Category: Laptops

• When shoppers buy store-brand pasta and premium sauce, Walmart says they’re “value hacking.”
• The retail giant said consumers are using the strategy to save a few bucks on their grocery bills.
• It’s an approach that has proven popular with Costco members and the Kirkland Signature brand.

If you’ve ever tried to save a few bucks by picking the store-brand noodles to go with your nice jar of Rao’s marinara, you’re part of a current retail trend.

Walmart’s head of investor relations, Stephanie Wissink, told analysts at TD Cowen that the retail giant was seeing more customers do exactly that.

Their term for this cost-cutting strategy: value hacking.

Specifically, they said the concept applies to mixing and matching premium and what retailers call “private label” products within the same meal.

Wissink even noted that more customers are adjusting their grocery runs to work around the timing of their paychecks.

Since Walmart derives over 60% of its product sales from the grocery category, the company is highly tuned in to how shopping behaviors are changing in the food aisles, especially after years of elevated inflation.

Even as price increases have begun to slow down or even reverse, the cost of many consumer packaged goods from national brands remains stubbornly high, a point that Costco CFO Richard Galanti underscored earlier this month.

By contrast, retailers like Costco and Walmart have been comparatively quick to pass along savings in their private-label offerings.

Where the normal price difference between, say, a block of Kraft cheese versus Walmart’s Great Value might previously have been around 25%, Walmart told TD Cowen the savings has grown closer to 50%.

But rather than loading up their carts exclusively with these lower-priced options, shoppers are using some of those store-brand savings to offset the cost of fancier selections.

It’s an approach that would be quite familiar to Costco members, where the company’s Kirkland Signature products consistently meet or exceed the quality of the same item from a national brand while costing a fraction of the price.

A big part of Costco’s appeal is finding a great deal on a premium brand product, like Wawona’s frozen organic fruit blend, and pairing that with even bigger savings on Kirkland Signature oat milk for a delicious smoothie that doesn’t break the bank.

For most businesses, falling prices pose several challenges, but juggernauts like Costco and Walmart say they’re up for it, especially since shoppers spend some of their grocery bill savings elsewhere in the store.

“If the food prices come down,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said in November, “that’ll free up dollars to be spent in general merchandise.”

• In-N-Out’s owner Lynsi Snyder announced on Instagram that the chain had added two new drinks.
• Lite pink lemonade and Cherry Coke are the latest additions to a famously limited menu.
• The new drinks come as fast-food chains add new beverage options.

In-n-Out Burger keeps its menu concise, with a handful of burgers, fries, drinks, and shakes. The California-based chain says the limited menu helps it maintain its high quality and freshness standards.

But last week, the chain’s owner, Lynsi Snyder, announced on Instagram that the chain had added two new drinks.

The new menu items — lite pink lemonade and Cherry Coke — represent the first addition since 2018, when the chain added hot chocolate. Traditional lemonade was added 15 years before hot chocolate. In-N-Out has added new drinks as beverages are becoming an increasingly important part of fast-food menus.

Earlier this month, McDonald’s unveiled details around its beverage-focused concept, CosMc’s, which appears to be competing with beverage-focused chains like Starbucks, Dutch Bros, and newly popular soda concepts like Swig. Taco Bell has also added new beverages.

The chains are all targeting a growing interest in beverages and catering to the “3 pm slump,” when consumers are looking for a sweet or caffeinated pick-me-up.

In-N-Out is taking a small, considered step in this segment.

The chain is also famously cautious when entering new markets. But here, too, the chain has recently expanded. Earlier this month, the chain opened its first location in Idaho, representing its entry into an eighth state. The company’s ninth state is expected to be Tennessee.

The limited menu and restaurant locations help keep In-N-Out’s menu affordable, even as many chains have rapidly increased prices, Snyder has said.

“The limited menu means reduced costs for raw ingredients. The company also saves money by buying wholesale and grinding the beef in-house,” Snyder told Fobes in 2018.

“It cuts out an estimated 6% to 10% of total costs by owning most of its properties — many bought years ago — and not paying rent. In-N-Out picks its locations carefully, clustering them near one another and close to highways to lower delivery costs while also avoiding pricey urban cores.”

