Artificial Unintelligence

In the early stages of the Lesser Depression, those of us who knew a bit about the macroeconomic debates of the 1930s, and realized how relevant the hard-won insights of Keynes and Hicks were to the post-financial crisis world, often felt a sense of despair. Everywhere you looked, people who imagined themselves sophisticated and possessed of deep understanding were resurrecting 75-year-old fallacies and presenting them as deep insights.
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How To Replace Your Training Program With A Real Learning Culture

Everyone hates all-day mandatory training. Here's how to encourage learning a different way.
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Nestle: Forced labor has no place in our food supply chain

Nestle says "forced labor has no place in our supply chain" following a U.S. class action lawsuit that alleges the Swiss food company knowingly supported a system of slave labor and human trafficking to make its Fancy Feast cat food. Nestle didn't deny the allegations in an email Sunday to The Associated Press but said its guidelines require suppliers to respect human rights. It outlined steps Nestle has taken to rid forced labor from its seafood supply chain.
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Why Are Chinese Agents Stealing Corn Seed From American Farms?

Inside a secret Cold War in the nation’s heartland. By Ted Genoways.
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In defense of single-payer: How it would reduce administrative waste

A universal system would make documentation irrelevant, and, therefore, unnecessary. By Adam Gaffney, M.D.
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Want To Start A Successful Company? Read These Five Books First

There’s an old saying in the rare coin business. That is: “buy the book before you buy the coin.” The same thing, I would say, goes for folks who want to start their own businesses.
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Live Sports No Longer TV’s Holy Grail in U.S. as Ratings Peak

Sports broadcasts -- long viewed by the entertainment industry as a way to lure viewers and ad dollars -- are losing some luster.
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Tiny ant takes on pesticide industry

Studies show insects as effective or better than chemicals in controlling some crop pests
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Wal-Mart Cuts Some Workers’ Hours After Pay Raise Boosts Costs

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., in the midst of spending $1 billion to raise employees’ wages and give them extra training, has been cutting the number of hours some of them work in a bid to keep costs in check.
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Looting Made Easy: the $2 Trillion Buyback Binge

Corporations are taking the retirement savings of elderly public employees and using them to inflate their stock prices so wealthy CEOs and their shareholders can enrich themselves at the expense of their companies.
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Marchionne Calls for GM Takeover Just Short of Hostile

The outspoken executive has now called for a General Motors takeover via a series of hugs increasing each time in their intensity.
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Central banks can’t save the markets from a crash. They shouldn’t even try

Alarming data from China was met with a soothing hint about monetary policy. But treasuries cannot keep pumping cheap credit into a series of asset bubbles
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Mad Max Ubers Are Driving Around Seattle

If you live in Seattle and you need a ride to Valhalla, you’re in luck. The driver-on-demand app Uber is running a promotion with the new Mad Max video game that puts passengers inside post-apocalyptic-inspired vehicles.
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Step inside a restaurant where no one takes your order or serves you

I must admit that I fully expected to dislike Eatsa, a new restaurant slated to open next week in San Francisco with a sleek, 21st-century take on the famous Horn & Hardart Automat. In the late 1980s, when I was a summer intern in New York, working in the Daily News Building, the last remaining Horn & Hardart Automat was right around the corner. The cafeteria chain that operated in Philadelphia and New York was in its twilight then...
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34 Indigenous Crops Promoting Health and Feeding the World

Food Tank has compiled a list of indigenous fruits, vegetables, and grains that are nutritious, delicious, and contribute to sustainable livelihoods.
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The Evolution of Magazine Covers

A look at how we’ve changed in the past 100 years
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Lenovo Installing Immortal Crapware

Lenovo has again been caught playing fast and loose with customers’ privacy and security. First, it was Superfish. Now, it’s vulnerable crapware that won’t go away, even if you reformat or replace your hard drive. Read on for the full story…
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How Open Source Is Shaping Microsoft's Future

A leopard can't change its spots, but Microsoft's embrace of open source looks to prove otherwise. Critics in the community have their doubts, but business realities are changing the climate in Redmond.
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Bank of America to pay $36 million in California overtime infraction case

A subsidiary of Bank of America has agreed to settle with 365 current and former employees for $36 million over charges it failed to pay overtime, an Oakland lawyer who brought the case said Thursday. The settlement comes just under the wire: It was slated to go to trial on Aug. 31, but the $36 million settlement, if and when it is approved by the court, now resolves all claims.
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The “Paid-What-You’re-Worth” Myth

