researchers have determined a new method based on machine learning that is said to reduce customer acquisition costs by approximately 15%, or $0.07/watt. It is based on a customized version of the XGBoost algorithm and takes into account, among other things, summer bills, household income and the age of the homeowner.
“We further dive into the modeling details of XGBoost and attribute its improved prediction performance in logistic regression compared to two factors: variable interaction and nonlinearity,” the researchers said. “Finally, we show XGBoost’s potential to lower customer acquisition costs and then the ability to identify new market opportunities for solar companies.”
According to them, this new method could help solar companies reduce customer acquisition costs and other soft costs associated with the residential solar business.
They compared the performance of the proposed algorithm with the logistic regression method, which the researchers described as the most commonly used method to analyze differences between PV adopters and non-adopters. “Our logistic regression model with nine original and highly visible household characteristics successfully predicts 71% of out-of-sample PVs,” they explained. “The model correctly identified 66% of adopters and 75% of non-adopters.”
According to the research team, the modified algorithm was able to provide better results than logistic regression in predictive performance. “The predictive model correctly predicted 87 percent of the two PV adoption states, compared to 71 percent for logistic regression,” they added. “The correct adopter percentage increased from 66 percent to 87 percent and the correct non-adopter percentage from 75 to 88 percent.”
They attributed the superior performance of the machine learning-based approach to the fact that it integrates complex nonlinearity and variable interaction and takes into account factors such as summer bills, household income, and homeowner age.
“The advantage of using these variables is that they are easily accessible, so PV companies can collect data on them at low cost,” they also note. “Another reason for XGBoost’s improved performance is that it can potentially recover key latent information embedded in the data. “For example, including geographic information such as the respondent’s state or county increases the predictive accuracy of logistic regression to some extent.”
The research group estimates that the new method can help solar power companies reduce customer acquisition costs by about 15%, or $0.07/watt. It also explained that data mining and machine learning can also help reduce the soft costs of contract cancellations, supply chain management, labor allocation, and licensing and inspection issues.
It described the new methodology in a study published in “Machine learning reduces soft costs in residential solar power”. scientific reports. The research team consists of researchers from the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Florida State University, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Renmin University of China.


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Failure to push ahead with employee share ownership is a missed opportunity
When Julian Richer said last year that he was handing 60 per cent of his retail business to his staff, it drew praise across the corporate and political world, from the CBI to Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour. It also sparked a remarkable response from readers of The Times, who contacted us in droves to applaud Mr Richer. “A real leading example of operating a company in an intelligent, forward thinking, altruistic and benevolent manner,” was one reader’s typical comment.
Yet Mr Richer’s move remains an isolated incident. Not every business can or should follow the model of Richer Sounds by creating a John Lewis-style employee ownership trust, but there has been no notable increase in workers owning shares in public or private companies, either.

domain: news


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The long-held conventional wisdom that short-term meetings cripple a corporation's bottom line because hoteliers can charge a premium when lead time is scarce appears completely to have reversed itself. During the past six months, hotel rates for meetings with fewer than 90 days of lead time are, at worst, no different than those for longer-term events and, in many cases, are lower.
The findings are part of a Meetings Today study of the preponderance and effects of corporate short-term meetings. Only 10 percent of respondents to a poll of 101 corporate meeting buyers, taken in February and early March, reported that during the past six months hotels have charged somewhat higher rates for short-term meetings than for meetings with more than 90 days of lead time. Not a single respondent said those rates are much higher.
About 34 percent of respondents said they get better rates in the short term, a sliver of whom said their rates are much better. The remainder, more than half, indicated that their rates were about the same regardless of lead time.
"It's definitely lower. There's a lot more flexibility in pricing, and sometimes they will beat out the negotiated transient rate," said one corporate meeting buyer. "A lot depends on location and timing, but overall, hotels are showing that they really need this business."
"If you hit a window or fill a niche, the hotels will be really flexible," said one corporate buyer from a pharmaceutical firm. "You'll still pay a premium if there is no flexibility on your part, but our people have been trying to plan meetings as far ahead as they can. There are less emergency short-term meetings, so that gives us more flexibility and we're certainly not hitting that window with any less frequency."
The results illustrate a few trends about the state of the hotel market, including how desperate many properties are for any kind of business—considering last year's significant declines in occupancy and revenue per available room (BTN, Feb. 10)
—the lack of optimism for a significant reversal of those trends this year and with military action in Iraq depressing corporate meeting business in the immediate future. It also underscores hotels' desire for group and meeting business, given that many properties are able to charge higher rates for guest rooms in a meeting room block than in other travel categories (Meetings Today, Jan. 20)
and the ancillary revenue meetings generate.
With occupancy soft in so many locales, inclined buyers with any flexibility have the potential to shop around their short-term meetings, and, even with little lead time, coax many properties into playing their best cards early in the game. "There are a lot of new options out there, and buyers can find two or three hotels that have the necessary space quickly," said Rodger MacDonald, vice president of sales and marketing at Destination Hotels & Resorts. "If a property is sitting there with a few hundred rooms available, there's 90 days in front of the meeting and a buyer can take up a large share of those rooms, they will find great value. The market compression isn't there, so properties will get creative."
One of the driving factors behind the trend, MacDonald said, is the Internet's role in short-term room distribution of distressed inventory. "It's a difficult case to argue when people are finding low Internet prices through Expedia, Travelocity or Hotels.com 90 to 120 days away," MacDonald said. "That drives meeting prices down as well."
Some chains, though, have intentionally and specifically put their best collective foot forward in negotiations. Within the past six months, Le Meridien Hotels & Resorts has issued directives to its properties in the United States, Canada, South America and London to offer extremely aggressive rates as part of its first offer to corporate buyers of short-term meetings, said director of global sales Jim VanDevender. As such, it is inevitable that the chain offers at least some group rates that are lower in the short term.
"Our directive is that those properties should be very aggressive right off the bat," VanDevender said. "We do this for a competitive advantage for planners who just want to get that meeting off their desks and not waste time with the negotiations game. We don't want to offer a $150 rate, then drop it by $30 a week later after negotiations. In this economy, that's where you want to be."
The move was sparked by the soft economy and a generally shrinking pool of potential corporate meetings revenue, leading to a landscape in which properties of different service levels compete for group business. "Many hotels are not doing this yet," VanDevender said. "The competitive set has changed. You might see a Ritz-Carlton and a Hilton compete for a piece of corporate business, which may not have been the case three years ago. If you want the business, you must reevaluate how you approach the market." The move has paid off thus far, he added, "We're becoming known as an aggressive competitor."
Other chains, though, are less ready to declare short-term meeting negotiating as better for the corporate buyer. "There was a perception that if planners wait until the last minute, they may pay the highest rate," said Charlotte St. Martin, Loews Hotels executive vice president of marketing. "Certainly, that's the case during boom time, and that hasn't changed a bit. If the hotel is full and it's close to the event date, you will pay a premium, but there can be opportunity."
St. Martin pointed out that much of short-term meeting negotiations, and much of hotels' flexibility, might center on areas other than room rate, as properties look at contractual clauses, services and amenities as enticements to lure short-term business. "Properties are much more flexible than they used to be for short-term meetings," St. Martin said. "They'll do things like close down sections of restaurants or move furniture out of a suite for a meeting that they may not have done in the past."


text: There was a report out this week that stated that just 8% of the British Olympic merchandise is actually going to be manufactured in Britain. Although most of the companies allocated the contracts are British, they are mostly outsourcing their production overseas.Is it me or is this a massive wasted opportunity? We are certainly not short of creative talent in this country, far from it. However, all visitors are going to be able to see and buy are mascots made in China and bed linen made in Turkey. Not only does this cause pollution from factories and shipping from abroad but Britain is barely going to benefit from the money generated by these orders. Isn't the country in need of more jobs? Wouldn't it be a great opportunity to show off our talent?


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What you need to know
- PlayStation Vue has been losing money for Sony for a long time now.
- And Sony has ended the PS Vue affiliate program.
- But it hasn't sold the service to anyone yet.
Sony — which owns PlayStation Vue — reportedly has been shopping around the multichannel video programming distributor. (That's a live TV streaming service, for those who prefer English.) The news, according to anonymous sources in The Information, is hardly surprising given that Sony has done very little to promote PS Vue the past few years, and in recent months opted to end its affilate program, which offers monteary incentives to induce registrations.
Fubo TV has named as one potential buyer, though those talks haven't gone anywhere. Presumably Sony's talking to, well, everyone — because everyone's always talking to everyone anyway.
From The Information:
The company tapped Bank of America Merrill Lynch several months ago to explore a sale, which would include the company's technology and a subscriber list of around 500,000 households, according to the people. Selling Playstation Vue, which loses money, would help Sony at a time when it is fending off activist investor Daniel Loeb, who is calling on the company to restructure in order to lift its stock price.
Among the companies that Sony has approached about Vue is FuboTV, a sports-oriented streaming service, although those discussions haven't gone anywhere, according to one of the people. The business is likely to be valued in the tens of millions, the person said.
So what does this mean to anyone who's not in the market to buy a multi-million video distribution service? Not all that much. PlayStation Vue still works, if you're a subscriber. If you're thinking about subscribing, there's really no reason to not take a look — like every other streaming service out there, you can cancel any time should things go south.
There's a new official trailer for Apple TV+'s 'Visible: Out on Television'
Apple has shared an official trailer for "Visible: Out on Television" on YouTube.
Apple signs multi-year Apple TV+ deal with Seinfeld's Julia Louis-Dreyfous
Apple has signed a multi-year deal with Julia Louise-Dreyfus, formerly of Saturday Night Live and Seinfeld.
The first three episodes of 'Truth Be Told' are now live on Apple TV+
A month after Apple TV+ went live, "Truth Be Told" is now available to stream. The first three episodes are online now, with a new episode arriving every week.
Streaming videos that help keep MLK's dream alive
Today — Monday, Jan. 20, 2020 — is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a holiday that commemorates the birthday of the famous Civil Rights Leader. While many of us enjoy having the day off, this can also be one of those holidays where the focus can be on learning about the person being honored, and their life's work. This is especially important for kids. There are a lot of ways that people...


