Category: Laptops

• Slice, which handles online orders for pizza shops, is hiring a full-time pizza influencer.
• The salaried position pays up to six figures and is eligible for benefits.
• The successful applicant will get a weekly pizza stipend to spend on creating content for the brand.

A online pizza platform is looking for a full-time influencer for its marketing team, and is offering tasty pay and pizza perks too.

Slice is an app that connects local pizzerias to customers who prefer ordering online. It’s searching for a pizza influencer who will become the “‘face’ of the company” on its social media accounts for a salary of $85,000 to $110,000, per the job posting.

The successful applicant will be tasked with shooting, editing, and appearing in videos for social media and get a weekly stipend to help pay for the pizza-related content.

The application process includes submitting a video resume, and a 45-minute presentation and mock pitch. Although New York City is the preferred location, Slice is accepting applicants in other major US cities.

Matthew Kobach, the company’s marketing VP, told Insider the ideal candidate is someone who can make “pizza synonymous with Slice.”

It’s a pizza lover’s “dream job” according to reactions on X (formerly known as Twitter). Although it’s a full-time role with benefits and a 401k, Slice’s pizza influencer will be eligible to take deals from other brands on a case-by-case basis, Kobach said.

Since joining Slice, he set out to find fun ways to relate to potential customers and increase brand awareness.

“Social media should be fun and entertaining,” Kobach said. “If you make it essentially glorified ads, no one is going to watch them, and your organic social media is really going to serve no purpose.”

Kobach estimates there have been thousands of applications since the job was first posted. He says no big online following is needed to apply.

• Parents say Apple’s parental controls are failing them, The Wall Street Journal reported.
• The company has acknowledged the issue and promised to make “updates to improve the situation.”
• Issues with Downtime and Family Sharing have been reported as far back as 2020 in Apple forums.

Some families who use Apple products say they’re having issues with the parental Screen Time controls, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Apple introduced Screen Time in 2018, and it included a setting called Downtime. The feature is meant to allow parents to restrict apps and limit screen time on their children’s iPhones, iPads, and iPods from their own devices.

Lately, parents are reporting that their changes haven’t gone into effect, and kids are getting extra time on their apps or even facing no restrictions on adult content.

“We are aware that some users may be experiencing an issue where Screen Time settings are unexpectedly reset,” an Apple representative told the Journal. “We take these reports very seriously and we have been, and will continue, making updates to improve the situation.”

When iOS 16.5 was released in May, Apple said the update would fix “an issue where Screen Time settings may reset or not sync across all devices.”

It’s unclear when the issue first began, but an Apple discussion page has complaints of parental control issues from as far back as 2020 and as recently as this month. 

“I’ve used screen time for my kids to limit time on certain apps,” one user wrote in December. “It worked well for years, but now I will set the limits and then they will suddenly disappear after a day or even less.”

Others in the thread said they’d struggled with the issue for “months,” with some contacting Apple directly for help. 

Mark Rowe, a CEO based in Boston, told the Journal he noticed one of his four children had no limits on their access to adult websites when he checked the Family Sharing settings.

“It’s frustrating that something that’s so simple and should work doesn’t,” Rowe told the newspaper. “How much time can I spend on this every week?”

In April, Apple CEO Tim Cook advised parents to set “hard rails” on their children’s screen time, and he’s previously voiced his concerns with technology usage in schools.

Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider, made outside regular working hours. 

• Art restoration combines art history, chemistry, and studio art. 
• Restoring a painting can take anywhere from a few hours to a few months. 
• Although it can be meticulous, knowledge of proper techniques diminishes more risks in the future.

Restoring art is not a singular discipline. It combines art history, studio art, and chemistry. 

The process of restoring pieces of art, paintings, sculptures, and manuscripts can be as unique as the pieces of art themselves. Each medium requires different techniques to restore it to its original beauty. Conservators are tasked with understanding what methods went into creating the original painting and what techniques past conservators used to inform new practices.

In contending with both, conservators use various techniques to slowly learn what materials to use while they restore a piece of work to its original beauty. For conservators like Sara Drew, who works at Center Art Studio in New York, the task involves a mixture of paints, varnishes, and solvents.

• US consumers earning less than $100,000 fueled record profits last year for French luxury group LVMH.
• These “aspirational” customers are now pulling back on spending as pandemic cash reserves run dry.
• Important as these shoppers are, don’t expect to see huge markdowns from Louis Vuitton and Dior.

Most retailers will do almost anything to encourage customers to come back and buy more products, especially when those shoppers begin to tighten their purse strings.

Typical strategies include bigger ads, deeper discounts, cheaper merchandise, and more, chasing after a shrinking pool of consumer spending.

