Category: Industry News

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News You Can Use: 4/17/2019

  • Old, Online, And Fed On Lies: How An Aging Population Will Reshape The Internet

    Four recent studies found that older Americans are more likely to consume and share false online news than those in other age groups, even when controlling for factors such as partisanship. Other research has found that older Americans have a poor or inaccurate grasp of how algorithms play a role in selecting what information is shown to them on social media, are worse than younger people at differentiating between reported news and opinion, and are less likely to register the brand of a news site they consume information from.

    Those digital and news consumption habits intersect with key characteristics of older Americans, such as being more likely to live in rural and isolated areas, and, perhaps in part as a result, to experience a high degree of loneliness. A survey conducted by AARP of Americans found that 36% of people ages 60–69 were lonely, while 24% of those ages 70 and older registered as lonely. (The survey focused on adults over 45.)

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/old-and-online-fake-news-aging-population

  • Why Videogames Trigger the Nightly Meltdown—and How to Help Your Child Cope

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-videogames-trigger-the-nightly-meltdownand-how-to-help-your-child-cope-11554206405
  • These are the most common roots of workplace drama

    A lack of authenticity creates or perpetuates a belief that management is hypocritical and that they only talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. In this environment, employees lose enthusiasm for their jobs, passion for what the company represents, and, most dangerously, they lose trust.

    A lack of authenticity leads to inconsistency, usually seen in the form of the failure to implement solutions in an evenhanded way. Over time, this creates actual unfairness and also creates a perception of a lack of workplace justice.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90330054/these-are-the-most-common-roots-of-workplace-drama

  • 4 Essential strategies for managing millennial salespeople

    As such, they’re likely to have less patience for old-school classroom sales training and bootcamps. They’re happier using their mobile devices to access virtual training sessions and videos on their schedule. After all, flexibility is key for millennials.

    To ensure engagement, training sessions should be short and concise. Millennial sales people are apt to tune out during long presentations.

    Since millennials embrace technology, sales tools that leverage automation and artificial intelligence will go a long way towards keeping them motivated and productive.

    https://www.the-future-of-commerce.com/2019/04/02/managing-millennial-salespeople/

Photo by Vlad Sargu on Unsplash

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News You Can Use: 4/10/2019

  • The anti-competitive forces that foil speedy, affordable broadband

    Big players such as AT&T routinely issue press releases touting new deployments. But on closer examination, many of those touch only a few homes or businesses in an entire census tract, thus inflating the actual scope of the deployment, says Joanne Hovis, the president of CTC Technology & Energy, the company that prepared the broadband report for San Francisco. “The FCC’s data is very flawed,” she says.

    What’s more, roughly half of the new fiber deployments cited recently by the FCC were mandated as a condition for approval of AT&T’s acquisition of DirecTV, says Ernesto Falcon, legislative counsel with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And deployments have slowed because the major players have already cherry-picked the neighborhoods that offer the best prospects for high-paying customers, he says.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90319916/the-anti-competitive-forces-that-foil-speedy-affordable-broadband

  • In a WeWork World, Finding an Office Buddy Is a Social Minefield

    Co-working requires a special set of social skills. Nisha Garigarn was visiting the Wing, a women-focused work and community space in New York, when an acquaintance from an event at another venue three years earlier approached her.

    “She kind of inserted herself into the conversation I was having with my co-working friends,” said the 28-year-old co-founder of the co-working app Croissant. “It was really awkward.” Unable to extricate herself, Ms. Garigarn pulled out her laptop and pretended to read her email. Another friend got up to use the bathroom. Later, Ms. Garigarn watched a YouTube video on how to end a conversation gracefully.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-a-wework-world-finding-an-office-buddy-is-a-social-minefield-11553873968

  • Universal basic income: The plan to give $12,000 to every American adult | Andrew Yang

    In an UBI economy, corporations (especially retail) will view these funds as a subsidy and find ways to pay employees less, and squeeze out more profit.
  • Repairing All the ‘Structurally Deficient’ Bridges in the US Would Take More Than 80 Years

    The ARTBA’s 2019 Bridge Report said that 8 percent—or 47,000 of the country’s 616,087 bridges—are “structurally deficient,” which the ARTBA estimates would cost $171 billion to fix. The report, published this week, is an analysis of data from the US Department of Transportation’s National Bridge Inventory.

