Category: News and Views

How does a company’s CEO pay compare to its workers’? Now you can find out. | Vox

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In 2018, corporate America will give up a data point it would probably rather keep under wraps: how much CEOs make in comparison to their employees.

For the first time, a new Securities and Exchange Commission rule mandated under the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform requires publicly traded companies to disclose how their CEOs are compensated in comparison with their employees. In public filings, companies have to disclose their “pay ratios,” or the CEO’s compensation divided by the median employee’s. The numbers are pretty jarring.

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A South Korean university is building killer robots — and AI experts are not happy | Vice

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Some 50 artificial intelligence experts signed a letter Wednesday criticizing a South Korean university for collaborating with a weapons manufacturer to build killer robots.

Defense company Hanwha Systems, which already deploys autonomous weapons on the North Korean border, recently teamed up with the state-run Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology to investigate further deployment of AI technology on the battlefield.

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Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy | Wait But Why

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Say hi to Lucy.

Lucy is part of Generation Y, the generation born between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s. She’s also part of a yuppie culture that makes up a large portion of Gen Y.

I have a term for yuppies in the Gen Y age group—I call them Gen Y Protagonists & Special Yuppies, or GYPSYs. A GYPSY is a unique brand of yuppie, one who thinks they are the main character of a very special story.

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Wally App: Personal Finance App Review | Gen X Finance

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Wally App Review, Personal Finance App

wally app

The first step to reigning in your finances is keeping track of what you spend.  Experts used to recommend writing down expenditures, or using some sort of setting goals worksheet but with technology being as advanced as it is today, cash logs are quickly becoming a thing of the past.  Mobile apps are readily accessible and easy to use.  There’s a variety of personal finance applications that do all the grunt work for you.  Wally happens to do just that. If you’re struggling to keep track of your finances and the receipts that you’re given after a purchase, you’ll find it a valuable, mobile tool to have on hand, especially with my grocery budget.  Available through iTunes, the personal finance app is one of the best of its kind.  Complete with all the tools you need to track your spending, you won’t need to download multiple apps to manage your expenses.

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Love to Text and Walk Cluelessly? Prepare to Pay a Fine for That | Bloomberg

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This really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who’s done it: You are just no good at texting and walking.

While you might do OK at the reading and typing part, your preoccupied brain isn’t paying enough attention to what’s going on with your feet. It’s such a hazard that Honolulu last month adopted an ordinance to outlaw smartphone use by pedestrians crossing streets. Now Stamford, Connecticut, may become the second U.S. city this year to combat the problem with fines.

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These platforms want to help you discover (and afford) craft wine | CNN Money

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It’s hard to imagine a world before craft beer. Could we one day feel the same about craft wine?

Boutique wineries across the country are producing small batches of everything from pinot noir to chardonnay, but it can be difficult for us twenty-somethings to find — let alone afford — those wines.

Your go-to vino is likely made by one of three major producers that account for over half of the U.S. wine market, according to a 2016 Michigan State University study. Plus, many boutique wineries make less than 1,000 cases per year and sell mainly through pricey wine clubs, making them hard to access.

Online platforms like Winestyr and Glassful are trying to change that.

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Goldman Sachs may have lost $100 million on bad natural gas bet | Business Insider

~ knjohn ~ 2 Comments

A sour bet on the direction of natural gas prices contributed to Goldman Sachs’ weak performance in commodities trading during the second quarter.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the bank had wrongly bet on an increase in gas prices in the Marcellus shale in Ohio and Pennsylvania, as a major pipeline was being constructed to export from the region.

Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners is spearheading the $4.2 billion Rover natural-gas line in question, which would move gas from the Marcellus shale to the Midwest.

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Can Ice Cream Vans Stage a Comeback? | BBC News

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For many of us, the distinctive chimes of an ice cream van conjure up happy childhood memories of British summers and dripping ice lollies.

But the number of ice cream vans has been falling for years, leading some to believe that those bells may mean nothing to future generations of children.

A crop of small, family-run businesses is determined to keep the industry alive however.

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Amazon opens up access to developer tools for adding Alexa to commercial products | TechCrunch

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Amazon wants to make its virtual assistant Alexa available on more devices, instead of just its own hardware. To that end, the company today is broadly opening up access to developer tools that will allow commercial device makers to build products powered by Alexa. With the launch of the Alexa Voice Service Device SDK toolset, companies can add a fully functional version of Alexa to their devices that’s able to handle speech recognition, as well as other Alexa functionality, like streaming media, using timers and alarms, notifications, weather reports, and accessing the thousands of voice apps, known as Alexa skills.

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