LIVE: Tim Cook's Interview At WSJD (AAPL) | ||
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We're at WSJD Live, and Apple CEO Tim Cook is on stage. We're taking live notes below.
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Jack Ma Got Drunk And Bought Half A Soccer Team — And Other Things He Just Said | ||
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Jack Ma gave a keynote interview at the Wall Street Journal's tech conference tonight. Here's a few things he said: WAL-MART: Here's Why We Don't Support Apple Pay (WMT, AAPL) | ||
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Wal-Mart and Apple are in a bit of a tussle over Apple Pay, Apple's mobile payment system on the iPhone 6. Wal-Mart is a leader of MCX, a group of merchants working on their own mobile payment system. Wal-Mart is not accepting Apple Pay right now. Members of MCX, including Rite Aid and CVS, shut down support for Apple Pay after a few days of accepting it, likely out of a contractual obligation to MCX to only use MCX's mobile payment solution. MCX's alternative to Apple Pay is called CurrentC. It's been in development since 2012, and it's a much clunkier solution. The user has to open the CurrentC app, then use a camera to scan a QR code, which is a boxy, bar code type of thing. Or, they unlock the phone, open the app, then have a QR code generated that gets scanned by the retailer. After we wrote about CurrentC earlier, a Wal-Mart PR rep reached out. During a back-and-forth, we asked why Wal-Mart doesn't accept Apple Pay, which is a pretty elegant solution to mobile payments. An iPhone owner simply holds their phone to a payment terminal, then uses her fingerprint to confirm payment. Here's what we were told: There are certainly a lot of compelling technologies being developed, which is great for the mobile-commerce industry as a whole. Ultimately, what matters is that consumers have a payment option that is widely accepted, secure and developed with their best interests in mind. MCX member merchants already collectively serve a majority of Americans every day. MCX’s members believe merchants are in the best position to provide a mobile solution because of their deep insights into their customers’ shopping and buying experiences. Our emphasis is added in there. These are mega corporations fighting for billions of dollars — Apple, the banks, Wal-Mart, etc. — so it's hard to know who to really trust. But, we would trust that Apple is working with consumers in mind. And we would guess that Wal-Mart is less concerned about consumers. It is more concerned with eliminating the 2% fee that comes with credit card purchases. CurrentC bypasses credit card fees, which will save Wal-Mart money in the long run. In fact, Ron Shevlin, a retail banking analyst, says he asked former Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott why MCX could succeed when so many other consortium had failed. Scott's answer tells you a lot about CurrentC, and MCX. He said, "I don’t know that it will, and I don’t care. As long as Visa suffers." Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Apple CEO Tim Cook Criticized His Home State For Failing To Advance LGBT Rights (AAPL) | ||
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Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke out against Alabama's lack of progress on LGBT rights in a speech before his induction into the Alabama Academy of Honor, which memorializes living Alabamans for their accomplishments. Cook said his state has moved "still too slow on equality for the LGBT community," comparing that struggle to Alabama's record on racial equality. It's been widely reported that Cook is gay, though he's never come out publically. Apple's CEO pointed out that Alabama law still allows an employee to be fired based on sexual orientation. "We can't change the past, but we can learn from it," Cook said. "And we can create a different future." Check out an excerpt of Cook's speech (he talks about LGBT rights at 2:30): SEE ALSO: Here's What It's Like To Work With Tim Cook Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Here's How New York City's Subway System Looked 110 Years Ago | ||
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The New York City subway turns 110 years old today. To celebrate, Google has created a collection of images and a virtual tour of the old subway trains and station, taken from the New York Transit Museum. From wood-paneled exteriors with ceiling fans to advertisements from the early 1900s, we've collected our favorite photos that show what riding the subway in 1904 would have been like.
The journey begins at the subway's turnstiles, which were wooden back then. The New York Transit Museum was actually created in a decommissioned underground station in Brooklyn. There are vintage signs from the time period on the walls. See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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Business Insider Is Hiring A QA Engineer | ||
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Business Insider is looking to expand its QA team with the addition of an associate-level QA Engineer. We spend our days building a product we love that is enjoyed by a fast-growing community of millions. We are looking for someone who strives to be a QA advocate that can evangelize best practices, research solutions to existing problems, and make confident suggestions on how to constantly drive process improvement. Business Insider’s offering spans desktop and mobile web, iOS apps, Android apps, and beyond. Qualifications:
This position is based in our New York City office. Business Insider offers a great work environment, great benefits, a collaborative team that has a lot of fun, and the opportunity to make a contribution on day one. Please apply below and tell us why you're a good fit for the role! Click here to apply!Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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These Are The Hacker Groups That Should Be Keeping You Up At Night | ||
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In light of recent hacks, you might be interested in the groups that pose the greatest threats to our cybersecurity. Ironically, the hacker groups that you should be afraid of also have the least intimidating names. Deep Panda, Putter Panda, and Flying Kitten have been listed by security technology firm CrowdStrike as the groups to watch out for. While they may seem cuddly, these hackers continue to be some of the most dangerous in the world. CrowdStrike is monitoring over 70 different hacker groups from around the world, most of which are based in China, Russia, and Iran. Many have ties to nationalist activist groups that are specifically seeking data on corporate America. Here's are a few of the most prominent hacker groups you should know about: Deep PandaCrowdStrike has deemed Deep Panda one of the most advanced Chinese cyber intrusion groups active today. This group has been known to target national security think tanks, infiltrating the defense and telecommunications industries of foreign countries. CrowdStrike believes the group operates on behalf of the Chinese government. In early July, CrowdStike reported the group had shifted its sights to individuals with a tie to Iraq and the Middle East. That makes sense since China is Iraq's largest foreign oil investor. Putter PandaActive since 2007, Putter Panda primarily targets the American and European defense and aerospace industries. The group is based out of Shanghai and has been linked to the Chinese military, due to the fact that the hackers reportedly work from buildings belonging to the People's Liberation Army (PLA) — the military of the People's Republic of China. In May, the US government filed a criminal indictment against members of Putter Panda (also known as PLA Unit 61398). China continued to deny its military had ever engaged in cyber theft. However, CrowdStrike subsequently released documents that purported to show evidence of Putter Panda's illegal hacking, IT News reported. Flying KittenThis Iran-based hacker group has been on CrowdStrike's radar since mid-January, and is best known for targeting multiple US-based defense contractors and Iranian political dissidents. Formerly known as the Ajax Security Team, this group has shifted its sights from hacktivism to cyber espionage and targeted attacks, InformationWeek has reported. According to CrowdStrike, the group began targeting the defense industry earlier this year, using spearphishing emails and spoofed Microsoft Outlook Web Access pages to infiltrate the accounts of defense contractors. InformationWeek reports that the group also lured in Iranian dissidents using anti-censorship tools that had been infected with malware. This targeting may imply that Flying Kitten is either an Iranian government entity or some private actor hired by Iran's government to take down agitators. What's In StoreIn its 2013 Global Threat Report, released in January, Crowdstrike predicted this kind of third-party targeting will continue, especially with events like the G20 Summit and midterm elections both coming up this November. CrowdStrike CTO and co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch confirmed by phone that these groups, as well as others identified in the Global Threat Report — including Magic Kitten, Emissary Panda, and Deadeye Jackal —continue to pose an active cybersecurity threat. These groups are also highly skilled and very sophisticated. "These are organized criminal groups that by some accounts have the same abilities that nation-states have," Marcus Christian, a criminal defense attorney whose practice focuses on intersection of cybersecurity and white collar crime, told Business Insider. "They are very streamlined in terms of their responsibilities, and often take old exploits and use them in new ways." Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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This Scientist Is Building A Robot Version Of Himself, And It's The Most Uncanny Thing Ever | ||
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Ishiguro is the director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory in Osaka, Japan and one of the world’s leading roboticists. For nearly a decade, Ishiguro has dedicated his life to creating the most lifelike android possible. Once at the lab, Whitton was struck by the casualness of Ishiguro’s mission: create a robot that could replace himself. While working tirelessly to create robotic copies of himself, Ishiguro has been faced with the philosophical question of what it means to be human. He was characteristically blunt with Whitton. “It’s a question of where the soul is. Japanese people have always been told that a soul can exist in anything and everything. We don’t make much distinction between humans and robots,” Ishiguro told Whitton. Whitton shared some photos with us here, but you can check out the rest at her website. Whitton is currently raising money on Kickstarter to continue the project. At the Intelligent Robotics lab, Ishiguro researches the potential for robots to have sonzaikan, which roughly translates to "human presence." Ishiguro has made numerous android replicas of himself. His goal is to eventually make one that could completely replace him. This is one of his replicas. The latest version (shown here) is the Geminoid HI-4. It can mimic Ishiguro’s expressions through motion sensors and is capable of displaying a wide range of emotions. In theory, he could send the robot in place of himself to give speeches at conferences or conduct meetings. See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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While studying at the London College of Communications, photographer Luisa Whitton was commissioned to shoot her dream project: visiting the robotics lab of Japanese scientist Hiroshi Ishiguro. We Can See Why People Are Crazy About A California Grilled Cheese Chain That Raised $10 Million In Venture Capital | ||
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Aged cheddar oozes out of the artisan white bread sandwich at a molten-lava pace. I bite into crisp strips of smoked bacon and macaroni noodles, and I kind of forget where I am in time and space. This is not your mom's grilled cheese. Fast-casual eatery The Melt, which is headquartered in the Bay Area, dedicates itself to savory and tech-savvy grilled cheese sandwiches starting at $5 a pop. And cheese aficionados across California are lining up at lunchtime for toasted creations as tame as The Classic (cheddar on artisan white) or as decadent as The Shroom (Swiss, portabello mushrooms, and grilled onions on sourdough).
The Melt opened with not-so-humble beginnings. The brainchild of Flip Video founder Jonathan Kaplan, Sequoia Capital — the firm that backed Apple, Google, Instagram, and Oracle — put up $10 million to get the chain off the ground in 2011. Today, a management team led by Kaplan and a board of directors including three prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalists, a former head of retail operations at Apple, and a James Beard award-winning chef, oversee 15 locations throughout California, including several in Silicon Valley. We stopped by The Melt's New Montgomery location in San Francisco to find out if it's worth dining out on grilled cheese that costs more than a loaf of white bread and packet of Velveeta combined.
When we arrived at 12:30 p.m. on a work day, young professionals packed the place, although the line moved quickly. The menu board contained eight grilled cheeses to choose from: four basics ($4.95) and four specialty sandwiches ($6.95). Diners could customize their sandwich with fresh tomato, jalapeno, or grilled onion at no cost; meat and other veggies run $1 – $2 per add-on.
I ordered the Mac Daddy, a bacon-macaroni-gluttony combo. It cost $6.95 and came with a pickle (or chips). It's evident that Kaplan's tech background influenced much of the ordering process. My initials popped up on an electronic order status board by the pick-up area, and when my sandwich was ready my initials jumped to the top with the words "Order up!'
While waiting for my coworker's sandwich to hit the counter, we noticed some patrons skip the line entirely. Part of The Melt's tech-shtick is its expedited online ordering process. When you place your order on the website or mobile app, you receive an email with a QR code that is unique to your purchase. You can go to any Melt location, walk straight to the pick-up area, and tap the QR code to a scanner to send your order to the kitchen. The Melt app also gives you the option to send your order to the kitchen without being inside the store, so it's ready for pick-up whenever you are.
