Starbucks workers plan 3-day walkout at 100 US stores

Starbucks workers around the U.S. are planning a three-day strike starting Friday, Dec. 16, as part of their effort to unionize the coffee chain's stores. 

(AP Photo/Matt York, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

DEE-ANN DURBIN

Thu, December 15, 2022 

Starbucks workers around the U.S. are planning a three-day strike starting Friday as part of their effort to unionize the coffee chain's stores.

More than 1,000 baristas at 100 stores are planning to walk out, according to Starbucks Workers United, the labor group organizing the effort. The strike will be the longest in the year-old unionization campaign.

The union says it expects the strike will shutter some stores entirely; at others, managers or other workers may keep the stores open.

A message seeking comment was left with Starbucks Friday morning.

This is the second major strike in a month by Starbucks’ U.S. workers. On Nov. 17, workers at 110 Starbucks stores held a one-day walkout. That effort coincided with Starbucks’ annual Red Cup Day, when the company gives reusable cups to customers who order a holiday drink.

More than 264 of Starbucks’ 9,000 company-run U.S. stores have voted to unionize since late last year.

Starbucks opposes the unionization effort, saying the company functions better when it works directly with employees. But the company said last month that it respects employees’ lawful right to protest.

Tori Tambellini, a former Starbucks shift supervisor and union organizer who was fired in July, said she will be picketing in Pittsburgh this weekend. Tambellini said workers are protesting understaffed stores, poor management and what she calls Starbucks’ “scorched earth method of union busting,” including closing stores that have unionized.

Workers United noted that Starbucks recently closed the first store to unionize in Seattle, the company’s hometown. Starbucks has said the store was closed for safety reasons.

Starbucks and the union have begun contract talks in about 50 stores but no agreements have been reached.

The process has been contentious. According to the National Labor Relations Board, Workers United has filed at least 446 unfair labor practice charges against Starbucks since late last year, including that the company fired labor organizers and refused to bargain. The company, meanwhile, has filed 47 charges against the union, among them allegations that it defied bargaining rules when it recorded sessions and posted the recordings online.

So far, the labor disputes haven't appeared to dent Starbucks' sales. Starbucks said in November that its revenue rose 3% to a record $8.41 billion in the July-September period.

Jupiter's Moon Io Is Glowing With Volcanoes in New Image From NASA Probe

Kevin Hurler
Thu, December 15, 2022 at 1:40 PM MST·2 min read

This newly revealed image of Io was taken on July 5, 2022 from a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers).

The latest image from NASA’s Juno mission reveals Jupiter’s moon Io in infrared, showing the volcanic hotspots that pepper its surface and fuel Jupiter’s auroras.

Io is the most volcanically active world in the solar system, with hundreds of volcanoes peppering the moon’s silicate crust, which is teeming with molten sulphur. Some of these volcanoes can eject lava tens of miles off the surface. In the new image, taken on July 5 but released yesterday, the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft caught Io in all of its burbling glory. In the image, high-temperature areas appear brighter.


Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM

These volcanic hotspots on Io are noteworthy because they are thought to contribute to the auroras on Jupiter’s poles, as discussed in research from the University of Leicester published earlier this year in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics. Jonathan Nichols and Stan Cowley were co-authors the paper, and after analyzing data from Juno, they argued that volcanic emissions from Io interact with and travel along Jupiter’s magnetic field to the planet’s poles, where they create auroras.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft launched in 2011 and took five years to reach Jupiter. The original mission saw Juno taking 35 orbits—each of which lasted approximately 53 days—around the planet, collecting 375 gigabytes of data on Jupiter’s atmosphere and interior along the way. NASA extended the mission in 2018 and again in 2021, with a new scheduled completion date of September 2025.

“The team is really excited to have Juno’s extended mission include the study of Jupiter’s moons. With each close flyby, we have been able to obtain a wealth of new information,” said Scott Bolton in the NASA release. Bolton is the principal investigator for Juno at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “Juno sensors are designed to study Jupiter, but we’ve been thrilled at how well they can perform double duty by observing Jupiter’s moons.”

More: Meet the Woman Who Guides NASA’s Juno Probe Through Jupiter’s Killer Radiation

Survived the tech layoffs? Congrats, but you're not out of the woods yet.

Hasan Chowdhury
Thu, December 15, 2022 

Marc Benioff, the cofounder and co-CEO of Salesforce, where managers are identify the bottom 10% of employees.

Business Insider/Salesforce

Tech workers who survived layoffs this year will likely face tougher performance reviews next year.

Salesforce and Meta are asking managers to tag 10% to 15% of people on teams as low performers.

CEOs may see industry-wide turmoil as a chance to "spring clean" workers considered "dead weight."

For Silicon Valley's army of workers still clinging to their jobs, reaching the end of 2022 will feel like a relief after a year that saw 150,000 tech workers laid off. But they might not be out of the woods just yet.

From Meta to Salesforce, tech firms across the board are looking to tighten their belts further in 2023 using a tactic unpopular with workers: stack ranking.

