Starbucks scraps vaccine requirement following Supreme Court decision | CNN

January 20, 2022January 20, 2022 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Starbucks is no longer requiring employees to get vaccinated or submit to weekly testing, following the US Supreme Court’s rejection last week of President Joe Biden’s vaccine and testing requirement for large businesses.

In a letter published on January 4, the coffee company recommended that its workers get vaccinated by February 9, in accordance with guidance from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Those who remained unvaccinated past that deadline would have had to submit to weekly testing, according to that early January note.

Hourly Wages at Small Businesses Hit Record Level in December | Small Business Trends

January 14, 2022January 13, 2022 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

As 2021 drew to a close, the average hourly wage at small businesses locked in at $30, according to the Paychex IHS Markit Small Business Employment Watch.

The December data shows hourly earnings growth improving to 4.27%, which is the highest level since Paychex began reporting 10 years ago.

Hiring at small businesses also closed 2021 on an optimistic stat, improving 7.31% from the prior year, according to the same report.

Hourly Wages at Small Businesses Hit Record Level in December

Paychex CEO Martin Mucci summed the stats.

“Employers are responding to the pressure of the tight labor market by raising wages, and workers are benefitting,” Mucci said.

iPhone 14 Pro design leak shows bizarre hole and pill cutout | Digital Trends

January 13, 2022January 12, 2022 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Is that a circular hole punch? Or a pill-shaped cutout? Wait, it’s both. As per a fresh leak, the iPhone 14 Pro and its Max sibling will ditch the notch in favor of a weird arrangement that includes both a circular and a pill-shaped cutout arranged neatly in a line. Whether it looks appealing is debatable, but it definitely hasn’t been attempted before by a smartphone maker.

Display supply chain expert Ross Young, who has a fairly accurate track record with display-related Apple predictions, tweeted what appears to be an engineering template for an iPhone 14 Pro model. There are two separate cutouts, a design that we are yet to see on a phone so far. Samsung offers a bucket load of phones with a single circular cutout, Motorola has a phone with two separate camera dots, and Huawei has been loyal to the pill-shaped design for the past few years. But never have the two elements been blended together like this.

Three ethical issues around pig heart transplants | BBC News

January 12, 2022January 11, 2022 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

A US man has become the world’s first person to get a heart transplant from a genetically modified pig.

57-year-old David Bennett, who doctors say was too ill to qualify for a human heart, is doing well three days after the experimental seven-hour treatment.

The surgery is being hailed by many as a medical breakthrough that could shorten transplant waiting times and change the lives of patients around the world. But some are questioning if the procedure can be ethically justified.

They have pointed to potential moral trouble spots over patient safety, animal rights and religious concerns.

So how controversial are transplants from pigs?

There’s No Slowing the Great Resignation | Inc.com

January 12, 2022January 11, 2022 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

November fueled another record month for the Great Resignation, as 4.5 million workers either left or switched jobs, according to data released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The November milestone usurps the previous record of approximately 4.4 million workers who ditched their jobs in September.

The so-called quits rate, which examines the amount of voluntary departures as a percentage of total employment, increased in both smaller businesses employing one to nine workers as well as larger shops with 1,000 to 4,999 workers.

Apple paid out around $60 billion to App Store developers in 2021 | TechCrunch

January 11, 2022January 10, 2022 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Despite facing numerous antitrust lawsuits and tighter regulations in certain markets, Apple today reported new figures indicating record App Store growth in 2021. The company in a press release said it has now paid out more than $260 billion to app developers since the App Store first launched in 2008, a number that’s up from the $200 billion Apple reported at the end of 2020 — meaning, in 2021 alone, Apple paid developers a total of at least $60 billion.

That number is a lot larger than the payouts reported in previous years.

For comparison, Apple by the end of 2019 had paid developers a total of $155 billion since the App Store’s debut. The year prior, it had said that figure was around $120 billion. Reading between the lines, that means payouts to developers jumped by $35 million from 2018 to 2019, then grew by another $45 billion from 2019 to 2020.

Goldman Sachs predicts bitcoin could hit $100,000 | CNN

January 6, 2022January 5, 2022 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Bitcoin prices have pulled back lately — but Goldman Sachs still sees strong gains ahead in the coming years.

The world’s most valuable cryptocurrency has fallen to about $46,000 after surging to a record high near $69,000 in November. Yet Goldman Sachs (GS) said in a report this week that bitcoin (XBT) could more than double, to a little over $100,000 per coin, within the next five years.

“We think that bitcoin’s market share will most likely rise over time as a byproduct of broader adoption of digital assets,” Zach Pandl, the co-head of global foreign exchange, rates and emerging market strategy for Goldman Sachs, said in the report.

Truckers Offer Help as Official Response to I-95 Traffic Chaos Falters | Rolling Stone

January 5, 2022January 4, 2022 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

As truckers, it’s second nature for Emily Slaughter and Michele Rusher to keep tabs on bad weather and road closures. But as the drivers, who work for the shipping company New Prime, Inc., headed southbound on Interstate 95 early Tuesday morning, Jan. 4, no radio updates or electronic road signs suggested they were about to hit the worst traffic jam imaginable.

At around one or two in the morning, Rusher and Slaughter joined a mass of cars stuck on the snow-covered, ice-slicked roads of Northern Virginia. A sudden winter storm the day before had blanketed this stretch of highway outside of Washington D.C., and many drivers (including U.S. Senator Tim Kaine) were stranded overnight in their cars with no food or water in freezing temperatures, trying to stay warm while conserving gas.

This new solar shingle from GAF Energy gets nailed right onto a roof | Fast Company

January 4, 2022January 3, 2022 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The concept seems obvious: Why put solar panels on a roof when you could just make the roof out of solar panels? But Tesla’s attempt to design a solar roof didn’t go well: The solar tiles turned out to be challenging to install, and the final price for customers has sometimes become tens of thousands of dollars higher than they were quoted. But GAF Energy, a spinoff of the world’s largest roofing company, launched a new solar roof today that it believes can succeed—and that could help radically speed up the adoption of home solar.

“The potential for solar is enormous, but we haven’t come close to meeting it,” says Martin DeBono, president of GAF Energy, which is part of parent company Standard Industries, which also owns GAF. “When you have a heritage in roofing, and you see solar panels going up the same way in 2020 as they were put up in 1990, yeah, you realize there’s an opportunity for innovation.”

Does fully vaccinated mean boosted? Yes, say these companies | Fast Company

January 4, 2022January 3, 2022 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests eligible people should consider getting a booster shot starting at about six months after the date of their original COVID-19 vaccine regimen. For many Americans, that date has passed. Factor in more heavily mutated variants like omicron, and you can see why proof of vaccination is hurtling toward showing you’ve also received a booster shot. Around the country, a number of private businesses have already started rolling one out, and some local governments are beginning to do the same.

The federal government hasn’t signed off yet on booster shot mandates. Ground zero for them, then, might seem like it would be progressive states. But so far, it’s a mixed bag pulling the trigger: