Walmart might be taking on some of the biggest names in video streaming with a service of its own — and its price might be lower than Netflix or Amazon.

According to The Information, Walmart is considering jumping into the streaming world. In addition to the paid subscription, which sources claim will be less than $8 per month, the company is also reportedly considering a free version of the streaming service that would include ads.

It's possible Walmart could roll out this streaming service through its Vudu subsidiary, which the company purchased in 2010. Vudu lets you stream full-length movies, and is available on most set-top devices and game consoles, including Roku devices, the Apple TV, smartphones, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and the iPad.

Walmart hasn't officially commented on the matter.

Looks like Samsung's new and upcoming Galaxy Note 9 will look like a modern Galaxy Note device.

That's to say there isn't much to report on the Galaxy Note 9's design if two photos that were leaked on Slashleaks and supposedly show the Galaxy Note 9 are accurate.

If they are accurate, the Galaxy Note 9 is set up to look pretty similar to the Galaxy Note 8, which isn't a bad thing by any means. The Galaxy Note 8 is a very nice smartphone.

The photos also suggest that Samsung gave the Galaxy Note 9 the same fingerprint sensor redesign underneath the camera as the Galaxy S9. If it's anything like the Galaxy S9's fingerprint sensor, it'll be much easier to reach and feel for compared to the fingerprint sensor on the Galaxy Note 8.

It's also worth pointing out the "Do not leak" sticker on the back of the phone for comic effect.

You can also check out the front of the supposedly leaked Galaxy Note 9 on Slashleaks. Of course, take any and all alleged leaks with a grain of salt, but the Galaxy Note 9 will be revealed soon, for what it's worth.

Samsung sent out press invitations for an August 9 "Unpacked" event in New York, where's it's expected to announce the Galaxy Note 9. The invitation hints to vibrantly colored S Pens that come with the new Galaxy Note devices, and some rumors claim the Galaxy Note 9 itself will come in a variety of similarly vibrant colors.

Netflix's second-quarter subscriber shortfall wasn't the end of the world — but that doesn't mean it isn't something to worry about.

Indeed, it could be an indication that the company's growth path is getting more difficult.

Regardless, it should be a spur for the streaming media giant to start releasing more information to investors to give them a better idea of what to expect going forward. Because with Netflix's stock having more than doubled in the last year, the market is betting big on its further growth and investors ought to have a better idea if their bet is likely to pay off.

Monday's results indicated it might not be — and Netflix's stock was pounded as a result.

In the second quarter, Netflix's subscriber additions fell far short of Wall Street's expectations. The company added less than 5.2 million subscribers in the second quarter, which was the fewest it had added in a single quarter in more than a year, far off the pace of the 7.4 million it added in the first quarter and more than a million fewer than it forecast in April.

More worryingly for investors, the company predicted that things will actually get worse in the third quarter. It expects to add just 5 million subscribers then, which again, is about a million fewer than analysts had been projecting.

It's anyone's guess why Netflix's subscriber growth fell short of forecasts

Ryan Pierse/Getty Images The company's subscriber additions are important because its revenue is directly tied to the number of people it signs up to use its service. The faster it's able to add subscribers, the more bullish analysts and investors become on the company's eventual size and value, which has translated into its surging stock price.

On a video interview following Netflix's earnings reports, CEO Reed Hastings and company offered little in the way of an explanation for the shortfall. Instead, Hastings and his team just downplayed it.

The company's subscriber additions have fallen shy of expectations before but bounced back, they noted. Over the last 12 months, the company has added significantly more subscribers than it did in the same period a year earlier.

The company has a point. Indeed, it's a good idea not to get too excited about one quarter's performance good or bad. Any number of things could have potentially affected Netflix's subscriber additions in the period, many of them transitory.

Much of the second quarter was dominated by the World Cup soccer tournament, which could have drawn away viewers and potential subscribers. The company has used original shows like "Stranger Things" to drive subscriber growth, but it had a relatively light release schedule of Originals in the second quarter, which could have depressed sign-ups. And while company officials discounted this theory, it's possible that recent price hikes could have dissuaded some new customers from signing up or encouraged some older customers to drop the service.

The shortfall could point to a bigger problem

But there's reason to worry that the shortfall may be an indication of a bigger, longer-term problem for Netflix. The company's subscriber additions were particularly light in the US, the company's original and most mature market. It added little more than half the number that it had projected and analysts were expecting. Netflix now expects similar weakness in the third quarter.

That could be an indication that Netflix's growth prospects in the US are dimming. The company already has some 57 million US subscribers. That's nearly half of all US households and well more than half of the number of households that have broadband internet connections. While it still could add millions more, those are already high penetration rates for a consumer service.

And you have to figure that the company has already picked most of the low-hanging fruit, when it comes to its US customers. US consumers who don't have Netflix right now are likely to be older users who are much more likely to tune in broadcast or cable television instead, consumers who don't have broadband at home, or less affluent customers who haven't been able to afford Netflix's monthly price.

David Becker/Getty Images Convincing those consumers to sign up will likely prove more difficult than past customers. And Netflix, which offers its service on a month-to-month basis, will also likely find it more difficult to retain them. Recent price hikes almost certainly don't help either effort.

For consumers who still rely on cable as their primary TV outlet and don't see Netflix and other alternatives as an adequate substitute, the price hikes offer one more reason not to sign up. For consumers who couldn't afford Netflix before, the hikes only worsen things.

Investors should know Netflix's churn rate

One way Netflix could give shareholders a better sense of what's going on with its business and what to expect from it would be to offer more data. One figure in particular that could be helpful is its churn rate. Churn is the portion of a company's subscriber based that discontinues service in a particular period. It's a figure that's disclosed by many subscription-based businesses, including online ones such as Spotify.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek's company disclosed its churn rate before going public this year. Greg Sandoval/Business Insider High churn rates can indicate customer dissatisfaction or a fickle customer base. Companies with high churn rates typically have to boost their marketing spending to try to bring in new customers to replace the old.

Netflix discloses the net number of customers it adds each quarter. But that number obscures its churn rate, because it includes — without identifying — both the number of new customers it signs up as well as the number who discontinue service.

The churn rate would help investors and analysts understand how Netflix's subscriber base is changing. If the company signed up few new subscribers, but its churn rate was low, it could be an indication that it's having trouble marketing its service. If it signed up lots of new subscribers, but its churn rate was high, it could be an indication that people aren't happy with the service or don't feel they're getting value for the money.

More importantly, if the churn rate increases over time and new subscriptions remain depressed, it could be a sign that the business has matured and no longer has the growth potential it once had.

That kind of insight is crucial for folks thinking about investing in Netflix. Because even with Tuesday's sell off, the company is still priced for near-perfection. And investors ought to have a better sense if that's even close to being reasonable.

Chef'd, a major meal-kit company, suddenly shut down services on Monday.

As of Tuesday, customers can no longer place orders on the meal-kit service's website. According to four sources with knowledge of the situation and an internal email viewed by Business Insider, the company alerted employees that it was immediately ceasing operations on Monday.

Chef'd's more than 350 workers — most of whom worked at the company's warehouses in Brooklyn, New York, and California — were told that the company was shutting down late on Monday.

"We have had some unexpected circumstances with the funding for the business," founder and CEO Kyle Ransford said in an email to employees on Monday evening.

"Due to setbacks with financing, unfortunately, we are ceasing operations for all employees, effective today, July 16, 2018," the email continues. "If we had been successful with these funding efforts, this difficult decision would have been avoided."

Most employees were alerted to the news prior to the email, during a 4 p.m. PST company-wide conference call, former warehouse workers told Business Insider. Miguel Gonzalez, who worked as a sanitation supervisor at Chef'd's Pico Rivera, California, location said that all employees were sent home immediately following the call, with the knowledge they no longer had jobs at the meal-kit startup.

"There were some tears," Gonzalez said.

According to the email, workers will receive wages through their last day of work, as well as accrued vacation days.

"I want to personally thank each of you," Ransford said in the Monday email. "It was an amazing run and while we didn't get to where we wanted to go, I hope you each take something away from this experience that will help you in the future. I will miss you and I will miss Chef'd."

Chef'd declined to comment following Business Insider's request for more details.

The news comes as a surprise, as it comes after a series of major announcements from Chef'd.

Last month, Chef'd announced it would sell its meal kits in 30 Duane Reade and Walgreens locations in New York. In late May, Campbell's announced it had made a $10 million investment in the company, following a $35 million round of investments in 2017 from Campbell's and pork producer Smithfield Foods. Also in May, Chef'd announced it would be partnering with Byte Foods to stock meal kits in the company's smart fridges.

Chef'd, which launched in April 2015, made its name as the biggest meal-kit service that didn't rely on a subscription model, like HelloFresh and Blue Apron. The company employed roughly 400 workers, primarily in warehouses in Brooklyn, New York, and California. Its headquarters was in El Segundo, California.

While the meal-kit business as a whole is trending, individual companies have hit some rough patches recently, with a number of competitors, including startups Sprig and Din, going out of business. With more companies creating meal kits of their own and Amazon looming large in the food industry thanks to its Whole Foods acquisition, the competition is stiff.

We have had some unexpected circumstances with the funding for the business. Due to setbacks with financing, unfortunately, we are ceasing operations for all employees, effective today, July 16, 2018. If we had been successful with these funding efforts, this difficult decision would have been avoided.

Everyone will receive wages through his/her last day of work, as well as any accrued vacation (as applicable). Eligible employees will have benefits through July 31, 2018.

I want to personally thank each of you. It was an amazing run and while we didn't get to where we wanted to go, I hope you each take something away from this experience that will help you in the future. I will miss you and I will miss Chef'd.

Best of luck and please be in touch,

Kyle

Despite its share of issues, Amazon is still sitting pretty this Prime Day — but it's possible the worst is yet to come.

"The first ten hours Prime Day grew even faster, year-over-year, than the first ten hours last year," Amazon boasted in a press release.

According to Feedvisor, an e-commerce software provider, Amazon was able to sell 54% more in the first four hours of Prime Day when compared to last year, Bloomberg reported. The first hour, however, sales were down 5% when compared to last year.

Still, the website issues, which included broken links and the site going down for a period of time, frustrated a lot of customers. Some threatened to cancel their Amazon Prime account, which is required to shop the sales, because of the issues.

Customers began to flood social media when the issues started, with 80% of posts on Twitter about the website crash reflecting anger, according to Crimson Hexagon, an analytics company. Net sentiment remained high on Prime Day overall, however, with a dip in the middle.

"Yesterday shows that even Amazon isn't immune and regardless of the retailer, discounts alone aren't enough and without a seamless, enjoyable experience, the consumer will go elsewhere," said Robin Copeland, vice president at marketing firm Huge, which partners with retailers.

That means that, although customers are increasingly tied to Amazon and addicted to its services, if those services start to suffer, customers will start to look elsewhere.

"Amazon's business model has trained consumers to expect heavy discounts 365 days a year - so Prime Day isn't the shiny object it once was - with an easy, hassle-free and enjoyable shopping experience," Copeland said. "When there are technical glitches or anything that creates friction with the experience, we know that users abandon their carts at a much higher rate. In the case of the Prime Day glitch, users who were already 'primed' to shop may have in fact gone to competitor sites such as Target and Macy's, who were offering their own discounts this week."

Amazon has seen similar issues with its Prime two-day shipping and Amazon Fresh services, where customers become very upset if they view the service is in any way falling behind the high bar Amazon has set for itself.

Prime customers are hugely important to Amazon, as they are known as the site's most frequent and valuable customers.

Last year's Prime Day began later in the day, with deals starting at 9 p.m. ET on July 10 and running through July 11. This year the 36-hour event began at 3 p.m. on Monday, and it continues through the end of Tuesday, July 17.

We’ve been soaking (and investing) in the world of 3D printing since our investment in MakerBot in 2011. Since then, we’ve made three other investments in the world of 3D printing – Formlabs, Glowforge, and Looking Glass. While Looking Glass is a holographic display and is the inverse of a 3D printer, you’ll see how it fits into this in a moment.

While I continue to be impressed by Desktop Metal, the incredible press that they get, and am a big fan of the writing of Jason Pontin, I think Jason’s story in Wired – 3-D Printing Is The Future of Factories (For Real This Time) – misses several key points that take the idea that 3D printing is the future in a different direction.

I’ve decided that 3D printing is the REPL for Hardware. Dan Shapiro, the CEO of Glowforge, coined this and he’s completely nailed it. If you don’t know what a REPL is, it’s a programming concept called the Read-eval-print loop. Following is an example of a Python REPL running in a browser.

In the middle window is the Python code for a simple factorial. You hit the “run” button and the REPL reads the Python code, evaluates it, and prints the answer (120) in the right window. Hang on to that idea – Read, Evaluate, Print – we’ll be back to it later.

My first thoughts around 3D printing started at the beginning of 2010, when I read Chris Anderson’s Wired essay In The Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are The New Bits. His 2012 book Makers: The New Industrial Revolution helped me understand this better.

At first, I was obsessed with distributed 3D printing. On the desktop. For professionals. Each of MakerBot, Formlabs, and Glowforge took expensive industrial products that cost $50,000 to $500,000 and put them on a desktop for $2,000 to $5,000. The metaphor we used for this was that of the evolution of the laser printer market. If that’s elusive to you, the path from mainframe to PC works also.

We started with our investment in MakerBot, which used a technology called FDM (fused deposition modeling), which is a cousin of FFF (fused filament fabrication). This is a fancy phrase for “heating up plastic, extruding it, and building a 3D thing with the heated plastic”. It was magical, but limited on many dimensions based on the constraints of the materials and the process. As a result, MakerBot (and FDM in general) is primarily a hobbyist and DIY product.

FDM is additive manufacturing. So, when Glowforge came along, we immediately recognized it as the analogous subtractive manufacturing technology. Glowforge is a laser cutter (basically the addition of a laser to a CNC machine). You shine a laser at a material – any material – over and over again to subtract from the material to make your 3D print. As magical as MakerBot was, what Glowforge could do was mind-bending and took 3D printing to an entirely new dimension for me. You could work with paper, granite, sushi, cardboard, chocolate, wood, and basically any other material. Plus, well, LASERS!

We knew Formlabs from our experience at MakerBot. If you haven’t seen the Netflix documentary Print the Legend and you are interested in this stuff, go watch it. It’s the early story of both MakerBot and Formlabs, has endless cringe-worthy moments in it, stars some of your friends, and shows how incredibly challenging a startup is.

Since MakerBot had been acquired, it cleared the way for us to invest in Formlabs, which we did in 2016. Formlabs first product was based on SLA (stereolithography). In this technology, you shine a laser at a vat of resin and it builds up the 3D print (again – additive manufacturing). The quality and fidelity of the 3D prints are much higher with SLA, there are a wide variety of resins, and, as a result, Formlabs has had great success in the prosumer market. Next year, Formlabs will be shipping the Fuse, an SLS (selective laser sintering) 3D printer, which is another, even more advanced technology, at a desktop price point.

With Formlabs and Glowforge, we now have high-end desktop 3D printers at a price point under $10,000 (or at least 1/10th the price of similar industrial products). They are WiFi connected (just like today’s laser printer), have contemporary software, are integrated with everything 3D software related, and work extremely well.

Let’s go back to REPL. You start with a 3D image, which you can either design, get from the web, or get from Thingiverse or Pinshape, Formlabs and Glowforge printers then provide the REPL – it reads the 3D code, evaluates it, and prints it. On your desktop. Next to you. In high fidelity. Right away. Inexpensively.

So – how does Looking Glass fit into this? It still takes some time for Formlabs and Glowforge to print the 3D object, so the output from the REPL isn’t immediate. What if you could visualize the 3D object, in 3D, as an intermediate step? Voila – a holographic display (also known by a variety of other names like lightfield or volumetric display.) Looking Glass is 3D visualization on the desktop, which makes the desktop 3D experience for the professional even more powerful.

In 1984, HP shipped their first HP Laserjet. a 300-dpi, 8 ppm printer that sold for $3,495. A decade later, HP shipped its 10-millionth LaserJet printer. By the end of 2000, they had shipped 50 million of them. Over the weekend, I installed an HP LaserJet Pro M277dw Wireless All-in-One Color Printer, a 600-dpi, 19 ppm WiFi connected color printer / scanner / fax that sells $484.

When someone asks me what they can do with a 3D printer, I wish I could shove them into my time travel machine and send them back to early 1985 to ponder the question “Why do I need a laser printer on my desktop – I’ve already got an Epson MX-80.”

If you make anything in 3D, you now can have a 3D REPL on your desk.

Also published on Medium.

Loliware’s edible cups.

Post call transcript generated by VoiceAI. Screenshot: Dialpad