The Group That Everyone Thought Wanted To Destroy Apple Pay Has Changed Its Tune (AAPL) | ||
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After several days of head-scratching over why Rite Aid and CVS blocked Apple pay in their stores after initially accepting it, executives from the Merchant Consumer Exchange (MCX), a group of retailers working on a rival to Apple Pay, finally spoke out. During a press conference, MCX CEO Dekkers Davidson shot down an earlier report from the New York Times that said MCX members would suffer fines or penalties if they accepted Apple Pay. "There are no fines to MCX merchants," Davidson said. "There's nothing in the structure that would have us do that. It's simply not true. There are no fines." MCX members include retailers like Target, Wal-Mart, CVS, Rite Aid, and several other notable chains. The group is working on its own rival app to Apple Pay called CurrentC, which will be available on iPhone and Android early next year. But CurrentC is being tested with a limited number of users now, and MCX notified them Wednesday that some personal email addresses were leaked. Davidson blamed a third-party email hosting service for the leak, but wouldn't go into much detail beyond that. The press conference with Davidson was pretty bizarre, with MCX's PR team requesting written questions from reporters over email in advance. Davidson only responded to a select few questions, and his answers were often vague or incomplete. Reporters were not allowed to ask followups. In an interview with Business Insider following the press conference, MCX COO Scott Rankin clarified some of Davidson's responses. Rankin said despite what has been reported, MCX retailers are allowed to use Apple Pay without suffering any sort of penalty. In fact, Rankin said MCX retailers can use both Apple Pay and CurrentC if they want to and they won't be kicked out of MCX for doing so. Rankin couldn't go into more detail about the CurrentC email hack, citing an ongoing investigation. Finally, Rankin said that although CurrentC will use barcodes on smartphones to make transactions, MCX is exploring other hardware options like the same near-field communication (NFC) technology Apple Pay uses. Davidson also said MCX wanted to give retailers multiple choices for mobile payments, but didn't expand much beyond that. Still, MCX executives' comments appear to contradict the written statement Davidson made Wednesday morning in a blog post: Does MCX Require its Merchants to Only Offer CurrentC? MCX merchants make their own decisions about what solutions they want to bring to their customers; the choice is theirs. When merchants choose to work with MCX, they choose to do so exclusively and we’re proud of the long list of merchants who have partnered with us. Importantly, if a merchant decides to stop working with MCX, there are no fines. Back when the MCX merchants first got together, it was in response to a market that lacked a viable mobile wallet that would benefit both consumers and retailers. Today, we believe that need still exists, and our working group is getting ready to reveal a solution that is different from other mobile payment options in many important ways. So either something changed between the time the blog post went up and MCX began talking to the press, or most interpreted the original statement incorrectly. Either way, MCX seems to be changing its tune. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Introducing Microsoft Band, The $199 Fitness Tracker That Also Works With iOS And Android (MSFT) | ||
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Microsoft unveiled its first major wearable fitness device on Wednesday night, called “Microsoft Band.” It also introduced a new health platform to go with its Band, appropriately called Microsoft Health. Microsoft will start selling its new Band on Thursday through the company’s physical and online stores, for $199. It will work with all the major mobile ecosystems, including iOS, Android, and yes, even Windows Phone. According to Re/code’s Ina Fried, the Microsoft Band has a strong emphasis on fitness, and it’s designed to be worn by its user all day to track both sleeping and exercise patterns. The Band comes with built-in GPS and 10 sensors that can track things like heart rate, but it also has a unique UV sensor to measure sun exposure, and a “galvanic skin response measurement” to purportedly help identify stress.
Microsoft Band will be incorporated into a new fitness-tracking service by Microsoft called Microsoft Health, which can analyze data from the Band — and other devices like smartphones and even rival fitness bands — in the cloud.
The companion application that delivers this data analysis through the user will be available for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. As a bonus for Windows Phone users, the Band will also support Microsoft’s Cortana voice assistant.
As Fried notes, Microsoft also previously attempted a digital health service called HealthVault in 2007. Microsoft actually claims its new Microsoft Health service can plug into HealthVault, even though the latter platform is more focused on medical records as opposed to personal fitness metrics.
Microsoft says it is launching Band with several partners in tow, including Starbucks, which will let Band owners pay for coffee with only a “gift card barcode.” It will also work with MyMapFitness and RunKeeper, two popular fitness tracking apps, and Jawbone’s own line of fitness devices. You can read more about Microsoft's new health initiative on its blog. SEE ALSO: Microsoft Might Launch A Smartwatch In A Few Weeks SEE ALSO: This Is The Apple Watch Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Why This Man Left His Fabulous $255,000 Job At Microsoft To Bootstrap A Startup (MSFT) | ||
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Adam Herscher's deeply personal story about leaving a prestigious and high-paying job at Microsoft to found a startup called HasMetrics went viral on LinkedIn the past couple of days. It struck a nerve, read by more than 400,000 people (and counting) and attracting more than 1,300 comments (and counting) so far, most of them supportive (he's read them all), he told Business Insider. Herscher's story goes like this: For nearly the past decade, Microsoft offered him a stable career with a fabulous paycheck, a situation he would have once called his dream job. "My salary straight out of college 9 years ago was $75,000. It was $10K-$15K over the Computer Science median at the time. I was ecstatic about the journey," he wrote. He did very well at the company. Every 18 months or so, he got a promotion and more money, "to the point where my salary upon leaving Microsoft at the end of 9 years ultimately amounted to: $254,895. I’ll just say… to the child of an immigrant and middle-class family, raised on sufficient but not excessive means, I can only describe that number as feeling both grossly obscene while at the same time a bit like: Well, I’ve made it." Herscher worked on some of Microsoft's biggest products: Windows, Windows Phone, Azure, System Center, and cloud services. But "then something happened." He started to feel like a cog in a big system. The paycheck started to feel like "golden handcuffs." Some of the projects he worked on succeeded. Some that he really cared about were killed. He says his decision to leave had three phases. The first was when he recognized his job was making him feel empty when he wanted to feel like he was changing the world. He started thinking about leaving. He "set a Mint.com goal to stash away enough cash, on top of retirement and rainy day savings, to live comfortably for at least 2 years without a paycheck." This stage lasted almost three years. The next stage happened when Microsoft reorganized his team and killed a project that he had worked very hard on. Herscher started writing pro/con lists about his great-paying job, ultimately deciding the pros won it. This stage lasted a couple of months. The final stage happened when he took a couple of days off and spent one with a friend working at a Seattle startup. The friend kept egging him to quit his job and pursue his startup idea. He went home that night, fired up his corporate email, and realized he could spend his whole life answering emails. He made another list that night and it said: "The project timing was right. The personal timing was right" to quit. So, with the full support of his significant other (who had a good job but not nearly Herscher's salary), the next day, he quit. He and his cofounder Sean Andersen (another Microsoftie), are bootstrapping their company. The viral post has caused several VCs to reach out, but he and his cofounder have a plan to go it alone for now, he told us. Their new startup is still in stealth, but Herscher told us it is a software-as-a-service to help companies make better use of their customer service folks. Instead of viewing customer service as an overhead drain, customer service reps, even in far away call centers, will be able to easily share customer feedback info with the people who are actually making the products and adding new features. Should his idea take off, it will turn the bane of customer service into a hotbed of new product ideas. Most importantly, he loves coming to work again. As one person on LinkedIn commented, "Inspiring, proving that money does not always equal happiness." SEE ALSO: 4 Great Stories About Bill Gates That Show What It Was REALLY Like To Work With Him Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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The Antares Rocket Explosion Took 1,254 Pounds Of Student Science Experiments With It | ||
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An unmanned Antares rocket carrying nearly 5,000 pounds of supplies to the International Space Station exploded on Oct. 28, destroying everything aboard. "It's hard to describe what it was like other than simply to say it was an event where you're trying to process what you're seeing," Jeff Goldstein told Business Insider. Goldstein is the National Program Director for the Student Spaceflight Experiment Program (SSEP). One quarter of the cargo's weight — 1,254 pounds — came from 18 student scientific research projects chosen by the SSEP from a pool of 1,489 proposals. In partnership with NanoRacks, who operates the only commercial lab in space, and the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE), the SSEP offers students in the US and Canada the opportunity to design an experiment to send to the ISS. Students of all ages, from grade school up through university, can participate. The students often form groups of four or five, and sometimes as many as 30, to put together a proposal. Yesterday, Goldstein was with three of these groups on Wallops Island, Virginia to watch the launch. Moments after lift off, Goldstein recalled: "There was this enormous fireball and as we're trying to process this and understand what we're seeing, the shockwave ...hit us," Goldstein said. They were far enough away that the shockwave from the explosion was not strong enough to knock anyone down, but when it hit them the explosion became real, he said.
This was the sixth series of experiments that SSEP had scheduled for launch to the ISS. The seventh and eighth sets of experiments are already scheduled for launch 167 and 350 days from now, respectively. So is this it for the students whose projects met a fiery end? Not even close. "If we said, 'Oh, it's gone,' then we would be doing a terrible disservice," Goldstein said. The students will have to re-make their mini-lab experiments, but they will then be loaded onto another spacecraft. If there's room on the SpaceX launch scheduled for December 9, the students might not have long to wait. For Goldstein, finding a new launch is not the hardest part: "These students [at the launch] were in shock...This was something that was not expected and all of the sudden their experiments were lost, the rocket was lost, and they just saw catastrophic failure. The hard part is to make sure that these students hold onto the appropriate frame of mind," he said. In society, he explained, "we don't teach students that failure is part of life ...and it's important for them to recognize that [it is]." SSEP has a list of each group's experiments along with an explanation of what the experiment is and why it's important to the advancement of science research. Some of the experiments include:
Nearly 30 students in sixth and seventh grade at McGowan Park Elementary in British Columbia, Canada, conceived of an experiment to understand how the absence of gravity affects how fluids form crystals in the absence of gravity. Three sixth grade students from Urban Promise Academy in Oakland, California, want to investigate whether red worms can take food waste and compost it into soil in space like they do on Earth.
Four college students at George Washington University and Georgetown University (shown to the right) aim to investigate whether Chrysanthemum morifolium plants can remove harmful toxins form the air in space. Studies have shown that they have this ability on Earth and the students want to know whether these plants could be used to purify air on long-term space explorations. Four eight-grade students at Willkinson Middle School in Michigan designed an experiment that will study how iodine tablets affected E. coli in zero gravity, which could purify water on the ISS and other planets in the future if the experiment shows that tablets can kill E. coli bacteria. "Nobody said that spaceflight is easy," Goldstein said. "And if explorers felt that way we wouldn't be where we are [today]." Onward. SEE ALSO: Here's What Was In The 5,000 Pounds Of Cargo Destroyed In Tuesday's Rocket Explosion DON'T MISS: Incredible Photos Show The Sequence Of Tuesday Night's Rocket Explosion Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Four eighth grade students at St. Monica Catholic School (shown to the right), in Kalamazoo, Michigan want to send Dry Lake Fairy shrimp eggs into space. The students hypothesize that if the eggs successfully spawn live shrimp in space, that upon their return to Earth for study, the shrimp will be underdeveloped and unable to swim due to limited muscle strength. Their goals is to further understand muscle loss in humans in space.