Are you an In-N-Out insider with a story to share? Contact Gloria at GDawson@BusinessInsider.com or on Signal or Text 516-721-6598

Currently only available to resellers of luxury goods, Entrupy claims its tool can authenticate products from luxury brands like Balenciaga, Burberry, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton. Using the AI could be a way for luxury resellers to build trust with their customers who may be wary of buying products that aren’t real.

“The whole point of doing this is to add trust and make it verifiable as a third party,” Vidyuth Srinivasan, the cofounder and CEO of Entrupy, told Elle in a recent interview. “It’s the consumer having the certainty that this is not just [one] person saying that it’s authentic, there’s also a third party that’s not invested in the transaction, certifying it.”

Entrupy claims it has a 99.1% accuracy rate

The renewed interest in the AI-service comes as of last October, when TikTok announced its partnership with Entrupy to identify whether products on its new e-commerce platform TikTok Shop are fake. The partnership comes at a time when generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT have taken the world by storm.

To use the AI-powered authenticator, users are prompted to take photos of the product from every possible angle after inserting their smartphone into Entrupy’s hardware device. The device has microscopic lens that the company claims can magnify the phone camera to take granular photos of features like a product’s designer plaque and material.

The photos are then cross-referenced with a database of millions of pictures of authentic inventory using an AI algorithm. Within minutes, Entrupy can make a verdict on whether the product is real or not, which it claims has a 99.1% accuracy rate, according to its website. The company generates an official certificate that retailers can display if the product is deemed authentic.

It can currently only authenticate major brands

Still, the product isn’t perfect: Entrupy’s CEO told Elle that it can only authenticate accessories from major brands because those are the ones most prone to being fraudulent.

Entrupy didn’t immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.

The AI-powered authenticator isn’t the only AI hardware device getting attention this year.

In September, Meta launched the second version of its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses that users can speak to through a built-in AI assistant. Two months later, Humane.ai, an AI startup, launched its AI pin — which the company says can project information onto a user’s palm through light — to the market.

Chesky was one the first people Altman reached out to when he found out he had been fired from OpenAI. The two have been friends for over a decade, and Altman mentored Chesky as an advisor at startup accelerator, Y Combinator, according to The Information. 

“So brutal,” Altman texted Chesky minutes after he got the news on November 17, according to the Journal. When they spoke to each other that day, Chesky probed Altman with questions about why the board had fired him, according to The New York Times. 

Chesky wasn’t just asking questions out of sheer curiosity. When his other “mentor” Shear briefly took the helm of OpenAI two days later, the two “helped clear a path” for Altman’s return, the Journal reported. 

Shear and Altman also have a relationship that goes back to their days at Y Combinator. The two knew each other as alums of Y Combinator’s first class, according to the AP. Shear was also a part-time partner at Y Combinator during some of Altman’s tenure as president. 

But beyond their familiarity on the startup circuit, it’s clear that Shear believed that Altman was the right person for the job. And he seemed pretty skeptical of the board’s decision to remove Altman. 

When Shear became interim CEO on November 19, he said Altman’s removal had been “handled very badly” and that he had “nothing but respect” for Altman in a post on X. He also outlined a plan for the ensuing 30 days that included hiring an independent investigator to “dig into the entire process leading up to this point and generate a full report.”

Shear didn’t get more than 72 hours in his post, so that report never saw the light of day. But he did say in a follow-up post on X that he was “glad to have been a part of the solution” when Altman was reinstated days later.

And from the looks of it, he may have been among a key group of negotiators who helped make way for Altman’s return.

• A new study says it’s possible to predict someone’s time of death accurately. 
• The study used machine learning to create detailed life sequences for 6 million people in Denmark. 
• Beyond morbid curiosity, the model could impact the work of insurance companies.

Death and taxes may be the only certainties in life. And now advances in AI may have brought us one step closer to anticipating the former.

A new study found that it’s possible to make accurate predictions about a person’s death using a subset of AI known as machine learning.

The study’s authors said the “sheer scale” of their dataset was key to their research. They collected a decade’s worth of day-to-day records from more than 6 million people living in Denmark, according to the report.