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Why there are still much fewer crypto card users than cryptocurrency holders, who need cryptocurrency cards and what are their benefits, shared СEO of the virtual bank TTM Bank Vladislav...
The 11-month old audio app is the latest vector for crypto adoption – memes and all. Here's why everyone wants in.
Gates has previously criticized cryptocurrencies and said he'd short bitcoin "if there was an easy way to do it."
Gundlach has previously said, "I don't believe in bitcoin."
"It‘ll be set up as a blind irrevocable trust, taking zero direction from us," said Dorsey.
For decades, the financial system has been rigged against Blacks. Today, there is an alternative that removes barriers to wealth creation.


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For according to Scotland Yard's Arts and Antiques unit, Sixties and Seventies "junk" has become the latest criminal collectable.
Detective Sergeant Dick Ellis, head of the Organised Crime Group's three- strong unit, said that where there was a market, a new breed of "renaissance" criminals would ensure that there was a supply.
"Things that were about in the Sixties and Seventies are now saleable. If they're saleable they're collectable and if they have a market price then people will steal them," he said.
Burglars are stealing items that 10 years ago would be considered junk, he added, for the simple reason that someone was prepared to buy it. Many thieves watched programmes such as the Antiques Roadshow and found that objects which might have been out of vogue a few years ago were now back in fashion and worth a lot of money.
"We have to get away from the misnomer that arts and antiques are something rather rarefied and only found in galleries and museums. Ninety per cent of what is stolen and finds its way onto the art market is stolen from domestic burglaries. They are going to be ordinary pieces of silver or ordinary pieces of furniture," said Det Sgt Ellis.
Demand for such contemporary items is reflected in the fact that auction houses have responded by opening specialist departments. According to a spokeswoman for Christie's new Europa Gallery, which opened in London last September, the auction house is now processing items manufactured as late as the 1980s.
"There's a growing demand for that kind of stuff; all the other houses are doing it now as well. We call the category modern design," she said. "I don't know if we've sold a lava lamp yet but we probably will."
The Arts and Antiques unit exists for the dual purpose of investigating art crime and managing a database through which stolen items might be returned. Its Bumblebee Imaging System, introduced in 1991, holds details of thousands of stolen artefacts, worth anything between pounds 50 and pounds 500,000.
Often, when Granny's 1950s teapot or Uncle's plastic chair are entered onto the Scotland Yard database and recovered (items are entered according to whether they are identifiable, rather than by their monetary value), no one is more surprised than the owners themselves, said Det Sgt Ellis.
"People are quite surprised when the antiques squad take an interest, because they don't themselves regard [the pieces] as being antiques."
Stolen antiques and works of art form a pounds 5bn industry, second only to drugs in global crime. Britain provides the biggest market in the world, with an estimated pounds 500m worth of goods stolen every year.
Before Det Sgt Ellis re-founded it in 1989, there was no specialist arts unit at all. It had been disbanded in 1984, before police recognised the strong links between art theft and other forms of organised crime.
Det Sgt Ellis said: "The biggest problem we face is communication with other police forces. We have this database on which we are prepared to put property that has been stolen from anywhere; not just London but from abroad as well, because London is a major marketplace. But the majority of police forces do not send us material."
"If there's no trace of the object we are looking at, we can't say it's stolen. So sometimes it goes back to the criminal. Then months later you might find the insurer will place an advertisement [about it] - but it's too late," he said.
Det Sgt Ellis recently attended a conference where international police forces considered the advantages of a pan-European database.
But he is still struggling with the fact that the majority of forces in Britain do not have a database of their own.
"If all police forces invested in a database and communicated more effectively you could actually have a national database at very little cost," he said. This would mean thousands more people a year recovering their stolen property.
"We're able to access France, Italy and Germany from our own office and yet we can't even tell you what's been stolen in Essex."
Det Sgt Ellis also pointed out that while the British unit has a staff of three, its Italian counterpart employs 100 officers.
The failure of what could easily be an effective, national system for recovering people's belongings, he said, was also partly due to regional forces' belief that arts and antiques was an area for specialists, while what they were dealing with was household burglary. This was compounded by national statistics, in which art is lumped in with other stolen property.
"It's been a growth area for a number of years. The antiques fairs circuit has grown enormously, to the point where the market is almost saturated. It's just so easy for people to drive up the motorway, commit thefts, drive to another part of the country and dispose of the goods on the same day.
"It is similarly easy to steal art in one country and sell it in another. It requires no currency exchange and criminals can protect themselves through international law.
"From the criminals' point of view there is an area in which they can operate and resell goods and get the maximum market price themselves."
Police say these are neither amateur, nor opportunist criminals. They research their market, target their goods, and know where to dispose of them. And as targets like banks become harder, the world of art and antiques is considered gratifyingly easy.
The Arts and Antiques Unithas some 20 major investigations under way, mostly international. The unit's integration into the Organised Crime Group helped, Det Sgt Ellis said, as it provided a greater pool of resources and generally gets good cooperation from an often insular and protective market.
"But," Det Sgt Ellis said, "because the marketplace acts in such secrecy, it lends itself to infiltration by the criminal."


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Chicago Restaurant To Pay $339,000 In Wage-Violation Case: FedsFabulous Freddies will pay nearly $170,000 in back wages and an equal amount in damages, labor officials said.
Felony Franks Closes, Owner Looking For Jobs For Ex-Con Workers"We had seven employees when we closed the doors, and what's going to happen to them is what keeps me up at night," owner Deno Andrews said.
Plan To Convert Historic Batavia Factory Into Apartments Could Stall On Final VoteThe Batavia City Council was scheduled to vote Monday night on the zoning amendments needed to make way for the $30 million project.
Japanese Company Awarding Six Extra Vacation Days To Workers Who Don't SmokeA marketing firm has announced it is awarding its non-smoking employees six more vacation days to make up for the breaks smokers take.
New Apple Store A Hazard To Birds, Rescue Group SaysThe highly praised Apple store along the Chicago River is yet another glass structure that pose a danger to birds, one advocate says.
Florida Governor Tries To Poach Jobs From Illinois; 'Your Taxes Are Too High'Florida Gov. Rick Scott was visiting Chicago on Wednesday, trying to lure businesses from Illinois to the Sunshine State.
$2.2 Billion Incentives Offered To Amazon Not Raising Alarms For AldermenAld. David Moore said, if Amazon builds on land not generating taxes now, then the $2.25 billion in financial incentives is not alarming.
Here Are The 10 Proposed Illinois Sites For AmazonWill Chicago or its suburbs be host to the online retail giant's "HQ2"?
U Of I, U Of C, Northwestern Plan $1.2 Billion Research Hub In South LoopThe universities have teamed up to create what they hope will become the next big think tank in Chicago.
Woodlawn Manufacturing Facility Training Workers In RoboticsThursday was the grand opening of a high-tech job training and manufacturing facility in the Woodlawn neighborhood.
Democrats, Republicans Unite To Organize Chicago Area Pitch For AmazonDozens of government, business, and civic leaders gathered downtown to discuss luring Amazon's second headquarters to the Chicago area.
Could Ford's Restructuring Affect Chicago Plant?The auto manufacturer is shifting gears to make more trucks and electric cars instead of sedans. CBS 2's Lauren Victory reports.


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Carson-Dellosa is one of the first educational publishing companies in the United States to offer online consumer reviews on its website.
Greensboro, N.C. (PRWEB) March 07, 2013
The majority of teachers and parents making purchases online rely on product reviews and online research before buying items, according to a recent online survey of 900 customers by Carson-Dellosa Publishing. The company found 90 percent of survey respondents researched products or services on the Internet and almost 80 percent of them read product reviews before making purchases. What’s more, 80 percent of respondents said that their decisions to purchase items are influenced by those reviews.
With this understanding, Carson-Dellosa, a leading provider of supplemental educational materials for teachers and parents around the world, has launched an online rating and review option on carsondellosa.com. The new functionality enables customers to review, rate and share their feedback on a wide variety of educational products, including books, learning cards, classroom decorative items, digital products, puzzles and games, and stationery. Customers benefit by tapping the opinions of others to make the best possible purchase decisions, and Carson-Dellosa can use the direct customer feedback as a guide to continually improve its products and services.
“Consumer insight is a vital part of our business as we rigorously survey, interview and test our products with thousands of teachers and parents each year in an effort to create the right products for them,” said Al Greco, chief executive officer, Carson-Dellosa Publishing. “People expect companies to provide them with easy ways to find and share opinions. And regardless of where shoppers make their final purchases—online or in stores—they’re reading consumer reviews before they buy. We want to make sure our customers are getting exactly what they need. Adding this online review option will help them make confident, informed purchase decisions.”
Carson-Dellosa is one of the first educational publishing companies in the United States to offer online consumer reviews on its website, which will allow the company to participate in real-time customer conversations, including questions and answers on products, product reviews and customer stories.
Carson-Dellosa created a customer insights group two years ago to make the point of view of the consumer part of daily conversations. This group works across all departments within the company to ensure that the consumer feedback is integrated into product development and marketing. Data from the new online reviews will further enhance consumer engagement across the company, all while improving existing products and services.
Carson-Dellosa Publishing, LLC, based in Greensboro, North Carolina, is a leading supplemental curriculum solutions provider for both educators and parents around the world. Founded by two teachers, our company boasts a more than 35-year history of enhancing a child’s learning potential and environment through quality curriculum and printed and digital supplemental learning materials for school and home.
Carson-Dellosa provides educational materials developed by experienced educators, tested with teachers and parents, and certified by a third party to align to the new Common Core State Standards. Offerings include the industry’s most recognized and respected award-winning brands such as Learning Spot™ Lessons, Summer Bridge Activities™, Mark Twain Publishing, Brighter Child® and many more.
To learn more about Carson-Dellosa, visit carsondellosa.com, Facebook.com/CarsonDellosa, Twitter.com/CDPub, Pinterest.com/Carson-Dellosa or YouTube.com/CarsonDellosaPub.


