Latest news with #Goodson
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
May Street closures in effect, Baton Rouge residents concerned with traffic congestion
BATON ROUGE, La. (Louisiana First) — Residents living on or near May Street near LSU are expressing concern over the traffic congestion that may make its way near the area. May Street officially closed on Wednesday to start the construction process. Miriam Tiritilli, who lives on May Street, said she's frustrated with the closure. 'Now, all of a sudden, it's inconvenient to go grocery shopping,' she said. May Street near LSU is one of the most used roadways in the area, by car and on foot. 'What it involves is really tearing up May Street and rebuilding it between Dalrymple Drive and East Lakeshore,' said Mark Goodson, project manager with CSRS. Goodson said this change has been in the works for a while, and it's all a part of the University Lakes Project. He said the upgrades will not only be beneficial for pedestrians, but drivers. The plan is to create a channel and allow those in the water to be able to travel between the University and City Park Lakes. 'Along with that will be providing new multi-use paths on either side of May Street, new lighting and new greenspace and landscaping, and parking for what was May Street Park before,' he said. Goodson said the construction on May Street plays a key role, but Tiritilli is not happy about the timing. 'It may not be as big a deal. It's still a big deal during summer, but when school comes back in, it's going to be crazy,' she said. This won't affect game day traffic, as the road is already blocked off. Tiritilli said although she's concerned, she still wants to see the finished product. 'We're hoping that the long run will be beneficial to our property values. Hopefully, the safety of the pedestrians will be improved,' she said. Construction will only happen during the day. They expect to be finished by August of next year. To stay up to date with construction for both May Street and the University Lakes Project, click here. Louisiana bill on Baton Rouge blight moves forward More people speak out against Clinton tax preparer accused of fraud AI may cut drug discovery time, says scientific software leader Keeping pets safe in the summer heat: Local experts share tips May Street closures in effect, Baton Rouge residents concerned with traffic congestion Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Kroger May Be Charging You Too Much for Groceries, Consumer Reports Says
You may be paying more than you should at a major grocery store chain. Kroger grocery stores have a problem with their price tags, resulting in shoppers paying full price for some items that are labeled as being on sale. The issue was uncovered by Consumer Reports during a three month-long investigation. Consumer Reports started examining prices after employees at Kroger stores in Colorado, during union negotiations, said that errors on price labels have been a problem for years. They said price tags aren't always removed when a sale or promotion ends, so shoppers pay full price for items that have expired discount or sale tags. The chain has also been the subject of class-action lawsuits alleging pricing errors in California, Illinois, Ohio, and Utah. Kroger owns other stores, including Fred Meyer, Fry's, Harris Teeter, and Ralphs. Read More: A Food Editor's Secret To Saving Time and Money at the Grocery Store In March, April, and May, Consumer Reports sent people shopping at more than two dozen Kroger and Kroger-owned stores in 14 states and the District of Columbia. The shoppers found sale labels that had expired, resulting in overcharges on more than 150 items. The report found an average overcharge of $1.70 per item, or 18.4 percent. 'Our findings suggest the typical Kroger shopper ends up paying far more for what they think are discounted items—all during a time of inflation and economic uncertainty,' Consumer Reports wrote. Experts who were asked to examine the findings told Consumer Reports that the price label mistakes could be in violation of federal and state laws that protect consumers. Kroger responded to Consumer Reports that the company is 'committed to affordable and accurate pricing' and that it reviews 'millions of items weekly to ensure our shelf prices are accurate.' The company told Consumer Reports, 'While any error is unacceptable, the characterization of widespread pricing concerns is patently false.' Read More: This One Trick Will Cut Your Grocery Bill, According to a Grocer's Daughter Store employees quickly corrected shopping errors when they were pointed out, according to Consumer Reports, but likely many shoppers unknowingly overpaid at the checkout. To make sure you're paying the prices you're supposed to, be savvy when shopping. Registered dietitian and health consultant Amy Goodson offers these tips. Use self-checkout. 'If you are personally doing the food scanning, you can keep track of the prices and if the discounts are showing up appropriately,' Goodson says. Pay attention. Watch the prices, particularly for sale items and produce that is charged by weight. But you really have to be alert at the end of the transaction. 'Typically, discounts are subtracted when you select 'pay now,' so make sure those items reduce in price when you check out.' Double-check coupons. If you're using coupons—in the app or physical coupons—make sure they all scan at the end. Speak up. If you think something scanned incorrectly, point it out immediately. 'It's easier to fix on the spot than after you leave the store,' Goodson says. Read the original article on SIMPLYRECIPES
