The man behind the nation’s most litigious patent troll has spoken

"We never seek personal attacks or personal discomfort toward anyone!"
Read more: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/10/the-man-behind-the-nations-most-litigious-patent-troll-has-spoken/?source=Snapzu

Falling Prices, Borrowing Binge Doom Midwest ‘Go-Go Farmers’

Before the grain price crash, many farmers borrowed big to expand. Now, tales of agrarian hubris and family desperation are piling up in the Midwest.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-farm-debt/?source=Snapzu

Publishers Are Rethinking Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads

The ads, which appear mostly via the services Outbrain and Taboola, can lead to questionable websites. Now some publishers wonder about the effect on their readers.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/31/business/media/publishers-rethink-outbrain-taboola-ads.html?source=Snapzu

Twitter says 'meaningful' ways to combat abuse are coming in November

The company says improving safety is "critical" to growing its audience. Trying to tame a wild animal.
Read more: http://mashable.com/2016/10/27/twitter-safety-tools/?utm_cid=hp-r-1#x3ZLmD0Ajsqn?source=Snapzu

America’s gift to the world: exports of the best armed drones

America has played a special role in the post-WWII era, repeatedly unleashing horrors on the world. We started the nuclear arms race by bombing Japan, staged the first cyberattack on Iran (we now live in fear of the next being on us), and now we’re flooding the world with armed drones. Here Stratfor explains the likely consequences. By Fabius Maximus,
Read more: https://fabiusmaximus.com/2016/10/28/america-exports-armed-drones/?source=Snapzu

The Strange Inevitability of Evolution

Good solutions to biology’s problems are astonishingly plentiful. By Phillip Ball.
Read more: http://nautil.us/issue/41/selection/the-strange-inevitability-of-evolution-rp?source=Snapzu

The Feds Won’t Buy This $19 Million Stealth Boat—or Let It Be Sold Abroad

With his patents under gag order, Gregory Sancoff is being ghosted by the government. By Caroline Winter. (Oct. 21, 2016)
Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-19/the-feds-won-t-buy-this-19-million-stealth-boat-or-let-it-be-sold-abroad?source=Snapzu

Doubts About the Promised Bounty of Genetically Modified Crops

Higher yields with less pesticides was the sales pitch for genetically modified seeds. But that has not proved to be the outcome in the United States.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/business/gmo-promise-falls-short.html?source=Snapzu

A Floating, Urban Forest Where the Food Is Free

Conceived of by artist Mary Mattingly, “Swale” models what New York City might look like if food were considered not only an economic good, but a public one.
Read more: http://hyperallergic.com/333553/a-floating-urban-forest-where-the-food-is-free/?source=Snapzu

America’s Biggest Filer of Patent Suits Wants You to Know It Invented Shipping Notification

Like almost every online retailer, Spice Jungle LLC emails tracking numbers to customers when they place orders. That’s why the small firm was dumbfounded when it received a demand to pay $25,000 for the right to do so. It came from a company called Shipping & Transit LLC, which soon followed with a lawsuit saying the spice seller had infringed on its patents “through use of its electronic tracking, text, email and other messaging to customers."
Read more: http://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-biggest-filer-of-patent-suits-wants-you-to-know-it-invented-shipping-notification-1477582521?source=Snapzu

Apple just told the world it has no idea who the Mac is for

To me, the event last night was Apple trying to remind the world it cares about the Mac, but more than anything else the undertone was this: Apple only cares about the Mac when it’s convenient, but even then, it’s obviously not thinking that hard about the impact it has. By Owen Williams.
Read more: https://medium.com/charged-tech/apple-just-told-the-world-it-has-no-idea-who-the-mac-is-for-722a2438389b#.zaxvvnxjc?source=Snapzu

