What's the Point If We Can’t Have Fun?

My friend June Thunderstorm and I once spent a half an hour sitting in a meadow by a mountain lake, watching an inchworm dangle from the top of a stalk of grass... By David Graeber.
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The Illusion of Taste

Sitting in a pub one night a dozen years ago, Charles Spence realized that he was in the presence of the ideal experimental model: the Pringles potato chip. Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University, runs the Crossmodal Research Lab there, which studies how the brain integrates information from the five human senses to produce a coherent impression of reality. Very often, these modes of perception influence one another on the way...
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How corporations use fine print to deny Americans their day in court

By inserting individual arbitration clauses into a soaring number of consumer and employment contracts, companies like American Express devised a way to circumvent the courts and bar people from joining together in class-action lawsuits, realistically the only tool citizens have to fight illegal or deceitful business practices.
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With 12% Of Comcast Customers Now Broadband Capped, Comcast Declares It's Simply Spreading 'Fairness'

Comcast continues to expand its usage cap "trial" into the company's less competitive markets, hitting these lucky customers with a 300 GB monthly usage cap. These users also now face a $10 per 50 GB overage fee should they cross this...
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Google Changes ‘.bro’ Filename To Avoid Accusations Of Misogyny

Google has renamed the file suffix of its new Brotli software from ‘.bro’ to ‘.br’ to avoid the potentially misogynistic overtones associated with the term. The tech giant’s new Brotli file compression software is designed to make websites load faster. After information about the new software was shared online, one poster - a Mozilla engineer - suggested that: “'bro’ has a gender problem” and “comes of[f] misogynistic and unprofessional due to the world it lives in”.
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These Ice Cellars Fed Arctic People for Generations. Now They're Melting

Native people in Alaska and Russia store their whale meat and other traditional foods in permafrost. But their underground freezers are thawing, causing food problems. By Eli Kintisch.
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Made in Holland: The Chanel of Africa

A small town factory in the Netherlands might not seem like the obvious birthplace for African haute couture. Helmond is a place most people (Dutch or African) wouldn’t be able to point out on a map and yet, this unassuming little town is where one of the most iconic fashion brands of West and Central Africa was created. By Inge Oosterhoff.
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People in Sweden are hiding cash in their microwaves because of a fascinating — and terrifying — economic experiment

Sweden is shaping up to be the first country to plunge its citizens into a fascinating — and terrifying — economic experiment: negative interest rates in a cashless society. The Swedish central bank held its benchmark interest rate at -0.35% today, the level it has been at since July. Although retail banks have yet to pass on that negative to rate to Swedish consumers, the longer it’s held there the more financial pressure there is for banks to pass the costs onto their customers.
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Homejoy at the Unicorn Glue Factory

Will the home-cleaning revolution be Uberfied? One company tried, and spectacularly bombed. By Christina Farr.
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The Best Business Planning Software of 2015

We test and compare five of the top-rated business planning software solutions to help you construct a polished business plan for your small to midsize business (SMB).
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The Selling Of Trust

How Russia’s longest and largest bank fraud has been covered up as it passed from one owner to another, starting with Mikhail Khodorkovsky and ending with Ruben Aganbegyan, Alexander Mamut, et al. By John Helmer.
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Making Insider Trading Legal

Thanks to gaping loopholes implicitly endorsed by the Supreme Court, hedge funds now essentially have a license to cheat. By Patrick Radden Keefe.
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Rigging of Foreign Exchange Market Makes Felons of Top Banks

For the world’s biggest banks, what seemed like the perfect business turned out to be the perfect breeding ground for crime. The trading of foreign currencies promised substantial revenues and relatively low risk. It was the kind of activity that banks were supposed to expand after the 2008 financial crisis. But like so many other seemingly good ideas on Wall Street, the foreign exchange business was vulnerable to manipulation...
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Dotcom's Bid to Halt Extradition Hearing Fails, Defense Begins

Efforts by Kim Dotcom's legal team to have his extradition hearing thrown out have failed today. As a result the Megaupload founder will begin his defense next week, presenting legal argument that he hopes will stop New Zealand authorities sending him to the United States. Defiant, Dotcom insists that he "won't be silenced by bullies!"
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Biological concrete for constructing 'living' building materials with lichens, mosses

The Structural Technology Group has developed and patented a type of biological concrete that supports the natural, accelerated growth of pigmented organisms. The material, which has been designed for the façades of buildings or other constructions in Mediterranean climates, offers environmental, thermal and aesthetic advantages over other similar construction solutions. The material improves thermal comfort in buildings and helps to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels.
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Haute dogs fill social calendars — and closets — for Halloween

The National Retail Federation estimates that 20 million pet owners will dress their pets this Halloween, spending $350 million on the costumes.
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The future is the Internet of Things—deal with it