But that’s not how French luxury conglomerate LVMH does business.

The powerhouse behind Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Tiffany, and over a dozen other iconic luxury brands was one of the largest beneficiaries of a pandemic-era boom in “aspirational” spending from US shoppers earning less than $100,000.

Flush with surplus cash, these middle-income shoppers splurged on handbags and perfumes, propelling LVMH to record profits last year.

This year however, high inflation, increasing economic uncertainty, and dwindling cash reserves have led most US consumers to think twice about what they spend and where they spend it.

“The aspirational customer is suffering a bit,” LVMH CFO Jean-Jacques Guiony said on the company’s earnings call Tuesday, citing lower sales online and in “second-tier cities.”

While big-box stores are stepping up with markdowns to boost sales, that approach would spell disaster for a luxury brand, which needs to preserve an image of exclusivity and rarity.

“Extensive discounting to stimulate sales is never a good idea as while it can provide a short-term boost, it usually causes long-term damage to the brand which becomes more ubiquitous,” GlobalData retail analyst Neil Saunders told Insider.

Saunders highlighted Coach and Michael Kors as brands who have spent several years now rebuilding their cache after wading too far into the mainstream.

Even as the company hands the reins over to a younger generation and expands its reach, Guiony said: “All our energy is focused on increasing the desirability of the brands.”

And desirability is rarely found in the bargain bin.

Still, even though chasing after “aspirational” customers would be bad for LVMH’s business, neither can the brand run away from them and into the arms of the ultra-wealthy.

“It’s a myth that a lot of the revenue stream comes from high earners,” retail industry expert and consultant Hitha Herzog told Insider. “Their bread and butter are products at lower price points, like sunglasses, wallets, and perfumes, that really target the aspirational customer.”

Herzog also pointed out that the breadth of LVMH’s geography and brand portfolio puts the company in a more secure position to ride out dips and changes in buying behaviors.

Falling US handbag sales can be offset by gains in Asia; fewer bottles of cognac can be compensated with more bottles of champagne.

So what’s a luxury house to do?

If the earnings call is any evidence, the answer is lots of advertising and a few blockbuster events to get the brands’ message out and burnish the image.

Guiony said a marketing blitz leading up to a mega-budget fashion show on the Pont Neuf in Paris with musician-turned-designer Pharrell Williams pulled in over a billion views for Louis Vuitton. 

“The cost of all these initiatives was obviously quite high,” Guiony said. “It’s quite extraordinary in my view and worth the investment.”

Not every luxury brand can pull this strategy off, but it appears LVMH certainly can.

Hunter Biden’s plea deal with federal prosecutors fell apart at the last minute in a court hearing Wednesday.

The president’s son was expected to plead guilty to two tax charges, as well as agree to seek treatment to have an additional gun charge dropped.

During Biden’s plea hearing on Wednesday morning in Delaware federal court, US District Judge Maryellen Noreika asked Leo Wise, a top prosecutor in the case, whether the deal would mean Biden would get immunity for other possible crimes, according to the New York Times.

Prosecutors had reportedly examined whether Biden worked as an unregistered agent for foreign governments and other business dealings involving overseas companies. David Weiss, the US Attorney in Delaware overseeing the Biden case, has said the investigation is ongoing.

Wise said the plea deal wouldn’t cover other potential crimes. At that point, according to the Times, Biden’s lawyer said the plea agreement was “null and void.”

In June, Biden’s lawyers indicted he would agree to the plea on two tax charges. Hunter Biden reportedly failed to pay around $1.2 million in taxes in 2017 and 2018 but has since paid the IRS in full.

Prosecutors had also brought a gun charge against the president’s son — alleging he was in possession of a firearm, which is against the law for unlawful drug users. They allowed Biden to enter a pretrial diversion program for the charge, allowing they’d drop it if he seeks treatment.

If the gun charge went to trial, it would carry a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. 

The tax charges that Biden admitted to stem from an investigation by David Weiss, the US Attorney in Delaware. He opened the investigation in 2018 during the administration of former President Donald Trump, who appointed him to the post. While US Attorneys typically resign with each new presidential administration, the Justice Department under Biden asked Weiss to remain in his role.

On Wednesday morning, Wilmington, Delaware was abuzz with national media.

Republican politicians have sought to intervene in Biden’s case. Some have been furious about what they call a “sweetheart deal” between the Justice Department and the president’s son, and want more investigation into Biden’s business in Europe and Asia. The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, filed a highly unusual brief asking the judge to seek more information about the case before deciding whether to accept a plea. 

On Tuesday, Republican Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, the chairman of the powerful House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, tried to intervene in the proceedings by asking the judge to reject the plea deal. His filings cited testimony from two IRS employees who have said the investigation has been limited in scope due to political influence — accusations Weiss has publicly denied.