The dataset includes health records, salary, working hours, residences, and more. Using that data, the researchers created a deep-learning model called “life2vec” to map out detailed sequences of an individual’s life events, according to the study.

To test life2vec, the researchers ran a subset of the data to see if it could predict if someone had survived in the four years after 2016. The researchers knew the answer, but the algorithm did not.

“To test how good [life2vec] is, we pick a group of 100,000 individuals where half survive and half die,” the study’s lead author, Sune Lehmann, a professor at the Technical University of Denmark, told CNN. They focused on using individuals between the ages of 30 and 55 — when mortality is harder to predict.

Life2vec was right about 78% of the time, according to CNN. It found that individuals with high incomes or those who held managerial roles were more likely to survive. It also found that men, skilled workers, or individuals who had been diagnosed with a mental health disorder were more likely to have died.

The model outperformed existing “state-of-the-art methods” by about 11%, the authors said. Not surprisingly, life2vec performs better for groups with a greater number of health events in their records. The researchers found it also performed better with cohorts of younger people and women.

The researchers also used the model to make predictions about more subjective human details, like personality traits, which are typically gathered through questionnaires. Life2vec was able to make predictions about a host of human personality traits from a person’s self-esteem to their sociability.

While life2vec may sound “ominous and crazy,” it’s likely to have an impact on work that’s already going on in the real world, especially work driven by insurance companies, Lehmann told CNN.

Google has also been working on AI technology that can predict a person’s death by analyzing health records.

Life2vec is not ready to perform any “real-world tasks” in its current state but, theoretically, “We can make any kind of prediction,” Lehmann told CNN.

OLED TV FAQs

Steven Cohen/Insider

What is an OLED TV?

OLED stands for “organic light-emitting diode.” Instead of using a traditional LCD panel with a backlight, like those found on QLED and LED TVs, OLED TVs are self-illuminating. This means that each pixel on an OLED can emit its own light or turn off completely, enabling an infinite contrast ratio. Because of this incredible contrast performance, OLED displays are among the best 4K TVs you can buy.

Though there are a few different types of OLED panels, they all share the same key benefits of pixel-level contrast and wide viewing angles. Some OLED subtypes, however, have extra perks that make them even more desirable. 

QD-OLED panels, for instance, have the added benefit of quantum dot technology, which enables them to produce an even wider and brighter range of colors. Sony and Samsung both use QD-OLED panels in their top TVs, like the S90C, S95C, and A95L. 

Though LG doesn’t use QD-OLED, it does use another advanced OLED panel tech called MLA OLED. MLA stands for Micro Lens Array, and OLEDs with this tech employ a layer of tiny convex lenses to boost their brightness capabilities. The LG G3 is the first consumer OLED to use MLA tech.

Should OLED TV buyers worry about burn-in?

Even the best OLED TVs are technically susceptible to an issue known as burn-in. If you leave a static image on an OLED TV for an extended period — a news station’s chyron bar, for example — a faint after-image can get stuck on the screen.

Though it sounds alarming, burn-in is not a new phenomenon. Many past TV technologies, including plasma and CRT displays, have also been prone to this issue. While OLED buyers should be mindful of this risk, OLED TVs have built-in measures to combat burn-in, including automatic pixel-shift modes and pixel-refreshers. 

Publications like Rtings have done long-term tests with many OLED TV models, and while the results do show that burn-in is possible in extreme use cases, the tests show that it shouldn’t be a problem for people with regular viewing habits. 

I’ve owned an LG CX OLED TV for two years, and the screen has no signs of burn-in. In my experience, as long as you don’t plan on watching the same cable news channel all day long, burn-in shouldn’t be a deciding factor when choosing whether to get an OLED TV. 

• Electric vehicle sales are falling short of the auto industry’s expectations. 
• American consumers are opting for hybrid vehicles instead of EVs.
• Range, reliability, and price are all factors that have consumers opting for hybrids instead of EVs. 

America’s automakers have staked their futures on the notion that electric vehicles will dominate sales in the coming years, spurred by buyers determined to reduce carbon emissions and save on fuel.