The Star
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Star
Here's a story about the history of the Like button that you might like
SAN FRANCISCO: The Internet wouldn't be the same without the Like button, the thumbs-up icon that Facebook and other online services turned into digital catnip. Like it or not, the button has served as a creative catalyst, a dopamine delivery system and an emotional battering ram. It also became an international tourist attraction after Facebook plastered the symbol on a giant sign on that stood outside its Silicon Valley headquarters until the company rebranded itself as Meta Platforms in 2021. A new book, Like: The Button That Changed The World , delves into the convoluted story behind a symbol that's become both the manna and bane of a digitally driven society. It's a tale that traces back to gladiator battles for survival during the Roman empire before fast-forwarding to the early 21st century when technology trailblazers such as Yelp co-founder Russ Simmons, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, and Gmail inventor Paul Buchheit were experimenting with different ways using the currency of recognition to prod people to post compelling content online for free. As part of that noodling, a Yelp employee named Bob Goodson sat down on May 18, 2005, and drew a crude sketch of thumbs up and thumbs down gesture as a way for people to express their opinions about restaurant reviews posted on the site. Yelp passed on adopting Goodson's suggested symbol and, instead, adopted the 'useful', 'funny' and 'cool' buttons conceived by Simmons. But the discovery of that old sketch inspired Goodson to team up with Martin Reeves to explore how the Like button came to be in their new book. 'It's something simple and also elegant because the Like button says, 'I like you, I like your content. And I am like you. I like you because I am like you, I am part of your tribe',' Reeves said during an interview with The Associated Press. 'But it's very hard to answer the simple question, 'Well, who invented the Like button?'' The social wellspring behind a social symbol Although Facebook is the main reason the Like button became so ubiquitous, the company didn't invent it and almost discarded it as drivel. It took Facebook nearly two years to overcome the staunch resistance by CEO Mark Zuckerberg before finally introducing the symbol on its service on February 9, 2009 – five years after the social network's creation in a Harvard University dorm room. As happens with many innovations, the Like button was born out of necessity but it wasn't the brainchild of a single person. The concept percolated for more than a decade in a Silicon Valley before Facebook finally embraced it. 'Innovation is often social and Silicon Valley was the right place for all this happen because it has a culture of meet-ups, although it's less so now,' Reeves said. 'Everyone was getting together to talk about what they were working on at that time and it turned out a lot of them were working on the same stuff.' The effort to create a simple mechanism to digitally express approval or dismay sprouted from a wellspring of online services such as Yelp and YouTube whose success would hinge on their ability to post commentary or video that would help make their sites even more popular without forcing them to spend a lot of money for content. That effort required a feedback loop that wouldn't require a lot of hoops to navigate. Hollywood's role in the Like button's saga And when Goodson was noodling around with his thumbs-up and thumbs-down gesture, it didn't come out of a vacuum. Those techniques of signaling approval and disapproval had been ushered into the 21st century zeitgeist by the Academy Award-winning movie, Gladiator , where Emperor Commodus – portrayed by actor Joaquin Phoenix – used the gestures to either spare or slay combatants in the arena. But the positive feelings conjured by a thumbs up date even further back in popular culture, thanks to the 1950s-era character Fonzie played by Henry Winkler in the top-rated 1970s TV series, Happy Days . The gesture later became a way of expressing delight with a programme via a remote control button for the digital video recorders made by TiVO during the early 2000s. Around the same time, Hot or Not – a site that solicited feedback on the looks of people who shared photos of themselves – began playing around with ideas that helped inspire the Like button, based on the book's research. Others that contributed to the pool of helpful ideas included the pioneering news service Digg, the blogging platform Xanga, YouTube and another early video site, Vimeo. The button's big breakthrough But Facebook unquestionably turned the Like button into a universally understood symbol, while also profiting the most from its entrance into the mainstream. And it almost didn't happen. By 2007, Facebook engineers had been tinkering with a Like button, but Zuckerberg opposed it because he feared the social network was already getting too cluttered and, Reeves said, 'is he didn't actually want to do something that would be seen as trivial, that would cheapen the service.' But FriendFeed, a rival social network created by Buchheit and now OpenAI Chairman Bret Taylor, had no such qualms, and unveiled its own Like button in October 2007. But the button wasn't successful enough