Most Americans aren't yet ready to order their groceries online.

A new BMO Capital Markets report  highlights just how slowly adoption of grocery delivery services is going — and, more importantly: why. 

The analysts highlight an important trend: even in 2012, for consumer products like electronics or sporting goods, between 25% and 40% of Americans bought products online — but only a very slim percentage, around 2% said they shopped for groceries this way. 

And, in the cities where BMO surveyed in late 2014, that had changed little: 4% of consumers in Los Angeles were buying groceries online, and just 8% in Seattle. In New York, 16% were using these services, but FreshDirect has operated for 15 years, slightly skewing results. Nevertheless, 16% in more than a decade is a slim majority if Amazon, Google or Instacart aims to dethrone grocery titans like Kroger or Whole Foods.

So, why exactly are consumers so reluctant to order groceries online?

Silicon Valley can disrupt a lot of things, but it can't find an app that will help you squeeze an avocado. Consumers' preference to shop for themselves is a big hurdle for the companies that want to profit by procuring your produce. The biggest hangup for consumers remains needing to pick out their own foods. 

Still, the online grocery delivery industry is in its earliest stages, and unlike Webvan, both big tech companies' developments, along with bigger startups, have developed a more sophisticated capital structure that's aimed at weathering slow consumer adoption. 

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NOW WATCH: Nationwide's Super Bowl commercial about dead children is about corporate profits ... in a way that we can all appreciate

Starbucks used to be considered an upscale brand. 

The company was founded with the purpose of providing premium coffee. CEO Howard Schultz modeled the first locations after Italian espresso bars where people met to have intellectual conversations. 

Over the next several decades, Starbucks became ubiquitous, with nearly 22,000 stores around the world.

These days, Starbucks is too popular to be cool. 

While Starbucks used to appeal to premium consumers, it is now closely associated with the masses. Primary competitors include Dunkin' Donuts and McDonald's. 

Starbucks beverages, especially pumpkin spice lattes, are associated with the term "basic bitch," which is frequently  "used to pejoratively describe people who like popular, mainstream products or music,"according to Wikipedia. 

Today's hip, upscale, urban consumers are eschewing Starbucks in favor of other options like Blue Bottle coffee, which just raised $25 million for expansion. 

Widespread popularity is the "kiss of death for trendy...brands, particularly those positioned in the up-market younger consumer sectors," industry expert Robin Lewis writes on his blog.

Faced with a basic image, Starbucks is now desperately trying to retain its premium status.

Starbucks acquired the trendy La Boulange baking company in 2012 to revamp its food offerings. But after many customers complained the food was too "fancy," the company recanted and started offering some products from the old menu like lemon cake.

In addition to the new pastries, Starbucks has added trendy items like coconut milk and cold brew iced coffee to the menu.

Starbucks also just launched service that delivers beans three to five days after they are roasted at Starbucks' Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room in Seattle.

Starbucks has launched a new delivery service for fans of its most premium coffee beans.

The freshness comes at about double the price of the regular coffee. 

Some analysts have noted that Starbucks' recent "#racetogether" campaign which encourages baristas to talk about race relations with customers is another desperate attempt to maintain its premium status.

"With the race campaign, the brand may have been looking for a way to break away from its competitors," the New York Times reported.

"The sole objective here is to try to increase the brand’s cultural relevance," University of Southern California professor Jeetendr Sehdev told the Times.

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NOW WATCH: 6 Crazy Things Revealed In HBO's Explosive New Scientology Documentary 'Going Clear'

Atlanta's top incomes grew faster than any other US city between 2012-2013 while its lowest wages remained stagnant, making it the most unequal city in America for the second year in a row, according to a Brookings Institution report on income inequality.

The city's richest 5% make roughly $288,159 per year, while its poorest 20% bring in just under $15,000, resulting in an inequality ratio of 19.2 — slightly higher than San Francisco's ratio of 17.1.

While San Francisco's top incomes are higher overall than Atlanta's (the top 5% make around $425,000 per year), its lowest-income residents still earn about $10,o00 more per year than Atlanta's poorest.

Still, the inequality ratios in both cities increased more than any other US city between 2012-2013 — the household incomes of Atlanta's wealthiest residents are now worth nearly 20 times the incomes off its poorest residents.