Rep. Smith’s filings kicked off some drama on the court docket. Noreika, an appointee of Trump, said in an order on Tuesday that an employee at Latham & Watkins, a law firm representing Hunter Biden, called the court and pretended to be a Republican lawyer in an attempt to convince the clerk to remove documents that Smith filed to court.

The law firm told the court that it was an “unfortunate and unintentional miscommunication” and does not warrant sanctions. Some accompanying documents in Smith’s filings appeared to include Biden’s personal tax information, the firm said.

The court clerk had removed the documents from the public record “on their own accord,” the firm wrote.

The staffer in question filed her own affidavit, denying that she ever implied she worked for Smith’s lawyer Ted Kittila, as accused.

“I am completely confident that I never indicated that I was calling from Mr. Kittila’s firm or that I worked with him in any way,” Jessica Bengels wrote in the affidavit.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

• A 71% majority of economists put the odds of a recession in the next 12 months at 50% or less.
• That’s according to a survey by the National Association for Business Economics.
• It’s a turnabout from a March, when a majority saw a recession sometime in 2023. 

Top economists have reversed their recession forecasts, with most now doubtful that one will occur in the year ahead.

A 71% majority of economists put the odds of a recession in the next 12 months at 50% or less, according to a survey by the National Association for Business Economics. 

That includes a sizable chunk who are especially optimistic, with one-fourth saying a recession has a probability of 25% or less. 

This is a turnabout from just a few months prior. In April, economists were about evenly split. And in the March NABE survey, 58% said the US was either already in a recession or that it would come sometime in 2023.

The shift in sentiment stems from broader positivity across the economy, as recent metrics demonstrate resilience and receding inflation trends. 

“Results of the July 2023 NABE Business Conditions Survey reflect an economy of rising sales and profits, as materials costs decline and stabilizing wages prove less challenging,” said NABE President Julia Coronado, who is also founder and president of MacroPolicy Perspectives.

In fact, for the first time since 2021, a majority said wages at their firms were steady in the second quarter. Meanwhile, the share reporting higher wages tumbled to 47% from 63% in the April survey.

The NABE data comes as others have expressed similar optimism. “Big Short” investor Steve Eisman said recently there’s no indication of a downturn, and Nobel economist Paul Krugman said a soft landing is in reach.  

• UBS downgraded Tesla to “Neutral” on Monday amid the stock’s scorching year-to-date 112% rally.
• While UBS still sees a long-term opportunity in Tesla, its stock is priced for near-perfection.
• UBS posed three pivotal questions Tesla investors should be asking. Here are the answers.

UBS downgraded Tesla to “Neutral” on Monday and argued that a lot of good news is already priced into the stock based on its near-$1 trillion valuation and scorching 112% year-to-date rally.

“We downgrade to Neutral because we think the recent strong share performance fully reflects the strong demand response seen after price cuts, as well as a solid executive in 2024,” UBS said. 

That comes about a week after the company released its second-quarter earnings results. While Tesla beat profit and revenue estimates, its slide in automotive gross margins helped spark a more than 10% sell-off in the stock.

Still, UBS holds a bullish long-term view on Tesla and raised its 12-month price target to $270 from $220, reflecting potential upside of about 3% from current levels.

“We continue to see Tesla globally leading the race to affordable electric and autonomous mobility, but on a one-year view, risk/reward looks balanced,” UBS said. 

And there are plenty of risks for Tesla as it increases spending to ramp up the production of the Cybertruck in 2024, as well as continuing to develop an alternative to Nvidia chips via its Dojo supercomputer.

For Tesla to unlock more value for its investors, it needs to unlock more profits, and that’s unlikely to happen until the company makes progress on its autonomous driving technology, UBS said.

UBS posed three pivotal questions Tesla investors need to ask. Here are the answers, according to the note. 

1. Can Tesla Deliver on its 50% growth target?

“Likely not for 2023, uncertain for 2024, likely yes for 2025. Tesla should meet the 1.8 million delivery target for 2023, but achieving 50% growth in 2024 would require a perfect ramp of Cybertruck. From 2025 onwards, the new affordable platform will be a game-changer for Tesla and the industry with the first truly global $25k mass-market EV, and we have little doubt about Tesla’s ability to be the most profitable OEM in this segment.”

2. Will Tesla keep its lead over the competition?

“With the exception of BYD, we don’t see any other OEM close to Tesla’s cost position and vertical integration. With that, Tesla can not only keep gaining share from the internal combustion engine segment but also beat competition on pricing while still generating positive free cash flow covering all growth capex. Our long-term base case is that Tesla will be one of the world’s largest OEMs by 2030 (9.6m units in 2030, same size as Toyota today), with superior margins.”

