Pay Taxes, Buy a Slurpee: IRS Now Accepts Taxes at 7-Eleven | NBC News

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The Internal Revenue Service announced this week that taxpayers who need to make a payment in cash can now do so at 7-Eleven convenience stores.

While it may seem unusual to pay your taxes where you might otherwise pick up a Slurpee, it caters to a large number of Americans who do not have a bank account or credit card. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation estimates one in 13 households in the U.S. do not have a bank account.

“We continue to look for new ways to provide services for our taxpayers … this provides a new way for people who can only pay their taxes in cash without having to travel to an IRS Taxpayer Assistance Center,” said IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.

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How to Pay School Loans and Save for Retirement at the Same Time | Bloomberg

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The best time to start saving for retirement is as soon as possible. By saving in your early 20s, you give your nest egg extra time to grow, potentially shaving years off how long you need to work.

But before setting aside money for retirement, most feel the need to retire student loan debt. That’s easy to say but harder to do for millennials exiting college these days. Many are in the same boat as Nolan Grace, a 24-year-old who graduated from Purdue University with “very significant” loans. “It’s the biggest weight on my life right now,” he says.

Luckily, Grace works for an employer—Austin-based software-services company BP3 Global Inc.—that helps him with loan payments in an increasingly popular way. BP3 uses a platform called Student Loan Genius to let it match as much as $100 per month in Grace’s debt payments, one of several companies offering similar benefits. Employees who work for Student Loan Genius customers have more than $61,000 in student loan debt on average, and their monthly payments are usually more than $500 a month.

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We Need To Redesign Work To Fight Bias, Because People Won’t Get Any Less Sexist | Co.Exist

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Leaning in doesn’t always work. If you ask for a raise and you’re female, studies suggest that your manager might be less likely to want to work with you afterward; you’ve violated gender norms. If you get offered a new job and try to negotiate better compensation, it might backfire (in extreme cases, it might even cost you your job offer).

Maybe it’s not surprising that it’s hard for women to fix gender bias at work on their own. HR departments don’t do much better: There’s basically no proof that the $8 billion that corporations spend on diversity training workshops have any effect. In some cases, they even make things worse by reinforcing stereotypes. Companies spend millions more on leadership training that also doesn’t seem to help women.

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The Internet is made with carrots, not sticks | TechCrunch

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The Internet is at once global and local. The nature of internetworking means that the global Internet is built only of other networks. There is a small but key point of coordination on the Internet, called the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).

The U.S. Department of Commerce National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) recently received a proposal to change the stewardship of IANA. This proposal is good for the Internet, the companies and organizations that depend on it and the people who use it. To understand why this is so, it is helpful to understand a bit about the coordination points, and why they have worked well so far.

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Forget Apple vs. the FBI: WhatsApp Just Switched on Encryption for a Billion People | WIRED

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FOR MOST OF the past six weeks, the biggest story out of Silicon Valley was Apple’s battle with the FBI over a federal order to unlock the iPhone of a mass shooter. The company’s refusal touched off a searing debate over privacy and security in the digital age. But this morning, at a small office in Mountain View, California, three guys made the scope of that enormous debate look kinda small.

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Study: Poor Writing Skills Are Costing Businesses Billions | Inc.com

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Communication is an essential skill for any business, but what’s shocking is how much time and money businesses are spending each year to bring employees up to a basic proficiency level. Writing seems to be one of the skills requiring the most remedial training.

A study from CollegeBoard, a panel established by the National Commission on Writing, indicates that blue chip businesses are spending as much as $3.1 billion on remedial writing training–annually. Of this budget, $2.9 billion was spent on current employees–not new hires.

Think it’s from lack of education? Think again.

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Why Everyone Must Get Ready For The 4th Industrial Revolution | Forbes

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First came steam and water power; then electricity and assembly lines; then computerization… So what comes next?

Some call it the fourth industrial revolution, or industry 4.0, but whatever you call it, it represents the combination of cyber-physical systems, the Internet of Things, and the Internet of Systems.

In short, it is the idea of smart factories in which machines are augmented with web connectivity and connected to a system that can visualize the entire production chain and make decisions on its own.

And it’s well on its way and will change most of our jobs.

Professor Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, has published a book entitled The Fourth Industrial Revolution in which he describes how this fourth revolution is fundamentally different from the previous three, which were characterized mainly by advances in technology.

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How Dirty Are Public Restrooms, Really? | Live Science

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Ah, spring — time to get out of the house and be on the go. But when you’re out and really have to, you know, go, is that rest-stop bathroom the place to do it?

Yep. Public toilets might get a little grimy, but they’re very unlikely to pose any threat to your health. Most bacteria that could be any danger to people perish quickly on barren bathroom surfaces. And a functioning immune system (plus hand washing!) will stave off most of the rest.

“The restroom isn’t that dangerous,” said Jack Gilbert, a microbiologist at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. “The organisms which can grow there have a very low probability of being able to cause an infection.”

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How It Feels to Go Viral, Then Watch Your Content Get Stolen All Over the Internet | Adweek

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On a Tuesday morning in December, I uploaded my late-night talk show’s 449th video to YouTube, then went about my day.

By the afternoon, I was thinking this one—a mockumentary called “Instagram Husband” created for our Springfield, Missouri-based show, The Mystery Hour—might be different. The next day, when it hit 1 million views, I knew it was different. And by the time the next week rolled around, I didn’t know which way was up anymore.

When I came up with the idea for “Instagram Husband,” I had a vague sense it had the chance to go viral, because when I shared the idea with people they enthusiastically related. I thought people I know would share it, the team that helped create it would share it, fans of my show would share it, and it would be a nice little feather in the cap. I never would have guessed just how big it would become.

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