The fact that more than half of Atlanta's residents are black may help explain the city's wage gap: Researchers at Brookings found that areas with more black residents are more financially unequal, since black people tend to have lower incomes and more limited upward mobility than whites, the Washington Post reported.

Sprawling cities with higher commute times — two of Atlanta's chief characteristics — also have worse economic mobility, a 2013 Harvard study concluded. Atlanta has lower rates of mobility than any developed country for which data is currently available: an Atlanta resident's odds of climbing the income ladder to reach the top fifth of earners is only 4.5%, the study found, compared with 12.9% in San Jose, California — the highest rate of upward mobility in the country.

As the Brookings report points out, Atlanta's growing gap between rich and poor shows how rising incomes at the top of the distribution do not necessarily lift incomes at the bottom. 

Between 1999 and 2008, Atlanta's median-household income dropped by $2,241, according to Brookings, and the city is now suffering from a lack of middle-class jobs. With stagnant incomes and an ever-increasing cost of living, residents are struggling: 25% of Atlanta residents lived below the poverty line in 2013. 

Meanwhile, the rich are getting richer — not just in Atlanta, but all around the country. "This latest report just tends to highlight something that we have already heard,"Mark Berman writes in the Washington Post. "As the country has slowly climbed out of the smoking economic wreckage left behind by the recession, the richest people have reaped the benefits of recovery while middle-class and poor are being shut out."

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NOW WATCH: What the Chinese saying 'The ugly wife is a treasure at home' actually means

The Brookings Institution recently released a report showing the income gap between the bottom 20% of households and the top 5% in the fifty largest US cities.

Inadvertently, Brookings has discovered a startling statistic about San Francisco.

Among the top fifty cities, San Francisco ranks as the second most unequal city in the United States, trailing only Atlanta, Georgia.

The top 5% in San Francisco, however, earn 17 times what the bottom 20% earn. The average for the top 5% in the 50 biggest US cities was 11.6 times what the bottom 20% earned.

That massive income gap may in part lie in just how ridiculously high income is for San Francisco’s top 5%. San Francisco’s top earners made at least $423,000. As you can see in the table below, no city’s top earners come within even $100,000 of those in San Francisco.

The income gap will likely only get bigger in the coming years. Though Brookings did not have enough data to deem it “statistically significant,” it did find that the estimated rate of income growth for top earners in San Francisco was more than 18%, equivalent to an increase of $66,000.

SEE ALSO: Atlanta is the most unequal city in America — here’s why

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NOW WATCH: How The Secrets Of The Samurai Can Help You Achieve Laser-Focus

Internet censorship and limitations on online speech are an unfortunate fact of life around the world. 

In 2014, Reporters without Borders designated 19 countries as "enemies of the internet," including the United States and Great Britain. According to the organization these countries all engaged in forms of online censorship, ranging from the UK carrying out a distributed denial of service attack against Anonymous to North Korea having building its own internal internet and walling its citizens off from the global web.

The following infographic from George Washington University’s Master’s in Paralegal Studies Online program visualizes the various forms that internet censorship can take around the globe. 

SEE ALSO: The history of the US at war, in one infographic

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NOW WATCH: A lawyer in Florida has come up with an ingenious way for drivers to evade drunken-driving checkpoints

London (AFP) - Manchester City benefited from a case of mistaken identity as they trimmed Chelsea's lead in the Premier League to three points by beating West Bromwich Albion 3-0 on Saturday.

Bidding to bounce back from their Champions League elimination by Barcelona in mid-week, City were giving a huge helping hand when referee Neil Swarbrick sent off West Brom defender Gareth McAuley after only 89 seconds.

But it was Craig Dawson, West Brom's number 25, who had committed a foul on Wilfried Bony (who then stumbled into number 23 McAuley), and Swarbrick confessed at half-time that he had sent off the wrong player.

"I was too far to see the red card incident. It is the referee's decision," City captain Vincent Kompany told BT Sport. "There was nothing to win today for us. We just had to do a good job and we didn't fail."

Bony made the breakthrough in the 27th minute, gathering a deflected pass from Fernando and hoisting a shot past West Brom goalkeeper Boaz Myhill to claim his first goal in City's colours.

