Whether you are an avid reader or the occasional book worm, identifying your next page-turner can sometimes be a challenge. Today we’re excited to introduce the next chapter for the Walmart book department: the Walmart Book Club.
Five titles will be chosen annually as part of the Walmart Book Club with four unveiled seasonally throughout the year leading up to the highest honor, the Pick of the Year. Our team of book merchants will select titles based on reading trends, relevancy and industry market data – helping to identify exciting titles Walmart customers are sure to love.
Focused on adult readers, select titles will be available to shop both in stores and online, making it easy to join no matter where you live. To get involved, all customers need to do is keep an eye out for the Walmart Book Club sticker on the cover of the book or the online product page.
The inaugural title for the Walmart Book Club is Love on the Brain by New York Times best-selling author, Ali Hazelwood. Releasing August 23, 2022, the romance novel follows a scientist forced to work on a project with her nemesis – with explosive results. And there’s more to love on the horizon: this fall and winter, the Walmart Book Club will announce new titles spanning a variety of genres, offering customers the perfect new read to curl up with.
At Walmart, we are always looking for new ways to excite customers with exclusive experiences and unique opportunities. It’s just one of the many ways we help our customers live better. We’re excited for customers to join in on the literary adventure with us. Let’s get reading!
Before they reach the hands of users, Samsung Electronics puts its smartphones through rigorous testing to ensure they can withstand everyday wear-and-tear and meet the needs of users. To detail the strict testing process on its production line, Samsung has released a video of the processing and reliability testing of its Galaxy Z Fold4 and Galaxy Z Flip4 smartphones.
Check out the video below and learn about how Samsung puts its foldable smartphones to the test.
ABOUT IN TECHIn Tech is our biweekly feature highlighting what people are talking about in the world of technology — everything from crypto and NFTs to smart cities and cybersecurity.
In the 2011 dark comedy “The Dilemma,” schlub buds Vince Vaughn and Kevin James star as freelance auto engineers who pitch an eco-friendly muscle car to Dodge. Not only did the vehicle need to look beastly – it had to sound like it, too. Hard to do for a car without a combustion engine, hence the film’s title.
“The Dilemma” came and went, but the central conceit was prophetic: Last week CNN reported that Dodge unveiled the concept for its Charger Daytona SRT, its first electric vehicle.
In fact, CNBC reports that at the end of 2023, Dodge will stop producing its gas-powered Challenger and Charger muscle cars altogether, as the company follows the rest of the industry in a shift to EVs. Yet there’s one notable difference: While most EVs are eerily quiet, Dodge says it wants the car to sound like it’s ready for the Cannonball Run, a loud, wild road race from the eponymous ‘80s movie. So … back to the dilemma of replicating the sound of shifting gears coupled with a thundering exhaust.
“We think we’re going to bring a car to market that customers didn’t see coming,” Dodge CEO Tim Kuniskis told CNN. “But they’re definitely going to hear this one coming.”
Dodge has claimed that the all-wheel drive Charger Daytona would outperform the Challenger Hellcat, Dodge’s gasoline-powered rear-wheel drive vehicle, “in all critical performance criteria.” According to Car and Driver, the supercharged Hellcat can accelerate from zero to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds.
With such horsepower under the hood, something tells us the famed nameplate will keep roaring into the EV Age.
Autumn’s annual bite of the apple
The end of summer has a slew of telltale signs that fall is coming: pumpkin spice lattes, Oktoberfest brews, back-to-school sales and a slight crisp in the night air. In the tech world, it means the proliferation of rumors of what Apple will be unveiling at its traditional fall event.
Apple confirmed today that it will host its annual autumn event — usually the company’s most significant of the year — on September 7, and Bloomberg reports the Apple Watch Series 8 and iPhone 14 are expected to be unveiled.
The entry-level iPhone 14 will resemble the iPhone 13, according to Bloomberg, but the 5.4-inch “mini” variant will be dropped, and a 6.7-inch model will be added. For the first time ever, Apple will introduce a non-Pro iPhone with a display that large.
New women’s health features, a body-temperature sensor and a better battery is also said to be included in Apple’s newest Series 8 Apple Watches. The base watch will resemble the Series 7, but a new pro model will target customers who are more active, with a larger display, tough titanium housing, improved fitness monitoring functions and longer battery life. Additionally, Apple may release a redesigned Apple Watch SE with a speedier chip.