3. Will Tesla reach full autonomous driving over the next 12 months?

“Likely not. While we consider Tesla best positioned to leverage AI competency with own purpose built supercomputer capacity (Dojo), we think full self driving iterations continue for several years until full autonomy can be reached, first in North America. Only then the technology becomes a game changer for Tesla’s financials.” 

• A woman was accused of falsely claiming to win the Powerball jackpot — the third largest ever won.
• Video footage shows the woman crying with joy at the LA store that sold the winning ticket.
• But the granddaughter of the store owner said the winner has yet to come forward.

A woman who claimed to be the winner of the $1.08 billion Powerball jackpot was lying, according to the granddaughter of the owner of the store where the ticket was sold, the Daily Mail reported. 

Sarai Palacios, the granddaughter of Nabor Herrera, who owns Las Palmitas Mini Market near LA’s Skid Row, told the Mail that the woman hadn’t won the jackpot.

“I’m not sure why she did that. I guess she just wanted to be on TV,” Palacios said. 

“We don’t know who the winner is yet. They still haven’t come forward,” she added. 

California Lottery confirmed on Thursday that the store had sold the winning ticket, which is the third-largest Powerball jackpot — and the sixth-largest US lottery jackpot — ever won. 

The unidentified woman entered the downtown store on Friday, crying and responding “yes” to a reporter who asked if she’d won a ticket before abruptly exiting the store and getting into a car, according to a video shared by Inside Edition. 

In the full video, the woman can be heard saying, “I’m scared right now. I’m so scared.” She then hugs people in the store before stating, “I need to find him,” and fleeing, according to the Daily Mail. 

Herrera, who said he wasn’t aware that his store had sold the winning ticket until he arrived there on Thursday, told the channel that he thought the woman’s claim was “fake” as he didn’t recognize her. 

The store owner will receive a reward of $1 million for selling the ticket. He told K-CAL News he planned to use some of the winnings to take his family on vacation.

The $1 billion winnings followed 38 consecutive draws where no one won the jackpot. Californian Edwin Castro won a record $2 billion Powerball Jackpot last year, with a ticket purchased 13 miles from Herrera’s store, the Mail reported.

• Tomas Duvan Perez, 16, died after becoming trapped in equipment while working at a Mississippi poultry plant.
• It is illegal for US poultry plants to hire minors. The company says a hiring agency misled them about his age.
• Perez is the third minor in the last month to die in a US workplace, the Huffington Post reported.

Duvan Tomas Perez was just 10 years old when he moved from Guatemala to the United States with his family. Now, six years later, he is dead because of a workplace accident at a poultry plant that should’ve never hired him.

Perez, 16, died on July 14 at the Mar-Jac poultry plant in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, NBC News reported. He died from his injuries after becoming trapped in equipment on a conveyor belt. It is illegal under federal law for minors to work in poultry plants due to the inherent workplace safety hazards. 

A spokesperson for the Mar-Jac Poultry plant in Hattiesburg, Mississippi claims an outside hiring agency misled the company by misrepresenting the boy’s age, the Huffington Post reported.

Hiring agencies are often unreliable when it comes to ensuring workers are not minors and have the proper qualifications for hazardous workplaces, Jordan Barab, former deputy assistant secretary of labor at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, told the Huffington Post. 

“These temp agencies don’t have any scruples at all,” Barab said. “They don’t have any national reputation to uphold. They’re just trying to sell workers, basically.”

While OSHA is going after these agencies, Barab noted they continue to thrive because employers are trying to avoid paying more qualified workers.

The poultry plant where Perez worked does not exactly have a clean safety record. In 2021, an employee was caught in a poultry processing machine and died as a result of his injuries. In 2020, another employee died after a coworker “placed the air nozzle on the lower back of the employee’s pants and injected air into employee’s rectum,” according to the OSHA report.

Joe Colee, the plant’s manager, told NBC News the company is cooperating with the current OSHA investigation into Perez’s death.

His death marks the third child workplace death in the last month, the Huffington Post reported.

On June 29, 16-year-old Michael Schuls died from asphyxiation after becoming trapped under equipment on a conveyor belt while working for a Wisconsin logging company. And on June 5, 16-year-old Will Hampton died in Missouri after becoming trapped between a tractor-trailer and its rig while working at a landfill.

Meanwhile, legislators in at least 10 states across the country have proposed loosening child labor laws. These proposals have included measures like easing restrictions on school night hours and allowing kids as young as 14 to serve alcohol, PBS News Hour reports. Wisconsin, Ohio, and Iowa are all considering policies that would relax child labor laws to address worker shortages, according to the outlet.

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