Stack ranking evaluates employee performance by comparing them and deeming a certain percentage of workers as top performers and a certain percent as low performing.

Demanding that managers find a larger percentage of their reports as low performers has already been used by tech firms as part of "quiet layoffs" to cut costs, avoiding the PR pain of large-scale layoffs by managing out people through performance reviews and internal restructuring,

But a tougher labor market for tech workers Silicon Valley CEOs are much more comfortable using stack ranking to put more people into a low-performance bucket, in a reversal of power as management gains the upper hand over labor after years of competing for workers.

CEOs see a chance to 'spring clean'

For Stevie Buckley, the cofounder of Talent Stuff, a hiring platform for tech firms, it's unsurprising to see firms get more aggressive about performance during times of economic turmoil.

"In these scenarios where there's an industry-wide impact in terms of mass redundancies and layoffs, it's pretty standard practice to use that opportunity as almost — this is a horrific term — but ultimately a 'spring clean' of your employee roster," he said.

Buckley noted that scenarios like this make it easier for companies to offer increasingly vague notions of what counts as low performance.

Employees who are "proving to be difficult" or "dead weight" among senior management, he said, can be added to that category as "there's question marks over the value you're getting" from those employees.

How Silicon Valley is stacking up workers

In November, Insider reported that the software giant Salesforce had implemented a quota system that gave sales teams "unrealistic goals and difficult accounts," with insiders saying they felt set up for failure.

Salesforce contended in November that its "sales performance process drives accountability," and that could "lead to some leaving the business."

At the start of December, Salesforce managers were reportedly asked to update a ranking of their bottom 10% of employees, despite laying off hundreds of workers last month.

Meta has also put performance front and center. The company told directors to identify 15% of their teams as "needs support" in October, shortly before Meta laid off 11,000 people in November.

Now the company wants to identify more low performers. Last week, Insider reported that the number of people finding themselves in the lowest-performance categories come annual performance reviews in January will roughly double.

Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, also used performance reviews prior to its layoffs. Managers were told to place 10% or more of their staff on performance-improvement plans at the beginning of summer. At the end of August, Snap cut roughly 20% of its full-time workforce.

Even Google's parent company, Alphabet, seen by many as the cushiest company to work for in Big Tech, has signaled it will be stepping up its performance reviews. Under a new system introduced this year, up to 6% of workers could be given a bad performance rating, up from 2% under the previous system.

Buckley said those who remain will likely have to meet higher expectations — Salesforce teams, for example, have been given higher sales targets.

"If you've made a bunch of people redundant, it can be very common to then raise targets," he said. "That gives you the opportunity to include others into that low-performance category because you've arbitrarily raised the bar in terms of what's expected."

VIRGINIA

Regulators grant critical approval for Dominion wind farm


Two of the offshore wind turbines, which have been constructed off the coast of Virginia Beach, Va., are seen, June 29, 2020. Virginia regulators granted a critical approval Thursday, Dec. 15, 2022, for Dominion Energy's plans to construct and operate a 176-turbine wind farm in the Atlantic Ocean. 

(AP Photo/Steve Helber, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

SARAH RANKIN
Thu, December 15, 2022 at 1:50 PM MST·4 min read

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia regulators granted a critical approval Thursday for Dominion Energy's plans to construct and operate a 176-turbine wind farm in the Atlantic Ocean.

The State Corporation Commission effectively signed off on an agreement Dominion reached this fall with the Virginia attorney general and other parties, in which the company agreed to implement several consumer protections in connection with the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project.

“We thank the Commission for its approval and appreciate the collaboration of the parties involved to reach an agreement that advances offshore wind and the clean energy transition in Virginia," the Richmond-based company said in a statement. “Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind has many benefits for our customers. It is fuel free, emissions free, diversifies our energy mix and is a transformative economic development opportunity for Hampton Roads and Virginia.”

In its order, the commission also issued a warning about the impact the project will have on the electricity bills of Dominion's captive electric utility customers.

“The magnitude of this project is so great that it will likely be the costliest project being undertaken by any regulated utility in the United States. And the electricity produced by this Project will be among the most expensive sources of power — on both a per kilowatt of firm capacity and a per megawatt-hour basis — in the entire United States,” the order said.

Dominion filed its application to build and recover the costs of the project with the State Corporation Commission last year. That kicked off a lengthy process before the regulatory agency, one that has included voluminous filings and an evidentiary hearing in May.

The commission initially signed off on the project in August, but it included a consumer protection provision — a performance guarantee — that Dominion strenuously objected to, saying it would kill the project.

Several parties to the SCC proceeding, including Walmart, the AG's office and conservation groups, began to hash out a compromise, announcing a proposed agreement in late October that did away with the performance guarantee but does include performance reporting requirements and provisions laying out a degree of construction cost sharing.

The agreement now approved by the SCC calls for a cost-sharing arrangement for any overruns beyond the estimated $9.8 billion price tag. The company would cover 50% of construction costs between the range of $10.3-$11.3 billion and 100% of costs between $11.3-$13.7 billion. If construction costs were to exceed $13.7 billion, the issue would go back to the commission.

