Category Archives: News and Views

The Rising Trend of Generational Tobacco Bans in Massachusetts | Small Biz Trends

Posted on May 9, 2024 by knjohn | Leave a comment

New laws on the books in Massachusetts are threatening the future of some historic local tobacconist businesses.

Following a landmark decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, several Greater Boston towns are adopting something known as a generational tobacco ban.

As reported by Cigar Aficionado, the legislative actions are setting a precedent that could influence broader state and national tobacco regulations. Often with local governments, one board of councilpersons gets their ideas from another – a monkey-see, monkey-do scenario.

In March 2023, the court upheld a bylaw in the Boston suburb of Brookline that prohibited the sale of tobacco products to anyone born in the 21st century. The ruling catalyzed similar policies across neighboring towns, each with the goal of a “Nicotine-Free Generation.”

Other towns in Massachusetts like Stoneham, Wakefield and Melrose have quickly enacted or are considering similar bans – all set to take effect by January 2025.

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Tagged Boston, Massachusetts, Nicotine-Free Generation, Generational Tobacco Bans

San Diego Bans Polystyrene Containers | Small Biz Trends

Posted on May 9, 2024 by knjohn | Leave a comment

A ban on polystyrene went into effect for small businesses in San Diego in April. Polystyrene is a synthetic polymer sometimes colloquially called Styrofoam, especially in the U.S.

The move means more costs for small businesses in that California community.

“Polystyrene plastic foam is one of the biggest sources of marine litter and costs the state and local governments millions of dollars each year to collect it from beaches, roadsides, and storm drains,” writes Mariel Garza for the Los Angeles Times.

Small businesses making less than $500,000 annually received a brief year-long exemption. But now the cost of eliminating the waste falls on the businesses that can afford it least.

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Tagged Bans Polystyrene Containers, San Diego

Starliner astronauts arrive at launchpad for first crewed flight | Digital Trends

Posted on May 7, 2024 by knjohn | Leave a comment

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have arrived at the Starliner spacecraft that will take them to the International Space Station (ISS) in the first flight for the crew capsule.

A ULA Atlas V rocket will carry the Boeing-made Starliner and the two astronauts to orbit in a launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida that’s scheduled for 10:34 p.m. ET tonight.

Digital Trends has full details on how to watch a live stream showing the launch buildup and the early stages of the mission.

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Tagged astronauts, NASA, Starliner

Apple working to fix alarming iPhone issue | BBC News

Posted on May 3, 2024 by knjohn | Leave a comment

Apple says it is working quickly to fix an issue that caused some iPhone alarms not to play a sound, giving their slumbering users an unexpected lie-in.

For many people, their phone is an indispensable alarm clock and some over-sleepers turned to social media to vent.

One TikTokker complained that she had set “like five alarms” and they didn’t go off.

Apple has confirmed it is aware of the issue – but is yet to spell out what it believes is causing it, or what users can do to avoid a late start.

It is also unclear how many people are affected or whether the problem is restricted to particular models of iPhone.

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Posted in News and Views, Tools and Information

Tagged Apple, iPhone

Google lays off staff from Flutter, Dart, and Python teams weeks before its developer conference | TechCrunch

Posted on May 2, 2024 by knjohn | Leave a comment

Ahead of Google’s annual I/O developer conference in May, the tech giant has laid off staff across key teams like Flutter, Dart, Python and others, according to reports from affected employees shared on social media. Google confirmed the layoffs to TechCrunch, but not the specific teams, roles or how many people were let go.

“As we’ve said, we’re responsibly investing in our company’s biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead,” said Google spokesperson Alex García-Kummert. “To best position us for these opportunities, throughout the second half of 2023 and into 2024, a number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better, remove layers, and align their resources to their biggest product priorities. Through this, we’re simplifying our structures to give employees more opportunity to work on our most innovative and important advances and our biggest company priorities, while reducing bureaucracy and layers,” he added.

