McDonald’s sales dented by Israel-Gaza boycotts | BBC

February 6, 2024February 5, 2024 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

McDonald’s has missed a key sales target, partly due to customers boycotting the firm for its perceived support of Israel.

The fast food chain reported its first quarterly sales miss in nearly four years due to weak growth in its international business division.

Its boss previously acknowledged the impact of the conflict, blaming “misinformation”.

Shares in McDonald’s fell about 4% after the announcement.

McDonalds is one of several Western corporations including Starbucks and Coca Cola that have seen boycotts and protests against them by anti-Israeli campaigners.

Deal Dive: It’s time for VCs to break up with fast fashion | TechCrunch

February 5, 2024February 4, 2024 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Fast fashion is an industry ensnared in labor issues and copyright problems, and it has an immense environmental impact due to its wastewater and carbon emissions. It also happens to have the potential to make a lot of money, fast.

But despite all these issues, VCs won’t stop loving the sector.

On Wednesday, my colleague Manish Singh wrote a scoop about a potential Accel investment into Newme, a fast-fashion startup based in India. Newme is an app-based retailer that produces 500 new items a week with an average price tag of $10. This news comes just a week after the company closed a seed round.

Accel and Newme did not respond to requests for comment.

This Week in AI: Do shoppers actually want Amazon’s GenAI? | TechCrunch

February 5, 2024February 4, 2024 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of recent stories in the world of machine learning, along with notable research and experiments we didn’t cover on their own.

This week, Amazon announced Rufus, an AI-powered shopping assistant trained on the e-commerce giant’s product catalog as well as information from around the web. Rufus lives inside Amazon’s mobile app, helping with finding products, performing product comparisons and getting recommendations on what to buy.

From broad research at the start of a shopping journey such as ‘what to consider when buying running shoes?’ to comparisons such as ‘what are the differences between trail and road running shoes?’ … Rufus meaningfully improves how easy it is for customers to find and discover the best products to meet their needs,” Amazon writes in a blog post.

Developing Trust: Utilising Your Ultimate Business Asset | Getentrepreneurial.com

February 2, 2024February 1, 2024 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

In today’s blog post, we’re going to explore the ultimate business resource: trust. If I were to ask you what the most valuable asset in your business is, what would you say? Over the years, I’ve posed this question to numerous business professionals, and while the answers vary, the common thread that emerges is trust.

Consider this: if you responded with “my product or service,” what ultimately drives people to choose and consume it? No matter how impressive or innovative your offering may be, if customers don’t trust that it will deliver on its promises, its value diminishes significantly. Likewise, if your answer revolves around yourself, your skills, or your knowledge, trust plays a crucial role. Without trust in you as an individual, regardless of your capabilities, people will hesitate to engage with you.

Sick of Google? 5 Search Engine Alternatives to Try in 2024 | Cool Business Ideas

February 2, 2024February 1, 2024 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Sick of Google? 5 Search Engine Alternatives to Try in 2024 While Google remains dominant in the search engine market, several alternative search engines offer unique features, privacy-focused options, and specialized search capabilities when researching questions like “Can bunion cause leg pain?” If you want to diversify your online search experience, here are some notable alternatives to Google.

1. DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo has gained popularity for its strong emphasis on user privacy. Unlike Google, DuckDuckGo does not track user data or personalize search results based on browsing history. This commitment to privacy makes it an excellent choice for users concerned about online tracking and data collection. DuckDuckGo also offers a clean interface and instant answers sourced from a variety of crowdsourced platforms.

Universal Music is set to pull its songs from TikTok | Mashable

February 1, 2024January 31, 2024 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The partnership between Universal Music Group (UMG) and TikTok has apparently soured, as the music company is set to pull its music catalog from the social media app.

The agreement between the two companies is set to expire today (Jan. 31), and negotiations appear to have come to a standstill. UMG published an impassioned open letter addressed to the artist and songwriter community, saying they must “call time on TikTok.” The letter explained that UMG has been pressing TikTok on three key issues: appropriate compensation for artists and songwriters, protecting human artists from the dangers of AI, and online safety for TikTok users.

Apple Vision Pro reviews are in: Here are 8 key takeaways | Mashable

February 1, 2024January 31, 2024 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Apple’s Vision Pro could very well be the most important new product Apple will launch this decade. It’s a whole new product category for Apple, with a new, accompanying software platform called visionOS and an app ecosystem to match.

It’s no wonder, then, that Apple has been extremely careful about how it handles this launch. The company invited only a handful of journalists for in-person briefings, and handed out review units to an even smaller group of people, whose embargoes for the review lifted on Tuesday.

The resulting reviews paint a (very) cautiously optimistic picture of the Vision Pro’s future. All of the reviewers praise the tech – CNET’s Scott Stein calls it a “mind-blowing look at an unfinished future,” while The Verge’s Nilay Patel calls it “magic,” but warns that “the technology to build a true optical AR display that works well enough to replace an everyday computer just isn’t there yet.”

Judge strikes down Elon Musk’s massive, multi-billion-dollar pay package | CNN Business

January 31, 2024January 30, 2024 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

A Delaware state court judge has thrown out the 2018 pay package that helped to make Tesla CEO Elon Musk one of the richest people in the world.

Delaware Chancery Court Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, who oversaw the bench trial that concluded in November 2022, ruled Tuesday that Musk and the Tesla board “bore the burden of proving that the compensation plan was fair, and they failed to meet their burden.”

The 303 million split-adjusted stock options that Musk had received as part of the package are worth $51 billion today, when calculated using Tuesday’s closing price, less the modest exercise price of $23.34 a share.

The case was argued in Delaware, where Tesla and many other major US corporations are incorporated. While Musk did not have an immediate comment on the decision, he did tweet Tuesday, “Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware.”

NY AG sues Citibank for failing to protect customers from fraud | CNN Business

January 31, 2024January 30, 2024 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against Citibank on Tuesday, alleging the big bank failed to do enough to protect and reimburse victims of fraud.

The lawsuit argues that New York customers lost millions of dollars — in some cases their entire life savings — to scammers and hackers because of Citi’s weak security and anti-fraud measures.

According to the NY AG, Citi does not do enough to prevent unauthorized account takeovers, illegally refuses to reimburse fraud victims, and “misleads” customers about their rights after their accounts are hacked.

90,000-year-old human footprints found on a Moroccan beach are some of the oldest and best preserved in the world | Live Science

January 30, 2024January 29, 2024 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Two trails of ancient human footprints pressed into a beach in Morocco form one of the largest and best-preserved trackways in the world.

Researchers happened upon the footprint site near the northern tip of North Africa in 2022 while studying boulders at a nearby pocket beach, according to a study published Jan. 23 in the journal Scientific Reports.

“Between tides, I said to my team that we should go north to explore another beach,” study lead author Mouncef Sedrati, an associate professor of coastal dynamics and geomorphology at the University of Southern Brittany in France, told Live Science. “We were surprised to find the first print. At first, we weren’t convinced it was a footprint, but then we found more of the trackway.”