9to5Mac predicts that Apple may tease its rumored mixed reality headset, an item very important to CEO Tim Cook. Hmmm, the fact that Bloomberg says that some retail store employees have been told to prepare for “a major new product release” on September 16 has us really wondering if this will be a big Christmas for metaverse and AR/VR gadgets.
Mr. Roboto, courtesy of Alphabet
Google hopes to make walking robots smarter by teaching them to understand human language then act on it in the real world, CNET reports.
Google revealed last week that it grafted its latest AI tech for handling language, called PaLM (short for Pathways Language Model), onto robots from Everyday Robots, one of the experimental divisions from parent company Alphabet. The result? A new AI technology called PaLM-SayCan.
PaLM was developed by the tech giant on a massive 6,144-processor system using a substantial multilingual collection of web content, books, Wikipedia articles, discussions, and programming code discovered on Microsoft’s GitHub site. The end result is an AI system that can explain jokes, finish sentences, respond to inquiries, and reason in its own way.
Karol Hausman, a senior research scientist at Google, told CNET, “As we improve the language models, the robotic performance also improves.”
These robots can respond to requests that simpler AI models may not understand. For example, when a PaLM-SayCan robot hears a Google AI researcher ask, “I spilled my drink, can you help?,” it will roll through a kitchen, use a motorized arm to pick up a sponge from the counter and return it to the researcher. The robot can also locate packs of chips, open drawers, and distinguish between Pepsi and Coke cans.
These robots’ task is to learn how to act appropriately around humans, says Vincent Vanhoucke, the director of the robotics lab at Google. “AI has been very successful in digital worlds, but it still has to make a significant dent solving real problems for real people in the real physical world,” he told CNET. “We think it’s a really great time right now for AI to migrate into the real world.”
With more companies throwing their hat into the robotics ring, don’t look for your own C3PO just yet.
Vanhoucke told Fast Company that Google is not at the point of developing a robot for commercial release. He said: “It’s still a quest of ‘what are the things that the robot can do? And can we broaden our imagination about what’s possible?’”
“Without water, there is no life,” Prema Devaraju says. But clean water wasn’t always available in her village in South India. Often, Prema’s only options were visiting a nearby pit containing water she knew wasn’t safe to drink or walking five to six times a day to faraway freshwater wells, leaving her unable to work full-time.
The PepsiCo Foundation provided a $4.2 million grant to the NGO WaterAid to help change that. Those funds were used to bring safe water access to more than 200,000 people in India. Now, Prema has a water storage tank outside her home that makes clean drinking water readily available to her family. That security allowed her to get a full-time job that doubled her income. “This has been life-changing for me,” Prema says. “I feel relieved and confident now that I finally have access to water.”
Prema Devaraju has access to clean water thanks to a storage tank outside her home in Nelamangala, Karnataka, India, which was installed as part of a project between the PepsiCo Foundation and WaterAid . (Srishti Bhardwaj/WaterAid)
Creating access in communities like Prema’s is a key aspect of PepsiCo’s water stewardship approach, which is working to make every drop go as far as possible through innovation, conservation, purification and more. The company’s pep+ (PepsiCo Positive) ambition is to become Net Water Positive by 2030 — that is, replenishing more water than it uses. PepsiCo has already made progress toward that goal, improving water-use efficiency at facilities in high-water-risk areas by 18% (compared to a 2015 baseline) and replenishing more than 6.1 billion liters of water back into local watersheds in 2021 alone.
“Our vision for the future is that, wherever in the world PepsiCo operates, water resources will be better off because we’re there,” says Roberta Barbieri, PepsiCo Vice President of Sustainability. “We’re doing this by scaling technologies to make our operations among the most water efficient in the food and beverage industry and helping communities in need gain access to safe water.”
Innovative solutions are helping to drive PepsiCo’s progress.
At PepsiCo’s Vallejo Facility in Mexico City, where the company cooks more than 100,000 tons of Sabritas, Doritos and Cheetos a year, a water recovery and treatment project has created the company’s first circular water system. The facility achieved 90 days without using any freshwater from the municipal drinking supply between April and mid-July and aims to be able to do it year-round. That accomplishment would save 550 million liters of water annually — enough for 4,000 families — and provide a model for other company sites to follow.