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After around a year of teasing that it's coming, AMD has finally confirmed that its FidelityFX Super Resolution tech is coming on June 22.
AMD made the announcement as part of its Computex 2021 keynote, and it looks to deliver a similar performance boost to Nvidia's DLSS (deep learning super sampling) technology. However, unlike Nvidia's upscaling tech, FidelityFX Super Resolution will work on any recent graphics card, as AMD has demonstrated the tech working on an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 in GodFall.
- Here are the best gaming PCs
- Check out the best gaming laptops
- We'll show you how to build a PC
AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution, based on Team Red's own claims, should provide a up to a whopping 2x performance jump on AMD graphics cards using the Quality mode of Super Resolution, and up to a 2x performance boost in its Performance mode. These numbers come from GodFall at 4K with ray tracing on an AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, so it's not clear if these numbers will change at all on other graphics cards.
AMD does share some brief information about the technology working with its competitor's graphics cards, but not the same breakdown we see for the 6800 XT. Also in Godfall, but at 1440p, AMD claims that the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 can go from 27 fps to 38 fps at 1440p, using the Epic Preset and FidelityFX Super Resolution with its Quality mode. That's not the same 2x performance jump that AMD's own card boasts, but that's still a 41% performance jump.
We'll have to see for ourselves how this technology fares once we can get our hands on it for some more in-depth testing on June 22. But for right now, just based on AMD's own claims, this technology is looking extremely promising.
- This year, Computex is going virtual, but we'll still be bringing you all the breaking computing news and launches as they happen, so make sure you check out all of TechRadar's Computex 2021 coverage.


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Exclusive interview: The Kiwi cloud company in a dying trade
Businesses are rushing to the cloud and its killing traditional IT as it reduces the need for on-site servers.
But, big tech giants are threatening managed cloud companies as they look at expanding in this sector.
That's according to Robert Elcombe, a director of Auckland-based managed cloud services company Mi-IT, who attended the Ingram Micro Showcase this year.
At the Showcase, Elcombe explains, “You no longer store all your own servers, somebody else does. Somebody else is responsible for backing up and maintaining that data.
“Traditionally, IT people have had a job maintaining servers. But recently, servers have been moving off site to people like us – cloud managed services.
“Now businesses don't need a server. So, a lot of IT support people out there are hunting for work because the servers are disappearing. No servers - no premium work,” says Elcombe.
“What's left is desk side support, and that's shrinking as well because it's becoming a disposable market. You don't repair your phone, you replace your phone. You don't have your laptop repaired, if there's no data on it, you replace it. So, the whole IT world is shrinking.
“This is where the growth has been in the last ten years for hosted services and virtual server companies like us – we bring people's servers from their business onto our infrastructure and managed and maintain it.
But, this space is dying as well, claims Elcombe who says that over the next two decades tech giants will try to take business from companies like Mi-IT.
“They are going to try to take our business from us like we've taken business from traditional IT support.
“It's just like how Amazon is taking away business from shops; people go to a shop in person, find something they want and then go to Amazon so they don't pay tax, or GST. Local shops are demised and big companies have increased.
“So, the long-term future for us is bleak.
“The big boys are going to take the majority of the market, leaving niche markets for people like us.
“So, that's for anyone who already has a start in the market like us, we have over 800 seats, over 60 virtual servers on our stack, we're well established.
“But anybody coming to the market late can only resell other people's product because it's too expensive now and they have too few clients to start from scratch, in most cases.
“It's a shrinking marketplace with only a number of people who are able to service it. It's going to come to personality.
Customer service and personality is crucial, stresses Elcombe, so much so that it forced the managed cloud services company to become an ISP.
“All of our services run on the internet but we couldn't find a good ISP. They all lack customer service, so we were forced to become an ISP with a focus on service and delivery.
“The world stops when your internet stops. When people have a problem with their internet, they phone us up and speak to an engineer who can fix the problem straight away. We don't have a call centre.
“We monitor our connections and there's an alarm the sounds when an internet connection goes down, so quite often one of our engineers will be on site with the client and a remedy, and sometimes that's before the client is aware they have an internet problem.
Beyond cloud hosted services, VoIP telephony and ISP services, Mi-IT is a reseller of Dell hardware.
“Initially, our company was set up to resell Dell computer hardware and sell web pages. But the profit margin on computer hardware is minimal, making the first 18 months very difficult.
“But then we moved into the cloud hosted services, experienced spectacular growth, and haven't looked back.


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T.I.’s dalliance into the world of cryptocurrency may end up costing him big.
The rapper, 38, is being sued for securities fraud by a group of angry investors, reports The Blast.
According to docs obtained by the website, the group of 25 investors alleges that T.I. and a business associate, Ryan Felton, engaged in a “pump and dump” scheme, that saw them sink $1.3 million into “now worthless” FLiK Tokens.
They claim that T.I. and Felton used “social media, celebrity endorsements, and well-known industry experts to create the false impression that FLiK Tokens were a valuable liquid investment.” After driving up interest, they sold off their tokens.
The group says that when they finally realized what had happened, Felton had set up another company which acquired FLiK, even though he denied having anything to do with the new company.
According to the docs, in November of last year, a massive “dump” led to their FLiK tokens plummeting in value. The investors claim that Felton blamed the drop on T.I. to them, saying the rapper had given the tokens to family and friends who sold them on coinexchange.com, leading to their devaluation.
The group is seeking $5 million in damages.
Reps for T.I. did not respond to a request for comment.


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So Fortune magazine, which I used to work for, suddenly discovered that Steve Jobs is a bit of a tyrant. That revelation is no surprise, but the publication's details create a pretty compelling profile to read.
I'd hate to work for Mr. Jobs. My intellect couldn't withstand his assaults, and my years of playing hockey would have me giving him a choice elbows on my way to HR to get my severance.
But this unbelievable passion and control makes Jobs products great. And great Apple products raise the bar for Microsoft, which is why the Zune was pretty good and Windows Phone 7, despite lackluster sales, is even better.
I like the fact that Jobs acts as a dictator. His passion transfers to his customers. I'm just glad I don't work there!
What are your Apple thoughts? Fire up your Mac or PC and shoot me a message at [email protected]
Posted by Doug Barney on 05/13/2011 at 1:18 PM
Microsoft on Tuesday announced a preview of the artificial intelligence (AI)-generated Bing Image Creator in the Microsoft Edge browser, along with new Stories and Knowledge Card 2.0 Bing search capabilities.
Microsoft on Tuesday announced a preview of OpenAI's GPT-4 artificial intelligence (AI) model for users of the Azure OpenAI service.
Organizations using Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) or Configuration Manager will be getting a 10GB download next week that will kick off Microsoft's Windows 11 version 22H2 Unified Update Platform (UUP) servicing scheme for those premises-based management tools, Microsoft warned on Monday.
Microsoft this week announced that Azure Firewall Basic is now at the "general availability" commercial-release stage.
Microsoft this week announced Semantic Kernel, a new open source framework on GitHub at the early preview stage that aims to help developers tap artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models in their applications.
More Tech Library


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SINGER Kate Nash surprised music lovers when she popped into the Vinyl Collectors and Sellers store in Salisbury.
The business, which recently started up in Cross Keys Arcade, was joined by the star to celebrate national Record Store Day on Saturday, April 22.
Nash, who is famed for hits including Foundations, is an ambassador for Record Store Day.
The day before she performed at Salisbury Arts Centre, headlining the The Fold Out Festival youth music event.
Vinyl Collectors and Sellers owner Paul Smith said: “It was brilliant she chose our store.
“It was a busy day with it being national Record Store Day.”
During Record Store Day the shop also had free live music from Echotape who have recently been booked for Chris Evans’ Carfest North and South in the summer.
Vinyl Collectors and Sellers put on regular free live music entertainment after closing time.
Paul said: “It is great that we are able to give the music lovers of Salisbury some free music entertainment from some of the fantastic local artists in the area which also gives them much-needed exposure.”