Fernando added a second before half-time, stabbing home after Myhill and Jonas Olsson got in a muddle at a corner.

Both teams hit the woodwork in the second half -- Sergio Aguero and Bony in quick succession for the hosts; Saido Berahino for West Brom -- before David Silva diverted in a shot from City substitute Stevan Jovetic in the 77th minute.

West Brom manager Tony Pulis expressed bewilderment over McAuley's dismissal, saying: "How he gets the lad wrong is just absolutely amazing to me.

"The second goal shouldn't be allowed. Fernando kicked Saido in the face while jumping and it's a decision which leads to the second goal and kills the game."

Victory helped City draw a line beneath last weekend's shock 1-0 loss at struggling Burnley.

But although they are now within sight of Chelsea, Jose Mourinho's side have two games in hand, beginning with a trip to Hull City on Sunday.

Arsenal, four points behind City in third place, visit Newcastle United later on Saturday, while fourth-place Manchester United travel to fifth-place Liverpool in a crunch clash on Sunday.

Saturday's fixtures will also see Dick Advocaat begin his tenure as manager of relegation-threatened Sunderland with a trip to West Ham United.

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I was recently browsing my bank account activity on the budgeting app Mint when I noticed a fee my bank (Citibank) had charged me for $12.

The charge was listed as an "Account Maintenance Fee."

(Yes, there's also an ATM fee in there, only because there wasn't a Citibank anywhere near me at the time.)

My immediate reaction was anger. That $12 could buy me some groceries!

When I had signed up for my checking account, I specifically remembered being told that as long as I made a direct deposit during each statement period, I wouldn't be charged any fees.

And I was pretty sure I had made a direct deposit during the past statement period.

So I decided to call my bank — not right then when I was irritated, but the next morning.

After working my way through a series of automated prompts, I found myself speaking to a friendly customer service representative, who ended up reversing the fee and crediting my account $12.

Here's roughly how the conversation went:

Bank: Hello, thank you for choosing Citibank as your financial partner. What can I do for you today?

Me: Hi, I'm calling because I was charged an account maintenance fee for $12, and I'm not sure why I was charged that.

Bank: Ok, let me just pull up your account information. You have a basic checking account, which means that in order not to be charged any fees, you either have to have maintained a balance of $1,500 for the prior calendar month, or you have to have made a direct deposit to the account and paid a bill during the statement period.

(I had forgotten that I not only had to make a direct deposit, but I also had to pay a bill.)

Me: Yes, and I'm pretty sure I've made a direct deposit and paid a bill, so I don't understand why I'm being charged. (I wasn't 100% sure that I actually had, but I was almost sure, so I decided to just go with that feeling.)

Bank: Ok, what I'm going to go ahead and do for you is reverse the charge and credit your account $12.

Me: Great, thank you.

And just like that I had my $12 back. The bank representative didn't actually check if I had made a direct deposit or paid a bill, she just refunded me.

Why?

I was pleasant and polite.

I said a friendly hello and goodbye, and I never cut her off. I listened to everything she had to say — from the fact that she was happy I had chosen Citibank as my financial partner, to her explanation of the bank's basic checking account requirements.

I kept my tone light.

I resisted the urge to start the phone call with something sassy like, "This fee is coming out of nowhere and I really shouldn't be paying it." Instead, I simply asked for an explanation of why I was being charged that fee, and that's what I framed the phone call around.

I never actually asked for a refund.

I have a feeling that if I had demanded a refund, the customer service rep would have been less likely to give it to me. I didn't go into the call assuming I would get the $12, I just thought I would call and see what happened.

So next time you're unhappy with something your bank did, just give them a call. Yes, it was only $12, but after about seven minutes, that $12 was back in my pocket, which is a better place for it to be than in my bank's pocket.

SEE ALSO: Ask Yourself These Questions Before Choosing A Bank

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NOW WATCH: Animated map of what Earth would look like if all the ice melted

This incredible short film by director Paul Trillo shows a look at the infinite possibilities within the everyday. The film follows a day in the life of Vincent, "Subject X" and the many variations that exist throughout his universe.

