Coke and Pepsi sued for creating a plastic pollution ‘nuisance’

Coke, Pepsi, Nestle and other large companies are being sued by a California environmental group for creating a plastic pollution “nuisance” and misleading consumers about the recyclability of plastic. The suit, filed in San Mateo county superior court on Wednesday, argues that companies that sell plastic bottles and bags that end up polluting the ocean should be held accountable for damaging the environment.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/27/california-plastic-pollution-lawsuit-coke-pepsi?source=Snapzu

Up to 91% More Expensive: How Delivery Apps Eat Up Your Budget

Uber Eats, DoorDash and Postmates might be convenient, but the apps are making you pay a juicy premium.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/technology/personaltech/ubereats-doordash-postmates-grubhub-review.html?source=Snapzu

Dow plunges 650 points as stock market enters correction territory, down 10% from record high

Stocks fell sharply once again on Thursday as investors worried the coronavirus may be spreading in the U.S. A slew of corporate and analyst warnings also dragged down the major averages. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 825 points, or 3.1%. The S&P 500 slid 3% while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 3.5%. The Dow was on pace for its worst weekly performance since the financial crisis, falling more than 9% week to date.
Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/26/dow-futures-fall-after-microsoft-issues-coronavirus-warning.html?source=Snapzu

Microsoft Issues Financial Warning Because of Coronavirus

The tech giant said the virus was causing issues with its supply chain, about a week after Apple said it was facing similar problems.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/technology/microsoft-coronavirus-earnings.html?partner=IFTTT?source=Snapzu

Apple Begins Selling Certified Refurbished 16-Inch MacBook Pro Models Internationally

Apple has been offering certified refurbished 16-inch MacBook Pro models in the United States for a couple of weeks now, but today it started selling refurb 16-inch models through its international online stores for the first time since the notebook was released in November 2019. All of the refurbished configurations are discounted by 15 percent compared to the equivalent brand new models.
Read more: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/02/26/apple-selling-refurb-16-inch-macbook-pro-models-uk/?source=Snapzu

Amazon is opening its first full-size, cashierless grocery store. Here's a first look inside

Amazon is cracking further into the $800 billion U.S. grocery industry, keeping the likes of Walmart, Kroger, 7-Eleven and Instacart on their toes.
Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/24/amazon-opens-its-first-full-size-cashierless-grocery-store-in-seattle.html?source=Snapzu

Amazon opened its first cashierless full grocery store in Seattle as it ramps up its position in the grocery sector

Amazon is opening its doors at a new Amazon Go location in Seattle on Tuesday. The new 10,000-square-foot store will be run in the same way as its sister locations – offering a cashierless shopping experience for its customers. The major difference here is that this will be the first full-line Amazon Go grocery store of its kind.
Read more: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-opens-first-cashierless-amazon-go-grocery-store-in-seattle-2020-2?source=Snapzu

Apple to again skip US congressional hearing on Chinese influence in tech

Apple has for the second time declined to attend a U.S. congressional hearing that would have scrutinized its relationship with China as part of a larger investigation into tech privacy and security.
Read more: https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/02/24/apple-to-again-skip-us-congressional-hearing-on-chinese-influence-in-tech?source=Snapzu

Apple now has $207.06 billion in cash on hand, up slightly from last quarter

Apple now has $207.06 billion cash on hand, according to the company’s fiscal first-quarter earnings report released on Tuesday. That’s a less-than 1% rise from its fiscal fourth quarter of 2019, when it reported a cash pile of $205.9 billion. It’s down about 15% from this quarter last year, when it reported a cash pile of $245 billion.
Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/28/apple-q1-2019-cash-hoard-heres-how-much-cash-apple-has-on-hand.html?source=Snapzu

GameStop's concept stores: A "laboratory," not a Hail Mary

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, the gaming retailer is taking its time trialing new, interactive store experiences focused on the local community
Read more: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-02-24-gamestops-concept-stores-a-laboratory-not-a-hail-mary?source=Snapzu

Farming gave us salmonella, ancient DNA suggests

But pigs didn’t give humans typhoid
Read more: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/farming-gave-us-salmonella-ancient-dna-suggests?source=Snapzu

Why now is the time to benefit from machine learning in real estate

Machine learning is being used in the real estate sector to drive improvements and find new solutions for business problems.
Read more: https://www.unissu.com/proptech-resources/Why-now-is-the-time-to-benefit-from-machine-learning-in-real-estate?source=Snapzu

