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

  Smoothie Robot In Walmart Signals Continued Rise Of Automated Fast Food Workers by  Tyler Durden Sun, 10/18/2020 - 21:10 Authored by Danny Razor via TheMindUnleashed.com, A robot that makes smoothies was showcased at a Walmart in California signaling the rise of automated workers. The Mind Unleashed has previously reported on how automated robots were beginning to take over various different jobs, including flipping burgers with Miso Robotics’ Flippy. Now, Walmart has partially got involved in the trend. A new start-up company called,  “ Blendid ”  showcased its product at the Fremont Walmart in California this week opening a kiosk, Yahoo News  reported. The stall is open seven days a week and is pitched as a way for customers to place contactless orders for a smoothie. Customers place their orders for a 12-ounce delicious drink and then an autonomous robot whips it up. What’s more, the drink is made in just 3 minutes or less from the time it’s placed. Digita...

  Amazon's Attempt To Muzzle Shelby Steele Speaks Volumes About Race In America: Wirepoints by  Tyler Durden Sun, 10/18/2020 - 14:30 By Mark Glennon, founder of  Wirepoints It’s tempting to dismiss this as just another instance of media censoring views it doesn’t like, but it’s about far more. It’s about the entire “conversation” we supposedly are having on race in America, and why it’s no conversation at all. " What Killed Michael Brown?"  is a new documentary written by impeccably credentialed  Shelby Steele , who has long been among the most prominent voices challenging orthodox thinking on race. The film isn’t another look at the facts surrounding the shooting of a black man, Michael Brown, by a white cop in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. That shooting sparked riots and gave life to the entire Black Lives Matter movement as well as the “hands up, don’t shoot” meme. Instead, Steele uses the event as an example through which his broader views are present...

GM to run robot cars in San Francisco without human backups By TOM KRISHER October 15, 2020 DETROIT (AP) — General Motors’ Cruise autonomous vehicle unit says it will pull the human backup drivers from its vehicles in San Francisco by the end of the year. Cruise CEO Dan Ammann said in a statement that the company got a permit Thursday from California’s Department of Motor Vehicles to let the cars travel on their own. The move follows  last week’s announcement  from Waymo that it would open its autonomous ride-hailing service to the public in the Phoenix area in vehicles without human drivers. Waymo, a unit of Google parent Alphabet Inc., is hoping to eventually expand the service into California, where it already has a permit to run without human backups. Cruise has reached the point where it’s confident that it can safely operate without humans in the cars, spokesman Ray Wert said. There’s no date for starting a ride service, which would require further government...

  New Students at U.S. Colleges Drop, Worsening Campus Crisis   Janet Lorin Thu, October 15, 2020, 6:56 AM PDT (Bloomberg) -- U.S. colleges are seeing sharp declines in enrollment of new students this semester in another sign of the economic toll that Covid-19 is having on higher education. The number of first-year undergraduate students enrolled fell 16%, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center said in a report Thursday. Total undergraduate enrollment slid 4% from last year at this time, led by international students. Empty seats are inflicting financial damage on colleges already reeling from the pandemic. Earlier this year, when the virus began spreading, many schools cleared their campuses of students and refunded housing costs. With enrollment waning, revenue from tuition, dormitories and dining halls is being hurt at a time when some institutions are posting low endowment returns. “The colleges are losing billions of dollars,” said Jack Maguire, foun...

Scottish Lord Advocate Launches War On Twitter by Tyler Durden Mon, 10/12/2020 - 14:45 Authored by Craig Murray, In what we think is a world first, the Lord Advocate of Scotland is claiming in the contempt of court case against me that I am legally responsible for the content of replies to my tweets. The claim is founded on an argument that when you tweet, there is a menu which enables you to hide replies. If you do not hide a reply, you are therefore the publisher of that reply. As the Lord Advocate is putting it: 2. That the Twitter account under profile name @CraigMurrayOrg is operated by the Respondent. When the user of such an account publishes a post on Twitter, there is an option for readers to post publicly available comments in relation to each post and to reply to other readers’ comments. Replies to original posts will appear on the timeline of the author of the original post and on the timeline of the author of the reply. The user of the account who published the original c...

The World's First Fully Driverless Vehicle Ready To Hit The Roads by Tyler Durden Mon, 10/12/2020 - 19:20 Authored by Josh Owens via OilPrice.com, Waymo just announced its plans to deploy vehicles without backup safety drivers, making a major milestone in a sector that has witnessed many ups and downs and stops and starts. The company, the self-driving unit of Google’s parent Alphabet, said it will soon expand its driverless ride-hailing service to include the general public in Phoenix, Arizona. “Beginning today, October 8, we’re excited to open up our fully driverless offering to Waymo One riders. Members of the public service can now take friends and family along on their rides and share their experience with the world,” the company said in a blog post. For now, Waymo’s service will still be limited to Phoenix, but the company hopes for that to change in the future. Waymo, and other autonomous vehicle developers, chose Arizona for testing due to an apparent lack of restric...

How Three Prior Pandemics Triggered Massive Societal Shifts by Tyler Durden Sun, 10/04/2020 - 17:25 Authored by Andrew Latham via TheConversation.com, Before March of this year, few probably thought disease could be a significant driver of human history. Not so anymore. People are beginning to understand that the little changes COVID-19 has already ushered in or accelerated – telemedicine, remote work, social distancing, the death of the handshake, online shopping, the virtual disappearance of cash and so on – have begun to change their way of life. They may not be sure whether these changes will outlive the pandemic. And they may be uncertain whether these changes are for good or ill. Three previous plagues could yield some clues about the way COVID-19 might bend the arc of history. As I teach in my course “Plagues, Pandemics and Politics,” pandemics tend to shape human affairs in three ways. First, they can profoundly alter a society’s fundamental worldview. Second, they can upe...