to keep the lights on at FriendFeed, and the service ended up being acquired by Facebook. By the time that deal was completed, Facebook had already introduced a Like button – only after Zuckerberg rebuffed the original idea of calling it an Awesome button 'because nothing is more awesome than awesome', according to the book's research. Once Zuckerberg relented, Facebook quickly saw that the Like button not only helped keep its audience engaged on its social network but also made it easier to divine people's individual interests and gather the insights required to sell the targeted advertising that accounted for most of Meta Platform's US$165bil (RM708.61bil) in revenue last year. The button's success encouraged Facebook to take things even further by allowing other digital services to ingrain it into their feedback loops and then, in 2016, added six more types of emotions – 'love', 'care', 'haha', 'wow', 'sad', and 'angry'. Facebook hasn't publicly disclosed how many responses it has accumulated from the Like button and its other related options, but Levchin told the book's authors that he believes the company has probably logged trillions of them. 'What content is liked by probably one of the singularly most valuable things on the Internet,' Levchin said in the book. The Like button also has created an epidemic of emotional problems, especially among adolescents, who feel forlorn if their posts are ignored and narcissists whose egos feast on the positive feedback. Reeves views those issues as part of the unintentional consequences that inevitably happen because 'if you can't even predict the beneficial effects of a technological innovation how could you possibly forecast the side effects and the interventions?' Even so, Reeves believes the Like button and the forces that coalesced to create it tapped into something uniquely human. 'We thought serendipity of the innovation was part of the point,' Reeves said. 'And I don't think we can get bored with liking or having our capacity to compliment taken away so easily because it's the product of 100,000 years of evolution.' – AP
Japan Today
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Today
Like it or not, the Like button has changed the world
This image provided by BCG shows a sketch by Bob Goodson that included a crude concept of what would become the Like button on May 18, 2005. (BCG via AP) By MICHAEL LIEDTKE The internet wouldn't be the same without the Like button, the thumbs-up icon that Facebook and other online services turned into digital catnip. Like it or not, the button has served as a creative catalyst, a dopamine delivery system and an emotional battering ram. It also became an international tourist attraction after Facebook plastered the symbol on a giant sign that stood outside its Silicon Valley headquarters until the company rebranded itself as Meta Platforms in 2021. A new book, 'Like: The Button That Changed The World," delves into the convoluted story behind a symbol that's become both the manna and bane of a digitally driven society. It's a tale that traces back to gladiator battles for survival during the Roman Empire before fast-forwarding to the early 21st century when technology trailblazers such as Yelp co-founder Russ Simmons, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, and Gmail inventor Paul Buchheit were experimenting with different ways of using the currency of recognition to prod people to post compelling content online for free. As part of that noodling, a Yelp employee named Bob Goodson sat down on May 18, 2005, and drew a crude sketch of thumbs up and thumbs down gestures as a way for people to express their opinions about restaurant reviews posted on the site. Yelp passed on adopting Goodson's suggested symbol and, instead, adopted the 'useful,' 'funny' and 'cool' buttons conceived by Simmons. But the discovery of that old sketch inspired Goodson to team up with Martin Reeves to explore how the Like button came to be in their new book. 'It's something simple and also elegant because the Like button says, 'I like you, I like your content. And I am like you. I like you because I am like you, I am part of your tribe,' ' Reeves said during an interview with The Associated Press. 'But it's very hard to answer the simple question, 'Well, who invented the Like button?' ' Although Facebook is the main reason the Like button became so ubiquitous, the company didn't invent it and almost discarded it as drivel. It took Facebook nearly two years to overcome the staunch resistance by CEO Mark Zuckerberg before finally introducing the symbol on its service on February 9, 2009 — five years after the social network's creation in a Harvard University dorm room. As happens with many innovations, the Like button was born out of necessity but it wasn't the brainchild of a single person. The concept percolated for more than a decade in Silicon Valley before Facebook finally embraced it. 'Innovation is often social and Silicon Valley was the right place for all this to happen because it has a culture of meetups, although it's less so now,' Reeves said. 