    “There’s a lot of conversation on Capitol Hill about investing in infrastructure; it’s the one thing both Democrats and Republicans agree should be done,” John Schneidawind, vice president of public affairs at the ARTBA, told Motherboard in an email. “But there’s little agreement yet on how to fund that investment.”

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/yw8ypb/repairing-all-the-structurally-deficient-bridges-in-the-us-would-take-more-than-80-years-artba

  • How to (Politely) Get Someone to Sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement

    “In the interest of maintaining good governance with future investors, we’re asking that anyone closely involved with this project at this early stage sign an NDA.”

    What you are saying is that you’re planning to approach investors who will want to see that you follow best practices in the way you run your business. The fact that you can produce a list of people who have been exposed to the concept and who have signed an NDA will bode well with professional investors doing due diligence. It will also prevent them from using this as an excuse to nibble down the valuation.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/331079

Photo by Simon Maage on Unsplash

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News You Can Use: 4/3/2019

  • How Better Communication Skills Can Make You a Better Leader

    You might stray away from being assertive, in fear that it’ll come off as confrontational — trust us when we say they’re not one and the same. Part of being assertive is the ability to confidently stand behind your words and offer up a much-needed sense of direction or action plan.

    Fact is, everyone possesses knowledge — but what makes individuals stand out as leaders is their ability to communicate that unique information. And beyond just relaying that information, figuring out a way to inspire and motivate others.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/331323

  • Apple still has a lot to prove with its new subscription services

    The best answer I can come up with is this: Apple has a huge effect on technology and culture, and Apple is trying to tell a new story about what it is and what it makes. You should care because the story Apple tells us and tells itself has real effects on the products it makes and its effect on culture.

    So yes, Apple makes subscription services now. But if the whole story is just “Apple can make more money now that iPhone sales have plateaued,” then none of this really matters or changes anything.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/26/18282776/apple-tv-news-plus-subscription-services-announcement-keynote-cost-bundle

  • Shh! Keep Your Big Goals to Yourself.

    Some experts argue that praise before accomplishment can actually prevent us from reaching our goals. In 2009, researcher Peter Gollwitzer asked the question, “Are scientists more likely to write papers if they tell colleagues about their intentions or if they keep their intentions to themselves?”

    After completing a series of studies, Gollwitzer and his team found that when people set a goal that’s closely tied to their identity and share their intentions with others, they’re less likely to achieve that goal. In converse example, telling friends that you’re going to start taking vitamins likely won’t affect your follow-through. That’s because vitamins probably aren’t deeply tied to your personal identity.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/329168

  • Move over, WeWork. This Belize beachside coworking space is the dream

    While all coworking spaces claim their business is “more than a workspace” and their unique design and the various perks they offer “set them apart,” the Belize Tourism Board (BTB) may actually be right. The bungalow is situated over the brilliantly blue water on Tobacco Caye. The coworking space has an open-concept layout to help coworkers feel right at home and make collaboration easy. There are standing desks, a wellness center, executive parking, a VIP boardroom, and, of course, Wi-Fi and a killer view.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90327084/move-over-wework-this-belize-beachside-co-working-space-is-the-dream

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Posted on

News You Can Use: 3/27/2019

  • Workplace tracking is growing fast. Most workers don’t seem very concerned

    The single area that worries watchdogs the most is, perhaps, wellness. A majority of large companies and a significant percentage of smaller ones have programs today that, in the name of encouraging their workers to be in good physical and mental shape, seek out personal health information. This can include questions about whether workers are anxious or depressed, drink alcohol or use drugs, or take medication.

    The Americans with Disabilities Act and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act are supposed to ensure that an employee’s sensitive details are held close. Yet there are gaps in these laws, experts say, and companies may not always adhere strictly to the regulations that are on the books.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90318167/workplace-tracking-is-growing-fast-most-workers-dont-seem-very-concerned

  • Amazon is aggressively blocking ads for unprofitable products as part of a plan to bolster its bottom line

    In recent months, Amazon has been telling more vendors, or brand owners who sell their goods wholesale, that if Amazon can’t sell those products to consumers at a profit, it won’t let them pay to promote the items. For example, if a $5 water bottle costs Amazon that amount to store, pack and ship, the maker of the water bottle won’t be allowed to advertise it.