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CHENNAI: With Christmas and New Year celebrations around the corner, shopping has picked up in the city from Sunday, prompting the top brass of city police to beef up security arrangements at retail hubs across the city.
Around 200 police personnel have been deployed in all major shopping areas including T Nagar, Velachery, Tambaram, Mylapore, Purusawakkam and NSC Bose Road to deter criminal activity. “Apart from this, four and two-wheeler patrol vehicles are being deployed in these areas around the clock. This includes 365 four-wheeler and 403 two-wheeler patrol vehicles. In addition, around 30 policemen in civil clothes will monitor these shopping areas,” said a police officer.
Besides this, assistance booths will be opened where people who come for shopping can report crimes, and also seek help to track children who go missing in the crowd. Pre-recorded advisory messages on attention diversion, keeping their belongings safe etc will be played, and pamphlets detailing various crimes and also the ways people can protect themselves will be distributed.
“People should be aware that when they come shopping, they should avoid wearing jewellery and be alert about their possessions,” said a police officer.
There have been cases in the past where miscreants sprinkle itching powder in an attempt to steal valuables. Women have diverted the attention of shoppers who come with children while attempting to steal belongings. Police have warned the public to be careful of such attempts.


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Crowdfunding has changed the game for many grownups who need money to achieve their dreams, whether that’s making a film, building a unique new gadget, or becoming president. But sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are for adults. When kids need to raise money for their schools or extra-curricular projects, they’re often still using decades-old methods like selling candy bars or wrapping paper.
A site launching to the public today called Piggybackr wants to bring kids’ fundraising out of the dark ages (or at least the 1980s.) Piggybackr is a crowdfunding platform that’s specifically targeted to the needs of kids, with educational tools, game mechanics, and age-appropriate directions, and parental controls. The site is focused on efforts, rather than physical products — kids ask potential sponsors for donations online and offer “thank you gifts” in return such as volunteer time.
Piggybackr’s founder Andrea Lo tells me that she came up with the idea for Piggybackr when helping her then 11-year-old sister set up a webpage to raise money for the rainforest by selling $1 bracelets.
“I saw how much more effective she was fundraising online, and how she became more confident. While crowdfunding is exploding for entrepreneurs and non-profits; it has not spread to young people and schools. With federal budget cuts hitting education, these are some of the people who need it the most.”
We first met Piggybackr in May 2012, when it graduated as a one-woman startup out of the AngelPad accelerator. Since then the company has grown its full-time team to three staff and run a private beta, which saw more than 1500 kids raise over $250,000. At its public launch today, Piggybackr is opening up to users throughout the United States with the support of ten partners including Tim Draper’s Bizworld Foundation, California YMCA Youth in Government, and others.
For its own financial needs, Piggybackr takes a five percent commission on its funding projects and collects a 30 cent fee on each transaction it processes. The company has also raised a seed round from “passionate investors,” but Lo is currently declining to talk specifics on that front for now.
What I like best about Piggybackr is that it is focused on the educational experience of selling, more than the money itself (even though the money tends to follow, as the online platform tends to get higher donations compared to your typical bake sale.) In our interview, Lo brought up a story told by Steve Jobs about when, as a kid, he reached out to tech magnate Bill Hewlett for guidance.
“There’s so much importance in learning how to ask for help, to take action, and be willing to sell at a young age,” Lo said. “Beyond just making this really inefficient industry online, we are excited to equip this generation with these skills early on: To learn to be self-starters, asking for help, being OK with getting nos, and funding their dreams.”


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Animal rights organization calls for ban on live skinning of fish. Mercy for Animals, a US-based animal advocacy organization in the USA, has revealed an undercover investigation video of live catfish being skinned and sliced fully-conscious at a processing center in Texas, USA. The footage of the animal struggling when the worker removed the fin and skin by constant flapping until the fish's head was dismembered further testifies to recent research demonstrating that fish feel pain in a manner similar to mammals. The organization is calling on the government to ban such torturous slaughter methods and is asking that consumers adopt the humane vegan diet to spare fish and all other sentient beings such sacrifice in the food production.
We are deeply saddened to know of the suffering of these aquatic animals as we thank Mercy for Animals for your efforts to bring such cruelty to the attention of the public. May more and more people realize the benefits of plant-based fare to both our health and ultimate peace of mind. http://www.mercyforanimals.org/fish/http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/mesquite/headlines/20110119-catfish-farm-near-mesquite-accused-of-torture.ece


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A new online auction platform developed for Nisa by US software giant FreeMarkets will help address some suppliers' concerns about e-tendering, the company has claimed.
Nisa started working with FreeMarkets earlier this year after its original auction technology provider, a subsidiary of Barclays, was folded by its parent company.
Nisa CBC MD Neil Turton said the new platform allowed buyers to include a range of variables to help them weight bidders according to factors other than just cost. "The new system has a lot more bells and whistles," said Turton. "You can set differentiators and measure the value difference between brands."
Nisa was acutely aware that some suppliers were unhappy with the way the technology had been applied by some retailers, said Turton. "We haven't rushed into this. Other people have got a bad name by handling this badly.
"We are treading tentatively. We are on course to do Â£50m in purchasing through e-tendering this year. But that could easily be Â£250m if we held auctions on unsuitable product areas.
"We have started using them on brands in commodity sectors such as canned meat, but we are aware that manufacturers have very different views on whether there is such a thing as a commodity brand."
The forward focus is on areas such as printing, Turton said, following a successful auction on printing for customer leaflets.
Average savings are 15%.


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Dollar damages Walmart profits
Walmart’s latest results are disappointing overall, with the flat growth of last quarter turning into a 1.3 per cent decline in sales over the latest period.
This deterioration has filtered through to the bottom line where net income was down by 11 per cent over last year.
As poor as the numbers are it is important to recognise the negative impact of international on the performance. Walmart, like many other US retailers, is feeling the heat of the strong dollar which is having a deleterious impact on the contribution from overseas divisions. The scale of this can be measured by the fact that the 11.4 per cent slip recorded for international sales translates into 3.2 per cent growth when the vagaries of foreign exchange are removed. This, in turn, adds an extra $5 billion of sales to the total number which would equal net sales growth of around 2.8 per cent over last year.
That exchange rates have punished Walmart should not be taken to mean that all is well in the international division. Across many geographies the business continues to be challenged with, for example, sales at its Asda format in the UK falling by 4.5 per cent on a same store basis. Such declines in productivity demonstrate that there is much work to be done to improve resonance with customers and rebuild loyalty against the backdrop of markets which are becoming ever more competitive.
In essence, Walmart’s international dominance and scale no longer affords it easy protection against other global retailers like Aldi.
This same argument also applies closer to home in the US market, although in our view Walmart’s scale and reach arguably still gives it more of an edge in a country as vast and geographically dispersed as the US. That said, the days of Walmart prospering simply because it offered the lowest prices in the most convenient location are on the wane – even in locations where it remains the predominant player.
There are several reasons for this undercutting. The first of these is an obvious one in that the internet in general, and the rise of Amazon in particular, continues to threaten Walmart on both price and convenience. While not as comprehensive in terms of offer, the rapid growth of dollar stores over recent years poses similar risks albeit in the physical arena. Overlaid on top of this is growing trend of shopping at smaller, local stores. All of these things are a challenge to a legacy player such as Walmart.
That said, against such a backdrop Walmart’s domestic figures are far from shoddy. Certainly total US sales growth slowed to 3.8per cent from last quarter’s 4.8 per cent, but this is in line with the general sluggishness across the consumer economy over the period and does not necessarily signal that the growth trend at Walmart is now inevitably downward. Pleasingly, part of the growth was down to an increase in customer traffic across the period although, store traffic remains down on the levels seen back in 2013, mostly because of the evolution in shopping habits and the rise of competition.
Less favorably, while gross profits in the US edged up thanks to more discipline around promotions and discounting, operating profit fell by 8.6 per cent. Much of this is down to higher costs around online fulfilment, an increase in the complexity of the operation, and some of the investments made in areas like customer service.
On top of this, significant investments in areas like eCommerce will, as Walmart has previously noted, have a drag on near term earnings growth.
In our view, it is this deterioration in profitability, and not the pressure on the sales line, that represents the biggest forward challenge to this behemoth of a retailer. Arguably, if Walmart is to retain and grow its market share in the US it has to flex and align its business model with new ways of shopping and consuming. Those ways are more complex and more costly, and they require investment in systems, logistics, and propositions. The price of continued dominance, at least over the short term, is reduced profit.
In our opinion, that Walmart has elected to take the long term view and sacrifice short term earnings for continued relevance over the longer term is correct. Walmart may be judged harshly by some investors, but there is a certain irony in the fact that many of those same investors applauded Amazon – which for many years was hopelessly unprofitable – for pursuing the self same strategy. The difference, of course, is that Walmart will remain profitable throughout its transition period.
Arguably Walmart has only really started its transformation, especially in eCommerce. Here we believe its advancement – and the fact it is able to leverage its sizable store base as part of the distribution and fulfillment operation – poses some threat to Amazon and to other online players. Walmart may have been relatively late in coming to the eCommerce party, but now it has arrived it brings with it a very considerable set of party tricks, including massive economies of scale, superior technology, and an advanced and extensive logistics operation. It also has the financial firepower to invest in and enhance these things over time.
Despite its size, and some of its international headaches, back at home Walmart remains highly entrepreneurial and open to change — both virtues that will serve it well in a rapidly changing retail market.
- Neil Saunders is CEO of retail analyst Conlumino.


