102185984
submission
gollum123 writes:
According to a new poll from Gallup, young Americans are souring on capitalism. Less than half, 45 percent, view capitalism positively. "This represents a 12-point decline in young adults' positive views of capitalism in just the past two years and a marked shift since 2010, when 68 percent viewed it positively," notes Gallup, which defines young Americans as those aged 18 to 29. While young people have a less upbeat view on capitalism, "older Americans have been consistently more positive about capitalism than socialism," Gallup reports. Of those between 30 and 49 years old, 58 percent have a positive view of capitalism and 41 percent have a positive view of socialism. Of those aged 50 to 64, 60 percent have a positive view of capitalism and 30 percent have a positive view of socialism. "Socialism clearly sounds better as a concept to young people than to those who are older, as it has over the past eight years," Gallup notes. "Whether the appeal of socialism to young adults is a standard function of idealism at that age that dissipates as one grows older, or will turn out to be a more permanent part of the political beliefs held by the cohort of millennials who have come of age over the past decade, remains to be seen."
102065846
submission
gollum123 writes:
Vivek Wadhwa writes — Silicon Valley exemplifies the saying “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Very little has changed over the past decade, with the Valley still mired in myth and stale stereotype. Ask any older entrepreneurs or women who have tried to get financing; they will tell you of the walls they keep hitting. Speak to venture capitalists (VCs), and you will realize they still consider themselves kings and kingmakers. Myth No. 1: Only the young can innovate. Myth No. 2: Entrepreneurs are born, not made. Myth No. 3: Higher education provides no advantage. Myth No. 4: Women can’t succeed in tech. Myth No. 5: Venture capital is a prerequisite for innovation
101881702
submission
gollum123 writes:
Tech workers are the envy of labor market — they earn some of the highest starting salaries and often command top-notch benefits. But money doesn't always buy satisfaction. Entrepreneur reports that tech workers in major American cities earn an average of $135,000 and yet, a survey of 6,000 tech workers conducted by workplace app Blind and reported by Quartz found that over 60 percent feel they aren't being paid enough. The survey also breaks down how tech workers feel about their pay by company. The five tech companies with the highest percentage of employees who felt they were underpaid shared one important characteristic: They were all founded before 1998. Cisco, Intel, Expedia, VMware and Microsoft employees were the most likely to say that they did not make enough money. Cisco had the highest percentage of dissatisfied employees, with 80 percent telling Blind that they did not feel adequately compensated. Facebook employees, on the other hand, were the most like to say that they are overpaid, with 13.8 percent saying that they felt their employer was overly generous.
101399246
submission
gollum123 writes:
A tense and short-tempered Chief Executive Elon Musk barked at engineers on the Fremont, California assembly line. Tesla pulled workers from other departments to keep pumping out the Model 3 electric sedans, disrupting production of the Model S and X lines. And weekend shifts were mandatory. Last week's big push also brought a rewrite of the employee attendance policy. After mandatory weekend shifts were assigned, two workers said, Tesla rescinded a policy promising workers at least one week's notice before weekend work. Some employees are worried the frenetic pace plus long hours could burn out workers. One employee said they were told to keep working until they met their daily production mark, not when their shifts ended.
100118884
submission
gollum123 writes:
Uber has reportedly discovered that the fatal crash involving one of its prototype self-driving cars was probably caused by software faultily set up to ignore objects in the road, sources told The Information. Specifically, it was that the system was set up to ignore objects that it should have attended to; Herzberg seems to have been detected but considered a false positive.
96049609
submission
gollum123 writes:
Are you doing better than the previous generation? The Pew Research Center, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C., asked nearly 43,000 people in 38 countries around the globe that question this past spring. Residents in 20 countries said people like them were better off than they were 50 years ago. In Vietnam, 88% felt better off, followed by India (69%), South Korea (68%), Japan (65%), Germany (65%), Turkey (65%), the Netherlands (64%), Sweden (64%), Poland (62%) and Spain (60%). Overall, 43% of people in those countries said they were better off. The U.S. was among the other 18 countries in which people said they were actually worse off than half a century ago. In Senegal, 45% felt this way, followed by Nigeria (54%), Kenya (53%), the U.S. (41%), Ghana (47%), Brazil (49%), France (46%), Hungary (39%), Lebanon (54%) and Peru (46%).
95906751
submission
gollum123 writes:
From BBC — "Rousing." "Thrilling." "Addictively bold." Just a few of the superlatives the critics are using to describe the latest film in the Star Wars saga. The Last Jedi, writes the Telegraph, is "enormous fun" and "will leave fans beaming with surprise". The Guardian calls it "an explosive sugar rush of spectacle" possessing "a tidal wave of energy and emotion". Driver's Kylo Ren is singled out for praise by USA Today, who describe the character as "blockbuster cinema's most magnetic and unpredictable antagonist since Heath Ledger's Dark Knight Joker."
92055201
submission
gollum123 writes:
"What do you make in your current job?" For women, is there any good answer to that dreaded job-interview question? Even not answering at all can ding what women earn, a new study has found. When job applicants are asked about their current salaries, women get penalized for demurring, while men benefit, according to a survey from PayScale Inc., a salary comparison website. In PayScale's study, nearly half of the more than 15,000 full-time workers surveyed said that, in the process of being hired, they had been asked. But women who refused to disclose ultimately got final salary offers that were 1.8 percent lower than the ones given to women who did disclose. Men who refused to give a number, however, ended up making more than those who chose not to divulge. That created a 3 percent pay gap between the men and women who refuse to answer.