Taxi Association President Compares UberX To ISIS Terrorists | ||
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It's not often you hear ride-sharing compared to a terrorist group. But that's exactly what happened at a Philadelphia Parking Authority board meeting on Tuesday when President of the Pennsylvania Taxi Association Alex Friedman had some choice words about their competitor. "I try to equate this illegal operation of UberX as a terroristic act like ISIS invading the Middle East," said Friedman. "It is exactly the same menace." It's worth noting that the Philadelphia Parking Authority considers UberX to be illegally operating there. UberX claims to be cheaper (and faster) than a taxi. You can listen to Friedman make the comparison below: (h/t The Huffington Post) We've reached out to Uber for comment and will update this post when we hear back. SEE ALSO: Uber Says It Mistakenly Banned A Driver For Tweeting A Story About The Company Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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CHART OF THE DAY: Apple's Capital Expenditure Is On The Rise (AAPL) | ||
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Apple's capital expenditure, or the money it spends on equipment and property each year, has more than quadrupled since 2010. Based on data from Apple's annual 10-K filing, which was charted for us by BI Intelligence, spending on plants and manufacturing equipment rose to $11 billion, from $7 billion in 2013. Apple predicts capital expenditure will leap again in fiscal 2015 to $13 billion. Asymco analyst Horace Dediu believes there's a relationship between Apple's growth in capital expenditures and revenue growth in new products. That certainly seems to fit the sudden rise in 2010 — that's when the first iPad launched — but CapEx is also an indicator of Apple's upcoming production schedule: In 2013, Apple announced it would, in 2014, open an Arizona plant to build sapphire displays, and also finally break ground on its second campus in Cupertino. In 2012, Apple reportedly "overspent" to secure production equipment previously owned by Sharp, which dramatically altered the company's forecast by about $2 billion. With at least one new product line debuting in 2015 — the Apple Watch — it's easy to see why Apple plans to spend so much capital on buildings and equipment next year.
SEE ALSO: CHART OF THE DAY: All Of Facebook's Revenue Growth Is Coming From Mobile Ads Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Steve Ballmer Just Tore Into Amazon, Sang Some Bing Crosby And Fergie Songs, And Shouted A Lot (MSFT, AMZN) | ||
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Former Microsoft CEO and current LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer closed out The Wall Street Journal's tech conference today. He shouted. He sang. He implied that Amazon is a lousy business. The conference, called WSJD Live, was held at The Montage Resort in Laguna Beach. Before Ballmer took the stage, attendees were gathered in a courtyard outside the hotel's ballroom. Suddenly, the volume in the room spiked. The reason: Ballmer had walked in. People were approaching him with greetings. In return, he was kindly, gently shouting hellos back at them. Ballmer's volume only turned up on stage. Just after he sat down, he broke into song — singing the lyrics of a new jingle for the LA Clippers. Ballmer's rendition went: "LA love, la la la la." He said that pop star Fergie will sing the song in the Clippers commercial. That's too bad that it won't be Ballmer. Ballmer talked about some of the tech he has brought to the Clippers, including machine learning, new Surface tablets, and better arena lights. Asked about the mistakes of his tenure at Microsoft, Ballmer said that he is tired of looking back. He said that he handed new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella a very healthy company. "My successor gets a business that made a quarter of a trillion dollars in the past 14 years." Ballmer said that was not going to become a startup investor. "My big bet on tech is Microsoft," he said. He still owns 4%. Defending his tenure, Ballmer ranted about how he believes companies should be built to make a big profit. The Journal's interviewer asked him if that meant Amazon was not a great business. Ballmer took the bait and went after Jeff Bezos's company. He said: "I still believe that, over time, markets measure profit. At least, that's what they taught us in economics class." He said that for Amazon to justify its current valuation of about $150 billion, it will, within the next few years, need to generate "$10 or $15 billion every single quarter." Ballmer did not sound optimistic about that happening. He said that, at 59, he's finally studying Hebrew and plans to have a bar mitzvah. Toward the end of his on-stage appearance, Ballmer broke out into song again. He said that one of his favorite movies was "White Christmas" and that he's seen it 39 times. Apparently, after he stepped down from Microsoft, a Bing Crosby song from that movie kept going through his head over and over. He sang. "What can you do with a general, when he stops being a general?" Here's the clip: Here's a quick Vine, revealing what it's like to be in the room with Ballmer: Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Source: Microsoft Employees Are 'Worn Out' Over So Much Change (MSFT) | ||
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As news broke on Wednesday that part three of Microsoft's huge multi-phase layoffs had occurred, employees at the company are having mixed feelings. Not surprisingly, all this change "wears on" a lot of Microsoft's employees, said a former employee who left the company shortly before the big layoff was officially announced in July. Remember even before it was announced, employees spent months waiting for news of a layoff as a consequence of the company's $7.2 billion, 25,000-employee acquisition of Nokia. They were initially "shell shocked" by the size of the cuts, although most employees liked new CEO Satya Nadella for the changes he was making, sources told us. But it's not really the layoffs per se dragging employees down. "Constant change is not healthy when have an organization of over 100,000 people," our source explained. "There's a whole set of people that can't deal with that constant change and at Microsoft there has definitely been a lot to deal with. Remember right before Ballmer left, he announced a bunch of stuff, the One Microsoft strategy, the Nokia acquisition. He had a plan that was to take us through the next few years," the source added. This employee describes Nadella as "awesome" but said that he's now "putting his own plan in place and when you have these transitions and they keep continuing, that sort of thing wears on a lot of people." And this isn't just about if they will keep their job or not. It's also about if the projects they care most about will continue or be cancelled and if their teams and co-workers will change. Most importantly, it's about if they feel their work will be important both to the company and the world. On the other hand, other employees, particularly long-term folks are kind of happy with all this change. Some people feel that "change is good, particularly change that takes you in the right direction," this source said. And right now, it does look like there is a "new" Microsoft going in a better direction. Nadella is striking up partnerships with its former rivals, changing the way products are built, and trying to overhaul the corporate culture. Competitor-turned-new-partner Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff says he's delighted and shocked by the changes. Although CEO Satya Nadella still has to prove he can make a new direction work, he is starting to better articulate it. He says Microsoft's goal is to "reinvent productivity." That means creating new software and cloud services that work across any mobile device, as well the PC and in the living room. He's defining "productivity" loosely as stuff we accomplish at home and at work. So it's a little hazy as to what our lives will look like once Microsoft reinvents it for us. Some new products in this theme are starting to trickle out. One example is a new tool for Office 365 called "Delve" which sifts through our inboxes and documents hoping to showcase the stuff we really need to see. But the bottom line is that the company is changing, and for many people change is scary. Microsoft had no comment. SEE ALSO: Satya Nadella: This Is How I'm Really Going To Change Microsoft's Culture Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Here's What Was In The 5,000 Pounds Of Cargo Destroyed In Tuesday's Rocket Explosion | ||
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When the unmanned Antares rocket exploded yesterday, it took with it nearly 5,000 pounds of cargo meant to resupply the ISS. The crew on the ISS are not in danger, however, according to NASA officials. But it's still a sad loss. These cargo missions to the International Space Station also advance science research in space. Yesterday's launch was the third cargo load that NASA had contracted with Orbital Sciences Corporation, and was the heaviest load they've taken to date. The total cargo and rocket were valued at $200 million. Luckily, the rocket was insured for up to $50 million. Here's a rundown of the cargo lost in the explosion:
But luckily for the hungry astronauts, Orbital Sciences isn't the only carrier of supplies. Earlier today, a Russian Soyuz rocket launched a resupply spacecraft that has successfully docked with the ISS. The craft carried over 5000 pounds food, fuel, and supplies for the crew. Moreover, last month, a SpaceX launched a Dragon spacecraft carrying about 5000 pounds of science investigations and supplies to the ISS, and SpaceX is scheduled to launch another resupply mission in December.
One of the projects was going to provide the first space-based observations of meteors entering Earth's atmosphere. The international project, called "Meteor Composition Determination," was going to capture high-resolution video and images of Earth's atmosphere to study the size, density, and chemical composition of meteoroid dust. With this information, scientists can better understand how planets develop and also, with continuous measurements, could spot meteor showers that were not predicted. Another international project, called "Drain Brain", was going to attempt to identify the source of headaches and other neurological symptoms that ISS crew members have reported in the past. For this, crew members would wear collars that monitored and measured blood from the brain to the heart. Some of the student-led science projects — created by students of all ages from grade school up to college — aimed to study: plant growth, crystal formation, milk spoilage, tooth decay, and Leopard frog development all in the absence of gravity.
SEE ALSO: Amateur Video Shows Rocket Exploding In Massive Ball Of Flames Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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What the Cygnus cargo carried, that these other resupply missions don't have, was over 
Keep People From Swiping To Other Photos With This iPhone Trick | ||
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People can be nosy, especially when it comes to photos on your phone. When handed a phone to check out a photo, there's always someone who takes a quick look and then begins enthusiastically swiping through you library, oblivious to the idea that not all photos are meant to be public. Luckily, writer Christopher Phin has discovered a trick for presenting photos on your iPhone while preventing people from nosily swiping away. Here's how it works. First, head over to Settings > General > Accessibility and tap Guided Access. After toggling Guided Access on, you'll need tap Passcode Settings and either create a passcode or enable Touch ID, whichever you'd like. Next, head on over to your Photos app. Triple click the home button on your iPhone to enable Guided Access. At this point, you'll see it's still possible to swipe left or right, and that's because Guided Access still recognizes touch input. To turn off touch input in Photos, triple click the Home button again. After being prompted to enter your passcode or scan your fingerprint, you'll notice an option button appear at the lower left-hand corner of your screen.
