Wendy’s Plans To Automate 6,000 Restaurants With Self-Service Ordering Kiosks

An anonymous reader writes: In response to the rising minimum wage, the fast-food chain Wendy’s plans to start automating all of its restaurants. The company said it will have self-service ordering kiosks available to its 6, 000-plus restaurants in the second half of the year. Wendy’s President Todd Penegor said it will be up to franchisees to decide whether or not to adopt the kiosks in their stores, noting that many franchise locations have had to raise prices to offset wage increases. California’s decision to gradually raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2022 will impact Wendy’s 258 restaurants, all of which are franchise-operated. About 75% of 200-plus Wendy’s restaurants are run by franchisees in New York, a state that is also on its way to $15. Penegor said, wage pressures have been manageable both because of falling commodity prices and better operating leverage due to an increase in customer counts. The company is still “working so hard to find efficiencies” so it can deliver “a new QSR experience but at traditional QSR prices.” The CEO of Carl’s Jr., Andy Puzder, is also looking into replacing many of its workers with machines to save money. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Wendy’s Plans To Automate 6,000 Restaurants With Self-Service Ordering Kiosks

Flow is Microsoft’s take on IFTTT automation (Updated)

Microsoft is about to release its take on the automation service IFTTT called Flow, according to a blog post published and removed by the company. Update : the service is now live ! Flow connects to over 35 services, with more integrations planned. These include Microsoft products like Office 365 and OneDrive; third-party platforms such as Twitter, Dropbox, MailChimp, Google Drive, Slack and Trello; and developer-focused options like Github and SQL. Just like IFTTT, you’ll be able to create workflows across multiple services. Examples include adding a card in Trello if your boss emails you with “to do” in the subject line, sending a text alert if a Dropbox file is modified, or saving all of a user’s tweets to OneDrive. Some of this functionality has been available as part of a private preview for Microsoft’s Azure business customers, but Flow appears to be a more user-friendly take on the concept. It’s aimed squarely at businesses, schools and other large institutions, but there’s no reason that it couldn’t be useful to individuals, especially if you’re the sort of person that organizes your life through Trello. It’s not clear exactly when Flow will be ready. Twitter user @h0x0d first discovered the service (as spotted by The Verge ) along with the blog post, but it was swiftly removed. The article itself had a typo and didn’t appear finished, so it seems that it was posted before it was ready. Ironically, one of the workflows mentioned in the post intended to ensure “that all of the posts [about Flow] were reviewed and approved.” It appears that particular Flow failed. We’ve reached out to Microsoft for more information on Flow, and will update you once we have more details. Update : As noted above, Microsoft’s Flow service went live on Friday morning. Via: The Verge Source: Microsoft Flow (Google cache)

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Flow is Microsoft’s take on IFTTT automation (Updated)

Alloy Automates Tasks In Nearly Any App on iOS

Automation is surprisingly powerful on iOS with tools like Workflow , but if that’s not your thing, Alloy is a new app that takes on a lot of the same tasks as Workflow in a different style. Read more…

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Alloy Automates Tasks In Nearly Any App on iOS

The Czur Scanner Can Build A Digital Library Five Minutes At A Time

 When the Visigoths burned Library Of Alexandria you can bet that old Ptolemy I Soter would have loved to have had a Czur (pronounced “Cesar”) scanner in his palatial marble-clad staterooms. The Czur is basically a book scanner on steroids that allows you to scan a 300-page book – or priceless scroll of ancient knowledge – in about five minutes. The Czur is a sort of… Read More

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The Czur Scanner Can Build A Digital Library Five Minutes At A Time

This Slick New App Is Like Popcorn Time for Music

Sick of paying for Spotify? Hate how hard it is to use Apple Music ? Then you’re going to love what renegade developer and lover of beer Andrew Simpson has built . It’s called Aurous, and it’s basically Popcorn Time for music . Read more…

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This Slick New App Is Like Popcorn Time for Music

AMD’s Project Quantum Gaming PC Contains Intel CPU

nateman1352 links to an article at Tom’s Hardware which makes the interesting point that chip-maker AMD will offer Intel — rather than AMD — CPUs in their upcoming high-end gaming PC. (High-end for being based on integrated components, at least.) From the article: Recently, AMD showed off its plans for its Fiji based graphics products, among which was Project Quantum – a small form factor PC that packs not one, but two Fiji graphics processors. Since the announcement, KitGuru picked up on something, noticing that the system packs an Intel Core i7-4790K “Devil’s Canyon” CPU. We hardly need to point out that it is rather intriguing to see AMD use its largest competitor’s CPU in its own product, when AMD is a CPU maker itself. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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AMD’s Project Quantum Gaming PC Contains Intel CPU

How Malvertising Abuses Real-Time Bidding On Ad Networks

msm1267 writes Dark corners of the Internet harbor trouble. They’re supposed to. But what about when Yahoo, CNN.com, TMZ and other busy destination sites heave disaster upon visitors? That’s the challenge posed by malvertising, the latest hacker Golden Goose used in cybercrime operations and even in some targeted attacks. Hackers are thriving in this arena because they have found an unwittingly complicit partner in the sundry ad networks to move malicious ads through legitimate processes. Adding gasoline to the raging fire is the abuse of real-time ad bidding, a revolution in the way online ads are sold. RTB enables better ad targeting for advertisers and less unsold inventory for publishers. Hackers can also hitch a ride with RTB and target malicious ads on any site they wish, much the way a legitimate advertiser would use the same system. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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How Malvertising Abuses Real-Time Bidding On Ad Networks

Bring On the Boring Robots

malachiorion writes: After a successful 6-month pilot, Savioke’s ‘butler bots’ are heading to hotels around the country. These are not sexy, scary, or even technically impressive machines. But they were useful enough, over the course of their 2, 000 or so deliveries, to warrant a redesign, and a larger deployment starting in April. Savioke’s CEO had some interesting things to say about the pilot, including the fact that some 95 percent of guests gave the robot a 5-star review, and only the drunks seemed to take issue with it. Plus, as you might expect, everyone seemed to want to take a damn selfie with it. But as small as the stakes might appear, highly specialized bots like this one, which can only do one thing (in this case, bring up to 10 pounds of stuff from the lobby to someone’s door) are a better glimpse of our future than any talk of hyper-competent humanoids or similarly versatile machines. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Bring On the Boring Robots

Consortium Roadmap Shows 100TB Hard Drives Possible By 2025

Lucas123 writes An industry consortium made up by leading hard disk drive manufacturers shows they expect the areal density of platters to reach 10 terabits per square inch by 2025, which is more than 10 times what it is today. At that density, hard disk drives could conceivably hold up to 100TB of data. Key to achieving greater bit density is Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) and Bit Patterned Media Recording (BPMR). While both HAMR and BPMR will increase density, the combination of both technologies in 2021 will drive it to the 10Tbpsi level, according to the Advanced Storage Technology Consortium (ASTC). Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Consortium Roadmap Shows 100TB Hard Drives Possible By 2025

Build Your Own Adobe Creative Suite with Free and Cheap Software

Adobe’s Creative Suite is one of the best software packs out there for professionals, but the suite is prohibitively expensive for most people. If you can’t drop the cash, you can still get a similar experience with free or cheap software. Here’s how to build your own Creative Suite. Read more…

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Build Your Own Adobe Creative Suite with Free and Cheap Software