Video courtesy of Paul Trillo

See more of Paul Trillo's work at paultrillo.com

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Seasoned fans of the show “Jeopardy!” know that certain categories pop up much more often than others.

And it turns out, there are common correct responses that surface over and over again too.

The data visualization website Tableau Public crowdsourced a compelling visualization of the top “Jeopardy!” answers and categories for the show, as well as for Double Jeopardy! and Final Jeopardy! rounds.

You can play around with the embedded infographic above to see the most common response and categories for each "Jeopardy!" round.

Since the show premiered in 1984, the most common response overall was “What is China?” and the most common category was Before & After.

For Double Jeopardy, the most common response was “What is Australia?” while in Final Jeopardy, the most common correct response was “What is Canada?”

To prepare for Final Jeopardy rounds, future contestants will want to brush up on their word origins. Since the show’s premiere over 30 years ago, this category has been used in the Final Jeopardy round 34 times, far surpassing the next most common Final Jeopardy category American History.

So if you ever find yourself on “Jeopardy!” and aren’t quite sure of the answer, remember the most common responses — statistics could be on your side.

SEE ALSO: Jeopardy's Controversial New Champion Is Using Game Theory To Win Big

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NOW WATCH: Watch That Dash Cam Video Tribute Of A Police Officer Singing Taylor Swift's 'Shake It Off'

On February 22, Formula 1 racer Fernando Alonso's McLaren slammed into a wall at approximately 93 mph while coming out of the third turn at the Montmeló circuit track in Barcelona.

At some point he apparently lost consciousness and showed signs of confusion, so he was airlifted to a hospital in a medical helicopter.

It was an odd crash on a pre-season test run for one of the greatest drivers in the world, but even stranger and scarier was his response when doctors asked him "who are you?" and "what do you do?"— standard questions for someone who suffers a head injury and likely has a concussion.

“My name is Fernando, I race karts and I want to be a Formula 1 driver,” was his response, according to the Spanish newspaper El País.

He remembered his 13-year-old self, who wanted to become an F1 racer when he grew up, but nothing beyond that.

He had forgotten the past 20 years of his life, the fact that he was a two-time world champion in his sport, and the four Real Madrid Champion's League wins that had happened in the past 20 years.

A week later his memory had come back, but that leaves us with the question of what happened.

How does someone lose 20 years?

Alonso received a variety of tests including an MRI and CT scan, which  ruled out pre-existing abnormalities like epilepsy or an electric shock, and also shows that he didn't suffer lasting damage.

And so in the opinion of neurologist Dr. Rafael Blesa, director of the neurology department at Sant Pau Hospital in Barcelona, this is just normal memory loss that can occur after a concussion.

As Blesa tells El País, “A concussion like that one happens because the brain suffers a blow that affects the neural synapses... When that happens, biochemical substances do not work [normally], meaning that the brain tries to find a memory but fails. Depending on each case, the recovery time can vary. You have to take into account the fact that, within the brain, the circuits that are most sensitive to an impact like his are connected to the memory.”

In other words, the brain disruption caused by a concussion temporarily damaged Alonso's brain circuits related to memory. Fortunately in this case, he seems to have recovered fully.

Thistype of memory loss is called retrograde amnesia, where someone forgets memories they'd acquired before the injury — it can cover a short period of time or a time period of years or decades, and can be the result of a concussion or other brain damage. (That's distinct from anterograde amnesia, where someone becomes unable to form new memories.)

Alonso seems to have recovered from his concussion completely, even though he was kept in the hospital three days, a length of time that indicates his concussion was quite severe. Amnesia associated with concussions is usually mild.

Multiple concussions can lead to brain damage over time, and getting two concussions in a short period of time can be extremely dangerous and cause serious trauma, which is probably why McLaren is keeping Alonso out of the Formula 1 season opener on March 15 in Australia.

A final impact test will be administered before Alonso is allowed to race again, but provided his amnesia was caused by a concussion that he seems to have recovered from, as his doctors and McLaren team officials say, he should be fine. He released a YouTube video on February 27 telling fans that he is completely okay and excited to race again.