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Travel Counsellors Ireland has raised almost €5,000 to date for its partner charity Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind following a climb of Ireland’s highest inland peak, Galtymore. Thirteen Travel Counsellors joined family members in scaling the 918-metre mountain that borders Tipperary and Limerick. The group was led by Cork-based Travel Counsellor and mountaineer Niamh Quinlan.
Cathy Burke, General Manager, Travel Counsellors Ireland, said: “We are delighted to partner with such an important charity like Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind this year. We are sponsoring Reuben, now 18 weeks old, who is in his first year of training, and fundraisers like Galtymore are a fantastic way to raise valuable funds. A huge congratulations to everyone who took part.”
The sponsorship is part of Travel Counsellors’ commitment to making travel more widely accessible, regardless of ability. This includes accessibility travel training for Travel Counsellors around Ireland.
The company will match amounts raised by Travel Counsellors over the year.


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Rumours have been flying around from many sources in the past days about the impending iPhone 5 launch date. Today though both Reuters and Bloomberg confirmed a September 12 Apple event where the 6th generation iPhone, often referred to as the iPhone 5, is expected to be launched. Reports have also speculated that the actual launch of the iPhone 5 will take place the following Friday, September 21. These dates are about 1 month earlier than the launch of the iPhone 4S last year; the folks from Cupertino are no doubt feeling the heat from their competitor, the Galaxy S III. These new rumours will no doubt fuel the pent up demand for the next device and possibly slow down the momentum that Samsung’s device has gained in recent months. The next generation iPhone is expected to feature a slightly taller 4 inch display and 4G LTE connectivity.
Source: Boy Genius Report


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Update at 7:40 p.m. May 24, 2019: to reflect final House action
AUSTIN — Imagine the scene: You're sitting at a craft brewery in Texas enjoying a hoppy, frothy double IPA. You like it. It's refreshing. You want to buy a six-pack of the local brew to bring home.
Only you can't, because Texas doesn't allow to-go beer sales from craft breweries. But maybe soon, you can.
By a vote of 140-0 late Friday, the Texas House passed and sent to Gov. Greg Abbott a bill that, on its face, renews the role of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission. It streamlines licenses and permits required for businesses that sell alcohol and removes some fees. On Wednesday night, it won unanimous Senate approval.
But the bill presented by Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, was also a vehicle for a key amendment that has rankled beer industry leaders for years.
"Everyone needs to pop a top to that one," Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said as the "beer to go" amendment was adopted.
The seemingly simple idea of letting consumers purchase packaged beer from craft breweries has been blocked for years by influential wholesale distributors who opposed the idea of increased competition.
But earlier this month, the Texas Craft Brewers Guild and the Wholesale Beer Distributors of Texas struck a deal. The amendment caps brewery sales at one case, per person, per day.
After the Senate passed the bill, the guild tweeted, "This legislation will represent the most comprehensive, positive reform to the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Code in a generation, serving the entire industry from the brewer down to the consumer."
This legislation will represent the most comprehensive, positive reform to the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Code in a generation, serving the entire industry from the brewer down to the consumer. With this victory, we take a HUGE step forward in the fight to #FixTexasBeerLaws— Texas Craft Brewers Guild (@TXCraftBrewers) May 23, 2019
Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, D-Austin, initially filed a beer-to-go bill in the House and helped broker the deal between the industry leaders.
"At last, Texas craft brewers have a clear path toward being allowed to sell Beer-to-Go," he said in a prepared statement. "Their competitors in all other 49 states are allowed to sell Beer-to-Go, but we've had to fight an uphill battle for Texas craft breweries to compete on a level playing field and enjoy access to the same economic opportunities."
The Senate bill does not include a provision the House approved to allow beer and wine sales to start two hours earlier on Sundays.
It heads to the House, which must approve the Senate's amendments before sending it to the governor to be signed into law or vetoed. The legislative session ends Monday.


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What consumer product comes to mind when youÂ think of Vermont? Maple syrup, Cabot cheese, or Ben & Jerryâ€™s, perhaps? If that's what comes up in a kind of consumer word association, marketing gurus would nod their heads knowingly.
A strong product is great, but if you donâ€™t build a strong brand, it won't sell. How are businesses and policy makers branding Connecticut-made products?
The Second Amendment is just 27 words long, but it has caused more debate than just about anything else in the Constitution. "Itâ€™s confusing and self-contradictory and we spend a lot of time trying to figure out what its clauses and commas mean," said Michael Waldman, author of the new book The Second Amendment: A Biography. We talk to him about the history and odd syntax of this Amendment and the debate over it that was renewed by the tragedy in Newtown.
As manufacturing continues its rebound in this country, thereâ€™s a lot of discussion about the best ways for government to encourage the trend. One group of manufacturers in Connecticut think theyâ€™ve found the perfect policy tool, and theyâ€™re pioneering it here in Connecticut.
This hour, we kick off our year-long Made in Connecticut series with a conversation about keeping jobs in and bringing jobs back to Connecticut. Senator Chris Murphy joined us, along with WNPRâ€™s Harriet Jones, and some folks from the local manufacturing industry, to take an in-depth look at the present and future of manufacturing in our state.
Last month, Fender Musical Instruments announced it will close the Ovation guitar factory in New Hartford in the coming weeks. For now, that means all Ovation guitars will be made in factories overseas.Â
Companies that supply planes and engines to commercial airlines are about to see a boom in business unlike anything that the industry can remember. There are more customers than ever before for airline flights, and alongside that, engine technology has taken a big leap forward. That means unprecedented investment, andÂ Connecticut is at the epicenter of that change.Â
As World War II came to a close, manufacturing in Connecticut employed close to half the state's working population. Now it accounts for only eleven percent of employment. That dramatic decline over half a century is due to one irresistible force:Â off-shoring, and the loss of work to cheaper labor markets in Asia. But that force may not be so irresistible after all.
Changes in technology, energy and world labor markets are all driving a manufacturing renaissance in the U.S., but some economists believe Connecticut may miss out, despite its storied history as a manufacturing state.
This hour, we kick off our year-long Made in Connecticut series with a conversation about keeping jobs in and bringing jobs back to Connecticut. Last week, Senator Chris Murphy joined us, along with WNPRâ€™s Harriet Jones, and some folks from the local manufacturing industry, to take an in-depth look at the present and future of manufacturing in our state.
Can our state be home to a boom of reshored jobs? How can we keep the skilled manufacturing jobs we already have?


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Under the Science and Innovation, Technology, Industry and Logistics Park Council’s (Council) decision on Tuesday, three new rural industrial parks can be established in addition to the 18 logistics parks title, and four additional industrial parks can carry out land expansion, announced the Ministry for National Economy.
The government, supporting investments in the logistics sector, created the legal framework for logistics parks in 2023. The aim of the new certification system is to create a unified regulatory, certification, and monitoring system in which investments in the logistics service sector will be made in a coordinated framework and more efficiently. On the basis of the applications submitted, the Council will propose the award of the title. Logistics parks can be certified as intermodal logistics parks, regional logistics parks, or local logistics parks.
According to the ministry’s statement, Hungary has excellent potential in the field of freight transport, as it is a unique entry point to the EU on three major road freight routes, and the motorway network is easily accessible from almost the whole country. The role of logistics is enhanced by the fact that
Hungary is a meeting point for high-tech industry and capital from the West and the East.
Photo: Facebook/Magyar Építők
The logistics sector is one of the foundations of economic growth, with almost 2,500 companies operating in this sector, employing 300,000 people and providing a livelihood for around 100,000 families. The sector currently accounts for five percent of GDP, and the government’s aim is to increase this to 10 percent.
Hungary needs to further strengthen its investment and export-based economy and to exploit its growth potential and improve its competitiveness. One of the means to do so is to develop the infrastructure used by industrial companies, based on the availability of transport, haulage, warehousing, and related services.
These logistical improvements will cover an area of approximately 340 hectares and represent a value of around HUF 370 billion (EUR 950 million).
Another 39 logistics centers are qualified by law to bear the title of logistics park, bringing the total number of official logistics parks in Hungary to 57. The government expects the Council’s work to make a substantial contribution to the development of industrial, logistics, and technology parks, thereby enhancing the attractiveness and economic performance of Hungarian regions, the ministry said in the statement.
Via MTI, Featured image: Facebook/Weerts Logistics Park


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January 6, 2023 — Cox Mobile, the new mobile phone service by broadband company Cox Communications, has selected global tech care leader Asurion to provide device protection and trade-in services for its wireless customers.
In keeping with Cox’s vision to provide a simple, flexible and reliable mobile experience, customers enrolled in a Cox Mobile Protection Plan can enjoy the convenience of same-day device replacement or cracked screen repair delivered to their doorstep if their device is damaged, lost, stolen or malfunctioning past its warranty period. Customers can also visit one of the 750+ uBreakiFix® by Asurion or Asurion Tech Repair & Solutions™ stores nationwide for fast, on-site cracked screen repair through their protection plan coverage. Protection plan customers even have access to free tech support via Asurion’s network of Experts.
“At Cox Mobile, we know accidents happen, even to the most careful phone owners,” said Rich Helfrich, Assistant Vice President of Mobile Devices at Cox Communications. “Dealing with a cracked screen or a lost phone shouldn’t have to be a hassle. With a Cox Mobile Protection Plan, customers have peace of mind knowing that if something unexpected happens, they can be back up and running as soon as the same day with Asurion’s repair and replacement options.”
In addition to device protection, Asurion will also administer Cox Mobile’s trade-in program, allowing customers to save on a new device when they trade in their old one. With more than 20 years of supply chain expertise, Asurion’s systems allow for a simple trade-in experience that delivers maximum value to customers, with some devices fetching up to $500+ in credit toward a new phone.
To be eligible for trade-in, the phone must have an IMEI visible on the phone or in its settings, must be fully paid for, must not appear on any banned lists, and iPhones must have Find My iPhone turned off. All trade-in devices are sent to Asurion’s global logistics center, which processes millions of devices each year, and customer data is securely wiped upon device receipt.
“After careful evaluation of many companies, we’re delighted to partner with Asurion on protection and trade-in programs that put customers first and align with our vision to provide options that fit every budget and lifestyle,” Helfrich said.
Customers interested in exploring Cox Mobile wireless plans can visit their nearest Cox retail store, go directly to cox.com/mobile or call 1-800-234-3993. For more information on Cox Mobile Protection Plans, visit phoneclaim.com/coxmobile. Those looking to trade in a device can visit https://qa-blue.cox.npr.tradein.asurion.com/ for a free trade-in estimate.
About Cox Communications
Cox Communications is committed to creating meaningful moments of human connection through technology. The largest private broadband company in America, we proudly serve nearly seven million homes and businesses across 18 states. We're dedicated to empowering others to build a better future and celebrate diverse products, people, suppliers, communities and the characteristics that make each one unique. Cox Communications is the largest division of Cox Enterprises, a family-owned business founded in 1898 by Governor James M. Cox.


