Steve Conley got the call early on Nov. 5. A natural gas storage well was leaking methane into the air at Aliso Canyon, near a Los Angeles suburb, and no one knew just how bad it was—could he get a read on it? Conley, an atmospheric scientist and a pilot, rushed to a small airport northeast of Sacramento. He’s flown more than 1,500 hours measuring emissions over oil and gas operations in one of his two single-engine Mooneys. Tubes mounted on each Mooney’s right wing suck air into two chemical analyzers stored in the luggage compartment. Soon Conley was soaring south across California’s Central Valley.
Category: News and Views
BuildDirect Wants To Become The Amazon Of The Home Improvement Industry, Launches Marketplace | TechCrunch
BuildDirect is an online marketplace for buying home improvement products. Today, the company is opening its platform to third-party sellers with the launch of its Home Marketplace.
Unsurprisingly, selling heavyweight products like flooring and roofing materials online takes a very different approach to logistics than selling books. As BuildDirect’s co-founder and CEO Jeff Booth and its VP of marketing Joe Thompson told me, the company spent the last few years perfecting its approach to how it ships its goods around the U.S. and Canada.
While the Vancouver, B.C.-based company can’t use FedEx or UPS to ship its goods, though, it’s still taking a page out of Amazon’s playbook by using data analysis to predict demand and adjust pricing to manage it.
Flint Mayor: Lead Water Pipe Replacement Being Worked On | ABC News
A plan to remove and replace all lead water pipes in Flint homes will cost $55 million, the city’s mayor said Tuesday.
Households were residents are deemed to be high-risk will be given priority for pipe replacement, Mayor Karen Weaver said at a news conference.
“We’re going to restore safe drinking water one house at a time, one child at a time,” she said. “All lead pipes need to be replaced. We deserve new pipes because we did not deserve what happened.”
Flint’s water supply was switched from Detroit water to the Flint River as a cost-saving measure in 2014, when Flint was under state-appointed emergency management. The untreated river water caused lead to leach from old pipes. Flint has since switched back to Detroit water.
Facebook Has Three Months To Comply With Data Protection Laws, France Warns | Forbes
Facebook needs to beef up its privacy protections in France or it could face sanctions.
On Monday, the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL)—a data protection authority in France—issued Facebook a formal notice that the social media giant must update its data collection practices within the next three months. The CNIL levels that several of Facebook’s practices don’t comply with the French Data Protection Act.
How Vicis Designed the Zero1, the Helmet That Could Save the NFL | Inc.com
Over 5,000 former players have sued the league over the brain injuries suffered during their careers, and a slew of high-profile former NFL players and coaches have said they won’t let their children play the game.
One thing is clear: If football safety doesn’t change soon, America’s most popular sport will be in jeopardy. Ideas fill a whiteboard in Vicis’s Seattle office.
Enter Vicis, a Seattle startup whose self-appointed mission is to create a helmet that reduces the risk of concussions. The company’s first product, the Zero1, features a pliable outer layer and an impact-absorbing core layer that cushions the wearer’s head against violent collisions–all, for the most part, while maintaining the look and shape of a classic helmet. The company has received $10 million in funding, including a $500,000 grant from the NFL. The helmets will be available to NFL and college players this spring.
Cash is way more popular than stocks or bonds | CNN Money
Cash is getting an alarming amount of love these days.
When investors are nervous, they flee risky assets like stocks for the safety of cash.
That’s exactly what’s been happening lately. Since July 1, cash and money market funds have easily been the world’s most popular asset class, attracting $208 billion of inflows, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Fine Brothers spark fury with YouTube trademark attempt | BBC News
The creators of one of YouTube’s biggest channels have sparked fury over plans to trademark and license a popular video format.
The Fine Brothers produce a popular series of “reaction videos”, in which people watch online clips and respond.
On Tuesday, they revealed a scheme to let other video-makers use assets from their version of the format.
But they have faced a backlash from viewers for trademarking “react” – a term widely used by other creators.
Weekly Economic Update | LAEDC
v.20 n. 4 – Released January 28, 2016
This Week’s Headlines:
- December State and Local Employment Report
- Retail Sales in December Disappoint
- Headline Inflation Edges Down in December
- Events of Interest
- February 17, 2016: LAEDC February Economic Outlook
Peach: WTF is this app everyone’s talking about? | Mashable
If you spent any time on Twitter Friday, you probably heard about a new app called Peach.
Created by Vine cofounder Dom Hofmann, the app is “a fun, simple way to keep up with friends and be yourself,” that everyone is now obsessed with because it’s Friday, and we needed this.
The app is a sort of a mix between Twitter and Slack. After you create an account and a handle and add some friends, you view a stream of updates from the people you’re connected with. From the home screen updates look a bit like tweets or status updates, though tapping into a friend’s post reveals much more.
You see, the app is centered around something its creators call “magic words” — trigger words that allow you to add a GIF, doodle, location and other content to your stream. Typing “here,” for example, adds your current location while “draw,” lets you add a quick doodle.
Hiring Vets: How to Leverage a Valuable Resource | Payroll Link
Research has found that the skills and traits found in people with a successful military employment track record make for particularly good civilian employees. A compilation of studies assembled by the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University suggest that veterans generally:
Are entrepreneurial. They have a high need for achievement, are comfortable with autonomy and uncertainty, and make effective decisions in dynamic environments.
Assume high levels of trust. Often a military career gives rise to a strong propensity to trust coworkers as well as a tendency to exhibit confidence in the organizational leadership.
Are adept at transferring their skills across contexts and tasks. Research has attributed this to the fact that military teaching strategies include contingency and scenario-based training.