Another PepsiCo facility is improving the water treatment process. Once recycled water is no longer usable, it needs to be sent to municipal or third-party facilities to be treated. PepsiCo’s bottling center in Fresno, California, found a solution with Aquacyl, a technology that uses microbial fuel cells to treat wastewater on-site. A one-year pilot resulted in less waste, a 30% reduction in costs and 100 tons fewer greenhouse gas emissions per month.
The company is also empowering partners to advance conservation.
Along the Nile River in Minya, Egypt, the PepsiCo Foundation and CARE — an international humanitarian organization — partnered to upgrade 30 feddans with water-saving irrigation technology and train more than 1,000 farmers in how to adopt the methods, which has had multi-pronged benefits. Transitioning from traditional flood irrigation to more targeted drip irrigation systems saved more than 306 million liters of water in a water-stressed region in 2021 (compared to 2020), and that number is expected to rise in 2022. Using drip irrigation also reduced costs and increased crop yields.
Drip irrigation lines, supplied by the PepsiCo Foundation and CARE, cover a field of potato crops in Beni Suef Governorate, Egypt. (Mona Elazazy/CARE)
PepsiCo is paving the way for more projects like the one in Minya through its Water Academy, a training course launched with Arizona State University in 2021 to provide associates engaged in water stewardship with the necessary skills and knowledge to support their objectives. There are plans to expand the Water Academy to more participants in 2022 and 2023.
Water stewardship efforts focus on expanding safe water access.
The PepsiCo Foundation continues to expand safe water access to new communities. Prema is one of the more than 68 million people the Foundation’s distribution, purification and conservation projects have reached over the past 15 years, which puts the company more than halfway toward its goal of reaching 100 million people by 2030.
Efforts span four continents and are tailored to each community’s specific needs, whether that means building community water tanks and rainwater harvesting systems in Querétaro, Mexico, or promoting conservation in Antioquia, Colombia. A new project with WaterAid in Lagos State, Nigeria, plans to reach 173,000 people by 2024, rehabilitating dysfunctional water systems and building new sanitation facilities in public places such as markets, schools and healthcare centers.
Maria uses a sink that provides clean water in Nigeria, where the PepsiCo Foundation and WaterAid have launched a project that includes building new sanitation facilities in public areas. (Tom Saater/WaterAid)
“We believe that water is a fundamental human right,” Roberta Barbieri says. “Access to safe water sits at the heart of our global water strategy, and we will continue to focus on finding solutions that help us enable long-term water security for our business, people and planet.”
Since announcing American Express’ $10 million commitment to support Black-owned small businesses through the Coalition to Back Black Businesses (CBBB), the program has helped small businesses meet critical needs and invest in long-term growth through a series of grants and resources, including mentorships and trainings.
Co-founded by American Express, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, and four leading national Black business organizations, the CBBB has awarded grants to more than 1,000 Black small business owners across the country. As reported in the Coalition to Back Black Businesses’ 2021 Impact Report, 50% of businesses who received this grant saw an increase in sales revenue in the second half of 2021.*
Black-owned small businesses are invited once again, during Black Business Month, to apply to the 2022-2023 grant program. Applications are now being considered through September 6, 2022.
The program, now in its third year, will award $1.3 million in total grants to over 270 Black-owned small businesses as part of the 2022-2023 cohort. Each business will receive a $5,000 grant, customized training, and one-on-one mentoring to help them with new and persistent challenges including inflation, labor shortages, access to capital, and supply chain disruptions.
Past grant recipients share below how they have used the program to grow their businesses and remain an active part of their communities:
Photo: Courtesy of Nekia Hattley
Nekia Hattley, founder of My Daddy’s Recipes, a plant-based food and wellness company based in Inglewood, California, says, “I started My Daddy’s Recipes with a mission to enhance the quality of life for people of color through health, wellness and healing. After my dad passed away from diabetes, I took a good look at my family tree and my community, and realized that there is a need for better education and food options when it comes to what we consume each day. My apron is my opportunity to help improve generational health by teaching and bringing healthier options to my community. With the CBBB grant money, we’ve been able to accomplish so much for the business including producing our YouTube cooking show, Veganize It, and creating new packaging that has allowed our products to soon be available in our first-ever grocery store in Los Angeles for purchase!”