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A Tesla employee who accused the company of not doing enough to protect Fremont plant workers from the new coronavirus, has been notified he will be terminated from his job on Friday.
Carlos Gabriel, of Hayward, received an email from Tesla on Tuesday giving him two business days to notify the company about his plans to return to his job, or he would be let go by Friday. In its email, which Gabriel shared with this new organization, Tesla said its decision was based on Gabriel’s “lack of response” to company emails and voicemails in April and May about his intentions of coming back to work.
Gabriel said he didn’t respond to the email because the company had previously told him it was OK for him to stay home if he was uncomfortable going back to work.
Gabriel said he believes Tesla is retaliating against him because of his efforts to pressure the company to divulge more information about its health and safety protocols following reports that a handful of Tesla employees had tested positive for coronavirus since coming back to work after vehicle production restarted in late May.
At a Monday rally outside of Tesla’s Fremont plant, and organized by a group called the Workers Solidarity Action Network, Gabriel spoke about employees’ fears of contracting coronavirus on the factory floor. Gabriel also held a sign reading “Tesla doesn’t care about human life.”
Less than 24 hours later, Gabriel, who began working at Tesla in January on the company’s powertrain and battery pack assembly operations, received notice that he could lose his job by the end of the week.
“They had said we could stay home without pay if we were still afraid about coming to work,” Gabriel said. “Then, the next day, after a public rally I spoke at, I got that email (about his possible termination). I find that a direct response to the rally.”
Gabriel provided copies of emails he had sent to supervisors and human resources officials at Tesla expressing his concerns about the work environment, and the company’s position regarding employees jobs should they choose to stay at home. In one email, dated May 9, which was when Musk was detailing plans to reopen the Tesla plant in opposition to Alameda County regulations, Gabriel said that because of “the dangers of this virus, and its long lasting negative effects, I remain concerned for this premature reopening of the Fremont factory being our community is not ready to return to work according to medical professionals.”
Gabriel received a reply from Vince Woodard, who was serving as acting human resources director at Tesla, in which Woodard said, “If at this time you do not feel comfortable returning to work, you can stay home without penalty and take time unpaid. There will be no repercussions for that decision. You are a valued employee and we respect your decision.”
Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment about Gabriel.
Tesla shut down production at Hayward in late March as part of the Bay Area’s shelter-in-place efforts to help slow the spread of coronavirus across the region. At times, the situation between Tesla and Alameda County turned testy, as in May, when Chief Executive Elon Musk said he would start up production in Fremont in violation of the shelter-in-place protocols.
After Tesla sued Alameda County, and Musk threatened to move Tesla’s operations out of California, the company and the county reached a truce over the matters that allowed Tesla to restart vehicle production in line with county safety guidelines. Tesla also dropped its suit against Alameda County.


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Former Amazon Alexa Head Researcher Ashwin Ram has now left the company and is headed to Google’s Cloud division to take on the position of Technical Director of A.I., the industry veteran revealed on LinkedIn. Ram didn’t provide an official reason for his decision to leave Amazon but the decision appears to have been made on good terms. Ram says that time spent with his “legendary” former employer were a delight and that he enjoyed working with some of the smartest people he knows.
This particular addition to Google’s team is likely to be a big boost to the company’s A.I. business. Although Ram commends Google’s A.I. in his statement – saying that it is “arguably the best on the planet,” Amazon’s Alexa remains the most popular consumer-facing intelligent assistant in the United States. It could be fairly said that Google’s A.I. feels smarter but Amazon has a larger share of the market and does a lot more with home connectivity. Meanwhile, the news doesn’t necessarily mean Ram will be working with the Google Assistant or any other Assistant-associated projects at the company. With consideration for his new job title, it seems more likely that he’ll be much more involved with the Google Cloud platform itself. That would almost certainly include aspects of that platform’s Cloud Machine Learning Engine and Cloud AutoML offerings. The former is linked in with Google’s TensorFlow, while the latter focuses on helping those without a lot of A.I. creation experience to implement machine learning into their own projects.
That’s not necessarily bad news since the field of artificial intelligence is still relatively new and could always use various improvements. It also doesn’t rule out Ram becoming involved in more user-facing sides to Google’s multifaceted A.I. efforts. The company is well-known for its consistent staff shuffling and repositioning of employees to take on roles outside of their ordinary duties. So it’s still possible that the former Amazon Alexa Head Researcher will be able to provide input and suggest improvements to make the Google Assistant even better or to create something entirely new for the company going forward.


text: November 03, 2017 Bid On A #PetesPlaidNight Game Worn Jersey November 03, 2017/ PTBOCANADA The Peterborough Petes sported special plaid jerseys Thursday night (November 2nd) for #PetesPlaidNight for the United Way in front of a huge crowd clad in plaid. Photo courtesy Peterborough Petes Their special plaid game worn jerseys are now up for auction, with the bidding closing November 12th! Proceeds go to the United Way.Here are some of the sweaters up for auction... Bid here on your fave player's plaid jersey. Engage with us on social media on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Write to us at firstname.lastname@example.org. Sign up for PTBOBuzz newsletter here. Watch our PTBOCanada Love video here.


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Rumour WRC 23, Developed by Codemasters, Is Just Around the Hairpin Bend on PS5
Petrolheads, prepare yourselves! In case you aren't aware, EA Sports and Codemasters currently hold the rights to produce officially licensed World Rally Championship games, taking over from Nacon and KT Racing. The first game in this new contract will be released this year. Given Codemasters' excellent DiRT Rally series, we expect this...
News WRC Generations Pumps the Brakes with Delay to November on PS5, PS4
Now day-and-date with PC release
WRC Generations is the latest officially licensed rally sim, coming to PS5 and PS4 soon — though not as soon as we'd hoped. Today, publisher Nacon has announced it's delaying the console release of the racer by a few weeks. Originally planned to launch on 13th October, the game will now cross the finish line on...
Rumour Make the Rally Car of Your Dreams in Codemasters' Upcoming WRC Game
In-depth vehicle creation reportedly included
We're still due one more officially licensed rally game from KT Racing, namely WRC Generations, arriving mid-October. The last couple of rally sims from the studio have been really rather good despite a few rough edges, and we're excited to see how this new one shakes out. However, the WRC licence moves...
News WRC Generations Turbocharged with Rally1 Hybrid Cars on PS5, PS4
Off-topic, but has anyone else noticed a real increase in electric cars out on the road of late? Feels like we see a Tesla every 10 minutes at the moment. Anyhoo, WRC Generations is including an interesting new gameplay wrinkle with the addition of Rally1 Hybrid cars. The press release reveals: “Experience driving sensations...
News WRC Generations Is the Latest Official Rally Sim, Racing to PS5, PS4 in October
KT Racing's last attempt
Nacon and developer KT Racing have announced WRC Generations, this year's officially licensed rally racer. It ditches the number, but this is in essence WRC 11, and will be the studio's final game in the series before the licence moves to Codemasters. The game will feature all the cars, teams, and stages from the 2022...
News Latest WRC 10 Update Adds Acropolis Rally, More Historical Cars and Events
November update out today
It's a game that's been bubbling away pretty quietly, but developer KT Racing has been updating WRC 10 with additional content and fixes since launch in September. Monthly updates have added rally courses, vehicles, and more to the experience, meaning it's now a more fleshed out game. October's update brought in the Renties...
News WRC 10 Slides Sideways onto PS5, PS4 Today with Launch Trailer
The latest annual entry in the WRC series arrives on PlayStation 5 and PS4 today. WRC 10 is KT Racing's effort for 2021, and it looks to build upon the success of last year's well-received iteration. To celebrate the arrival of the new game, publisher Nacon has released a launch trailer, featuring plenty of dust-kicking drifts in both...
News Now You Can Send Your Very Own Custom Car Flying Into the Bushes in WRC 10
Livery editor looking good
The officially licensed WRC games have been getting better and better lately, having built up a substantial, fun career mode and pretty excellent handling. Of course, they also have the benefit of all the real world vehicles, drivers, and courses. But what if you wanted to make the experience a bit more personal?...
News WRC 10 Will Let You Play Classic Moments from Real Life Motorsport
Relive Sébastien Loeb's victories and more
WRC 10 is the latest edition of the officially licensed rally game, due for release in September of this year. As it so happens, 2021 is the 50th anniversary of WRC, and developer KT Racing is taking the opportunity to look back at some of the motorsport's iconic moments. In addition to including all the...
News WRC 10 Brings Historic and Modern Rally Racing to PS5, PS4 in September
Rally the troops
Update: As promised, WRC 10 has been officially announced with a flashy reveal trailer. As you can see, the game will feature all the cars and courses from the 2021 season, as well as a larger focus on historic vehicles and events. This is to help celebrate the motorsport's 50th anniversary. It's coming to both PlayStation 5 and PS4...
News DualSense Sensation WRC 9 Adds Free Content in December Update
More stages, cars, and modes
Kylotonn Entertainment's WRC 9 is widely considered to be one of the best early PlayStation 5 titles to make great use of the DualSense controller, and that offering is only about to get even better with the arrival of the free December update. Available right now on PlayStation 4 and coming soon to Sony's latest system,...
News WRC 9 PS5 Trailer Shows Next-Gen Rally Gameplay
Looking rally good
WRC 9 is already doing laps on PlayStation 4, but it's worth remembering it's also coming to PS5 on day one. The solid rally racing title is making the jump to next-gen, and you can see what this version looks like in the trailer embedded above. It's not the best PS5 showcase, but it certainly looks like a step up from the PS4...
News Codemasters Signs On to Make Official WRC Rally Games on PS5
Will run alongside DIRT series
We've all thought it at some point -- why isn't Codemasters making officially licensed WRC rally games? If the DIRT series proves anything, it's that the team knows off-road racing better than any other. It's been making unofficial and brilliant rally games since 1998, after all. What better studio is there to take on...
News PS5 Has One More Confirmed Game, and It's WRC 9
Rally the troops
You read that right, WRC 9 is the latest game confirmed to be in development for PlayStation 5. Publisher Nacon (formerly Bigben Entertainment) has just announced the latest entry in the officially licensed series, and it's hooning it onto next-gen. The game is also getting a PS4 version, which is due for release on 3rd September...
News WRC 8 Announced, Kicks Up Dust on PS4 in September
Rally the troops
For a while, Bigben Interactive's official World Rally Championship games have released annually, with Kylotonn Entertainment on development duties. However, the studio has taken an extra year to work on the latest entry in the series, WRC 8. The game was announced yesterday, and you can watch the reveal trailer above. In a press...
The racing genre is still poorly represented on the PlayStation 4, with Evolution Studios' hardy DriveClub the only real option on the appliance outside of launch title Need for Speed: Rivals and Milestone's many motorcycle simulations. Polyphony Digital overlord Kazunori Yamauchi doesn't seem in any real hurry to reveal Gran Turismo 7...