Vice President of Operations Greg Hernandez told Gizmodo in an interview that the perfect grilled cheese combines a few criteria. The cheese needs to be ooey-gooey, the bread has to be crispy "but not hard like a crouton," and the sandwich as a whole should be moist without turning soggy. The contraption pictured below is the secret ingredient to cultivating this grilled cheese of technology lore. The sandwich cooks in the glorified toaster for approximately 50 seconds. While The Melt declined to take us behind the counter and teach us its ways, I have faith in a company that recruited NASA consultants to design its delivery transport boxes.
I soon discovered my trust was well placed. The Mac Daddy's bread tasted buttered and heavily herb-spiced, but the sandwich was not so greasy that it leaked all over my hand. The saltiness of the bacon complemented the rich mac and cheese, of which there was just enough.
The indulgent lunch filled me for most of the afternoon. I regret nothing. SEE ALSO: San Franciscans Are Lining Up To Eat This Sushi-Burrito Hybrid Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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CHART OF THE DAY: Twitter Is Having A Hard Time Attracting New Users (TWTR) | ||
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Twitter reported earnings for its fiscal third quarter of 2014 on Monday. Revenue, earnings per share, and even monthly active users (MAUs) fell right in line with Wall Street expectations. There was no grand surprise, and the company’s stock tanked roughly 9% after the announcement. Twitter’s monthly active users are arguably the company’s most scrutinized metric, since everyone cares about how Twitter plans to regularly attract new users. But while membership rises each quarter, the growth of MAUs on the network continues to slow down. According to Twitter’s data charted for us by BI Intelligence, Twitter reported 284 million MAUs in Q3 — up from 271 million in Q2 — but year-over-year growth is down to around 21% this quarter, whereas growth in the year-ago quarter was just shy of 38%. Twitter has been trying new things like “buy” buttons to increase user engagement, but this slowdown in MAU growth was somewhat expected. Business Insider’s Jim Edwards predicted earlier this year that the “temporary uptick” in MAUs was likely due to the World Cup, and that Twitter would likely have trouble figuring out how to keep that growth going through Q3 and Q4. Twitter needs another World Cup-size event, or some kind of new incentive, to drive more users to the real-time sharing network.
SEE ALSO: CHART OF THE DAY: Amazon's Growth Is Waning Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Customers Fire Back Against CVS And Rite Aid Over Apple Pay (AAPL) | ||
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Apple unveiled its new payment platform last week, but not everyone is thrilled with Apple Pay so far. When Tim Cook announced Apple Pay in September, he pointed out the large number of retailers prepared to support it. Absent from that list were two major pharmacies: CVS and Rite Aid. Both retailers have blocked Apple Pay at their stores, ostensibly because they're partnering with a different platform. That may pan out down the road, but consumers have taken to Twitter to protest CVS and Rite Aid. Here's what we're hearing:
SEE ALSO: Here's Apple's Reaction To CVS And Rite Aid Blocking Apple Pay Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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These Are The Best Headphones You Can Get For Under $300 | ||
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It's getting close to the holiday shopping season, which means it's time to start eyeballing gift ideas for the audio buffs in your life. Thanks to comparison shopping platform FindTheBest and other gadget blogs known for their reviews like The Wirecutter, we can provide you with a definitive compilation of the best headphones you can buy. FindTheBest rates products by aggregating reviews from CNET, PC Mag, TechCrunch, Wired, and Laptop Mag. FindTheBest also looks at technical aspects like sensitivity, frequency, and impedance (signal obstruction). Whether you're looking for a pair of super cheap headphones for your morning commute or headsets that offer a more premium sound at a not-so-premium price, you're sure to find something you like on this list. Noontec Zoro HD Name: Noontec Zoro HD Price: $150 Sensitivity: 108 dB Impedance: 32 ohm What people are saying about them: Its CNET review said, "While their build quality is nothing special, the Noontec Zoro HD headphones improve on the original Zoros, offering audiophile-grade sound in a $100 pair of headphones." Average sensitivity for headphones is 104 dB. Low-sensitivity headphones require more power to produce the same quality of sound as its high-sensitivity counterparts. Sennheiser HD 558 Name: Sennheiser HD 558 Price: $180 Sensitivity: 112 dB Impedance: 50 ohm What people are saying about them: Its PC Mag review said, "The no-frills Sennheiser HD 558 is easily one of the best-sounding headphone pairs available in its under-$200 price range, but it isn't designed for easy use with mobile devices or computers." Average sensitivity for headphones is 104 dB. Low-sensitivity headphones require more power to produce the same quality of sound as its high-sensitivity counterparts. Harman Kardon HARKAR-BT Name: Harman Kardon HARKAR-BT Price: $200 Sensitivity: N/A Impedance: N/A What people are saying about them: Its CNET review said, "While its design may not be for everyone, the Harman Kardon BT is one of the best-sounding Bluetooth headphones available." Average sensitivity for headphones is 104 dB. Low-sensitivity headphones require more power to produce the same quality of sound as its high-sensitivity counterparts. See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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Consumer Reports Says Infotainment Systems Are Ruining Car Reliability | ||
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Consumer Reports released its annual Auto Reliability Survey on Monday and cited a growing problem that should be of significant concern to carmakers, regardless of where their brands finished in the ranking. "Multi-function, cross-linked infotainment systems and the associated in-car electronics are a growing reliability plague for many brands," the publication said in a statement. "Of the 17 problem areas CR asks about in its survey, the category including in-car electronics generated more complaints from owners of 2014 models than for any other category." Automakers have invested heavily in infotainment systems since consumers began demanding them in a wide variety of vehicles. Furthermore, the entire auto industry is looking forward to a future in which in-car electronics, displays, related infotainment systems, and advanced self-driving features will be increasingly prevalent, if not dominant. It can be difficult enough to engineer a highly reliable car from a strictly mechanical standpoint. There are quite literally a lot of moving parts. Bringing a whole new cluster of technologies into the picture has created additional pressures — and to a certain extent given Consumer Reports' testers more to find wrong. Obviously, with any new technology, it can take time to work out all the kinks. Longtime carbuyers can probably remember days when the old-school nuts-and-bolts of their vehicles were harder to count on. Over the past few decades, the overall quality of cars has improved greatly. A similar trajectory should emerge for infotainment systems. Consumer report noted that some automakers have improved their technology, alleviating problems from previous years. The publication also indicated that automakers finishing near the top of the reliability ratings typically fared better on the infotainment front. “Infotainment system problems generally don’t exist in a vacuum,” said Jake Fisher, director of automotive testing at Consumer Reports, in a statement. “A close look at the results suggests that cars with a lot of in-car electronic issues usually have plenty of other troubles, too.” SEE ALSO: Edmunds Tested The Tesla Model S For Over A Year And Found A Lot Of Problems Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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The 10 Most Expensive Halloween Costumes Ever Sold On eBay | ||
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When it comes to Halloween costumes, some fans are willing to drop some serious cash to dress like their favorite characters. Some people turn to online marketplaces like eBay to find the perfect getup. Market research company Terapeak has compiled a list of the most expensive Halloween costumes ever bought on eBay. You'll be surprised to see just how much people are willing to spend. Someone dropped $2,300 on this recreation of Star Wars' 4-LOM droid costume. The winning bid on this Spider-Man costume was a cool $2,500. This Batman costume also went for $2,500. See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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Salesforce.com Will Soon Reveal Its Next $1 Billion Initiative: Healthcare (CRM) | ||
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In fewer than 100 days, the Benioff Children's hospital will open in San Francisco, mostly thanks to a huge $200 million donation from Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne. The Benioffs have been working with the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) on building this hospital since 2010. It turns out that all that exposure to the way hospitals do business has given Benioff ideas. His company is set to announce in November a new initiative to sell cloud services software to the healthcare industry, according to Christina Farr and Bill Rigby at Reuters who broke this story. Salesforce.com thinks this could be its next $1 billion idea, sources told Reuters. And it's currently hiring like mad to go after it. Healthcare software is an interesting, and lucrative, nut to crack. Hospitals, doctors offices and related industries will spend $31.3 billion on tech by 2017, some market researchers predict. But because of privacy laws like HIPAA, they can't buy any old cloud service to store documents, chat, or send data to their phones or tablets. These services have to get certified with special security controls and get certain government stamps of approval. Remember Benioff started life as a teen coding genius and is still a bona-fide gadget geek known to wear two fitband wrist computers at once. And doctors love iPads. It makes sense that the hospital that bears his name would be the first to use a new app called CareWeb Messenger, built on Salesforce.com's cloud, Reuters reports. It will let doctors, nurses and patients chat on mobile devices while complying with HIPAA. Salesforce.com could try to sell it to other hospitals, although there's already a ton of competition in that market (HipaaChat, Doximity, for instance). It could also get into the electronic health care records business, following competitors like Microsoft and Oracle. And it will almost certainly try to get into the brand new field of consumer health care apps tied to the "Internet of Things," or devices outfitted with sensors. This take advantage of new sensors added to all sorts of healthcare monitoring devices, everything from pill bottles to contact lenses, will share data, and get their own apps. Salesforce.com wants to host those apps and help make them all work together. Work on that at Salesforce.com has already begun. In April, the company announced a partnership with Philips that will let care givers monitor patients with chronic conditions in their homes. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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6 Reasons Why Apple Pay Will Catch On And Walmart Will Have To Accept It | ||
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Over the weekend, Rite Aid and CVS quietly shut down Apple Pay in their stores. They're cutting off Apple Pay because they're part of a consortium of US retailers — called MCX — that is launching its own mobile wallet, which will compete with Apple Pay. At BI Intelligence, we think this is a very minor setback for Apple. We believe MCX merchants will ultimately accept Apple Pay in their stores. Here's why: 1. Consumers want security more than ever. As a result of the many data breaches at US retailers over the past couple of years, consumers are looking for a more secure option to protect their payment card data. Transactions made with Apple Pay do not transmit sensitive data, so even if transaction data is stolen it is useless for making fraudulent transactions. In addition, Apple's fingerprint reader Touch ID makes authenticating a payment faster and more secure than entering a password.  2. Apple Pay has the merchant infrastructure. Apple says Apple Pay can already be used at around 200,000 merchant locations, many of which are large retailers. But that number will grow quickly because a security update set by the major credit card companies will require retailers to update their credit card readers by late 2015 if they haven't already. When the merchants make the upgrade, they'll buy terminals that can accept Apple Pay to cover their bases. 3. Apple Pay has the consumer infrastructure. Forty-two percent of American smartphone users have an iPhone and over half of them are due for an upgrade. Once they upgrade, they'll have Apple Pay-compatible iPhones. All of the top banks in the US support Apple Pay and 500 additional banks will support Apple Pay in the near-term as well.  4. Passbook users will adopt Apple Pay. A quarter of American smartphone users already use Apple's coupon and loyalty wallet Passbook and usage is much higher among people with iPhones. Apple Pay is integrated into Passbook: People who use Passbook will use Apple Pay because it is easier to use your phone to redeem offers and then purchase goods, rather than redeeming offers with your phone and then paying by some other method.
6. Apple Pay is going to be global whereas MCX is national. Tim Cook has already emphasized the importance of Apple Pay in China. If MCX merchants continue to block Apple Pay they will likely be alienating foreigners on vacation who want to spend in their stores. The Bottom Line: Rite Aid, CVS, Walmart, and the other MCX merchants are going to have to eventually accept Apple Pay in their stores. Consumer behavior determines what payment methods merchants accept. Consumers will want to use Apple Pay and that will force MCX merchants to accept it. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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5. Apple is the only company that can change consumer behavior en masse. Apple has proven time and again that it can create the consumer fanaticism necessary to change consumer behavior quickly and on a massive scale, i.e music, telephony, and personal computing. We expect this will also be the case with paying in-store using a phone.
