Your state may offer a break on clothing and school supplies, and in some cases, much more By Mary Beth Quirk, Beth Braverman We know it may feel like summer’s just getting started. But if you’re already thinking of back-to-school shopping, you may get a price break in the next few months. Though 45 states and the District of Columbia typically collect sales tax, more than a dozen have decided to either cut the amount of sales tax they charge or not charge sales tax at all during various weekends this summer, according to the Federation of Tax Administrators. And the savings apply to all shoppers in those states, even if you aren’t going back to school. While shopping, keep in mind that...
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Le Chat Noir: Yelena Bryksenkova?s 2009 drawing of Georges Perec, whose master work, ?Life: A User?s Manual,? was published in 1978. Click for larger view. Image by YELENA BRYKSENKOVA A Renaissance for Belleville’s Georges Perec, Master of the LipogramBenjamin IvryMay 12, 2010One of France’s most daring postwar writers, perhaps best known for writing an entire novel without the letter “e” (a lipogram), French-Jewish author Georges Perec, is coming back into vogue. Two of his books were reprinted by publisher David R. Godine last year, and new interest is being taken in his Polish-Jewish roots.Perec, who died of lung cancer at age 45 in 1982, was long celebrated as an adherent of the experimental Oulipo literary group. Founded by Raymond Queneau, a...
Some shoppers are buying Costco’s $4.99 rotisserie chickens and paying at self-checkout. The problem: They aren’t all members. Since Costco has expanded self-checkout, the company has noticed that non-members have been sneaking in to use membership cards that don’t belong to them. The warehouse club retailer will now ask for shoppers’ membership cards along with a photo ID to use the self-checkout registers – the same policy as regular checkout lanes. “We don’t feel it’s right that nonmembers receive the same benefits and pricing as our members,” Costco said in a statement. Costco had around 66 million paid members and 119 million cardholders in 2022, making it one of the largest membership clubs in the world. Costco members pay either...
Computers possess two remarkable capabilities with respect to images: They can both identify them and generate them anew. Historically, these functions have stood separate, akin to the disparate acts of a chef who is good at creating dishes (generation), and a connoisseur who is good at tasting dishes (recognition). Yet, one can’t help but wonder: What would it take to orchestrate a harmonious union between these two distinctive capacities? Both chef and connoisseur share a common understanding in the taste of the food. Similarly, a unified vision system requires a deep understanding of the visual world. Now, researchers in MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have trained a system to infer the missing parts of an image, a...