Uber drivers win key employment case

Uber drivers have won the right to be classed as workers rather than self-employed. The ruling by a London employment tribunal means drivers for the ride-hailing app will be entitled to holiday pay, paid rest breaks and the national minimum wage. The GMB union described the decision as a "monumental victory" for some 40,000 drivers in England and Wales. Uber said it would appeal against the ruling that it had acted unlawfully.
Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37802386?source=Snapzu

Facebook Lets Advertisers Exclude Users by Race

Facebook’s system allows advertisers to exclude black, Hispanic, and other “ethnic affinities” from seeing ads. By Julia Angwin and Terry Parris Jr.
Read more: https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-lets-advertisers-exclude-users-by-race?source=Snapzu

Making a killing under Obamacare: The ACA gets blamed for rising premiums, while insurance companies are reaping massive profits

Health insurance costs are rising, but why? Let's take a close look at health insurance companies' soaring profits
Read more: http://www.salon.com/2016/10/28/making-a-killing-under-obamacare-the-aca-gets-the-blame-for-rising-premiums-while-insurance-companies-are-reaping-massive-profits/?source=Snapzu

US charging 61 people in call center scam based in India

It can be a frightening call to get. Callers posing as tax and immigration agents are threatening arrest, deportation or other punishment unless money is sent to help clear up what they say is a deportation warrant or to cover unpaid income taxes. The government says it's a scam—one that's tricked at least 15,000 people into shelling out more than $300 million. Now the Justice Department is announcing charges in connection with a call center operation that officials say is based in India.
Read more: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/27/us-charging-61-people-in-call-center-scam-based-in-india.html?source=Snapzu

UK workers are paid less now than they were 12 years ago and Brexit could make things worse

Wages for average UK workers are less than they were 12 years ago shocking official figures revealed today. The gender pay gap also remains stubbornly high, data from the Office of National Statistics showed. The median full-time worker is now paid £539 per week (£28,028 a year), less than the £555 per week they earned in 2004, after taking inflation into account. Despite a 1.9 per cent salary increase this year, annual average earnigs in 2016 are still around £1,600 less than their 2009 peak.
Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uk-salaries-less-wages-down-inequality-ons-statistics-a7381671.html?source=Snapzu

Brazil plans to waive visas for visitors from U.S., Japan

Brazil's government is considering waiving visas for visitors from the United States, Japan, Canada and Australia to boost tourism, and could eventually extend the plan to include China, a tourism ministry spokesman said on Monday. The proposal by new Tourism Minister Marx Beltrão would extend for a 12-month trial period a visa-waiver program adopted for visitors from the four countries during the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro this year.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-visas-idUSKCN12O14I?source=Snapzu

Is Wall Street an Ethical Wasteland?

A new book takes a philosophical approach to assessing the morality of modern finance.
Read more: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/10/wall-street-arbitrage-maureen-ohara/505526/?source=Snapzu

Hotel CEO openly celebrates higher prices after anti-Airbnb law passes

A hotel executive said a recently-passed New York law cracking down on Airbnb hosts will enable the company to raise prices for New York City hotel rooms, according to the transcript of the executive's words on a call with shareholders last week. The law, signed by New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo on Friday, slaps anyone who lists their apartment on a short-term rental site with a fine up to $7,500. It "should be a big boost in the arm for the business," Mike Barnello, chief executive of the hotel chain LaSalle Hotel Properties, said of the law last Thursday, "certainly in terms of the pricing.”
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/10/26/hotel-executive-openly-celebrates-higher-prices-after-anti-airbnb-law-passes/?source=Snapzu

The Progressive Tax Reform You’ve Never Heard Of

Put simply, if Congress were to adopt a territorial system to tax only U.S.-originated revenue without addressing profit shifting, corporations would continue to artificially book income in tax havens. Tax revenue would continue to plummet. There is a remedy that fixes profit shifting, adopts a territorial tax, and solidifies tax revenue, by adapting a variation of the corporate tax system already used at the state level.
Read more: http://prospect.org/article/progressive-tax-reform-you%E2%80%99ve-never-heard-0?source=Snapzu

Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4 Billion in IPO

Snapchat will seek to raise as much as $4 billion in its planned initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter. The IPO could value Snapchat at about $25 billion to $35 billion, the people said, asking not to be identified as the details aren’t public. No final decision has been made and the size of the IPO may change, they said. The valuation could reach as much as $40 billion, one of the people said.
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-26/snapchat-seeks-to-raise-as-much-as-4-billion-in-ipo?source=Snapzu

Report: Colorado weed is now a behemoth with a $2.4 billion economic impact

Colorado’s burgeoning legal marijuana industry has quickly made gains on the state’s largest industries — including the mighty oil-and-gas sector — and contributed an economic impact of $2.39 billion in 2015, according to research released Tuesday. The cannabis industry, the fastest-growing business sector in the state, also is credited with funding 18,005 direct and ancillary full-time jobs in 2015, according to the report from the Marijuana Policy Group, a Denver-based economic and market research firm that consults with businesses and governments on marijuana policy.
Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/2016/10/26/colorado-weed-economic-impact-report/?source=Snapzu

What's More Distracting Than A Noisy Co-Worker? Turns Out, Not Much

Sounds, particularly those made by other humans, rank as the No. 1 distraction in the workplace. According to workplace design expert Alan Hedge at Cornell, 74 percent of workers say they face "many" instances of disturbances and distractions from noise. "In general, if it's coming from another person, it's much more disturbing than when it's coming from a machine," he says, because, as social beings, humans are attuned to man-made sounds. He says overheard conversations, as well as high-pitched and intermittent noises, also draw attention away from tasks at hand.
Read more: http://www.npr.org/2016/10/26/498850659/what-s-more-distracting-than-a-noisy-coworker-not-much?source=Snapzu

No country on Earth is taking the 2 degree climate target seriously

If we mean what we say, no more new fossil fuels, anywhere. By David Roberts.
Read more: http://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fossil-fuels?source=Snapzu

Australian desert farm grows 17,000 metric tons of vegetables with just seawater and sun

This incredible farm makes tomato plants bloom in the desert using nothing more than sunlight and seawater. Needing no soil, fossil fuels, groundwater, or pesticides, Sundrop Farms grows crops in a hydroponic greenhouse lined with water-drenched cardboard. The 20-hectare farm officially opened on October 6th near Port Augusta, and their desert-grown tomatoes are already for sale in Australian grocery stores.
Read more: http://inhabitat.com/australian-desert-farm-grows-17000-metric-tons-of-vegetables-with-just-seawater-and-sun/?source=Snapzu

Mike Bloomberg defends Wall Street banks, says Trump supporters are not educated enough to understand the issues

"If I ran, I would have been an incredible candidate," Bloomberg said on Tuesday at his company's 2017 Year Ahead conference. Elitist much?
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-on-wall-street-and-donald-trump-2016-10?source=Snapzu

Canadian Mining’s Dark Heart

Tallying the human cost of gold in one of the most remote places on Earth. By Richard Poplak.
Read more: http://thewalrus.ca/canadian-minings-dark-heart/?src=longreads?source=Snapzu

The Reason The Copyright Office Misrepresented Copyright Law To The FCC: Hollywood Told It To

From the so-now-we-know department. By Mike Masnick.
Read more: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161025/23255535886/reason-copyright-office-misrepresented-copyright-law-to-fcc-hollywood-told-it-to.shtml?source=Snapzu

Made in China: three ways Chinese business has evolved from imitation to innovation

There is a tidal wave of competition approaching the developed world from China – and foreign businesses have much to learn how Chinese companies evolved from imitators to innovators.
Read more: https://theconversation.com/made-in-china-three-ways-chinese-business-has-evolved-from-imitation-to-innovation-67236?source=Snapzu

The Patent That Could Destroy Monsanto And Change The World…

And as Monsanto would love for this article to not go viral, all we can ask is that you share, share, share the information being presented so that it can reach as many people as possible. In 2006, a patent was granted to a man named Paul Stamets. Though Paul is the world’s leading mycologist, his patent has received very little attention and exposure.
Read more: http://countercurrentnews.com/2016/10/patent-destroy-monsanto-change-world/?source=Snapzu

