Extra, Extra
Purge Pricing: A recent study “used economic models to show that if grocery retailers used dynamic pricing to adjust prices for perishable foods based on how long they’ve been on the shelves, retailers would likely dramatically curb food waste.” Surge pricing isn’t the only part of dynamic pricing. Supermarket Food Waste Is a Big Problem. Is Dynamic Pricing the Solution? (When I was a kid, my friends and I used to frequent a place called the Day Old Bakery. It had Hostess Fruit Pies, Cupcakes, and Twinkies. It could have been called the Decade Old Bakery, and the products would still have tasted fresh.)
+ Intel Inside: “The allegation of India’s involvement in the killing of a Sikh Canadian is based on surveillance of Indian diplomats in Canada, including intelligence provided by a major ally.” Some more background: Why is Canada’s assassination allegation against India more destabilizing than it seems?
+ 9/11 Trials Still Not Started: A 9/11 defendant is ruled unfit for trial after a medical panel finds torture left him psychotic.
+ Prime Numbers: “Amazon Prime Video will include advertising during shows and movies starting early next year, joining other streaming services that have added different tiers of subscriptions. Members of Amazon Prime can pay $2.99 per month in the U.S. to keep their service ad-free.” Slowly but surely, the new TV bundle will become more expensive and less convenient than the old TV bundle.
+ Ford Escape: “The United Auto Workers union expanded its strike against major carmakers Friday, walking out of 38 parts-distribution centers operated by General Motors and Jeep and Ram owner Stellantis in 20 states. Ford was spared additional strikes because the company has met some of the union’s demands during negotiations over the past week.”
+ Trap Door: This crazy and tragic story just keeps getting crazier. “The owners of a New York City day care center where a toddler died and three others were sickened by opioid exposure last week were hiding bags of fentanyl beneath a trap door in the children’s play area, police said.”
+ Olivia Rodrigged: “Normal people have one Ticketmaster account tied to one email address and can therefore enter this lottery one time for one specific show. Serious ticket scalpers have many accounts (hundreds or thousands) tied to many different email addresses, with credit cards all over the country and can enter the lottery as many times as they want.” Why Scalpers Can Get Olivia Rodrigo Tickets and You Can’t.
+ Train Wreck: “Popular authors including John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen, George R.R. Martin, Jodi Picoult, and George Saunders joined the Authors Guild in suing OpenAI, alleging that training the company’s large language models (LLMs) used to power AI tools like ChatGPT on pirated versions of their books violates copyright laws and is ‘systematic theft on a mass scale.'” (ChatGPT plans to respond with a brief written in the style of each of the authors.)