Coronavirus gives boost to iPad sales even as production capacity is down

The coronavirus may be hitting production of Apple products, including iPads, but it is reportedly giving an unexpected boost to iPad sales in China… Digitimes says that people staying home from work and school is increasing demand for tablets, to the extent of seeing some mild price-gouging on iPads.
Read more: https://9to5mac.com/2020/02/24/boost-to-ipad-sales/amp/?source=Snapzu

You Miss Every Shot You Don’t Take

You must be stretching your own limits and your own identity. You must be going beyond where you’ve currently been. Otherwise, you’re simply attempting to maintain and preserve your current status, station, or identity.
Read more: https://benjaminhardy.com/you-miss-every-shot-you-dont-take/?source=Snapzu

Apple drops a bomb on long-life HTTPS certificates: Safari to snub new security certs valid for more than 13 months

Safari will, later this year, no longer accept new HTTPS certificates that expire more than 13 months from their creation date. That means websites using long-life SSL/TLS certs issued after the cut-off point will throw up privacy errors in Apple's browser. The policy was unveiled by the iGiant at a Certification Authority Browser Forum (CA/Browser) meeting on Wednesday.
Read more: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/20/apple_shorter_cert_lifetime/?source=Snapzu

There's a huge fight over reclining your airline seat. Is capitalism to blame?

Recline or don’t recline – it’s your call. But remember: the greed of airlines in shrinking space to reap profits makes them the true villains
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/feb/14/airline-seat-reclining-video-capitalism?source=Snapzu

A Survival Guide for Startups in the Era of Tech Giants

Startups and established companies all face a dilemma when building new technology products. If they hit upon something innovative that has high potential, they invite the scrutiny of large technology companies such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. Big Tech has the money, technology, data, and talent to replicate and enhance any technological innovation that is not fully protected by patents — which encompasses most digital products.
Read more: https://hbr.org/2020/02/a-survival-guide-for-startups-in-the-era-of-tech-giants?ab=hero-subleft-2?source=Snapzu

Nearly 40% of Europeans in their late 20s still live at home

Economists blame the phenomenon on the 2008 recession and the following European debt crisis.
Read more: https://qz.com/1805520/nearly-40-percent-of-europeans-in-their-late-20s-still-live-at-home/?utm_source=reddit.com?source=Snapzu

Deliver Us, Lord, From the Startup Life

In the Midwest, Christian entrepreneurs are searching for relief from the corrosive grind of company-building—while some faith leaders preach the gospel of crushing it.
Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/midwest-christian-entrepreneurs-startup-life/?source=Snapzu

Marketplace purchased dozens of products online. More than half were suspected fakes

To test how prevalent counterfeits are online, Marketplace purchased dozens of well-known products from five popular online retailers: AliExpress, Amazon, eBay, Walmart and Wish. More than half were suspected knockoffs.
Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/marketplace-counterfeits-fakes-online-shopping-1.5470639?source=Snapzu

How I Gather News to Help Build Communities

Gathering and sharing news and updates is a bit of an art and it's a time consuming one too.
Read more: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-i-gather-news-to-help-build-communities-eec5b34e67?source=Snapzu

How to Build a Media Company

Take it from Jasmine Brand, who started the celebrity news site The Jasmine Brand 10 years ago, and is still going strong.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/08/style/jasmine-brand.html?source=Snapzu

L.A. County D.A.’s Office Reaches $18.8M Settlement on Behalf of 170,000 Customers Over Internet Speeds

Time Warner Cable has agreed to pay a $16.9 million settlement to thousands of consumers in California who did not receive the high-speed internet they paid for, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office. More than 170,000 customers will benefit from the settlement, the largest direct restitution order ever secured in a consumer protection lawsuit by the DA's office, L.A. prosecutors said in a news release.
Read more: https://ktla.com/2020/02/20/l-a-county-d-a-s-office-reaches-18-8m-settlement-on-behalf-of-170000-customers-over-internet-speeds/?source=Snapzu

The Template That’ll Allow You to Publish an Article a Day

Use this simple 5-part structure to publish more often
Read more: https://medium.com/better-marketing/the-template-thatll-allow-you-to-publish-an-article-a-day-d10dee5e57fd?source=Snapzu

What Happens To Your Mail-Order Mattress After You Return It

Earlier this year, I noticed something curious: four Craigslist ads, selling the same brand of mattress, using nearly the same text, at the same location
Read more: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-happens-to-your-mail-order-mattress-after-you-return-it/?source=Snapzu

'The Whole System Collapsed': Inside the Music Industry's Ongoing Distribution Crisis

‘It’s amazing how a company most have never heard of can bring the U.S. music industry to its knees,’ said one label exec struggling to get his artists’ records into stores
Read more: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/cd-vinyl-distribution-crisis-950327/?source=Snapzu