Tap Options and then toggle off Touch. Just tap Done and then Resume and you're all set! You'll find that when you enable Guided Access in your Photos app (by triple clicking the Home button), no one will be able to swipe through any of your photos. To disable Guided Access and restore touchscreen capabilities, simply triple click the Home button, enter your passcode or Touch ID, and then tap End. If you'd like to see this in action, you can watch Christopher Phin's video tutorial below. SEE ALSO: We Now Know Why Retailers Blocked Apple Pay Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Rupert Murdoch's One-Word Answer For Why He's Still Working At 83 (NWS, FOX) | ||
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We've been at the WSJ's tech conference all week. All week, everywhere you looked, there was Rupert Murdoch, the 83-year-old chairman of News Corp, the Journal's parent company. He's been walking the halls just like every other attendee. He's been at every panel and interview, sitting in the front row. Today, he went on stage to take questions himself. He was his usual quick-witted self. For example, he said that in his business, you can't succeed without making friends and enemies. He said: "On the whole, I'm proud of my enemies." With flashy socks and thick plastic rimmed glasses, Murdoch these days has the style of a much younger man. He doesn't exactly bound about with energy, but neither is he dragging himself from place to place. He keeps a step ahead of his (small) entourage. The other night, we buttonholed a News Corp executive and asked him how long he thinks Murdoch plans to keep working. This executive said that during a recent planning meeting, executives were discussing the notion that News Corp could move from its Time Square offices in Manhattan when the lease is up in seven years. Murdoch made a point to say that he'd still be coming to the office then, cranking away. Finally, as the conference closed today, we cornered Murdoch as he was leaving a the show's final session. We asked him, after all the money he's made, prestige and power he's accumulated: Why is he still working? He gave a one word answer: "Curiosity." We pressed him. He said, "You've got to look to the future. You can't look back." Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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A Complete Look At Google's Biggest Android Update Yet (GOOG) | ||
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Google is preparing to unleash its biggest Android update yet — Android 5.0 Lollipop. With its newest version of Android, Google has revamped the entire user interface in addition to adding some under the hood improvements. As per usual, Google's line of Nexus smartphones and tablets will be the first to get the update. Google also says Lollipop is designed to work seamlessly across all types of screen sizes, ranging from smartphones, to tablets, watches, and even televisions. Here's a quick tour of what to expect when Android Lollipop rolls out over the next few months. Here's what the home screen in Android L looks like. Notice how the navigational buttons at the bottom now consist of simple shapes. Google has also added another folder called "Create" with its productivity apps, in addition to the standard "Google" app folder. You can really see the influence of Material Design in the app drawer. Notice how app icons look as if they were drawn on paper. See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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This Chart Shows How The US Military Is Responsible For Almost All The Technology In Your iPhone | ||
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Nearly all of the technology in many of the world's most ubiquitous electronic devices can be traced to a single, taxpayer-funded source: the US Department of Defense. In an article promoted by the European Commission today, Italian economist Mariana Mazzucato wrote that sparking the world's economies after a long recession will require greater and riskier investment from government. She used Apple's wildly popular handheld devices as a present-day example. The world's biggest company may have more cash on hand than many actual governments. But the technological breakthroughs behind its iconic iPods, iPhones, and iPads were funded almost exclusively by government agencies — and by one particular segment of one particular country's government. As the chart below demonstrates, there's little in these devices that doesn't owe its existence to the US Department of Defense in some form or another.
Later devices saw investments from the Navy for their GPS capabilities, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funded Siri. In fact, the parent company of Siri's creator, which was acquired by Apple in 2010, still gets over half of its revenue from the Department of Defense, according to a report they published earlier this year. Highlighting an idea from her recent book on the relationship between the private and public sectors, Mazzucato explains that achieving missions like putting a man on the moon required "a confident ‘entrepreneurial state’ willing and able to take on the early, capital-intensive high risk areas which the private sector tends to fear." The US military was often the one taking "capital-intensive risks" that resulted in Apple's line of products. And the result is a family of devices so widely used that it's difficult to imagine the world without them. SEE ALSO: 15 astounding technologies DARPA is creating right now Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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A Top NYPD Official Just Said A Bunch Of Wild Stuff About Weaponizing Drones | ||
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NYPD Deputy Chief Salvatore DiPace appeared on "CBS This Morning" Wednesday and discussed why the police are increasingly concerned drones could pose a terrorist threat. "Can a drone be weaponized? Definitely," DiPace said. He went on to outline the various scenarios where a drone could cause a "catastrophe." Drone Bombs DiPace said the NYPD is worried a terrorist could attack the city by arming a drone with explosives. "You can get a fixed wing drone, it's a model plane but it could be 10 feet tall, can travel up to 200 miles an hour. So if you flew it into a building, could it cause damage? If you packed it with explosives? Definitely," explained DiPace. Mid-Air Collisions NYPD officials told "CBS This Morning" there have been incidents where drones flew dangerously close to police aircraft. DiPace said they are very concerned about potential collisions between drones and helicopters or planes in the skies above the city. "Worst case scenario, when it comes to drones, is that a drone collides with an aircraft over the city of New York, and we have a catastrophe," DiPace said. Chemical Attacks DiPace also discussed the possibility a drone could be used to deliver "a chemical agent into an area," particularly over a large crowd. "Special events take place, open venues, open stadiums. We've seen the drone modeled as a crop duster, so that's not to say a drone couldn't go over a crowd and spray a chemical over a crowd or a biological agent over a crowd. Very, very big concern," said DiPace. Watch the full "CBS This Morning" segment below.
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Kevin Spacey: Netflix Made A LOT Of Money On 'House Of Cards' (NFLX) | ||
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On Wednesday, actor Kevin Spacey gave an inspiring, funny, and f-bomb-filled talk about how big data is changing the world at a conference hosted by IBM in Las Vegas. Spacey was there thanks to his breakout Netflix hit, "House of Cards," and he offered a number of interesting insights about it. For instance, he said that when promoting shows, Netflix tailors its trailers to individual viewers. If you watch a lot of Kevin Spacey movies, your clip will feature a lot of Spacey. If you watch a lot of action flicks, your clip will feature action sequences. That's the kind of the thing that can't be done on regular TV or cable. He also indicated how much Netflix invested in "House of Cards" and how this ad-free model of internet-streaming TV can be very profitable. Spacey said that it was "widely reported" that Netflix spent $100 million to create the first season of "House of Cards," although, in his best Frank Underwood accent, he also insisted he could not "confirm or deny" that figure. (But, we're fairly certain he'd know. He not only starred in the show, but was one of its executive producers.) Industry pundits scoffed at the time, Spacey said, "[They said] we'd never make that money back." The team calculated Netflix would "have to sign up 565,000 more members to break even," he said. Since the launch of "House of Cards" in February 2013, Netflix has brought in "he believes" about 17 million new members, he said. Those numbers basically check out. The first season aired in February 2013. The internet-streaming service has grown to 50.7 million paid internet-streaming members worldwide, it said when it reported earnings earlier this month. That's up from 27.5 million at the end of 2012, when it reported earnings in January. Although Netflix didn't grow subscribers last quarter as fast as Wall Street wanted, that success was not lost on others like HBO and CBS, both of whom are going to start offering their own shows through internet-streaming subscriptions. More of that kind of competition from internet TV is likely to come, too. The FCC said earlier this week that it is spearheading a proposal to create rules for internet streaming that won't allow the cable or satellite companies to interfere with the internet television subscriptions they deliver, even if those subscriptions compete with their own offerings. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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There Are 48 Billion Reasons Why Retailers Are Going To War With Apple (AAPL, WMT) | ||
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Apple and some major retailers are at war over how people pay for stuff in stores. Apple recently launched Apple Pay, which allows iPhone and iPad users to pay using their gadgets. But some retailers like Walmart are refusing to accept it. The logic comes down to two major things:
The credit card fees are probably the most important. Most credit card companies take about 2% or 3% of each transaction. Retailers paid approximately $48 billion to credit card companies in 2013, according to BI Intelligence analyst John Heggestuen. That's a big expense retailers would like to reduce. To try to reduce these fees, a group of major retailers formed something called the Merchant Consumer Exchange (MCX), which will launch its own mobile payment solution called CurrentC. CurrentC is an app that connects to your checking account and lets you pay for stuff at MCX members like Wal-Mart and Target by scanning a barcode on your phone. As it stands now, credit card companies don't want to partner with CurrentC as they have with Apple Pay, according to sources with familiar with major credit card companies' plans. CurrentC is designed to disrupt the model credit card companies put in place, by cutting them out of the loop. Instead of paying fees to the credit card companies, MCX retailers will be able to withdraw the money directly from a customer's bank account. Even if CurrentC isn't as versatile as Apple Pay, MCX retailers at least want to give it a try. Credit card companies can charge those fees because credit cards are easy for customers to use, and customers like using them. They also provide security and other services to customers and merchants. Major retailers would probably lose a ton of business if they decided to stop accepting credit cards, so paying that ~3% cut to Visa, MasterCard, American Express, etc. is worth it for now. And Apple Pay is very tiny. Fewer than 1 million people have it on their phones. Meanwhile, there are about 600 million credit and debit cards in circulation in the US. Plus, only a tiny fraction of retailers accept Apple Pay compared to regular credit cards. If digital wallets like Apple Pay are the future, this future is not going to happen any time soon.
Then there's the data retailers can collect about you when you make purchases using CurrentC. Right now, much of that data is only given to the banks and credit card companies. Apple Pay is even more anonymous and encrypted, meaning the retailers have absolutely no idea who you are and what you're buying. Without that data, retailers can't offer you targeted awards, coupons, advertisements, and so on. CurrentC will have all that stuff built into the app, so you can redeem offers through your phone at checkout. So yes, MCX retailers are removing a potentially good payment option from customers in an effort to battle credit card companies, but from their perspective, the gamble on CurrentC could save them billions. If not, it'll be relatively easy for them to start accepting Apple Pay and similar digital wallets. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Microsoft Confirms Another Round Of Layoffs Just Happened (MSFT) | ||
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Another round of layoffs hit Microsoft employees on Wednesday as part of the company's massive 18,000 layoff announced in July. About 3,000 employees were let go, reports ZD Net's Mary Jo Foley. Microsoft company confirmed the layoffs to us with this statement: “We've taken another step that will complete almost all the 18,000 reductions announced in July. The reductions happening today are spread across many different business units, and many different countries." Sources told Foley that these cuts are mostly coming from human resources, finance, sales and marketing and IT. In July, Microsoft said it was immediately cutting 13,000 employees, nearly all of them, 12,500, from Nokia, which would leave about another 5,000 employees to cut. In September, Microsoft let go about 2,100 employees. However, we also heard that not all of the original 13,000 were actually cut immediately and so another round will likely happen. Looks like that will be done in early 2015, Foley is reporting. Microsoft had promised that the majority of the layoff would be done by December. However when it announced the layoff, it also said it might make additional cuts throughout its fiscal year, which ends in June. In those first round of cuts, test engineers across the company were the hardest hit, sources told Business Insider, because CEO Satya Nadella is changing the organizational structure of how Microsoft builds products. The second round occurred across the board in "many different teams, functions and countries," a source told us.