But so far, while EV sales are growing, their pace is falling well short of the industry’s ambitious timetable for transitioning away from combustion engines. Instead, buyers are increasingly embracing a quarter-century-old technology whose popularity has been surging: The gas-electric hybrid, which alternates from gas to battery power to maximize efficiency.

So far in 2023, Americans have bought a record 1 million-plus hybrids — up 76% from the same period last year, according to Edmunds.com. As recently as last year, purchases had fallen below 2021’s total. This year’s figures don’t even include sales of 148,000 plug-in hybrids, which drive a short distance on battery power before a gas-electric system kicks in.

Though electric vehicle sales are nearing an annual record of over 1 million this year, their year-over-year growth rate has begun to stall. EVs still account for only about 7% of all U.S. auto sales.

The slowdown has raised concern among automakers that buyer interest in EVs is faltering. Some companies are cutting production and scaling down plans for new battery or assembly plants.

The reasons why hybrids have quickly become the preferred choice for many buyers vary. They range from the higher prices of comparable EVs to concern about the scarcity of charging stations to a recognition that hybrids provide many of the same advantages without the hassles of EVs.

Ford, the nation’s No. 2 hybrid seller behind Toyota, expects to produce enough hybrids to quadruple sales within five years. General Motors, which abandoned most hybrids in the U.S. four years ago in favor of EVs, now says it’s considering bringing them back.

In the meantime, surveys show that consumers remain uneasy about either the availability of charging stations or the sale prices of EVs — even factoring in tax credits that the federal government makes available for EV purchases in many cases.

“Your standard hybrid makes the most sense to most people,” said Ivan Drury, a director at the Edmunds.com auto website. “I think you’ll find that people don’t want to deal with the hassle or the difficulties of charging.”

Hybrids do emit some tailpipe pollution. But because they burn less fuel than autos equipped solely with gasoline engines, their emissions are less. What’s more, purchase prices for hybrids are akin to those of gas vehicles and typically far less than for comparable EVs.

“People are perfectly fine with a car that gets 45 or 50 miles per gallon, and you don’t have to do anything” different from current behavior, said Scott Adams, owner of a Toyota dealership in suburban Kansas City.

Here are some key reasons why hybrids, which use both a gas engine and battery power to efficiently turn the wheels, have taken off this year:

Reducing carbon footprint

The proliferation of wildfires, heat waves and more intense storms has led more people to view climate change as a grave crisis, one they can help mitigate by burning less carbon-spewing fuel. Yet even among those people, some remain skeptical that an electric vehicle will allow them to travel long distances or tow trailers.

“People want to participate in this — the idea of reducing carbon,” said Jack Hollis, who heads North American sales and marketing for Toyota, which leads in hybrid sales and has moved only gradually toward EVs. “I think the hybrid gives them what they’re most looking for.”

A more affordable option

EV prices have been dropping, mainly as a consequence of federal tax credits and price cuts by Tesla, the market leader. Yet they’re still pricier than hybrids or gas vehicles

After peaking at nearly $63,000 last year, the average EV sale price fell to just over $60,500 in November, not including tax credits or prices from Tesla, which doesn’t release them. Fewer EVs, though, will likely qualify for the tax credits in 2024 because of rules that will limit buyers from claiming a full credit if they purchase cars with battery materials from China or other countries that are considered hostile to the United States.

The average price of a hybrid has stabilized at roughly $42,000. A typical hybrid costs somewhat more than its gasoline counterpart. A Toyota RAV4 hybrid with all-wheel-drive, for example, starts at $32,825, $1,600 more than a comparable gas version.

Like many hybrid buyers, Shalinder Singh, an Uber driver from Sunnyvale, California, said that for him, the gas savings helped tip the price equation in favor of a 2024 Honda CR-V hybrid over the corresponding gasoline model.

“The mileage for the hybrid is too good,” said Singh, who makes frequent trips to San Francisco and San Jose.

The Environmental Protection Agency says a front-wheel-drive CR-V Hybrid gets 40 mpg in city and highway driving, 10 mpg better than the gas version. The owner of a hybrid CR-V who drives 15,000 miles annually would save $450 a year on fuel over the gas model.