Here's What The First Hires At Apple, Google, And Other Top Tech Companies Are Doing Now | ||
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Who were the first non-founders at today's top tech companies, like Apple, Google and Facebook? Business Insider tracked them down and learned what they're doing. Some made millions, others saw fortunes slip through their fingers, and some have joined or founded other startups. Taner Halicioglu was Facebook's first "real" employee outside of the founders. He juggled a bunch of operations roles. Halicioglu worked for Facebook from October 2004 through November 2009. He had many roles to juggle but was a senior software and operations engineer when he left. After Facebook, Halicioglu joined Blizzard Entertainment as a lead reliability engineer. Halicioglu is now a computer science and engineering lecturer at UC San Diego. He is also an angel investor and startup advisor. See what other early Facebook employees are doing now >> Shel Kaphan was Amazon's first employee after Bezos and his wife. Kaphan joined Amazon in the fall of 1994 and worked there until 1999. He was initially Amazon's VP of Research and Development. By the time he left, he was Amazon's CTO. Now, Kaphan is doing what you'd expect most early employees to do: philanthropy and pursuing personal interests. He never retained co-founder status at Amazon, although he brainstormed the startup idea with Bezos before Amazon was incorporated. He and Bezos had a falling out, but Bezos once called him "the most important person ever in the history of Amazon.com." See what Amazon's other early employees are doing now >> Craig Silverstein was Larry and Sergey's first hire at Google. He left in 2012 to join education startup Khan Academy. Silverstein was employed by Google from 1998 until 2012. He worked on various projects there, and he mentored engineers. Silverstein also helped build Google's search engine. He is now Dean of Infrastructure at education startup Khan Academy. See what Google's other first 20 employees are doing now >> See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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Concert Cellist Hooks Her Brain Up To Speakers To Create Bizarre New Music | ||
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Concert cellist, Katinka Kleijn, can play a duet with her own brain. "It was really interesting when I heard the sound of my own brain — or a translation of my own brain waves into sound," she says in the audio file below, first seen on Buzzfeed. Kleijn achieves such a feat by wearing an electroencephalography (EEG) headset, her composer Daniel Dehaan tells Business Insider. Billions of small cells called neurons compose the human brain. They communicate with each other by emitting electrochemical impulses, which the headset can measure. "It reads the electromagnetic impulses between neurons and the brain ... which aren't actually sound themselves but just signals," he says. Dehaan then uses a program called MAX to translate those signals into audio. Initially, they appear as data, which he must scale as directly as possible into values appropriate for sound. He doesn't assign brain waves instrumental sounds, like a clarinet or a drum. Instead, they create an entirely unique sound. "We receive 32 or 33 separate streams of numbers [from the headset] ranging from very small increments to to very large," Dehaan explains. Initially, the company who made the headsets wouldn't provide a key, a huge challenge the team. Another problem arises when translating the data too — most of the brain's electrical impulses occur at frequencies below what the human ear can hear. The brain exchanges electrical impulses at about 0 to 30 hertz, while human hearing ranges from 20 to 20,000 hertz. For some perspective, the cello has a frequency range of about 65 to 880 hertz. That means the human ear simply can't hear certain sounds. "You might feel a vibration in your heart or your chest though," Dehaan says. The frequency of brain waves also reveals information about the person's psychical and emotional state. For example, 8 to 13 hertz implies someone feels relaxed but aware, while anywhere above that implies alertness, agitation, tenseness, or fear. Colored spotlights during Kleijn's performances also indicate the strengths of her four affective states: meditation (blue), engagement (green), excitement (yellow), and frustration (red).
"I can't do what she does," Dehaan says. To start the rehearsal process, Kleijn needed to become accustomed to the sound of her own brain and learn to control it. Easier said than done. If the word "calm" flashed across the screen, the second Katinka would feel calm, she'd become excited about feeling calm, which would change the sound, Dehaan tells Business Insider. Then, she'd immediately become frustrated she lost the feeling of calmness, changing the sound once again. "You're constantly aware of your own emotions," he says. "And it's amplified because everyone else in the room also is." Watch the full video of her performance at the Chicago Cultural Center in 2013. Although Dehaan and his team aren't the first to use EEG technology for music, he considers their focus on the performer's experience rather revolutionary. "Did she [Kleijn] have a lot of coffee this morning? Did she have a good conversation with the last person she spoke with?" Dehaan inquires. "It open up this inner world of the performer while she performs." The audience hears the evolution of Kleijn's brain's response to stimuli. Exploring this technology and its relationship to the brain has potential far beyond music, as well. Dehaan remembers one concert in Washington, D.C. where a woman told him that she used a similar EEG headset of her mentally disabled son to help him better understand his brain. "The applications are endless," Dehaan says. SEE ALSO: 4 Weird Ways Music Affects The Brain SEE ALSO: What Our Brain Looks Like When It Hears Music Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Believe it or not, Kleijn has a much more difficult job than Dehaan. During a performance, she must play the cello and simultaneously react to words, like "grief" or "excitement" that flash across a screen in front of her along with small musical fragments. She controls when the words or fragments appear with two foot pedals while she plays. The World's 100 Most Desirable Employers | ||
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Everyone wants to work in tech these days — especially for big-name companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook. In fact, these tech giants topped LinkedIn's 2014 ranking of the 100 most in-demand employers, taking four of the top five spots. The professional networking site based its ranking on member awareness and engagement on LinkedIn by looking at how many people viewed employees' profiles and how many users followed the company's Company or Career pages within the last year. Here's the full list of this year's top employers, according to LinkedIn:
SEE ALSO: Google Tops List Of The World's 100 Most In-Demand Employers Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Tour The Creepy Factory Full Of Hands Where Rubber Gloves Are Made | ||
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Rubber gloves have a history in the medical field, the food industry, and even in the criminal business. They protect us from diseases and contamination and keep us from leaving finger prints at the scene of a crime. The world uses an estimated 100 billion rubber gloves each year in the medical business alone. To produce this kind of quantity, large factories will produce up to 45,000 rubber gloves per hour! Rubber gloves are manufactured in surprisingly creepy hand factories. Here's an inside peek into these hand-filled factories and how rubber gloves are made. Science Channel's great series "How It's Made," shows the process by which many products we use today are mass produced and is the source for most of the information in this post. They also have videos on how chocolate chip cookie dough, lace, and soap sculptures are made, among many others. The factories use dozens of ceramic or aluminum hand-shaped molds attached to conveyor belts. The conveyor belts move the reusable hands to various dipping stations. The first two stations, shown below, are solutions first of water and soap and then bleach that remove any residual material from the former run.
See the entire clip from the Science Channel's "How It's Made." SEE ALSO: Sanjay Gupta Uses Chocolate Sauce To Show Us How Easy It Is To Get Ebola SEE ALSO: Crazy Images Of Farmers Making Natural Red Dye From Bugs That's In Your Candy And Lipstick Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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After the hands are scrubbed clean and dipped into a vat of hot water, they enter a chemical bath. The chemicals coat the hand molds that then enables the liquid rubber to stick to the hands. The rubber substance won't adhere to ceramic directly. Watch the chemical coating process below.
After that, it's time for the rubber, which manufacturers fortify with stability-enhancing chemicals. As seen below, the hands spin after the rubber coating to remove any drops.
If allowed to dry at room temperatures, the liquid rubber will be weak and easily break. To strengthen the rubber, the factories bake it in an oven, shown below. This process, called vulcanization, provides the incredibly stretchy, durable, and flexible rubber gloves we know so well.
Following baking, the hands are washed, dried, and then spin through brushes that roll up the cuffs of the gloves that have now formed on the hand molds. This is an important step, because it makes the gloves easy to remove from the hands.
After the rubber is dry and the cuffs are rolled up, it's time to remove the gloves. This is either done manually, as shown below, or by machine. Workers will remove gloves made of synthetic rubber by hand because those gloves are stickier than traditional latex. Gloves made of latex can easily be sucked off of the hands with some pressure and air.
The final steps before packaging involve checking the gloves for any weak spots, holes, or other deformities. These tests include inflating the gloves with air, as seen below, and also filling some with water.
Finally, after surviving the creepy hand factory and passing thorough testing, the gloves are ready for packaging, shipment, and use. Whether you're performing surgery, prepping burritos, or making ridiculous-looking water balloons, you now know how these handy gloves are produced. A Comment About Artificial Intelligence Left Elon Musk Frozen On Stage | ||
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Artificial intelligence really spooks out Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. He's afraid, without proper regulation in place, it could be the "biggest existential threat" to humans. Musk was asked about AI at MIT's annual AeroAstra Centennial Symposium last week. He spooked himself out so badly answering the question, he was unable to concentrate for a few minutes after. "Do you have any plans to enter the field of artificial intelligence?" an audience member asked. "I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence," Musk replied. "If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with artificial intelligence. I’m increasingly inclined to think that there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish. With artificial intelligence we’re summoning the demon. You know those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram, and the holy water, and he’s like — Yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon? Doesn’t work out." According to Musk, AI humans are capable of building would make Space Odyssey's HAL 9000 look like "a puppy dog." The next question came from another audience member who asked how SpaceX plans to utilize telecommunications — something totally unrelated to AI. But Musk was too distracted to listen. "I'm sorry could you repeat the question?" he said. "I was just sort of thinking about the AI thing for a second." Here's the clip (start watching at the 1 hour 7 minute mark):
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Twitter Disappoints By Hitting Expectations, Stock Tanks (TWTR) | ||
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Twitter delivered a good earnings report, but it wasn't good enough. Twitter's stock dropped 10% after the report hit despite delivering results that were in line with expectations. Basically, investors don't want Twitter to meet their lowered expectations, they want Twitter to blow them away. That didn't happen. Here are the numbers:
For Twitter, the only thing that really matters is user growth. On the earnings call, CEO Dick Costolo explained his view of Twitter users. He sees users as a concentric circle with core users at the center of the circle. Outside of that is logged out users, who are 1-2X the size of the core logged in users. Outside of that are people that just see tweets syndicated across other media. Costolo believes Twitter has an opportunity to convert those logged out users into logged in users. Short of that, he also thinks Twitter has an opportunity to generate revenue from them. Twitter CFO Anthony Noto talked about logged out users in depth during the call. He said there are four ways logged out users end up at Twitter: 1. They do a specific search for something related to Twitter, and they land at Twitter. 2. They do a general search for a topic and end up at Twitter. 3. They come to Twitter.com, but get no content and just bounce off the page. 4. They see tweets on ESPN/CNN/etc. and come to Twitter. In each of these cases, Noto said there are things that Twitter can do to convert logged out users to logged in users. CHARTS VIA BI INTELLIGENCE: | ||
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Here's Apple's Reaction To CVS And Rite Aid Blocking Apple Pay (AAPL) | ||
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After accepting Apple Pay for the first few days, two major retailers, CVS and Rite Aid, have blocked the mobile payments system. The theory is that they're working on their own mobile payments system called CurrentC along with the rest of the Merchant Consumer Exchange (MCX), a consortium of major retailers. CurrentC likely won't launch until next year. Even though CVS and Rite Aid both have the special payment pads required to accept Apple Pay, they disabled the functionality over the weekend. In a statement Monday, CVS confirmed it is no longer accepting Apple Pay and similar mobile payment systems, but only said it was working on an alternative payment system. In a statement to Business Insider, an Apple spokesperson responded to the brewing battle: The feedback we are getting from customers and retailers about Apple Pay is overwhelmingly positive and enthusiastic. We are working to get as many merchants as possible to support this convenient, secure and private payment option for consumers. Many retailers have already seen the benefits and are delighting their customers at over 220,000 locations. That's a nice way to say that Apple Pay is a hit, and retailers blocking Apple Pay are putting a bigger burden on their customers by removing a handy payment system without providing a good alternative. According to early reports, MCX's CurrentC app doesn't sound as private nor as convenient as Apple Pay. First, CurrentC uses QR codes that are scanned at registers to make payments. QR codes aren't very secure because they can easily be captured and put on another device. CurrentC may be able to get around that by requiring you to type in a PIN too. But that's still not as easy as Apple Pay Apple Pay, which only works in conjunction with the user's fingerprint. You just tap the phone on a pad and you're finished. CurrentC will also likely be used to track purchase history and spending habits, something Apple Pay can't do. Apple Pay is just as private as using a regular credit card. The only people who know about the purchase are you and your bank. It sounds like CurrentC will only work with checking accounts after you enter your bank account and routing numbers. It probably won't work with many major credit cards like Apple Pay can. Finally, CurrentC probably won't be available in as many locations as Apple Pay. While Apple Pay isn't ubiquitous enough to replace your wallet, it will be accepted more places than CurrentC likely will, according to analysis from Business Insider Intelligence.