91754667
submission
gollum123 writes:
From Vox : “Google is a digital truth serum,” Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, author of Everybody Lies, told me in a recent interview. “People tell Google things that they don't tell to possibly anybody else, things they might not tell to family members, friends, anonymous surveys, or doctors.” Stephens-Davidowitz was working on a PhD in economics at Harvard when he became obsessed with Google Trends, a tool that tracks how frequently searches are made in a given area over a given time period. As a barometer of our national consciousness, Google is as accurate (and predictive) as it gets. In 2016, when the Republican primaries were just beginning, most pundits and pollsters did not believe Trump could win. After all, he had insulted veterans, women, minorities, and countless other constituencies. But Stephens-Davidowitz saw clues in his Google research that suggested Trump was far more serious than many supposed. Searches containing racist epithets and jokes were spiking across the country during Trump’s primary run, and not merely in the South but in upstate New York, Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Ohio, rural Illinois, West Virginia, and industrial Michigan.
90160227
submission
gollum123 writes:
From Recode, Last month, Walmart gathered some of America’s biggest household brands near its Arkansas headquarters for a tough talk. For years, Walmart had dominated the retail landscape on the back of its “Everyday Low Price” guarantee. Walmart wants to have the lowest price on 80 percent of its sales, according to a presentation the company made at the summit, which Recode reviewed. this time around, Walmart’s renewed focus on its “Everyday Low Price” promise coincides with Amazon’s increased aggressiveness in its own pricing of the packaged goods that are found on supermarket shelves and are core to Walmart’s success, industry executives and consultants say. The result in recent months has been a high-stakes race to the bottom between Walmart and Amazon that seems great for shoppers, but has consumer packaged goods brands feeling the pressure.
80261235
submission
gollum123 writes:
More employers, from Whole Foods Market, with 91,000 employees, to smaller companies such as SumAll and Squaremouth, are opening up companywide salary information to all employees. They generally don’t disclose it to the public—but one company, Buffer, posts all employees’ salaries on its website. The idea of open pay is to get pay and performance problems out on the table for discussion, eliminate salary inequities and spark better performance. But open pay also is sparking some awkward conversations between co-workers comparing their paychecks, and puncturing egos among those whose salaries don’t sync with their self-image.
75030185
submission
gollum123 writes:
scientists (two men, for the record) are urging an end to the Great
Arctic Office Conspiracy. Their study, published Monday in the journal Nature
Climate Change, says that most office buildings set temperatures based on a
decadesold formula that uses the metabolic rates of men. The study concludes
that buildings should “reduce genderdiscriminating bias in thermal comfort”
because setting temperatures at slightly warmer levels can help combat global
warming. The study says most building thermostats follow a “thermal comfort
model that was developed in the 1960s,” which considers factors like air
temperature, air speed, vapor pressure and clothing insulation, using a version
of Fanger’s thermal comfort equation. But Dr. Kingma and his colleague, Wouter van Marken Lichtenbelt, write
that one variable in the formula, resting metabolic rate (how fast we generate
heat), is based on a 40yearold man weighing about 154 pounds.
Maybe that man once represented most people in offices. But women now
constitute half of the work force and usually have slower metabolic rates than
men, mostly because they are smaller and have more body fat, which has lower
metabolic rates than muscle. Indeed, the study says, the current model “may
overestimate resting heat production of women by up to 35 percent.”
74858375
submission
gollum123 writes:
A new kind of memory technology is going into production, which is up to 1,000 times faster than the Nand flash storage used in memory cards and computers' solid state drives (SSDs). The innovation is called 3D XPoint, and is the invention of Intel and Micron. The two US companies predict a wide range of benefits, from speeding up scientific research to making more elaborate video games. 3D XPoint does away with the need to use the transistors at the heart of Nand chips. If all goes to plan, the first products to feature 3D XPoint (pronounced cross-point) will go on sale next year. Its price has yet to be announced.
72756157
submission
gollum123 writes:
The number of Americans who identify as Christian has fallen nearly eight percentage points in only seven years, according to a new survey.
Pew Research Center found that 71% of Americans identified as Christian in 2014 — down from 78% in 2007.
In the same period, Americans identifying as having no religion grew from 16% to 23%. About 5 million less Americans now identify as Christian compared to when the study was conducted in 2007.
In the South, those not-affiliated with religion — or as the researchers call them, "nones" — rose to 19% of the population, while in the Northeast they climbed to 25%.
In the West "nones" are a larger group than any religion, making up 28% of the public.
65659367
submission
gollum123 writes:
From NPR, Back in the day, computer science was as legitimate a career path for women as in medicine, law or science. But in 1984, the number of females majoring in computing-related subjects began to fall, and is now as low as 20 percent compared to those other three.It's a surprising trend that NPR's Planet Money has uncovered, and the show's latest episode seeks to answer a simple question: Why? According to the show's experts, computers were advertised as a "boy's toy," and combined with early '80s geek culture staples like the novel Hackers, as well as movies like WarGames and Weird Science, the knock-on effect was to exclude women.