Less range anxiety

Angie Rodesky, who recently moved to Jefferson City, Missouri, said her children wanted her to buy a Tesla to replace her old vehicle. Though she did consider an EV to help reduce emissions, she settled on a RAV4 hybrid because she travels frequently to see children in Florida and Delaware.

“I have a fear of plugging something in and not being able to travel as far, because it’s a 16-hour road trip from Delaware to Missouri,” Rodesky, 55, said. “I needed to make sure I had a vehicle that was comfortable to ride in and had good gas mileage.”

After buying a 2023 model from Adams Toyota near Kansas City, she had to wait a month for it to arrive, mainly because of heavy customer demand for the vehicle.

Brad Sowers, owner of Jim Butler Kia and other St. Louis-area dealerships, said customers who consider EVs often ask for hybrids or other alternatives.

“They look at it as a baby step into the EV world,” Sowers said. “They’re saying to themselves, ‘I can’t really do 100% battery psychologically.’ “

Cold weather isn’t a problem

Dealers say many hybrid buyers appear to have done research and know that cold weather reduces the range of an EV battery. Tests conducted in Norway, where nearly 80% of new vehicles are electric, found that EVs lose between 10% and 36% of their range during winter.

Most U.S. EV purchases occur on the coasts, where charging stations are more prevalent and weather is often warmer. In the Midwest, where stations are farther apart, Sowers said consumers worry about decreased wintertime range.

“It’s cold here,” he said. “The (charging) infrastructure isn’t that great.”

Hybrids beat EVs when it comes to reliability

In its auto reliability survey this year, Consumer Reports found that hybrids were the industry’s most reliable type of power system. Electric vehicles were the least reliable. EVs contain glitch-prone new technology, Consumer Reports said. Hybrids have less.

And with hybrids having been sold in the United States for more than two decades, automakers have had time to refine the vehicles’ engineering and construction. In general, vehicles that have been manufactured for longer periods are more reliable, said Jake Fisher, senior director of auto testing at Consumer Reports.

Analysts say they still think more EVs than hybrids will eventually be sold in the United States. With government help, the industry is moving to build many more charging stations. Ford, GM, Hyundai and others have reached agreements for owners of their vehicles to charge them at many of Tesla’s widespread stations. The industry is standardizing its plugs to match Tesla’s.

With direct-current fast chargers, charging times are becoming faster. Battery technology will likely improve cold-weather range, too.

In addition, next year, EVs’ tax credits will be counted at the time of sale, thereby reducing the price and easing monthly payments. This year, buyers had to wait for income tax returns to receive their money. In addition, over time, tighter fuel economy and pollution regulations will likely compel automakers to sell more EVs.

On Tuesday evening, the Colorado Supreme Court released a 4-3 decision that found Trump had violated the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution by his actions before and during the Capitol riot. Trump immediately vowed to appeal the decision to the US Supreme Court. If the ruling were to stand, it would severely damage Trump’s chances if he were to make it to the 2024 general election given that it would almost certainly open the floodgates to similar challenges.

At the moment, Haley and Trump are tussling over the gas tax, a quaint reminder of how primary disagreements used to have at least a passing nexus to policy. Deep down though, the primary has been about Trump’s future since almost the beginning.

Haley has netted key endorsements in recent weeks, including from New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu. Despite trailing Trump by double-digits in the Granite State, the hope is that Haley can surge at the last minute in what can be a late-breaking state.

It’s hard to see how the current, rally ’round Trump moment will help what was already a long-shot comeback. The major difference this time is that Republicans will start voting in less than a month.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, an unrelenting Trump critic who still registers in New Hampshire polls, also denounced the court’s decision.

“I do not believe Donald Trump should be prevented from being president of the United States by any court,” Christie said during a town hall event, per NBC News. “I think he should be prevented from being president of the United States by the voters of this country.”

The Republican National Committee has reiterated that it will help Trump appeal the Colorado case, just as it has tried to argue in his favor before other states that have considered similar challenges.

“Election interference,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “This irresponsible ruling will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and our legal team looks forward to helping fight for a victory. The Republican nominee will be decided by Republican voters, not a partisan state court.”