Do you know anything else about the Apple Pay/MCX war? Want to talk? Email skovach@businessinsider.com. We're discreet! SEE ALSO: Apple Pay works well, but it won't replace your wallet yet Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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The State Of Android: How Developers, Retailers, And Publishers Are Driving Revenue On Google's Massive Platform | ||
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Android is underappreciated as a commercial platform — as a revenue driver for the e-commerce, advertising, and software industries. Too many analysts remain attached to an outdated idea of Google's mobile operating system as fragmented, malware-ridden, and low-end. They believe Android users don’t spend money on mobile and lack lifetime value. This is no longer true. In a new BI Intelligence report, we show how Android has translated its massive audience — an estimated 1.2 billion active users globally by the end of this year — into a solid platform for mobile-based businesses. Access The Full Report And Data By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today >> Here are the report's main takeaways:
The report is full of charts and data that can be easily downloaded and put to use. In full, the report:
For full access to the report on Android As A Mobile Business Platform and all our downloadable charts and data on mobile computing strategy and trends sign up for a free trial subscription today.
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The 21 Coolest New Businesses In San Francisco | ||
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Due to its progressive attitude and proximity to Silicon Valley, the Bay Area is ripe for hosting cool, new businesses. From a pirate supply store to bacon-centric eats we found the 21 most intriguing and innovative new businesses in San Francisco. We looked for businesses that opened in the last five years that bring something new to the San Francisco scene. Know a cool business we missed? Let us know in the comments. 826 Valencia Pirate Supply Store What it is: A general store for pirates and pirate enthusiasts. Why it's cool: A whimsical storefront for non-profit writing-tutoring center 826 Valencia, the 826 Valencia Pirate Supply Store sells everything you need to pillage and plunder. Here you'll find glass eyes, hooks, beard extensions, treasure chests, mermaid bait, and more dastardly products. Sales benefit 826 Valencia. Bacon Bacon 205A Frederick St. What it is: A bacon-centric food truck and cafe. Why it's cool: Bacon Bacon comes in the form of a food truck and a brick-and-mortar restaurant. And both serve, yep — you guessed it — all things bacon. The Bacon Bacon Truck rolls around San Francisco distributing six bacon-friendly sandwiches, including a pork meatball banh mi and grilled cheese, as well as french fries and root beer. Bacon Bacon also sells a bacon bouquet and chocolate-covered bacon. Canyon Market What it is: An urban "hybrid" grocery store. Why it's cool: Canyon Market leads the growing trend of hybrid grocery stores. This means that the market offers natural and regular groceries, as well as specialty lines that are tailored for the store's Glen Park neighborhood. The market has everything you could want in a grocery store: It host events, has in-store tastings, seasonal offerings, prepared foods — a very wide selection to meet your shopping needs. See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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Spurs seek NBA title repeat while LeBron revives Cavaliers | ||
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Washington (AFP) - As the San Antonio Spurs face the possible end of an era, they attempt to repeat as NBA champions after a turbulent off-season topped by LeBron James returning to Cleveland. Racism issues forced two team ownership changes, injuries hit stars Kevin Durant and Paul George and the league signed a nine-year television deal worth $24 billion that begins in 2016 in the four months since the Spurs won their fifth crown by beating Miami in the NBA Finals. For all the Spurs have done over the past 16 seasons under coach Gregg Popovich, defending a crown has not been achieved, San Antonio's championships coming in 1999, 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2014. Spurs star big man Tim Duncan, who played on all five title teams, is in the final year of his contract and will turn 39 during the next NBA playoffs. The three-time NBA Finals Most Valuable Player (MVP) and two-time NBA MVP could be in his final season, as might Argentine star guard Manu Ginobili, who missed this year's World Cup with a leg stress fracture. But the Spurs are largely unchanged from last year, with French star guard and scoring leader Tony Parker signing a contract extension in the off-season, countryman Boris Diaw back in a set-up role and 2014 NBA Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard returning with higher expectations. Australian reserve playmaker Patty Mills has a shoulder injury but also will return this season. The Spurs dethroned "King" James and the two-time reigning champion Miami Heat last June, only weeks before the four-time NBA MVP left Miami for the Cavaliers, the home-region team he had spurned in 2010 to join the Heat. James signed a two-year deal with the team where he began his NBA career -- setting up greater riches when new television money kicks in -- and vowed to bring Cleveland a championship team, something it has not had in any major sport in half a century. "I understand what it takes to win a championship. I understand winning a championship is the hardest thing you could ever do," James said. "My expectations are still high, but I'm more patient now than I was four years ago." - Cavs also land Love - The Cavaliers inked a long-term deal with young star guard Kyrie Irving to show James they were serious about surrounding him with top talent for a title run, then made a trade deal to bring star big man Kevin Love from Minnesota. "We're still putting things together on the court. It's still a process," Love said. "We'll get better. We just have to have some continuity out there. It will take us a while to get on the same page." The Cavaliers also have a new coach in David Blatt who has never guided an NBA club, although he coached Tel Aviv to a 2014 Euroleague title and Russia to 2012 Olympic bronze. The NBA faced adversity as racist remarks forced ownership changes for the Los Angeles Clippers and Atlanta Hawks. The Clippers' sordid saga surrounding Donald Sterling's taped remarks about not wanting his would-be girlfriend to bring black people to Clippers games ended with him banned from the NBA for life and selling the club for a record $2 billion to former Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer. The Clippers boast star point guard Chris Paul and playmaker Blake Griffin and a top coach in Doc Rivers. Not having the nightly soap opera of scandal surrounding a playoff run could make the team a contender. Hawks co-owner Bruce Levenson said last month he would sell his controlling interest in the Hawks in the wake of a 2012 e-mail becoming public in which he said, among other things, that "the black crowd scared away the whites." Hawks general manager Danny Ferry is also on an indefinite leave of absence after making racist remarks about African-born British NBA star Luol Deng. - Gasol joins Bulls - Kobe Bryant will return to the Los Angeles Lakers but with star big man Pau Gasol now with the Chicago Bulls, little is expected from the once-mighty Lakers. The Bulls figure to be a contender with Gasol joining Joakim Noah and the much-awaited return of Derrick Rose, trying to overcome injuries that have sidelined him for most of the past two seasons. Also with diminished expectations are the Indiana Pacers, who lost Lance Stephenson to free agency and George for the season to a broken leg in an inter-squad scrimmage for the US team that went on to win the World Cup. Oklahoma City has lost four-time NBA scoring champion and reigning MVP Durant to a broken foot that could sideline him for up to two months, but with Russell Westbrook sparking the Thunder they should be able to hold firm until the forward's return. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Boat migrants in EU's hands as Italy weighs future of rescues | ||
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Rome (AFP) - The EU will launch a patrol mission in the Mediterranean on Saturday amid warnings the number of boat migrant deaths could rise with Italy mulling pulling the plug on its own rescue mission. To complicate matters further, Britain said Tuesday it won't support the planned EU search and rescue operation, arguing it will create an unintended "pull factor" for more migrants to attempt the dangerous sea crossings, The combined efforts of the Italian navy and coast guard have saved over 150,000 men, women and children attempting the perilous crossing from the coasts of North Africa this year so far. But with the introduction of EU border agency Frontex's "Triton" mission, it is not clear whether Italy's "Mare Nostrum" rescue mission -- a large-scale deployment launched a year ago after two deadly shipwrecks -- will be scaled back or closed down entirely. "Mare Nostrum is being wound up. There will be a formal decision during one of the next cabinet meetings," Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said recently. But Alfano has also insisted the two operations are "totally distinct", as Triton will remain within European territorial waters, while Mare Nostrum rescues people in floundering boats and overcrowded dinghies from the Strait of Sicily to the coast of Libya. Interior Ministry Undersecretary Domenico Manzione this month said Mare Nostrum "will continue until further notice. For now, nothing changes." Aid agencies have warned the number of deaths in the Mediterranean -- which have topped 3,300 so far this year -- may rise if Italy cuts the chord. A total of 32 boats have taken part in the Mare Nostrum mission, supported by two submarines as well as planes and helicopters, according to navy figures. On average, a total of 900 men and women are manning the decks daily and pick up an average of 400 people every 24 hours -- tripling the number of arrivals in 2013. Their work has also led to the arrest of 351 human traffickers since the mission began. Half of those rescued are asylum seekers from Syria and Eritrea, the rest come from Gambia, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, the Palestinian territories or Somalia.
- Shifting the burden -
Despite winning high praise from the UN's refugee agency, Mare Nostrum has drawn criticism both at home and in Europe from those who say it is ferrying in immigrants rather than dissuading them from coming. The planned EU operation will do the same thing, creating "an unintended pull factor, encouraging more migrants to attempt the dangerous sea crossing and thereby leading to more tragic and unnecessary deaths," according to British foreign office minister Joyce Anelay. London's position is to focus on "countries of origin and transit" and tackle people smugglers instead, she added. Policing the coast also comes at a monetary cost and the Italian government, struggling to stave off a third recession in six years, is increasingly unwilling to shell out the 9.0 million euros ($11.4 million) a month needed. Triton's budget is more modest, coming in at 3.0 million euros a month, with eight European Union countries pledging planes and boats for the operation. Other countries will send teams to help Italy with the new arrivals -- in particular with registering fingerprints, amid concerns Italy is letting too many migrants slip through the net and make it to other countries, shifting the burden to other national asylum seeker systems. The majority of would-be refugees do not want to stay in Italy. The country registered 26,620 requests for asylum in 2013 -- just 6.0 percent of the number of requests made across the European Union. In the same period, 125,000 requests were made in Germany, 65,000 in France and 55,000 in Sweden. Catholic charity Caritas, Save the Children and the UNHCR have all insisted that, with a lack of commitment in Europe to finding legal ways for asylum seekers to escape their homelands, Italy cannot simply stop saving boat migrants. In a bid to reassure critics, on October 16 Alfano said that "even after Mare Nostrum winds up, Italy will continue search and rescue missions at sea."