SEE ALSO: Formula One legend Michael Schumacher is out of a coma — here's what comes next

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NOW WATCH: Here's What Happens To Your Brain When You Get A Concussion

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NOW WATCH: How to supercharge your iPhone in only 5 minutes

This is a frustrating time of year in the northeastern United States.

One day, it feels like spring.

The next day, the weather gods taunt you with snow and ice again.

But if you live in the country or burbs, there is at least one fun thing you can do with "mud season."

Make maple syrup!

Maple syrup is made from the sap of maple trees. So you have to collect that sap. You start with some gear — buckets, taps, hooks, a drill, a hammer, and a tank. A pickup truck helps.

Buckets are actually an old-fashioned and inefficient way to collect sap (you'll see why). These days, serious "sugaring" operations use vacuum tubes that whoosh sap straight from the trees to the sugar house. But you can still get tin buckets secondhand from specialty dealers. Ours are from Canada.

Our taps are the old-fashioned kind, too. The ones you use with vacuum tubes are thinner and made of plastic.

Malcolm Gladwell is probably the most famous nonfiction author alive. When a new book of his comes out, it takes over airport bookstores. 

Each of his five books has become a best-seller, thanks to his incomparable ability to marry storytelling to social-science theory. 

This is an update of an article originally written by Aimee Groth and Elizabeth Bogner.

Social movements are sparked by small sets of influential people.

In Gladwell's debut bestseller, "The Tipping Point,"he talks about the Law of the Few, which states that a select few sets of people push ideas, diseases, and fads through social networks.

There are three kinds:

• Connectors: who know everybody

• Mavens: who become experts

• Salespeople: who push ideas on others 

When these people get excited about something, it takes off.

Context shapes behavior.

Gladwell says "epidemics are sensitive to the conditions and circumstances of the times and places in which they occur."

The most controversial idea cited is the Broken Windows Theory, which posits that crime is an outgrowth of disorder. So if you clean the graffiti off of subways and the trash off the streets and repair any actual broken windows, it will create an environment in which people are less likely to commit crimes.

It's still being debated.

We make split-second judgment calls all the time.

In "Blink," Gladwell zooms in on "thin slicing," a psychological process in which we're constantly reading people's personalities within seconds of seeing them. 

Examples of thin slicing include: 

• We predict how likely someone is to get a promotion based on the person's clothes.

• We infer whether someone is gay or straight from glancing at his or her face.

• We think a woman is promiscuous if she has a visible tattoo.

Alex Gibney, the Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker who just tackled Scientology in HBO's explosive "Going Clear," is already making news again for his next project, a documentary about Steve Jobs.

In "Steve Jobs: Man in the Machine," the director Gibney ("Taxi to the Dark Side,""Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room") takes a critical look at the personal and private life of the late Apple CEO, tackling topics like his repeated denial of being the father of his daughter Lisa and the harsh way in which he treated many Apple employees.

After the film's premiere at South by Southwest on Saturday, The Daily Beast called it "a blistering takedown" and "an all-out character assassination," while Variety wrote the film was a "coolly absorbing, deeply unflattering portrait" of Jobs.

Just one day after the premiere, Magnolia Pictures acquired North American theatrical, video-on-demand, and home-entertainment rights to the documentary, which was backed by CNN Films. While the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, Variety notes: "There's a comfort level between filmmaker and distributor. This is the seventh film directed by Gibney to be distributed by Magnolia."

Gibney's film is the first to be deeply critical of Jobs, who was also portrayed by Ashton Kutcher in "Jobs" in 2013 and by Michael Fassbender in the coming biopic "Steve Jobs," which is based on Walter Isaacson's biography.

"Behind the scenes, Jobs could be ruthless, deceitful, and cruel," Gibney says via voiceover early in the film. And apparently the sentiment doesn't stop there.

Here's what five reviewers of the film have to say about "Steve Jobs: Man in the Machine":

Mashable's Chris Taylor:

The focus (of Steve Jobs: The Man Inside the Machine) is on the shadows created by the light and the dark of Jobs' personality, as told by the people who knew him. Early on, we meet a Macintosh engineer who breaks down in tears remembering the agony and ecstasy working with Jobs, who drove his staff so hard, worked them so late, to the point where the engineer lost his wife and kids. And yet, the result was genius.

