US president Trump made a few very important and surprisingly hopeful announcements regarding the US - Huawei saga at today's G20 summit. In case you haven't been following the recent ban closely, here is a quick refresher course to get you up to speed. But aside from all the complex political and economic concerns, the situation quite simply boils down to major losses and setbacks on all sides. Hence, the extreme backlash, followed by bargaining and delays and more recently, legal loopholes just to keep the delicate economic balance between the US and China. Well, at the risk of...
from GSMArena.com - Latest articles https://ift.tt/2JbCtcc
The OnePlus 7 got OxygenOS 9.5.4 update earlier this month which came with DC Dimming and Fnatic Mode. And a week later, it received OxygenOS 9.5.5 with May 2019 security patch and camera improvements. Now, this latest OnePlus flagship is getting its third update of the month - OxygenOS 9.5.6. This new firmware comes with improvements to the photo and audio quality, and that's as specific as it gets as OnePlus hasn't provided any details about these improvements. That said, OxygenOS 9.5.6 also bumps up the Android security patch level to June 2019 and squashes some bugs. Here's the...
from GSMArena.com - Latest articles https://ift.tt/2IVXsk5
Independent restaurant owners are doomed, and perhaps grocery stores, too.
Such is the conclusion of a growing chorus of observers who’ve been closely watching a new and powerful trend gain strength: that of cloud kitchens, or fully equipped shared spaces for restaurant owners, most of them quick-serve operations.
While viewed peripherally as an interesting and, for some companies, lucrative development, the movement may well transform our lives in ways that enrich a small set of companies while zapping jobs and otherwise taking a toll on our neighborhoods. Renowned VC Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital seemed to warn about this very thing in a Financial Times column that appeared last month, titled “The cloud kitchen brews a storm for local restaurants.”
Moritz begins by pointing to the runaway success of Deliveroo, the London-based delivery service that relies on low-paid, self-employed delivery riders who delivery local restaurant food to customers — including from shared kitchens that Deliveroo itself operates, including in London and Paris. He believes that Amazon’s recent investment in the company “might just foreshadow the day when the company, once just known as the world’s largest bookseller, also becomes the world’s largest restaurant company.”
That’s bad news for people who run restaurants, he adds, writing, “For now the investment looks like a simple endorsement of Deliveroo. But proprietors of small, independent restaurants should tighten their apron strings. Amazon is now one step away from becoming a multi-brand restaurant company — and that could mean doomsday for many dining haunts.”
The good news . . . and the bad
He’s not exaggerating. While shared kitchens have received accolades so far as a potential pathway for food entrepreneurs to launch and grow their businesses — particularly as more people turn to take out — there are many downsides to them that may well outweigh the good. Last year, for example, UBS wrote a note to its clients titled “Is the kitchen dead?” wherein it suggested that though few outside the food industry were paying much attention, the rise of food delivery apps like Deliveroo and Uber Eats could well prove ruinous for home cooks and as well as fresh food providers, including restaurants and supermarkets.
The economics are just too alluring, suggested the bank. Food is already inexpensive to have delivered because of cheap labor, and that will disappear entirely if delivery drones every take off. Meanwhile, food is becoming cheaper to make because of central kitchens, the kind that Deliveroo is opening and Uber is reportedly beginning move into, as well. (In March, Bloomberg reported that Uber is testing out a program in Paris where it’s renting out fully equipped, commercial-grade kitchens to serve businesses that selling food on delivery apps like Uber Eats.)
Yes, the businesses using the spaces are paying less than they would for traditional restaurant real estate, but the reality is also that most of the businesses moving into them right now aren’t small restaurateurs but quick service brands that aren’t particular known for emphasis on food quality but instead for churning out affordable food, fast.
As Eric Greenspan, an L.A.-based chef who has appeared on many Food Network shows and has opened and closed numerous restaurants over the course of his career, explains in a new, independent documentary about cloud kitchens: “Delivery is the fastest growing market in restaurants. What started out as 10 percent of your sales is now 30 percent of your sales, and [the industry predicts] it will be 50 to 60 percent of a quick-serve restaurant’s sales within the next three to five years. So you take that, plus the fact that quick-serve brands are kind of the key to getting a fat payout at the end of the day . . .”
During an age when fewer people frequent them traditional restaurants — with their overhead and turnover and razor-thin margins — running one simply makes less and less sense, Greenspan continues.
“[Opening] up a brick-and-mortar restaurant these days is just like giving yourself a job. Now [with centralized kitchens], as long as the product is coming out strong, I don’t need to be there as a presence. I can quality control remotely now. I can go online and [sign out of a marketplace like Postmates or UberEats or Deliveroo] and not piss off any customers, because if I just decided to close the restaurant one day, and you drove over and it was closed, you’d be pissed. But if you’re looking for [one of my restaurants] in Uber Eats and you can’t find it because I turned it off, well, you’re not pissed. You just order something else.”
Big players only need apply . . .