It’s often assumed that people are paid what they’re worth. According to this logic, minimum wage workers aren’t worth more than the $7.25 an hour they now receive. If they were worth more, they’d earn more. Any attempt to force employers to pay them more will only kill jobs.
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How companies make millions off lead-poisoned, poor blacks

Structured-settlement annuitants are lured by quick cash to unload their future payouts for dimes on the dollar.
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NYC cabs will test app-based system to challenge Uber

Around 7,000 NYC cabs are currently beta testing a new e-hail app called Arro, which the industry hopes can help it get back the customers it's lost to Uber. Arro isn't the first hailing app for cabs -- it actually works quite similarly to Uber -- but the startup believes it can do better than its predecessors. Why? Because; (a) it doesn't have surge pricing, meaning you'll just have to pay whatever shows up on the meter, and (b) it has a partnership with...
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Europe and the food industry are at war over whether pesticides are dangerous

Widely-used pesticides made by Bayer CropScience and Syngenta pose a risk to bees, the European Union's food safety watchdog said on Wednesday, reinforcing previous research that led to EU restrictions. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which guides EU policymakers, said leaf spray containing three neonicotinoid pesticides could harm bees, whose pollinating role is estimated to be worth billions of euros for the bloc's farm sector.
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Lawsuit Accuses Nestlé of Using Slave-Caught Fish in Fancy Feast

The four consumers who filed the Nestle case in Los Angeles federal court seek to represent all California buyers of Fancy Feast who wouldn’t have bought the product had they known that the fish was allegedly harvested using forced labor.
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Pentagon Teams up With Apple, Boeing to Develop Wearable Tech

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter awarded $75 million on Friday to help a consortium of high-tech firms and researchers develop electronic systems packed with sensors flexible enough to be worn by soldiers or molded onto the skin of a plane. Carter said funding for the Obama administration's newest manufacturing institute would go to the FlexTech Alliance, a consortium of 162 companies, universities and other groups, from Boeing, Apple and Harvard...
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Board Issues Decision in Browning-Ferris Industries

In a 3-2 decision involving Browning-Ferris Industries of California, the National Labor Relations Board refined its standard for determining joint-employer status. The revised standard is designed “to better effectuate the purposes of the Act in the current economic landscape.” With more than 2.87 million of the nation’s workers employed through temporary agencies in August 2014, the Board held that its previous joint employer standard has failed to keep pace with changes in the workplace...
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The battle between Washington and Silicon Valley over encryption

Tech titans are pushing back against Obama's national security officials over strong security on consumer devices, strengthened after the Snowden leaks. The outcome could impact the future of the Internet – and your privacy. By Sara Sorcher.
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Switzerland: Special trains for Chinese tourists

A mountain resort in Switzerland is launching special train services for Chinese tourists to defuse tensions with other visitors, it is reported. Noisy throngs of Chinese tourists disturb those who visit Mount Rigi in the Alps in search of peace and relaxation, reports the Swiss newspaper Blick. They crowd the corridors while taking pictures from the train, there has been rudeness in packed carriages, and some even report seeing tourists spit on the floor, the paper says.
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What's the world's most expensive city?

Is it London, playground of the world’s super-rich, or an Asian financial centre such as Hong Kong or Singapore? In fact, two of the most respected surveys locate the world’s most expensive city in Africa
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A Dream Come True: Huge Lego Bricks for Building Real Stuff

Everblocks are a life-size version of the locking blocks you know and love. They're more than a toy. They might be a real method for building.
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CEOs Call for Wage Increases for Workers! What's the Catch?

Their concern is not driven by moral outrage at the injustice of it all, but by self-interest.
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China’s Hunt for Growth in the Countryside

Alibaba, the e-commerce giant, is turning to the immense interior in search of fresh profits. On a hot day in June, one spot in Tuguan is bustling. At the local convenience store, a dozen sun-tanned villagers are clustered around a new Lenovo computer and wall-mounted flatscreen Skyworth monitor, checking out the latest online deals on mobile phones, toothpaste, pesticide dispensers, and more, all for sale on Alibaba Group’s new rural e-commerce platform.
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The CEO of Ashley Madison has resigned

