"The plan to launch large stores will mark a new expansion for the online-shopping pioneer into bricks-and-mortar retail, an area Amazon has long disrupted.
Some of the first Amazon department stores are expected to be located in Ohio and California, the people said. The new retail spaces will be around 30,000 square feet, smaller than most department stores, which typically occupy about 100,000 square feet, and will offer items from top consumer brands. The Amazon stores will dwarf many of the company’s other physical retail spaces and will have a footprint similar to scaled-down formats that Bloomingdale’s Inc., Nordstrom Inc. and other department-store chains have begun opening, the people said."
In the second quarter of 2016, Cook and Apple CFO Luca Maestri drew financial analysts’ attention to a remarkable fact it had quietly been disclosing for well over a year — Apple was becoming a services company, too. The App Store and the company’s other paid subscriptions were accelerating quarter over quarter and year over year — and they had raked in $4.8 billion in Q1 2015 alone. In 2017, after pulling in over $7 billion per quarter for three fiscal quarters in a row, Apple declared its services business was the size of a Fortune 100 company all by itself. Last quarter, Apple saw a record $17.5 billion in services revenue, nearly half the size of the iPhone and more than double any other hardware category.
Along with its effect on the car community, the original Fast & Furious film had massive repercussions for the aftermarket industry. "I went back to the companies that provided us parts for the movie," Lieberman recalls, "companies like Sparco, GReddy, and Nitrous Oxide Systems, and they all reported their sales went up. Not hundreds of percentage points, but 1,000-plus percent."
Craig Lieberman, whose YouTube channel is a treasure-trove of behind-the-scenes information, served as a technical consultant for the first two films. "A lot of people became car fans because of the movies' influence," he says today. "I hear it every day on social media: 'This movie got me into cars. '"
The University of Tampa will soon be home to a 105-foot musical tower of bells at the center of campus, a structure that school officials say will be the first of its kind in the United States.
The tower, called an Ars Sonora, will contain 6 miles of wiring, 147 lights and 61 bronze bells that will sound notes controlled from an electronic keyboard. It also will have four swinging bells, including a 6-foot-tall, 5,000-pound bell etched with the names of philanthropists Susan and John Sykes.
More in the video below - where they also mention the iconic Bok Tower. That is a National Historic Landmark, about 70 miles away. Its 60-bell carillon will allow for a contrast to technology designed a century ago.
Blending hydrogen into the existing natural gas infrastructure has national and regional benefits for energy storage, resiliency, and emissions reductions. Hydrogen produced from renewable, nuclear, or other resources can be injected into natural gas pipelines, and the blend can then be used by conventional end users of natural gas to generate power and heat. Several projects worldwide are demonstrating blends with hydrogen concentrations as high as 20%, but the long-term impact of hydrogen on materials and equipment is not well understood, which makes it challenging for utilities and industry to plan around blending at a large scale.
Interesting demographic trends from the Fortune 500 issue profile of Tractor Supply Co.
Professional farmers originally made up 90% of Tractor Supply’s clientele; today that figure is 10%. Far fewer Americans farm today as agriculture has consolidated and industrialized. But by the 1990s. the demographics of rural America had taken an interesting turn. During that decade, the number of rural route addresses grew 25%, as more people bought primary and weekend homes in the country rather than, say, at the beach. Since 2011, according to US. Department of Agriculture data, the population in rural areas at the edge of larger “metros” has slowly hut steadily grown. And some of those hack-to-the-landers are trying their hand at small-scale farming—raising eggs or goats or heirloom tomatoes for fun and, occasionally for extra income.
Today, the core Tractor Supply customer typically has one to live acres of land, some small livestock like chickens, hogs. or sheep (in Texas, there could he a couple head of cattle), and perhaps a horse or two. “They are not big industrial farmers— they live out here because it’s their passion,” says Tractor Supply’s senior vice president of marketing. Christi Korzekwa. The fast- growing new cohort that Tractor Supply is cultivating. she says, are ‘beginning to learn how to garden. They have this passion for poultry.” Call them the “country suburban” customers.
