Hollywood’s scripts always call for a protagonist. Margin Call has none.
Raymond Alvarez: The film Margin Call has to be regarded as a distorted reflection of reality. Just as Michael Douglas stood before a soon-to-be-fired audience in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, declared greed good, rationalization has become a mainstay. At the end of the day, we’re just cannon fodder.
Continue reading… “The dark hours before the storm: “Margin Call””
Comparing salaries among colleagues has long been a taboo of workplace chatter,
Brian Bader said at the orientation for a tech-support job with Apple Inc. that human-resources managers ran down the list of guidelines workers were expected to follow. Don’t use explicit language on calls with customers. Treat other employees with respect. And, he says, they told the assembled recruits, don’t discuss your pay with co-workers.
Continue reading… “Employees share their salary secrets”
Minister Marco Antonio Raupp releases the Start-up Brazil program.
The government in Brazil is offering foreign companies visas and funding to relocate to South America. Startup Brasil is a new program offering up to $78 million in investment for domestic and foreign high-tech companies. Firms that participate would have to relocate to Brazil and hire local employees; disbursement of funds would take place through a series of government-subsidized accelerators concentrated in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janiero. One of the participating accelerators, 21212, also has a New York office.
Continue reading… “Startup Brasil – Brazil offers foreign startups visas and funding”
Americans enjoy diving into a good book, but more and more of them prefer the digital version.
Ebook sales made up 22.5 percent of the publishing industry’s net revenue last year, according to a new survey from the Association of American Publishers. That’s up from just 0.05 percent 10 years prior, when the AAP first began keeping track of ebook sales, and up from 16.98 percent in 2011. The categories that saw the biggest increase in ebook revenues included adult fiction, adult nonfiction, and religious books. Even more encouraging, the overall net revenue for the US publishing industry was $7.1 billion, up 6.2 percent from 2011.
Continue reading… “eBooks account for nearly 23% of all U.S. publishing revenue”
The arguments in favor of self-driving cars are many: computer-sorted traffic could yield higher maximum speeds and optimized drive times (sayonara “stop and go,” hello increased fuel efficiency!), the option to drive whether you’ve had too much to drink or not and driverless valet park anywhere you go (as well as make better use of parking space — no more sloppy two-for-one parking jobs). Imagine your vehicle driving itself off to a maintenance facility without your assistance, returning home on its own, or the option to be as distracted as you like while your vehicle’s escorting you around, from texting to watching a video to catching up on your notes for a morning work meeting. (Infographic)
Mike Merrill has been selling shares of his self.
Since 2008, Mike Merrill has been literally selling himself. Not his body, his self. The straight-laced entrepreneur has been selling shares of his person at Kmikeym.com.
Continue reading… “The world’s first publicly traded human”
“Content marketing” seems to be the buzzword of choice these days. If you run a startup — or a small company that is navigating the waters of content marketing for the first time — read this before you dive head-first into any content marketing initiatives.
By 2017 Verizon expects that number to grow to two-thirds.
Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam’s speech at the National Association of Broadcasters conference on Tuesday indicated that half of the traffic on Verizon’s mobile networks is now video, FierceWireless reported, and by 2017 Verizon expects that number to grow to two-thirds.
Continue reading… “50 percent of Verizon’s mobile network traffic is video”
Latest data says 2.16 million people have quit their jobs.
Americans are voluntarily quitting their jobs at the highest rate since the pre-recession era, according to the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey — known as JOLTS — published by The Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Continue reading… “Number of Americans quitting their jobs at the highest rate in five years”
If you are a good coder in Silicon Valley, you are among the pampered elite. You get big paychecks, people bring you free gourmet food, drivers shuttle you around town. Coders in Silicon Valley are treated a lot like talented entertainers would be in Hollywood. It’s a thought not lost on Altay Guvench, a coder himself who has become one of the first agents for software developers.
Continue reading… ““Show me the money!” Top programmers can now get agents”
By rejecting patent applications, developing countries have kept down the costs of much-needed medications.
Gleevec, a leukemia drug, costs $70,000 per year in the United States, but only costs $2,500 in India. Why does that drug cost so much more in the U.S.?
Continue reading… “Why does chemotherapy cost $70k in the U.S., but only costs $2.5k in India?”
Futurist Thomas Frey: In the late 1980s, I was an engineer working as part of an IBM team to build a mobile satellite command and control center for monitoring missile launches from space. This contract was part of Regan’s “Star Wars” missile defense system.
Continue reading… “Monitoring People from Space: The Good the Bad, and the Ugly”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.