Following a devastating hack that leaked more than 30 million users' data online, the founder of Ashley Madison has resigned. Noel Biderman, the CEO of Avid Life Media, the parent company of extra-marital affairs site Ashley Madison, is stepping down, the company announced on Friday. He is no longer with the company. "This change is in the best interest of the company," Avid Life Media said in a statement...
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Bimbo Bakeries recalls bread brands due to potential broken glass

Bimbo Bakeries is recalling bread under the brands of Sara Lee, Nature's Harvest and others due to the potential of glass in the bread caused by a broken light bulb at a factory. The company, headquartered in Horsham, Pa., made the announcement Wednesday after receiving three consumer reports of small pieces of glass found on the outside of the bread. No injuries were reported.
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The Financial Times Calls for Ending Cash, Calls it a "Barbarous Relic"

Earlier this week, as the financial world was mesmerized by a min-stock market crash, the Financial Times published a dastardly little piece of fascist propaganda. There is no more egregious anti-l...
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McDonald's cuts ties with chicken supplier accused of cruelty

McDonald's has cut ties with one of its chicken suppliers after an animal rights group obtained gruesome video footage that appears to show operators of the Tennessee poultry farm clubbing small and sickly birds to death. The video taken at T&S Farm in Dukedom, Tenn., which the activist group Mercy for Animals says was secretly recorded by one of the group’s investigators, appears to show a man and woman at the farm pummeling the birds using a...
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Diving for treasure to help protect the world’s great reefs

We examine some of the challenges and solutions for developing “the blue economy” in smarter, more sustainable ways.
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After China’s fake Rolex - now there’s a fake Goldman Sachs

China has been accused of pirating movies, handbags, Rolexes -- even cars. Add Goldman Sachs to the list. Goldman Sachs (Shenzhen) Financial Leasing Co. has been operating in the city just across the border from Hong Kong using a nearly identical English and Chinese name as the New York-based financial institution, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. It claims on its website to be one of the city’s largest financial leasing firms.
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AT&T grudgingly accepts $428 million in annual government funding

AT&T objected to 10Mbps requirement, but will expand "broadband" in 18 states.
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71% of top music executives think Jay Z's streaming service Tidal will die within a year

Jay Z's music streaming service, Tidal, has had a rocky few months since he bought it for $56 million in March. For Tidal, traction has been hard to come by. And now some 71% of top music executives have lost faith in the streaming service, saying they believe the company will fold in a year or less, Billboard reports.
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Strawberries, Basil and Beans Thrive in Underwater Greenhouses

The produce aisle goes undersea in a new approach to farming
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The Longest Tunnel In the World Is Now Finished

The 35-mile tunnel that runs below the Swiss Alps is now complete.
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The Internet Is Failing The Website Preservation Test

The other day I was writing an article and I wanted to link to a piece I wrote when I was at CITEworld in 2013 -- just two years ago. I went searching for..
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Where Are Chernobyl’s Children? A Photojournalist’s Honest Project in the Age of Disaster Tourism

National Geographic photographer Gerd Ludwig has spent almost three decades trying to honor the victims of Chernobyl — and watching the world minimize them. He’s getting ready to make another trip. Polarr finds out more…
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Despite The Drought, California Farms See Record Sales In 2014

While the drought has put a strain on California agriculture, its farms actually set a record for total sales — $54 billion — in 2014. How? By pumping more water from their wells.
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Thinking Outside the Square: Support for Landscape and Portrait Formats on Instagram

Today, we’re excited to announce that — in addition to square posts — you can now share photos and videos in both portrait and landscape orientation on Instagram.
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Cold Opening: The Publicity Campaign for “Watchman”

The July 14, 2015, publication of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, the sequel to Lee’s only other novel, the intensely beloved To Kill a Mockingbird, was a big deal, and HarperCollins, Watchman’s publisher, designed its prepublication campaign carefully.
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No One Is Ready for the Next Katrina

As the seas rise and storms worsen, it's worth taking a look at how poorly US infrastructure is going to do under climate change.
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Want to Make a Diamond in Just 10 Weeks? Use a Microwave

Microwaved stones—no dirty mines or bloody conflicts—might be a girl’s next-best friend
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Court Says the FTC Can Slap Companies for Getting Hacked

An appellate ruling in a suit against Wyndham Hotels has wide consequences for hacked firms. For companies like the dating site Ashley Madison or the health insurer Anthem, financial loss, customer anger and professional embarrassment aren’t the only consequences of getting massively gutted by hackers. Now a court has confirmed that there’s a three-letter agency that can dish out punishment, too.
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