'Everyone was getting together to talk about what they were working on at that time and it turned out a lot of them were working on the same stuff.' The effort to create a simple mechanism to digitally express approval or dismay sprouted from a wellspring of online services such as Yelp and YouTube whose success would hinge on their ability to post commentary or video that would help make their sites even more popular without forcing them to spend a lot of money for content. That effort required a feedback loop that wouldn't require a lot of hoops to navigate. And when Goodson was noodling around with his thumbs-up and thumbs-down gesture, it didn't come out of a vacuum. Those techniques of signaling approval and disapproval had been ushered into the 21st century zeitgeist by the Academy Award-winning movie, 'Gladiator,' where Emperor Commodus — portrayed by actor Joaquin Phoenix — used the gestures to either spare or slay combatants in the arena. But the positive feelings conjured by a thumbs up date even further back in popular culture, thanks to the 1950s-era character Fonzie played by Henry Winkler in the top-rated 1970s TV series, 'Happy Days.' The gesture later became a way of expressing delight with a program via a remote control button for the digital video recorders made by TiVO during the early 2000s. Around the same time, Hot or Not — a site that solicited feedback on the looks of people who shared photos of themselves — began playing around with ideas that helped inspire the Like button, based on the book's research. Others that contributed to the pool of helpful ideas included the pioneering news service Digg, the blogging platform Xanga, YouTube and another early video site, Vimeo. But Facebook unquestionably turned the Like button into a universally understood symbol, while also profiting the most from its entrance into the mainstream. And it almost didn't happen. By 2007, Facebook engineers had been tinkering with a Like button, but Zuckerberg opposed it because he feared the social network was already getting too cluttered and, Reeves said, 'he didn't actually want to do something that would be seen as trivial, that would cheapen the service.' But FriendFeed, a rival social network created by Buchheit and now OpenAI Chairman Bret Taylor, had no such qualms, and unveiled its own Like button in October 2007. But the button wasn't successful enough to keep the lights on at FriendFeed, and the service ended up being acquired by Facebook. By the time that deal was completed, Facebook had already introduced a Like button — only after Zuckerberg rebuffed the original idea of calling it an Awesome button 'because nothing is more awesome than awesome,' according to the book's research. Once Zuckerberg relented, Facebook quickly saw that the Like button not only helped keep its audience engaged on its social network but also made it easier to divine people's individual interests and gather the insights required to sell the targeted advertising that accounted for most of Meta Platform's $165 billion in revenue last year. The button's success encouraged Facebook to take things even further by allowing other digital services to ingrain it into their feedback loops and then, in 2016, added six more types of emotions — 'love,' 'care,' 'haha,' 'wow,' 'sad,' and 'angry.' Facebook hasn't publicly disclosed how many responses it has accumulated from the Like button and its other related options, but Levchin told the book's authors that he believes the company has probably logged trillions of them. 'What content is liked by probably one of the singularly most valuable things on the internet,' Levchin said in the book. The Like button also has created an epidemic of emotional problems, especially among adolescents, who feel forlorn if their posts are ignored and narcissists whose egos feast on the positive feedback. Reeves views those issues as part of the unintentional consequences that inevitably happen because 'if you can't even predict the beneficial effects of a technological innovation how could you possibly forecast the side effects and the interventions?' Even so, Reeves believes the Like button and the forces that coalesced to create it tapped into something uniquely human. 'We thought serendipity of the innovation was part of the point,' Reeves said. 'And I don't think we can get bored with liking or having our capacity to compliment taken away so easily because it's the product of 100,000 years of evolution.' © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Boston Globe
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Like it or not, the Like button has changed the world
It's a tale that traces back to gladiator battles for survival during the Roman empire before fast-forwarding to the early 21st century when technology trailblazers such as Yelp co-founder Russ Simmons, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, and Gmail inventor Paul Buchheit were experimenting with different ways using the currency of recognition to prod people to post compelling content online for free. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up As part of that noodling, a Yelp employee named Bob Goodson sat down on May 18, 2005, and drew a crude sketch of thumbs up and thumbs down gesture as a way for people to express their opinions about restaurant reviews posted on the site. Yelp passed on adopting Goodson's suggested symbol and, instead, adopted the 'useful,' 'funny' and 'cool' buttons conceived by Simmons. But the discovery of that old sketch inspired Goodson to team up with Martin Reeves to explore how the Like button came to be in their new book. Advertisement 'It's something simple and also elegant because the Like button says, 'I like you, I like your content. And I am like you. I like you because I am like you, I am part of your tribe,' ' Reeves said during an interview with The Associated Press. 