March 20 (UPI) — Something far more unusual than shortages happened in the toilet paper aisle of a Missouri Walmart store — a customer gave birth.
Jessica Hinkle, store manager at the Walmart store on Sunshine Street in Spingfield, said the woman’s water broke in the toilet paper aisle of the store Wednesday and the expectant mother warned employees her last child had been born after only 30 minutes of labor.
March 19 (UPI) — A Minnesota restaurant is offering an unusual promotion for customers amid the coronavirus pandemic – a free roll of toilet paper with take-out orders over $25.
The Cambridge Bar and Grill in Cambridge announced all orders totaling over $25 now come with a free roll of toilet paper, a product some consumers are having difficulty finding due to shortages from customers stocking up for quarantine.
The IRS announces a tax deadline extension of 90 days to July 15 interest and penalty-free to help individuals and businesses affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
As Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Tuesday in the briefing about the coronavirus, individual taxpayers and small businesses can delay paying their income taxes on as much as $1 million for up to 90 days. The sum goes up to $10 million for corporations.
Mark Cerny’s PlayStation 5 presentation detailed many key elements of Sony’s new console. It was also, frankly, a snoozefest for most of the people watching it. That’s not a huge surprise. Cerny is the project’s lead, not a personality or presenter, and the talk was originally scheduled for the now-postponed Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2020. It was a deep dive, not a flashy marketing presentation (though Sony could’ve done more to make that clear).
Still, the presentation’s focus was a surprise. You might have expected it to linger on the CPU and GPU, two key components most gamers associate with performance. Instead, Cerny went deepest on the console’s custom storage solution and audio engine, which only Sony’s PlayStation 5 will have.
Microsoft revealed the technical specifications of its next generation video game console, the Xbox Series X, in a Monday blog post. Although pricing is still unknown, Microsoft said the Series X is coming this holiday season and has several new features that would give it a leg up over older consoles.
The Series X will be capable of running 4K graphics at 60 to 120 frames per second, meaning that game graphics should display clear details and games will appear smooth even during action-packed scenes.
A new Apple patent envisions bringing together two or more devices to act as one large, seamless display through sensor technology.
The patent, first reported by Patently Apple, is titled System With Multiple Electronic Devices and was initially submitted in June 2017 and published on March 10. The patent describes seamlessly dividing one image into two separate displays between separate devices, which the patent calls “joint operating mode.”
Remember how five years ago, Dan Price, the CEO of Seattle-based payment processing company Gravity Payments, raised all of his 120 employees’ salary to at least $70,000 a year, taking a huge pay cut to make it happen?
A media firestorm resulted, including here in Inc.com, much of it focused on negative blowback from the decision, including executive resignations, sniping from local startups, and a lawsuit from Price’s co-founder (also his brother). Rush Limbaugh called Price “a communist.” All in all, the coverage painted a messier picture than a simple feel-good story of a generous CEO doing good by his employees.
In a press conference late on Friday, Vice President Mike Pence said that the government will finally have the capacity to provide over 1 million tests for the novel coronavirus, COVID-19.
Joined by representatives of the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the vice president detailed the continuing efforts from the White House to coordinate a response to the spread of the coronavirus.
A lot of raw material goes into the making of footwear, so the less that can be used, the better for the environment. Nike’s new Space Hippie shoes were designed with that in mind, as they’re composed largely of recycled materials.
Not unlike the Adidas x Parley, the Hippies’ uppers are made mainly of a woven yarn, that is in turn made up of 100-percent recycled materials obtained from sources such as water bottles, discarded T-shirts, and yarn scraps. Even when other materials besides the yarn are taken into account, the uppers are still reportedly 90 percent recycled content by weight.
Streaming was supposed to help us cut the cord, but all it’s done is create new problems for folks who want to catch live TV. Most available options are either too expensive or can’t fully recreate the experience of sitting on a couch, aiming your remote at your TV, and settling in for a couple of hours of lazy channel surfing.
AT&T might just have the solution, though.
After a trial run in about a dozen markets, the company is launching its new AT&T TV streaming bundle nationwide on Monday. It’s not a traditional cable or satellite subscription, nor is it a direct competitor to streaming alternatives like YouTube TV or Hulu with Live TV. Instead, it finds ways to mix the two with its own box, its own remote, and its own pricing structure.
Dispatches From The Front 