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Cassi Miles learned to bake while watching her great-grandmother in her Haltom City kitchen -- sometimes even helping roll out pie crusts or cut biscuit dough.
As she got older, she helped her mom bake cookies and brownies for bake sales.
But when Miles thought about turning her kitchen into a small business, she learned that it's illegal to bake food in a typical home kitchen and sell it for profit.
"All I could think about was how my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother had been unknowingly breaking the law for generations," said Miles, 30, of Fort Worth. "It was a huge shock, but it was also motivation to do my part to get the law changed."
Home bakers have been working for years to change state law so they can sell goods they baked in their own kitchens.
Now Senate Bill 81 -- which would allow just that -- is among more than 1,000 measures awaiting action by Gov. Rick Perry. He has until Sunday to approve or veto bills, or they automatically become law.
Kelley Masters, an Austin baker who spurred the effort, is counting the days until the deadline.
"I'm so excited and nervous and sick," said Masters, 40, who started a letter-writing campaign about the issue in 2007. "I think this is a good bill that makes sense.
"It increases personal freedom and gets government out of our lives."
More than 20 states allow people to bake or cook in their home kitchens and sell those goods for profit. The rules vary by state, but some allow the baking without health department approval.
SB81 would add Texas to the list, with some conditions.
It would let food made in home kitchens be sold to consumers but not at farmers markets, grocery stores, restaurants, coffee shops or other businesses. Bakers would be limited to selling low-risk foods such as baked goods, candy, granola, dry spice mixes or canned jellies and jams. There would also be limits on how much bakers could make from their sales, and baked foods would have to be properly labeled.
Health officials wouldn't regulate the "home cottage food operations" -- which is a concern to some -- but they would keep a record of complaints filed so consumers could check on bakers.
In the beginning
After taking cake-decorating classes and deciding she might like to start a home business, Masters learned in 2005 that selling cakes made at home is illegal.
Seeing bakers in other states set up businesses, she told her husband that maybe they should start a petition to change the law. "He said, 'No, that will never work,'" Masters said.
And in 2009, a bill filed to legalize home cottage food businesses died.
This year, the proposal was added to SB81, which was authored by Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, and approved by both chambers.
"This isn't just about cakes and cookies; it's about people who have this talent and dreams -- and this may be the only hope they have," Masters said.
Miles, who bakes and decorates custom cakes, cookies and other pastries, dreams of someday working from home as a baker and cake decorator. "It will allow me to finally do what I love for a living, and that is a very powerful reality," she said.
For Michaela Jones, 42, of Mansfield, baking in her kitchen is a way to help people with allergies.
Jones has a wheat allergy and takes care when preparing foods for her twin daughters, who are allergic to wheat, eggs, milk, corn, soy, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish and gelatin.
Because of the allergies, she doesn't want to cook in a commercial kitchen because "you never know what has been cooked there or how thorough the cleaning was."
Jones said that if SB81 becomes law, she could legally bake and sell foods to other Texans with multiple food allergies.
"Something as simple as a bake sale ... should not be illegal," she said.
Anna M. Tinsley, 817-390-7610


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Marvel’s Wolverine will not get a release date in 2023 according to the latest trailer from PlayStation that showcases upcoming PS5 and PS4 games for this year. This is despite earlier rumors that the game would have a 2023 release date window because Microsoft had included the estimate in a report.
Is there a confirmed Marvel’s Wolverine release date?
Marvel’s Wolverine does not have a confirmed release date and it seems like the earliest the game may be released is in 2024 seeing as the game was omitted from a new PlayStation trailer showing off several PS5 and PS4 games expected to be released in 2023. These included Horizon: Call of the Wild, Firewall Ultra, Forspoken, Street Fighter 6, Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, and Assassin’s Creed Mirage.
The trailer seems to debunk rumors that started late last year when Microsoft declared they expected the game to be released in 2023. This was released in a statement as part of their ongoing arguments to complete their acquisition of Activision. At the time it seemed unlikely the game would be released in the same year as Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 from the same studio, and Sony has now seemingly confirmed that the studio will be focusing on pushing one game out the door at a time.
Read the full story at: Source link


text: The Girl Scouts of Penn's Woods have come up with a unique spin on a project to save Pennsylvania's hemlock trees (Tsuga canadensis), according to this article from NEPA Today. Send them $3 and you can adopt a ladybird beetle (Pseudoscymnus tsugae), the only natural predator of the hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae). The Adopt-A-Beetle program will send you an adoption card and a picture of a ladybird beetle that can be decorated, then sent back to be posted on the "wall of beetle heroes." You can purchase the kits at the address given in the article, or by calling 1 (800) 432-4672. The troop is hoping to raise enough money to purchase and release 5000 beetles. Without predators, the spread of the woolly adelgid will comtinue unchecked, and it only takes seven years for them to kill an adult hemlock tree.


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Honoring Small Businesses
From April 29 to May 5, the Small Business Administration will recognize outstanding entrepreneurs and small business owners across the United States and its territories during National Small Business Week.
The Venture Center at Fox Valley Technical College is a significant driver of economic development through small business start-up and growth training around the region. In just more than 15 years, the Venture Center has served thousands of aspiring small business owners, helped 300-plus businesses launch and grow, and created more than 1,000 jobs in the New North.
Under the innovative leadership and vision of award-winning director Amy Pietsch, the Venture Center received an Innovation award in 2009 from the MIT Club of Wisconsin, and its E-seedTM entrepreneurial experience has become a national train-the-trainer model. Her instructional team is made up of successful entrepreneur subject matter experts who cover all aspects of the small business start-up and growth process.
The Venture Center is the state’s first training resource to prepare military veterans for small business enterprises through the successful Envoy program. It also holds weekly networking sessions free and open to the public on Wednesdays from 9-10 a.m., called 1 Million Cups.
Have a business idea? Stop by the Venture Center in FVTC’s D. J. Bordini Center at 5 Systems Drive in Appleton.
Read more about entrepreneurship from FVTC President Dr. Susan May in the national journal, Community College Entrepreneurship, A Keen State of Awareness (Winter/Spring 2018 edition).
Celebrate Small Business Week with others in the Fox Cities // Tuesday, May 2


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Passengers who own a device can purchase advance single tickets by saying ‘Alexa, open Virgin Trains’.
The tech firm’s new ‘exclusive’ event service will also have early gigs from Texas and Katie Melua.
Marc Maron, Thursday September 3 & Friday September 4, Southbank Centre, London TICKETS went on sale today for cult US stand-up Marc Maron's only live dates outside his homeland this year.
The studio tent travelled around the world in the first series.
He will plays gigs in the UK and Ireland during 2018 and 2019.
Until Wednesday, spend £60 or more in a single transaction in a Sainsb
There were 53 reports of the chargers overheating.
Alexa for Hospitality lets guests order room service, ask for more towels or get restaurant recommendations.
AMAZON has ditched a controversial policy banning firms that trade on its
The two firms have fallen out over YouTube and exposure to each other’s products.


