Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook changes reduced time spent on site by 50 million hours a day in Q4

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday that the changes the company made to its service last year reduced time spent on the site by 50 million hours per day, or 5 percent. "Already last quarter, we made changes to show fewer viral videos to make sure people's time is well spent. In total, we made changes that reduced time spent on Facebook by roughly 50 million hours every day. By focusing on meaningful connections, our community and business will be stronger over the long term," Zuckerberg wrote.
Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/zuckerberg-changes-reduced-time-spent-on-facebook-50-mln-hours-daily.html?source=Snapzu

Facebook Really Wants You to Come Back

It’s been about a year since Rishi Gorantala deleted the Facebook app from his phone, and the company has only gotten more aggressive in its emails to win him back. The social network started out by alerting him every few days about friends that had posted photos or made comments—each time inviting him to click a link and view the activity on Facebook. He rarely did.
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-01-31/facebook-really-wants-you-to-come-back?source=Snapzu

India's farmed chickens dosed with world's strongest antibiotics, study finds

Chickens raised in India for food have been dosed with some of the strongest antibiotics known to medicine, in practices that could have repercussions throughout the world. Hundreds of tonnes of an “antibiotic of last resort” – only used in the most extreme cases of sickness - are shipped to India each year to be used, without medical supervision, on animals that may not require the drugs but are being dosed with them nevertheless to promote the growth of healthy animals.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/01/indias-farmed-chickens-dosed-with-worlds-strongest-antibiotics-study-finds?source=Snapzu

Data is the new lifeblood of capitalism – don't hand corporate America control

One hundred and sixty years ago, the first transatlantic telegram traveled from Britain to the United States along a rickety undersea wire. It consisted of twenty-one words – and took seventeen hours to arrive. Today, the same trip takes as little as 60 milliseconds. A dense mesh of fiber-optic cables girdles the world, pumping vast quantities of information across the planet.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/31/data-laws-corporate-america-capitalism?source=Snapzu

Owners of KC area construction company guilty in $13.8 million ‘rent-a-vet’ fraud

The owners of a Kansas City area construction company have pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining nearly $14 million in government contracts by falsely claiming the company was run by a veteran. Jeffrey K. Wilson, 53, of the Village of Loch Lloyd in Belton, pleaded guilty Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Kansas City to one count of government program fraud.
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article197637759.html?source=Snapzu

How to Not Die in America

I am lucky not for surviving the infection, but for being a member of a shrinking class of Americans whose lives can absorb a trauma of this magnitude. By Molly Osberg.
Read more: https://splinternews.com/how-to-not-die-in-america-1822555151?source=Snapzu

Europe's economy grew faster than the U.S. last year

Sure, the United States is growing at a nice clip. But Europe's economy is expanding at an even faster rate. Economic growth in the 19 countries that use the euro currency was 2.5% in 2017, according to official data published Tuesday. Growth in the 28-member European Union also reached 2.5% last year. It's the best period of growth for both groupings since 2007, putting Europe just ahead of the 2.3% expansion posted by the U.S. in 2017.
Read more: http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/30/news/economy/gdp-europe-economy-2017/index.html?iid=hp-grid-dom?source=Snapzu