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From rural strip-malls to Manhattan’s avenues, it has been a disastrous two years for retail. There have been nine retail bankruptcies in 2017—as many as all of 2016. J.C. Penney, RadioShack, Macy’s, and Sears have each announced more than 100 store closures. Sports Authority has liquidated, and Payless has filed for bankruptcy. Last week, several apparel companies’ stocks hit new multi-year lows, including Lululemon, Urban Outfitters, and American Eagle, and Ralph Lauren announced that it is closing its flagship Polo store on Fifth Avenue, one of several brands to abandon that iconic thoroughfare. A deep recession might explain an extinction-level...

While there have been plenty of ridiculous protests against President Trump — including marches with hats resembling female genitalia — there is now an over-the-top “protest in space.” In solidarity with the upcoming March for Science, the Autonomous Space Agency Network (ASAN) launched a balloon into space this week with a message reportedly directed at Trump. The important message that needed to be broadcast above Earth was the phrase “LOOK AT THAT, YOU SON OF A B*TCH,” in the form of a tweet. Behold:

eBay Foundation and GriffinWorx have launched the 2017 eBay StartUp Cup Challenge, a business model competition in four cities helping early stage entrepreneurs with any type of business idea to design, test and build a viable business. Through a competitive selection process over several months, the eBay StartUp Cup Challenges will culminate in awards celebrations providing a total of $70,000 in cash prizes. Aspiring entrepreneurs, startups and existing businesses in Berlin, Brooklyn, Mumbai and Washington, D.C. looking to launch a new startup or take an existing concept to the next level are encouraged to submit their business models at www.ebay.startupcup.com....

Comcast Corp. on Thursday announced 600 new jobs for its base in Miramar. The Philadelphia-based telecommunications giant (Nasdaq: CMCSA) said it aims to focus on improving its customer service by adding 5,500 customer service jobs across the country. A direct beneficiary of the plan, South Florida will be the base of Comcast's beefed up customer care team at 15800 S.W. 25th St. Among the hundreds of new sales and customer care jobs coming to Broward County, the Fortune 50 company will have 160 representatives dedicated to technical support for Comcast Business' small- and medium-business customers as well. "Today’s announcement shows...

Could Apple buy Disney? It would be a huge deal, worth hundreds of billions of dollars — and that's what analysts are speculating about on Thursday. Research from RBC Capital Markets says such a merger would produce a "tech/media juggernaut like no other" — the combination of the biggest tech company in the world and a near-century-old cultural titan. "The resultant company would be massive, with enough cash and balance sheet capacity to change the nature of the hardware, service, and content industries," the analysts wrote in a note to investors....

The Guardian adds to our knowledge of how the Obama administration and its allies overseas tried to discredit Donald Trump. (For purposes of this post, I assume that everything the Guardian says is true, even though it is based on anonymous sources who are pursuing their personal and political interests.) Britain’s spy agencies played a crucial role in alerting their counterparts in Washington to contacts between members of Donald Trump’s campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives, the Guardian has been told. GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious “interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected...

Americans have become lazy, argues economist Tyler Cowen. They don't start businesses as much as they once did. They don't move as often as they used to. And they live in neighborhoods that are about as segregated as they were in the 1960s. All of this is causing the U.S. to stagnate economically and politically, Cowen says in his new book: "The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream." Growth is far slower than it was in the 1960s, 70s and 80s and productivity is way down, despite everyone claiming they are working so hard. "Innovation is painful....

Three-dimensional (3D) printing has gained traction in recent years and is now used across a wide range of industries for the quick and easy fabrication of complex materials. 3D printing is now set to revolutionise the medical industry, especially in regenerative medicine, as it enables cells, tissues and organs to be printed on demand. These biological components are traditionally cultured for long periods of time, using various gaseous and chemical environments so that they grow. Aside from the timescales, standard culturing methods can easily go awry if there is even a small, and often accidental or unavoidable change in the...

President Donald Trump’s border wall project could get funding through an unlikely method: voluntary donations from private citizens. The newly-founded America First Foundation, Inc., has started accepting donations to fund “the great wall of America,” with the ultimate goal of raising $21 billion to contribute to construction of the nearly 2,000 mile, 18 to 30-foot-high barrier between the U.S. and Mexico. “This is not a joke, this is not a scam, this is the REAL DEAL!” a post on the group’s Facebook page reads. America First’s founders want to bring the American people together to be part of what will...