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Not Even Mike Tyson Himself Can Beat 'Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!' | ||
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Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson was on "The Tonight Show" on Tuesday. So of course Jimmy Fallon got the boxer-turned-actor to play a Nintendo classic: "Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!" "I always thought it would just be an amazing thing if you played 'Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!' and tried to fight yourself," Fallon says. The game is notoriously hard as you go up the ranks. Even Tyson knows how hard the game can be; he's played it before. "I would be killed, man," Tyson says. "He beats everybody ... I've only met one little kid around 10 years old who said he beat me." It doesn't take much persuasion, however, and soon Tyson is standing in front of a giant screen, facing off against himself. Unfortunately, the match doesn't last long, and, like so many before, Little Mac is knocked out in a TKO. Watch the whole fight in the video below: SEE ALSO: 7 of the coolest secrets in the game "Destiny," and how to find them Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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SNL Star Michael Che Offends With Sexist Facebook Status About Catcalling | ||
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Yesterday, a video about catcalling took over the internet. It was taken from the perspective of a woman who walked around Manhattan with a camera, and documented the times when she was catcalled, spoken to, whistled at, or commented on. It happened 112 times. Women on Twitter and Facebook were commiserating with the filmmaker, and many men and women were surprised that this kind of attention is unwanted, or even considered to be harassment. The video has been viewed more than 6.5 million times. Men including SNL star Michael Che, who took to Facebook to comment the following. He likens the catcalls to times when people come up to him on the street, recognizing him from SNL.
The amount of "likes" on the post is concerning, as were some of the comments from women and men below his statement.
He then posted to Facebook again, using a somewhat sarcastic approach.
You can watch the full video below: SEE ALSO: The Director Of The Viral Catcalling Video Explains Why It Was Street Harassment Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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In One Simple Sentence, Alibaba’s Jack Ma Shows How Easy It Is To Find Happiness At Work | ||
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But what makes him even more special are the inspirational things he occasionally says. In fact, he even runs his own blog where he often shares his thoughts on business and life in general. On Tuesday, Ma wrote on his blog how work happiness could be achieved with a simple change in mindset. Ma tells the story of his encounter with a customer service employee working at an airport in Alaska. That employee, who turned out to be a geneticist, had to move to Alaska because of her husband’s work, and find a less lucrative job. Yet she sounded extremely happy with her new position, even while working a night shift. Ma writes that it’s “your own attitude” that makes work happy. He points out that there are two types of people: those who find happiness even in poor working conditions, and those who are always upset regardless of the importance of their jobs. “A good job isn’t something you go out and find, it’s something you discover while you’re working,” he writes. Meanwhile, Wall Street analysts started coverage of Alibaba on Wednesday and estimated that its shares could go as high as $178. That would make the company worth $500 billion. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Alibaba founder Jack Ma is the Here's How Uber's Tipping Policy Puts Drivers At A Disadvantage | ||
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They're upset. Some say they aren't even making minimum wage. One way Uber could easily help solve this problem for its drivers is by allowing them to collect tips. Currently, when you use Uber's app, there's no option to add a tip. "Being Uber means there is no need to tip drivers with any of our services," Uber says in a blog post. This does not mean your Uber driver is receiving a tip, necessarily. Your Uber fare includes a 20% tip when you take UberTAXI, a partnership between Uber and existing taxi services. But if you're riding in an UberX, UberBlack, or UberSUV vehicle, there's no way to include a tip for your driver. Lyft, one of Uber's rivals, lets you tip through its app. And for some, it's common courtesy to include a tip when you take a cab. This summer, Uber cut the price of an UberX ride by 20%, which drivers have protested because they're not making as much. Uber says that the low fares would increase demand, so drivers could recoup those losses. Some drivers feel that having an option to include tips could make up for UberX's low fares. "Even with the higher commission and lower fare, if the tips were back on the table, drivers feel they may be able to earn a livable wage," Joseph De Wolf Sandoval, an Uber driver and president of the California App-Based Drivers Association, a nonprofit that was the driving force behind a recent country-wide Uber drivers protest, told us. Business Insider has reached out to Uber for comment on its tipping practice, or lack thereof. The company pointed us to a section of its website called "Do I Have To Tip My Driver?," which says:
Late last year, a federal judge ruled that drivers could sue Uber for deceptive marketing that told its passengers that Uber's fares included a tip, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. "Uber's marketing initially said 'The tip is included in the fare,' and that was absolutely not the case," De Wolf Sandoval told us. "The fare has always been the calculation of the distance and the time and the base fare and any surcharges and any tolls. "And never has there been, in UberBLACK, UberSUV or UberX's platforms, a calculation for the tip. And it's impermissible, from a labor standpoint, for management to take a percentage of tips. And surprisingly, Uber tried to get away with it anyway by saying 'The tip is included in the fare' — but that would also mean they're taking a percentage of the tip, if they're taking 20% off the fare." Some drivers we spoke to say they've had customers who want to tip, but can't do it through the app. "If a rider absolutely insists on providing an additional cash tip, drivers are of course free to accept it," an Uber spokesperson told Business Insider last month. SEE ALSO: UBER DRIVERS SPEAK OUT: We're Making A Lot Less Money Than Uber Is Telling People Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Uber drivers have told us that they're not making anywhere near the $90,000 Uber says they could be making. Here's Why Instagram Demographics Are So Attractive To Brands | ||
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Instagram has suddenly become the go-to social network for young adults and teens in the United States. In a new report from BI Intelligence, we unpack data from over a dozen sources to understand how social media demographics are still shifting, including the migration of young users to photo-based social networking. Access The Full Report And Its 20 Charts By Signing Up For A Free Trial >> Here are a few of the key takeaways from the BI Intelligence report:
The report is full of charts (over 20 charts) and data that can be downloaded and put to use. In full, the report:
For full access to all BI Intelligence reports, briefs, and downloadable charts on the digital media industry and social media audience data and demographics, sign up for a free trial.
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Google Just Put Its Giant New Smartphone Up For Preorder, And It's Already Sold Out (GOOG) | ||
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Google just put its new Nexus 6 up for preorder, and the giant phone is already sold out. Both the 32GB and 64GB are out of inventory in the Google Play Store. This isn't uncommon, however, as Nexus phones have always sold out quickly in years past. The Nexus 4 was out-of-stock constantly when it was released in 2012. It's unclear whether or not the phones are just selling extremely fast, or if Google isn't making enough of them at launch. Either way, it looks like Android fans are eager to get their hands on the new phone: The Nexus 6 is Google's largest and most powerful Nexus phone yet. It'll be available at full price (starts at $649) in the Google Play Store next month, but this is the first time all five major US carriers will be offering the phone as well. SEE ALSO: Big, Beautiful Photos Of The Nexus 6 Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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HP's Crazy New 'Sprout' Computer Ditches The Keyboard And Mouse (HPQ) | ||
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HP just announced its newest all-in-one desktop computer, the Sprout, and it's unlike anything we've ever seen before. Instead of a keyboard and mouse, the Sprout features a touch mat with a capacitive touch screen. The most eye-catching feature of the Sprout, however, is the "Sprout Illuminator," which is attached to the top of the Sprout's display and extends out and over the touch mat. The Sprout Illuminator contains multiple devices designed to capture and project things onto the touch mat. Inside the Sprout Illuminator resides a scanner, depth sensor, high-resolution camera, and a projector. While it all looks a bit wild, the Sprout combines these various technologies to create a fully touch-based system that is supposed to make the creative process easy for the user. At its heart, the Sprout is designed to blur the lines between real-world objects and those inside the computer, and the entire apparatus makes it easy to capture, scan, import, and manipulate both physical and virtual objects. Here's how it works: Say you were designing a poster and wanted to include something that exists physically, like an origami crane. By placing it on the touch mat, the Sprout can scan and capture both 2D and 3D objects.
Those objects are then free to be altered and manipulated using either the touchscreen display or the touch mat, which acts as both a second screen and an input device.
For those times when you need to use a keyboard, the Sprout will project a keyboard onto the touch mat, and the Sprout's 23-inch touchscreen display is designed so you'll never need a mouse. HP is also announcing a collection of apps designed to play nicely with the Sprout, but since the Sprout runs Windows 8.1, it will always act like a full-featured PC. The Sprout's specs are fairly standard when it comes to desktop PCs. Inside you'll find an Intel Core i7 processor, 1TB of storage, 8GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GT 745A graphics card. Inside the Sprout Illuminator housing you'll find a DLP projector, a 14.6-megapixel camera, a RealSense 3D camera, and an LCD lamp for illuminating the touch mat. The HP Sprout is certainly a unique device with some promising potential for artists and designers; it starts at $1,899. To get a better sense of what the Sprout is capable of, you can watch the launch video below. SEE ALSO: We Now Know Why Retailers Blocked Apple Pay Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Former Google Exec: Here's 'One Thing The Media Gets Wrong About Google' | ||
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Google gets a lot of media coverage. What do people often get wrong? "Easy, the level of importance of all the perks," former SVP of Product Jonathan Rosenberg writes on Google+. Between the crazy-good health insurance, shuttle rides, instantaneous tech support, abundance of dogs, and delicious free food, employees have a lot to be grateful for. Rosenberg's argument, though, is that the media over-covers those benefits. Employees take those perks for granted compared to another aspect of working at Google. "When we ask employees, we’ve found that [the perks] aren’t what ultimately keeps people at Google," he writes. "The biggest motivator for Googlers is actually the opportunity to work on audacious projects. Self-driving cars, Google Fiber, Google Loon – these and so many others are the kind of things that spark people’s imaginations and get them excited about coming into work each day." Making magnetic nanoparticles that will search through your body looking for cancer and other diseases probably falls under that umbrella, too. "Proximity to crazy ideas and the people who dream them up is probably the single greatest perk we can offer," former CEO Eric Schmidt added. Check out more Google advice in Rosenberg and Schmidt's new book "How Google Works." SEE ALSO: Brilliant Management Advice From Google's Former CEO On How To Build A $300 Billion Company Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Good morning! Here's what you need to know for Thursday.
