Southwest warns 6,800 employees they could lose their jobs | CNN

December 4, 2020December 3, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

New York (CNN Business)Southwest Airlines warned 6,800 employees Thursday they may be furloughed in the spring, the airline told CNN.

If the layoffs do take place, they would be the first in the carrier’s nearly 50-year history.

The total includes 2,551 ground crew members who handle baggage, cargo, and restocking planes, as well as 1,176 customer service agents, 1,500 flight attendants and 1,221 pilots. The airline said the cuts would take place on March 15 or April 1 for different groups of employees

The Alps are growing taller | Live Science

December 4, 2020December 3, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The Swiss Alps are going through a growth spurt, according to a new study suggesting that part of the mountain range is lifting upward faster than it is eroding.

The finding goes against the conclusions of two previous studies, which suggested that the Alps were neither growing nor shrinking.

However, an international team of researchers has now found that isn’t the case, after analyzing different isotopes, or versions of an element, in the sand from hundreds of rivers in the European Alps. One particular isotope — beryllium-10 (10Be) — revealed information about erosion rates in different parts of the Alps, the team said.

Walmart beat Amazon on Black Friday by one important metric | Fast Company

December 2, 2020December 1, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Volumes of future marketing analysis will surely be written about this year’s unprecedented holiday shopping season, but for now we’ll have to make do with industry reports that reveal people’s pandemic-era spending habits in dribs and drabs.

The latest drib (or drab?) comes from analytics firm Sensor Tower, whose new dispatch shows a record surge in new downloads of shopping-related mobile apps. Black Friday alone saw more than 2.8 million first-time installs of shopping apps, the largest ever in a single day, according to Sensor Tower’s preliminary estimates. Year-over-year growth, the report says, was about the same as last year at 8%, but it was more substantial when you look at the entire month of November—with 59.2 million shopping app installs compared to 51.7 million for the same period last year.

It’s Official: Salesforce Buying Slack For $28 Billion, Taking On Microsoft With Benioff’s Biggest Deal Yet | Forbes

December 2, 2020December 1, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

After nearly a week of speculation, Salesforce confirmed its intent to acquire popular workforce chat platform Slack in a deal valued at $27.7 billion on Tuesday, marking the enterprise cloud giant’s largest-ever acquisition and positioning it to compete more forcefully with the nation’s second-largest tech firm by market capitalization, Microsoft.

Data Surveillance During Remote Work Leaves Businesses Vulnerable | Small Business Trends

December 1, 2020November 30, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Remote work has enabled businesses to weather the storm of the pandemic and adapt to new work environments while keeping business going. Yet, with employees now working remotely, the line between personal and professional data has been blurred and that comes with significant risk.

While companies focus on matching productivity and collaboration to that of office times, they can lose focus on the growing concern of data surveillance and misuse. Thanks to GDPR and CCPA regulations, businesses are now held to more stringent standards when it comes to collecting and handling data. However with the pandemic to distract focus, the number of data breaches continues to grow and businesses continue to ignore potential vulnerabilities.

Smart doorbells ‘easy target for hackers’ study finds | BBC News

November 25, 2020November 23, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Major security flaws in popular smart doorbells are putting consumers at risk of being targeted by hackers inside their homes, according to Which.

The consumer group says devices being sold on marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay, could easily be hacked or switched off by criminals.

It is asking the government for new legislation to safeguard consumers.

Amazon has removed at least seven product listings in response to the findings.

‘He used our smart doorbell camera to track me’

Ring logs every doorbell press and app action

The watchdog tested 11 devices which were purchased from popular online marketplaces in the UK. Brands included Qihoo, Ctronics and Victure.

It found that among the most common flaws were weak password policies, and a lack of data encryption.

Netflix commits $1 billion to make New Mexico home to one of the world’s largest studios | TechCrunch

November 24, 2020November 23, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Netflix is committing $1 billion in production spend at its ABQ Studios in Albuquerque, New Mexico, along with plans to expand those studios, the company said.

In an announcement alongside New Mexico’s Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham and Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller, Netflix’s chief executive Ted Sarandos said the company would add 300 acres to its existing space in ABQ Studios, creating one of the largest film production facilities in North America.

That means roughly 1,000 new production jobs in New Mexico over the next 10 years, the company predicted, and an additional 1,467 construction jobs to complete the expansion.

How this family-run cider business is breaking even during a pandemic | CNN

November 19, 2020November 19, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Just surviving will be a huge success for most small businesses this year.

And few expect to break even given all that’s happened as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Yet Meriwether Cider in Boise, Idaho, is on track to meet that mark, thanks in large part to Covid-related federal assistance, according to Ann Leadbetter, who owns the business with her husband and two daughters.

Also helpful: Meriwether Cider makes money a few ways, so while some lines of revenue took a hit, others went up. Sales are down at its two sit-down venues — a cider house in downtown Boise and a smaller tap room at its bottling facility in nearby Garden City. So are its sales to bars and restaurants. But the company has made more from its distribution to grocery stores and the curbside pickup it now offers customers.

Apple to pay $113 million in ‘batterygate’ settlement | CNN

November 19, 2020November 19, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Apple has agreed to pay millions of dollars to 34 states over its controversial previous practice of deliberately slowing down older iPhones to extend their battery life.

The company will pay $113 million to settle an investigation by states including California and Arizona over how Apple wasn’t transparent about its iPhone battery problems that led to unexpected device shutdowns. Instead of disclosing the issue to consumers or replacing the batteries, it pushed a software update in December 2016 that impacted the performance of older iPhone models.

News of the practice upset Apple (AAPL) consumers, igniting what some called “batterygate.” Many believed it was an effort to encourage users to buy new iPhones.

Here’s all the buzz about honeybees | Live Science

November 18, 2020November 17, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The domestic honeybee (Apis mellifera), also frequently spelled “honey bee” and known scientifically as the European or western honeybee, is the most common of the nine species of honey-producing bees. It is native to Africa, Europe and the Middle East, according to the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture, but humans have introduced domestic honeybees around the world and it’s the only honeybee in the United States.

Honeybees are social insects. They live in large colonies that include a single adult queen bee and tens of thousands of female worker bees, whose numbers change with the seasons, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The queen bee is the only bee that lays eggs. Male honeybees, called drones, are only seen during the spring mating season and hatch from unfertilized eggs. The female worker bees, on the other hand, hatch from eggs that have been fertilized by drones.