Uber’s Self-Driving Truck Makes Its First Delivery: 50,000 Budweisers

Walt Martin is kneeling, legs folded behind him, butt resting on his heels. “I’ve got to practice my yoga,” he says, clearly joking. Never mind that we’re in the cab of an 18-wheeler cruising through Colorado at 55 mph and Martin was, until a moment ago, the guy at the wheel. Maybe he was feeling cocky. After all the truck, outfitted with $30,000 worth of hardware and software from San Francisco startup Otto, had just hours before made the world’s first autonomous truck delivery.
Read more: https://www.wired.com/2016/10/ubers-self-driving-truck-makes-first-delivery-50000-beers?source=Snapzu

AT&T Is Spying on Americans for Profit, New Documents Reveal

New documents reveal the telecom giant is doing NSA-style work for law enforcement—without a warrant—and earning millions a year from taxpayers. By Kenneth Lipp.
Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/25/at-t-is-spying-on-americans-for-profit.html?source=Snapzu

The genius and stupidity of corporate America are on display when companies rebrand for new countries

When Coca-Cola was first sold in China, some called it “bite the wax tadpole.” To others, it was “female horse fastened with wax,” or “wax-flattened mare.” These inscrutable names were the unfortunate result of shopkeepers’ makeshift translations—they used any set of Chinese characters that sounded vaguely like “Coca-Cola.”
Read more: http://qz.com/816544/phono-semantic-matching-corporate-branding/?source=Snapzu

How Lipton Built An Empire By Selling 'Farm To Table' Tea

Lipton tea can be found in almost any grocery store, and the brand is just about synonymous with industrial Big Tea. So tea enthusiasts who sniff at the familiar square bags might be surprised that once upon a time, Lipton was known as the "farm to table" of the tea world. In fact, it was sold with the catchy slogan "direct from tea garden to tea pot."
Read more: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/10/25/498863411/-from-tea-garden-to-teapot-how-lipton-became-an-empire?source=Snapzu

Small Business Owners Face Pressures Of Minimum Wage Bumps In Big Cities

Minimum wages are on their way to $15 an hour in New York and California. Workers look forward to the bump. But some small businesses are bracing for a hit to their bottom line.
Read more: http://www.npr.org/2016/10/23/499042319/small-business-owners-face-pressures-of-minimum-wage-bumps-in-big-cities?source=Snapzu

Feds: Most states to see steep ObamaCare rate hikes

Another inconvenient truth nobody talks about.
Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/302569-feds-most-states-to-see-steep-obamacare-rate-hikes?source=Snapzu

More coal plants will deepen - not cut - poverty, researchers warn

Building just a third of planned new coal-fired power plants around the world would push hundreds of millions of people into poverty as it accelerates climate change past an agreed limit of 2 degrees Celsius of warming, development experts warn.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-coal-poverty-idUSKCN12O2S1?source=Snapzu

Inside big pharma’s fight to block recreational marijuana

Pharma and alcohol companies have been quietly bankrolling the opposition to legal marijuana, raising questions about threats to market share. By Alfonso Serrano.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/oct/22/recreational-marijuana-legalization-big-business?CMP=fb_gu?source=Snapzu

Economists never imagined negative interest rates — now they're rewriting textbooks

Throw them in jail.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/economists-negative-interest-rates-rewriting-textbooks-2016-10?source=Snapzu

Microsoft's tablet deal with the NFL has been a disaster

The Microsoft Surface tablet is so bad that the best coach in the NFL would rather use paper. By Daniel Roberts.
Read more: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsofts-surface-tablet-deal-with-the-nfl-has-been-a-disaster-193812598.html?source=Snapzu