Fewer Chinese couples want second child than expected: media | ||
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Beijing (AFP) - Far fewer Chinese couples applied to have a second child than expected after a relaxation of the country's "one child" policy, state-run media reported Thursday, highlighting the ageing nation's demographic challenges. The world's most populous country has restricted most families to a single child since the late 1970s, but the Communist party said in November that couples would be allowed to have two offspring so long as one of the parents is an only child, rather than both. Authorities had expected the change to result in more than two million extra births a year, but out of more than 11 million couples eligible, only 700,000 had applied for permission by the end of August, the China Daily newspaper said, citing the National Health and Family Planning Commission. Of those, 620,000 had been authorised, it added. China has a population of 1.36 billion, the National Bureau of Statistics said in January, but its working-age population fell by 2.44 million last year. Over-60s accounted for 14.9 percent of the total, it said, and projections show that they will represent one in four of the population -- 350 million people -- by 2030. The lower-than-expected desire to have more children might reflect changing perceptions of reproduction, particularly in cities, said Lu Jiehua, a demography professor at Peking University, according to the report. The new policy mostly affects couples in urban areas, where the family planning policy has been implemented more strictly than in the countryside. But education and housing are expensive in cities, and reliance on children in old age is lower, making multiple offspring less necessary. Chinese academics have called for an across-the-board two-child policy to be introduced to tackle emerging labour shortages. China's birth limit policies have at times been brutally enforced, with authorities relying on permits, fines, and, in some cases forced sterilisations and late-term abortions. Beijing says the policy prevented food shortages and laid the foundations for the country's recent economic growth. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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With Rose blooming, Bulls open NBA season with emphatic win | ||
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New York (AFP) - The Chicago Bulls welcomed former NBA Most Valuable Player Derrick Rose back from injury with a convincing 104-80 win over the New York Knicks. The return of Rose and the addition of Spanish veteran Pau Gasol have branded the Bulls as Eastern Conference contenders in 2014-15, and they looked the part at Madison Square Garden. "I wouldn't say my rust is knocked off, but it's getting there," said Rose, who missed the final 71 games of last season with a torn meniscus after missing all of the previous campaign recovering from a torn knee ligament. "I can't be content with how I'm performing," he added. "I have to put it behind me whether it's good or bad and make sure I stay consistent with my workouts. Physically, I feel good." Both Rose and Gasol made key contributions. Rose -- the 2011 NBA MVP -- scored 13 points with five assists in his long awaited regular-season return and off-season acquisition Gasol putting up 21 points with 11 rebounds. Taj Gibson scored 22 points in 28 minutes off the bench for the Bulls, who connected on better than 50 percent of their shots from the field and effectively smothered the Knicks offense. In all the Bulls received 55 points from their reserves, with Aaron Brooks netting 13 and 2014 first-round draft pick Doug McDermott scoring 12 in his NBA debut. For New York, it was a disappointing start to the head coaching tenure of Derek Fisher, the former player drafted to implement the Phil Jackson triangle offense. Carmelo Anthony was held to 14 points on 5-of-13 shooting and the Knicks finished a lackluster 3-for-17 from three-point range. Amare Stoudemire was New York's only other player to score in double figures, with 12 points to go with his eight rebounds. Rose acknowledged he was eager to get back on an NBA court for the first time since surgery last November, but said he wasn't harboring any unrealistic expectations for himself. "It's still going to take some time," he said. "I'm not worried about that. I might have some bad games here and there. But that's not going to stop me from trying to be aggressive."
- Heat sizzle without James -
The second night of the season saw Miami open their post-LeBron James era with a bang as Chris Bosh scored 26 points and 15 rebounds in the Heat's 107-95 victory over Washington. Bosh, who saw his numbers dwindle in each of the four seasons that superstar James played for the Heat, inked a five-year $118 million deal in the offseason to stay in Miami, while James opted to return to the Cleveland Cavaliers in his home state of Ohio. Turns out the Heat, who won two titles in four trips to the NBA finals in James' four years in Miami, didn't need "King James" to put on a show. Dwyane Wade scored 12 of his 21 points in the fourth quarter while Norris Cole added 23 and off-season acquisition Luol Deng of Britain scored 12 in his Miami debut. James, meanwhile, will launch his second stint in Cleveland on Thursday, when the Cavaliers open their season hosting the Knicks. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Sistine chapel dazzles after technological makeover | ||
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Vatican City (AFP) - High above the altar in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel, the halo around Jesus Christ's head in Michelangelo's famous frescoes shines with a brighter glow, thanks to a revolutionary new lighting system. Angels, Sybils and prophets in blues, pinks and golds, once lost in the gloom, are brought into sharp relief by 7,000 LED lamps designed specifically for the prized chapel, where red-hatted cardinals have elected new popes since the 15th century. A state of the art ventilation system has also been installed to protect the frescoes from humidity, enabling up to 2,000 people at a time to visit one of the world's top tourist attractions, which draws over six million people a year. The venture cost some 1.9 billion euros ($2.3 billion), with 870,000 euros provided by the European Union and the rest donated to the Vatican in expertise, technology and man hours by the various companies taking part in the LED4ART project. "The LEDs have a colour spectrum specifically designed with the pigmentation of the frescos in mind to ensure the light faithfully reflects the original colours, as the artists intended," said Marco Frascarolo, who works for Fabertechnica, one of the companies behind the new system. "As each LED can be tuned to a different colour, we spent long nights in the chapel with the Vatican Museum curators, trying out different mixes of red, blues, whites... trying to get it just right," he said during a private tour for journalists of the chapel late Wednesday. While eight colour samples are usually taken in an environment to create a LED system, 276 areas of the Renaissance paintings were analysed, he said. The sunlight which had streamed through the windows for centuries was shut out in the 1980s, when conservators realised ultraviolet radiation was damaging the masterpieces, causing the Last Judgement and other frescoes which cover the chapel's ceiling and walls to fade. The lighting system put in place at the time was criticised for casting an unnatural glow and throwing some of the lesser known works by artists such as Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Perugino into shadow. - A whole new light - "The LEDs create a much better viewing experience because they throw light on aspects of the frescoes which were overlooked before," Frascarolo said. The lights were vigorously tested to make sure they wouldn't damage the works, with pigments of the frescoes subjected to the LEDs in a laboratory at a high intensity which showed what effect the new system would have over 50 years. Protecting the artworks was also the driving factor behind the new ventilation system, installed by US firm Carrier, which uses three cameras to monitor the number of people in the chapel and regulate the temperature and humidity. "The previous system was only capable of regulating the air for up to 700 people. With this system the room can hold a maximum of 2,000 people without damaging the artworks," said Michel Grabon, director of Carrier's AdvanTE3C Solutions Center. "We know the amount of CO2 and humidity released by each visitor and can make adjustments accordingly, lowering the temperature or raising it if necessary to compensate for cold spells," he said, adding that he can monitor the chapel from his home computer or mobile phone. Both systems are also highly energy efficient, meaning the Vatican is expected to cut output for ventilation by around 60 percent and by up to 90 percent for the lights -- shaving a vast amount off its bills. Antonio Paolucci, the director of the Vatican Museums, said the chapel "contains the most extraordinary works ever conceived by the human mind" and the new installations aimed to honour the 450th anniversary of the artist's death by preserving and re-illuminating his creations. The Museums said they were also exploring a project for next year whereby visitors craning their necks to see the famous depiction of Adam and God reaching towards each other to touch fingers could be given disposable "intelligent glasses" like Google Glass for a whole new 3D-view. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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San Francisco Giants Win World Series On Controversial Decision In Final Inning | ||
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The San Francisco Giants won the World Series for the third time in five years but not before a dramatic pitching performance by Madison Bumgarner and a dramatic decision by the Royals to hold a runner in the ninth inning. After pitching a complete game shutout in game five, Bumgarner was called upon in the fifth inning of game seven with the Giants up 3-2. After giving up a single to the first batter he faced, Bumgarner went on to retire the next 12 batters he faced leading into the ninth inning. Amazingly, the Giants decided to stick with Bumgarner for the ninth inning. After Bumgarner retired the first two batters he faced while still nursing a 1-run lead, Alex Gordon lined a ball into center field that was misplayed by center fielder Gregor Blanco as well as left fielder Juan Perez. 
Paul Rudd was excited.
But here is where controversy enters. With two outs in an inning, it is standard practice for the third base coach to take chances on a runner rounding third and possibly heading home. We never got a definitive replay from Fox. But Gordon was nearing third base as the throw was coming in from the outfield wall to the relay (these are back-to-back frames from Fox).
In the worst-case scenario, Gordon is rounding third base as the relay throw is taken, meaning it would have taken a perfect throw to the plate to get Gordon. But the Royals did not send Gordon home. Gordon was held at third base against all baseball logic. There were two outs and the Royals' season was riding on the shoulders of the next batter, Salvador Perez, who was injured earlier in the game. He fouled out to Pablo Sandoval in foul territory and the Giants were world champs.