'But it's very hard to answer the simple question, 'Well, who invented the Like button?' ' Advertisement The social wellspring behind a social symbol Although Facebook is the main reason the Like button became so ubiquitous, the company didn't invent it and almost discarded it as drivel. It took Facebook nearly two years to overcome the staunch resistance by CEO Mark Zuckerberg before finally introducing the symbol on its service on February 9, 2009 — five years after the social network's creation in a Harvard University dorm room. As happens with many innovations, the Like button was born out of necessity but it wasn't the brainchild of a single person. The concept percolated for more than a decade in a Silicon Valley before Facebook finally embraced it. 'Innovation is often social and Silicon Valley was the right place for all this happen because it has a culture of meet-ups, although it's less so now,' Reeves said. 'Everyone was getting together to talk about what they were working on at that time and it turned out a lot of them were working on the same stuff.' The effort to create a simple mechanism to digitally express approval or dismay sprouted from a wellspring of online services such as Yelp and YouTube whose success would hinge on their ability to post commentary or video that would help make their sites even more popular without forcing them to spend a lot of money for content. That effort required a feedback loop that wouldn't require a lot of hoops to navigate. Advertisement Hollywood's role in the Like button's saga And when Goodson was noodling around with his thumbs-up and thumbs-down gesture, it didn't come out of a vacuum. Those techniques of signaling approval and disapproval had been ushered into the 21st century zeitgeist by the Academy Award-winning movie, 'Gladiator,' where Emperor Commodus — portrayed by actor Joaquin Phoenix — used the gestures to either spare or slay combatants in the arena. But the positive feelings conjured by a thumbs up date even further back in popular culture, thanks to the 1950s-era character Fonzie played by Henry Winkler in the top-rated 1970s TV series, 'Happy Days.' The gesture later became a way of expressing delight with a program via a remote control button for the digital video recorders made by TiVO during the early 2000s. Around the same time, Hot or Not — a site that solicited feedback on the looks of people who shared photos of themselves — began playing around with ideas that helped inspire the Like button, based on the book's research. Others that contributed to the pool of helpful ideas included the pioneering news service Digg, the blogging platform Xanga, YouTube and another early video site, Vimeo. The button's big breakthrough But Facebook unquestionably turned the Like button into a universally understood symbol, while also profiting the most from its entrance into the mainstream. And it almost didn't happen. By 2007, Facebook engineers had been tinkering with a Like button, but Zuckerberg opposed it because he feared the social network was already getting too cluttered and, Reeves said, 'is he didn't actually want to do something that would be seen as trivial, that would cheapen the service.' Advertisement But FriendFeed, a rival social network created by Buchheit and now OpenAI Chairman Bret Taylor, had no such qualms, and unveiled its own Like button in October 2007. But the button wasn't successful enough to keep the lights on at FriendFeed, and the service ended up being acquired by Facebook. By the time that deal was completed, Facebook had already introduced a Like button — only after Zuckerberg rebuffed the original idea of calling it an Awesome button 'because nothing is more awesome than awesome,' according to the book's research. Once Zuckerberg relented, Facebook quickly saw that the Like button not only helped keep its audience engaged on its social network but also made it easier to divine people's individual interests and gather the insights required to sell the targeted advertising that accounted for most of Meta Platform's $165 billion in revenue last year. The button's success encouraged Facebook to take things even further by allowing other digital services to ingrain it into their feedback loops and then, in 2016, added six more types of emotions — 'love,' 'care,' 'haha,' 'wow,' 'sad,' and 'angry.' Facebook hasn't publicly disclosed how many responses it has accumulated from the Like button and its other related options, but Levchin told the book's authors that he believes the company has probably logged trillions of them. 'What content is liked by probably one of the singularly most valuable things on the internet,' Levchin said in the book. The Like button also has created an epidemic of emotional problems, especially among adolescents, who feel forlorn if their posts are ignored and narcissists whose egos feast on the positive feedback. Reeves views those issues as part of the unintentional consequences that inevitably happen because 'if you can't even predict the beneficial effects of a technological innovation how could you possibly forecast the side effects and the interventions?' Advertisement Even so, Reeves believes the Like button and the forces that coalesced to create it tapped into something uniquely human. 'We thought serendipity of the innovation was part of the point,' Reeves said. 'And I don't think we can get bored with liking or having our capacity to compliment taken away so easily because it's the product of 100,000 years of evolution.'