The model works for now for Greenspan, who is running numerous restaurant “concepts” from one cloud kitchen in L.A. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that facility belongs in part to Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick, who was early to grok the opportunity that shared kitchens present. In fact, it was early last year that he announced he was investing $150 million in a startup called City Storage Systems that focused on repurposing distressed real estate assets and turning them into spaces for new industries, like food delivery.
That company owns CloudKitchens, which invites chains, as well as independent restaurant and food truck owners, to lease space in one of their facilities for a monthly fee, along with additional fees for data analytics meant to help the entrepreneurs boost their sales.
The pitch to restaurateurs is that CloudKitchens can reduce their overhead, but of course, the company is also amassing all kinds of data about its tenants in the process that one could seeing using over time. Little wonder that Amazon wants in or that these outfits have at least one serious competitor in China — Panda Selected — that is doing exactly the same thing and which raised $50 million led by Tiger Global Management earlier this year.
No one can fault these savvy entrepreneurs for seizing on what looks like a gigantic business opportunity. Still, the kitchens, which make all the sense in the world from an investment standpoint, should not be embraced so readily as a panacea, either.
Most obviously, they rely on the same people who drive Ubers and handle food deliveries — people who aren’t afforded health benefits and whose financial picture is forever precarious as a result. As with Uber drivers, Deliveroo employees tried to gain status as “workers” last year with better pay and paid but they were denied these rights because they have the option of asking other riders to take their deliveries. The EU Parliament more recently passed new rules to protect so-called gig economy workers, though the measures don’t go far.
Meanwhile, in the U.S, Uber and Lyft continue to fight legislation, including in California, that would turn their drivers and other gig workers into employees. In fact, though a bill passed the California assembly late last month that would give employee status to contract workers, Uber and Lyft are worried enough about its possible passage now in the state’s senate that the fierce rivals have teamed up to battle it.)
Ripple effects . . .
As Moritz suggests, shared kitchens stand to benefit some far more than others. While big chains, and renowned chefs like Greenberg, can take advantage of them given their brand recognition, smaller restaurants are more likely to be adversely impacted by them, and if they disappear, there are other ripple effects, including on housing markets.
Even Matt Newberg, a founder and foodie from New York, could see the writing on the wall when he recently toured CloudKitchen’s two L.A. facilities, along with the shared kitchens of two other companies: Kitchen United which last fall raised $10 million from GV, and and Fulton Kitchens, which offers commercial kitchens for rent on an annual basis.
Newberg is responsible for the aforementioned documentary (which you can also watch below), and he suggests that he most taken aback by the conditions of the first facility that CloudKitchens opened and operates, on West Washington Boulevard in South L.A. Though most restaurant kitchens are chaotic scenes, Newberg said that as “someone who loves food and sustainability” the easy-to-miss warehouse didn’t feel “very humane” to him. It’s windowless for one thing (it’s a warehouse). Newberg says that he also counted 27 kitchens packed into what are “maybe 250-square-feet to 300 square-foot spaces,” and a lot of people who appeared to be in panic mode. “Imagine lots of screaming, lots of sirens triggered when an order gets backed up, tablets everywhere.”
Adds Newberg, “When i walked in, I was like, holy shit, no one even knows this exists in L.A. It felt like Ground Zero. It felt like a military base. I mean, it seemed genius, but also crazy.”
Notably, Newberg says CloudKitchen’s second, newer location is far nicer, as are the facilities of Kitchen United and Fulton Kitchens. “That [second CloudKitchen warehouse] felt like a WeWork for kitchens. Super sleek. It was as quiet as a server farm. There were still no windows, but the kitchens are nicer and bigger.”
Growing pains . . .
Every startup has growing pains, naturally, and presumably, shared kitchen companies are not immune to these. Still, Moritz, the venture capitalist, recalls a telling story in that FT column. He says that in the early 2000s, his firm, Sequoia, invested in a chain of kebab restaurants called Faasos that planned to delivery meals to customers’ homes but was getting crushed by high rents and turnover among other things, so opened a centralized kitchen to sell kebobs. Now, he says, Fassos produces a wide variety of foods, including other Indian specialities but also Chinese and Italian dishes under separate brand names.
It’s the same playbook that Eric Greenspan is using, telling Food & WIne magazine last year that his goal was ultimately to have six delivery-only concepts running simultaneously, with two menus each for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Greenberg, who is obviously media savvy, can probably pull it off, too, as has Fassos. But for restaurants that are not known franchises or have the star appeal of celebrity chef, the future might not look so bright.
Writes Moritz: “In some markets there is still an opportunity for hardened restaurant and kitchen operators — particularly if they are gifted in the use of social media to build a following and refashion themselves. But they need to move quickly before it becomes too expensive to compete with the larger, faster-moving companies. The mere prospect of Amazon using cloud kitchens to provide cuisine catering to every taste — and delivering these meals through services such as Deliveroo — should be enough to give any restaurateur heartburn.”
It should also worry people who care about their neighborhoods. Cloud kitchens may make it easier and cheaper than ever to order take-out, but there will be consequences, some of which most of us have yet to imagine.