Organic Eggs Pit Factory Farms Against Family Farms

If the news shocks you that the dozen organic eggs you just bought came from hens living in factory-like conditions, you are not alone.
Read more: http://zesterdaily.com/agriculture/organic/organic-egg-industry-pits-factory-farms-against-family-farms/#?source=Snapzu

The Little-Known Company That Enables Worldwide Mass Surveillance

Internal Endace documents reveal the firm’s key role helping governments harvest vast amounts of data on private emails, chats, and browsing histories. By Ryan Gallagher, Nicky Hager.
Read more: https://theintercept.com/2016/10/23/endace-mass-surveillance-gchq-governments/?source=Snapzu

The Conversation: Behind the scenes: creative commons publishing

We believe in the free flow of information and proudly publish under creative commons.
Read more: https://theconversation.com/behind-the-scenes-creative-commons-publishing-67375?source=Snapzu

Maria Pallante Removed as U.S. Register of Copyrights

U.S. Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante was removed from her job Friday morning (Oct. 21) by the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, who supervises the Copyright Office. Officially, Pallante has been appointed as a senior adviser for digital strategy for the Library of Congress, although it’s clear she was asked to step down.
Read more: http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/7549978/maria-pallante-removed-us-register-of-copyrights?source=Snapzu

The New Hillary Library?

This is the time to think big about designing the digital future. It is a rare moment when a new regime can realign the modes of communication so that they serve the public interest, as the Constitution originally intended. By Robert Darnton.
Read more: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/10/27/new-hillary-library/?source=Snapzu

MetLife fires Snoopy

MetLife is retiring the lovable Peanuts character Snoopy, who has appeared in MetLife print and TV ads for more than three decades. Snoopy’s ouster is part of a marketing shift that includes a new corporate emblem and getting rid of the line “Get Met. It Pays.”
Read more: https://finance.yahoo.com/video/metlife-fires-snoopy-134503466.html?source=Snapzu

The Weird Economics Of Ikea

Ikea is a behemoth. The home furnishing company uses 1 percent of the planet’s lumber, it says, and the 530 million cubic feet of wood used to make Ikea furniture each year pulls with its own kind of twisted gravity. For many, a sojourn to the enormous blue-and-yellow store winds up defining the space in which they sit, cook, eat and sleep. All that wood is turned into furniture that tries to bring a spare, modern aesthetic to the masses. “We’re talking about democratizing design,” Marty Marston, a product public relations manager at Ikea, told me.
Read more: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-weird-economics-of-ikea/?source=Snapzu

Iraq's parliament passes law banning alcohol

Iraq’s parliament has passed a law forbidding the import, production or selling of alcoholic beverages in a surprise move that angered many in the country’s Christian community who rely on the business. The law, passed late on Saturday night, imposes a fine of up to 25m Iraqi dinars (£17,000) for anyone violating the ban. But it’s unclear how strictly the law would be enforced, and it could be struck down by the supreme court. Islam forbids the consumption of alcohol, but it has always been available in Iraq’s larger cities, mainly from shops run by Christians.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/23/iraqs-parliament-passes-law-banning-alcohol?source=Snapzu

The Next Big Thing: Job Benefits That Go Where You Go

We need to overhaul America’s social safety net, which was designed for a different labor market and economy. By Chris Farrell.
Read more: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-gig-economy/the-next-big-thing-job-benefits-that-go-where-you-go-20161017?source=Snapzu

Bill Gates: He eats Big Macs for lunch and schedules every minute of his day - meet the man worth $80 billion

With $80 billion, Bill Gates is the world’s richest man. So how does he spend his money? What makes his life worthwhile? And is his a happy marriage? Mary Riddell spends three months with the Microsoft billionaire to find the answers. Microbes fascinate Bill Gates. On his arrival for a recent meeting with Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, Gates is spotted clutching a book on bacteria, presumably so that he might devour a chapter or two should any lull occur in the conversation.
Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/bill-gates-he-eats-big-macs-for-lunch-and-schedules-every-minute/?source=Snapzu