Punxsutawney Phil, the Pennsylvania groundhog we let decide our seasons for us, is officially predicting an early spring.
On Saturday morning, the famous groundhog awoke at sunrise to celebrate Groundhog Day and did not see his shadow. This, his male handlers in top hats dramatically said, signals an early start to spring and an end to winter. But don’t get too excited.
Amazon now finds itself in an elite group of companies whose annual revenue can be measured in the hundreds of billions.
The company said Thursday that its holiday quarter sales hit $72.4 billion, up 20% from the same period a year earlier and at the high end of its previous forecast. The strong end to the year pushed Amazon’s annual revenue to an impressive $232.9 billion.
But sales growth is slowing as Amazon (AMZN) runs up against the law of large numbers. Its 20% sales growth for the quarter was well below the 38% growth it saw in the same period a year earlier.
The population of Memphis, Tennessee is 63% black. Over half of the local businesses are black-owned; if you’re a black entrepreneur, it regularly tops the list of best places to start a businesses. But a 2012 study found that black-owned businesses take in less than 1% of all the money spent in the city. Women-owned businesses–particularly those owned by women of color–also struggle.
Part of the issue, says Joann Massey, a businesses consultant who now heads up the Memphis Office of Business Diversity and Compliance, is how Memphis spends its money. Cities contract with vendors for everything from paper and pencils to construction work and technology services. In Memphis, as in most cities, those vendors are typically run by white men.
If anyone tells you that they have the 2019 tax filing season all figured, they’re lying. By all accounts, the upcoming tax season is going to be tricky. Despite a shoestring staff due to the shutdown, new tax forms and new tax rules, the 2019 tax season is still set to open on January 28, 2019. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) claims that the season will operate as close to normal as possible—including issuing tax refunds.
So when are those tax refunds coming? Assuming no delays, what follows are my best guesses for expected returns based on filing dates and information from the IRS:
Former Chancellor George Osborne has said delaying the UK’s exit from the EU is now the “most likely” option.
The UK has to choose between no deal – which he compared to Russian roulette – or no Brexit for now, he told the BBC.
MPs are proposing alternative plans to the PM’s deal with the EU, including seeking an extension to the UK’s exit date – it is due to leave on 29 March.
But the prime minister has said the “right way” to rule out no-deal Brexit is to approve her withdrawal agreement.
That new leak lines up with previous leaks. As you can see on the photo, the new devices don’t have a notch. They feature a hole-punch selfie camera instead. If you’re looking for the fingerprint sensor, Samsung could choose to embed it in the screen.
Just like in previous years, in addition to the main S10, there will be a bigger version of the device — the S10+. On this photo, you can see that the bigger version has two selfie cameras instead of one.
But the S10E is a new addition to the lineup. Samsung is launching a more affordable version of the S10 at the same time as the S10. The S10E features two cameras on the back instead of three for instance. I wouldn’t be surprised if the S10E had an LCD display instead of an AMOLED display as well.
You know those machines at the grocery store that transform your gallon jugs worth of change into more usable currency? They’re about to start selling Bitcoin .
To make this impulse shopping dream come true, Coinstar, the company behind those ubiquitous change-counting kiosks, has partnered with Coinme, a startup that operates a small network of cryptocurrency-dispensing ATMs around the country.
THE DETROIT AUTO Show circa 2004: Gas prices are low. Auto sales are is good. Bigger is better. The only electrics on the floor are the hybrids brought along by the Japanese automakers like Toyota and Honda. Tesla is a Silicon Valley startup with big ideas, safely ignored. Cars are machines that people buy, own, and drive themselves. Automakers are taking the wraps off their latest machines, talking up power and comfort while the metal gleams in the spotlights.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai might just want to check his Twitter tomorrow.
A group called Googlers for Ending Forced Arbitration will hold a tweetstorm on Tuesday, Jan. 15 to educate the public about forced arbitration agreements and advocate for their removal from the tech industry. The group, which says it’s run by organizers of the Google Walkouts and dozens of other employees, announced the plan in a Medium blog post to inform people about “how forced arbitration denies 60 million Americans access to their civil rights.”
Hell yeah. YouTube is finally letting creators know what curse words they can use without taking a financial hit.
In a video uploaded to its Creator Insider channel, YouTube has finally defined what exactly constitutes profanity on the platform. YouTube creators have often struggled with censoring their own content over fear that their videos will be demonetized, thus affecting their earning potential.
Dispatches From The Front 