Category: News and Views

Restaurant and cafe chains giving out ‘dangerous’ allergy advice | BBC News

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Leading restaurant and coffee shop chains are giving out incorrect allergy advice, BBC Watchdog Live has found.

Posing as customers with food allergies, journalists secretly filmed staff at Frankie & Benny’s, Pizza Hut, Nandos, Pizza Express, Starbucks and Costa.

The journalists asked staff whether dishes contained any of the 14 major allergens.

Five out of the 30 outlets visited gave the reporters incorrect information.

The unclear and incorrect advice could have caused anyone with a genuine allergy to have a potentially life-threatening reaction.

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Secretive Electric Car Startup Rivian Emerges From Stealth Mode With 600 Employees and Half a Billion in Funding | Inc.com

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After nine years of secrecy, an electric car startup with a whole lot of funding is revealing its vehicles to the public.

On Monday, San Jose-based Rivian unveiled its pickup truck at an event in Los Angeles, the first of two gas-free cars the company is revealing this week. Founded by MIT grad R.J. Scaringe in 2009, the company has racked up more than $500 million in funding while keeping a tight lid on its futuristic-looking designs.

On Tuesday, the startup will pull the lid off its SUV. Rivian says neither car will be available until 2020.

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Amazon opens its internal machine learning courses to all for free | TechCrunch

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It’s Cyber Monday and Amazon has one deal for its customers that’s a little unexpected. The company just announced that it has made available, for free, the same machine learning courses that it uses to train its own engineers.

It’s a lot of information to digest — from a programming standpoint. According to a newly released statement by Matt Wood, an eight-year veteran of Amazon and a general manager of deep learning and AI at the company, there are more than 45 hours across 30 different courses that developers, data scientists, data platform engineers and business professionals can take gratis.

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Teen girl in South Sudan auctioned off for marriage on Facebook | Mashable

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A 16-year-old South Sudanese girl was sold for marriage via Facebook in a disturbing case that’s been described as “reminiscent of latter-day slave markets.”

The winning bid in the auction was for 500 cows, three cars and $10,000, and the girl was married off at a ceremony on Nov. 3 in the country’s Eastern Lakes State, according to Plan International, a humanitarian organisation focused on children’s rights.

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Bitcoin keeps plunging — when will it hit bottom? | CNN

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The recent plunge in the stock market is a cakewalk compared to what’s going on with cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin prices are down more than 15% in just the past week and have plummeted nearly 70% so far this year.

Bitcoin hit a peak above $19,000 in December 2017. Its is now trading at around $4,600.

Shares of companies with ties to the crypto market have plunged lately too, including chipmakers Nvidia (NVDA) and AMD (AMD), which make graphics cards used by bitcoin miners. Online retailer turned blockchain investor Overstock (OSTK) and digital payments firm Square (SQ) are also sharply lower. Each stock is down between 15% and 35% in just the past month.

So it seems safe to say that the bitcoin bubble has burst. Should investors start to dip their toe back in to bitcoin and other crypyto-related assets?

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David’s Bridal files for bankruptcy | CNN

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David’s Bridal has been buried under a mountain of debt. It hasn’t helped that fewer people are tying the knot lately.

The nation’s largest bridal retailer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday. It owes between $500 million and $1 billion to creditors, according to court records.

As part of the bankruptcy, David’s Bridal reached a deal with lenders to reduce the company’s debt by more than $400 million. The agreement will allow David’s Bridal to continue to operate its more than 300 stores.

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The $400,000 GoFundMe for a homeless man was a scam | Fast Company

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Let’s rewind to October 2017. Kate McClure, a New Jersey woman, ran out of gas on an interstate ramp outside of Philadelphia. Johnny Bobbitt, a homeless man, was allegedly panhandling nearby, and used his last $20 to buy McClure enough gas to get home. In return, McClure and her boyfriend, Mike D’Amico, took to GoFundMe, asking givers to help them raise $10,000 toward rent, a car, and a few months of basic living expenses for Bobbitt. The fundraiser went viral. In all, over 14,000 donors eventually contributed to the goal-shattering total of $402,000.

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Exercise Can’t Save Us: Our Sugar Intake Is The Real Culprit, Say Experts | Forbes

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In a fascinating and scorching editorial in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, three authors argue that the myth that exercise is the key to weight loss – and to health – is erroneous and pervasive, and that it must end. The evidence that diet matters more than exercise is now overwhelming, they write, and has got to be heeded: We can exercise to the moon and back but still be fat for all the sugar and carbs we consume. And perhaps even more jarring is that we can be a normal weight and exercise, and still be unhealthy if we’re eating poorly. So, they say, we need a basic reboot of our understanding of health, which has to involve the food industry’s powerful PR “machinery,” since that was part of the problem to begin with.

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