Dollar General will pay workers to get the covid vaccine | CNN

January 20, 2021January 18, 2021 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Dollar General wants its employees to get Covid-19 vaccines, so it’s offering to pay them to do it.

The chain said Wednesday that it will give its workers a one-time payment equivalent to four hours of pay after receiving a completed vaccination.

“We do not want our employees to have to choose between receiving a vaccine or coming to work,” Dollar General (DG) said in a press release, noting that its hourly workers face hurdles to getting vaccinated, such as travel time, gas mileage or childcare needs.

Paris is redesigning the Champs-Élysées into pedestrian gardens | Fast Company

January 18, 2021 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

In Paris, the Champs-Élysées was originally designed as a place to stroll. But in 2021, around 64,000 cars travel down the eight-lane avenue each day. It’s polluted and noisy, and while the sidewalks are filled with tourists, it isn’t a place where people living nearby want to walk.

As Paris transforms elsewhere—aiming for a vision of a “15-minute city” where it’s possible to easily get anywhere you need to go for day-to-day errands on foot or by bike—the Champs-Élysées will now also be redesigned, in a $304 million project that will turn the mile-long street into what Mayor Anne Hidalgo calls “an extraordinary garden.”

California’s Disneyland to become Covid vaccination site | BBC News

January 13, 2021January 12, 2021 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

California’s Disneyland theme park is set to become a massive Covid-19 vaccination site this week, county officials announced on Monday.

The “happiest place on earth” is one of several large distribution sites opening up in the state as cases soar and hospitals near capacity.

The most populous US state has lagged behind in its vaccination rate, doling out around a third of its doses so far.

Windows 10 is rumored to be getting a major redesign. Don’t screw this up, Microsoft! | CNN

January 7, 2021January 5, 2021 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Microsoft is rumored to be working on a major redesign of Windows 10 that could bring big changes to the way the PC operating system looks and functions.

Windows 10 could use a refresh. Aside from twice-annual tweaks, Windows 10 been mostly unchanged since its release in 2015. Six years is long in the tooth for any PC operating system, and a revolution is coming to personal computers that threatens Windows’ standing as the dominant productivity operating system.

Still, Microsoft (MSFT) doesn’t exactly have the best reputation for fixing operating systems that ain’t broke. So a lot is riding on Microsoft’s ability to turn the next iteration of Windows 10 into something hundreds of millions of computer owners will want to keep using.

Woman’s garden ‘stepping stone’ turns out to be an ancient Roman artifact | Live Science

January 7, 2021January 5, 2021 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

A seemingly dull marble slab, used for 10 years as a stepping stone in an English garden, is actually a rare ancient Roman engraving, a new analysis finds.

The discovery surprised its owner, who learned that the 25-inch-long (63 centimeters) slab — a stone she had previously used as a stair while mounting her horse — dated to the second century A.D. and was worth about $20,400 (£15,000).

However, no one knows how the marble masterpiece ended up in England. It was likely carved in Greece or Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), according to a statement from Woolley and Wallis, a U.K auction house that is handling the sale of the slab.

How the idea of the tiny house evolved in 2020 | Fast Company

January 5, 2021January 3, 2021 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

If you’ve been living with roommates during the pandemic, 2020 might have felt like you were already living in a tiny house, just one you shared with other people you may have come to not like as much. Maybe you began to seriously fantasize about living in a tiny house on your own. The experience isn’t always as idyllic as tiny-house shows portray it. But if 200 square feet may not be the ideal amount of living space for everyone, it’s still true that smaller homes are a viable part of the solution for the challenges of affordable housing and homelessness. Here are a few of the ways that the field advanced this year.

Large Numbers Of Health Care And Frontline Workers Are Refusing Covid-19 Vaccine | Forbes

January 5, 2021January 3, 2021 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Despite the Covid-19 death count in the United States rapidly accelerating, a startlingly high percentage of health care professionals and frontline workers throughout the country—who have been prioritized as early receipts of the coronavirus vaccine—are reportedly hesitant or outright refusing to take it, despite clear scientific evidence that the vaccines are safe and effective.

Man Uses Brain-Controlled Robot Arms to Eat a Twinkie | Digital Trends

December 31, 2020December 29, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Robert “Buz” Chmielewski, a quadriplegic man who suffered an accident in his teens that left him with minimal movement and feeling in his hands, recently fed himself dessert with the aid of two prosthetic robot arms he was able to control using his mind.

Two years ago, Chmielewski underwent a 10-hour brain surgery at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital. This was part of a clinical trial designed to allow participants to control assistive devices using neuro signals. As part of the procedure, he had six electrode arrays implanted into both sides of his brain. This has now allowed Chmielewski to be able to control smart prostheses, such as these robot limbs, to carry out tasks like feeding himself.

FTSE 100 index of leading shares hits highest since March | BBC News

December 30, 2020December 29, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Britain’s index of leading shares closed at its highest since the pandemic sparked a market rout in March as investors on Tuesday cheered the post-Brexit trade deal.

In the first day of trading since markets closed on Christmas Eve, the FTSE 100 ended up 1.6% at 6,603 points.

It was the Footsie’s best day since 9 November, and only falls in bank shares stopped the index from rising further.

US shares also rose in the first few hours of trading.

Not even 5G could rescue smartphone sales in 2020 | TechCrunch

December 29, 2020December 27, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

This was going to be the year of 5G. It was going to be the year the next-generation wireless technology helped reverse some troubling macro trends for the industry — or at the very least helped stem the bleeding some.

But the best laid plans, and all that. With about a week left in the year, I think it’s pretty safe to say that 2020 didn’t wind up the way the vast majority of us had hoped. It’s a list that certainly includes the lion’s share of smartphone makers. Look no further than a recent report published by Gartner to answer the question of just how bad 2020 was for smartphone sales.