IoT is about to explode, perhaps literally, if privacy and security issues aren't fixed.
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Bronx Cheer

The New York borough that once symbolized urban decline is safer and more stable—but most Bronxites’ lives are still precarious. By Harold Meyerson.
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Scientists: Warming ocean factor in collapse of cod fishery

PORTLAND, Maine - The rapid warming of waters off New England is a key factor in the collapse of the region's cod fishery..the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, said the gulf is warming at a rate 99 percent faster than anywhere else in the world, .
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The home-chefs causing panic in restaurants

Restaurant owners in Paris say they could be put out of business by chefs who are catering for diners in their own homes.
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Apple's clever plan to kill cheap Android phones

Since launching the first iPhone back in 2007, Apple has always focused on offering high-end mobile experience, even if that meant losing the market share battle against Google’s Android.
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The Nightmare Of Grocery Shopping In Venezuela

Venezuela's economic model has imploded. With food production, import and distribution now controlled by the government, shelves are bare. A day's hunt for groceries in Caracas can prove futile.
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Too many classic films remain buried in studios' vaults

Will McKinley, a New York film writer, is dying to get his hands on a copy of "Alias Nick Beal," a 1949 film noir starring Ray Milland as a satanic gangster. For classic film blogger Nora Fiore, the Grail might be "The Wild Party" (1929), the first talkie to star 1920's "It" girl Clara Bow, directed by the pioneering female director Dorothy Arzner. Film critic Leonard Maltin says he'd like to score a viewing of "Hotel Haywire," a 1937 screwball comedy written by the great comic director...
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Is the ‘China Model’ Better Than Liberal Democracy?

“One person, one vote isn’t the only morally legitimate way to select leaders,” a political theorist says. By Eric Fish.
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Singpost Is Developing A Futuristic Shopping Mall To House Online Retailers

Weeks after revealing plans to use drones to deliver the mail, Singpost — Singapore’s postal service provider — has unveiled another futuristic e-commerce concept, a mall that combines online and offline shopping together under one roof. The mall (artist’s impressive above) will be located at Singapore Post Centre (SPC) and is scheduled to be completed by mid-2017. The company said it would feature 25,000 square meters of retail space spread across five levels.
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We’ve finally agreed: Techpocalypse is coming. Two questions remain: When and who?

If your unicorn CEO isn’t worried, quit. By Sarah Lacy.
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Aquafina to say it comes from same source as tap water

The label on Aquafina water bottles will soon be changed to spell out that the drink comes from the same source as tap water, the brand's owner PepsiCo said Friday. A group called Corporate Accountability International has been pressuring bottled water sellers to curb what it calls misleading marketing practices. Aquafina is the single biggest bottled water brand, and its bottles are now labeled "P.W.S." The new labels will spell out "public water source."
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MtGox CEO spent embezzled funds on prostitutes

The head of collapsed Bitcoin exchange MtGox was facing fresh embezzlement charges Wednesday, as Japanese media said some of the allegedly stolen funds were spent on prostitutes. Tokyo police said they had arrested France-born Mark Karpeles, 30, for moving 20 million yen ($166,000) in client money to his bank account, as he faces fraud allegations over the disappearance of hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars-worth of the virtual currency.
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Will Clean Tech make Fossil Fuels more Expensive?

Renewables are getting cheaper all the time. Interestingly, they may also drive up the cost of the competition.
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IBM to Acquire the Weather Company

IBM hopes it has a new use for Watson, its artificial intelligence business. The company announced on Wednesday that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire most of the assets of the Weather Company, including its Weather.com website, a large number of weather data collection points, consumer and business applications and a staff of over 900 people.
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Hotel Vermont to serve roadkill-inspired menu

Are you brave enough to eat road kill? You can find out at the Hotel Vermont in November.
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The Republican Study Committee wants to ratchet austerity up well past the sequester

A bit over four years ago, the U.S. economy threatened to breach the legislated (and totally arbitrary) national debt ceiling. There was no economic sign (high interest rates, for example) that argued that public debt was too high, and there were many economic signs that such debt was actually too low. Yet because of a quirk in American economic policy, Congress must periodically act to raise the nominal value of the debt allowed to be issue by the federal government.
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Prolific romantic fiction writer exposed as a plagiarist

A prolific, self-published romantic fiction novelist has been exposed as a plagiarist after a reader spotted that she had switched the gender in a tale of romantic suspense to turn it into a gay love story. Becky McGraw, a New York Times bestselling writer, was alerted by one of her readers about the similarities between her own novel "My Kind of Trouble" and Laura Harner’s "Coming Home Texas."
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Copyright Fail: 'Pirating' Academic Papers Not Only Commonplace, But Now Seen As Mainstream