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Funeral museum rises again in death-fixated Vienna | ||
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Vienna (AFP) - Just in time for Halloween on Friday and a weekend devoted to the dead, Vienna's unashamedly morbid Funeral Museum is now closer to the action: the Austrian capital's huge Central Cemetery. In a city with a singular attitude to kicking the bucket -- "Death himself must be a Viennese," one local song says -- the "Bestattungsmuseum" was the world's first of its kind when it first opened in 1967. This month it reopened, updated for the digital age, in new premises at the Zentralfriedhof, the second-largest cemetery in Europe by surface area. But with some three million "inhabitants", the graveyard is the biggest by number of interred. The stepped entrance to the subterranean museum takes people literally down into the underworld of undertakers from centuries past, "into the realm of the dead," museum director Helga Bock told AFP. Some 250 items are on display, many quite opulent, showing how for the Viennese having a good send-off -- or as they say a "schoene Leich" or "beautiful corpse" -- is important, no matter what the cost. "For nobles, and especially the Imperial Court, funerals were opportunities to demonstrate power. And people adopted these customs, which is why Vienna developed such a specific mourning culture," Bock said. The many eerie items include death masks, death notices and various coffins. But among the more bizarre is a bell that was placed above ground, attached to the corpse by a string, to ring if you were buried alive by mistake -- and a special "Herzstichmesser" knife to pierce the heart to make doubly sure you weren't. Another curiosity is a reusable wooden coffin with a hinged door underneath instigated in 1784 by Emperor Joseph II in order to save money, but withdrawn a year later. - Totally inappropriate - But unlike at the old museum, visitors can no longer lie in a coffin -- some even wanted the lid on -- as they used to be able to do once a year during Vienna's annual Museum Night. "The management decided ... it was totally inappropriate," Bock said. The still-operating Central Cemetery itself is a huge draw for visitors, and not just for All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day -- November 1 and 2 -- when thousands of Viennese lay flowers at their relatives' graves. Many locals and tourists take the tram there at weekends -- "Taking the 71" is a euphemism for dying -- to see the tombs of the likes of Beethoven, Brahms and even Austrian pop star Falco, he of "Rock Me Amadeus" fame. The number buried here is double the current population of Vienna and at 2.5 square kilometres (620 acres) is "half the size of Zurich but twice the fun", the local saying goes. Austria is largely Catholic, but the cemetery has sections for Protestants, two for Jews -- one partially destroyed by the Nazis -- one for Muslims, and another for Buddhists. There is a special area too for those who bequeath their bodies to science, one for the victims of the Nazis, a section for stillborn babies and another where urns can be buried among tree roots. - Imperial entrails - All in all in Vienna, death is never far away. Other cemeteries include one for pets, a number of Jewish graveyards, one dating back to the 16th century, and a "cemetery for the nameless" for suicides and cadavers washed up by the Danube river. The Imperial Crypt in Vienna's Capuchin Church, meanwhile, was from 1633 the last resting place of Austria's Habsburg dynasty, containing the bones of 145 royals. But not all of them. Habsburg tradition dictated that the hearts went into urns in one church, the intestines into copper containers in Vienna's main cathedral, St. Stephen's, and only what was left to the Capuchin Church. Visitors can also take guided tours through the catacombs at St. Stephen's and see, together with the Habsburgs' guts, the bones of some 1,000 Viennese chucked in during a 1735 plague outbreak. "The Austrians are known for their worship for the dead," impressed Swiss tourist Benjamin told AFP at the Funeral Museum. "The dead are almost as famous as the living". Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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San Francisco Giants win baseball World Series | ||
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Kansas City (AFP) - San Francisco captured the World Series for the third time in five seasons with a 3-2 victory over Kansas City, sparked by pitcher Madison Bumgarner's five shutout relief innings. The Giants defeated the Royals four games to three in Major League Baseball's best-of-seven final to collect their eighth championship overall and follow up titles in 2010 and 2012. Bumgarner, a 25-year-old left-hander, overpowered Royals batters to win games two and five and pitched in the decider on only two days of rest. He allowed only two hits while striking out four over the final five innings to complete the Giants' championship run. "MadBum" tosed 50 his his 68 pitches for strikes to claim World Series Most Valuable Player honors. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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The Group That Everyone Thought Wanted To Destroy Apple Pay Has Changed Its Tune (AAPL) | ||
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After several days of head-scratching over why Rite Aid and CVS blocked Apple pay in their stores after initially accepting it, executives from the Merchant Consumer Exchange (MCX), a group of retailers working on a rival to Apple Pay, finally spoke out. During a press conference, MCX CEO Dekkers Davidson shot down an earlier report from the New York Times that said MCX members would suffer fines or penalties if they accepted Apple Pay. "There are no fines to MCX merchants," Davidson said. "There's nothing in the structure that would have us do that. It's simply not true. There are no fines." MCX members include retailers like Target, Wal-Mart, CVS, Rite Aid, and several other notable chains. The group is working on its own rival app to Apple Pay called CurrentC, which will be available on iPhone and Android early next year. But CurrentC is being tested with a limited number of users now, and MCX notified them Wednesday that some personal email addresses were leaked. Davidson blamed a third-party email hosting service for the leak, but wouldn't go into much detail beyond that. The press conference with Davidson was pretty bizarre, with MCX's PR team requesting written questions from reporters over email in advance. Davidson only responded to a select few questions, and his answers were often vague or incomplete. Reporters were not allowed to ask followups. In an interview with Business Insider following the press conference, MCX COO Scott Rankin clarified some of Davidson's responses. Rankin said despite what has been reported, MCX retailers are allowed to use Apple Pay without suffering any sort of penalty. In fact, Rankin said MCX retailers can use both Apple Pay and CurrentC if they want to and they won't be kicked out of MCX for doing so. Rankin couldn't go into more detail about the CurrentC email hack, citing an ongoing investigation. Finally, Rankin said that although CurrentC will use barcodes on smartphones to make transactions, MCX is exploring other hardware options like the same near-field communication (NFC) technology Apple Pay uses. Davidson also said MCX wanted to give retailers multiple choices for mobile payments, but didn't expand much beyond that. Still, MCX executives' comments appear to contradict the written statement Davidson made Wednesday morning in a blog post: Does MCX Require its Merchants to Only Offer CurrentC? MCX merchants make their own decisions about what solutions they want to bring to their customers; the choice is theirs. When merchants choose to work with MCX, they choose to do so exclusively and we’re proud of the long list of merchants who have partnered with us. Importantly, if a merchant decides to stop working with MCX, there are no fines. Back when the MCX merchants first got together, it was in response to a market that lacked a viable mobile wallet that would benefit both consumers and retailers. Today, we believe that need still exists, and our working group is getting ready to reveal a solution that is different from other mobile payment options in many important ways. So either something changed between the time the blog post went up and MCX began talking to the press, or most interpreted the original statement incorrectly. Either way, MCX seems to be changing its tune. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Meet Microsoft Band, The $199 Fitness Tracker That Also Works With iOS And Android (MSFT) | ||
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Microsoft unveiled its first major wearable fitness device on Wednesday night, called “Microsoft Band.” It also introduced a new health platform to go with its Band, appropriately called Microsoft Health. Microsoft will start selling its new Band on Thursday through the company’s physical and online stores, for $199. It will work with all the major mobile ecosystems, including iOS, Android, and yes, even Windows Phone. According to Re/code’s Ina Fried, the Microsoft Band has a strong emphasis on fitness, and it’s designed to be worn by its user all day to track both sleeping and exercise patterns. The Band comes with built-in GPS and 10 sensors that can track things like heart rate, but it also has a unique UV sensor to measure sun exposure, and a “galvanic skin response measurement” to purportedly help identify stress.
Microsoft Band will be incorporated into a new fitness-tracking service by Microsoft called Microsoft Health, which can analyze data from the Band — and other devices like smartphones and even rival fitness bands — in the cloud.
The companion application that delivers this data analysis through the user will be available for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. As a bonus for Windows Phone users, the Band will also support Microsoft’s Cortana voice assistant.
As Fried notes, Microsoft also previously attempted a digital health service called HealthVault in 2007. Microsoft actually claims its new Microsoft Health service can plug into HealthVault, even though the latter platform is more focused on medical records as opposed to personal fitness metrics.
Microsoft says it is launching Band with several partners in tow, including Starbucks, which will let Band owners pay for coffee with only a “gift card barcode.” It will also work with MyMapFitness and RunKeeper, two popular fitness tracking apps, and Jawbone’s own line of fitness devices. You can read more about Microsoft's new health initiative on its blog. SEE ALSO: Microsoft Might Launch A Smartwatch In A Few Weeks SEE ALSO: This Is The Apple Watch Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Secular Nidaa Tounes party beats Islamists in Tunisia poll | ||
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Tunis (AFP) - The secular Nidaa Tounes party came top in Tunisia's weekend legislative polls beating Islamist rivals Ennahda, who had already conceded defeat, official provisional results released early Thursday showed. Nidaa Tounes won 85 of the 217 parliamentary seats in Sunday's election, while Ennahda came second with 69, the ISIE election body told a press conference.
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MORGAN STANLEY: This Chart Shows Why Fat Profit Margins Aren't Doomed To Collapse | ||
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Almost every corporate profit margin chart you'll see since the financial crisis will share one characteristic: they go up. Ever since the financial crisis, corporations have managed to deliver robust profit growth by offsetting the drag of weak sales growth with widening profit margins. These fatter profit margins come from cutting costs, which usually means getting more productivity out of a fewer number of workers. With profit margins at historic highs, there are plenty of very smart folks warning that these margins will revert to a mean, which could also come with tumbling profits. However, Morgan Stanley's Adam Parker joins a handful of experts who believe profit margins, at least for those companies listed in the stock markets, are on a long-term upswing. While most margin bulls focus on company specific structural changes like lower tax rates, falling interest costs, and less pressure on wage costs due to the waning of labor unions, Parker focuses 1) the resilience of the mega-cap behemoths and 2) the fact that margin mean reversion for small-cap companies mean rising margins. From Parker (emphasis ours): ...Why do we think margins can remain elevated? This will become clear if you look at net margins for US companies broken into four cohorts by market capitalization (Exhibit 12). Mega cap companies (the largest 50 by size) have been able to pull their margins away from the smaller companies through globalization, productivity, scale, cost of capital, and taxes, among other reasons. We argue against frameworks that call for near-term mean reversion and base equity return algorithms off the concept of overearning. Why? The margins for the mega cap cohort in the last two downturns of 2001 and 2008 were well above the HIGHEST margins achieved during the 1974-1994 period. To us, this is a powerful indication that the mega cap cohort is unlikely to mean revert back to the 1970s to 1990s average level. Further, what probably isn’t universally known is that small cap margins are below their long-term average today. If our house view is correct – that this turns out to be one of the longest expansions ever – then we don’t see why small caps that still have low margins can’t also ascend over the next several years. In the end, our suspicion is that margins remain elevated for some time. As noted above, mega caps benefit from globalization, productivity scale, cost of capital, and lower taxes, among other phenomena, that have led to this 20-year trend of increased profitability vs. small companies. Like others, Parker also acknowledges that companies have moved a lot of their operations to low-cost countries. Additionally, many of the biggest corporations are like Google, which carry no inventory and therefore their cost structures are very lean. But Parker nevertheless acknowledges that margins can't just go straight up forever. "Ultimately, however, it is likely that margins will experience some mean reversion, and that is our base case on a ten-year view, but we do not think margins will revert all the way back to the long-term average," he writes. 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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Decades-old Soviet engines powered US rocket that exploded | ||
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Washington (AFP) - The Orbital Sciences rocket that exploded after launch was powered by a pair of rocket engines that were made during the Soviet era and refurbished, experts said. The Ukrainian-designed AJ-26 engines date back to the 1960s and 1970s, and Aerojet Rocketdyne of Sacramento, California has a stockpile that it refurbishes for Orbital Sciences. Orbital described the AJ-26 engine on its web site as "a commercial derivative of the engine that was first developed for the Russian moon rocket that would have taken cosmonauts to the moon." In 2010, the company announced it would use the engines for its Taurus II rocket because "it achieves very high performance in a lightweight, compact package." The Soviet Union poured $1.3 billion in investment over a 10-year period into developing the engines and building more than 200 of them in all, Orbital said. Space analyst Marco Caceres of the Teal Group told AFP that the AJ-26 is "a powerful engine" that was designed to launch people to the moon, but never did. "They did have problems with that engine back in the '60s and ultimately they stopped manufacturing it," he said. In 1993, Aerojet began developing design modifications to make the engine suitable for commercial launches. The staged-combustion, oxygen kerosene engines underwent testing at NASA's Stennis facility in Mississippi. In May, an AJ-26 engine blew up during a ground test there, but in the immediate aftermath of Tuesday's accident, officials declined to link the two incidents. Orbital Sciences has begun investigating the cause of the rocket failure at Wallops Island, Virginia but has not released any conclusions yet. Orbital engineers said there was no alarming signs leading up to the sunset launch. The accident was the first catastrophic failure since private companies began supplying the International Space Station in 2010.
