Ken Garen, CPA, Co-Founder and President, UBCC

Amazon and Walmart are in an all-out price war that is terrifying America’s biggest brands Grocery suppliers are feeling the squeeze — big-time. BY JASON DEL REY@DELREY  MAR 30, 2017, 1:44PM EDT Last month, Walmart gathered some of America’s biggest household brands near its Arkansas headquarters for a tough talk. For years, Walmart had dominated the retail landscape on the back of its “Everyday Low Price” guarantee. But now, Walmart was too often getting beaten on price. So company executives were there, in part, to reset expectations with Walmart’s suppliers — the consumer brands whose chips, sodas and diapers line the shelves of its Supercenters and its website. Walmart wants to have the lowest price on 80 percent of its sales, according to a presentation the company made at the summit, which Recode reviewed. To accomplish that, the brands that sell their goods through Walmart would have to cut their wholesale prices or make other cost adjustments to shave at

Google voice searches records and keeps conversations people have around their phones – but the files can be deleted Just talking is enough to activate the recordings – but thankfully there's an easy way of hearing and deleting them Andrew Griffin March 31 2017 1:17 PM Google could have a record of everything you have said around it for years, and you can listen to it yourself. The company quietly records many of the conversations that people have around its products. The feature works as a way of letting people search with their voice, and storing those recordings presumably lets Google improve its language recognition tools as well as the results that it gives to people. But it also comes with an easy way of listening to and deleting all of the information that it collects. That’s done through a special page that brings together the information that Google has on you. It’s found by heading to Google’s history page and looking at the long list of recordi

Latest WikiLeaks release shows how the CIA uses computer code to hide the origins of its hacking attacks and 'disguise them as Russian or Chinese activity' WikiLeaks published 676 source code files today which it claimed are from CIA It says the CIA disguised its own hacking attacks to make it appear those responsible were Russian, Chinese, Iranian or North Korean By MAIL ONLINE REPORTER PUBLISHED: 07:02 EDT, 31 March 2017 | UPDATED: 14:17 EDT, 31 March 2017 WikiLeaks has published hundreds more files today which it claims show the CIA went to great lengths to disguise its own hacking attacks and point the finger at Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. The 676 files released today are part of WikiLeaks' Vault 7 tranche of files and they claim to give an insight into the CIA's Marble software, which can forensically disguise viruses, trojans and hacking attacks. WikiLeaks says the source code suggests Marble has test examples in Chinese, Russian,

Don't Believe the Self-Driving Car Crash Hype BY DOUG NEWCOMB MARCH 31, 2017 The media frenzy following accidents involving autonomous technology is reminiscent of the fear that greeted the first horseless carriages. After centuries of getting around primarily via horses, many people viewed the first automobiles with apprehension. This newfangled "horseless carriage" was considered too fast and dangerous to ever catch on. In the late 19th century, England even had a law called the Red Flag Act, which required self-propelled vehicles to be led at walking pace by someone waving a red flag. In 1895, the New York Times noted that the law would effectively "destroy the usefulness of a horseless carriage," although we now know that the car (and good sense) prevailed. It wasn't just fear of speed that spooked early detractors of motor cars. Some thought that horses had better sense than humans. Another New York Times article from 1928 that comp

Facial Recognition Tech Could Ensnare Millions Of Innocent Americans For Crimes They Didn’t Commit by   Tyler Durden Mar 30, 2017 10:55 PM It’s often the case that new technologies arrive on the scene faster than our society and its legal code can keep up. Sometimes this can be a good thing. For instance, 3D printing allows people to print out unregulated gun parts, thus allowing gun owners to circumvent the onerous laws of our government, which has struggled to come up with new laws to restrict the technology. When technology advances at a breakneck pace however, it can also be quite dangerous for our liberties.   This is especially true in regards to privacy. If a new technology makes it easy for the government to track us, you can bet that the government is going to take its sweet time updating the legal code in a way that will protect us from surveillance. That certainly seems to be the case with facial recognition software. During a recent Congressional Oversight Co

GE's Jeff Immelt: Robots won't kill human jobs By Christopher Matthews  14 hrs ago General Electric is going all in on futuristic manufacturing, having ditched businesses like finance and network television to focus on building stuff like jet engines and gas turbines. Here's what CEO Jeff Immelt thinks about automation and the future of work: He thinks fears of robot-driven joblessness are overblown, even as he invests billions in automation: "This notion of the war of the robots happening in the short term, that's more of a Silicon Valley vision than the real world." Robots are making Americans richer: Businesses can only pay workers more if they become more productive, and automation allows humans to focus on more valuable tasks. It's not just technology, but politics that drive automation: "The question of the last election was, 'how do you create $25 per hour jobs?" Immelt argues. In a global economy, jobs that do

ESPN Has Seen the Future of TV and They’re Not Really Into It As more fans cut the cord and go mobile, the network is busy protecting its cable-TV money machine. by Ira Boudway  and Max Chafkin March 30, 2017, 2:00 AM PDT The main SportsCenter studio at ESPN’s headquarters in Bristol, Conn., is a blue-lit box. The ceiling is as high as a cathedral’s, and there’s enough floor space to land a helicopter. Screens are everywhere. “We have about 150 different monitors in here and, of course, miles of LED lighting,” says Aaron LaBerge, the sports network’s chief technology officer, during a recent tour. The hosts’ desk faces a wall of screens that jut out and recede like a giant chest of drawers. To one side, there’s a six-panel touchscreen that can slide apart and come together with the push of a button; a more modest 84-inch touchscreen across the way displays an interactive bracket for the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament. The show’s producers can also summon virtua