Photo: Courtesy of Dr.Artika Tyner
Dr. Artika Tyner, founder of Planting People Growing Justice (PPGJ), a Black woman-owned children’s book publisher and social enterprise based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, notes that a staggering percent of Black fourth graders are reading below grade level – leading to them being less likely to graduate. “I started my business to create books where Black children can see themselves in the stories and that empowers them to find joy in reading. This is something that’s really lacking in the industry, and so our focus has been on making these stories more widely available to children, and the CBBB grant has made this possible. We’ve used the funding to invest in the development of new products including e-books and audiobooks, and we’ve also been able to print more books and increase inventory for distribution across national retailers.”
Photo: Courtesy of Dr. Ché Raquel Ward, PsyD
Grant recipient Dr. Ché Raquel Ward, PsyD, owner of Hurt and Healing Behavioral Health and Wellness PLLC in Havelock, North Carolina, shared,“As a wife to a U.S. Marine, I relocated to a small coastal town in North Carolina. Upon moving, there were few therapists and no Black psychologists. When the pandemic hit, I felt an obligation to begin my own private practice and opened an office adjacent to Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in order to provide military families from the base, along with those from the surrounding community, access to affordable therapy, psychological assessment, and other wellness services. The CBBB grant has allowed us to move to a group practice and acquire more clients by providing us with the funds to hire more staff and to support credentialing and training. Additionally, we’ve used the grant to fund free educational and therapy groups for the community and to provide pro- bono and subsidized services to clients who would otherwise be unable to engage in mental health services. We’ve been able to offer more than half of our clients from underserved communities a complimentary or reduced service thanks to the CBBB enhancement grant.”
Photo: Courtesy of Kesha Aycock
Kesha Aycock, founder of Catering By Design LLC in Henry County, Georgia, says, “I started the business because growing up, I saw first-hand how much joy the southern cuisine prepared by my parents and my grandparents brought to my community. Even during difficult times, one of their meals could brighten a mood. Now that they are gone, I want to be able to continue on this delight for the community. My business offers personalized dishes and menus made with quality food and fresh ingredients from local suppliers and growers, created to bring together families, neighbors, friends, church members, and others. The CBBB grant money is being put towards plans to open our first-ever restaurant, ‘Southern Vittles.’ Once the restaurant is up and running, I’d also like to allocate any remaining funds to help provide food for a local shelter which will hopefully encourage other vendors and organizations to work together to improve the lives of our local community.”
LG Electronics (LG) is presenting its new air purifier, the PuriCare Objet Collection Aero Furniture, at IFA 2022. The follow up to the acclaimed PuriCare AeroTower revealed at CES earlier this year, the new table-type model blurs the line between beautiful furniture and advanced air purifier, offering a design that can be tailored to meet individual preferences, 360-degree air purification and user-friendly features.
Elegant and compact, the LG Aero Furniture has a relatively small size that makes it perfect for smaller spaces, such as a single bedroom, study or studio, while users can choose the color of the unit’s base (Crème Rose, Crème Yellow to Crème Grey) and the shape of its table-top (Round or Track) to suit their personal tastes or match their home décor.
The smooth upper surface of LG’s innovative, new product provides a useful place for storing household items or displaying decorative objects. It also integrates convenient controls on its underside for powering the device on/off, and for managing its airflow modes and mood lighting features. Subtly positioned near the edge of the table-top, and flush with its surface, is a series of small indicators denoting Wi-Fi connectivity, air quality, air flow strength and upgrade status.1
What’s more, the new Aero Furniture presents an array of thoughtful features for a more personalized user experience. Users can conveniently charge their smartphones and wireless earbuds via the table-top’s built-in wireless charger2 and create a pleasing atmosphere with the mood lighting feature. Providing eight different colors to choose from, Aero Furniture’s mood lighting can be easily controlled using the LG ThinQ™ app. Furthermore, LG’s unique air purifier is designed with sustainability in mind, incorporating components fabricated from reusable plastic harvested from old appliances and electronics products, and shipping in packaging made from reusable materials.