The Daily Beast's Marlow Stern:

The entire final hour of Gibney's 127-minute film is an all-out character assassination. It questions the inherent value of Apple products — and by extension, Jobs's legacy. It smears him for not informing his company of his illness earlier, saying he was "obligated" to shareholders, and criticizes him for pursuing avenues of alternative medicine instead of immediately having surgery on his pancreatic cancer. It even chastises him for driving a silver Mercedes convertible with no plates and parking in handicapped spots.

Los Angeles Times' Amy Kaufman:

Certainly Gibney's portrayal of Jobs is far less flattering than Isaacson's. As the film makes its way through Jobs' story chronologically, Gibney highlights moments in which Jobs was unkind. The documentary says that when he and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak worked at Atari, Jobs once gave Wozniak only $350 of a $7,000 check meant to be split between them.

The film suggests he may have been downright greedy. The Chinese workers who were putting together iPhone 4s were making $12 per unit, while the company was profiting $300 per phone.

Variety's Justin Chang:

Gibney duly acknowledges Jobs's artistry, innovation and technological showmanship while making plain just how "ruthless, deceitful and cruel" the man could be ...

On a certain level, "The Man in the Machine" functions as a corrective and a tribute to the many brilliant men and women Jobs surrounded himself with but didn't necessarily give their due; many here attest to his sharp way with a jab and his monomaniacal need for control, particularly with regard to staff retention ...

Considerable screen time is devoted to an older episode in which the young Jobs disputed the paternity of his daughter Lisa (with his high-school girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan) and balked at paying child support — callous and ironic behavior, coming from someone who was always painfully aware of having been given up for adoption. As a still-wounded Brennan understandably concludes: "He didn't know what real connection was."

9to5mac highlighted a few interesting points featured in the film:

On the paternity debacle: "Jobs' cruelty regarding Chrisann and Lisa is highlighted in the film. You learn that he had lied in a sworn testimony, falsely claiming Brennan had multiple sex partners and that he was sterile and could therefore not be Lisa's father. Only after a paternity test proved that he was did he finally accept responsibility. And though Apple went public in 1980, increasing Jobs' net worth from $20 million to $200 million, he agreed to pay Brennan just $500 per month in child support."

Gizmodo and the iPhone 4: The film spends a significant amount of time revisiting the time when Jobs went to war with Gizmodo, after the tech website had gotten its hands on a prototype of an iPhone 4 that an Apple employee had carelessly left at a bar. All the key figures are interviewed, including editor Jason Chen, whose home was forcibly entered and computers seized by Silicon Valley police, and Nick Denton, who approved a payment of $5,000 for the phone. Jobs, who pledged not to stop until Gizmodo's editors were in jail, died one year later.

In every review we've read of the film, the following clip is seen as the most emotional moment. Former Apple engineer Bob Belleville breaks down reading a note he wrote after Jobs' death.

Despite being in the midst of heavy promotion for his Scientology documentary, "Going Clear," Gibney flew to Austin, Texas, this weekend for the movie's world premiere at SXSW. 

During a Q&A after the screening, Gibney defended his film and portrayal of Jobs.

"Zen was superficial — a formal elegance," Gibney said of trying to understand Jobs' spiritual values. "He believed in making the world a better place by making better products, and that's it."

Gibney also defended his film to Variety, saying, "There are critical elements that people haven't seen about Jobs or understood."

"I would say I'm no longer madly in love with my iPhone," the director added. "It’s no longer blind faith."

Watch Gibney's full Q&A at SXSW below.

SEE ALSO: How filmmaker Alex Gibney finally infiltrated Scientology for HBO's explosive new documentary

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NOW WATCH: Steve Jobs' biographer reveals the childhood moment that defined the Apple founder

McDonald's is in the process of reinvention. 

The brand is losing US customers to fast-casual options like Chipotle. To win back its clientele, McDonald's has done everything from testing burgers with trendy ingredients to selling chicken nuggets for cheap. 

But in the future, McDonald's will utilize kiosks, smartphones, and wearable devices, Atif Rafiq, chief digital officer at McDonald's, told Fast Company.