A Growing Presence on the Farm: Robots

A new generation of autonomous robots is helping plant breeders shape the crops of tomorrow.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/science/farm-agriculture-robots.html?source=Snapzu

Inside Adidas’s ambitious plan to end plastic waste by 2030

It’s a road map that the rest of the fashion industry should follow.
Read more: https://www.fastcompany.com/90456454/inside-adidas-ambitious-plan-to-end-plastic-waste-in-a-decade?source=Snapzu

Washington state takes bold step to restrict companies from bottling local water

Washington has taken a major step toward becoming the first US state to restrict companies looking to extract, bottle and sell local water supplies. On Monday night the state senate passed a bill that would ban new permits for water bottling operations. SB 6278 states “any use of water for the commercial production of bottled water is deemed to be detrimental to the public welfare and the public interest” and would apply retroactively to new permits filed after 1 January 2019.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/18/bottled-water-ban-washington-state?source=Snapzu

Verizon says report it's dumping Google Pixel phones 'isn't true'

Verizon on Thursday is playing defense against a report that it was no longer interested in carrying Google's Pixel line of phones, including the upcoming rumored Pixel 4A and Pixel 5 that are expected to be released this year. "It's not true," Verizon spokeswoman Adria Tomaszewski told CNET. "We continue to work with Google and look forward to the new portfolio of devices."
Read more: https://www.cnet.com/news/verizon-says-report-its-dumping-google-pixel-phones-isnt-true/?source=Snapzu

Burger King breaks the mold with new advertising campaign

Burger King is breaking the mold in its new advertising campaign. The burger chain is portraying its Whopper covered in mold in print and TV ads running in Europe and the U.S. The message: Burger King is removing artificial preservatives from its signature burger. The company, already known for irreverent ad campaigns, turned it up a notch, including a time-lapse of a decaying burger on Twitter. That imagery goes beyond the print ads that show a 28-day-old burger — a week beyond.
Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/Weird/wireStory/burger-king-breaks-mold-advertising-campaign-69072744?source=Snapzu

A group of ex-NSA and Amazon engineers are building a ‘GitHub for data’

Six months ago or thereabouts, a group of engineers and developers with backgrounds from the National Security Agency, Google and Amazon Web Services had an idea. Data is valuable for helping developers and engineers to build new features and better innovate. But that data is often highly sensitive and out of reach, kept under lock and key by red tape and compliance, which can take weeks to get approval.
Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/20/gretel-nsa-amazon-github-data/?source=Snapzu

Google gobbling Fitbit is a major privacy risk, warns EU data protection advisor

The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has intervened to raise concerns about Google’s plan to scoop up the health and activity data of millions of Fitbit users — at a time when the company is under intense scrutiny over how extensively it tracks people online and for antitrust concerns.
Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/20/google-gobbling-fitbit-is-a-major-privacy-risk-warns-eu-data-protection-advisor/?source=Snapzu

Lambda Coding Boot Camp Claims 86 Percent of Students Get Tech Jobs. They Don’t.

Coding boot-camp start-up Lambda School has been valued by investors at $150 million — but its job placement rate is much lower than it claims.
Read more: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-placement-rate-is-lower-than-claimed.html?source=Snapzu

How Saudi Arabia Infiltrated Twitter

“Proactive and reactively we will delete evil my brother.”
Read more: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/how-saudi-arabia-infiltrated-twitter?source=Snapzu

UK to close door to non-English speakers and unskilled workers

Britain is to close its borders to unskilled workers and those who can’t speak English as part of a fundamental overhaul of immigration laws that will end the era of cheap EU labour in factories, warehouses, hotels and restaurants. 
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/uk-to-close-door-to-non-english-speakers-and-unskilled-workers/ar-BB108gP3?li=BBoPWjQ?source=Snapzu

Hulu is now the biggest live-TV streaming service after Sling subscribers shrink

Hulu is now officially the top live TV streaming service, overtaking Sling TV for the first time last quarter. Dish Network reported this morning that its Sling TV service finished Q4 2019 with 2.59 million subscribers, having lost 94,000 subscribers from the prior quarter. Hulu + Live TV, meanwhile, continues to grow, finishing last quarter with a record 3.4 million subscribers. The next closest streaming bundle competitor is YouTube TV with two million subscribers. Both Hulu + Live TV and Sling TV raised prices in Q4, but not until late December, so the full effects of those price hikes probably won’t be felt until next quarter.
Read more: https://www.fastcompany.com/90465664/hulu-is-now-the-biggest-live-tv-streaming-service-after-sling-subscribers-shrink?source=Snapzu