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Struggle, sacrifice on front line of Italy's Mare Nostrum | ||
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Palermo (Italy) (AFP) - The memory of terrified parents and children being tossed out of their boat to drown in a nighttime storm haunts Captain Giuseppe Maggio, one of the men and women tasked with saving shipwrecked migrants in the Mediterranean. "We've seen things I cannot describe. The hardest moment was one shipwreck when we managed to rescue 250 people... but with rough seas, at night, we weren't able to save everyone," the coast guard captain told AFP in Palermo port after yet another exhausting operation at sea. His crew is one of dozens that have rescued thousands of asylum seekers attempting the perilous crossing from northern Africa as part of "Mare Nostrum", a large-scale deployment launched by Italy after two deadly shipwrecks last year. And with the number of deaths in the Med topping 3,300 so far this year they have no intention of stopping, despite Italy's threat to wind up its search and rescue mission. "It does take a toll. Many of us have families, I'm a father of two and it's sometimes hard to reconcile your home life with what you have to do," he said, describing nights spent recovering bodies or searching for shipwreck survivors. Despite the strain, Maggio says "the emotional reward is far greater than the effort and sacrifices made." The main challenge of his 32-man crew is keeping migrants calm while transferring them quickly from unseaworthy boats to the rescue vessels. "Timing is everything. You need to hold your nerve and make sure they know everything's going to be ok," Maggio said as 261 people from Syria, Mali and Ghana, rescued the day before, disembark from the "Fiorillo" coast guard boat. "We're dealing with people who often cannot swim, don't speak our language and are exhausted from days in the sun. The key is to prevent panic," he said. Social assistant Angela Puccio, who works for Palermo's city council, is on hand at the port to help with any unaccompanied minors brought in and often deals with teenagers "who have suffered physical and psychological violence." - 'Bewilderment and fear' - Rushing from one makeshift tent to another, as the Red Cross and Caritas Catholic charity give new shoes, water and food packages to families waiting to be identified by police, she said the youngsters are sometimes difficult to control. "We hear terrible stories of what they've been through, which we then carry home with us. But you can't get too wrapped up in them or you wouldn't be able to carry on," she said. Back out at sea, navy frigate Captain Francesco Laghezza and the crew of the "San Giorgio" are scouring the area for others who may be in trouble. The navy's long landing platform dock spends four months at a time on the front line of Mare Nostrum and has picked up over 18,000 people so far. "The first time we saved migrants was an incredible experience, and the feeling remains the same with each new mission," said Laghezza, 41, the ship's second in command, who regularly dons a white hazmat suit to pluck migrants from their battered boats. "The migrants have the same look in their eyes of bewilderment and fear, and I have the same sense of pride in helping rescue them," he said by satellite telephone from the ship. Ottavia Balbi, doctor on the "San Giorgio", said she not only treats the sick but also listens to horror tales of desert journeys and devastated homelands, noting psychological traumas to flag up to charity workers who take over care of the new arrivals on the portside. "The most difficult thing is keeping a clear head, especially while dealing with sick children. But when those we've bonded with wave goodbye to us as they disembark, it brings us huge satisfaction," the 27-year old sublieutenant said. Despite the possible end to Mare Nostrum, Laghezza said he and the rest of the crew would "continue to save lives, regardless of the name of the mission or the flag we fly under." "I am proud to do so. What could be nobler than rescuing men, women and children who are fleeing war and persecution?" he added. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Radio in tribal languages spreads Ebola message | ||
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Buchanan (Liberia) (AFP) - Straining to hear the radio held to his ear, Wesley Wudea gestures for his grandchildren to be silent as he picks up rare tips on Ebola prevention in his own language. In Liberia, at the centre of the west African outbreak, the airwaves are often the best way to disseminate information on the epidemic, yet swathes of the ethnically diverse country do not speak the lingua franca. "They don't mainly understand the words (radio stations) used in English. Some people don't even understand a single English word," says the 61-year-old, in his own stumbling attempt at his country's official language. Wudea is rare among his countrymen, for only an estimated 20 percent of the population of four million understand English, with everyone else communicating in one of around 30 minority languages. "Without the vernacular program, they would not have understood the preventive measures to be taken to avoid Ebola," says the retired teacher from Saint John, a village near the southern port of Buchanan. Wudea keeps a radio set nearby and never misses the news programmes in his native Bassa language, broadcast by the local station Radio Gbehzohn. He says it was Bassa programming that got him into the habit of asking his children and grandchildren to wash their hands frequently as a measure against Ebola infection. And his fellow villagers are all now aware of preventive measures against the disease and the need to avoid physical contact with the sick or the dead, he says. - Key weapon - The public health message has become so ingrained, he says, that social practices evolved over centuries, such as shaking hands or touching the dead at funerals, have been stopped. "To shake hands is part of our tradition. We cannot do it today because of Ebola. This is difficult to accept but we have to," Wudea tells AFP. Radio Gbehzohn has doubled its programming in Bassa, spoken by a few hundred thousand members of the Kru ethnic grouping, since the epidemic began, program director Isaac Siegal told AFP. Visitors to his office in Buchanan, which is dotted with posters warning of the dangers of Ebola, must wash their hands with chlorinated water under the watchful eye of a security guard before they are allowed in. "The local language plays a very important role in our programmes because the majority of the populations live in the rural areas," Siegal says. "Before, they had only 15 minutes three times a day. Today, they have 30 minutes three times a day. We receive messages from the people telling us thanks for informing them in the language they understand." Assistant Information Minister Patrick Worzie acknowledged the "cardinal" role played by local language broadcasting during a recent visit to distribute hygiene kits to community radio stations in neighbouring Margibi county. West Africa is made up of countries where the official language is either French, English or Portuguese. Yet in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea -- the countries hit hardest by an epidemic that has killed nearly 5,000 -- as in neighbouring countries, the focus on ethnic languages has become a key weapon in fighting the spread of Ebola. - Deadly task - Commercials, phone-in shows and news programmes are broadcast on radio and television in the local tongue, with the airwaves thrown open to religious leaders, tribal elders and trusted opinion formers. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has hailed the "key role" played in public health education by Liberian media groups, which have produced Ebola information programming in local languages broadcast on 44 community radio stations. HRW also highlighted the role played by Radio MOA in Kailahun, a town at the epicentre of the outbreak in eastern Sierra Leone. The station launched a campaign to quash rumours undermining the fight against the virus, reaching tens of thousands of listeners across the border area straddling Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. Yet the mission to raise awareness of Ebola in remote areas can be a thankless and even deadly task. In southern Guinea, eight members of an Ebola campaign team, including three local radio journalists, were killed by villagers who denied the epidemic was real and charged that it was a white conspiracy against black people. The battle of the airwaves is not limited to countries in the Ebola zone. Canal France International, a publicly-subsidised French agency that supports the development of broadcast media in Africa, launched a project last week to train people at 48 west African radio stations in Ebola prevention. The main goal is to improve acceptance of such information among people who often distrust what they are told about disease prevention, and to contribute to a change in their behaviour, it said. The "Radio Against Ebola" campaign is targeting Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Togo and Benin -- none of which have had any Ebola cases -- as well as Senegal, which has been declared rid of the virus, and Mali, the latest affected country. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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E-waste inferno burning brighter in China's recycling capital | ||
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Guiyu (China) (AFP) - Mountains of discarded remote controls litter the warehouse floor. In a dimly-lit room, women on plastic stools pry open the devices, as if shucking oysters, to retrieve the circuitry inside. In a narrow alley a few blocks over, a father and son from a distant province wash microchips in plastic buckets. Men haul old telephones and computer keyboards by the shovelful off a truck. Some items will be refurbished and resold, others will be stripped for components or materials such as copper or gold. Business is booming in the Chinese town of Guiyu, where the world's electronic waste ends up for recycling -- and is set to get even better. But the industry has a heavy environmental cost. Electronic remnants are strewn in a nearby stream, and the air is acrid from the burning of plastic, chemicals and circuitboards. Heavy metal contamination has turned the air and water toxic, and children have high lead levels in their blood, according to an August study by researchers at Shantou University Medical College. Much of the e-waste that passed through Guiyu over the past few decades came from outside China. Western countries are now making a greater effort to process their own e-waste, but Chinese domestic supply will soon be more than enough to step into any breach, campaigners say. China's surging economy has transformed the country into a consuming power in its own right -- it is now the world's largest smartphone market -- and use of electronic devices has soared. "Before, the waste was shipped from other parts of the world coming into China -- that used to be the biggest source and the biggest problem," said Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, one of China's foremost environmental NGOs. "But now, China has become a consuming power of its own," Ma said. "We have I think 1.1 billion cell phones used, and the life of our gadgets has become shorter and shorter." "I think the wave is coming," he added. "It's going to be a bigger problem."
- 'This cannot be allowed to go on' -
China currently generates 6.1 million metric tonnes of e-waste a year, compared with 7.2 million for the US and 48.8 million globally, according to the United Nations University's Solving the E-waste Problem (StEP) Initiative. But while US e-waste production has increased by 13 percent over the past five years, China's has nearly doubled, setting the Asian giant on track to overtake the US as the world's biggest source as early as 2017. Nowhere are the profit and environmental toll of e-waste recycling more on display than in Guiyu in the southern province of Guangdong, where some 80,000 of 130,000 residents work in the loosely-regulated industry, according to a 2012 local government estimate. More than 1.6 million tonnes of e-waste pass through Guiyu each year, with recycling worth 3.7 billion yuan ($600 million) annually and attracting migrants from near and far. "This work is tiring, but the salary is okay compared with the work in town," said a 30-year-old surnamed Ma, who left a salesman's job to dismantle electronics. "You can make 4,000 or 5,000 yuan ($650 to $815) a month." At the same time, the town has made worldwide headlines for the devastating health impact of its tainted environment. "People think this cannot be allowed to go on," said Leo Chen, 28, a financial worker who grew up in Guiyu. The situation was better than a decade ago, he said, following authorities' interventions, but the effects of years of pollution remain. "In my memory, in front of my house, there was a river. It was green, and the water was very nice and clear," he said. "Now, it's black."
- 'Morally complicated' -
Lai Yun, a Greenpeace researcher who has often visited Guiyu, said that while Beijing has tightened regulations enforcement is often lax, and the bottom line is that development cannot be obstructed. "From the government's perspective, e-waste gathering and processing is important for the local economy," Lai said. "Research has shown that 80 percent of households are involved in this work. So, if they don't expand this industry, these residents will need some other kind of employment." Central authorities including China's powerful National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) have invested heavily in Guiyu's recycling industry, pointed out Adam Minter, author of "Junkyard Planet", on the economics of the global scrap industry. The overall picture was mixed, he said. "There is an environmental good happening there -- they're extending the life span of usable components, they're pulling things out and recycling them, or sending them to Korea and Japan, something that's very expensive to do in the US and the EU," he said. "Yet they do it in a way that's not always good for human health and the environment," he added. "Recycling is a morally complicated act."
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Kinshasa still rumbles with Ali-Foreman boxing bout | ||
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Kinshasa (AFP) - The Tata Raphael stadium looks as though it has lost a few rounds against Muhammad Ali in the 40 years since it staged the greatest boxing fight in history. The terraces, which were packed with 100,000 people for "The Rumble In The Jungle", are falling apart. Water leaks into the gyms where Ali and George Foreman trained for their epic fight. But Kinshasa, capital of one of the poorest countries in the world, remains proud of having staged one of the most important sporting events of the 20th century on October 30, 1974. Then the world was scared that Ali -- aged 32 and fighting his way back to the top after his ban for refusing to fight in the US Army -- would suffer a humiliating beating by the fearsomely powerful George Foreman, the defending world champion. Ali soaked up the pressure for seven rounds, taunting his opponent all the time, and then knocked him out in the eighth with a lightning right hook. Ali became a legend. Now each day, dozens of men, women and children still train in the stadium. After work and school they practice hooks and simulate fights, often without gloves and when they are still hungry. Stadium security chief Abdelaziz Saliboko Serry took up boxing after watching Ali and Foreman. "I was a good boxer but my father forced me to give up and study. I would still like to box, but I'm over 50 now so I can't. I could have made a name like Muhammad Ali," he said. Ali won the fight and also the hearts of the people of DR Congo, which was then known as Zaire. "Ali was one of us. We considered him a Zairean who was living in America. Foreman did not like contact with black people. He did not like this population and that was a factor in his defeat," added Serry. Guy Lioki, now 50 and a referee in amateur boxing tournaments, twice came across Foreman -- who had already aggravated the local population by arriving on his plane accompanied by two German Shepherd dogs which evoked memories of the brutal rule of their former colonial masters Belgium -- before the fight when a child. "Foreman was too moody, even if he was black like us. He stayed with the important people and was really interested in the women," he said. Judex Tshibanda remembers Ali coming to box with the local children. "We tried to hit him. I got him once in the stomach," said the 52-year-old who became a boxer himself and now trains young fighters. Ali completely won the occasion. Even his pre-bout quote deriding Foreman, "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee -- his hands can't hit what his eyes can't see," has gone down in sporting folklore. Foreman was totally out of place while Ali, a divisive figure in the United States even though he became a symbol of the fight against segregation in his homeland, felt entirely at home.
