Lyft announces new CEO, says co-founders will step aside from management positions | CNN Business

March 28, 2023March 27, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Lyft announced on Monday that Amazon veteran David Risher will join as chief executive next month, and that co-founders Logan Green and John Zimmer will step down from their management positions at the ride-hailing company.

Green, who is currently the CEO, will be succeeded by Risher effective April 17, the company said in a statement. Zimmer, Lyft’s president, will also step down from his role as of June 30, the company said. Both Green and Zimmer will stay on at Lyft in non-executive roles as chair and vice chair of the Lyft board, respectively. No replacement for Zimmer was named.

‘Wedge tornado’ in Mississippi is the deadliest in more than 50 years | Live Science

March 28, 2023March 27, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

A devastating, nearly mile-wide “wedge tornado” has killed at least 26 people and battered Mississippi with golf ball-size hail and winds up to 200 mph.

A massive tornado that was nearly a mile (1.2 kilometers) long has killed at least 26 people and injured dozens more after devastating parts of western Mississippi on Friday (March 24) night.

IRS Updates Dirty Dozen Tax Scams List | Small Biz Trends

March 24, 2023March 23, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Beware Phishing and Smishing

Phishing is a term coined over a quarter of a century ago and is a play on the spelling of fishing, and the similarity of using lures to fish for sensitive information that can be used to commit fraud. Such phishing scams usually occur via email, with a typical tactic being to bulk-send spam emails in the hopes of finding an unsuspecting victim.

Smishing is an amalgamation of phishing and SMS, as it relates directly to phishing attacks that happen via text message.

Scammers ‘Pose as the IRS’ During Tax Season

The IRS Commissioner, Danny Werfel, further explained the dangers of phishing and smishing scams, saying: “Email and text scams are relentless, and scammers frequently use tax season as a way of tricking people. With people anxious to receive the latest information about a refund or other tax issue, scammers will regularly pose as the IRS, a state tax agency or others in the tax industry in emails and texts. People should be incredibly wary about unexpected messages like this that can be a trap, especially during filing season.”

Is this a banking crisis – how worried should I be? | BBC News

March 21, 2023March 20, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The news is full of emergency meetings, central banks offering credit lifelines and tumbling bank shares.

No wonder people are asking: is this the start of another financial crisis?

Politicians, including the UK prime minister, and central banks, say the situation is now stable. But banking shares have continued to fluctuate.

So how bad is this and what does it mean for you?

AWS takes a hit in latest round of Amazon layoffs | TechCrunch

March 21, 2023March 20, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

When Amazon announced it was laying off another 9,000 employees today, AWS employees were not exempt with Amazon CEO (and former AWS CEO) Andy Jassy announcing the cloud division would be included into today’s round.

TechCrunch is hearing that around 10% of today’s total came from AWS. The company would not confirm those numbers, instead referring to Jassy’s memo to employees that was published this morning as the gist of its statement.

Clean Energy Electricity | Cool Business Ideas

March 20, 2023March 19, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

While most of us will never bear witness to them, many of the world’s smallest organisms have some incredible means of survival. Some soil bacteria, for example, can gobble up hydrogen from the air and use it for fuel if starved of any other food.

It’s exactly this microbiological trickery that set researchers from Monash University in Australia on a long path to locating and isolating an enzyme from Mycobacterium smegmatis that processes the consumed hydrogen and outputs it as electricity. Now, this has the potential to be harnessed for use to power things such as small devices and implants.

“We’ve known for some time that bacteria can use the trace hydrogen in the air as a source of energy to help them grow and survive, including in Antarctic soils, volcanic craters, and the deep ocean,” said Chris Greening, microbiology professor at Monash and co-lead of this study. “But we didn’t know how they did this, until now.”

Carnival Cruises Will Now Charge You a $500 Fee if You Do This | Entrepreneur

March 20, 2023March 19, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Carnival Cruise Line hopes its guests relax and have fun on its fleet — up to a point.

The company is informing customers ahead of spring break that unruly passengers could be hit with a $500 fine and required to disembark prematurely, Fox News reported.

Twitter now shows bookmark counts on tweets | Mashable

March 17, 2023March 16, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Twitter has slapped yet another social media stat on users’ tweets: Bookmark counts.

On Thursday, Twitter started to roll out analytics onto tweets that show how many times a tweet has been bookmarked(Opens in a new tab). As of publishing time, the bookmark count stat is only showing up on Twitter’s iOS apps but will soon expand and be displayed on Twitter for web and other platforms too.

Unlike last year, this tax season has been going smoothly | CNN Business

March 17, 2023March 16, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The past two tax-filing seasons were fraught with aggravations, delays, last-minute changes and huge backlogs at the IRS. But by comparison, this year’s tax-filing season has been going relatively smoothly, tax preparers say.

“After a few years of pandemic-related updates, mid-tax season IRS guidance, last-minute tax law changes and more, the ‘quiet’ is a welcome change to many,” the National Association of Tax Preparers said in a statement

Indeed, the most recent filing season statistics from the IRS indicate more returns are being processed and more refunds are being issued than at the same point last year.

For example, the IRS reports that as of the week ending March 3 it had sent out 11% more refunds than it had during the same week a year ago. Even though the IRS has processed more refunds at t

Prostate cancer treatments can be avoided or delayed in many cases, huge study finds | Live Science

March 16, 2023March 13, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Many men with prostate cancer can delay or skip harsh treatments, such as surgery or radiation, without undermining their chances of survival, a decades-long study finds.

Instead, they can have their cancer “actively monitored” following diagnosis, rather than having their prostate removed or exposed to high-energy radiation. Such treatments can cause long-lasting side effects, such as urinary leakage, erectile dysfunction, and other problems with urinary, bowel, and sexual function.