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If youve built an audience around documenting your 9-to-5 online, what happens after you hand in your notice? Thats the conundrum facing Connor Hubbard, aka hubs.life, a creator who amassed a huge following by sharing the mundane details of his corporate life as a senior analyst at a Fortune 500 company. In April 2024, The Guardian dubbed him the most boring man on the internet, with some of his most popular videos showing viewers his lunch breaks and daily 9-to-5 routine. @hubs.life The days are long, the years are short.. #dayinthelife #ninetofivelife #dailyvlog Glimpse (Slowed + Reverb) – Gabriel Albuquerqüe The internet couldnt get enough. It just seemed to get a lot of traction, because I think most of the world is working,” he told GQ in an interview. “They have to work for a living. They can’t all be influencers. Then he quit. Not for another job, but to become a full-time influencer. Clips from a recent livestream began circulating after Hubbard told viewers he wouldnt answer questions unless they sent him a Galaxy, a TikTok gift that costs 1,000 coins, or about $13. Unsurprisingly, this didnt go over well with fans. We need studies on the downfall of Hubs Life, one TikTok user posted. Who did this guy become? @escapetheslop Not going to pretend I was ever not a hater of the corporate sloptent, but this was so absurd I clipped it. Like a #jasonnash stream all over. #normalizethenorm #9to5 #hubslife #contentcreator @hubs.life oh my god bruh oh hell na man – ok9172917 Hubbard has fallen into the relatability trapone that often trips up influencers who go viral by sharing their ordinary lives. As their follower count grows, their lifestyleas well as their contentinevitably shifts. Maybe its a bigger house, more lavish brand trips, or, in Hubbards case, quitting the job that made him famous in the first place. Suddenly, the content no longer reflects what drew the audience in. He left his 6-figure job FOR THIS, one person commented. This storyline would be a good Black Mirror episode, another added. (Fast Company has reached out to Hubbard for comment.) For audiences, watching their favorite influencers change in real time can feel dishearteningsometimes even like a betrayal. The backlash can be swift and harsh, or fans simply lose interest and move on. Hubs Life assumed people loved him, not the content, another TikTok user observed. The internet is rarely forgiving, especially when followers feel responsible for someones rise. Its a lesson Hubbard is learning the hard way. As one particularly brutal comment put it: We made the wrong person famous.
Category:
E-Commerce
If you bought an e-bike on Amazon for a price that seemed too good to be true, theres a fair chance you mightve been right. A federal consumer watchdog just issued a recall for about 24,000 e-bikes in the sub-$1,000 price range, all of which were sold at popular retailers including Amazon, Walmart, Sears, and Wayfair. According to the recall notice, issued by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) on July 17, the affected bikes were sold under the brand name VIVI. The recall comes due to a potential fire and burn risk posed by the bikes 36-volt lithium-ion rechargeable batteries, which have already resulted in 14 reports of overheating and three reports of fires, though, thankfully, no injuries have been reported. Full details of the recallincluding affected models and retailersare listed in the notice. Unfortunately, this isnt the first time that the next-to-non-existent e-bike and e-bike battery regulations in the U.S. have resulted in fire concerns. Why are e-bikes catching fire? According to a 2022 article by the National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA), the first UL Standards & Engagement safety standards (a voluntary safety certification) for personal electric micromobility devices were created back in 2016, after more than half a million electric hoverboards were recalled due to overheating and, in some cases, explosions. The truth is battery-powered electric micromobility devices, including the e-bikes and e-scooters that have become immensely popular in recent years, do catch fire, the NFPA wrote. Specifically, its their batteries, which are often lithium-ion, that pose a risk. Today, UL Standards & Engagement has two separate safety standards for both e-bikes (UL 2849) and e-bike batteries (UL 2271). These standards require a one-time certification test to confirm that a product is safe, which typically cost between $30,000 and $100,000. However, in most U.S. jurisdictions, these certifications are not requiredand there is currently no federally mandated safety standard. Of the VIVI brand e-bikes involved in the recent recall, all of the affected models that are currently available on VIVI’s website claim to be certified with UL 2849, but not with the battery specific UL 2271. Several of the affected models appear