Groceries via delivery apps like Uber Eats, DoorDash and Milkrun can be up to 39% more expensive
Convenience can come at a steep price, Choice has found, with Australian consumers paying up to 39% more for groceries ordered through rapid delivery apps.Choice compared in-store prices of 13 common grocery items available at Coles, Woolworths and Aldi with their equivalents on third-party apps Uber Eats, DoorDash and Woolworths-owned Milkrun.They found that items including pasta, milk and fresh vegetables cost on average 11% more on third-party apps and delivery charges of between $5 and $11 significantly drove up bills.Seven out of 13 items at Aldi were priced higher on DoorDash than in store, while Milkrun charged more for 11 out of 13 items from Woolworths.“Not all items are increased in price,” said the editorial director at Choice, Mark Serrels, but “the majority of them are”
Barclays can afford Tricolor loss but risks remain in the private credit market
“I’m not an entomologist,” said CS Venkatakrishnan, the Barclays chief executive, dodging the question everybody is asking: how many cockroaches are about to crawl out of the woodwork in the private credit market?The good news – sort of – for Barclays is that it had only one insect to point to. A £110m loss from lending to Tricolor, the US sub-prime auto lender that has failed amid allegations of fraud, doesn’t look good but Venkatakrishnan could simultaneously trumpet that Barclays avoided that other rotten private credit beast First Brands. Barclays was asked to lend to the stricken autoparts supplier, but didn’t. JP Morgan, taking its own $170m (£127m) hit on Tricolor, said the same last week.One could regard these developments as mildly reassuring after a week in which both the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of England have warned about risks that may be emerging in the world of private credit, AKA the shadow banking sector
Tesla reports steep drop in profits despite US rush to buy electric vehicles
Despite record vehicle sales, Tesla saw a precipitous drop in profit in its most recent quarter.A rush to buy electric vehicles before a US tax credit for them disappears had boosted Tesla’s flagging sales, leading to the automaker exceeding some of Wall Street’s projections in its most recent financial quarter. Yet the company failed to meet earnings expectations and its stock fell in after hours trading.Tesla reported third-quarter earnings of 50 cents a share on Wednesday after market close, less than the 54 cents that market analysts predicted. The automaker exceeded Wall Street’s expectations of $26
OpenAI relaxed ChatGPT guardrails just before teen killed himself, family alleges
The family of a teenager who took his own life after months of conversations with ChatGPT now says OpenAI weakened safety guidelines in the months before his death.In July 2022, OpenAI’s guidelines on how ChatGPT should answer inappropriate content, including “content that promotes, encourages, or depicts acts of self-harm, such as suicide, cutting, and eating disorders”, were simple. The AI chatbot should respond, “I can’t answer that”, the guidelines read.But in May 2024, just days before OpenAI released a new version of the AI, ChatGPT-4o, the company published an update to its Model Spec, a document that details the desired behavior for its assistant. In cases where a user expressed suicidal ideation or self-harm, ChatGPT would no longer respond with an outright refusal
Fide to investigate Kramnik over attacks on Naroditsky as chess reels from player’s death
The International Chess Federation (Fide) said on Wednesday it is examining former world champion Vladimir Kramnik’s public attacks on Daniel Naroditsky, the American grandmaster whose sudden death at 29 has stunned the chess world and laid bare fissures in the sport’s digital age.Naroditsky, among the most visible faces of chess’s pandemic-era renaissance, was one of the most popular players and teachers of his generation, a Stanford-educated prodigy who won the Under-12 world championship, became a grandmaster at 18 and went on to amass more than 800,000 followers across Twitch and YouTube. Known by his nickname Danya, the California-born Naroditsky’s mix of patience, humor, generosity and gift for communication made him a standard-bearer of chess’s online boom, helping to bring vast new audiences to a centuries-old pastime.In recent years, the explosion of online chess has fueled a parallel surge in cheating accusations, as players gained access to powerful computer engines capable of suggesting perfect moves in real time. The ecosystem became both democratized and combustible
Australia beat England by six wickets at Women’s Cricket World Cup – as it happened
I’ll leave you with Raf Nicholson’s match report. Goodnight!Yeah, very happy. The spinners did a fantastic job with the ball, we had a bit of a shaky start with the bat but then Bels and Ash were just world-class. It was clinical. I feel for Bels a bit, not getting a hundred – she thoroughly deserved it
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