    The added stringency, which CNBC learned of from conversations with vendors and emails they received from Amazon as well as from outside experts, reflects a broader push to squeeze earnings out of a historically low-margin business. In its most recent quarter, Amazon posted $3 billion in net income, the highest in company history, while profit for the full year more than more than tripled to $10 billion.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/20/amazon-aggressively-suspending-ads-of-unprofitable-products-as-focus-on-the-bottom-line-grows.html

  • The colossal problem with universal basic income
  • No sleep, no sex, no life: tech workers in China’s Silicon Valley face burnout before they reach 30

    “One thing Chinese founders or unicorns haven’t figured out is how to become a sustainable business. If you continue those [long hours] for 10 years, people will have no personal life any more, they will have no kids, they will go crazy,” Wingender said.

    Yang is pondering what comes next. With more than 10 years of experience, he now holds a mid-level position at a top-tier internet company but has reached a career ceiling. He compares himself to a construction worker, who can earn good money due to high work intensity but can easily be replaced by younger, cheaper labour.

    https://www.scmp.com/tech/apps-social/article/3002533/no-sleep-no-sex-no-life-tech-workers-chinas-silicon-valley-face

  • The New Social Network That Isn’t New at All

    Newsletters could be a more reliable means of increasing readership for major publishers whose relationships with social networks have soured. Remember when Facebook moved away from promoting videos on the platform? Or when it decided to show more posts from friends and family, and de-emphasize content from publishers and brands? With every shift, big media companies had to adjust.

    Also

    “You don’t have to fight an algorithm to reach your audience,” Casey Newton, a journalist who writes The Interface, a daily newsletter for the technology news site The Verge, told me. “With newsletters, we can rebuild all of the direct connections to people we lost when the social web came along.”

    It can be more than just a creative endeavor: Newsletters can make a fine one-person business. Writers can charge readers to a monthly fee for their newsletters. Substack takes a cut of that fee; Revue charges writers using a tiered-pricing system based on the size of newsletter’s subscriber base.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/technology/new-social-network-email-newsletter.html

Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash

Posted on

News You Can Use: 3/13/2019

  • If We’re Going to Break Up Big Tech, We Shouldn’t Forget Big Telecom

    In recent years, telecom giants like Verizon have been repeatedly caught covertly spying on customers and selling your private location data to a long chain of dubious middlemen, often with little oversight. Giant ISPs often help scammers rip off their own customers, earning them the worst customer satisfaction ratings of any business sector in America.

    Telecom presents a unique problem in tech. ISPs like Comcast and AT&T not only enjoy vast media and broadcast empires, but a clear monopoly over access to the internet itself thanks to limited broadband competition.

    This domination of both the conduit and the content creates unique anti-competitive opportunities ISPs are starting to exploit in a variety of sneaky ways. For example, telecom giants convinced the FCC in 2017 to neuter itself at lobbyists’ behest, demolishing numerous widely popular consumer protections like net neutrality along the way.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vbwjvy/if-were-going-to-break-up-big-tech-we-shouldnt-forget-big-telecom

  • Philadelphia Bans ‘Cashless’ Stores Amid Growing Backlash

    The new law, signed by Mayor Jim Kenney last week, takes effect on July 1 and could lead to fines of up to $2,000 on businesses that do not take cash.

    But many transactions will be exempt, including those at parking lots and garages; businesses that sell goods through a membership model; rentals that require security deposits; online, telephone or mail-in transactions; and goods sold exclusively to employees.

    The bill amends the city’s Fair Practices Ordinance, which is administered by the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations. Mike Dunn, a spokesman for the city, said on Thursday that the commission would have to set the penalties before the bill takes effect.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/business/cashless-stores-philadelphia.html
    This is the same city that makes it ever more difficult to use cash for public transportation. Philly – if you are making laws like this, you have to eat your own dog food.

  • Taxing the rich
  • Hip offices are part of our mental health crisis, here’s why

    Even with all the mental health days and in-office lounges, many employees still feel an inability to disconnect from the office mindset, which makes them feel overworked and exhausted for prolonged periods. Job-induced anxiety is on the rise as technology blurs the lines between work and home life. The idea of work-life balance has all but disappeared.

    According to a 2015 study put out by NAMI Massachusetts, one can attribute 64 percent of absenteeism from work because of poor mental health. And 81 percent of productivity loss occurs as a result of presenteeism, where people work when they’re sick (and should be resting).

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90313990/why-cool-offices-do-nothing-to-mental-health

Photo by Master Wen on Unsplash