to be either unavailable or no longer sold. A 2022 investigation by Consumer Reports found that loose regulations have resulted in many companies skirting around adequate safety precautions for both e-bikes and their lithium-ion batteries to avoid added costs. This trend was made even worse by the fact that, before May 2 of this year, Chinese importers (which account for the majority of the U.S. e-bike market) were incentivized to keep prices low by the de minimis exception, which allowed goods under $800 to enter the U.S. tax-free. Lack of regulation or industry-wide acceptance of safety standards may leave lower-income users at greater risk than those able to afford high-end devices that are likelier to be UL-certified, Consumer Reports noted. As of 2023, New York City began requiring UL certification on all e-bikes. A UL Standards & Engagement study published in 2024 found that the rate of deaths and injuries in the city began to slow significantly after the law was put into place. And, this coming January, California is set to follow New York Citys example with its own UL requirements. However, as the Consumer Reports investigation noted, until a federal standard for e-bike safety is set, its likely that other states will continue to encounter problems caused by faulty batteries. Despite the mounting toll of fires, injuries, and deaths tied to e-bike batteries, manufacturers and sellers have failed to take vital steps that would protect peoples safety, said Gabe Knight, policy advocate for Consumer Reports, in a press release. When an industry isnt putting safety first, people rightly expect the Consumer Product Safety Commission to step in. CRs investigation shows that the CPSC cant do its job as quickly or effectively as it needs to as long as Congress forces the agency to fight with one hand tied behind its back.
Category:
E-Commerce
IBM: International Business Machines, or Incredible Breakthroughs in Medicine? IBM may need to tweak its moniker in light of recent news, because its recent work in quantum computing, in partnership with Moderna, could lead to potentially explosive breakthroughs in the medical field. The companies’ recently published research showed promise using a combination of both quantum and classical computers to predict mRNA secondary structures, which may make it easier to develop and design new mRNA-based medicines and treatments. Until now, this wasnt possible due to the amount of computing power needed to calculate potential complex interactions at a molecular level. But quantum computing, which is being used in similar ways such as materials design, is giving scientists the extra computational firepower they need to do it. The results? More, better drugs, developed on much shorter time frames. One of the biggest challenges when identifying the best candidates for mRNA-based medicines is determining how they will instruct mRNA to fold in the bodya challenging optimization problem that gets harder and harder to solve for larger mRNA sequences, ultimately pushing the limits of even the most advanced classical computers, says Sarah Sheldon, Senior Manager of Applied Quantum Science at IBM. By applying an approach that leverages the strengths of both quantum and classical computing, the Moderna and IBM team has set a new record in the scale of mRNA structure problems that quantum computers are able to solve. In effect, utilizing quantum computers on a large scale could transform life sciences, she says. Quantum computing holds the promise to help streamline the design of new medicines, while reducing the time and cost scales of bringing new therapies to market,” explains Sheldon. “As quantum computers continue to expand their computational power and new algorithms emerge, they could accelerate drug discovery and enable more precise and effective medicines. While thats obviously exciting news, its worth noting that some in the tech field have tried to throw cold water on the hubbub surrounding quantum computing. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, for instance, said earlier this year that he thought quantum computers were still decades awaya notion that was rejected by others in the space. Some companies already do have commercially available quantum computers on the market, and others are working on their own, such as IBM. One thing we do know, at this point, is that the promise of quantum computing, when pointed at existing research bottlenecks, has many researchers excited. Were already seeing promising early results, says Sheldon. We expect to make meaningful progress with our partners across global industries to scale algorithms capable of running increasingly more complex quantum circuits with greater accuracya critical step toward realizing practical and industry-relevant applications in fields such as life sciences, materials, chemistry, optimization, and more.
Category:
E-Commerce
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