As the world teeters on the brink of suffocating from single-use products, some designers are quickly coming up with ingenious ways to reduce our waste. For example, Greek designer George Bosnas has just unveiled the Biopack, a compact egg carton made out of cleared paper pulp, flour, starch and biological legume seeds. Instead of throwing out the eco-friendly container at the end of its use, it can be planted directly into the ground to sprout green plants.
Category: News and Views
General Mills: Pet food sales pop but snack demand down | CNN
Americans are splurging on food for their cats and dogs — but not snacks for them and their kids. That’s not great news for General Mills.
Shares of General Mills (GIS), the owner of Cheerios, Lucky Charms and Yoplait, fell 7% in early trading Wednesday after the company reported its latest quarterly results. That made General Mills the worst performing stock in the S&P 500.
Sales missed forecasts, despite soaring demand for the company’s Blue Buffalo pet food.
The weaker-than-expected revenue was largely because of a 2% drop in sales in its North American retail unit, the division that includes Annie’s branded cheddar bunnies, Chex, Fruit Snacks and the Fiber One and Nature Valley brands of bars.
Wayfair workers to walk out over furniture sales to migrant camps | Fast Company
Employees at the e-commerce company Wayfair are planning on staging a walkout tomorrow over an alleged decision to sell furniture to BCFS, a government contractor operating camps at the U.S. border that are detaining migrants. According to a tweet from the group of employees, they sent Wayfair CEO Niraj Shah a letter asking for the company to stop doing business with the contractor. Over 500 people allegedly signed the letter.
The Real Reason Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple’s XRP, And Litecoin Suddenly Rocketed? | Forbes
Bitcoin, ethereum, Ripple’s XRP, and litecoin suddenly rocketed this weekend, with the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, bitcoin, shooting past the psychological $10,000 per bitcoin mark to highs of $11,200 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange.
Ethereum, Ripple’s XRP, and litecoin all made double-digit gains, meanwhile, with the sudden push higher causing many to recall the great bitcoin and cryptocurrency bull run of late 2017 which saw the bitcoin price go from $10,000 per bitcoin to almost $20,000 in under 20 days.
56% of Small Business Owners Have a College Degree | Small Business Trends
Digital technology is disrupting almost everything, which includes education. According to the self employment statistics in FreshBooks’ 2019 Self-Employment in America Report, college education is becoming less of a prerequisite.
The percentage of self-employed professionals with college degrees has decreased considerably in the last couple years. In 2017 it was 64%, followed by 60% in 2018 and it now stands at 56% in 2019. This doesn’t mean people are not getting educated. The only thing that has changed is how they’re getting this education.
A fact which supports this point is how much those with and without college degrees earn. In the past the earning disparity between high school and college graduates was significant, this is no longer the case. The report reveals there is no difference in revenue between businesses founded in the last two years for both groups.
You’re Wrong: The New Acura NSX is Just Like the Old NSX | Digital Trends
Nobody likes the new Acura NSX. Well it’s not that nobody likes it, it’s that nobody is buying one. This of course means nobody likes it enough to part with their retirement savings to get one. And what are people pilfering their 401Ks for? The old NSX, that’s what. The classic NSX’s values have doubled over the last 6 years, and images of the cars are currently adorning countless walls, garages, and phone screens everywhere.
KFC’s vegan burger: could it wean you off chicken? | BBC News
Jordan would normally choose KFC’s standard chicken fillet burger but the 32-year-old has come with a colleague from the Medway in Kent to try out the fast food chain’s temporary vegan addition to its menu.
“It’s alright,” is his verdict on the “Imposter Burger”, although he could tell it wasn’t chicken.
“It’s a bit lighter,” he tells me patting his stomach. He doesn’t think he’d have it again, it might leave him too hungry.
Here’s the 1 Eye-Opening Statistic About Millennials That Big Companies Are Finally Beginning to Notice | Inc.com
Millennials outnumber everyone else in America. On paper they should be the perfect consumers to help a robust economy well into the second half of the 21t century.
But a new report suggests that big companies are having a sudden realization–something that almost every one of the 83.1 million Millennial Americans knew a long time ago, and in fact that they’ve been screaming from the proverbial rooftops.
It’s that while as a generation Millennials are “digitally native, mobile oriented, media savvy, politically progressive, ethnically diverse, well-educated and culturally savvy,” as Adweek put it recently, they also have one other giant defining characteristic:
They’re kinda broke.
Is your product’s AI annoying people? | TechCrunch
Artificial intelligence is allowing us all to consider surprising new ways to simplify the lives of our customers. As a product developer, your central focus is always on the customer. But new problems can arise when the specific solution under development helps one customer while alienating others.
We tend to think of AI as an incredible dream assistant to our lives and business operations, when that’s not always the case. Designers of new AI services should consider in what ways and for whom might these services be annoying, burdensome or problematic, and whether it involves the direct customer or others who are intertwined with the customer. When we apply AI services to make tasks easier for our customers that end up making things more difficult for others, that outcome can ultimately cause real harm to our brand perception.
Tricky Scam Plants Phishing Links in Your Google Calendar | WIRED
AT THIS POINT, you’re probably keeping an eye out for possible phishing messages in your email. You know the drill: If you have any doubts, don’t click links or download attachments. That’s difficult enough to adhere to in practice. Now, thanks to new findings from the threat intelligence firm Kaspersky, along with phishing texts, phishing tweets, and phishing pop-ups, you need to worry about one more thing: phishing in your calendar.
Dispatches From The Front 