Beyond its sophisticated design, LG’s new air purifier delivers customized comfort at home, with performance that can be tailored to suit any preference. The product greatly improves indoor air quality thanks to the Aero Furniture’s multi-stage filtration, which combines LG’s Ultra-fine Filter, Dust Collector Filter and Deodorization Filter. Users can also enjoy cleaner indoor air courtesy of LG’s UVnano™ technology, which reduces the presence of viruses and bacteria on and around the Aero Furniture’s fan blades by up to 99.99 percent.3
Additionally, LG will be launching limited-edition versions of its new air purifier in the near future. Along with models featuring exclusive table-top decorations designed by well-known artists, such as popular South Korean painter, Kim Sun-woo, the company will be releasing models made with newly developed sustainable materials.
“With its customizable design, advanced air purification and user-centric features, the Aero Furniture helps consumers create a healthy, comfortable and more personalized home,” said Lyu Jae-cheol, president of LG Electronics Home Appliance & Air Solution Company. “LG will continue to develop innovations for a healthier, better life by responding to the diverse needs of consumers worldwide.”
LG will be showcasing its latest innovations, including the new Aero Furniture, at its exhibition booth (Hall 18, Messe Berlin) at IFA 2022 in Berlin, Germany, from September 2-6.
ir Canada today provided the following update on its operational improvement initiatives implemented in response to the challenges the global airline industry has encountered emerging from the pandemic.
“At Air Canada, we know how much our customers value travel and their reliance on us to transport them safely, comfortably and without disruption. This is always our goal and we share with them their disappointment that, coming out of the pandemic, the global industry faltered due to the unprecedented challenges of restarting after a two-year, virtual shutdown,” said Michael Rousseau, President and Chief Executive of Air Canada.
“Earlier this summer, I committed on behalf of everyone at Air Canada that we would do everything possible to restore our company’s industry leading standards of customer care. Among other things, this included innovation at the airport, operational changes and significant schedule adjustments and today these are yielding demonstrable improvement in the metrics that matter most to our customers. While I am very satisfied with the progress to date, and I thank our employees for their unrelenting efforts, we all continue to work hard on behalf of our customers to complete our recovery.”
For the period June 27 to August 14, during which it carried approximately 6.4 million customers, the Air Canada family (including Air Canada, Air Canada Rouge and Air Canada Express), recorded the following operational improvements as it returns to its pre-pandemic customer service levels:
Flight Delays – Comparing the week of June 27 to the week of August 8, there was a 48% reduction or 1,160 fewer flights that took a delay longer than one hour. In addition, flight delays overall are getting shorter. For flights that experienced any delay, the average arrival delay during the week of June 27 was 28 minutes longer than the same week in 2019. As of the week of August 8, this had improved to 12 minutes.
Flight Cancellations – There has been a substantial reduction in the volume of flight cancellations. During the week of August 8, there was a 77% reduction in the number of cancelled flights as compared to the week of June 27. This translates into 960 fewer flights cancelled. Furthermore, flight completion, which is the percentage of all scheduled flights that are not canceled, reached 96.7% during the week of August 8, which was less than one percentage point lower than the same week in 2019. The vast majority of customers experiencing cancellations, often due to weather or other unexpected factors, were able to travel within 24 hours.
Baggage Handling – The strongest area of improvement over this period can be seen in baggage handling, where the airline handles over 650,000 bags per week. During the week of June 27, mishandling rates per 1,000 customers were approximately 2.5 times the same number in 2019. As of the week of August 8, this rate has fully recovered to 2019 levels with a baggage handling success rate of 98%.
Air Canada continues to work with its partners to address the issues disrupting the air transport ecosystem in Canada. Evidence of the success of these joint efforts is a marked decrease in delays and cancellations for airlines, contributing to increased overall stability in Air Canada’s operations. This has resulted in an enhanced customer experience, with better on-time performance, schedule reliability and baggage delivery.
Each day on average, Air Canada currently operates nearly 1,100 flights and regularly carries 135,000 people. Air Canada has been prudently restoring its schedule as it recovers from the effects of COVID-19 and this summer it plans to operate 79 per cent of its pre-pandemic capacity as the industry stabilizes. In support of this, the carrier has recalled employees laid off during the pandemic and continues to hire additional workers. It currently has approximately 34,000 employees compared to 34,700 prior to the pandemic.
