A primary culprit for this decline is a decrease in the number of distinct songs that appear in the Hot 100 each year. Songs now stay on the chart longer, which does not allow for as many hits. Prior to 1985, no song had ever stayed on the charts for more than 50 weeks; this now happens regularly.
The Office of Technology, Research and Investigation will explore the effect of algorithms on markets.Should that lead to even more scrutiny of algorithm-based price-fixing, the bots may find that they’re no match for human will.
Well over 10 million American workers and their families' incomes depend entirely or at least partially on the incomes of truck drivers. (But) robot trucks will kill far fewer people and also dont need salaries.
We're forever thankful to Silicon Valley for giving us the iPhone, omnipotent search engines, and swipe-simple hookups. But now that America's most vaunted industry has also become its most self-satisfied, Silicon Valley is veering toward fall-of-Rome territory. Which is why it needs to blow up the myths about itself before it's too late
"We started asking ourselves, Why can't TVs act more like smartphones?" Smartphones and tablets never turn completely off when not in use, and thus don't need to laboriously reboot when they're activated.
How self-checkouts, ATMs and airport check-ins are changing the economy.
Extended flip-flop use seems to transport people across some sort of etiquette Rubicon where the distinction between public and private, inside and outside, shod and barefoot, breaks down entirely.
(It) was not programmed to play poker, per se. It was given the rules of poker. Then it spent months playing more hands against itself than humans have ever played, learning to navigate the dizzying number of game situations, a figure that exceeds the number of atoms in the universe.
The stock market places a lower valuation on original research than it did three decades ago. Corporate executives, their compensation tied overwhelmingly to short-term gains in the market value of their companies, may be responding accordingly. Rather than invest in their own science, big companies more easily buy innovative start-ups.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude exporter, could phase out the use of fossil fuels by the middle of this century the kingdom’s oil minister said. The kingdom plan(s) to become a “global power in solar and wind energy” and could start exporting electricity instead of fossil fuels.
Now everyone has a smartphone and a lot of those employers at least tacitly suggest you be available 24/7, so courts are more willing to see that as company policy. Judges appear to be taking seriously allegations of uncompensated remote work, and have been more willing to certify the lawsuits as collective actions.
The problem with patterns (is that) the human mind is incapable of swallowing them whole, so we curate them instead. Inevitably, what we recognize is our own image.
Today's dogs, from the Chihuahua to the Great Dane, are believed to have descended from wild wolves domesticated by humans in prehistoric times. Using genetic information, dog domestication occurred between 27,000 and 40,000 years ago.
This year alone, about a dozen books will be published about him, and two movies will be released. Surely a Netflix series can’t be far behind.
Following a ban on phone use, schools' test scores improved by 6.4%. The impact on underachieving students was much more significant -- their average test scores rose by 14%.
FBN has accrued 7 million acres’ worth of data with lots of room to grow; in the U.S. there were roughly 400 million acres used for crops. Half of the farms in the U.S. could directly use this
The era of the overeducated barista is here to stay. Today’s young-person problem is about a lack of good jobs, a dearth of raises, and a shortage of opportunities for this historically educated generation to put its historic number of degrees to work.
Apple is saying that RadioShack’s database contains information gathered about Apple customers who bought iPhones and iPads through the retailer. Apple lawyers wrote that RadioShack had agreed to protect Apple customers’ data before being allowed to sell iPhones.
Earnings are a performance measure. You start with revenues and subtract all the resources you used up to generate that revenue. Human capital is one of those resources. Backing out stock-compensation expense is tantamount to saying employees are working for free.
Wearable technology could drop hospital costs by 16 percent over five years, and remote patient-monitoring technologies could save health-care $200 billion over the next 25 years. Lowering health insurance and cutting hospital costs will be the real reason wearable will be sustainable.
The divorce rate in relation to the marriage rate is going down. Marriage is now what you do after you’ve accumulated the other accoutrements of adulthood: the education, the job, the social capital, even the fully stocked kitchen and furnished living room. Marriage isn’t fundamental anymore. It’s aspirational.
As technology grows increasingly complex, companies must navigate a web of intellectual property protections. Are innovation and competition suffering from the race to create enormous patent portfolios?
