Dispatches From The Front

Why you should be using Google Home Routines | Digital Trends

Posted on March 22, 2023 by knjohn | Leave a comment

If you’ve finally jumped into the smart home world by picking up a Google Nest Hub or other Google Home-compatible gadgets, you might think setting up Routines is something to postpone until you become an expert. After all, coming to terms with your new smart home might take a few days — and Routines can often sound like a complex feature that’s best saved for a rainy day.

However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Routines are shockingly easy to use, and they allow you to harness the full power of your smart home. Here’s a look at what Routines are, how they work, and why you’ll want to start using them as soon as possible.

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Posted in Tools and Information

Tagged Google Home Routines, Google Nest Hub, smart home gadgets

How to attract more people to your first brick-and-mortar store | The Startup Magazine

Posted on March 22, 2023 by knjohn | Leave a comment

Opening your first-ever store is incredibly exciting. You’ve spent months fitting out and decorating, and now it’s time to fling open the doors and invite your first potential customers over the threshold of your brick-and-mortar store.

The problem is, unless you’re in a really high footfall area, simply having a store with an ‘Open’ sign on the door won’t be enough to start driving sales through the til.

If you’re about to launch your own shop, or have an existing store and would like more people through the door, here are some things to consider.

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Posted in Tools and Information

Tagged attract more customers, brick-and-mortar store, high footfall area

Is this a banking crisis – how worried should I be? | BBC News

Posted on March 21, 2023 by knjohn | Leave a comment

The news is full of emergency meetings, central banks offering credit lifelines and tumbling bank shares.

No wonder people are asking: is this the start of another financial crisis?

Politicians, including the UK prime minister, and central banks, say the situation is now stable. But banking shares have continued to fluctuate.

So how bad is this and what does it mean for you?

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Posted in News and Views

Tagged banking crisis, central banks, financial crisis

AWS takes a hit in latest round of Amazon layoffs | TechCrunch

Posted on March 21, 2023 by knjohn | Leave a comment

When Amazon announced it was laying off another 9,000 employees today, AWS employees were not exempt with Amazon CEO (and former AWS CEO) Andy Jassy announcing the cloud division would be included into today’s round.

TechCrunch is hearing that around 10% of today’s total came from AWS. The company would not confirm those numbers, instead referring to Jassy’s memo to employees that was published this morning as the gist of its statement.

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Posted in News and Views

Tagged Amazon, AWS, layoffs

Clean Energy Electricity | Cool Business Ideas

Posted on March 20, 2023 by knjohn | Leave a comment

While most of us will never bear witness to them, many of the world’s smallest organisms have some incredible means of survival. Some soil bacteria, for example, can gobble up hydrogen from the air and use it for fuel if starved of any other food.

It’s exactly this microbiological trickery that set researchers from Monash University in Australia on a long path to locating and isolating an enzyme from Mycobacterium smegmatis that processes the consumed hydrogen and outputs it as electricity. Now, this has the potential to be harnessed for use to power things such as small devices and implants.

“We’ve known for some time that bacteria can use the trace hydrogen in the air as a source of energy to help them grow and survive, including in Antarctic soils, volcanic craters, and the deep ocean,” said Chris Greening, microbiology professor at Monash and co-lead of this study. “But we didn’t know how they did this, until now.”

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Posted in News and Views

Tagged Clean Energy Electricity, Monash University in Australia

Carnival Cruises Will Now Charge You a $500 Fee if You Do This | Entrepreneur

Posted on March 20, 2023 by knjohn | Leave a comment

Carnival Cruise Line hopes its guests relax and have fun on its fleet — up to a point.

The company is informing customers ahead of spring break that unruly passengers could be hit with a $500 fine and required to disembark prematurely, Fox News reported.

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Posted in News and Views

Tagged Carnival Cruises, unruly charge

Twitter now shows bookmark counts on tweets | Mashable

Posted on March 17, 2023 by knjohn | Leave a comment

Twitter has slapped yet another social media stat on users’ tweets: Bookmark counts.

On Thursday, Twitter started to roll out analytics onto tweets that show how many times a tweet has been bookmarked(Opens in a new tab). As of publishing time, the bookmark count stat is only showing up on Twitter’s iOS apps but will soon expand and be displayed on Twitter for web and other platforms too.

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Posted in News and Views

Tagged bookmark counts, tweets, twitter

Unlike last year, this tax season has been going smoothly | CNN Business

Posted on March 17, 2023 by knjohn | Leave a comment

The past two tax-filing seasons were fraught with aggravations, delays, last-minute changes and huge backlogs at the IRS. But by comparison, this year’s tax-filing season has been going relatively smoothly, tax preparers say.

“After a few years of pandemic-related updates, mid-tax season IRS guidance, last-minute tax law changes and more, the ‘quiet’ is a welcome change to many,” the National Association of Tax Preparers said in a statement

Indeed, the most recent filing season statistics from the IRS indicate more returns are being processed and more refunds are being issued than at the same point last year.

For example, the IRS reports that as of the week ending March 3 it had sent out 11% more refunds than it had during the same week a year ago. Even though the IRS has processed more refunds at t

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Posted in News and Views

Tagged IRS, tax preparers, tax season

Prostate cancer treatments can be avoided or delayed in many cases, huge study finds | Live Science

Posted on March 16, 2023 by knjohn | Leave a comment

Many men with prostate cancer can delay or skip harsh treatments, such as surgery or radiation, without undermining their chances of survival, a decades-long study finds.

Instead, they can have their cancer “actively monitored” following diagnosis, rather than having their prostate removed or exposed to high-energy radiation. Such treatments can cause long-lasting side effects, such as urinary leakage, erectile dysfunction, and other problems with urinary, bowel, and sexual function.