The proposal would not require the company to guarantee certain energy production levels, like the SCC had initially ordered. Rather, Dominion will have to report average net capacity factors annually and “provide a detailed explanation of the factors contributing to any deficiency.” Capacity factor is a measure of how often a generating facility runs during a period of time.

The commission will also have the continuing authority to inspect Dominion's expenditures on the project to ensure they are reasonable and prudent under state law.

The project, which will be located about 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, has drawn broad support from local officials, policymakers, business groups and trade unions, who say it will help fight climate change and create jobs.

The company already has a two-turbine pilot project up and running. The 2.6-gigawatt, utility-scale project’s schedule calls for an in-service date of late 2026 or early 2027. Dominion expects the project to generate enough clean energy to power up to 660,000 homes.

Thursday's SCC order noted that while Dominion estimates the capital cost of the project to be nearly $10 billion, total project costs, including financing, are estimated to be approximately $21.5 billion.

Clean Virginia, a clean energy and rate-reform advocacy group, said in a statement that the approved compromise would help hold Dominion accountable.

“With its final ruling today, the State Corporation Commission demonstrated that consumer protection must go hand in hand with Virginia’s clean energy transition,” Clean Virginia Energy Policy Manager Laura Gonzalez said. “Absent the Commission’s leadership and pressure from environmental groups, the Attorney General, and Walmart, Dominion Energy would have zero incentive to actually produce clean energy from its offshore wind project or keep costs reasonable.”

Archaeologists discovered a Medieval shipwreck in near perfect condition at the bottom of Norway's largest lake

Erin Snodgrass
Wed, December 14, 2022 

Researchers discovered a shipwreck that is likely hundreds of years old at the bottom of Norway's lake Mjøsa.

Courtesy of Norwegian Defence Research Establishment.

Researchers discovered a shipwreck site at the bottom of Norway's largest lake last month.

Archaeologists believe the vessel, which was in near pristine condition, is up to 700 years old.

Sonar images of the ship showed signs of the boat having had a central rudder.

A team of Norwegian researchers uncovered a maritime miracle while mapping a massive lake bed last month.

Archaeologists discovered a near-pristine shipwreck they believe to be up to 700 years old at the bottom of Norway's largest lake, Mjøsa, during a government research mission.

The vessel, which is estimated to date back sometime between the 1300s and 1800s, was found nearly 1,350 feet below the surface, according to a Facebook post from the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment. Underwater images captured the 33-foot long ship in the lake's depths.

Researchers stumbled upon the site while executing Mission Mjøsa, a government-funded project to map the 140-square mile lake bed. The body of water serves as a source of drinking water to about 100,000 people in the country, according to CNN, but the discovery of unexploded World War II munitions in the lake during previous inspections prompted a more expansive search into the water's potential health risks.

The crew discovered the shipwreck using sonar imagery to measure the lake bed via pulses, CNN reported.

Courtesy of Norwegian Defence Research Establishment

Øyvind Ødegård, a maritime archaeologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, told Live Science last month that he was expecting to find some hidden treasures beneath the surface when he signed on to the project, given the lake's status as a vital trade route since the Viking era.

The vessel was in near-perfect condition due to a lack of wave activity in the freshwater lake, according to CNN. Ødegård told the outlet that some minimal wearing on the ship's metal indicates the wreck has been on the bottom of the lake for a long time since corrosion takes hundreds of years to happen.

Archaeologists said the stern of the ship showed signs of having had a central rudder, which didn't begin appearing on boats until the late 13th century. Using the evidence of light corrosion, as well as the rudder style, researchers narrowed down the ship's possible era to no earlier than 1300 and no later than 1850, Ødegård told CNN.

Archaeologists said the stern of the ship showed signs of having had a central rudder, which didn't begin appearing on boats until the late 13th century.

Courtesy of Norwegian Defence Research Establishment.

Fuzzy, underwater photos of the boat show that the vessel is made of wood and was built with planks laid overlapped on top of one another — an old Norse technique used during the Viking age, according to Live Science.

Ødegård told CNN that the ship likely went down in bad weather since it was found in the middle of the lake.

Soon after researchers discovered the site, the weather turned and they were no longer able to investigate the wreck using camera equipment, Ødegård told media outlets. The team plans to return to the site next year once conditions improve.

Previous expeditions have uncovered some 20 shipwrecks in the lake's shallow waters, according to The Smithsonian Magazine. But Mission Mjøsa is the first project to explore the lake's greatest depths.

Researchers stumbled upon the site while executing Mission Mjøsa, a government-funded project to map the 140-square mile lake bed.

