Playing Monopoly: What Facebook’s Mark Zuckergerg Can Learn From Bill Gates | WIRED

August 1, 2018 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

POP QUIZ: WHAT tech mogul dropped out of Harvard after two years to found a tech company that conquered the world? If you answered Mark Zuckerberg, congratulations! You are correct. And if you answered Bill Gates, congratulations: You are also correct!

And the interesting thing is, it’s not just Harvard. The more you compare the two, the more similar they seem. It’s as if they were cloned from the same DNA: They both were born the only boy into a wealthy family. They both have doting, indulgent mothers, who believed they could do no wrong and instilled in them both a preternatural self confidence.

Snapchat Is Shutting Down Snapcash, Its Peer-to-Peer Payment Service | Digital Trends

July 30, 2018July 29, 2018 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Snapchat’s woes show no sign of ending, and the latest casualty in the company is Snapcash, the peer-to-peer payment service. It’s likely that you’ve never heard of — much less used — the service, which makes its shuttering less of a surprise.

Part of Snapcash’s problem is that it wasn’t always used for the most innocent of purposes. Rather than splitting bills or sending back some money for the pizza you stole from your roommate, Snapcash tended to be used to pay adult entertainers for content on Snapchat. In short, it was probably more bane than boon to Snapchat proper.

Tesla surprises fans with $1,500 limited edition surfboards | Mashable

July 30, 2018July 29, 2018 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Is Tesla taking merch too far?

Elon Musk has a knack for selling weird branded merchandise that has nothing to do with what his companies actually do — remember The Boring Company’s flamethrowers? Or the $400 leather jackets made from the same automotive grade leather that adorns Tesla interiors?

Tesla added surfboards to its gift shop on Saturday. The surfboards, which were briefly available for the perfectly reasonable price of $1,500, is a collaboration between Tesla Design Studio and Lost Surfboards.

Twitter stock tumbles 15% after it purged fake accounts | Money CNN

July 27, 2018 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The number of people on Twitter fell during the three months ending in June as it worked to clean up the platform and comply with new privacy regulations.

The social network said Friday that it had 335 million monthly users around the world in the second quarter, down from 336 million users in the quarter prior. The number of users could also decline in the third quarter, Twitter warned.

The company attributed the dip in part to “decisions we have made to prioritize the health of the platform” and, to a lesser extent, complying with sweeping new data protection regulations in Europe.

The stock fell 15% in premarket trading Friday after the earnings results.

D.B. Cooper: Investigators Claim They’ve Discovered Skyjacker’s Identity | Rolling Stone

July 26, 2018July 25, 2018 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

A team of former FBI investigators is claiming to have proof of the real identity of D.B. Cooper, the notorious airplane hijacker who has remained at large since he parachuted out of a Seattle-bound plane with $200,000 in November 1971. According to filmmaker and author Thomas Colbert – who has led the independent investigation into the cold case for the last seven years – the real Cooper is a 74-year-old Vietnam veteran named Robert Rackstraw. And the proof is hidden in a series of letters allegedly written by Cooper in the months after the hijacking and his disappearance.

French school to kids: Wear this tracking device or pay a $12 fine | Fast Company

July 24, 2018July 23, 2018 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The time-honored tradition of skipping school may soon be a thing of the past.

A French school has announced that it would like students to carry Bluetooth-enabled tracking devices so teachers always know where they are, especially if they are not in class.

Prime Day 2018 Results: $1 Billion in Sales for Small Business on Day 1 | Small Business Trends

July 23, 2018July 23, 2018 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Small businesses who took part in the 36-hour event experienced great numbers. In some cases, small business sales were 10 to 100 times higher than their average day. In an Amazon press release, a few small businesses shared their thoughts as the day was just beginning.

“Prime Day is just getting started for us, but we’re already seeing 10 times our average day sales,” said Kelly Fedio of One Savvy Life,

“We’re having our biggest day ever! So far this Prime Day, we’ve sold 102 times more units than an average day.” said Victor Chang of Furbo.

Trump tariffs: Fed says manufacturers in all its districts are worried | Business Insider

July 19, 2018July 18, 2018 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The manufacturers most affected by US tariffs on imported goods are worried about their future, according to the Federal Reserve.

The Fed’s Beige Book, which compiles anecdotes on business activity from across its 12 districts, showed Wednesday that manufacturers in all districts expressed concern about tariffs. In many districts, manufacturers said US trade policy had driven up their costs and disrupted supply.

Minneapolis officials keep teen’s hot dog stand in business | BBC News

July 19, 2018July 18, 2018 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

After a complaint threatened to shutter a young boy’s hotdog stand, US city officials decided instead to rally behind him to keep it open.

Jaequan Faulkner, 13, has been selling hotdogs outside his home in North Minneapolis, in the Midwestern state of Minnesota, since 2016.

His stand was at risk of closure after someone reported him for not having a permit, local media say.

Instead, city staff helped him obtain a permit and get back to work on Monday.

Why Silicon Valley Is So Good at Making People Hate Things They Should Love | Inc.com

July 18, 2018July 17, 2018 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

To anyone who has spent time in a great metropolis, San Francisco can only be experienced as a collection of dysfunctions interrupted by the occasional nice view. The housing market is the stuff of nightmares. Traffic heading in and out of town sits gridlocked for hours a day. The overcrowded public transit system primarily serves a narrow corridor of neighborhoods. Whole tracts of the city are weirdly barren of restaurants or supermarkets.

And let’s not even start on the ways this increasingly wealthy city fails its large homeless population.

All this dysfunction creates a ready market for consumer-focused startups that can ease the suck a little. It’s no accident that Uber, Airbnb, and Instacart all started here. And so it was when app-enabled electric scooters started showing up on the streets of San Francisco in March, a lot of people wanted to ride them. Cheap, convenient, zero-emissions transportation that gets you exactly where you’re going–that’s something that would improve every city, not just one this broken.