Yelp expands its restaurant health-grading initiative

Yelp today announced it would further expand its health grades information on restaurant listings. While the reviews platform developed its own digital standard for restaurant hygiene (called “Local Inspector Value-entry Specification” or LIVES) alongside the “the technology departments of the cities of San Francisco and New York” in 2013, it’s now broadening its partnership with firm Hazel Analytics. Yelp and Hazel teamed up last year, and together the LIVES metric now incorporates “data from health departments across 48 U.S. states” as well as Toronto and Vancouver.

“The expansion of Yelp’s health scores program comes at a time when people are returning to indoor dining as COVID-19 restrictions continue to lift, health inspections are restarting from the early pandemic pause, and restaurants are embracing more diner safety measures like contactless payments and virtual menus,” wrote Yelp in a blog post.

There’s a chance you’ve seen health scores on your city’s Yelp restaurant pages already. But in recent years, Yelp became even more proactive in displaying restaurant health scores — it displays information from local health departments or uses third-party vendors like Hazel. Yelp listings for restaurants in Los Angeles also include alerts for the lowest health scores in the last six months.

Still, some in the restaurant industry have criticized Yelp’s efforts. Cities and states vary widely in their food inspection scoring, with some assigning a letter grade or numerical score, and others opting for a pass/fail system. Restaurants have complained about inaccurate or out-of-date scores on their listings. The Mercury News reported back in 2018 that restaurants in Bay Area counties that use a pass/fail system were taken aback when Yelp showed health inspection scores from their previous third-party analytics vendors for their businesses.

Yelp calculates health inspection scores using three methods: directly using a score provided by a city’s health department, generating a score from raw health data or using an estimated health score generated by Hazel. The third option — which Hazel defaults to in cases where cities don’t publish health inspection scores — leaves a great deal of room for misinterpretation. And as The Mercury News points out, restaurants that, deservedly or not, show low LIVES-generated scores on Yelp might see their business dry up significantly.

Correction, 8:30AM ET: This story has been updated to note that Yelp itself doesn’t estimate health scores for restaurants; it displays third-party data from firms like Hazel Analytics. We apologize for the error.

TweetDeck may become a paid Twitter Blue option

TweetDeck — a version of Twitter beloved by journalists, social media pros and other power users — might soon become a paid app, The Verge has reported. A new version of the app redirects to the Twitter Blue subscription signup page, according to code discovered by security researcher Jane Manchun Wong. It promises “a powerful, real-time tool for people who live on Twitter” and would be an “ad-free experience,” according to screenshots. 

TweetDeck is already an essentially ad-free experience, so the inclusion of that language strongly implies that it would become a paid service. The new version would be a “complete rebuild with the parts from the new Twitter app,” Manchun noted in a reply. However, she also spotted a link for a “legacy version” which could still be free. 

Twitter launched its Twitter Blue subscription service last November for $2.99 per month. Some features like top articles were seen as positives, but users also criticized Twitter for hiding key features like an “undo” button behind a paywall. 

Twitter has been testing a new version of TweetDeck since last year, with significant changes like “a full Tweet composer, new advanced search features, new column types, and a new way to group columns into clean workspaces,” the company wrote. Some power users haven’t exactly embraced it, however, due to user interface and other issues. 

The company has also pondered a TweetDeck subscription service, asking users in 2017 if they’d be willing to pay up to $20 per month for a “more advanced TweetDeck experience.” And last year, Bloomberg reported that Twitter was considering a subscription fee for the app. 

The move would make sense for Twitter internally, as TweetDeck has always been a black sheep product that lets users bypass ads. Adding it to Twitter Blue would finally allow the company to monetize it and offer a true ad-free experience — since Twitter Blue itself still includes ads.

Here are some of the best storage deals we’ve seen on World Backup Day

Today is World Backup Day and to mark the occasion, retailers including Amazon and Best Buy are offering some solid deals on storage. Amazon’s sale includes an all-time low price for SanDisk’s 1TB Extreme microSDXC UHS-I memory card. It has dropped by $35 from $175 to $140 in a one-day-only deal. If you’re looking to seriously upgrade the amount of storage available on your Nintendo Switch, that’s not a bad option.

Shop storage deals at Amazon

Also falling to an all-time-low price for today only is the 500GB version of Samsung’s T7 Touch SSD. The external drive has a fingerprint sensor you can use to keep your data secure. It’s currently $80, which is a temporary drop of $30. The deal only applies to the silver model, unfortunately, and not the black version. The larger-capacity models, which you can find on the same page, have been discounted too.

Elsewhere, SanDisk’s 2TB Extreme Portable SSD has been reduced to its second-best price ever. The price of the rugged drive has dropped significantly from $460 to $200 — you’ll save $260. Again, this deal is only available for today only.

Shop storage deals at Best Buy

Meanwhile, Best Buy’s World Backup Day sale isn’t quite as extensive, but there are still some good deals to be found, especially if you could do with adding a ton of storage to your backup process. Take, for instance, the 14TB version of WD’s Easystore External USB 3.0 Hard Drive. The price has dropped by $163 to $200. As with the Amazon deals mentioned above, the offer is only available today.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Boston Dynamics begins selling its Stretch warehouse robot

Almost exactly a year ago, Boston Dynamics introduced a new robot called “Stretch.” It’s not quite as exciting or as terrifyingly adorable as the Hyundai-owned company’s Spot robotic dog, but it can make loading, unloading and moving boxes in warehouses a lot easier. Now, Boston Dynamics has announced that Stretch is finally available for purchase. Or, more precisely, it’s now accepting reservations for deliveries in 2023 and 2024, because it’s sold out throughout the year due to strong pre-order demand. 

One of the early Stretch customers is DHL, which signed a $15 million deal with Boston Dynamics to equip its warehouses in North America with the robots over the coming years. TechCrunch says Gap and H&M are equipping their warehouses with the robot, as well.

What makes Stretch a feasible option for any company is that it was built for easy deployment and doesn’t require warehouses to be set up for automation. It doesn’t have to be pre-programmed and doesn’t need information on the box sizes it needs to handle, though they have to weigh 50 pounds and below. Stretch has a wheeled base, so it can move around without the need for fixed infrastructure, and it has an advanced vision system that gives it the power to autonomously identify boxes and its surroundings.

Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter says companies are showing interest in Stretch due to labor shortages, especially since it can be installed and ready to work within existing warehouses in just a few days:

“Labor shortages and supply chain snags continue to create challenges in keeping the flow of goods moving. Stretch makes logistics operations more efficient and predictable, and it improves safety by taking on one of the most physically demanding jobs in the warehouse. Many of our early adopter customers have already committed to deploying the robot at scale, so we are excited Stretch will soon be put to work more broadly, helping retailers and logistics companies handle the continued surging demand for goods.”

You can watch Stretch in action below: