The Real Power of Platforms Is Helping People Self-Organize. Uber, the car-sharing service, has become ubiquitous. It’s now a multi-billion-dollar global business. It’s even become a noun of sorts — uberization — which people use to describe a disruptive change to a staid industry ripe for innovation (though, to be sure, the popularization of the word “disruptive” means that it is often used in ways that the concept’s author, Clay Christensen, didn’t intend). But I would argue that the real reason Uber is disruptive is because it is reshaping how we can think about organizing people, not cars. Uber has shown how you can actually empower many thousands of people to self-organize to tackle a task (shuffling people to their destination in this case) without the preplanning that is the norm in traditional enterprises. Put another way, Uber’s business model extends a very complex supply chain beyond the boundaries of a corporation in a way that creates real results without any planning in advance.
How does Uber handle the holiday crunch? The Case Against Reality. Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers. By Rutger Bregman Thick fog envelops City Hall Park at daybreak on February 2, 1968. Seven thousand New York City sanitation workers stand crowded together, their mood rebellious. Union spokesman John DeLury addresses the multitude from the roof of a truck.
When he announces that the mayor has refused further concessions, the crowd’s anger threatens to boil over. It’s time to strike. The next day, trash goes uncollected throughout the Big Apple. Get Evonomics in your inbox When the mayor goes out to survey the situation two days later, the city is already knee-deep in refuse, with another 10,000 tons added every day. Still the mayor refuses to budge. Rich without Lifting a Finger Perhaps, but not in every profession. Imagine, for instance, that all of Washington’s 100,000 lobbyists were to go on strike tomorrow. When it comes to garbage collectors, though, it’s different. Instead of creating wealth, these jobs mostly just shift it around. Or take the legal profession. When Bankers Struck . Uk.businessinsider. The Genius of Birds. Some birds have an exceptional gift for imitating human speech. The African grey parrot is one such species. The mynah certainly qualifies, as does the cockatoo.
These few are generally considered the Ciceros and Churchills of birds. Arguably, there are a few others in the corvid and the parrot families: parakeets, for instance. The New Yorker once reported that “after weeks of silence, the first words uttered by a Westchester parakeet were, ‘Talk, damn you, talk!’” Imitating human sounds is a lot to ask of a bird. The African grey parrot is the parliamentarian of the bird world. Alex was not alone in his badinage. “Hello! Then he finishes with the flat ring tone of hanging up. For one long stretch, his preferred “Bob” word was “Shhhhhhhhiiiit.” Parrots have been known to teach other parrots to talk smack. Inside One of the World’s Most Secretive iPhone Factories.
A few minutes past 9 a.m. at Pegatron Corp.’s vast factory on Shanghai’s outskirts, thousands of workers dressed in pink jackets are getting ready to make iPhones. The men and women stare into face scanners and swipe badges at security turnstiles to clock in. The strict ID checks are there to make sure they don’t work excessive overtime. The process takes less than two seconds. This is the realm in which the world’s most profitable smartphones are made, part of Apple Inc.’s closely guarded supply chain. After years of accusations that employees in China were forced to work long, grueling hours, Pegatron and Apple adopted new procedures to keep iPhone assemblers from amassing excessive overtime. John Sheu, known at the factory as Big John, or the Mayor, is giving the tour to a Bloomberg reporter. “Every second counts,” Big John says. “Good morning!” Inside, the factory still hides a secret, according to China Labor Watch.
Related Story: Where Your iPhone Goes to Die (and Be Reborn) Koch Brothers Consider Purchasing First Democrat. WICHITA (The Borowitz Report)—Charles and David Koch, the billionaire industrialists who have spent decades acquiring a world-class collection of Republicans, revealed over the weekend that they are considering purchasing their first Democrat. “We’ve always bought Republicans, and our father bought Republicans before us,” Charles, the elder Koch, said. “They’re bred to be obedient, and they respond to simple commands.”
He said that he and his brother had considered acquiring a Democrat only after determining that none of the Republicans on offer this year was worth adding to their collection. “It’s kind of a scary proposition for us, because we’ve never owned a Democrat before,” he said. “We don’t really know what we should be looking for.” Koch said that he and his brother learned, after making some phone calls, that other oligarchs have bought Democrats in the past, and “had good experiences with them.” “That was very reassuring,” he said. BioViva follows controversial anti-aging quest. The way BioViva founder Elizabeth Parrish sees it, biological aging is a disease – and she’s willing to bet her life on a cure. Last fall, the 45-year-old Seattle-area woman underwent an experimental type of gene therapy aimed at addressing some of the big effects of aging, including loss of muscle mass and a shortening of the chromosomes’ telomeres.
The procedure was reportedly done in Colombia, to get around U.S. regulations. The idea of having gene therapy done on yourself raised eyebrows in the biotech community, but Parrish was unfazed. “I 100 percent believe that it will work, or else I wouldn’t have done it,” Parrish told GeekWire during an interview in February. “I didn’t try to flame out in glory. The research shows that it should absolutely work.”
Now BioViva is reporting that it does seem to work, at least on Parrish’s telomeres. The gene therapy that Parrish underwent was aimed at inhibiting myostatin and building up telomeres. Bottom line? MU News Bureau | MU News Bureau. April 21, 2016 Story Contact(s): Jeff Sossamon, sossamonj@missouri.edu, 573-882-3346 COLUMBIA, Mo. – Global studies have shown that women are underrepresented in some science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects and fields. Even in countries with higher gender equality, sex differences in math and technical scores persist.
Now, using international data, a team of psychologists from the University of Missouri, the University of California-Irvine and the University of Glasgow in Scotland, have determined that, overall, girls experience negative emotions about mathematics that can result in avoidance of math topics. Often called “mathematics anxiety,” scientists believe that several factors other than math performance are resulting in higher mathematics anxiety in girls compared to boys.
The study also analyzed the possible role of parental views on the value and importance of mathematics for their daughters and sons. Learn How to Identify Any Language at a Glance With This Handy Guide. History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places. Build a Deck for Less Than $900. If you want to be like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, adopt their voracious reading habits — Quartz.
A Berlin, Germany, startup called Locomore has launched the world’s first crowdfunded train service. The renovated 1970s train, with retro orange-and-brown livery and the words “fair, ecological, cheap” emblazoned on the side, pulled out of Stuttgart station for its maiden voyage to Berlin via Frankfurt and Hanover on Wednesday morning. A one-way Stuttgart-Berlin ticket with Locomore costs upwards from €22 euros ($23.44) versus €115 on Deutsche Bahn. At six and-a-half hours, the trip is slightly slower than aboard the high-speed national rail service Deutsche Bahn—and so far it only offers one return service a day. But Locomore founder Derek Ladewig is hoping that his radically cheaper tickets and the fact that the trains are powered by 100% green electricity will lure people away from long-distance buses and cars. “We are offering a new service to compete with the car, the plane, the long-distance bus as well as Deutsche Bahn,” Ladewig told AFP.
This Map Shows How Much Money School Districts Spend on Each Student. The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. ELI5: Why do the largest US cities have the poorest public school programs? : explainlikeimfive. Found this in the woods today. It never ends. De overheid hoort onze burgers te beschermen tegen afluisteren, de overheid kan en mag zelf afluisteren maar kan en mag dit enkel binnen een wettelijk kader doen. Allerlei zaken tonen aan dat overheden binnen de NAVO alliantie ons land aanvallen met digitale inbraken. Het baart me zorgen. Technisch betekent dit voor mij dat ons land moet investeren in beveiliging van systemen. Hier hoort kennis en controle over hardware en software op diep niveau bij. Ik hoop dat Pieter De Crem niet enkel in straaljagers maar ook in het beveiligen van ‘s lands computersystemen investeert.
Dat betekent voor mij kennis en controle op het niveau van de bootloader, de kernel en de hardware. Wat betreft de kernel moet een recruit het boek van Robert Love de dagen voor het sollicitatiegesprek doornemen. Een goede technische test zou zijn om een eigen rootkit kernel module te schrijven gedurende de dagen dat het sollicitatiegesprek plaatsvindt (ja, dagen). Maar de wet staat boven de militair. Philip. Uk.businessinsider. The Post-Imperial Moment. IN 1935, the anti-Nazi writer and Austrian-Jewish intellectual Joseph Roth published a story, “The Bust of the Emperor,” about an elderly count at the chaotic fringe of the former Habsburg Empire who refused to think of himself as a Pole or an Italian, even though his ancestry encompassed both.
In his mind, the only mark of “true nobility” was to be “a man above nationality,” in the Habsburg tradition. “My old home, the Monarchy, alone,” the count says, “was a great mansion with many doors and many chambers, for every condition of men.” Indeed, the horrors of twentieth-century Europe, Roth wrote presciently, had as their backdrop the collapse of empires and the rise of uniethnic states, with Fascist and Communist leaders replacing the power of traditional monarchs. While the United States still remains the single strongest power on earth, it is less and less an overwhelming one. This partial retreat of American power has international and domestic causes. WORLD DISORDER will only grow. Pentagon adopts Israeli tactic in bombing ISIS. Israeli forces have widely used the so-called knock-on-the-roof operations in Gaza attacks in recent years to try to get civilians out before they are hit. The first public revelation of the U.S. using a "knock operation" came Tuesday at a press briefing by Air Force Maj.
Gen. Peter E. Gersten, deputy commander for operations and intelligence for the anti-ISIS Operation Inherent Resolve. Gersten described a strike against an ISIS financial storage center on April 5 in southern Mosul, Iraq. "He was the major distributor of funds to Daesh fighters," Gersten said, using another name for ISIS. Using reconnaissance aircraft and other intelligence assets to keep watch, the U.S. then began to formulate a plan, Gersten said, to get women, children and other civilians out of the building. Gersten acknowledged the Israeli influence, saying, "That's exactly where we took the tactics and technique and procedure from.
" But he noted, "We've certainly watched and observed their procedure. 'Crypto Wars' timeline: A history of the new encryption debate. Encryption is finally mainstream. Government officials and technologists have been debating since the early 1990s whether to limit the strength of encryption to help the law-enforcement and intelligence communities monitor suspects' communications.
But until early 2016, this was a mostly esoteric fight, relegated to academic conferences, security agencies' C-suites, and the back rooms of Capitol Hill. Everything changed in mid-February, when President Barack Obama's Justice Department, investigating the terrorists who carried out the San Bernardino, California, shooting, asked a federal judge to force Apple to help the Federal Bureau of Investigation unlock one attacker's iPhone. What followed was an unexpectedly rancorous and unprecedentedly public fight over how far the government should go to pierce and degrade commercial security technology in its quest to protect Americans from terrorism.
But where and when did this new phase began? That attitude would not last. Sens. Why So Many Smart People Aren’t Happy. There are three things, once one’s basic needs are satisfied, that academic literature points to as the ingredients for happiness: having meaningful social relationships, being good at whatever it is one spends one’s days doing, and having the freedom to make life decisions independently.
But research into happiness has also yielded something a little less obvious: Being better educated, richer, or more accomplished doesn’t do much to predict whether someone will be happy. In fact, it might mean someone is less likely to be satisfied with life. That second finding is the puzzle that Raj Raghunathan, a professor of marketing at The University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business, tries to make sense of in his recent book, If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy? I recently spoke to Raghunathan about his book, and the interview that follows has been edited and condensed for the sake of clarity.
And those yardsticks are ones that we adapt to really quickly. Disciplinary spanking increases childhood defiance and mental health issues - Redorbit. Health April 26, 2016 by Chuck Bednar If you think that the answer to an unruly child is a good spanking, think again, say researchers from the Universities of Texas and Michigan, who after extensive analysis found that this form of punishment only makes youngsters more likely to be defiant and aggressive. Their study, which was published in the April edition of the Journal of Family Psychology, was based on five decades worth of research involving more than 160,000 children. They are calling it the most extensive scientific investigations into the spanking issue, and one of the few to look specifically at spanking rather than grouping it with other forms of physical discipline.
