Author: knjohn

The next clash of Silicon Valley titans will take place in space | Digital Trends

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Like one of those comic book supervillain crossovers where The Joker meets Lex Luthor or Doctor Doom takes on Magneto, the world’s biggest tech companies are battling one another — with Earth as their ultimate prize.

That might sound a bit melodramatic, but it also sums up a recent trend by Silicon Valley companies looking to bring the internet to our planet’s furthest reaches by launching their very own internet satellites into orbit. Far from some obscure skunkworks project from companies with way too much money, however, these launches have the possibility to finally make the world the hyper-connected place that tech giants dream of. At stake? The chance to connect every last person on the planet to the internet. Oh, and many, many billions of dollars, too.

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Sam Mustafa’s Tips for Obtaining “Regulars” in the Restaurant Business | The Startup Magazine

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The regular customer is the backbone of every restaurant’s business. Regulars fill seats and they are more likely to recommend their favorite restaurants to their friends and families. Experienced restaurateur Sam Mustafa from Charleston, South Carolina shares his tips and tricks for new restaurant owners who want to attract regular customers.

Remember their Names

In a larger restaurant, this may be difficult, but make sure that your manager and your most loyal wait staff know the names and families of the regulars. Nothing makes a customer feel more special than walking into a restaurant and being recognized as a regular. It is an ego boost to the customer and creates instant goodwill.

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4 Things To Know About Property Valuation In Real Estate | The Startup Magazine

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The value of a property can best be described as its current worth that relates to the future benefits that will be drawn from it by its rightful owners. Real estate property isn’t quickly consumed as compared to other goods. As such, the benefits of it are always seen after long time periods.

The estimate of the value of real estate property takes into consideration factors such as social and economic trends, environmental conditions, and government regulations that have been set, all of which go a long way in influencing the property valuation.

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How TerraCycle Persuaded Unilever, Nestle, and Procter & Gamble to Redesign Their Product Packaging | Inc.com

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Take a look at your pantry or maybe the cupboard where you keep the cleaning supplies. Chances are, most of the household products you buy are packaged in plastic. About one-third of the world’s plastic winds up in the ocean, according to the World Economic Forum–that amounts to a garbage truck’s worth of plastic dumped into the sea every minute. Meanwhile, only 14 percent of it is collected to be recycled.

A New Jersey company called TerraCycle thinks it’s time for a better, more radical solution: zero waste. Under the company’s Loop system, which launches in April, containers are designed to be reused. As in: You’ll be using the same bottle that someone–or a lot of people–has already used.

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The government is about to permanently bar the IRS from creating a free electronic filing system | TechCrunch

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Thanks to pressure from tax preparation industry, Congress is getting ready to ban the Internal Revenue Service from ever building a free electronic tax filing system.

As ProPublica reports, the effort is a bipartisan one. The House Ways and Means Committee, led by Massachusetts Democrat, Richard Neal, passed the Taxpayer First Act.

The bill would make changes to the IRS and is sponsored by Georgia Democratic Congressman John Lewis and Mike Kelly, a Republican from Pennsylvania.

One of its stipulations would make it illegal for the IRS to create its own online system for tax filing. That’s right, members of Congress are prohibiting a branch of the federal government from providing a much-needed service that would make the lives of all of their constituents much easier.

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A New Breed of ATM Hackers Gets in Through a Bank’s Network | WIRED

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OVER THE PAST few years, scammers have increasingly siphoned cash off of digital payment networks, stealing hundreds of millions of dollars so far. Not only is the problem hard to contain; new findings show that it’s evolving and maturing, with new types of ATM malware on the rise.

Researchers at the Kaspersky Security Analyst Summit in Singapore are presenting findings on Wednesday about a new wave of payment system scams. Beyond so-called jackpotting attacks, which cause individual ATMs to spit out money, hackers are manipulating ATM networks and the digital authentication checks in the machines to cash out fraudulent transfers they initiate around the globe.

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Difficult Conversations Can Jump Start Company Innovation | Entrepreneur

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Harley-Davidson was in trouble in the early eighties. The booming popularity of imported Japanese motorcycles cut Harley’s market share from 75 percent to a flickering 25 percent. To protect the homegrown brand’s viability, CEO Vaughn Beals adopted an authoritarian stance modeled after the fearsomely efficient managers at his Japanese competitors.

Beals slashed his workforce by 40 percent, overhauled the manufacturing process, and doubled down on promotional marketing tactics to win back market share and save the HOG.

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5 Expectations You Need to Set for Every Employee | Getentrepreneurial.com

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Even if you’ve never owned a business and you’ve never managed a team of people before, you should have at least a rough idea of the value of setting proper expectations. For example, if you walk into an account management role expecting to only manage client relationships, but you end up having to tackle tons of administrative responsibilities too, you might end up disappointed. Alternatively, you could focus only on what you were expecting to accomplish, but your boss will end up disappointed.

Expectations are a form of communication that remove ambiguities from language, clear up any misconceptions in advance, and help all parties walk into a relationship with clear understandings of the values, significance, and direction of that relationship. Clear communication of expectations, well in advance, is critical for a healthy employer-employee relationship.

That being said, some expectations can go without saying. So how do you know which expectations you have to set for your employees?

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Corn-based lacquer heals its scratches when heated | New Atlas

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It’s certainly a hassle when a car gets a big paint-scratch, but smaller scratches in its clear coat are much more common and still unsightly. A new corn-based transparent finish could help, as its scratches heal up when subjected to heat.

Developed by scientists at Germany’s Leibniz Institute for New Materials, working with colleagues at Saarland University, the “Nanomer” lacquer incorporates ring-shaped molecules known as cyclodextrins.

Derived from corn starch, these are threaded like pearls onto long-chain polymer molecules. The cyclodextrins are then able to move freely along the length of those chains, but are kept from falling off the ends by large “stopper” molecules. All of the cyclodextrin-loaded long-chain polymer molecules are in turn cross-linked to one another, via a chemical reaction.

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