Analysis – Page 11

Analysis, Big Problems, Housing, Science & Technology News

Soaring second home ownership hitting young people

June 28, 2019

The number of British people who own a second home, buy-to-let or overseas property has doubled since 2001, says think tank the Resolution Foundation.

While the number of millennials who own a home continues to fall, one in 10 people now own an additional property.
Just 37% of people born in the 1980s managed to buy a home at the age of 29, compared with half of those born in the 1960s.
Wealth from owning a second home has risen since 2001 to almost £1 trillion.
Buy-to-let property is now the most common form of property wealth, having grown by 58% since 2006-08, the report found.

Continue reading… “Soaring second home ownership hitting young people”

Amazon.com, Analysis, Internet, Latest Trend, Microsoft, Science & Technology News

Mary Meeker’s most important trends on the internet

June 25, 2019

Mary Meeker, Code 2019/Recode

It’s the holiday season for data nerds: That is, Mary Meeker is delivering her annual Internet Trends Report — the most highly anticipated slide deck in Silicon Valley — again at Code Conference 2019.

The general partner at venture capital firm Bond Capital delivered a rapid-fire 333-page slideshow that looked back at every important internet trend in the last year and looked forward about what these trends tell us to expect in the year ahead. The “Queen of the Internet” and former Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner touched on everything from accelerating internet ad spend in the US to the growth of digital delivery services in Latin America.

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Analysis, Housing, Human Behavior, Parenting, Science & Technology News

Most Americans agree that this is the age that living at home becomes embarrassing

June 25, 2019

A survey conducted on more than 3,000 Americans, by TD Ameritrade, examines how every generation views boomeranging back to the nest after college.

According to a new survey conducted by Zillow, 14.4 million Millennials (people between the ages of 23 and 38) currently live at home with their parents. This is a staggering 21% of all American Millennials.

Although this figure has continued to rise over the years, the stigma that accompanies it has actually experienced a decline. A survey conducted on more than 3,000 Americans, by TD Ameritrade, examines how every generation views boomeranging back to the nest after college. And according to the study, you shouldn’t feel too bad until your nearing your thirties.

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Analysis, Bitcoin, Blockchain, Science & Technology News

Why Blockchain is Hard

June 24, 2019

The hype around blockchain is massive. To hear the blockchain hype train tell it, blockchain will now:

Solve income inequality
Make all data secure forever
Make everything much more efficient and trustless
Save dying babies

What the heck is a blockchain, anyway? And can it really do all these things? Can blockchain bring something amazing to industries as diverse as health care, finance, supply chain management and music rights?

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Analysis, Automobiles, Driverless cars, Science & Technology News, Tesla

Tesla Navigate on Autopilot drives itself poorly, Consumer Reports finds

June 22, 2019

Tesla says it has improved its self-driving Navigate on Autopilot system with its latest software update. Consumer Reports begs to differ.

Last month, Tesla updated its Navigate on Autopilot software to allow its cars to change lanes automatically, without prompting or warning the driver. This gives the system the ability, for example, to navigate highway interchanges by choosing the appropriate lane. The system fulfills Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s promise to develop a system that can drive itself from highway on-ramps to off-ramps without intervention (though several system warnings note that the driver still has to pay attention, and it will shut off if the driver doesn’t hold the steering wheel for too long.)

Only, Consumer Reports says that the system does a poor job changing lanes and that watching over the system and correcting its mistakes is more work for drivers than just driving themselves.

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Analysis, Human Behavior, Internet, Science & Technology News

Average US time spent with mobile in 2019 has increased

June 16, 2019

US Adults Spend More Time on Mobile than They Do Watching TV

For the first time ever, US consumers will spend more time using their mobile devices than watching TV, with smartphone use dominating that time spent.

Consumers’ use of smartphones will continue to make up the majority of their media consumption, but we predict that use will plateau by 2020, as consumers become increasingly uneasy about overuse of mobile devices.

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Analysis, Energy, Engineering, Science & Technology News

IISc team ‘confirms’ superconductivity at room temperature, backed by 8 more experts now

June 13, 2019

Levitation of a magnet on a superconductor

When it first came out, the IISc study created quite a stir because superconductivity at room temperature is seen as the holy grail of physics.

Bengaluru: Researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, have reiterated their promising, if controversial, discovery of superconductivity at room temperature, with eight more researchers backing the finding originally put forth by a team of two last year.

The team of 10 posted a preprint of their paper on arXiv, an open repository where peers discuss academic research, last week, but it is yet to be peer-reviewed or published in any scientific journal.

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Amazon.com, Analysis, Science & Technology News, Shopping

Amazon – Redefining the 80:20 rule

June 13, 2019

The 80:20 rule is oft bandied around in the retail world and Amazon, not content with disrupting numerous retail industries and the very way we shop have even taken an established business saying and turned it on its head.

Amazon uses the 80:20 rule to demonstrate their approach to product decision making – they base selections 80% on data and 20% on experience and gut feel, whereas traditionally decisions in retail are entirely the other way around, with 20% being based on data and 80% on gut feel.

No-one can argue that the 80:20 model isn’t working well for Amazon as the company announced a near doubling of their profits for the first quarter of 2019 as it continues its expansion into new categories by using the data they generate from selling 3d party products.

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Analysis, brains, Employment, Human Behavior, Science & Technology News

Why the 8-hour workday doesn’t work

June 12, 2019

The eight-hour workday is an outdated and ineffective approach to work. If you want to be as productive as possible, you need to let go of this relic and find a new approach.

The eight-hour workday was created during the industrial revolution as an effort to cut down on the number of hours of manual labor that workers were forced to endure on the factory floor. This breakthrough was a more humane approach to work 200 years ago, yet it possesses little relevance for us today.

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Analysis, Human Behavior, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X outvoted older generations in 2018 midterms

June 10, 2019

Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X outvoted older generations in 2018 midterms

Voters in Missouri take part in November’s elections. Turnout reached a record high for the 2018 midterms. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Midterm voter turnout reached a modern high in 2018, and Generation Z, Millennials and Generation X accounted for a narrow majority of those voters, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly available Census Bureau data.

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Analysis, Healthcare, Insurance, Science & Technology News

Hospitals charging the privately insured 2.4 times what they charge medicare patients

June 7, 2019

Indiana Rep. Sen. Jim Banks’ Hospital Competition Act of 2019 would curtail the pricing power of regional hospital monopolies, and incentivize them to restore a competitive market.

For generations, the prices that hospitals charge patients with private insurance have been shrouded in secrecy. An explosive new study has unlocked some of those secrets. It finds that employers and their insurers are failing to control hospital costs, increasing calls for transparency into insurer-hospital agreements.

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Analysis, Big Problems, Medicine, Science & Technology News

Antibiotics found in world’s rivers at levels up to 300 times above safe levels

June 7, 2019

A new study has found that in over 100 of 700 river samples taken, antibiotic concentrations were at levels exceeding safe concentrations, with the Danube found to be the most contaminated river in Europe

In a massive global study, led by researchers at the University of York, hundreds of rivers around the world have been tested for levels of common antibiotics. The study found 65 percent of all samples contained some concentration of antibiotics, with the worst cases showing levels more than 300 times higher than the generally accepted safe threshold.

The study is the first to coordinate such a broad global survey of the world’s rivers, examining levels of 14 common antibiotics from 711 sites across 72 countries. John Wilkinson, one of the researchers coordinating this large project, suggests that alongside many regions never before monitored, this is the largest antibiotic survey ever conducted.

Continue reading… “Antibiotics found in world’s rivers at levels up to 300 times above safe levels”