Category: News and Views

Self-order kiosks don’t just help big chains, Long Island fast casual learns | Fast Casual

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Self-order kiosks are one of the fastest growing technologies in the restaurant industry today, with several of the nation’s leading chains deploying these customer conveniences. While the big chains move forward on this front, will independents and chains that are not as well capitalized as their larger competitors be left behind?

LI Pour House Bar and Grill, a fast casual independent in Port Jefferson Station, New York, recently deployed self-order tabletop kiosks on all of its tables and has found the convenience very popular with customers. Customers can order and pay when they want. Owner Anthony Pallino found what he considers an affordable kiosk that has proved reliable and has improved sales and made his operation more efficient.

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Cities Are Becoming Sanctuaries For Climate Policy, Too | Fast Company

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Yesterday, The New York Times published a complete draft of a climate change report by scientists from 13 federal agencies. According to the Times, its authors feared the Trump administration would suppress its conclusions–including its statement, made with “very high confidence,” that human activities are the primary cause of global climate change.

The 600-plus page report is an expansive look at the state of existing climate science, detailing rising temperatures, increased precipitation, extreme weather like tornadoes and cyclones, and much more. But since it “directly contradicts” the president’s stance on climate change, it’s also kindling for the ongoing debate over the climate on the federal level–one that’s unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.

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The Star Wars Video That Baffled YouTube’s Copyright Cops | WIRED

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Every director knows that the score can make the scene. Anyone who’s ever watched a rough cut without soundtrack music can confirm this. Case in point: Something weird happens to the beloved throne room scene that ends the original 1977 Star Wars if you’re crazy enough to delete John Williams’ brassy music from it: Instead of a triumphal award ceremony, it becomes an awkward mime interrupted by sporadic coughing, an occasional strangled yell from the hairy humanoid alien Chewbacca, and tepid applause from a crowd of Rebel troopers.

Fans of the YouTube channel Auralnauts, which posted the doctored Star Wars scene in 2014 as a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the emotional power of Williams’ score, loved it for that weirdness. But another set of viewers—those with the rights to the movie’s soundtrack—tuned in to these sounds of silence and heard something else: the ka-ching of a cash register.

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U.S. Employers Add 209,000 Jobs in July, Unemployment Drops to 4.3 Percent | Inc.com

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U.S. employers added 209,000 jobs in July, a second straight month of robust gains that underscore the economy’s vitality as it enters a ninth year of expansion.

The unemployment rate slipped to 4.3 percent from 4.4 percent, matching a 16-year low first reached in May, the Labor Department said Friday.

But growth in Americans’ paychecks — a persistent weak spot since the recovery began in June 2009 — remains stubbornly slow. Average hourly pay rose by 2.5 percent from a year earlier, the same tepid annual pace as in June. That’s below the 3.5 percent to 4 percent that is typical when the unemployment rate is this low.

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Credit Card Rewards Are Playing Harder to Get | Bloomberg

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Citigroup Inc. just unveiled an updated version of its premium credit card, the Citi Prestige. The new card is made of metal—like its direct competitors, Chase Sapphire Reserve and American Express Platinum—and comes with attractive perks including free nights at hotels, an annual $250 air travel credit, and a sign-up bonus of 75,000 points, which, according to Citi, are worth $935 in air travel.

There’s a catch, though: To get those 75,000 points, cardholders must spend $7,500 on the card in the first three months.

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Bitcoin split in two, here’s what that means | CNN Money

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All eyes were on bitcoin on Tuesday as the digital currency split in two.

After ongoing debates over how to scale the digital currency called bitcoin, some people have decided to make an entirely new currency called Bitcoin Cash.

It’s a bit complicated for those who aren’t in the bitcoin weeds. Essentially, political, technological, and ideological debates about growing bitcoin have come to a head. And some say that an entirely new currency called Bitcoin Cash could help scale bitcoin and bring it to the masses.

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Reasons your pay isn’t going up | Business Insider

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Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and other top economists say productivity is the key to long-run wage growth for American workers. That would be true — if only the fruits of economic expansion were actually trickling to average incomes. International Monetary Fund

“If the labor market continues to improve, we will see some pickup in wage growth, but we have at the moment low productivity growth,” Yellen told Congress in her last official testimony of her term as Fed chair, which ends early next year. “That wage growth would be greater over time if productivity growth picks up.”

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Apple ‘pulls 60 VPNs from China App Store’ | BBC News

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The creators of several Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) have criticized Apple’s decision to remove their products from its App Store in China.

The BBC understands that as many as 60 VPNs were pulled over the weekend.

Apple said it was legally required to remove them because they did not comply with new regulations.

It refused to confirm the exact number of apps withdrawn, but did not deny the figure. It added that dozens of legal VPN apps were still available.

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Time Inc. is moving all its websites to a new platform called Element | TechCrunch

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Time Inc. websites will be getting a new look over the next few months, thanks to a new in-house platform called Element.

Ben Ronne, Time Inc.’s executive director, product, platforms, told me that this is part of a broader effort to centralize the company’s technology — for example, he said that in the past year, Time Inc. has gone from fourteen content management systems to just two.

To be clear, Element isn’t the company’s new CMS. Instead, it sits on top of the CMS, and includes basic templates for how articles, galleries and recipes should look across all the different Time Inc. properties. The end result should be pages that load more quickly and are optimized for mobile.

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