Most of the field, or for that matter, the party, has rarely looked back since federal agents searched Mar-a-Lago in August last year. Trump’s allies and would-be foes have torched prosecutors from New York’s Alvin Bragg and Fulton County’s Fani Willis to special counsel Jack Smith. Fairly or unfairly, each resulting legal headache has been temporarily soothed by top Republicans rushing to the former president’s side.

In the meantime, what briefly was a close race in December 2022 (Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis actually led in some polls) has now become a near-certain blowout just two years later.

It’s no surprise then that a New York Times/Siena College poll found that Republicans say they’ll stand behind Trump regardless of what may come next. According to the poll, more than 60% of Republicans would still back Trump as the party’s nominee even if he is convicted of a federal crime.

• 5G technology is the latest generation of mobile connectivity. 
• Before implementing 5G, founders should consider exactly what they need the technology to do. 
• Getting expert support and ensuring secure networks are essential for succeeding with 5G.
• This article is part of “5G Playbook,” a series exploring one of our time’s most important tech innovations.

We’re about five years into 5G connectivity and haven’t yet seen the full potential of the technology. Still, even in its current state, 5G — the latest generation of mobile-wireless technology — can connect over longer distances and provide faster speeds than previous generations, which may make it appealing to founders.

Before building 5G into a new business, consider these four factors.

Secure the right kind of 5G connection

5G operates on three different bands: low, mid, and high. Low-band 5G has a far reach but sometimes operates slower than 4G because of having to travel such far distances. Mid-band 5G provides enough coverage and speed difference from 4G to be notable for many businesses. High-band 5G is millimeter wave, also known as mmWave, and though it has faster speeds, the coverage area isn’t as large.

Depending on their business, a founder may want to choose any one of the three. A concert venue could benefit from mmWave, where many devices connect to the internet and send data.

Consider Internet-of-Things solutions

Elina Lidere is the head of innovation ecosystems at LMT Innovations, Latvia’s leading mobile operator and 5G innovator. She works with startups and international organizations such as NATO in their 5G research-and-development efforts. She told Business Insider that one mistake she repeatedly sees founders make is failing to consider different ways companies can use 5G.

LMT works with a guiding principle: “The future is only mobile.” Lidere said it’s helped her imagine what’s possible when it comes to leveraging 5G’s capabilities. “In the near future, everything could be connected, including things that, maybe today, you can’t imagine being connected.”

Despite 5G’s ability to power the Internet of Things, or IoT — allowing machines to talk to one another — many founders have a hard time shifting away from how we currently think about connectivity, which requires a level of human involvement. Think: human operators sending data across WiFi or other connections.

Lidere said that once she challenges founders to move beyond their existing thinking and consider IoT solutions in their products, that’s where the magic happens. She said that the shift toward IoT can often be the most enticing part for investors.

Take advantage of research-and-development labs, accelerators, and hackathons

Not everyone knows a 5G expert, but it’s still possible to access their knowledge through labs, accelerators, and other programs.

In addition to working at LMT, Lidere also mentors at accelerators and hackathons, events where computer programmers and other specialists collaborate intensively over a short time to create code. Her day job allows her access to LMT testbeds, where she’s helped test augmented-reality and virtual-reality solutions for NATO. Universities such as Cambridge and the National Science Foundation have hosted 5G accelerators, and telecommunications companies such as AT&T have labs working to advance innovation.

Don’t forget about security

Lidere said that as much as tech should be practical and easy to use, it should also be safe — something she sees a lot of startups overlook. More specifically, she said, founders can get lost in ensuring a killer use case and aesthetics, but forget entirely about security, leaving their products vulnerable to hackers and data breaches.

She suggested this is likely the case because we’re not yet used to the concept of all these new devices being connected to the internet and interacting with each other versus being connected to the internet and being told how to interact. Ensuring a secure product is paramount for startups looking for growth and partnership opportunities with larger companies.

While 5G is inherently secure, connecting numerous IoT devices can pose certain security risks since many devices mean a larger potential target for hackers. Business owners should be sure to keep IoT devices up to date and ensure device permissions are confined to their specific needs.