Institutional rigidities don’t permit adjustments to occur all at once. It is difficult to be sure when a reset is underway, and it is harder yet to raise public alarm about changes that seem to be gradual and slow.
When the world realizes that getting stuff fixed isn’t a hassle anymore (it) could influence the design strategies of the appliance brands it sells, and change what consumers expect from the other tech devices in their lives…at which point Sears could service those gizmos, or entirely unrelated product categories.
Incitements to beat up the other guy too often lead to beating up yourself or your people.
"The only difference between a smartphone and a computer is the monitor, the keyboard, the mouse and the operating system."
Starbucks recently announced a new drink size, the mini. Before the mini, there were only 3 drink sizes (and thus 3 data points). When you only have 3 data points, you can’t do much in the way of making a mathematical model. However, 4 data points might be just enough.
Airbnb is helping constrict housing supply and drive up rental costs. Also, the growing popularity of Airbnb could kill hotel jobs and replace them with a handful of lower-paying domestic worker gigs.
Many of the tech-related behaviors we associate with millennials—connecting over social networks rather than in real life, buying smartphones instead of cars—should be viewed as adaptations to difficult economic circumstances as much as an embrace of the shiny and new.
Federal agents do not have unlimited power to search electronic devices without a warrant. “Given the vast storage capacity of even the most basic laptops, and the capacity of computers to retain metadata and even deleted material, one cannot treat an electronic storage device like a handbag simply because you can put things in it."
The company gather(s) 20 to 30 employees and asks them go through their social media contacts, with recruiters right there to follow up on potential candidates. Breaking down a huge question (“Do you know anyone we should hire?) into lots of small, manageable ones (“Do you know anyone who would be a good salesperson in New York?”) boosted referrals by more than a third.
Compared with satellite imagery, drone mapping can produce data faster, at a higher resolution and a far cheaper price.
Hey, whaddya know? When the majority of consumers in an economy get only a sliver of its financial gains, they tend not to spend what little they have. Especially when they dont see anything changing anytime soon. In a huge shock to economists, consumers actually did what consumers said they would do rather than what economists' models predicted. And economists still don't believe it. They are looking for 3% growth this year, whereas I think the US is in recession.
Our allegiances have rarely seemed more divided than they do now. The emerging global nature of economic, political, and social activity must coexist with a patchwork of non-state structures of association.
RadioShack said the information it was selling included 8.5 million e-mail addresses, 67 million customer name and physical address files, and transaction data. The proposed sale of customer information drew objections from 37 state attorneys general, who expressed concern about how a buyer might use the data
Whatever you think about Facebook, they have refocused our attention on the importance of architecting apps and experiences with network performance and speed — something Google made us aware of 11 years ago. Design is not the pretty face, but the entire experience.
The success of Uber has inspired hundreds of startups to call themselves the “Uber of X, Y, or Z.” The best marketplaces have high-purchase frequency and regular usage.
Happiness has been key to capitalism ever since, in the 19th century, it was shown that happy workers were more productive, “a route to sell people stuff they don’t need, work harder for managers who don’t respect them and conform to objectives over which they have no say.”
Beluga whales can grow up to 15 feet long, and weigh up to 3,500 pounds; they don't particularly like being air mailed.
'How much money your parents have is more important than your own talent. That's the opposite of meritocracy.'
He "hacked" the [in-flight entertainment] system. He stated that he then overwrote code on the airplane’s Thrust Management Computer while aboard a flight. He stated that he successfully commanded the system he had accessed to issue the climb command
A new class of buyer has entered the market and they’re prepared to pay staggering sums for trophy pictures. Much of the bidding is conducted on the telephone by rich American, Russian, Latin American, Korean and Chinese collectors.
Competition intensifies between key players in the increasingly mature smartphone industry. Foxconn is being hit by Apple’s efforts to secure its supply chain via greater diversification.
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As a Partner and Co-Founder of Predictiv and PredictivAsia, Jon specializes in management performance and organizational effectiveness for both domestic and international clients. He is an editor and author whose works include Invisible Advantage: How Intangilbles are Driving Business Performance.
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