Courtesy of Norwegian Defence Research Establishment

Pacifist Japan unveils unprecedented $320 bln military build-up


Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force’s International Fleet Review at Sagami Bay

Fri, December 16, 2022
By Tim Kelly and Sakura Murakami

TOKYO, Dec 16 (Reuters) - Japan said on Friday it would begin a once-unthinkable $320 billion military build-up that would arm it with missiles capable of striking China and ready it for a sustained conflict as regional tensions and Russia's Ukraine invasion stoke war fears.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's government worries that Russia has set a precedent that will encourage China to attack Taiwan, threatening nearby Japanese islands, disrupting supplies of advanced semiconductors and putting a potential stranglehold on sea lanes that supply Middle East oil.

In its sweeping five-year plan and revamped national security strategy, the government said it would also stockpile spare parts and other munitions, reinforce logistics, develop cyber warfare capabilities, and cooperate more closely with the United States and other like-minded nations to deter threats to the established international order.

"Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a serious violation of laws that forbid the use of force and has shaken the foundations of the international order," Japan said in the national security paper.

"The strategic challenge posed by China is the biggest Japan has ever faced," it added.

Unthinkable under past administrations, the rapid arming of Japan, which already hosts U.S. forces, including a carrier strike group and a Marine expeditionary force, has the backing of most voters, according to opinion polls. Some surveys put support as high as 70% of voters.

Kishida's plan will double defence outlays to about 2% of gross domestic product over the next five years and increase the defence ministry's share to around a tenth of all public spending. It will also make Japan the world's third-biggest military spender after the United States and China, based on current budgets.

The five-year spending roadmap did not come with a detailed plan for how Kishida's administration would pay for it, as ruling Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers continue to discuss whether to raise taxes or borrow money. 

Reporting by Tim Kelly, Sakura Murakami and Nobuhiro Kubo; Editing by David Dolan and Gerry Doyle.

Japan ruling party panel agrees on tax hikes to boost defence, with delay


 Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force’s International Fleet Review at Sagami Bay


Thu, December 15, 2022 
By Tetsushi Kajimoto

TOKYO (Reuters) -A tax panel of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on Thursday agreed to raise the country's key taxes to pay for the defence budget, but stiff opposition among lawmakers effectively delayed a decision on when to implement the politically unpopular move.

The tax plan, following through on Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's commitment to raise taxes to double defence spending to 2% of gross domestic product by 2027, had become bogged down in wrangling among lawmakers who objected to near-term tax increases that could hurt Japan's fragile economy.

The tax plan will be written into an annual tax-code revision for the next fiscal year from April, with the aim of gaining formal government approval on Friday, Yoichi Miyazawa, chief of the ruling party's tax panel, told reporters after the panel's meeting.

"Participants agreed to leave the defence tax plan entirely to me," Miyazawa said.

However, the tax hikes will kick in "at an appropriate time" in fiscal year 2024 or thereafter, he said, stopping short of committing to exactly when to implement the tax hike or suggesting a possible delay.

The delay would highlight challenges for Kishida as his popularity dwindles and he juggles conflicting priorities that pit restoring Japan's tattered public finances against addressing geopolitical risks from an assertive China and unpredictable North Korea and Russia.

Japan is struggling to secure funding sources for planned defence spending of 43 trillion yen ($315 billion) over the next five years, which could further complicate its aim of balancing the budget - excluding new bond sales and debt servicing - by fiscal year 2025.

Kishida has resisted calls from within his own party to issue additional bonds to fund defence spending. However, the government also recently floated issuing construction bonds to develop Self-Defence Forces facilities, Kyodo news reported, which would mark an unprecedented use of infrastructure-related debt for military purposes.

Among the three taxes, including a tobacco tax, targeted for increases, the special income tax was originally intended to help rebuild areas hit by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in northeast Japan, which was unrelated to military spending.

The corporate tax hikes would consist of a surtax of 4% to 4.5%, with exemptions for small firms with annual income of up to 24 million yen, Miyazawa said.

Many LDP lawmakers had objected, saying raising corporate taxes could undermine the push for wage increases the government considers necessary for sustained growth and inflation.

Under the defence build-up plan, Kishida told Miyazawa to come up with a tax hike plan that would secure about 1 trillion yen annually from the fiscal year starting April 2027.

($1 = 136.6100 yen)

(Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Additional reporting by Yoshifumi Takemoto and Takaya Yamaguchi; Editing by Chang-Ran Kim, Edmund Klamann and Mark Porter)

Factbox: What will Japan's military build-up look like?

 The Pacific Amphibious Leaders Symposium 2022 (PALS22) in Kisarazu, Japan

Fri, December 16, 2022 a
By Sakura Murakami

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan unveiled a new national security strategy on Friday along with details of its biggest military build-up since World War Two, in a marked shift away from the pacifism that has dominated its political discourse for seven decades.

The changes, which come as tensions grow with neighbouring China, Russia and North Korea, include spending on longer-range missiles and cyber warfare capabilities.

Here is what you need to know:

- The changes are set out in three documents: the National Security Strategy (NSS), the National Defense Strategy, and the Mid-Term Defence Program.

- The documents detail Japan's determination to develop new "counter strike" capabilities. These capabilities will allow Tokyo to hit ships and strike targets 1,000 km (621.37 miles)away with land or sea-launched missiles.

