Technology

Amazon is looking to open more of its cashier-less Go stores across the United States and it looks like San Francisco and Chicago will be among the next cities to get them, according to new job postings in those cities.

In response to the postings, discovered by The Seattle Times, an Amazon spokesperson confirmed that stores were being planned for both of the cities, though they didn&t specify what timing looked like.

There aren&t many details beyond the general job listings, but they do list a couple of management positions around these two sites.

Earlier this week, the SF Chronicle reported that an Amazon Go store could be coming to SFheavily trafficked Union Square downtown area. Meanwhile, the company has a permit for what would be a much smaller 635-square-foot &Amazon store& inside Chicago Loop area.

AmazonGo store is designed with the idea of getting consumers in and out of a convenient store-like grocery without ever having to go through the check-out process. The store relies heavily on cameras tracking customers and seeing what they select while charging them directly through an Amazon Go app. The company&store of the future& is currently only in Seattle and appears to be a wholly separate initiative from Whole Foods, which Amazon acquired last year.

If thereone thing I envy in the global spirit and character its the appreciation of a fine bidet. Hygiene being close to godliness, one can imagine the huddled scientists at CERN and KAUST and Tokyo University creating scientific marvels, secure in the knowledge that their posteriors were as clean and crisp as their lines of thought. The same can be said of peoples of all continents who celebrate the occasional fountainal intrusion, from those who use bidets complete with birdsong to hide their doings to those with a simple hose next to the can.

But America, that land of the free and the home of the brave, can&t join in the fun Is there no bidet culture in Dear Columbia Pshaw. After all, theresomething called Tushy.

This simple bidet system is the gateway drug to posterior enjoyment. I&ve been trying to install a proper bidet in my home since 2007. The problem I discovered was that the design of my toilet did not allow for something large and heavy up against the toilet tank. Because the system was so large I couldn&t fit it in place of the seat, resulting in endless heartbreak. I was almost going to swap out my toilet for one of a simpler designed but luckily the Tushy is the low-cost, low tech solution I was looking for.

It works by sitting in line with the tank refill line. You simply connect the line to the Tushy and then connect a line from the Tushy to the tank. The water that would normally go into your bowl is routed through a little movable nozzle and up into your backside. The water, obviously, is cold. You can also turn it so the water cleans the nozzle, and important health and safety addition.

Bear in mind that the Tushy is as simple as it gets. It doesn&t blow out fine perfumes, it doesn&t steam or mist you, and it doesn&t play birdsong. But it costs $69 and seems to work just fine in my testing. In fact, I&m thinking of Tushying up the whole house since it doesn&t actually need electricity or any plumbing changes.

Tushy also sells an $84 Spa model that connects to your hot water line for a bit of warmth. But thatfor the coddled few who can&t manage a little cold water. Why is this important Because all innovation is important, for one. The changes in lifestyle associated with tech are moving out of the esoteric into the basic, a fact that should give us all a bit of a giggle. If electrified scooters in SF are a sign of the apocalypse, things like the Tushy are a sign of a renaissance. After all, the clean innovator is the happy innovator.

Ultimately ideas like Tushy will lead us to a new world of butt hygiene. Perhaps, one day, all of us will have a bidet in our homes and offices. Perhaps one day we will be able to break the shackles of toilet paper. And perhaps, one day, we will join the ranks of men and women who enjoy a good squirt in the morning. Until then, Tushy does its business.

It's no secret that Google is on a mission to make intrusive ads a thing of the past, and while a recent Chrome update which aimed to prevent autoplaying audio in web pages seemed like step in the right direction, it unfortunately came with some unexpected side effects. 

According to a story by Waypoint, the Chrome 66 update has majorly impacted