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Japanese Firms Showing Signs Of Interest In The India's Startups
BANGALORE: Of late the Far East has shown sign of interest in the India's startup ecosystem. A growing number of Japanese-led firms like Softbank Capital are making their way to India in hopes of sharing in the success.
On the other hand, Tokyo-based Beenos Partners has backed high-flying startups like ShopClues and Citrus Pay, while Singapore-based Rebright Partners disclosed a $20 million funding for India this week. Other budding investors such as IMJ Investment Partners and M&S Partners are moving at a fast pace to strike gold in the blooming sector as well, reports ET
"We are interested in India-only services, as well as startups which want to go abroad. We can help with global expansions in Southeast Asia, Japan, U.S .and China, because of our presence there," said Hiro Mashita, founder and director of M&S Partners.
The Singapore-based company who had recently taken interest in the Indian market, is all set close four deals in the next couple of months. Although a domestic economic has decelerated over the past decade, Japanese funds have been directed towards the thriving Southeast Asian market as many venture firms are running out of Singapore. Having witnessed the impressive growth in China, they are eagerly waiting to reap similar benefits of growth trend in India.
"The Japanese have a very small consumer market. Hence, they have always looked at emerging markets, China being one of them," said Vikram Upadhyaya, chief mentor at Greenhouse Ventures, which works frequently with Japanese investors who are probing for opportunities in the country.


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Uber Eats already distributes again with autonomous riders, such as Glovo, despite warnings of sanctions by the Ministry of Labor. After a brief pilot in five municipalities, Uber Eats has recovered the distribution with autonomous couriers in all the cities where it has been operating since last "Wednesday night", they respond from the company. This is a new pulse to the Rider Lawwhich the Government approved to prevent the use of freelancers on these digital platforms, which had been invalidated by the Labor Inspectorate and the courts for recruitment fraud.
Uber Eats fulfills its threat and announces that it will return to the self-employed model days after the anniversary of the Rider Law
The multinational of green backpacks began its first movements in August, when it communicated to former messengers of the platform his intention to return to the cast with freelancersa model that had been abandoned due to the entry into force of the Rider Law.
The legislation meant a new legal framework for the sector, the presumption of employment of the riders in the face of the systematic abuse of false self-employed, but one of the largest home delivery companies challenged the norm: Glovo. The multinational was the only one that finally kept its couriers autonomous, through a new system with some changes.
After months with Glovo distributing with freelancers, Uber Eats expressed its complaint to Labor for what he considered to be unfair competition and a government that "has failed to enforce the Rider Law." Faced with the situation of "disadvantage", he launched a question to Labor: "Should we follow the example of Glovo and work with freelancers to be able to compete on equal terms?"
Labor has warned of harsh sanctions
What then sounded like a threat has been fulfilled. Uber Eats has also redeployed the self-employed model, which means that two of the main companies in the sector stand up to the presumption of employment of the Rider Law. Deliveroo left Spain, but before it hired the couriers and applied an ERE to them, and Just Eat now remains the only large company that applies a labor model, especially through subcontracting, but also with a directly hired workforce. by the company.
After the Uber Eats communication to its messengers in August, the Ministry of Labor came out to respond in public in a clear manner, with the notice of harsh sanctions for those who do not comply with the Rider Law. Even the Secretary of State for Employment, Joaquín Pérez Rey, raised the possibility that the companies had “criminal responsibilities” in the face of a “flagrant and announced” breach of the law.
A few days ago, the Labor Minister herself insisted on a strong hand in the face of non-compliance. “We have already sanctioned them and in a very intense way. And believe me, the weight of the law is going to be applied harshly. We are going to see even more performances these days”, warned Yolanda Díaz in an interview in elDiario.es Posted Sunday night. Three days later, Uber Eats again extended the self-employed model across the country.
The company says it complies with the law
As happened with Glovo, Uber Eats has followed in its footsteps to justify that the use of autonomous riders complies with the legislation. Since their previous models had already been invalidated by the Labor Inspection and by the courts, both companies have launched new self-employment systems, incorporating changes in the conditions of the messengers. For example, a greater capacity to set their remuneration, something that the courts had pointed out as a clear sign of their lack of autonomy. With these changes, companies ensure that they comply with the legal framework.
“Given the success of the pilot, we launched our new model for all those delivery people who want to work as self-employed, in compliance with current regulations, in the rest of Spain. This new model includes important changes that offer the delivery person greater control over their activity, such as the possibility of freely setting their rate, ”says an Uber Eats spokesperson.
The multinational has published on its website some of the new conditions for autonomous couriers, such as that riders can "determine the minimum price per kilometer in each order and only receive offers that are equal to or greater than the chosen rate", as well as that they can “change this rate at any time and as many times” as the courier wants.
As has happened with Glovo, now the battle over the legality of the hiring model for these couriers resets the counter to zero. The Labor Inspection is facing a new model to evaluate and analyze, a process that takes time, as the example of Glovo has shown, which has been distributing with freelancers for a year without being sanctioned.
The Ministry of Labor has announced that there are new sanctions to fall (it is intuited that on Glovo), but now it will be necessary to see how the conflict evolves. If with a new and long battle with resources and cross complaints in court, or if the Government deploys some other strategy against the rebellious multinationals.


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The apocalypse according to Kate Moss: An exclusive peek behind the scenes at the supermodel's latest ad for Rimmel make-up
She's never been one to hold back and now supermodel Kate Moss has revealed that she's convinced the apocalypse is on its way - the beauty apocalypse that is.
The veteran model is to be the face of APOCALIPS Lip Laquer - beauty brand, Rimmel London's first launch of 2013.
To celebrate, Rimmel has released a behind-the-scenes video featuring the model, exclusively to the MailOnline.
Scroll down for video
Gorgeous! The model gets camera ready with a little help from Rimmel's make-up artist
That's how it's done: Kate Moss proves why she's still in demand at the advanced (for a model) age of 38
The clip shows the ever-professional Moss laughing and joking with the make-up artist before turning on her mega-watt smile for the cameras.
And in a nod to spring beauty trends, the model has forgone her usual vampy red lipstick for a pretty bright pink pout.
Although the Rimmel campaign is Kate Moss' first of 2013, it certainly won't be the last, with the model set to star in several high profile projects next year.
After Rimmel's APOCALIPS campaign, the 38-year-old model will be seen stripped down to her shirt and shoes on billboards in the ads for luxury US footwear brand, Stuart Weitzman.
Beauty armageddon: Moss' favourite shade, the fuschia Apocalyptic, is applied backstage
Moss, who replaced Russian supermodel, Natalia Vodianova, as the face of the American brand, will also star in one of French fashion house Givenchy's campaigns for the first time in her career.
Shot by photographic duo, Mert and Marcus, and styled by former French Vogue editor, Carine Roitfeld, the pictures will be released in January.
APOCALIPS, which will hit shops on January 23rd, is part of a new breed of lip colour, which has the colour intensity of a lipstick but the shine of a lip gloss.
Laquers, as the name suggests, also stay on for longer than regular lip gloss and don't stick to hair.
Supermodel smile: Moss proves what a pro she is, as she laughs with the camera crew and backstage team
APOCALIPS now: The new lacquer range includes shades such as the rosy pink Nova, bright red Big Bang and coral pink Stellar
Thanks to the foam applicator brush, the new Rimmel lacquer is also easy to apply, which means getting a smear-free pout is simple.
And if you fancy trying the face of APOCALIPS' favourite shade? According to Rimmel, the 'ultimate beauty icon' chose the collection’s hero shade Apocaliptic (303), £5.99.
Fingers crossed the world lasts long enough to enjoy it!
VIDEO Behind the scenes with Kate and the Rimmel team...
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Value fashion retailer Bonmarché is on the hunt for more stores after posting a pre-tax profit of £10.5m in its first year of trading since being bought in a pre-pack administration deal last year.
The 261-store retailer, which was acquired by private equity firm Sun European in January 2012, notched up sales of £170.3m in the 12 months to March 31, its first year under new ownership.
The most recent figures for Bonmarché before it was sold show it made revenue of £194m through 387 stores in the year to March 2010.
After completing its “recovery phase” in the last 12 months, including renegotiating the rents on existing stores, Bonmarché chief financial officer Stephen Alldridge said the retailer is now ready to push the button on expansion.
Bonmarché, which sells womensear aimed at the over 50s, is eyeing stores in major towns and cities including Aberdeen, Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow and Nottingham and has hired property agent Capa to advise it on expansion. The stores will feature the retailer’s latest design and logo.
Alldridge said: “We are delighted with these results, which represent a significant turnaround in a difficult market.
“This achievement is a tremendous credit to our team and to our external property consultants Capa, together with whom we have renegotiated leases in respect of all 261 of our stores.
“Having completed our recovery phase, we are now positioned for growth.”
Bonmarché has opened new stores this year in Clydebank, Darlington and East Dereham, “all of which are trading well”, Bonmarché said.
Sun European bought 390 Bonmarché shops out of the 393-strong portfolio last year, but shuttered about 130 to “ensure that the company can be placed on a sound economic footing”, the private equity firm said at the time.
Former parent Peacocks Group collapsed into administration last year before eventually being acquired by Edinburgh Woollen Mill.
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