Things To Do In SW Florida

A few weeks ago, I was about to pay the HVAC technician who had repaired my home’s heat pump. Out of habit, I pulled a credit card from my wallet — I figured I’d earn rewards on this pricey transaction — but then the tech warned me that his company assesses a 3% surcharge on credit card payments. Thankful for the heads-up, I wrote him a check instead.

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  Instacart, DoorDash, Gopuff among companies offering discounts to SNAP recipients

Credit card surcharges aren’t new, but they’re becoming more common. According to J.D. Power’s 2025 U.S. Merchant Services Satisfaction Study, “34% of merchants are adding surcharges for customer purchases made using credit cards.” Compare that number to just a year before, when 20% of merchants reported assessing surcharges, per a 2024 State of the Industry Report from CMSPI, a payments consultancy firm. read more

By DEE-ANN DURBIN, Associated Press Business Writer

Instacart said Friday it will offer customers who receive SNAP benefits 50% on their next grocery order to ease strain as the government prepares to cut off food aid payments.

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Instacart said any customer who placed an order in October using a SNAP/EBT card will be eligible for the discount, which will be available even if the government makes the payments as planned on Nov. 1. Instacart said it is also expanding the number of food banks it supports through online food drives from 100 to 300. read more

After acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy this month called out SpaceX for Starship delays, Elon Musk’s company has come back with an update defending its progress and offering a speedier plan to get astronauts back on the moon as part of the Artemis program.

“Starship continues to simultaneously be the fastest path to returning humans to the surface of the moon and a core enabler of the Artemis program’s goal to establish a permanent, sustainable presence on the lunar surface,” reads a statement published to SpaceX’s website on Thursday.

Duffy said he would open back up a contract that SpaceX had won in 2021 to be the human landing system for the Artemis III mission that looks to return humans to the surface of the moon for the first time since the end of the Apollo program in 1972.

“I love SpaceX. It’s an amazing company,” Duffy said. “The problem is they’re behind. They push their timelines out, and we’re in a race against China.”

That mission is the follow-on to Artemis II, which is slated to fly around, but not land on, the moon as early as February next year. Artemis III was on NASA’s roadmap to launch by summer 2027, but Duffy said that timeline has been threated, and he was reopening the contract that could bring in Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin potentially to service that mission instead. read more

By Nilesh Christopher, Los Angeles Times

Scrolling through the Sora app can feel a bit like entering a real-life multiverse.

Michael Jackson performs standup; the alien from the “Predator” movies flips burgers at McDonald’s; a home security camera captures a moose crashing through the glass door; Queen Elizabeth dives from the top of a table at a pub.

Such improbable realities, fantastical futures, and absurdist videos are the mainstay of the Sora app, a new short video app released by ChatGPT maker OpenAI.

The continuous stream of hyperreal, short-form videos made by artificial intelligence is mind-bending and mesmerizing at first. But it quickly triggers a new need to second-guess every piece of content as real or fake.

“The biggest risk with Sora is that it makes plausible deniability impossible to overcome, and that it erodes confidence in our ability to discern authentic from synthetic,” said Sam Gregory, an expert on deepfakes and executive director at WITNESS, a human rights organization. “Individual fakes matter, but the real damage is a fog of doubt settling over everything we see,” read more

Issues with the septic system at the new home of Austin’s Coffee have forced the owners to delay reopening the Winter Park mainstay for local arts and entertainment.

The shop located for decades at 929 W. Fairbanks Ave. closed its doors Saturday with plans to reopen a week later at 2240 W. Fairbanks Ave. — about a mile west of its current site near Interstate 4.

But co-owner Angela Whitmer told the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday afternoon that the building’s septic system is problematic and the building needs to be connected to the city sewer system.

“We’re looking at two, possibly three weeks. I’m hoping not to be down that long,” Whitmer said. “Everything else is going good and smooth.”

She owns Austin’s with her brother, Richard Whitmer, and Preacher Lawson, a nationally known comedian who honed his style on the shop’s stage years ago during its weekly Comedy Night. The trio bought it earlier this month from Jackie Moore, who owned it for many years with two others.

Whitmer said they became aware of the septic issues a few days ago and are trying to get permits and work completed — along with required health inspections — as quickly as possible. read more