- Order to detonate -
The rocket exploded about six seconds after it lifted off from the seaside launch pad Tuesday at 6:22 pm (2222 GMT). A ground controller at Wallops Island issued a command to destroy the vehicle, Orbital representatives said in a press conference late Tuesday, but gave no details on why. "It is kind of standard procedure, that if you get something in your readings that indicate it is going to fail, you would detonate it sooner rather than later," explained Caceres. "You don't want that vehicle to fly very high if you know it is going to fail." John Logsdon, former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, agreed. "There was something dramatic happening to lead the range safety officer to issue a destruct command," Logsdon told AFP. "They know that something was really wrong and they have all the data from the rocket so it should not take long to find out what went wrong." It was also the first attempt to launch the Antares 130, a more powerful kind of Antares than the 110 and 120 models that have flown in the past. "I imagine they will be looking at a lot of issues," said Caceres, including whether there was too much weight on the rocket, or if there was a fuel leak or a corrosion problem. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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New York street harassment video goes viral | ||
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New York (AFP) - A video that shows a woman being pestered by men on the streets of New York has gone viral, sparking renewed debate about harassment endured by women and minority groups. The two-minute video shows actress Shoshana B. Roberts walking silently in jeans and a T-shirt through Manhattan as man after man greets her with remarks such as "hey, baby" or "hey, beautiful." When she does not respond, she is admonished for being rude with comments such as "smile" or "somebody's acknowledging you for being beautiful. You should say thank you more." Called "10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman," at one point the video shows a man who walked alongside Roberts for five minutes without saying a word, causing her clear alarm. The video has clocked up more than 1.2 million YouTube hits since being posted online Tuesday. Produced for charity Hollaback!, which is dedicated to ending street harassment, the organizers said Roberts encountered more than 100 instances of verbal street harassment within 10 hours. She endured countless other winks and whistles. The charity says women, people of color, gays, lesbians and transgenders are particularly susceptible to street harassment, which reminds victims that they are vulnerable to assault. Rob Bliss, who filmed the video from a camera hidden in his backpack as he walked in front of Roberts, told AFP that he wanted men to see what street harassment looks like and to empower women. "You can very quickly feel objectified and it's ugly," he said. He wants to show men "what street harassment looks like in plain broad daylight, how it makes people feel and leave it out there. "For women, I wanted to empower them a bit and talk about their own personal experiences, a lot of the time street harassment is something they can't remove themselves from," he said. Roberts said pestering is a daily reality for her. "I'm harassed when I smile and I'm harassed when I don't. I’m harassed by white men, black men, Latino men," she said. "Not a day goes by when I don't experience this." Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Why This Man Left His Fabulous $255,000 Job At Microsoft To Bootstrap A Startup (MSFT) | ||
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Adam Herscher's deeply personal story about leaving a prestigious and high-paying job at Microsoft to found a startup called HasMetrics went viral on LinkedIn the past couple of days. It struck a nerve, read by more than 400,000 people (and counting) and attracting more than 1,300 comments (and counting) so far, most of them supportive (he's read them all), he told Business Insider. Herscher's story goes like this: For nearly the past decade, Microsoft offered him a stable career with a fabulous paycheck, a situation he would have once called his dream job. "My salary straight out of college 9 years ago was $75,000. It was $10K-$15K over the Computer Science median at the time. I was ecstatic about the journey," he wrote. He did very well at the company. Every 18 months or so, he got a promotion and more money, "to the point where my salary upon leaving Microsoft at the end of 9 years ultimately amounted to: $254,895. I’ll just say… to the child of an immigrant and middle-class family, raised on sufficient but not excessive means, I can only describe that number as feeling both grossly obscene while at the same time a bit like: Well, I’ve made it." Herscher worked on some of Microsoft's biggest products: Windows, Windows Phone, Azure, System Center, and cloud services. But "then something happened." He started to feel like a cog in a big system. The paycheck started to feel like "golden handcuffs." Some of the projects he worked on succeeded. Some that he really cared about were killed. He says his decision to leave had three phases. The first was when he recognized his job was making him feel empty when he wanted to feel like he was changing the world. He started thinking about leaving. He "set a Mint.com goal to stash away enough cash, on top of retirement and rainy day savings, to live comfortably for at least 2 years without a paycheck." This stage lasted almost three years. The next stage happened when Microsoft reorganized his team and killed a project that he had worked very hard on. Herscher started writing pro/con lists about his great-paying job, ultimately deciding the pros won it. This stage lasted a couple of months. The final stage happened when he took a couple of days off and spent one with a friend working at a Seattle startup. The friend kept egging him to quit his job and pursue his startup idea. He went home that night, fired up his corporate email, and realized he could spend his whole life answering emails. He made another list that night and it said: "The project timing was right. The personal timing was right" to quit. So, with the full support of his significant other (who had a good job but not nearly Herscher's salary), the next day, he quit. He and his cofounder Sean Andersen (another Microsoftie), are bootstrapping their company. The viral post has caused several VCs to reach out, but he and his cofounder have a plan to go it alone for now, he told us. Their new startup is still in stealth, but Herscher told us it is a software-as-a-service to help companies make better use of their customer service folks. Instead of viewing customer service as an overhead drain, customer service reps, even in far away call centers, will be able to easily share customer feedback info with the people who are actually making the products and adding new features. Should his idea take off, it will turn the bane of customer service into a hotbed of new product ideas. Most importantly, he loves coming to work again. As one person on LinkedIn commented, "Inspiring, proving that money does not always equal happiness." SEE ALSO: 4 Great Stories About Bill Gates That Show What It Was REALLY Like To Work With Him Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Samsung posts 48.8% drop in Q3 net profit | ||
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Seoul (AFP) - Samsung Electronics said Thursday its third-quarter net profit plunged nearly 50 percent from a year ago to 4.22 trillion won ($4 billion). The South Korean electronics giant reported operating profit of 4.06 trillion won for July to September, down 60 percent from a year ago and slightly less than its earlier forecast of 4.1 trillion won. Sales also tumbled about 20 percent to 47.4 trillion won, Samsung said in a regulatory filing. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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The Antares Rocket Explosion Took 1,254 Pounds Of Student Science Experiments With It | ||
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An unmanned Antares rocket carrying nearly 5,000 pounds of supplies to the International Space Station exploded on Oct. 28, destroying everything aboard. "It's hard to describe what it was like other than simply to say it was an event where you're trying to process what you're seeing," Jeff Goldstein told Business Insider. Goldstein is the National Program Director for the Student Spaceflight Experiment Program (SSEP). One quarter of the cargo's weight — 1,254 pounds — came from 18 student scientific research projects chosen by the SSEP from a pool of 1,489 proposals. In partnership with NanoRacks, who operates the only commercial lab in space, and the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE), the SSEP offers students in the US and Canada the opportunity to design an experiment to send to the ISS. Students of all ages, from grade school up through university, can participate. The students often form groups of four or five, and sometimes as many as 30, to put together a proposal. Yesterday, Goldstein was with three of these groups on Wallops Island, Virginia to watch the launch. Moments after lift off, Goldstein recalled: "There was this enormous fireball and as we're trying to process this and understand what we're seeing, the shockwave ...hit us," Goldstein said. They were far enough away that the shockwave from the explosion was not strong enough to knock anyone down, but when it hit them the explosion became real, he said.
This was the sixth series of experiments that SSEP had scheduled for launch to the ISS. The seventh and eighth sets of experiments are already scheduled for launch 167 and 350 days from now, respectively. So is this it for the students whose projects met a fiery end? Not even close. "If we said, 'Oh, it's gone,' then we would be doing a terrible disservice," Goldstein said. The students will have to re-make their mini-lab experiments, but they will then be loaded onto another spacecraft. If there's room on the SpaceX launch scheduled for December 9, the students might not have long to wait. For Goldstein, finding a new launch is not the hardest part: "These students [at the launch] were in shock...This was something that was not expected and all of the sudden their experiments were lost, the rocket was lost, and they just saw catastrophic failure. The hard part is to make sure that these students hold onto the appropriate frame of mind," he said. In society, he explained, "we don't teach students that failure is part of life ...and it's important for them to recognize that [it is]." SSEP has a list of each group's experiments along with an explanation of what the experiment is and why it's important to the advancement of science research. Some of the experiments include:
Nearly 30 students in sixth and seventh grade at McGowan Park Elementary in British Columbia, Canada, conceived of an experiment to understand how the absence of gravity affects how fluids form crystals in the absence of gravity. Three sixth grade students from Urban Promise Academy in Oakland, California, want to investigate whether red worms can take food waste and compost it into soil in space like they do on Earth.
Four college students at George Washington University and Georgetown University (shown to the right) aim to investigate whether Chrysanthemum morifolium plants can remove harmful toxins form the air in space. Studies have shown that they have this ability on Earth and the students want to know whether these plants could be used to purify air on long-term space explorations. Four eight-grade students at Willkinson Middle School in Michigan designed an experiment that will study how iodine tablets affected E. coli in zero gravity, which could purify water on the ISS and other planets in the future if the experiment shows that tablets can kill E. coli bacteria. "Nobody said that spaceflight is easy," Goldstein said. "And if explorers felt that way we wouldn't be where we are [today]." Onward. SEE ALSO: Here's What Was In The 5,000 Pounds Of Cargo Destroyed In Tuesday's Rocket Explosion DON'T MISS: Incredible Photos Show The Sequence Of Tuesday Night's Rocket Explosion Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Taxi Association President Compares UberX To ISIS Terrorists | ||
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It's not often you hear ride-sharing compared to a terrorist group. But that's exactly what happened at a Philadelphia Parking Authority board meeting on Tuesday when President of the Pennsylvania Taxi Association Alex Friedman had some choice words about their competitor. "I try to equate this illegal operation of UberX as a terroristic act like ISIS invading the Middle East," said Friedman. "It is exactly the same menace." It's worth noting that the Philadelphia Parking Authority considers UberX to be illegally operating there. UberX claims to be cheaper (and faster) than a taxi. You can listen to Friedman make the comparison below: (h/t The Huffington Post) We've reached out to Uber for comment and will update this post when we hear back. SEE ALSO: Uber Says It Mistakenly Banned A Driver For Tweeting A Story About The Company Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Take A Tour Of Norway's Unbelievably Luxurious Prison | ||
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Norway's prison system is known as one of the most humane in the entire world. It may also be one of the most radical. "This is prison utopia," American prison warden James Conway said in "The Norden," a made-for-TV documentary. "I don't think you can go any more liberal — other than giving the inmates the keys." The production explored Conway's experience visting Halden. Click here to see the surprising accommodations »The 75-acre facility tries to maintain as much normalcy as possible, an important concept in the Norwegian prison system, Jan Stromnes, deputy head of the prison, said in the documentary. That means no bars on the windows, fully equipped kitchens, and friendships between guards and inmates. "Every inmates in Norwegian prison are going back to the society," Are Hoidel, Halden's director, said in another production by Gughi Fassino and Emanuela Zuccalà . "Do you want people who are angry — or people who are rehabilitated?" Like many prisons, Halden seeks to prepare inmates for life on the outside with vocational programs: wood-working, assembly workshops, and even a recording studio. Norway hasn't imposed the death penalty since 1979. Life sentences don't exist, putting the focus on rehabilitation instead of punishment. The Scandinavian country has an incarceration rate of 70 per 100,000, totaling 3,571 inmates for the entire country. The US' rate is more than 10 times Norway's — 707 per 100,000, or 2,228,424 people behind bars. At Halden, it's sometimes hard to tell the inmates and guards apart. Source: "Welcome to Halden Prison" Uniforms aren't required. Source: "Welcome to Halden Prison" And the guards and prisoners are friendly with each other. Source: "Welcome to Halden Prison" See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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Top Gear Is Going On The Ultimate Road Trip Again — And The Trailer Looks Amazing! | ||
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The BBC's smash hit car show "Top Gear" just released the trailer for its annual Holiday DVD, and it's as epic as expected. The DVD — "Top Gear Perfect Road Trip 2" — captures the show's hosts, Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond, as they take an epic journey through southern Europe. The DVD will not only be a follow-up to last year's "Top Gear Perfect Road Trip," installment 1 — it will also serve as somewhat of a do-over for the first sojourn, which did not end in an ideal manner. The first "Road Trip" concluded with Clarkson and Hammond on side of a damp French highway being accosted by police as the duo were issued driving bans for speeding. As for this year's road trip, Clarkson and Hammond will once again hit the Riviera in search of fast cars and fun times. From the looks of the trailer, they seem to have found them. The dynamic duo take to the streets in everything from a million-dollar McLaren P1 to a classic Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider to '80s-chic Ford Capris. The all-conquering Corvette Stingray also takes on Alfa Romeo's pint-sized 4C supercar, in a contest on the track. As with all "Top Gear" undertakings, comedy is must. Not only does Richard Hammond take a spill in a $100,000 Jaguar F-Type Coupe on what looks to be Italy's Mugello race track — he also fails to successfully order spaghetti bolognese in a restaurant!