With Washington’s Blessing, Telecom Giants Can Mine Your Web History Congress’s repeal of FCC privacy rules could be data boon for Verizon, Comcast, AT&T By JACK MARSHALL March 30, 2017 6:30 a.m. ET What if your telecom company tracked the websites you visit, the apps you use, the TV shows you watch, the stores you shop at and the restaurants you eat at, and then sold that information to advertisers? In theory, it’s possible, given the stance Washington is taking on online privacy. Lawmakers on Tuesday voted to overturn privacy rules that required telecom companies to get customers’ permission before sharing their web-browsing and app usage history with third parties. The White House said Wednesday President Donald Trump intends to sign the measure into law. Undoing the rules, which had been adopted last fall by the Federal Communications Commission but hadn’t gone into effect, is a boon to Verizon Communications Inc., Comcast Corp. and AT&T Inc., which

5 Galaxy S8 features people can’t stop talking about, and 2 features no one knows about Zach Epstein  @zacharye March 30th, 2017 at 10:14 AM It’s funny how you can know just about everything there is to know about a new flagship smartphone thanks to rumors and leaks, and yet still be blown away when the phone is finally announced. We’ve seen it time and time again with Apple’s iPhone lineup since all the details always leak months in advance, and now we’re seeing it with Samsung’s hot new Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. Android fans lost count of all the leaks as they flooded the web in the weeks ahead of Samsung’s big Unpacked press conference on Wednesday, and we’ve seen photos and videos leak time and time again. Once people actually saw the full Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ picture come together on stage yesterday, however, they knew they were watching something special. We already gave you an extensive hands-on preview of the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+, and we also ran through a

Robots bringing meals to DC (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) POSTED:MAR 29 2017 05:37PM EDT UPDATED:MAR 29 2017 05:37PM EDT WASHINGTON (AP) - Some hungry customers in the nation's capital may be surprised to discover a robot is delivering their pastrami on rye. The delivery service Postmates is using knee-high, six-wheeled robots to bring food to customers. The robots can travel up to 4 mph and use sensors and cameras to navigate sidewalks and cross the street. Initially, the robots will be accompanied by a person, but eventually their progress will be monitored remotely. Postmates says it's the first service of its kind in the United States. Customers put their orders in online and once the robot arrives, they get a text with a code to unlock it and grab their food. Postmates already uses human couriers to deliver food and goods in scores of cities. The robots are made by Starship Technologies. http://www.fox5ny.com/news/244785796-story

Federal judge tosses suit against property owner who shot down hovering drone Posted Mar 27, 2017 08:40 am CDT By Debra Cassens Weiss A federal judge in Louisville has dismissed a suit seeking damages against a property owner who shot down a hobbyist’s drone in 2015. Senior U.S. District Judge Thomas Russell dismissed the suit against self-described “drone slayer” William Merideth, citing a lack of federal subject matter jurisdiction, Ars Technica reports. The suit by hobbyist John David Boggs had sought a declaratory judgment that a drone is an “aircraft” under federal law, that Boggs’ drone was operating in U.S. airspace, and that property owners can’t shoot at drones in this airspace. The suit also sought $1,500 in damages. Russell wrote in a March 21 opinion that the suit was essentially a garden-variety state tort claim that should not be in federal court. Although the Federal Aviation Administration has an interest in enforcing regulations governing federal

Domino’s Will Begin Using Robots to Deliver Pizzas in Europe Will use Starship’s sidewalk droid in Holland, Germany Adds to Starship’s partnerships in food, parcel delivery by Jeremy Kahn March 29, 2017, 2:00 AM PDT Starship Technologies, the London-based company that has created six-wheeled self-driving delivery robots, will begin taking customers Domino’s pizzas in Germany and the Netherlands. Starship, launched in July 2014 by two former Skype co-founders, Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, will whisk pizzas to customers’ doors if they live within a one-mile radius of certain Dominos pizza shops in "select German and Dutch cities," the company said in a statement. Domino’s Pizza Enterprises Ltd., the world’s largest franchise licence owner of Domino’s Pizza, with operations in markets across Asia and Europe, has formed a group called Domino’s Robotic Unit to oversee the project. Domino’s has tested ground-based autonomous vehicles for pizza delivery in

Six jobs are eliminated for every robot introduced into the workforce, a new study says The threat of robots taking our jobs is very real. BY APRIL GLASER@APRILASER  MAR 28, 2017, 6:07PM EDT Job-stealing robots aren’t some distant scenario that’s unlikely to cause problems for another “50 to 100 years” from now, as Donald Trump’s treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin said in an interview last week. New research released from the National Bureau of Economic Research yesterday shows that between 1990 and 2007, when one or more industrial robots were introduced into the workforce, it led to the elimination of 6.2 jobs within a local area where people commute for work. The report, which was authored by economists Daron Acemoglu of MIT and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University, found that the wages of workers also declined slightly as a result of robots entering the U.S. economy. Wages dropped between 0.25 percent and 0.50 percent per 1,000 employees when one or more robots