- Japan's military is currently armed with missiles that can fly a few hundred kilometres at most. Tokyo believes developing counter strike capabilities will deter potential attacks.

- Japan has been discussing the plan for more than two years.

- Tokyo will spend about $37 billion on boosting counterattack capabilities, such as by extending the range of its ground-launched Type 12 anti-ship missiles by 2027. It also plans to develop other missiles, including hypersonic weapons.

- The documents also say Japan will buy ship-launched, U.S.-made Tomahawk missiles. The Yomiuri newspaper previously reported that Tokyo wants as many as 500 of the cruise missiles, which can fly 1,250km.

- The defence ministry will spend more than 43 trillion yen ($315.76 billion) on its military over five years, doubling its defence budget to about 2% of GDP.

- Some $7 billion of that will go toward cyber warfare operations and another $7 billion toward space capabilities. Some $6 billion will go to developing next-generation fighter jets with Britain and Italy.

- To better coordinate its air, sea and land forces, Japan will establish its first joint command centre. Prime Minister Kishida's ruling party is also discussing joint U.S.-Japan commands, according to sources.

- The documents said Japan will increase munitions supplies and depots, without specifying details. The Yomiuri previously reported of plans to build about 70 munitions depots within five years and 130 by 2035. Military planners worry that Japan has too little ammunition for a lengthy conflict, a problem that has been highlighted by Russia's war in Ukraine. They also say stocks of spare parts are low.

- About 70% of the military's munitions are stored on Hokkaido island in Japan's north, a legacy of Cold War planning, when Japan's military adversary was the Soviet Union, according to a report by Nikkei.

- Japan now sees its main threat coming from China along its southwestern island chain, running along the East China Sea, and Tokyo plans to prepare supply bases in the southwest of Japan in anticipation of conflict near Taiwan.

(Reporting by Sakura Murakami and Tim Kelly. Editing by Gerry Doyle and Tomasz Janowski)

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY

THEY INTRODUCED IT WITH SELF SERVICE CHECK OUT
The CEOs of Walmart and Target are warning of surging theft. Here's how a CVS exec said thieves steal $2,000 from stores in just 2 minutes.

Hannah Towey,Ben Tobin
Thu, December 15, 2022 

CVS pharmacyJohnny Louis/Getty Images

Execs at Walmart and Target have both warned that retail theft is higher than usual in 2022.


CVS Health's director of organized retail crime investigations testified to Congress in 2021 about the topic.


Retailers are pointing to e-commerce for the spike in "sophisticated and highly dangerous" crime rings.

One year after a CVS executive testified about the "massive" scale of organized retail crime in the US, other major retailers are also issuing warnings about a surge in thefts. And this time they say big profit drops and even store closures may come as a result.

According to the National Retail Federation, organized retail crime incidents jumped 26.5% on average in 2021. One of the people who brought the problem into the national spotlight last year was Ben Dugan, director of organized retail crime and corporate investigations at CVS Health.

In congressional testimony, he said organized retail crime-related events are reported in a CVS Pharmacy store every three minutes. In just two minutes, he testified, the average professional thief targeting CVS steals $2,000 worth of goods.

A year later, Target Chief Financial Officer Michael Fiddelke has also sounded the alarm on theft.

Missing inventory has reduced Target's gross margin by more than $400 million in 2022 compared with last year, and Target expects those profit losses to grow to $600 million by the end of the fiscal year, Fiddelke said last month during a company earnings call. Target predominantly blamed the inventory shrink on organized crime.

"Along with other retailers, we've seen a significant increase in theft and organized retail crime across our business," Target CEO Brian Cornell said during the earnings call.

And Walmart CEO Doug McMillon made waves when he told CNBC this month that theft is "higher than what it has historically been" and if it doesn't slow down, prices will be higher, and/or stores will close."

Dugan appeared before a Senate judiciary committee in November 2021 to discuss the illegal sales of stolen and counterfeit goods online. He had personally investigated organized retail crime for over 30 years. He said such crimes had only been getting worse due to the lack of regulation surrounding online marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay.

"The ease with which online sellers can open and close their sites, essentially undetected, is directly related to this increase in criminal activity in our stores," he told legislators, adding that an estimated $500 billion in illicit stolen and counterfeit goods are sold on third-party marketplaces like Amazon each year.

"Let me just be clear about what organized retail crime is not. It is not everyday shoplifting," Dugan told the committee. "It is not individuals committing singular opportunistic thefts for personal reasons. It is organized, it is sophisticated, and it is massive in scale."

He said these complex crime rings often begin with a "booster" who steals from stores directly or recruits others to steal for them. The use of a weapon or physical violence during these thefts has more than doubled from mid-2020 to the end of 2021, Dugan added.

The booster then delivers the haul to a "fence" who collects and transports the stolen goods to a consolidation site such as a warehouse.

From there, "the stolen goods can be sold directly online to unsuspecting customers, to other third-party sellers (some of whom know the goods are stolen or counterfeit) or distributed to the marketplaces themselves to fulfill orders," he explained.