About Air Canada
Air Canada is Canada’s largest airline, the country’s flag carrier and a founding member of Star Alliance, the world’s most comprehensive air transportation network celebrating its 25thanniversary in 2022. Air Canada provides scheduled passenger service directly to 51 airports in Canada, 51 in the United States and 86 internationally. It is the only international network carrier in North America to receive a Four-Star ranking from Skytrax, which in 2021 gave Air Canada awards for the Best Airline Staff in North America, Best Airline Staff in Canada, Best Business Class Lounge in North America, and an excellence award for managing COVID-19. Through its leading travel loyalty Aeroplan program, Air Canada offers the ability to earn or redeem points on the world’s largest airline partner network of 45 airlines, plus through an extensive range of merchandise, hotel and car rental rewards. Its freight division, Air Canada Cargo, provides air freight lift and connectivity to hundreds of destinations across six continents using Air Canada’s passenger flights and cargo-only flights with its fleet of Boeing 767-300 freighters. Air Canada has committed to a net zero emissions goal from all global operations by 2050.
Samsung Electronics today unveiled its latest gaming screen lineup at Gamescom 2022, including the groundbreaking Odyssey Ark and the Odyssey G70B and G65B. The Odyssey Ark, announced earlier this month, is the world’s first 55-inch 1000R curved gaming screen, with a 165Hz refresh rate, 1ms response time (GtG) and all new Cockpit Mode.
“As the world’s largest gaming event, Gamescom represents an opportunity for Samsung to showcase our latest gaming innovations that will deliver the incredible future of gaming to player communities around the world,” said Hyesung Ha, Executive Vice President of Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. “The awe-inspiring Odyssey Ark and super smart new G70B and G65B reinforce our expertise, while opening up a new world of possibilities through these gaming screens.”
Odyssey Ark: Ultimate Entertainment Screen With Superior Gaming Performance
The Odyssey Ark represents a new frontier in gaming with its unrivaled picture quality and cinematic surround sound. The world’s first 55-inch 1000R curved screen provides an immersive view that wraps around the user’s peripheral vision, enhanced by Cockpit Mode which optimizes the screen environment with HAS (Height Adjustable Stand), tilt and pivot functionality. Quantum Matrix Technology powered by Quantum Mini LED enables ultra-fine and precise control of the densely packed LEDs with newly added 14-bit processing, enhanced by 16,384 black levels and a million-to-one static contrast ratio which showcases every detail in perfect clarity.
The Odyssey Ark is the ultimate entertainment screen, made possible by Samsung’s proprietary Matte Display and Sound Dome Technology. With both anti-glare and anti-reflection protection, users can watch, work and play without distractions, while surrounding themselves with cinematic sound delivered through four speakers at each corner and two central woofers — resulting in a 60W 2.2.2 channel with the lowest 45Hz notes of any gaming screen or gaming soundbar.
The Odyssey Ark is equipped with all the necessary features to deliver the best gaming, entertainment and lifestyle experiences. Smart Hub integrates essential IoT devices and functionality, allowing users to monitor and adjust settings such as temperature and humidity through the SmartThings app. Plus, a simple Wi-Fi connection enables a full smart TV experience, giving access to popular streaming apps and free live content with no downloads or sign-ups made possible by Samsung TV Plus.
In addition to a 165Hz refresh rate and 1ms response time (GtG) with AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, the Odyssey Ark offers Samsung Gaming Hub,1 an all-in-one game streaming discovery platform where players can discover and play the games they love with no downloads or storage space requirements.
Furthermore, Odyssey Ark is equipped with Ark Dial, a solar-powered controller which is exclusive to the Ark screen, allowing the quick and easy control of settings such as Flex Move Screen, Multi View, Quick Settings and Game Bar.2 In addition to being equipped with a solar panel, the Ark Dial can also be charged by a USB Type-C connection.
Odyssey G70B & G65B: Smart Services and Even Slicker Gameplay
Newly unveiled at Gamescom 2022 are the Odyssey G70B and G65B gaming monitors. These are the first models in the Odyssey lineup which have both Samsung’s Smart Platform and Samsung Gaming Hub embedded.