Techdirt has been writing about open access for many years. The idea and practice are certainly spreading, but they're spreading more slowly than many in the academic world had hoped. That's particularly frustrating when you're a a researcher who can't find a particular academic paper freely available as open access, and you really need it now.
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It Is Now Legal to Hack a Smart TV

Earlier this year, we covered the odd saga of Samsung's Internet-connected SmartTV, whose privacy policy raised concern that hackers might attempt to activate built-in microphones and cameras to spy on viewers. At the time, the Software Freedom Conservancy looked to take advantage of a triennial review conducted by the U.S. Copyright Office. Every three years, this government office hears petitions to exempt certain hacking...
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A Tale of Two Retirements: One for CEOs and One for the Rest of Us

While the availability of pension plans for most Americans has dwindled in the last 30 years, more than half of Fortune 500 CEOs receive company-sponsored pension plans. Their firms are allowed to deduct the cost of these plans from their taxes, even if they have cut worker pensions or never offered them at all.
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Inside the Secretive Circle That Rules a $14 Trillion Market

Fifteen of the biggest players in the $14 trillion market for credit insurance are also the referees. Firms such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. wrote the rules, are the dominant buyers and sellers and, ultimately, help decide winners and losers. Has a country such as Argentina paid what it owes? Has a company like Caesars Entertainment Corp. kept up with its bills? When the question comes up, the 15 firms meet on a conference...
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Will Trudeau Transform Canada into a Green Energy Superpower?

Clean Energy Canada urges Trudeau to transform Canada into a green energy superpower — and to tap into a global renewables trade racing towards the $1 trillion mark.
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Why HP Helion public cloud went down for the count

HP has given up on the public cloud. Amazon Web Services (AWS) was just too tough. I can’t say I’m surprised.
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Walgreens Says will Buy Smaller Drugstore Rival Rite-Aid

Drugstore chain Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc (WBA.O) said on Tuesday it would acquire smaller peer Rite Aid Corp (RAD.N) for $9.4 billion to widen its footprint in the United States and negotiate for lower drug costs.
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How N.Y.’s Biggest For-Profit Nursing Home Group Flourishes Despite a Record of Patient Harm

The state’s “character-and-competence” reviews are supposed to weed out operators with histories of violations and fines— but regulators don’t always act on the full story.
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Higher-inequality neighborhoods reduce inequality

The study is yet another confirmation of earlier work by researchers like Raj Chetty and Patrick Sharkey, showing that being poor in a poor neighborhood is usually much worse than being poor in a middle-class or affluent neighborhood.
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Top 100 US CEOs sitting on retirement nest egg of nearly $5bn

The CEO-worker retirement divide has turned our country’s already extreme income divide into an even wider economic chasm. The trends of expanding CEO pensions and increasing worker retirement insecurity are inextricably linked.”
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Reform tax credits with a Negative Income Tax, says new report

The government should replace tax credits, Jobseeker’s Allowance, the Universal Credit, and most other major welfare payments with a single Negative Income Tax, according to a new report from the Adam Smith Institute, Free Market Welfare: The case for a Negative Income Tax. This Negative Income Tax (NIT) would act as a minimum income guarantee for all British citizens and be tapered away as people’s earnings rise through work.
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Why Are More Young Adults Still Living at Home?

The number of 25-year-olds living with their parents has risen significantly since 1999. What factors are at play?
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Robert Reich Explains Why Capitalism Is Broken and the Importance of Bernie Sanders

Capitalism needs to be rescued.
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A Bad Bet on Synthetic Biology

Earlier this month, the international food conglomerate Cargill chose the famous Las Vegas Strip to introduce what it hopes will be its next blockbuster product: EverSweet, a stevia sweetener that contains no stevia. What happened in Vegas should stay in Vegas. By Silvia Ribeiro and Jim Thomas.
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Pinterest Loses “Pin” Trademark Battles In US and UK

The pin may have finally dropped on trademark cases that Pinterest has been chasing in the U.S. and UK. In the U.S., a judge has ruled in favor of a travel startup called Pintrips, in a case where Pinterest was trying to get the startup to cease use of the terms “pin” and “pinning.” Meanwhile, in the UK, location-based mobile directory Free118 won a fight against Pinterest for the right to use the phrase “pinmydeal” for...
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Asylum seekers could be our next wave of entrepreneurs

Against the odds, a growing group of refugees have managed to succeed in business. These are the people we need here!
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Activists urge Trudeau to defend Canada’s copyright regime from TPP changes

Copyright activists say Canadians could face lawsuits, fines or worse for ripping the latest Justin Bieber CD or uploading an animated GIF of Jose Bautista’s bat-flip under a new trade deal, and they’re calling on the newly elected Justin Trudeau to act. A major part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal finalized Oct. 5 involves harmonizing copyright laws in the 12 Pacific Rim countries — including Canada, the United States, Australia and Japan — that are signatories to the deal.
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