78141463
submission
Strudelkugel writes:
Apple has started a new limited time in-store promotion that offers customers $50 off an Apple Watch Sport or Apple Watch with the purchase of any new iPhone, including the latest iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, the company confirmed to MacRumors. Apple Watch Edition and Apple Watch Hermès models are ineligible for the discount.
78140149
submission
Strudelkugel writes:
The standard story is that traffic deaths will dwindle, cities will spread out magnificently, and you’ll all be reading Marginal Revolution on your morning commute rather than fighting the traffic. Maybe so, but what other options are at least worth considering, if only out of contrarian orneriness?
77941875
submission
Strudelkugel writes:
When it comes to automotive technology, self-driving cars are all the rage. Standard features on many ordinary cars include intelligent cruise control, parallel parking programs, and even automatic overtaking—features that allow you to sit back, albeit a little uneasily, and let a computer do the driving.
So it’ll come as no surprise that many car manufacturers are beginning to think about cars that take the driving out of your hands altogether (see “Drivers Push Tesla’s Autopilot Beyond Its Abilities”). These cars will be safer, cleaner, and more fuel-efficient than their manual counterparts. And yet they can never be perfectly safe.
72307941
submission
Strudelkugel writes:
As the world’s electronic companies scramble to set the agenda for wearable devices, the vegetable juice company Kagome has gone one step farther — unveiling a wearable tomato machine.
The Tomatan is a backpack that can be loaded with six midsize tomatoes — enough, say the makers, to power runners through this weekend’s Tokyo Marathon.
“Tomatoes have lots of nutrition that combats fatigue,” Shigenori Suzuki of Kagome said Thursday.
62236679
submission
Strudelkugel writes:
A restaurant in Manhattan compared video from 2004 and 2014 to see why service was slower than before. A few observations listed in the article:
2004:
Customers walk in.
They gets seated and are given menus, out of 45 customers 3 request to be seated elsewhere.
Customers on average spend 8 minutes before closing the menu to show they are ready to order...
2014:
Customers walk in.
Customers get seated and is given menus, out of 45 customers 18 requested to be seated elsewhere.
Before even opening the menu they take their phones out, some are taking photos while others are simply doing something else on their phone (sorry we have no clue what they are doing and do not monitor customer WIFI activity).
57592923
submission
Strudelkugel writes:
"Actual end user momentum is trailing business interest," Szafranski said. "IT likes Microsoft and likes Windows. They've made a lot of investment in things like Active Directory and Exchange and as a result they have a lot of interest in seeing Windows Phone used by employees. I don't think anyone is going to be all Windows on mobile, but enterprises do want it and I think they have a strong opportunity when it comes to the enterprise side of purchase decisions."
52891185
submission
Strudelkugel writes:
In an overhaul of its employee-review system being announced Tuesday, Microsoft will stop requiring managers to rank workers on a scale of one to five on a "bell" curve. The system—often called "stack" or "forced" ranking— meant a small percentage of workers had to be designated as underperformers. The rankings were also crucial in allocating bonuses and equity awards.In place of the bell curve and numerical-ranking system, Microsoft managers will give employees more frequent feedback on how they're doing their jobs. Managers also will have more flexibility in how they dole out bonuses. The changes take effect immediately. The stack-ranking system was designed to ensure Microsoft's most-effective employees were awarded the lion's share of bonus pools, and were first in line for promotions. Such forced-ranking systems were widely copied after they rose to popularity at General Electric under CEO Jack Welch, but have fallen out of favor in recent years. Some current and former Microsoft employees say the software giant's system has serious flaws. Critics said the review program sometimes resulted in capricious rankings, power struggles among managers jockeying for their employees to get better reviews, and unhealthy competition among colleagues.
51439361
submission
Strudelkugel writes:
The average car on the road is 11.4 years old, according to Polk, a global automotive analysis firm, which reviewed 247 million light vehicles in the U.S. The age of cars has been gradually increasing since 2002, when the average car was 9.8 years old. Polk expects the trend to continue over the next five years. Automotive density is projected to decline to 77.5 cars per 100 people, down from 80 cars per 100 in 2007, according to Kelsey Mays of Cars.com.
Another study, from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, analyzed the reason for the decline in young driver licensing. Of the 618 unlicensed respondents aged 18-39, 26.9 percent said the main reason they did not get a license was “too busy or not enough time to get a driver’s license.”