Both the G70B and G65B provide smart functionality, including the option to create a home office environment even without a PC. The monitors conveniently connect with various IT devices and services all from one screen for an ultra-efficient working environment. Users can wirelessly connect to a Windows or Mac PC, use Samsung DeX, mirror a smartphone screen onto the monitor using Apple AirPlay 2 as well as access Microsoft 365 cloud services. Users can also watch the latest shows on Netflix, Amazon Prime and other leading OTT (over-the-top) service providers.
In addition to the IoT functionality also available on the Odyssey Ark, the G70B and G65B are equipped with a high-sensitivity Far Field Voice microphone, allowing users to control the device with voice assistants such as Bixby and Amazon Alexa. The Always On Voice3 function allows users to interact with Bixby even when the monitor is turned off, while displaying conversation related information on the monitor’s screen.
The G70B is available in 28- and 32-inch sizes, offering a 144Hz refresh rate and a 1ms response time (GtG). These capabilities are packaged up in a UHD resolution, flat IPS display that is enhanced by NVIDIA’s G-SYNC Compatible and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro for smooth gameplay.
The G65B is offered in 27- and 32-inch size option and is equipped with a 240Hz refresh rate and 1ms response time (GtG). The QHD, 1000R curved display comes with FreeSync Premium Pro for a flawless gaming experience that will give any player a competitive edge.
Samsung Gaming Hub — available on both the G70B and G65B — allows instant access to top streaming services from partners such as Xbox, NVIDIA GeForce NOW, Google Stadia, Utomik and Amazon Luna (U.S. Only). Plus, users can access popular console and PC games to journey throughout the gaming universe, powered by Samsung’s advanced game streaming technology for smooth visuals and responsive gameplay. In addition to Samsung Gaming Hub, the two new Odyssey models offer Game Bar, a powerful tool enabling gamers to quickly and easily view the status of gaming settings and modify response time or screen ratio, as well as Game Picture mode, without ever needing to leave the game screen.
Samsung’s Odyssey Ark is now available for preorder globally, while the G70B and G65B will be available globally from Q4.
To experience and learn more about Samsung’s latest gaming display innovations, please visit the Samsung booth at Gamescom in Hall 9 in the Koelnmesse, Cologne, August 24-28, 2022. For additional information on Samsung’s Odyssey gaming lineup, please visit https://displaysolutions.samsung.com/gaming-monitor/odyssey-ark.
1 Samsung Gaming Hub is available in the following countries/regions: U.S., Canada, U.K., Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Korea and Brazil. Service availability for partners may vary by region.
2 Game Bar is supported for PC & console gaming, but not for Gaming Hub.
3 Availability of voice assistant services may vary by region.
Unilever purchases the world’s first linear alkylbenzene (LAB) surfactant made from renewable carbon
Until now the chemistry that provides the cleaning power of many laundry and detergent products has relied on ingredients derived from fossil fuels, also known as black carbon.
But a new range of renewable and biodegradable products from Spanish chemicals company Cepsa Química is helping to transition these carbon-intensive ingredients to circular chemistry.
This surfactant is known as NextLab linear alkylbenzene (LAB) and is made using green carbon derived from biomass. It’s renewable and biodegradable, and it provides the same properties and cleaning performance as LAB created from black carbon.
And in a potentially ground-breaking move for circular chemistry, Unilever is the first company to buy NextLab LAB and use it in our production.
What we’ll use LAB for
Unilever will use NextLab LAB to make linear alkylbenzene sulfonate (LAS), the world’s largest-volume synthetic surfactant and our most-used surfactant by volume too. It’s a key raw material used in many of our brands, including Persil, Cif and Sunlight.
That’s because surfactants are a vital ingredient in cleaning products. They work as ‘surface active agents’ to ‘stir up’ activity on the surface you’re cleaning, whether that’s a mark on a jumper or grease on a plate. Their activity breaks up stains and suspends the ‘dirt’ in water so that it can then be easily removed in the wash.
Currently, all LAS surfactant is made from black carbon from fossil fuels. Using LAB (which is created from renewable biomass to make LAS) is a more sustainable way to produce this key raw material. And that’s not all. In Unilever’s Home Care business, 46% of our cleaning products’ carbon footprint comes from the chemicals used to make them, so using chemicals derived from renewable feedstocks will reduce their carbon impact too.