Crimes like these cost retailers an estimated $45 billion in losses each year, according to the Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail.

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/12/oop-walmart-rolled-out-self-checkout-to.html

Big Tech Companies Join Linux in Effort to Kill Google Maps

Kyle Barr
Thu, December 15, 2022 

A VR representation of a city showing a navigation screen in a 3d representation of a city.

Companies like TomTom have struggled for years to beat Google Map’s might in the world of navigation and geolocation, but a partnership facilitated by the Linux Foundation might offer them and the likes of Meta and Microsoft a new means of one-upping the current king.

Some of Google’s biggest rivals are coming together in a kind of rogues gallery with the hopes of creating new open source services to knock Google Maps from its mapping throne.

On Thursday, the nonprofit Linux Foundation announced its own open project that’s meant to collate new map projects through available datasets. And several other major companies have come out of the woodwork to support it in what seems like a bid to finally end Google’s domineering geolocation reign. Those companies include Meta, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and none other than Dutch geolocation company TomTom.

This Overture Maps Foundation is essentially an open source program for curating and collating map data across the globe from multiple different data sources. So in essence, the project promises it will use the massive amount of global data housed by these various companies and from outside to build up-to-date maps that developers can then use. Linux also promised this new project will essentially level the playing field for anybody looking to develop up-to-date geolocation services or maps without breaking the bank on expensive commercial data that may not even be accurate.

In the release, Linux Foundation’s Executive Director Jim Zemlin said “Mapping the physical environment and every community in the world, even as they grow and change, is a massively complex challenge that no one organization can manage.”

Of course, all the companies involved could have a major stake in such open services. AWS’ general manager Michael Kopenec said in the release that map data is “cost prohibitive and complex,” though it’s unclear if Amazon wants to break into the world of geolocation as well. Overture could also be a boon to its flagging “metaverse” ambitions, with applications in both VR and AR. The company has its own street view company called Mapillary, and it’s already worked alongside Microsoft on street mapping data.

While Google and its parent company Alphabet were combining its Maps and Waze teams, its street view and AR capabilities keep getting more sophisticated, leaving its potential competitors in the dust, even after it was cited for selling users’ location data. That domination is so great that Google Maps has mapped more than 220 countries and territories, according to the company. Maps is the most-downloaded GPS app by far, and it’s not even close.

Though TomTom’s market share has seriously depleted since highs in 2008, the company has survived against Google Maps with deals in countries where the top performing app wasn’t available. Last month, the company announced a new maps platform. TomTom’s Chief Technology Officer Eric Bowman said in an internal Q&A “The world of maps today is pretty siloed. Everyone who is making a commercial map—whether they admit it or not—is starting to see that there are limits to what any one company can do, no matter how big or powerful or well funded they are.”

TomTom’s CEO Harold Goddijn, said in a release “Overture’s standardization and interoperable base map is fundamental to bringing geospatial information from the world together.”

Meta, Microsoft, AWS and TomTom launch the Overture Maps Foundation to develop interoperable open map data

Paul Sawers
Thu, December 15, 2022 

The Linux Foundation has partnered with some of the world's biggest technology companies to develop interoperable and open map data, in what is a clear move to counter Google's dominance in the mapping realm.

The Overture Maps Foundation, as the new effort is called, is officially hosted by the Linux Foundation, but the program is driven by Amazon Web Services (AWS), Facebook's parent company Meta, Microsoft and Dutch mapping company TomTom.

The ultimate mission of the Overture Maps Foundation to power new map products through openly available datasets that can be used and reused across applications and businesses, with each member throwing their own data and resources into the mix.

"Mapping the physical environment and every community in the world, even as they grow and change, is a massively complex challenge that no one organization can manage," noted the Linux Foundation's executive director Jim Zemlin in a press release. "Industry needs to come together to do this for the benefit of all."


Map and location data plays such a fundamental role across society today, powering everything from IoT (Internet of Things) devices and self-driving cars, to logistics and big data visualization tools. Having all that data under the auspices of just one or two mega-firms can be hugely restrictive in terms of what companies can do with the data and what features they have at their disposal, not to mention the costs involved in licensing it.

Spatial mapping will also be vital to emerging technologies such as those required for the Metaverse, which Meta is heavily invested in.

"Immersive experiences, which understand and blend into your physical environment, are critical to the embodied internet of the future," added Jan Erik Solem, engineering director for Maps at Meta. "By delivering interoperable open map data, Overture provides the foundation for an open metaverse built by creators, developers, and businesses alike."

The anti-Google?

Google is a notable omission from the Overture Maps Foundation's founding members. Indeed, that such big names and rivals from the technology sphere are coming together in partnership is probably testament to the stranglehold Google has on the world of mapping, a position it has slowly garnered since launching its Android mobile operating system nearly fifteen years ago.

Moreover, with the iPhone arriving around the same time, a combination that brought maps and navigation into the pockets of millions of people globally, this had a monumental impact on incumbents such as TomTom, which had built a substantial business off the back of physical navigation devices plastered to car windshields.

This graph shows how TomTom's shares plummeted with the advent of the modern smartphone era.

TomTom's shares since the launch of Android and iOS 15 years ago

In the intervening years, TomTom has tried to evolve, striking map and data partnerships with the likes of Uber and Microsoft, while it has also targeted developers with SDKs and hit the acquisition trail to bolster its autonomous vehicle ambitions. But the fact remains, Google and its mapping empire still rule the roost for the most part, something that this new collaboration will go some way toward addressing.

“Collaborative mapmaking is central to TomTom’s strategy -- the Overture Maps Foundation provides the framework to accelerate our goals," TomTom CEO Harold Goddijn noted in a press release. "TomTom’s Maps Platform will leverage the combination of the Overture base map, a broad range of other data, and TomTom’s proprietary data in a continuously integrated and quality-controlled product that serves a broad range of use cases, including the most demanding applications like advanced navigation, search, and automated driving."
Open sesame

The emergence of this new foundation jibes with trends elsewhere across the technology spectrum, with a growing push toward decentralized and interoperable social networks driven by regulatory and societal pressures. Elsewhere, the Linux Foundation also recently announced the OpenWallet Foundation to develop interoperable digital wallets, pushing back against the closed payment ecosystems fostered by tech juggernauts including Google and Apple.

Today's announcement very much fits into that broader trend.

The founding companies are planning to engage in collaborative map-building programs, meshing data from myriad open data sources and knocking it into a format that's consistent, standardized, and fit for use in production systems and applications. This will include channeling data from long-established projects such as OpenStreetMap, in addition to open data provided by municipalities.

While there are only four member companies at launch, there are plans to expand things in the future to include any company with a direct vested interest in open map data.

For now, the Overture Maps Foundation said that it's working toward releasing its first datasets in the first half of 2023, and will include "basic" layers such as roads, buildings, and administrative information. Over time, this will expand to include more places, routing and navigation, and 3D building data.

House approves referendum to 'decolonize' Puerto Rico


Rep. Norma Torres, D-Calif., left, speaks with Del. Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon, R-Puerto Rico, joined at right by Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., after a vote on the Puerto Rico Status Act that would lay out a process for the people of Puerto Rico to determine the future of their political status, in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 15, 2022.

 (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FARNOUSH AMIRI and DÁNICA COTO
Thu, December 15, 2022 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. House passed a bill Thursday that would allow Puerto Rico to hold the first-ever binding referendum on whether to become a state or gain some sort of independence, in a last-ditch effort that stands little chance of passing the Senate.

The bill, which passed 233-191 with some Republican support, would offer voters in the U.S. territory three options: statehood, independence or independence with free association.

“It is crucial to me that any proposal in Congress to decolonize Puerto Rico be informed and led by Puerto Ricans,” said Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, which oversees affairs in U.S. territories.

The proposal would commit Congress to accept Puerto Rico into the United States as the 51st state if voters on the island approved it. Voters also could choose outright independence or independence with free association, whose terms would be defined following negotiations over foreign affairs, U.S. citizenship and use of the U.S. dollar.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who has worked on the issue throughout his career, said it was “a long and torturous path” to get the proposal to the House floor.

“For far too long, the people of Puerto Rico have been excluded from the full promise of American democracy and self-determination that our nation has always championed,” the Maryland Democrat said.

After passing the Democrat-controlled House, the bill now goes to a split Senate where it faces a ticking clock before the end of the year and Republican lawmakers who have long opposed statehood.

Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi, of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, traveled to Washington for the vote. He called it a historic day and said the 3.2 million U.S. citizens who live on the island lack equality, do not have fair representation in the federal government and cannot vote in general elections.

“This has not been an easy fight. We still have work to do,” he said. “Our quest to decolonize Puerto Rico is a civil rights issue.”

Members of his party, including Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González, cheered the approval of the bill, although reaction in the U.S. territory was largely muted and tinged with frustration since it is expected to be voted down in the Senate.

The proposal of a binding referendum has exasperated many on an island that already has held seven nonbinding referendums on its political status, with no overwhelming majority emerging. The last referendum was held in November 2020, with 53% of votes for statehood and 47% against, with only a little more than half of registered voters participating.

The proposed binding referendum would be the first time that Puerto Rico's current status as a U.S. commonwealth is not included as an option, a blow to the main opposition Popular Democratic Party, which upholds the status quo.

Pablo José Hernández Rivera, an attorney in Puerto Rico, said approval of the bill by the House would be “inconsequential” like the approval of previous bills in 1998 and 2010.

“We Puerto Ricans are tired of the fact that the New Progressive Party has spent 28 years in Washington spending resources on sterile and undemocratic status projects,” he said.

González, Puerto Rico’s representative in Congress, praised the bill and said it would provide the island with the self-determination it deserves.

“Many of us are not in agreement about how that future should be, but we all accept that the decision should belong to the people of Puerto Rico,” she said.

___

Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico.