50182761
submission
Strudelkugel writes:
Microsoft said it has reached an agreement to acquire the handset and services business of Nokia for more than $7.1 billion, in an effort to transform Microsoft’s business for a mobile era that has largely passed it by. In a news release late Monday night, Microsoft and Nokia said 32,000 Nokia employees will join Microsoft as a result of the all-cash deal. Stephen Elop, the chief executive of Nokia and a former Microsoft executive, will rejoin Microsoft, setting him up as a potential successor for Steven A. Ballmer, who has said he will retire as chief executive of Microsoft within 12 months after a successor is found.
45935019
submission
Strudelkugel writes:
WHEN the e-mail came out of the blue last summer, offering a shot as a programmer at a San Francisco start-up, Jade Dominguez, 26, was living off credit card debt in a rental in South Pasadena, Calif., while he taught himself programming. He had been an average student in high school and hadn’t bothered with college, but someone, somewhere out there in the cloud, thought that he might be brilliant, or at least a diamond in the rough. “The traditional markers people use for hiring can be wrong, profoundly wrong,” says Vivienne Ming, the chief scientist at Gild since late last year. That someone was Luca Bonmassar. He had discovered Mr. Dominguez by using a technology that raises important questions about how people are recruited and hired, and whether great talent is being overlooked along the way.
43214807
submission
Strudelkugel writes:
EVERY time you purchase an app on Google Play, your name, address and email is passed on to the developer, it has been revealed today. The "flaw" — which appears to be by design — was discovered this morning by Sydney app developer, Dan Nolan who told news.com.au that he was uncomfortable being the custodian of this information and that there was no reason for any developer to have this information at their finger tips.
31963465
submission
Strudelkugel writes:
An insurance company will discount insurance premiums for drivers who volunteer to have their driving habits monitored. Insurance is an asymmetric market. The insurer does not really know how the insured will drive, so the actuaries assume the worst. But by adding the black box, the insured can get a discount by providing the insurer with more information. But that also includes privacy, the future value of which might be quite high:
Young Marmalade MD Crispin Moger states that they offer low-cost insurance packages because, “Young Marmalade buys many new cars and receives assistance from manufacturers, which is passed on to young drivers as Cash back. For example on the best seller Vauxhall Corsa 1.2 SXi 3 door, the Cash back on that model is £3,558 and can help pay off your first year of car insurance.” Fortunately, when you purchase a low-powered car from Young Marmalade, the free installation of a black box can cut your insurance premiums into half. By monitoring the driving behaviour such as acceleration, braking, what time of the day the car was driven and at what speed, Young Marmalade provides affordable telematic insurance premiums.
18965982
submission
Strudelkugel writes:
Apple is further tightening its control of the App Store.
Some application developers, including Sony, say Apple has told them they can no longer sell e-books within their apps unless the transactions go through Apple’s system. Apple rejected Sony’s iPhone application, which would have let people buy and read e-books from the Sony Reader Store.
Apple said on Tuesday that it was still allowing customers to read e-books they bought elsewhere within apps. For example, a Sony app could still access books the customer bought earlier from Sony’s store.
But Steve Haber, president of Sony’s digital reading division, said on Monday that Apple had told his company that from now on, all in-app purchases would have to go through Apple.
“It’s the opposite of what we wanted to bring to the market,” Mr. Haber said. “We always wanted to bring the content to as many devices as possible, not one device to one store.”
14746618
submission
Strudelkugel writes:
Edwin Perello discovered that Bing, the Microsoft search engine, could find addresses in his rural Indiana town when Google could not. Laura Michelson, an administrative assistant in San Francisco, was lured by Bing’s flight fare tracker. Paul Callan, a photography buff in Chicago, fell for Bing’s vivid background images. When Microsoft introduced it last year, Bing made a splash with its vivid background images. In June, Google presented searchers the option of a colorful background rather than the stark, white page.Like most Americans, they still use Google as their main search tool. But more often, they find themselves navigating to Microsoft’s year-old Bing for certain tasks, and sometimes they stay a while.
14619148
submission
Strudelkugel writes:
The Beast reports unhappiness with Steve Ballmer as CEO of Microsoft: Sources say the talk around Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, headquarters—which has grown increasingly louder ever since Apple surpassed Microsoft in market capitalization—-is that the company's stock suffers from a "Ballmer discount," and that the CEO is on the clock to significantly move the needle on its share price over the next two or three quarters or face a potential move to oust him. "Ballmer is on the list of mega-executives under pressure," says a banker who has negotiated deals for Microsoft. "If he was asked to leave the building, I suspect there would be more happy than unhappy people."