Fuelling the transition to circular chemistry at scale
Achieving circular chemistry requires a period of transition and a phased approach to renewable and recycled feedstocks. As it stands, 85% of carbon demand in the chemical and derived materials sector is still met by black carbon from fossil sources. To create the change to more sustainable sources requires greater demand for it.
This means that Cepsa Química is using a ‘Mass Balance’ process to create NextLab LAB, which sees traditional black carbon sources blended and co-processed with sustainable green sources and tracked to ensure an appropriate volume of green carbon in the LAS produced. In other words, mass balance allows material from fossil fuels and from green or recycled sources to be mixed while the amount form each source is monitored.
“We are determined to accompany our customers in their progress towards the development of products that are increasingly more environmentally friendly,” says Cepsa Química Head of Chemicals Paloma Alonso.
Manufacturing surfactants in this way is not only the most viable short-term alternative to purely fossil-carbon derived products, it’s also a vital stepping stone in the shift from petrochemical to renewable feedstocks.
Using a mass balance approach allows us to start transitioning from black carbon sources to renewable alternatives that offer the same quality cleaning that our consumers expect and love in our brands Unilever’s Head of Procurement, Home Care, Kirsten Tosin.
“We are delighted to be the first buyers of NextLab and hope fellow suppliers and industry players will follow suit in exploring more sustainable and affordable alternatives as we work together to transform the industry from being heavily reliant on fossil-fuels to using renewable and recycled sources instead.”
We started a journey four years ago to bring even more convenience to our customers by delivering groceries and essentials directly to their doors. To offer this service to all customers with speed, we needed a delivery network that could reach rural and suburban areas. So we launched the Spark Driver platform.
Fast forward to today. We now have thousands of independent contractors who choose to drive on the Spark Driver platform, making it the largest delivery provider for Walmart. Today, nearly three-quarters of delivery orders have been fulfilled by drivers on the Spark Driver platform—reaching 84% of U.S. households.
Deliveries from our stores make up a large portion of this growth, but it doesn’t stop there. Drivers on the Spark Driver platform also fulfill orders for Walmart GoLocal, our white label, delivery-as-a-service business. The Spark Driver platform enables us to serve Walmart GoLocal clients—from large enterprises to small- and medium-sized businesses—and help them reach their customers with fast, reliable and affordable delivery.
The combination of these options is great for drivers, too. In fact, they rank quality of support for drivers and our shop and delivery experience highest in our satisfaction surveys. More broadly, drivers on the Spark Driver platform have more:
Flexibility: Drivers in all 50 states enjoy the freedom of deciding when, where and how frequently to perform deliveries. They can choose the types of trips they want to accept, including delivery, shopping and delivery or Walmart GoLocal. And, with 7,000 pickup points between Walmart stores and Walmart GoLocal clients, drivers can deliver everything from groceries, clothing and apparel to home improvement products and floral arrangements.
Opportunity: Drivers are paid competitively, with earnings calculated on multiple factors including distance, size of delivery and extras. Earnings don’t stop when the delivery is complete. Drivers also have the opportunity for incentive earnings through the Spark Driver Bonus Program and referrals. Additionally, drivers on the Spark Driver platform always keep 100% of their tips.
Reliability: People choose the Spark Driver platform in large part because of its reliable demand for deliveries through stores and Walmart GoLocal. Thanks to this, our customers can rely on us to save them time with convenient pickup and delivery with no added markup on items, making Walmart a destination for customers and drivers alike.
The Spark Driver platform has made a huge difference in my life. It gives me the flexibility to work when I want and be able to spend more time with my daughter. I’ve also earned extra cash to pay off my car and make extra house payments. Thanks to the Spark Driver platform my house is halfway paid off!
Christina H.
We’ll continue to grow the Spark Driver platform and work with our valued delivery service providers to ensure we’re bringing the best possible experience to our customers and getting them what they need, when they need it. And with the holidays approaching, we’re excited to add even more opportunities for drivers to earn.
Until then, we welcome drivers to sign up at drive4spark.com. We’d be honored to have you.
![[Video] Behind the Foldable Phones in Our Pockets](https://www.economistdubai.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/download-5-1.jpeg "[Video] Behind the Foldable Phones in Our Pockets")