All but 16 House Republicans vote against bill to allow Puerto Rico to decide its future

Bryan Metzger
Thu, December 15, 2022

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other House Republicans at a press conference on Wednesday.Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

• The House passed a bill to allow Puerto Rico voters to choose independence, statehood, or free association.

• Only 16 Republicans joined all Democrats in supporting the bill.

• Republicans opposed the bill in part due to long-standing opposition to Puerto Rico's statehood.

The House of Representatives voted by a 233-191 margin on Thursday to pass the Puerto Rico Status Act, with all but 16 House Republicans voting against the measure. Every House Democrat voted for the bill.

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who worked on the bill and is of Puerto Rican descent, presided over the vote.

 

The bill would give voters in Puerto Rico the opportunity to vote in a plebiscite next November, allowing them to choose between statehood, independence, or to enter into a compact of free association with the United States.

Lawmakers had long been working on the bill, and its addition to the calendar this week was unexpected. A handful of Republicans had co-sponsored the legislation, including Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida and Don Bacon of Nebraska.

It also had the support of the territory's Republican Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González-Colón who serves as a non-voting representative for the island in Congress.

Despite House passage, the bill is unlikely to pass the Senate, where it would need at least 10 Republican supporters.

House Republicans on Thursday cited a number of reasons for opposing the bill, including a lack of debate and the possibility that it would lead to statehood, which they've long opposed.

"At this point in time I'm not, you know, interested in going down that road," Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas told Insider. "We didn't have a debate about it, I haven't been a part of any of the debates on this. They're trying to jam this through right before Christmas."

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia told Insider that she didn't think the bill was "the right way to go about something like that."

"I'm just not interested in Puerto Rico being a state," she said, adding that she didn't believe people living in Puerto Rico should get to vote on that.

Here are the 16 Republicans who voted for the bill:

• Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska

• Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming

• Rep. Rodney Davis of Illinois

• Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania

• Rep. Mayra Flores of Texas

• Rep. Andrew Garbarino of New York

• Rep. Tony Gonzalez of Ohio

• Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington

• Rep. Bill Huizenga of Michigan

• Rep. Dave Joyce of Ohio

• Rep. John Katko of New York

• Rep. Dan Newhouse of Washington

• Rep. Bill Posey of Florida

• Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar of New York

• Rep. Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania

• Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan

Experimental Shock-Absorbing Material Can Stop Projectiles Traveling Over 3,000 MPH


Andrew Liszewski
Thu, December 15, 2022 

Photo: Wikimedia - Nathan Boor & Kurt Groover of Aimed Research (Other)

A team of researchers from the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, have used a protein called talin, which functions as “the cell’s natural shock absorber,” to create a new shock-absorbing material capable of stopping projectiles traveling at supersonic speeds without destroying them in the process.

Developing materials to improve the efficacy of armor isn’t a pursuit exclusive to the militaries of the world. Shock-absorbing materials have benefits in other fields, too. In the aerospace industry, they’ll be essential as we continue to expand our presence in space, where even tiny particles moving at supersonic speeds can cause significant damage to spacecraft. Even other researchers can benefit from breakthroughs in this field, particularly those conducting experiments with high-speed projectiles that eventually need to be safely stopped.

The current design of projectile-stopping armors and materials uses a mix of ceramics and fiber-based components layered together, which are effective at stopping a high-speed object from passing straight through them, but end up transferring a lot of the projectile’s kinetic energy onto the armored vehicle or person, often resulting in non-fatal injuries. These materials also tend to get destroyed in the process, requiring them to be replaced after every use. This new research brings us one step closer to solving the unique challenges of developing shock-absorbing materials.

At the molecular level, talin has a structure that unfolds under tension to dissipate energy and then fold back up again afterwards, leaving it ready to absorb shocks again and again, keeping cells resilient against outside forces. When the protein was combined with other ingredients and polymerised into a TSAM (or Talin Shock Absorbing Material), those unique shock-absorbing properties were maintained.

To test the effectiveness of TSAMs, the researchers subjected them to impacts from basalt particles (around 60 µM in size, or roughly the diameter of a human hair) and later, larger aluminum shrapnel, traveling at 1.5 kilometers/second. That’s over 3,300 miles per hour, and three times faster than the speed of a nine-millimeter bullet fired from a hand gun. Not only was the impact of the particles completely absorbed by the TSAM material, but the particles themselves weren’t destroyed in the process.

The size of these test materials means the particles weren’t imparting as much energy into the TSAMs as a projectile fired from something like a tank would, but it does help demonstrate their potential. Eventually, the researchers are confident the hydrogel could be incorporated into lighter wearable armors for soldiers that do a better job of absorbing the energy of an impact, while retaining their shock-absorbing capabilities, even after saving a life.

It would potentially be even more useful for the aerospace industry, both for protecting spacecraft and for research involving space debris, dust, and micrometeoroids, which could be captured without being destroyed in the process. Of course, the captured micrometeroids would be easier to study than a handful of decimated dust. But far more important to regular readers of Gizmodo is how this new material can be incorporated into smartphone cases, making our expensive investments as durable and resilient as the nearly indestructible Nokia handsets from years ago.