- Dictator's Gift -
Mobutu Sese Seko was the other key figure. He agreed to part finance the bout organised by American promoter Don King. It was priceless global propaganda for the country's dictator. Posters put up across Kinshasa proclaimed "A gift from President Mobutu to the Zairiean people and an honour to the black man." Even the venue was then known as the May 20 Stadium after the date of the creation of Mobutu's ruling party in 1967 and also played host to less welcome violence as opponents of the regime were tortured there. The bout should have taken place in September, but had to be put back when Foreman injured a hand in training. A three day music festival featuring James Brown, BB King and Manu Dibango had even been organised leading up to the first date. While the stadium was packed to the rafters for the fight, Mobutu watched a special live television broadcast in his palace. The bout started at 4:00am local time so that US television channels could show it live. "Ali boma ye" (Kill him Ali), the crowd chanted. The slogan inspired Ali, even though his efforts to repeat the phrase with his thick American accent caused hilarity among Zaireans. "It was an extraordinary knockout," recalled Felix Mputu, 71, who had refereed some of the amateur fights that preceded the Ali-Foreman duel. Mputu believes Foreman lost because he was too physical. "He hit too hard!" "That is not what boxing should be, there has to be the spectacle. Muhammad Ali is a stylist, a technician," said Mputu of the boxing legend, now 72, who has been brought to his knees by Parkinson's disease. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Apple CEO Tim Cook Warns That A Major Event Will Wake Everyone Up To How Their Privacy Is Being Invaded (AAPL) | ||
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Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage at WSJD Live for an interview with Gerard Baker of the Journal. We took live notes, and you can read them below. One of the most interesting things Cook said was that he thinks that some kind of "major event" will soon happen that will wake people up to how their privacy is being invaded by other tech companies. (He was implicitly referring to Google.) Cook also talked about how the US needs to reform its tax policy. The most interesting thing he said about Apple products was he doesn't know how long the battery will last on the Apple Watch because Apple doesn't know how people will use it yet. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Jack Ma Got Drunk And Bought Half A Soccer Team — And Other Things He Just Said | ||
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Polish, Israeli presidents to open Jewish museum in Warsaw | ||
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Warsaw (AFP) - Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski and Israeli counterpart Reuven Rivlin will on Tuesday inaugurate a Warsaw museum chronicling the vibrant 1,000-year history of Poland's Jewish community, all but wiped out during the Holocaust. Built on the site of the former Warsaw ghetto, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews will be "a game changer" for Polish-Jewish relations, the country's chief rabbi Michael Schudrich told AFP. "That does not mean the relations were bad, but it means it will make them better," he said. Poland's Komorowski and Israel's Rivlin will attend the long-awaited unveiling of the museum's core exhibition to the public on Tuesday. The museum itself has been open to the public since April 2013 and has already drawn more than 400,000 visitors -- in part thanks to its eye-catching design. The serene, glass facade of the building -- which has already become an icon of modern architecture -- is broken only by a wide, irregular opening that serves as the entrance and main hall. According to its Finnish architects, Rainer Mahlamaeki and Ilmar Lahdelma, the fracture symbolises the Red Sea crossing of Jews fleeing Egypt. - 'Rest here' - The museum -- named after the Hebrew word for both "Poland" and "rest here" -- uses narrative to bring the past to life, said Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, director of the museum's core exhibition. Rather than showcasing myriad artefacts, the museum recounts that past with the help of multimedia installations and by recreating scenes of everyday life. That account includes dark chapters like the World War II Holocaust, during which Nazi Germany killed millions of Jews in occupied Poland, and the anti-Semitism that was an undeniable fact of Jewish life throughout Europe, Poland included. But the exhibition also sheds a rare light on the richness of Jewish life in Poland -- once home to the world's largest Jewish community. Jews first arrived in Poland in the Middle Ages. By the mid 18th-century, there were 750,000 living across the United Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, having been chased out of western Europe. By 1939, that number was up to 3.3 million Jews, or around 10 percent of the entire Polish population. Only between 200,000 to 300,000 survived the Second World War. Most emigrated and now the active Jewish community numbers only around 7,000. Tens of thousands of other Poles have Jewish roots but either do not identify with the community or are unaware of their heritage. The museum's creation has coincided with an unexpected "coming out" of a third-generation of descendants of Jews who survived the Holocaust. For instance, a play entitled "The Hideout", which premiered in Warsaw on Saturday, tells the tale of people who spent two years in hiding in closets or under floors during the Nazi occupation. Over the course of the play, it becomes clear that the trauma of the Holocaust runs so deep that survivors dare not speak of it to their children and grandchildren. The subject is also taboo for the Christian Poles who hid them. Private donors, Diaspora Jews and Poles raised 33 million euros ($42 million) to pay for the museum's core exhibition, while the city of Warsaw and culture ministry funded the building to the tune of 42.5 million euros. "The level of anti-Semitism in Poland is much less than in countries like France, or Austria, or Hungary," said Schudrich. "But whatever is left, certainly this museum will help to make anti-Semitism even smaller." Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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New York's hottest new trend: clubbing for kids | ||
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New York (AFP) - The music's thumping, the dance floor's packed and the bar's bustling. Welcome to one of New York's hottest nightclubs and a new generation of clubbers: six-year-olds. The VIP Room threw open its doors to children aged six to 12 on a Sunday afternoon to give them a taste of the nightclub, electronic music and dance scene in New York's uber trendy Meatpacking District. Among those hitting the decks was eight-year-old DJ Alden. Kids swarmed onto the dance floor, bopping up and down to beats with proud moms shimmying alongside or snapping pictures. "It was awesome!" said Alden, son of the organizers who jumped on the decks during the four-hour, Halloween-themed party. "The best thing was when I was in the DJ booth, DJing for everybody." A dancer dressed as a robot with LED lights on his legs, arms, head and body, took to the podium to whip up the crowd. When he starts shooting dry ice from two white guns, they go wild. The children scream with pleasure, reaching up their hands as the robot takes them through basic dance steps, getting them to feel the beat. More than 300 people, including parents and younger siblings, attended the party organized by a husband and wife team whose company CirKiz opens top New York clubs to children once a month. "I love it. My daughter's having a great time," said Laura Lampert, a legal secretary from Harlem dressed in a leopard print dress with cat ears, pointing out her child twirling to the side. "It's a lot of fun. It's also safe for the kids. It's during the day, and they get to feel like grown-ups," she said. While parents sit back with a beer or vodka from the bar, children get a taste of the DJ booth -- they are encouraged to touch the equipment and dabble in a spot of mixing. Natalie Elizabeth Weiss DJs at the children's club sessions and thinks they are a brilliant way of opening young minds. "It's giving us a chance to get back to our roots as humans, which is get together and dance to music," she told AFP. She gives DJ lessons to children as young as three months, which have gone viral among trendy families across New York.
- Cool vibe -
There has been interest as far afield as South Korea, Berlin and Los Angeles. Weiss plans masterclasses in Atlanta and Orlando, and she flies next month to Taiwan to initiate the program there. But the parties are the brainchild of Jesse Sprague, a DJ who has worked on the club scene for 20 years, and his wife Jenny Song. They say the raves are great fun for a child. "They get to come into a really cool space, socialize with their friends, get away from televisions, iPads and tablets, and come in and experience something that has a very cool vibe," said Sprague. "One of the mission statements is that we want to inspire kids to pursue things that are artistic. It helps to develop a creative mind, having the kids be in a stimulating sensory environment." The couple got the idea after throwing their son's first birthday party at New York club Cielo. Friends had such a good time that they urged the couple to turn it into a business. In concession to the tender age of clubbers, they keep the volume in check, screen songs for content and restrict ravers to cupcakes instead of cocktails. Pier Singh, dressed up as a Candy Corn Witch in tight trousers, high-heeled ankle boots and a spangly top, struts onto the dance floor with two-year-old son Nico in a New York police uniform. Older brother Miles, six, is Spider-man and likes to breakdance. Singh saw the party advertised on Facebook and knew it would be the perfect family outing. "I think it's really awesome," said Singh. "What kid doesn't love dancing these days," she laughs. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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BHP Billiton to sell US shale gas assets | ||
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Sydney (AFP) - Mining giant BHP Billiton is set to sell some of its shale gas assets in the United States, closing the chapter on a controversial acquisition three years ago that sparked a multi-billion dollar writedown. The chief executive of the world's biggest miner, Andrew Mackenzie, said BHP was looking to sell its Fayetteville shale gas assets in Arkansas. "As we look to improve the balance of liquids and gas across our Petroleum portfolio we have initiated the marketing (of) our Fayetteville acreage," Mackenzie said in a statement late Tuesday. "However, we will only divest the field if it maximises value for shareholders." BHP acquired Fayetteville from Chesapeake Energy as part of a $4.75 billion deal in February 2011. But plunging US gas prices forced the Anglo-Australian miner to book a $2.84 billion writedown on the value of the Fayetteville assets in August 2012, with then chief executive Marius Kloppers forgoing his annual bonus. BHP instead concentrated on its more profitable shale liquid assets. "In the Eagle Ford and Permian (US shale assets) we are forecasting liquids production of approximately 200 thousand barrels per day by the 2017 financial year," Mackenzie said. "This is expected to generate significant value as investments in our liquids-rich onshore US wells typically generate returns of over 50 percent." BHP would also "fully develop" its other shale gas asset at Haynesville, petroleum boss Tim Cutt told an investor briefing in London on Tuesday. "The Haynesville is the premier dry gas asset in our portfolio, and one of the most prolific shale gas assets in North America," Cutt said. "We are moving towards full development now, and we will be in full development during the five-year plan." Macquarie analysts questioned the timing of the sale but said it could point to BHP's growing confidence about the output from the Permian region. "This is perhaps a strange time to be considering such a sale given anticipated gas demand growth from imminent LNG exports, petrochemicals and the like," Dow Jones quoted the analysts as saying. "Indeed, this could be another instance of BHP misreading the outlook for the US gas market." Shares in BHP were down 1.72 percent to Aus$33.23 at midday on the ASX 200 on Tuesday. The potential Fayetteville sale comes two months after BHP announced a plan to create a new independent company by demerging non-core assets, including some of its aluminium, coal, manganese, nickel and silver operations. BHP in August reported a 23.2 percent jump in annual net profit to $13.83 billion.
