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

Restaurateurs Begin To Automate Amid Labor Shortage    BY TYLER DURDEN FRIDAY, MAY 14, 2021 - 10:00 PM   Restaurant owners are blaming generous unemployment benefits for the current labor shortage. Ahead of the busy summer season, some restaurateurs are warning they might have no other choice but to use robots.  According to Andrew Gruel, founder and CEO of Slapfish seafood, with 11 locations in the Southwestern US and new ones quickly opening up across the country, if the labor shortage persists, significant changes to the restaurant industry are coming in the form of automation. "What I fear in terms of the long-term effects of this is that we start to automate and robotize our industry," Gruel told  Fox News . "That's the only option if a lot of these businesses are going to continue to try and survive, especially when there's a lack of labor or if the cost of labor is so high that it's prohibitive for anybody to grow." "It's i...

VW will start testing its Argo AI-powered self-driving vans in Germany this summer The plan is to launch a commercial ride-pooling service in 2025 By  Andrew J. Hawkins @andyjayhawk     May 12, 2021, 6:00am EDT Volkswagen will start testing its new autonomous vehicles in Germany this summer, the company announced Wednesday. The German automaker’s electric ID Buzz vans will use hardware and software developed by Argo AI, a Pittsburgh-based startup that is backed by Ford and VW. The aim is to launch a commercial delivery and micro-transit service in Germany by 2025. Executives from VW and Argo convened a press conference this week to provide an update on their partnership, which was  first announced in 2019 as an extension of VW’s “global alliance” with Ford . And while much of what they discussed was already known, it did provide a closer look at the timeline for launching a revenue-generating service using VW’s vehicles and Argo’s autonomous technology. A...

Amazon Wins Appeal Overturning $300M EU Tax Bill In Latest Defeat For Vestager   BY TYLER DURDEN WEDNESDAY, MAY 12, 2021 - 07:01 AM   Amazon has just scored a major victory in Europe's second-highest court that mirrors Apple's  recent tax victory in Europe . The American tech giant on Wednesday saw a €250 million ($300 million) tax bill assessed by the European Commission's antitrust regulator back in 2017 overturned Wednesday in a ruling by the EU's General Court, the second-highest court in the land. The money was supposed to be paid to Luxembourg (in Apple's case, the money was owed to Ireland, where Apple's European headquarters were located). In the decision, the court argued that EU regulators had failed to prove that Amazon had received an illegal advantage from certain decisions made by the Luxembourg government. Amazon said it welcomed the court's decision, "which is in line with our long-standing position that we followed all applica...

Professor Explains Flaw In Many Models Used For COVID-19 Lockdown Policies   BY TYLER DURDEN TUESDAY, MAY 11, 2021 - 07:25 PM Authored by Andrew Chen via The Epoch Times  (emphasis ours)   Economics professor Doug Allen wanted to know why so many early models used to create COVID-19 lockdown policies turned out to be highly incorrect. What he found was that  a great majority were based on false assumptions and “tended to over-estimate the benefits and under-estimate the costs.” He found it troubling that policies such as total lockdowns were based on those models. “ They were built on a set of assumptions . Those assumptions turned out to be really important, and the models are very sensitive to them, and  they turn out to be false ,” said Allen, the Burnaby Mountain Professor of Economics at Simon Fraser University, in an interview. Allen says most of the early cost-benefit studies that he reviewed  didn’t try to distinguish between mandated and vo...

NYT Calls Out CDC Over Disingenuous COVID Guidance   BY TYLER DURDEN TUESDAY, MAY 11, 2021 - 02:19 PM   With Trump out of office and Biden now taking credit for all pandemic-related progress, several new studies - some of them picked up by MSM outlets, have significantly dialed back the fear (asymptomatic spread is  less common  than previously thought, surfaces are  actually pretty safe , etc.). Now, the  New York Times  of all outlets is calling out the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for a bullshit claim that "less than 10 percent" of COVID-19 transmission happens outdoors. In reality, it's more like 1% or less, and the  Times  nails them on it. " ...the number is almost certainly misleading ," writes David Leonhardt. "Saying that less than 10 percent of Covid transmission occurs outdoors is akin to saying that  sharks  attack fewer than 20,000 swimmers a year. (The actual worldwide number is around 150.) It’s both ...

Court Battle With Amazon May Force Pentagon To Scrap 'JEDI' Cloud-Computing Program   BY TYLER DURDEN MONDAY, MAY 10, 2021 - 07:24 AM   Has Jeff Bezos overpowered the Pentagon with legal firepower? Amazon's legal battle with the Pentagon over its decision to grant its $10 billion JEDI cloud-computing contract to rival Microsoft may finally succeed in scuppering the program altogether. WSJ reports  that Pentagon officials are considering scuttling the program, possibly in favor of a different model that will involve parceling out pieces of the contract to various companies, something that would lower the legal risks associated with the project. JEDI, or the 'Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure' contract, was awarded to Microsoft in 2019 over Amazon, which has contested the award in court ever since, claiming that then-President Donald Trump interfered to sway the award to Microsoft over Amazon over Jeff Bezos' ownership of the Washington Post. The...

The FCC Aims To Stem Robocalls But ATT, Verizon, & T-Mobile Say Wait   BY TYLER DURDEN MONDAY, MAY 10, 2021 - 09:34 AM Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,   The big phone companies have asked the FCC to delay measures to block robocalls... Billions of Robocalls Consumers get billions of robocalls and many if not most of them come from overseas locations including India and the Philippines. On September 28, the FCC seeks to implement foreign provider regulation that would block most of these incoming calls.   Under the proposal, foreign carriers have to be approved by the FCC and those spamming calls would be blocked.   Rule Challenge   Several big phone companies say they are  On Board With Robocall Blocking, Just Not Now.   “We strongly support the direction the FCC is going to address the foreign robocall problem, to police the edge of the U.S. telephone network,” Verizon associate general counsel Christopher...