Amazon: How Bezos built his data machine

Leo Kelion investigates the rise of Amazon and its huge data-gathering operation
Read more: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/CLQYZENMBI/amazon-data?source=Snapzu

HSBC signals mass job cuts as profits plunge

HSBC has said it will axe around 35,000 jobs as it announced profits for 2019 fell by about a third. That has spurred the bank to target $4.5bn (£3.5bn) of cost cuts by 2022 as part of a major restructuring. The bank's interim chief executive, Noel Quinn, said HSBC would scale back its headcount from 235,000 to about 200,000 over the next three years.
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51499776?source=Snapzu

Kickstarter workers vote to form first union in tech industry

The historic vote comes amid growing discontent among employees at technology companies such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft, who have started to organize.
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/kickstarter-workers-vote-form-first-union-tech-industry-n1138006?source=Snapzu

A very brief history of cloud computing

The cloud's been with us for 14 years now. Let's take a quick look at its history.
Read more: https://blogs.dxc.technology/2020/02/18/a-very-brief-history-of-cloud-computing/?source=Snapzu

Red Hat finds enterprise users are adopting open-source software at a rapid pace

The Red Hat survey found that proprietary software usage is in decline as open-source software continues its take over of the enterprise software world.
Read more: https://www.zdnet.com/article/red-hat-finds-enterprise-users-are-adopting-open-source-software-at-a-rapid-pace/?source=Snapzu

New York drops out of suit to block T-Mobile, Sprint merger

New York Attorney General Letitia James on Sunday dropped a court challenge to the $26 billion Sprint and T-Mobile merger. James was among 13 attorneys general who had opposed the mega-marriage between the third- and fourth-largest US wireless carriers, claiming that it would drive up consumer prices.
Read more: https://nypost.com/2020/02/17/new-york-drops-out-of-suit-to-block-t-mobile-sprint-merger/?source=Snapzu

AI Algorithms Intended to Catch Welfare Fraud Often Punish the Poor Instead

President Donald Trump recently suggested there is “tremendous fraud” in government welfare programs. Although there’s very little evidence to back up his claim, he’s hardly the first politician – conservative or liberal – to vow to crack down on fraud and waste in America’s social safety net.
Read more: https://truthout.org/articles/ai-algorithms-intended-to-catch-welfare-fraud-are-punishing-the-poor-instead/?source=Snapzu

Nvidia trims earnings outlook by $100 million over coronavirus concerns

In brief: Nvidia in its latest earnings report this week said it generated $3.11 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2020 that ended on January 26. That’s an increase of 41 percent over the $2.21 billion brought in during the same period a year ago and a three percent hike quarter-over-quarter.
Read more: https://www.techspot.com/news/84027-nvidia-trims-earnings-outlook-100-million-over-coronavirus.html?source=Snapzu

Local Bookstores Have A New Weapon In The Fight With Amazon

Bookshop.org is looking to generate revenue for independent book stores by moving sales, and affiliate links, away from Amazon and toward independent bookstores.
Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/joanverdon/2020/02/14/advocate-for-local-bookstores-takes-aim-against-amazon-with-new-website/?source=Snapzu

Europe wants G20 to make taxing digital giants top priority this year

Europe wants the world’s financial leaders to make it their top priority this year to reach a deal on global rules for taxing digital giants like Google (GOOGL.O), Amazon (AMZN.O) and Facebook (FB.O), a document showed.
Read more: https://reut.rs/38vFVtm?source=Snapzu

Transgender Americans are more likely to be unemployed and poor

The United States Supreme Court will issue a ruling this year in a landmark case that will determine whether transgender people – individuals whose sex assigned at birth does not match their current innate sense of being male, female, both or neither – are protected by federal law from employment discrimination. At stake is whether transgender individuals can reasonably earn a living without fear of losing their jobs simply because they are transgender.
Read more: https://theconversation.com/transgender-americans-are-more-likely-to-be-unemployed-and-poor-127585?source=Snapzu

Online retailers are destroying goods but won't say how much ends up as trash

Destruction of packages sent back to e-commerce giants is just one part of a poorly researched problem. An estimated €7 billion worth of goods are destroyed each year in Germany alone.
Read more: https://www.dw.com/en/destroy-packages-online-shopping/a-52281567?source=Snapzu

Why so many of the world’s oldest companies are in Japan

The country has 33,000 businesses at least a century old. How have so many survived – and what does it mean for Japan’s future?
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200211-why-are-so-many-old-companies-in-japan?source=Snapzu