2016 was a big year for research and discovery in space. The year started off with Caltech astronomers picking up the presence of a ninth planet while researchers at LIGO were detecting gravitational waves for the first time. NASA’s Juno spacecraft finally arrived in orbit around Jupiter, and astronomers found the closest exoplanet to Earth. Blue Origin showed off their suborbital rocket reusability skills and Elon Musk revealed a plan to colonize Mars. Not to mention the huge developments for SpaceX, which successfully landed a Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship in the ocean for the first time, but then suffered a devastating explosion later in the year. These are the top events for space in 2016.
Category: News and Views
These facts about millennials and driving will blow your mind (Allstate) | Mashable
When it comes to driving, car ownership and vehicle maintenance, millennials’ status as OG digital natives is especially evident.
Millennials love their apps. There is literally an app for almost every element of the daily routine: waking up, meditating (important to this health-obsessed, new-agey generation), keeping track of finances and managing the morning commute. There’s even an app to tell them when to drink water.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that millennials depend heavily upon apps when they hit the road. Navigation systems are huge: In fact, millennials say nav apps are the number one technology they use when en route.
Wells Fargo’s Hometown Penalizes Bank Amid Fake-Accounts Scandal | Bloomberg
Wells Fargo & Co., the bank working to contain a scandal over bogus accounts, was suspended from doing some business with its hometown of San Francisco.
The city’s Board of Supervisors on Tuesday suspended the firm for two years from providing services as a broker dealer, in commercial banking and in commercial paper. The measure, sponsored by Supervisor John Avalos, also removed Wells Fargo from securities investments and counterparty/repurchasing agreements. San Francisco had barred the lender in September from a banking program for low-income residents.
Retail sales show massive shift in restaurant industry | Business Insider
Within the retail sales report, however, was an interesting nugget that may be worrying for America’s major restaurant chains.
The percentage of retail sales devoted to bars and restaurants compared with food and beverage stores was nearly the smallest gap in decades, according to Bespoke Investment Group.
The ‘Uber for X’ Fad Will Pass Because Only Uber Is Uber | WIRED
“UBER FOR X” has been the headline of more than four hundred news articles. Thousands of would-be entrepreneurs used the phrase to describe their companies in their pitch decks. On one site alone—AngelList, where startups can court angel investors and employees—526 companies included “Uber for” in their listings. As a judge for various emerging technology startup competitions, I saw “Uber for” so many times that at some point, I developed perceptual blindness.
Nearly all the organizations I advised at that time wanted to know about the “Uber for” of their respective industries. A university wanted to develop an “Uber for tutoring”; a government agency was hoping to solve an impending transit issue with an “Uber for parking.” I knew that “Uber for” had reached critical mass when one large media organization, in need of a sustainable profit center, pitched me their “Uber for news strategy.”
6 million borrowers are 90 days late on their car loans | Money Cnn
Roughly six million auto borrowers with shoddy credit scores are at least 90 days late on making their loan payments, according to new figures released by the New York Federal Reserve. The percentage of delinquent subprime auto loans has raced to the highest level since 2010.
Since the end of the Great Recession, there’s been an explosion of auto loans, growing to more than $1.1 trillion. That, along with a far stronger economy, has helped fuel a boom in U.S. auto sales.
While Detroit’s sales slowed down earlier this year due to rising prices, General Motors (GM) and Ford (F) on Thursday said sales accelerated in November. The industry is now back on track for record sales in 2016. It could be the eighth-straight year of increases.
But part of those sales may have been fueled by easy availability of credit for borrowers with poor credit, who are evidently now struggling to pay off those loans.
Here’s everything AWS will announce today | TechCrunch
Amazon is hosting the second of two major keynotes at its re:Invent developer conference in Las Vegas today. TechCrunch has received detailed notes on the contents of today’s keynote, which will be delivered by Amazon CTO, Werner Vogels. We already knew he was going to talk about DevOps and containers today, but here are a few more details of what to expect. The keynote is scheduled to start at 8:30am PT.
AWS Personal Health Dashboard
AWS Personal Health Dashboard will give developers data on the health of the infrastructure that is running their applications. This is the kind of operational data that companies are used to having on their applications — and should make DevOps teams feel a lot more comfortable using AWS to launch their cloud applications.
Nokia Android phones are coming early next year | Mashable
Fallen mobile phone giant Nokia is about to (attempt to) rise again next year with new phones — this time based on Android.
The plan has been known for a while, but it’s now official, as the company itself confirmed it in a press release Thursday.
The new Nokias will be manufactured by Foxconn subsidiary FIH Mobile and sold by a Finnish company called HMD Global, which will have an exclusive global license for the Nokia brand for the next ten years. This means another Android player has emerged in the overcrowded market, albeit one with a familiar brand name.
The story of the new, new Nokia is somewhat complex, so here’s a little background: Microsoft bought Nokia’s struggling mobile phone division in 2013 for $7.2 billion but it ditched the Nokia brand the following year, instead calling its mobile phones Microsoft Lumia.
New Overtime Rules Suspended for Now | Payroll link
Many employers have been wrestling with plans to comply with new U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) overtime rules since last May. That’s when the rules were finalized, with a December 1 compliance deadline. Those new rules included raising the minimum salary overtime exemption to $913 per week from $455. A little more than a week before the deadline for the rules was to take effect, a federal court has issued an injunction, at least temporarily blocking implementation of the changes.
In its decision, the court stated it believes the DOL exceeded its authority in promulgating the rule. In addition, the court said the DOL failed to follow Congress’s intent, which was to reexamine the duties test of the overtime rules, and not to focus solely on the salary level, as the final rules do.
The DOL’s initial response was to state that it “strongly disagrees” with the ruling, and is “currently considering all of our legal options.” A couple of short-term legal scenarios remain possible: The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, which issued the ruling, could drop its temporary injunction.
Here’s Why Hostility Could Be Harmful to Women’s Hearts | Live Science
NEW ORLEANS — Hostility is linked to poor heart health, and a new study reveals what may happen in women’s bodies that may explain this link.
Scientists have known that, in women, optimism is associated with a reduced risk for heart disease, and that “cynical hostility” — or a general mistrust of other people — has been linked to a higher risk for heart disease, according to a previous study.
What has been unclear, however, is what mechanism optimism and hostility act through to influence women’s heart health. In other words, why do these traits have such effects on heart disease risk?