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Ex-Toronto Mayor Who Smoked Crack Easily Wins A Seat On The City Council | ||
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The scandal-plagued former mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, easily won his old seat on the city council, the Toronto Star reports. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Ex-Toronto Mayor Who Smoked Crack Easily Wins A Seat On The City Council | ||
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The scandal-plagued former mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, easily won his old seat on the city council, the Toronto Star reports. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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WAL-MART: Here's Why We Don't Support Apple Pay (WMT, AAPL) | ||
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Wal-Mart and Apple are in a bit of a tussle over Apple Pay, Apple's mobile payment system on the iPhone 6. Wal-Mart is a leader of MCX, a group of merchants working on their own mobile payment system. Wal-Mart is not accepting Apple Pay right now. Members of MCX, including Rite Aid and CVS, shut down support for Apple Pay after a few days of accepting it, likely out of a contractual obligation to MCX to only use MCX's mobile payment solution. MCX's alternative to Apple Pay is called CurrentC. It's been in development since 2012, and it's a much clunkier solution. The user has to open the CurrentC app, then use a camera to scan a QR code, which is a boxy, bar code type of thing. Or, they unlock the phone, open the app, then have a QR code generated that gets scanned by the retailer. After we wrote about CurrentC earlier, a Wal-Mart PR rep reached out. During a back-and-forth, we asked why Wal-Mart doesn't accept Apple Pay, which is a pretty elegant solution to mobile payments. An iPhone owner simply holds their phone to a payment terminal, then uses her fingerprint to confirm payment. Here's what we were told: There are certainly a lot of compelling technologies being developed, which is great for the mobile-commerce industry as a whole. Ultimately, what matters is that consumers have a payment option that is widely accepted, secure and developed with their best interests in mind. MCX member merchants already collectively serve a majority of Americans every day. MCX’s members believe merchants are in the best position to provide a mobile solution because of their deep insights into their customers’ shopping and buying experiences. Our emphasis is added in there. These are mega corporations fighting for billions of dollars — Apple, the banks, Wal-Mart, etc. — so it's hard to know who to really trust. But, we would trust that Apple is working with consumers in mind. And we would guess that Wal-Mart is less concerned about consumers. It is more concerned with eliminating the 2% fee that comes with credit card purchases. CurrentC bypasses credit card fees, which will save Wal-Mart money in the long run. In fact, Ron Shevlin, a retail banking analyst, says he asked former Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott why MCX could succeed when so many other consortium had failed. Scott's answer tells you a lot about CurrentC, and MCX. He said, "I don’t know that it will, and I don’t care. As long as Visa suffers." Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Royals confident despite must-win baseball World Series game | ||
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Kansas City (AFP) - On the brink of losing the World Series, the Kansas City Royals arrived home confident they could defeat the San Francisco Giants on Tuesday to force a one-game title showdown. The Giants, seeking their third crown in five seasons, carry a 3-2 edge in Major League Baseball's best-of-seven final ahead of game six, where Royals right-hander Yordano Ventura starts against Giants' righty Jake Peavy. "Even though our backs are against the wall, what is so weird about it is it doesn't feel like our backs are against the wall, so that's a pretty good feeling," Royals manager Ned Yost said. "I think we're going to win. That's the way I feel. I've got that much confidence in our team. I've got that much confidence in Ventura. I just think we're going to go to game seven." The Giants have scored 15 unanswered runs in winning the past two games while the Royals have gone scoreless over the past 15 innings. "The key is, I don't care how many runs we score, just score one more run than they do," Yost said. "That's all I look for. I don't care how we do it." Kansas City's back-to-back defeats came in San Francisco under National League rules requiring pitchers to bat, unlike the American League rules that will be used at Kansas City that see designated hitters replace pitchers at the plate. For the Royals, that means Japanese outfielder Nori Aoki will return to second in the lineup and designated hitter Billy Butler, the Royals' top playoff batter, will be back in the lineup. That could mean more base hits and more base runners for the best base-stealing team in the league. "It's a big boost getting Nori's offense back in there and obviously it's a big boost getting Billy back in there," Yost said. "We all know what Billy does in our lineup. He's a pretty key component to our offensive lineup." After working for this goal since pre-season training began in February, every player knows what must be done. "Everybody is going to give everything they have, go out there and fight, knowing that we're a good team with confidence," Ventura said. "The biggest goal is to not leave anything behind, to give everything you have, knowing that that could be the last game. We have all the confidence that we can go out there and win."
- Peavy seeks title repeat -
The Giants feel much the same after winning twice in a row and Peavy takes the mound having helped Boston win last year's World Series crown. "I can't imagine anything being any sweeter," Peavy said. "That's what you play for, to be in the World Series and to win it. To be the guy that gets the ball with that opportunity, it's a special opportunity. "Just got to do all I can do to be in the moment, think about executing pitches, to find any way for the San Francisco Giants to win this game,and I promise you I'm going to exhaust every option." With a blend of veterans and newcomers the Giants are trying to solidify their place as one of baseball's top modern dynasties. "We're trying to grind this thing out the way we have for what feels like forever now," Peavy said. "We're focused on trying to find a way to win one more game. We know that's not going to be easy. We've got our work cut out for us, but the boys are focused and we believe." After sweeping Detroit for the 2012 crown and downing Texas in five games in 2010, battling a Royals team that was 8-0 in the playoffs before facing the Giants has been the toughest World Series of the three for San Francisco, manager Bruce Bochy said. "I think that's fair to say," Bochy said. "When I look at '10 and '12, we just got on the roll in the Series. But these guys (the Royals) were on a roll and they're playing well, so I don't think this has surprised anybody that we're going to game six." Yost sees a chance to swing the momentum back to the Royals on home turf. "I think home-field advantage is huge," Yost said. "But you can't think about game seven, even though I've got a real strong sense in my heart that we're going to be in game seven." Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Plan won't save Great Barrier Reef: Australian scientists | ||
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Sydney (AFP) - Australian government plans to protect the Great Barrier Reef are inadequate, short-sighted and will not prevent its decline, the country's pre-eminent grouping of natural scientists said Tuesday. The draft plan, released for consultation last month, was supposed to allay concerns by the United Nations about the reef's health after UNESCO threatened to put it on the World Heritage "in danger" list. Environment Minister Greg Hunt has said the proposal reflects an effort to balance the priorities of protecting the reef, which is teeming with marine life, and long-term sustainable development. But the Australian Academy of Science warned that the plan ignored the impact of climate change and failed to address problems with poor water quality, coastal development and fishing. "The science is clear, the reef is degraded and its condition is worsening. This is a plan that won't restore the reef, it won't even maintain it in its already diminished state," academy fellow Terry Hughes said. "The plan also seems overly focussed on the short-term task of addressing UNESCO's concerns about the reef's World Heritage Listing, rather than the longer-term challenges of restoring the values of the reef." Hughes said while the plan identified targets for reducing harmful agricultural run-off, any improvements would likely be lost in the unprecedented amount of dredging for coal ports and the Queensland state government's plans to double agricultural production by 2040. The survival of the reef was reliant on a reduction in pollution from run-off and dredging, less fishing and a decrease in carbon emissions from fossil fuels, he said. The draft plan calls for greater coordination between authorities in relation to the reef, a proposal welcomed by environmentalists. It calls for a 10-year ban on dredging to develop new ports or to expand existing ones both inside and next to the World Heritage site -- apart from in priority port development areas. And it bans future port developments in the Fitzroy Delta, Keppel Bay and North Curtis Island near Rockhampton -- areas of the reef described by environmentalists as key incubators of marine life. But environmentalists have criticised the draft as not setting high enough targets for cutting agricultural pollution or providing the billions of dollars required to restore the health of the reef. The colourful coral faces a number of pressures including climate change, poor water quality from land-based runoff, the crown-of-thorns starfish, which eat coral, and the impacts of coastal development and fishing.
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The Flushing Toilet Is Symbolic Of One Of The Biggest Investing Opportunities Of This Generation | ||
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Investors should consider multinational companies that are exposed to the booming middle class in emerging markets. US Trust's Joseph Quinlan wrote in a note to clients that it is "time to buy" into global brands that reach these markets. He called this new middle class "Transformers" because they are an active part of huge changes in various industries around the world. "What their parents and grandparents considered luxuries—flushing toilets, electricity, telephones, cars, computers—the Transformers consider staples or basic necessities," Quinlan wrote. He explained why they are an attractive market: "This cohort craves global brands, loves to travel, cares about the environment and is into body health—beauty and healthcare matter to these people. As this new global consuming class adopts and acquires Western lifestyles—or moves from the village to the city, works in air-conditioned offices, drives to work, and consumes more protein—there will be greater demand and higher prices for energy, water, agricultural goods and related items. There will also be more demand for material goods—high-end material goods, in particular. So while global luxury sales have slowed over the past year in many emerging markets, the long-term outlook remains promising." Quinlan said these companies, mainly from the US, Europe, and Japan, will benefit from the rapidly expanding middle class. Here's a chart that forecasts the explosion of the middle class in emerging markets, to at least 4 billion people by 2025.
SEE ALSO: WALL STREET'S BRIGHTEST MINDS REVEAL THE MOST IMPORTANT CHARTS IN THE WORLD Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Gender equality at work more than 80 years off | ||
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Geneva (AFP) - If you're waiting for gender equality in the workplace, be prepared to wait a long time. While women are rapidly closing the gender gap with men in areas like health and education, inequality at work is not expected to be erased until 2095, according to a report published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) Tuesday. The organisation, which each year gathers the global elite in the plush Swiss ski resort of Davos, said that the worldwide gender gap in the workplace had barely narrowed in the past nine years. Since 2006, when the WEF first began issuing its annual Global Gender Gap Reports, women have seen their access to economic participation and opportunity inch up to 60 percent of that of men's, from 56 percent. "Based on this trajectory, with all else remaining equal, it will take 81 years for the world to close this gap completely," the WEF said in a statement. The world would be better served to speed up the process, according to WEF founder and chief Klaus Schwab. "Achieving gender equality is obviously necessary for economic reasons. Only those economies who have full access to all their talent will remain competitive and will prosper," he said. - Some 'far-reaching' progress - The report, which covered 142 countries, looked at how nations distribute access to healthcare, education, political participation and resources and opportunities between women and men. Almost all the countries had made progress towards closing the gap in access to healthcare, with 35 nations filling it completely, while 25 countries had shut the education access gap, the report showed. Even more than in the workplace, political participation lagged stubbornly behind, with women still accounting for just 21 percent of the world's decision makers, according to the report. Yet this was the area where most progress had been made in recent years. "In the case of politics, globally, there are now 26 percent more female parliamentarians and 50 percent more female ministers than nine years ago," said the report's lead author, Saadia Zahidi. "These are far-reaching changes," she said, stressing though that much remained to be done and that the "pace of change must in some areas be accelerated." - More equality in Nordic countries - The five Nordic countries, led by Iceland, clearly remained the most gender-equal. They were joined by Nicaragua, Rwanda Ireland, the Philippines and Belgium in the top 10, while Yemen remained at the bottom of the chart for the ninth year in a row. The United States meanwhile climbed three spots from last year to 20th, after narrowing its wage gap and hiking the number of women in parliamentary and ministerial level positions. France catapulted from 45th to 16th place, also due to a narrowing wage gap but mainly thanks to increasing numbers of women in politics, including near-parity in the number of government ministers. With 49 percent women ministers, France now has one of the highest ratios in the world. Britain meanwhile dropped eight spots to 26th place, amid changes in income estimates. Among other large economies, Brazil stood at 71st place, Russia at 75th, China at 87th and India at 114, the report showed. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Apple CEO Tim Cook Criticized His Home State For Failing To Advance LGBT Rights (AAPL) | ||
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Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke out against Alabama's lack of progress on LGBT rights in a speech before his induction into the Alabama Academy of Honor, which memorializes living Alabamans for their accomplishments. Cook said his state has moved "still too slow on equality for the LGBT community," comparing that struggle to Alabama's record on racial equality. It's been widely reported that Cook is gay, though he's never come out publically. Apple's CEO pointed out that Alabama law still allows an employee to be fired based on sexual orientation. "We can't change the past, but we can learn from it," Cook said. "And we can create a different future." Check out an excerpt of Cook's speech (he talks about LGBT rights at 2:30): SEE ALSO: Here's What It's Like To Work With Tim Cook Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Twitter hammered on growth fears | ||
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San Francisco (AFP) - Twitter saw its shares hammered after reporting quarterly results that largely met expectations but failed to allay concerns about sluggish growth of the messaging platform. The San Francisco-based firm service posted a net loss of $175.5 million on $361.3 million in revenue in the three months that ended on September 30. Meanwhile, the number of monthly users grew 23 percent from a year earlier to 284 million, matching expectations of analysts. "We had another very strong financial quarter," Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo said in a release. "I'm confident in our ability to build the largest daily audience in the world, over time, by strengthening the core, reducing barriers to consumption and building new apps and services." Twitter shares fell more than 10 percent in after-market trades that followed release of the earnings figures, along with a lackluster fourth-quarter outlook. Investors had evidently hoped to hear the ranks of users were growing faster at Twitter. "Their user growth is mildly encouraging, but I want to see better," said Forrester Research analyst Nate Elliott. "Users is their key metric; they need to get people using the site every day."