TREDYFFRIN - A company that sells parts online for Jeep Wranglers, Ford Mustangs and F-150 pickup trucks plans to expand and add almost 200 jobs in eastern Chester County. The news of Turn5’s expansion was announced by Gov. Tom Wolf last week as the state put in incentives to keep the company, now based in East Whiteland, in the area. The new headquarters at 600 Cedar Hollow Road will be about four miles from its current location on Lee Boulevard, brothers and company founders Steve and Andrew Voudouris said. The company was last in the headlines in July when it...

After Donald Trump’s shock electoral victory, Josh Kushner, the investor brother of Trump’s powerful son-in-law Jared, “scrambled” to calm worried employees, according to a report today in Forbes. Kushner, who did not vote for Trump, is an investor and tech entrepreneur. According to Forbes, Kushner met with a hundred employees of his firms after the election. “It is no secret that liberal values have guided my life,” he told the magazine, “and that I have supported political leaders that share similar values.” He also dates Karlie Kloss, also known as a liberal, although critics accused her of cultural appropriation recently...

Frustrated with its inability to control the narrative in our current age of abundant social media, the Merkel Regime has decided to fine media firms that allow false news on their platforms. The penalty can range as high as $50 million for an offense the government determines is "dangerously out-of-step with accepted views." German Justice Minister Heiko Maas lamented that "unconstrained free speech has unleashed an avalanche of uniformed and anti-social messages being posted on FaceBook and Twitter. The proof of the danger is the fact that an unhinged Donald Trump was able to exploit Twitter to foment disrespect for...

Japan-based Sakae Casting opened first U.S. location in the eastern region of The Gem State in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Sakae Casting specializes in castings for inserting stainless steel pipes into an aluminum casting product with minimized clearance, necessary for optimal performance of semi-conductors and super computers. The Idaho Falls location will give Sakae the best U.S. location to work directly with the University of Idaho, Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and the region’s extensive nuclear and advanced manufacturing sectors to further their research capabilities and U.S. product sales. "It is my mission to create job opportunities in Eastern Idaho to support...

Google has no ownership rights on the truth. The truth can’s be owned. It can only be told. Google’s grab as the inarguable ‘Truth Teller of the Digital World’ was never too big to fail. Google principals living high on the proverbial hog just don’t seem to get that you can’t tell people what to believe any more than you can tell them what to think.

Building a house completely by hand can be both time-consuming and expensive. A number of home-builders have chosen to automate part of the construction process (i.e. by printing the home's parts) instead. A new Ukrainian homebuilding startup called Passivdom uses a 3D-printing robot that can print parts for tiny houses. The machine can print the walls, roof, and floor of Passivdom's 380-square-foot model in about eight hours. The windows, doors, plumbing, and electrical systems are then added by a human worker. When complete, the homes are completely autonomous and mobile, meaning they don't need to connect to external electrical and...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/can-mike-cernovich-a-pro-trump-meme-maker-get-a-real-news-scoop

Amazon may be hiring thousands of people to fill jobs on its Seattle campus or at fulfillment centers around the country, but jobs in the tech giant’s Virtual Customer Service program — which allow for the option of working from home — are growing, too. Amazon announced Thursday that it plans to create 5,000 new, part-time roles for the 5-year-old program over the next year. That number is on top of Amazon’s plans to hire more than 30,000 part-timers over the next year and 100,000 full-time, full-benefit employees over the next 18 months. Amazon says over 70 percent of part-time...

I know I am not alone in being sick and tired of the nonsensical Russian hacking brouhaha. Give it a rest--please. The only ones still buying into it are brain-dead liberal zombies who take as gospel anything their various propaganda outlets spew out You brought this up [Russian hacking] and you act as if we all know this—and I don’t think we do all know this, actually. ....What’s this about? We all assume we know that Russia hacked the election, and I’m just asking why has not one person, not one explained exactly what that means. I’m getting very frustrated....

Apple is currently hard at work on a “completely rethought” Mac Pro, with a modular design that can accommodate high-end CPUs and big honking hot-running GPUs, and which should make it easier for Apple to update with new components on a regular basis. They’re also working on Apple-branded pro displays to go with them. These next-gen Mac Pros and pro displays “will not ship this year”. (I hope that means “next year”, but all Apple said was “not this year”.) In the meantime, Apple is today releasing meager speed-bump updates to the existing Mac Pros.

Kniterate, the 3D printer for Knitwear, has taken Kickstarter by storm with its new crowd-funding campaign. The digital knitting machine, which first crossed our radar back in June 2016, has recently resurfaced, catching the eye of design bloggers, knitters, and knitwear enthusiasts alike. And all the buzz may be just what Kniterate needs to hit the market: with almost $250,000 already pledged, the Kickstarter campaign has more than doubled its initial goal of $100,000. What is Kniterate exactly? It’s a computerized knitting machine that, by “bringing an affordable and compact version of industrial knitting machines to your workshop,” promises to...