Don't miss the beautiful @McDonaldsCorp booth powered by @Sprinklr & @Ideacage! #SXSW #McDonalds #AustinConventionCenter

A photo posted by Brittany Flocken, MJ (@brittanyflocken) on Mar 15, 2015 at 6:01pm PDT

McDonald's new innovations would include "kiosks similar or identical to those already on the market," Fast company reports.

Smartphones could also load a customer's past history, similar to e-commerce sites like Amazon.

"You could walk up, tap your phone to it, and sync your account via an app. From there, the screen would not just show a stock menu, but provide your order history, and offer Amazon-like recommendations," according to Fast Company.

It's been a busy week for Ideacage here at #SXSW! #McDonalds #CommandCenter #Hilton #GoldenArches

A video posted by Brittany Flocken, MJ (@brittanyflocken) on Mar 15, 2015 at 5:05pm PDT

The company has been debuting new technology at the South by Southwest festival in Austin.

Starbucks is also taking notes from the e-commerce business.

CEO Howard Schultz called the company's new delivery initiative "e-commerce on steroids."

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NOW WATCH: 14 things you didn't know your iPhone headphones could do

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NOW WATCH: A tanker truck carrying 9,000 gallons of fuel just burst into flames

George R. R. Martin, author of the best-selling "A Song of Ice and Fire" fantasy series, indicated that the latest instalment could be finished this year.

Martin has worked on "The Winds of Winter" (TWoW) since its predecessor, "A Dance with Dragons", was published in 2011. TWoW will be the sixth and penultimate book in the series, which is currently being adapted into the award-winning HBO series "Game of Thrones."

The books — and TV adaptation — focus on the fractured fictional kingdoms of Westeros and Essos, and the court intrigue and bloody battles playing out between an expansive cast of dozens of characters.

Posting on his blog, Martin announced that he's pulling out of the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga, because he has "too many things on my plate." But he added the caveat that he may change his mind "should I complete and deliver WINDS OF WINTER before these cons roll around."

He suggested that progress on TWoW is going well, and could be realistically completed this year. Previously, the author's publisher said there were no plans for publication in 2015. And past books in the series have also been mired by delays: Martin originally intended to finish "A Dance with Dragons" by 2006, but after numerous holdups, it was finally released 5 years later, in 2011.

For this reason, Martin previously said he won't"play games with news about the books," and that the announcement of when it is complete would be "straightforward and to the point."

So, considering his statement about the completion of the book, it looks like this is a strong indicator that he doesn't envision many holdups.

As progress on "A Song of Ice and Fire" continued to drag on, fans of the book have grown increasingly concerned about its TV adaptation "Game of Thrones" overtaking the events of the books.

The producers of the show, David Beinoff and D. B. Weiss, were told by Martin about how the books will end, and they have no contractual obligation to wait for the books. With season 5 of the show about to begin next month, it has already almost caught up with the events of the books, with some storylines almost certainly set to overtake the books this season.

Martin's latest statement won't stop Season 5 from spoiling some aspects of the series for book readers, and it's no guarantee that the TV show won't ultimately conclude before the books do. But the fact that he is at least discussing the completion of TWoW is being taken by many in the community as a very positive sign.

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NOW WATCH: HBO just released another new trailer for 'Game of Thrones'

A bunch of people are freaking out about Apple's new iOS update forcing another mandatory app onto their devices. But, there is at least one huge benefit to this update – you gain storage space. 

Produced by Will Wei

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Ever feel like your brain is so full of information, you need to toss something out in order to learn something new?

That might be more true than you think.

Remembering something important makes our brains discard any similar memories that might compete for its attention, according to a new study published Monday. And actively recalling some of these memories while ignoring others can cause those overlooked memories to fade.

Similar memories compete with one another

Think of your brain as a giant collection of cabinets with all of your memories stored inside as photographs.

Similar memories — like one of you dropping your keys on the kitchen table and another of you putting those keys on your desk — get stored in the same cabinet. Each time you shuffle through one of those cabinets of snapshots to pick one out, it causes the other snapshots to fade a bit.

If you keep pulling out the same photograph over and over (or recalling the memory of your keys in the same place), your brain marks it as important, and the other images get more and more faint. Eventually, only the important memory remains distinguishable from the rest.