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Tagged dart team, developer conference, Flutter team, Google, python team

UnitedHealthcare CEO says ‘maybe a third’ of US citizens were affected by recent hack | TechCrunch

Posted on May 2, 2024 by knjohn | Leave a comment

Two months after hackers broke into Change Healthcare systems stealing and then encrypting company data, it’s still unclear how many Americans were impacted by the cyberattack.

Last month, Andrew Witty, the CEO of Change Healthcare’s parent company UnitedHealth Group, said that the stolen files include the personal health information of “a substantial proportion of people in America.”

On Wednesday, during a House hearing, when pushed to give a more definitive answer, Witty testified that the breach impacted “I think, maybe a third [of Americans] or somewhere of that level.”

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Tagged Data Breach, hack, UnitedHealthcare

Walmart Launches Bettergoods Food Brand With ‘Unique’ Flavors | Entrepreneur

Posted on May 1, 2024 by knjohn | Leave a comment

Walmart announced on Tuesday that it is putting a new grocery label on the shelves called Bettergoods — the largest private food brand launched by the retailer in two decades.

The move could help Walmart hold on to higher-income shoppers who have flocked to the retailer in times of higher inflation by filling Walmart’s grocery aisles with 300 new products tailored to vegan, gluten-free, and adventurous dietary choices.

Bettergoods has three focus areas: plant-based goods like $3.44 oat milk ice cream, culinary flair foods like bronze cut pasta for $1.97 or jalapeño chowder for under $4, and “made without” foods, like gluten-free products

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Tagged Betterfoods brand, Gluten-free, vegan, WalMart

Net neutrality is back as FCC votes to regulate internet providers | CNN Business

Posted on April 26, 2024 by knjohn | Leave a comment

The US government on Thursday banned internet service providers (ISPs) from meddling in the speeds their customers receive when browsing the web and downloading files, restoring tough rules rescinded during the Trump administration and setting the stage for a major legal battle with the broadband industry.

The net neutrality regulations adopted Thursday by the Federal Communications Commission prohibit providers such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon from selectively speeding up, slowing down or blocking users’ internet traffic. They largely reflect rules passed by a prior FCC in 2015 and unwound in 2017.

The latest rules show how, with a 3-2 Democratic majority, the FCC is moving to reassert its authority over an industry that powers the modern digital economy, touching everything from education to health care and enabling advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence.

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Tagged FCC, net neutrality, regulate internet providers

Tech earnings: Google, Microsoft and Snap shares climb | CNN Business

Posted on April 26, 2024 by knjohn | Leave a comment

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, bounced back from an absolutely dreadful day for tech shares, as its stock surged Thursday after the closing bell. All it had to do was to hand out billions of dollars to investors.

The tech giant announced its first quarterly cash dividend, saying it will pay $0.20 per share on June 17 to shareholders of record as of June 10, as well as a $70 billion share buyback. Buybacks and dividends help to boost stock prices by rewarding investors with cash just for holding the stock — but they’re widely criticized for artificially inflating the stock price without spending on employees or improvements to the underlying business.

Google’s stock jumped as much as 13% in after-hours trading following the report.

The announcement came as part of Google’s earnings report for the first three months of the year, in which it also reported that it exceeded Wall Street analysts’ expectations for both sales and profits.

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Tagged Alphabet, Google, Microsoft, Snap

‘We were in disbelief’: Antarctica is behaving in a way we’ve never seen before. Can it recover? | Live Science

Posted on April 25, 2024 by knjohn | Leave a comment

Look out over Antarctica in the summer, and time seems frozen. The South Pole’s midnight sun appears to hover in place, never dropping below the horizon for weeks between November and January.

But the Antarctic’s timelessness is an illusion. Only a decade ago, on summer nights across the coast, the sun would glide ever so slightly over the ocean, dusting its ice floes in golden light.

Yet today, much of this sea ice is nowhere in sight. And scientists are increasingly alarmed that it may never come back.

“Antarctica feels very distant, but the sea ice there matters so much to all of us,” Ella Gilbert, a polar climate scientist at the British Antarctic Survey, told Live Science. “It’s a really vital part of our climate system.”

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Posted in News and Views

Tagged Antarctica, polar climate, south pole