“Our analysis focuses on what most Americans would recognize as spanking and not on potentially abusive behaviors,” lead author Elizabeth Gershoff, an associate professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Texas, said in a statement Monday. Image credit: Thinkstock. Why You Should Still Do Good Work Even If You Hate Your Job. TTIP: UK Government found secret courts in trade deal have 'lots of risk and no benefit' in its only assessment | Business News.
Secret courts to be introduced under the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership will have "few or no benefits to the UK", according to the only official assessment of the deal commissioned by the UK Government. The warning was disclosed in response to a Freedom of Information request by anti-TTIP campaigners Global Justice Now. The group filed a request to the Department for Business Innovation and Skills to ask what risk assessments had been made about the introduction of secret courts known as the Investor-State Dispute Settlement.
The BIS said it had carried out only one such review in 2013, when the London School of Economics was commissioned to conduct a study. The study found this provision under TTIP would have limited political and economic benefits and may result in "meaningful economic costs in the UK". Loaded: 0% Progress: 0% What is TTIP? Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, said the findings show the treaty could have harmful consequences for ordinary people. The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs. Why isn′t the NSA a hot topic in the US elections? | World | DW.COM | 22.04.2016. Different political views keep Chinese women from seriously dating foreign men — Quartz. Chernobyl Hints Radiation May Be Less Dangerous than Thought. Four Red Flags to Watch Out for in Job Interviews. The Worst Ways Cable Companies Confuse You Into Paying More.
Who Was Ramanujan? — Backchannel. Make These Grilled Cheese Roll-Ups for Easy Snacking or Soup Dipping. Future - The secretive, billionaire-backed plans to harness fusion. Immortality Begins at Forty. Quora. Identity 2016: 'Global citizenship' rising, poll suggests. ELI5: what is it about boiling water that cooks pasta : explainlikeimfive. Uk.businessinsider. Uk.businessinsider. Imgur. Quora. This year’s Founders' Letter. Quora. Your 2016 April Fool's Day Prank Spoiler. Correct a Child's Behavior Without Punishment By Focusing on These Three Things. History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places. Uk.businessinsider. Quora. Theorists perplexed by hints of unexpected new particle. The Amount Of Salt In The Brain Determines Sleep Cycles. Uk.businessinsider. US spy court didn't reject a single government surveillance request in 2015.
In Pictures | Philippa Lawrence's Bound project. Obituaries My Mother Wrote for Me While I Was Living in San Francisco in My Twenties. Samsung’s VR Plans Include Standalone Headset, Hand-Tracking Tech. Imgur. Tor and VPN users will be target of government hacks under new spying rule. Beethoven music shaped by gradual deafness, say experts. Quora. Why You’ll Need To Save Way More Than You Think. ELI5: If animals can distinguish us from our smells, how do they not get confused by the smells of our soaps/colognes/deodorants/etc? : explainlikeimfive. Quora. Craig Wright reveals himself as Satoshi Nakamoto. Cruelty-free mousetrap | Create, Discover and Share on Gfycat.
Quora. 'A big society needs big citizens' Uk.businessinsider. Your phone’s biggest vulnerability is your fingerprint. What is the most expensive object on Earth? Great idea - GIF on Imgur. Uk.businessinsider. SoloLearn Teaches Coding Basics In Bite-Sized Lessons Every Day. How to get a cheap airfare, according to a guy who sets the prices for American Airlines — Quartz. Uk.businessinsider. The Rock Clock Alarm App Keeps You Motivated and Ditches the Snooze Button. Nine years of censorship. Quora. Quora. The U.S. Recovery Is Historically Good. Why Does It Feel Terrible?
How Melatonin Helps You Sleep. The Party Decides on Donald Trump. I thougt I would share this with you on my cakeday. Edward Snowden: ‘Governments can reduce our dignity to that of tagged animals’ | US news. Here’s How Long Your Common Household Appliances Should Last. Pushing The Brake On Education Funding In Colorado. Hug and play. Why Cruz, and the G.O.P., Lost to Trump. After Donald Trump’s win in Indiana, an exodus from the Republican Party has begun — Quartz. History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places.