Researchers have been testing the idea that the brain intentionally wipes away similar memoriesin favor of preserving the ones it labels "important" for years, but only this most recent study has gotten close to narrowing down precisely how it happens.

How our brain decides which memories to keep

To find out what's going on in the brain when we remember certain things and forget others, the scientists had volunteers memorize that a specific word was linked with two different, unrelated pictures.

To remember that the word "sand" was linked with an image of Marilyn Monroe, for example, someone might picture Marilyn on a sandy beach. Then, to remember that "sand" was also linked with a hat, someone might think of the hat covered in sand.

Every time the volunteers linked a specific image with a word, they formed a distinct pattern in the area of the brain responsible for storing visual information. The researchers came up with a way to identify each of these patterns (let's call them the "Marilyn pattern," for example, and the "hat pattern") on a computer.

After the volunteers had linked both images with the word, the researchers told them they only had to worry about remembering the first one. 

Next, they took the volunteers to another room, where the word "sand" was being flashed occasionally on a blank screen. At first, the volunteers' brains displayed both the Marilyn pattern and the hat pattern when they saw the word. But over time, the hat pattern grew dim while the Marilyn pattern stayed clear.  

In other words, the volunteers were remembering the image of Marilyn by discarding the image of the hat.

"It's the brain's way of keeping everything that's up to date, and telling the rest it can go,"University of Birmingham psychology professor and the study's lead author Maria Wimber told Business Insider.

We forget in order to remember

While it sounds inconvenient (who wants to forget where they last stashed their keys?), there might be a very important reason that we forget similar memories. 

Take for example the last time you got a new bank account, suggests Wimber. When you walk up to the ATM, you automatically find yourself typing in the PIN number linked with your old account. But the more you visit the ATM and get used to recalling the new PIN number, the more the old number fades in your memory — and the more easily you recall the new one.

Apply this knowledge to your keys by storing them in the same location every time (reducing your brain's supply of competing similar memories), and you'll be less likely to forget where you put them last.

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Le Mont-Saint-Michel (France) (AFP) - Thousands of people flocked to Mont Saint-Michel on Saturday hoping to see the "tide of the century" surround the picturesque landmark on France's northern coast.

Perched on a rocky island topped with a Gothic Benedictine abbey, the Unesco World Heritage Site is exposed to some of Europe's strongest tides.

But the high tide due on Saturday evening is expected to be exceptional because of the effects from Friday's solar eclipse, with predictions that it could reach as high as 14.15 metres (46 feet) -- a wall of water as high as a four-storey building.

The predictions are based on tide coefficients which are used to measure wave size, with Saturday's high tide expected to peak at 119. The maximum possible coefficient is 120.  

Even before dawn, tourists from France and the world over --  Japanese, Germans and Belgians in particular -- were on the bridge leading up to Mont Saint Michel, a site visited by three million people a year. 

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian were also among the curious.

At low tide, fisherman took advantage of the sea pulling out to look for cockles, clams and other shell fish on the beach. 

Officials at France's Navy Oceanic and Hydrological Service (SHOM) have urged caution, warning that the high tide, expected to peak around 2000 GMT, would pose a danger to people venturing out too far.

In the bay of Mont Saint-Michel, as the saying goes, the sea rises "at the speed of a galloping horse."

A 70-year-old fisherman in the southwestern Gironde region got caught in the high tide and drowned on Saturday, firefighters said.

Some 10,000 people had already turned up at Mont Saint-Michel on Friday evening, when the tide failed to reach the predicted highs.

Although dubbed the "tide of the century," the "supertide" phenomenon occurs once every 18 years.

In the coastal town of Saint Malo in Brittany, to the west of Mont Saint-Michel, around 20,000 people gathered to watch massive waves crash onto the shore.

Among them, an Italian couple Francesca and Gianni had travelled 1,400 kilometres (869 miles) just to witness this special event. 

The spectacular phenomenon is also happening in other parts of the globe, with Canada's Bay of Fundy on the Atlantic Coast expected to see a tidal surge of 16 metres. 

The "supertide" will also be felt in Tierra del Fuego off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, the northern coast of Australia and the Bristol Channel in Britain. 

The last so-called tide of the century was on March 10, 1997 and the next will be on March 3, 2033.

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