- Lagging Facebook -
The analyst lamented that the Twitter service has changed little since it launched in 2006, while social network Facebook has thrived by perpetually innovating. "Facebook is constantly giving people new reasons to come back to the site, Twitter needs to do more of that," Elliott said. Twitter earlier this month said it would start reconfiguring users' timelines with "relevant" messages from people they haven't bothered to follow at the service. Based on a positive response from its tests, the service is inching toward the Facebook model of using software to "curate" what users see based on their interests or activities, Twitter said in a blog post. Twitter said the plan, which has drawn resistance from some users, remained a "timeline experiment" and might not make it to 100 percent of users. The company said testing showed that many people enjoy seeing tweets from accounts they don't follow, provided the messages are deemed worthwhile based on "signals" such as popularity, level of interaction, and how much interest is shown by account's one does follow. The notion of curating Twitter timelines that have long been loved for real-time blasts of information is seen as anathema by some fans of the service. Facebook continually refines its algorithm for determining which posts should be given priority in timelines presented at the leading social network. "Twitter will always be a real-time network," Twitter chief financial officer Anthony Noto promised in an earnings call with analysts. He left open the door for Twitter to tinker with timelines in the spirit of surfacing "tweets" users may have missed earlier or which may be strongly relevent to their interests. Twitter will host an analysts day in November to lay out its strategy for taking advantage of opportunity it sees ahead for the business, according to Costolo. "I feel good about the strategy we have in place," Costolo said during the earnings call. "It is critical that we increase the pace of execution," he added, saying that innovations need to move faster from theory to reality at the service. Twitter last week set out to weave itself into mobile applications with a free "Fabric" platform to help developers build better programs and make more money. Fabric consists of software tools to tackle challenges such as stability and distribution of applications as well as streamlining user log ins and placing ads. The move could build Twitter functions directly into new mobile apps, which could greatly expand the reach of the messaging platform. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Here's How New York City's Subway System Looked 110 Years Ago | ||
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The New York City subway turns 110 years old today. To celebrate, Google has created a collection of images and a virtual tour of the old subway trains and station, taken from the New York Transit Museum. From wood-paneled exteriors with ceiling fans to advertisements from the early 1900s, we've collected our favorite photos that show what riding the subway in 1904 would have been like.
The journey begins at the subway's turnstiles, which were wooden back then. The New York Transit Museum was actually created in a decommissioned underground station in Brooklyn. There are vintage signs from the time period on the walls. See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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Business Insider Is Hiring A QA Engineer | ||
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Business Insider is looking to expand its QA team with the addition of an associate-level QA Engineer. We spend our days building a product we love that is enjoyed by a fast-growing community of millions. We are looking for someone who strives to be a QA advocate that can evangelize best practices, research solutions to existing problems, and make confident suggestions on how to constantly drive process improvement. Business Insider’s offering spans desktop and mobile web, iOS apps, Android apps, and beyond. Qualifications:
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Houses Are More Expensive In Democratic Cities Than In Republican Cities | ||
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It turns out that houses in blue cities are more expensive than houses in red cities. Trulia chief economist Jed Kolko compared vote margins from the 2012 presidential election to Trulia's estimates of the median asking price per square foot in each of the hundred largest US metropolitan areas. The following chart plots this comparison, with red dots indicating metro areas where Mitt Romney won, light blue dots indicating areas where Barack Obama won by fewer than 20 percentage points, and dark blue dots showing areas where Obama won by more than 20 points:
While each of the three groups include cities on the lower end of the house price spectrum, nearly all of the Romney-voting metro areas had median prices lower than $200/square foot, while some of the most Democratic-leaning areas were far more expensive. Looking at these three groups in aggregate, the median asking price among the heavily Obama-favoring metro areas was nearly twice as high as in the Republican metros:
In the Trulia blog post on this analysis, Kolko warns against mistaking correlation for causation: "The point is not that Democrats cause expensive housing, lower homeownership, or greater inequality. Determining whether and how the political views of voters or their elected officials affect local housing markets is the stuff of scholarly research, not short blog posts. But because blue markets are less affordable, have lower homeownership, and have greater income inequality, political leaders in Democratic-leaning and Republican-leaning metros may push for different policies." For further details, and a full list of the nation's metro areas, check out the Trulia post here. SEE ALSO: Here's The Most Expensive Place To Buy A Home In Every State Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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These Are The Hacker Groups That Should Be Keeping You Up At Night | ||
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In light of recent hacks, you might be interested in the groups that pose the greatest threats to our cybersecurity. Ironically, the hacker groups that you should be afraid of also have the least intimidating names. Deep Panda, Putter Panda, and Flying Kitten have been listed by security technology firm CrowdStrike as the groups to watch out for. While they may seem cuddly, these hackers continue to be some of the most dangerous in the world. CrowdStrike is monitoring over 70 different hacker groups from around the world, most of which are based in China, Russia, and Iran. Many have ties to nationalist activist groups that are specifically seeking data on corporate America. Here's are a few of the most prominent hacker groups you should know about: Deep PandaCrowdStrike has deemed Deep Panda one of the most advanced Chinese cyber intrusion groups active today. This group has been known to target national security think tanks, infiltrating the defense and telecommunications industries of foreign countries. CrowdStrike believes the group operates on behalf of the Chinese government. In early July, CrowdStike reported the group had shifted its sights to individuals with a tie to Iraq and the Middle East. That makes sense since China is Iraq's largest foreign oil investor. Putter PandaActive since 2007, Putter Panda primarily targets the American and European defense and aerospace industries. The group is based out of Shanghai and has been linked to the Chinese military, due to the fact that the hackers reportedly work from buildings belonging to the People's Liberation Army (PLA) — the military of the People's Republic of China. In May, the US government filed a criminal indictment against members of Putter Panda (also known as PLA Unit 61398). China continued to deny its military had ever engaged in cyber theft. However, CrowdStrike subsequently released documents that purported to show evidence of Putter Panda's illegal hacking, IT News reported. Flying KittenThis Iran-based hacker group has been on CrowdStrike's radar since mid-January, and is best known for targeting multiple US-based defense contractors and Iranian political dissidents. Formerly known as the Ajax Security Team, this group has shifted its sights from hacktivism to cyber espionage and targeted attacks, InformationWeek has reported. According to CrowdStrike, the group began targeting the defense industry earlier this year, using spearphishing emails and spoofed Microsoft Outlook Web Access pages to infiltrate the accounts of defense contractors. InformationWeek reports that the group also lured in Iranian dissidents using anti-censorship tools that had been infected with malware. This targeting may imply that Flying Kitten is either an Iranian government entity or some private actor hired by Iran's government to take down agitators. What's In StoreIn its 2013 Global Threat Report, released in January, Crowdstrike predicted this kind of third-party targeting will continue, especially with events like the G20 Summit and midterm elections both coming up this November. CrowdStrike CTO and co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch confirmed by phone that these groups, as well as others identified in the Global Threat Report — including Magic Kitten, Emissary Panda, and Deadeye Jackal —continue to pose an active cybersecurity threat. These groups are also highly skilled and very sophisticated. "These are organized criminal groups that by some accounts have the same abilities that nation-states have," Marcus Christian, a criminal defense attorney whose practice focuses on intersection of cybersecurity and white collar crime, told Business Insider. "They are very streamlined in terms of their responsibilities, and often take old exploits and use them in new ways." Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Crashing Oil Prices Are Spilling Into Other Markets In A Bad Way | ||
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FA Insights is a daily newsletter from Business Insider that delivers the top news and commentary for financial advisers. Falling Oil Prices Are Hurting High-Yield Bonds (Charles Schwab) Falling oil prices are having negative effects in other markets. Specifically, it has fueled the recent high-yield bond market sell-off. "Despite the recent drop in high-yield bond prices — and accompanying higher yields — we're still cautious on high-yield bonds. We believe any further declines in oil prices could continue to put pressure on the high-yield market," writes Collin Martin. Instead, Charles Schwab analysts recommend that investors who are reaching for yield should switch up to investment-grade corporate bonds. Investors Should Stay Away From Financial Advisors Under The Suitability Standard (Washington Post) There are two standards that govern financial advisors: suitability and fiduciary. Fiduciaries have a stricter duty, and legal obligations, and as a result advisers who operate under this standard must act in the interest of the client at all time. On the other hand, the suitability standard provides way less protection to investors, especially because compensation is commission-based. Under this standard, "investors rarely come out on top," argues Barry Ritholtz. "So the ordinary individual investor has three problems with the suitability standard: 1. It favors the brokerage firm and its employees over the investor. 2. It costs much more than services provided under other standards. 3. And it creates an inherent conflict of interest between the adviser and the investors," argues Ritholtz. Policy-Driven Reform Could Liberalize Nigeria's Economy (AllianceBernstein) For some reason, Nigeria seems to be off of everyone's radar. However, it's one of the biggest economies in Africa and is also one of the world's largest oil and gas producers — so it deserves a second glance. Electrical power outages are the biggest hurdles that are holding Nigeria back from huge economic growth. But "resolving its electricity-generation gaps could significantly boost the country's economic growth — and provide opportunities for equity investors," argues Henry S. D'Auria. Investors can capitalize on this potential policy-driven reform because many industries will grow at incredible rates. Manufacturing capacity and efficiently will improve, and there will be greater employment and economic stability. Even Though It's Scary, Investors Need To Rebalance Portfolios (Vanguard) Many investors are afraid to rebalance their portfolios. They're worried that they will rebalance too early and thus forego potential gains — especially when they have a handful of well-performing assets in their portfolios. But investors should remember that rebalancing "is a discipline designed to manage risk rather than maximize return," argues Colleen Jaconetti. The future is uncertain, and as a result even the assets that have been performing recently may suddenly drop tomorrow. Advisors Must Be Prepared In Case Their Elderly Clients Suffer From Memory Loss Or Dementia (Financial Planning) "Losing capacity for financial decisions is something advisors need to be ready for, as it is likely to affect a huge part of our population," writes Carolyn Rosenblatt. By 2030, there will be 72.1 million people aged 25 and over in the US, and an estimated 7.7 million of them will have Alzheimer's Disease. There are two things that advisors should do. First, they need to "explicitly" plan for the possibility that clients will have "diminished financial capacity," writes Rosenblatt. And second, advisors should communicate with the client and find out if family members can act as proxies in the future. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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