Google’s vice president of finance, has joined Postmates’ board of directors, the latest sign that the on-demand food delivery startup is prepping to take the company public.
Postmates announced Friday that Kristin Reinke, vice president of Finance at Google, will join the San Francisco startup as an independent director.
Reinke has been with Google since 2005. Prior to Google, Reinke was at Oracle for eight years. Reinke also serves on the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s Economic Advisory Council.
Her skill set will come in handy as Postmates creeps towards an IPO.
Earlier this year, the company lined up a $100 million pre-IPO financing that valued the business at $1.85 billion. Postmates is backed by Tiger Global, BlackRock, Spark Capital, Uncork Capital, Founders Fund, Slow Ventures and others. Spark Capital’s Nabeel Hyatt tweeted the news earlier Friday.
“Postmates has established itself as the market leader with a focus on innovation and route efficiency in the fast‐growing on‐demand delivery sector. Given their strong execution, accelerating growth, and financial discipline, they are well positioned for continued market growth across the U.S.,” said Reinke. “I’m thrilled to join the board.”
The startup has been beefing up its executive quiver, most recently hiring Apple veteran and author Ken Kocienda as a principal software engineer at Postmates X, the team building the food delivery company’s semi-autonomous sidewalk rover, Serve.
Kocienda, author of “Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs,” spent 15 years at Apple focused on human interface design, collaborating with engineers to develop the first iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch.
SpaceX is only getting started launching Falcon Heavy commercial missions, but it already has its eyes on the next prize – launching Starship. Now, we know that it’s hoping to start commercial service for this next-generation, fully reusable rocket by 2021, according to SpaceX Vice President of Commercial Sales Jonathan Hofeller.
Hofeller was speaking at a conference in Indonesia (via SpaceNews), and noted that the private space launch company is currently talking to three different telecom companies about selecting which will be the first mission aboard the new spacecraft. Starship, formerly knowns as ‘BFR’ or ‘Big Falcon Rocket’) is currently in development at two separate SpaceX facilities, one in Texas and one in Florida, in what amounts to an internal company ‘bake-off’ to see which team can delivery the better solution faster. An engineering show-down of this kind is not uncommon among tech companies, and often produces results from both efforts that complement or enhance whatever the final product ends up being, rather than being a ‘winner take all’ scenario.
Starship, once complete, will include a launch system propelled to orbit by a ‘Super Heavy’ booster, with even more lift capacity than the existing Falcon Heavy rocket. It’ll be able to delivery as many as 20 metric tons to geostationary transfer orbit, or over 100 tons to low-Earth orbit. It’s also intended to be the spacecraft that enables SpaceX to achieve its goal of running crewed missions to Mars.
Previously stated target dates for Starship milestones include achieving orbital launches by 2020, though based on this new info those will be test or demonstration missions rather than for paying customers. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk also previously said that the company is looking at 2023 as the earliest target date for providing a Moon circuit space trip to his first paying tourist customer, Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa.
Sneakers have been a pretty effective means for helping 3D printing make the transition from prototype to manufacturing. Carbon in particular has found success with its Adidas partnership, printing out Futurecraft 4D shoes in limited quantities and scaling up considerably in the last few years.
Announced back in 2017, the New Balance x Formlabs collab has just yielded two new sneaker styles at considerably less than those Adidas. The shoes don’t really deliver the long promised extreme customization championed by 3D printing advocates, but they do bring some of the technology’s unique properties to a pair of (reasonably) mass market sneakers.
The heart of the collaboration is TripleCell, which is able to make a marginally (10 percent) lighter heel than standard injection molding, along with some solid cushioning support. The heel is printed in lattice structures using Formlabs’ proprietary Rebound Resin, which the company says is ever bit as durable as more traditional thermoplastic.
Here’s Formlabs CPO David Lakatos on the technology,
3D printing is changing how companies approach manufacturing, with this announcement New Balance is pioneering localized manufacturing. By eliminating the dependence on molds and direct printing for both prototyping and production, their team shifts from months to hours in the development and production cycles. We’re moving towards a world where design cycles are closing in on the whim of the consumer and it’s exciting to be on the frontlines of this with New Balance.”
The 990 Sport are available today through New Balance’s site at $185. The Fuel Cell Echo, which uses TripleCell In the forefoot of the sneaker, arrives in September for $175. The 990 are made in the U.S. and the Echos are assembled here.
The Nokia 2 that was launched in October 2017 with Android 7.1.1 Nougat got Android 8.1 Oreo back in March this year. And, it now turns out that was the last version update for the entry-level smartphone. The Nokia 2 was launched with a promise of two years of version updates, so its owners were eagerly waiting for HMD to drop Android Pie for Nokia 2. The customer support had also confirmed that Pie would eventually arrive on Nokia 2, but didn't share any timeframe for the release. However, a Nokia community admin has now confirmed that the customer support had some misunderstanding...
from GSMArena.com - Latest articles https://ift.tt/2FB7c1a
Great times ahead. 