Wired discusses some of the experiments planned on the International Space Station as we plan a return to moon and beyond. They were sent on the Grumman CRS-16 mission on August 10.
"Made in Space sent the first 3D printer into orbit aboard the ISS five years ago. Now, Redwire (which acquired Made in Space last year) is sending hardware and ingredients to try printing slabs of building material made from a simulated lunar sediment called JSC-1A. Its printer head is roughly the size of a sourdough loaf, and it attaches to the existing printer, a wide metal box that opens from the front like a futuristic microwave oven. Black cylindrical pellets of fake regolith, made of volcanic basalt, feed the printer, which will extrude (presumably) tough slabs. Redwire engineers know their machine can heat, bind, and squeeze out the simulant on Earth. But they have never tested its performance in microgravity."
and
"There are currently no FDA-approved drugs to treat sarcopenia, but Huang wants to accelerate the process of finding one. Her team developed an experiment that simulates the muscle atrophy seen in sarcopenia faster by using muscle cells that are stunted by microgravity. That speed is key, she says, to more quickly screen drugs for their efficacy treating the condition—it’d be like hitting fast forward on a test of whether a fertilizer helps a tree grow in poor soil. In their experiment, first, they’ll be confirming that microgravity stymies muscle cells. Then, they’ll test whether two chemicals that have been shown to aid muscle formation in previous lab studies can counteract that effect."
In a survey I did earlier in the year, I was surprised to find auto dealer services were some of the more poorly rated. People complain about the erratic scheduling options, the time it takes for even basic services, the poor hygiene in wait rooms, the scarcity of loaner cars and drop off services, the predatory behavior - they always seem to suggest additional services when they have your car. No wonder there is growing market for mobile services - where they come to you and provide specific support.
AAA has long provided basic services around flat tires, dead batteries etc. With their growing brick and mortar service stores, it is likely their mobile services will grow. Tesla has been delivering a variety of mobile service to its customers.
Services like Safelite have honed car glass replacement or repair at your home, office or on the road. See video below
And there are a growing number of startups aiming at that category. FastCompany profiles RepairSmith.
"RepairSmith’s pricing falls above local budget options. Today, an in-home-driveway oil change on an aging Honda CR-V in Portland, Oregon, costs $97, which is far north of the $39 coupon option available at a nearby Jiffy Lube. An air conditioning compressor replacement costs $1,583, double what a local garage charges. But neither requires the CR-V’s owner to lose hours of work while marooned at a garage, nor multiple trips to the garage for diagnosis and then repair, nor sharing air with a cabbie on taxi rides back and forth to the garage during the repair."
"Automakers are multitaskers. They are working on minor improvements for the next model year while engineering new models to debut four years out and developing technology that might be decades from reality. But now, more than ever before, designers and engineers are seeing green. CEOs such as Mary Barra at General Motors, Herbert Diess at Volkswagen, Håkan Samuelsson at Volvo, and Adrian Hallmark at Bentley are staking their careers on a successful transition to electric and autonomous vehicles."
and the more sobering reality
"Automakers have attempted to lure the public into electric vehicles but made little headway. Part of it is confirmation bias: Automakers spend far more advertising gas-guzzling SUVs than battery-powered hatchbacks. As the O'Jays sang, you got to give the people what they want.
As a result, pure electric vehicles still account for less than 2 percent of U.S. vehicle sales, and four out of every five of those sales is a Tesla, according to consultancy IHS Markit."
Diehard EV fans like Andy Slye keep growing. Here he is discussing the cost of charging his Tesla - only $1,404 after 75,000 miles.
Now, if EV makers could start passing along the cheaper cost of their much lighter bill of materials compared to combustion engine vehicles, they would become much more popular.
In 1992, Neal Stephenson coined the term "metaverse" in his science fiction novel Snow Crash. In his world, avatars of humans interacted in a three-dimensional virtual space.
Three decades later, Mark Zuckerberg just showed off his version of that vision.
What do you think? Zoom killer?
Like the 3D v 2D feel? Don't like avatars? Don't like the bulky headgear?
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