Missing from all of this high-speed drama is the third member of the "Top Gear" team. So where was James May while Clarkson and Hammond were road-tripping? That mystery may be revealed later. SEE ALSO: Consumer Reports: This Mercedes Is '140% Worse Than The Average Car' Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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White House Officials Say John Kerry Is Lost In Space Like Sandra Bullock In 'Gravity' | ||
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The White House and the State Department might need to get together for some high-level talks. Just one day after a "senior administration official" sparked controversy after being quoted by The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg as calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a "chickenshit," anonymous White House officials have a new target: Secretary of State John Kerry. An article in The New York Times about a wide variety of international crises that have hit the Obama administration in recent months — from the rise of the Islamic State to its handling of Ebola in West Africa — contained an interesting nugget that demonstrates a deep disconnect between The White House and State: "Mr. Kerry is vocal and forceful in internal debates, officials said, but he frequently gets out of sync with the White House in his public statements. White House officials joke that he is like the astronaut played by Sandra Bullock in the movie 'Gravity,' somersaulting through space, untethered to the White House." Aides for Kerry told The Times they reject that portrait and said the secretary frequently dials into White House meetings. Kerry's team also said he put together a long memo for battling the Islamic State that the administration has followed. "Something is very wrong when White House officials openly ridicule the Secretary of State," tweeted Mike Doran, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution Center for Middle East Policy.
However, there have been some recent signs of tension. Kerry unleashed a litany of criticism towards the Obama administration in April after he said that Israel could become an "apartheid state" if peace talks with the Palestinians fail. While the White House defended Kerry in the ensuing controversy, the recent comments from the administration echo others in Israel, who mocked Kerry's attempt to broker a truce in Gaza. "It's as if he isn't the foreign minister of the world's most powerful nation," wrote Haaretz diplomatic correspondent Barak Havid in July, "but an alien, who just disembarked his spaceship in the Mideast." | ||
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Here's The Crazy Diet That Explains Why Al Sharpton Is Shrinking | ||
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The Reverend Al Sharpton used to weigh 305 pounds — no surprise, considering that the prominent reverend and activist used to incorporate fried chicken into all three meals of the day. He added fried chicken to breakfast with grits and eggs, to lunch in a sandwich, and to dinner, when he'd eat half a chicken. But about 15 years ago, his then 12-year-old daughter punched him in the belly and asked him why he was so fat, he recently told the New York Daily News. And that was more than the minister could take. "That was my inspiration to lose the weight. And probably the last time anyone hurt my feelings," he told the News. Now, while Sharpton's political presence may be as large as ever, the man himself is more than half gone weightwise — this week he weighed in at 129.6 pounds, about one pound above being classified as underweight, according to the National Institutes of Health's body mass index calculator. So how does that happen? Is it some special diet, bariatric surgery, or even some sort of illness? Nope. He stopped eating and started exercising. But when we say "stopped eating," we mean it.
With breakfast and lunch he drinks breakfast tea sweetened with stevia, which is basically calorie-free. Occasionally on the weekends he'll have some grilled fish. That's it, according to his interview with the Daily News. And he only added the juice, banana, and toast because a doctor told him he wasn't eating enough with just a lunchtime salad a day. He still doesn't eat any solid food after 6 p.m. That's about 1,000 calories and 26 grams of protein a day, less than half the normal "recommended diet." His workout is less intense, 20 minutes on the treadmill at 3 mph. So is it healthy, or is it an eating disorder? A doctor might recommend such a low-calorie diet for extreme weight loss, but it's likely overkill at this point — especially for someone teetering on the edge of being underweight. "Certainly compared to weighing 300 pounds, this is preferable," David Seres of the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University Medical Center told the News. But he might be pretty vulnerable if he got sick, according to Seres. "His intake would make a nutrition expert nervous." His meal plan may also seem a bit boring and not enough for most of us, to be sure, but Sharpton told the News that he isn't bothered by it. "I'm conditioned now so that I never get hungry," he said. SEE ALSO: John Oliver Takes On The Sugar Industry In His Latest Rant Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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His daily intake, as told to the News, is this: NYC Subway Named The Safest In The World For Women | ||
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New York City's subway has been named the safest public transit system in a global city in the world for women by the Thompson Reuters Foundation. Partnering with internet research firm YouGov, the nonprofit performed an Internet survey of women in the country's largest capitals in the world -- plus New York. Sixteen cities were examined in total. The study found that, in general, less developed countries fared worse than more highly developed ones. In the survey, women were asked if they felt safe on the system at night, their confidence in fellow riders interfering, and their general feelings about the safety of the transport in the city. Bogota, capital of Colombia, fared the worst. with Mexico City, Lima, and Delhi following. Women in these cities claimed a high rate of verbal and physical abuse with low rates of feeling safe at night and confidence in authorities. New York's score is benefited by plummeting crime rates in the last 15 years. In particular, about half of the women surveyed in New York reported a very high confidence that someone would intervene on their behalf Unfortunately, women in the city still reported a high rate of verbal harassment (which comes as no surprise). Check out the full rankings here. SEE ALSO: Candid Photos Of New Yorkers Riding The Subway In 1960 DON'T FORGET: Follow us on Facebook Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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CHART OF THE DAY: Apple's Capital Expenditure Is On The Rise (AAPL) | ||
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Apple's capital expenditure, or the money it spends on equipment and property each year, has more than quadrupled since 2010. Based on data from Apple's annual 10-K filing, which was charted for us by BI Intelligence, spending on plants and manufacturing equipment rose to $11 billion, from $7 billion in 2013. Apple predicts capital expenditure will leap again in fiscal 2015 to $13 billion. Asymco analyst Horace Dediu believes there's a relationship between Apple's growth in capital expenditures and revenue growth in new products. That certainly seems to fit the sudden rise in 2010 — that's when the first iPad launched — but CapEx is also an indicator of Apple's upcoming production schedule: In 2013, Apple announced it would, in 2014, open an Arizona plant to build sapphire displays, and also finally break ground on its second campus in Cupertino. In 2012, Apple reportedly "overspent" to secure production equipment previously owned by Sharp, which dramatically altered the company's forecast by about $2 billion. With at least one new product line debuting in 2015 — the Apple Watch — it's easy to see why Apple plans to spend so much capital on buildings and equipment next year.
SEE ALSO: CHART OF THE DAY: All Of Facebook's Revenue Growth Is Coming From Mobile Ads Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Sororities Are Charging Crazy Fees Like $100 For Showing Up Late To Events | ||
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So much for fashionably late. The New York Times' Risa C. Doherty recently examined the costs of joining a sorority, where extravagant gifts, pricey apparel, and elaborate crafts lead to a high price tag for college women who want to go Greek. Arguably, the most egregious of these is the late fee, where members (or members' parents, as it may be) may be charged as much as $100 when the sister is more than 15 minutes late to an event — that's over $6 a minute. Exceptions may be made only for excuses like a doctor's appointment or funeral, but not an impending paper or test. These fees, Doherty points out, tend not to appear with such fervor at fraternities, which aren't known for financially penalizing tardiness. And, on top of all the other costs, $100 here and there really adds up. According to the Times, sorority costs for the first semester alone average $1,570 at University of Georgia sororities, $1,130 at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and $1,580 at Syracuse University. This estimate doesn't include housing. In addition to the late fees, here are some of the other costs listed in the article:
If it seems unbelievable that every member can swing the steep costs, that's because it is: Doherty profiles several sisters who had to leave the fold because of financial concerns (no refunds are provided). SEE ALSO: I Paid Off My Student Loans In 3 Years By Taking A Job Abroad Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Striking Photographs Show The Accidental Beauty Of Brooklyn's Toxic Gowanus Canal | ||
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The Gowanus Canal — the 2-mile waterway that connects the factories and industries of inner Brooklyn to the New York Harbor and the rest of the world — is widely considered to be one of the most polluted areas in the world. Photographer and artist Steven Hirsch set out to capture the pollution, but along the way, he found unexpected beauty in the area as well. Hirsch's photographs of the canal depict the multitude of contaminates and chemicals floating on the slimy surface. It certainly doesn't look like clear, clean water, but those unsettling characteristics also create odd and sometimes striking geometric shapes, swirls, and a variety of psychedelic colors, likened by many to abstract painting. "“I would sit there on the side of the canal, and what looked like a giant painting by Monet would be there in front of me, hovering on the surface of the water," Hirsch says. The photographs will be on display at the Lilac Gallery in New York City starting on November 12. Hirsch shared a selection of the images here. More of his work can be seen on his website. When the area we now know as New York City was first being settled and developed in the 1600s, the Gowanus Canal was a tidal inlet full of plant life and vegetation. As early as the first part of the 1700s, however, the waterway developed into a high-traffic shipping channel and its shores became a popular site for industry, like mills, factories, tanneries, and warehouses. With its long history of industrial and commercial use, the Gowanus Canal has a tradition of pollution. Today, its waters are widely considered to be some of the most contaminated in the world. According to the EPA, "as a result of years of discharges, storm water runoff, sewer outflows and industrial pollutants," the area was named a Superfund site in 2010. See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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