Tag: millennials

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News You Can Use: 7/17/2019


Photo by Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash

  • How U.S. Tech Giants Are Helping to Build China’s Surveillance State

    The OpenPower Foundation — a nonprofit led by Google and IBM executives with the aim of trying to “drive innovation” — has set up a collaboration between IBM, Chinese company Semptian, and U.S. chip manufacturer Xilinx. Together, they have worked to advance a breed of microprocessors that enable computers to analyze vast amounts of data more efficiently.

    Shenzhen-based Semptian is using the devices to enhance the capabilities of internet surveillance and censorship technology it provides to human rights-abusing security agencies in China, according to sources and documents. A company employee said that its technology is being used to covertly monitor the internet activity of 200 million people.

    https://theintercept.com/2019/07/11/china-surveillance-google-ibm-semptian/

  • These Tech Companies Are Giving Millions To Politicians Who Vote Against LGBTQ People

    The group, Zero for Zeros, analyzed the contribution data between 2010 and 2019 of the top-scoring companies on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. It found 49 corporate PACs that gave a combined $5,837,331 to members of Congress who had received ratings of zero on the HRC’s legislative scorecard. These elected officials include Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who introduced legislation in 2018 that would make it legal for businesses and nonprofits to discriminate against same-sex couples, unmarried couples, and single parents.

    Companies like Google, through their corporate PACs, gave a combined $178,500 to politicians who scored zeros on the HRC legislative scorecard. Google, which has faced scrutiny for refusing to crack down on anti-LGBTQ speech, donated $10,000 to Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee. In 2014, Lee said that the progressive agenda “rejects the enviable right to life according to one’s religious convictions, and is utterly blind to the moral and economic consequences of our nation’s growing marriage crisis.”

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/leticiamiranda/these-tech-companies-are-giving-millions-to-politicians-who

  • Why aren’t Millennials buying homes?
  • The 3 Essential Negotiation Tactics According to Researchers

    The guilt and petty politics of socials debt can be a nightmare. But when it comes to negotiations, reciprocity can be used to give yourself some serious leverage, especially if you’re smart about it. Marketing and persuasion expert Robert Cialidini found that waiters offering their patrons an after dinner mint increased tips by 3%. For wait staff who added, “for you nice people, here’s an extra mint,” tips jumped by a whopping 23%.

    This isn’t just for beguiling the other side, but for guilting them as well. Katherine Shonk, editor of Harvard Business School’s Negotiation blog, asserts that you should be specific about the things you’re giving up. Why? Well, in spite of people’s instinct to be even, you can’t always count the opposing side recognizing when you’re making a compromise or how important of a point you’re folding on. Getting a fair deal means making people understand exactly what you’re exchanging. As strong as reciprocity is, to really make it work for you, you need to make the exchange felt for it to have any effect.

    https://www.primermagazine.com/2019/earn/negotiation-tactics

  • Workers waste half their time as they struggle with data

    Organizations are suffering from inefficiencies and ineffectiveness as they turn to data as the lifeblood of their digital transformation — and the workforce is struggling.

    About 54M data workers around the world face challenges associated with the complexity, diversity and scale of their company’s data. These data workers represent a quarter of knowledge workers around the world.

    Four out of five (80%) of organizations take advantage of data across multiple organizational processes, but despite increases in innovation, workers waste 44% of their time each week due to unsuccessful activities because of lack of collaboration, existence of knowledge gaps and resistance to change.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/workers-waste-half-their-time-as-they-struggle-with-data/

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News You Can Use: 5/29/2019

  • How work became the millennial religion of choice

    According to Jobvite’s annual Job Seeker Nation survey, 42% of American workers define themselves by the jobs they perform and/or the companies they work for, and that number rises to 45% among those under the age of 40. Furthermore, of the 42% who say that they define themselves through their work, 65% say it’s “very important” to who they are as people.

    “We have spiritual lives, we have physical lives, we like to have intellectual stimuli in our lives, we have our communities and our families and friends; humans are complex, and to have a really healthy balance, it requires all of those components,” says Rachel Bitte, Jobvite’s chief people officer. “Expecting all of that to come from your work could be an unrealistic expectation.”

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90350861/how-work-became-the-millennial-religion-of-choice

  • Diverse Workplaces Generate 19 Percent More Revenue Than Less Diverse Competitors

    Other tactics that La Mendola took to task for organizing multicultural teams included pinpointing personalities. By identifying the types of personalities on a team, from Type A taskmasters to creative working out-of-the-box types, you’ll begin to understand how to best approach the team as a whole.

    For a more laid back crowd, La Mendola recommends establishing a laissez-faire work environment–humor helps, too. In a multicultural environment that is more serious and straightforward, keep the crew on task for the best results. This is how La Mendola is able to manage a team of engineers from around the world and is also key to dealing with a multigenerational employee group.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/333873

  • How AI will liberate doctors from keyboards and basements
  • How Silicon Valley gamed Europe’s privacy rules

    Smaller firms — whose fortunes were of special concern to the framers of the region’s privacy revamp — also have suffered from the relatively high compliance costs and the perception, at least among some investors, that they can’t compete with Silicon Valley’s biggest names.

    “Big companies like Facebook are 10 steps ahead of everyone else, and 100 steps ahead of regulators,” declared Paul-Olivier Dehaye, a privacy expert who helped uncover Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal. “There are very big questions about what they’re doing.”

    The patchy record of Europe’s data protection overhaul — on the one-year anniversary of its implementation — has given industry an opportunity to blunt similar efforts outside the European Union to emulate the region’s new privacy rules.

    https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-data-protection-gdpr-general-data-protection-regulation-facebook-google/

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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: 10/24/2018

The Source - No Attention Span

  • Facebook Isn’t Sorry — It Just Wants Your Data

    Weeks after the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal broke, Facebook announced at its annual conference that it would soon use its trove of user data to roll out a dating app to help pair users together in “long-term” romantic relationships. Later in the year, while Zuckerberg told Congress “I promise to do better for you” and pledged increased transparency in its handling of users’ data, the company admitted to secretly using a private tool to delete the old messages of its founder. This summer, just days after Zuckerberg assured “we have a responsibility to protect people,” reports surfaced that Facebook asked US banks for granular customer financial data (including card transactions and checking account balances) to use for a banking feature. Even the company’s good faith attempts to secure its platform feel ham-handed and oblivious, like last November when Facebook asked users in Australia to upload their nude photos to Facebook for employee review to combat revenge porn.

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/facebook-isnt-sorry-it-just-wants-your-data

  • How WhatsApp is undermining Facebook’s war on election interference

    The problem, of course, is WhatsApp. As we were admiring the flags, Brazilian newspaper Folha published an investigation showing that media companies are buying large groups of phone numbers and blasting them with anti-leftist propaganda on the encrypted messaging app. While it’s often discussed as a chat app, WhatsApp has message-forwarding mechanics that strip away the identity of the sender and allow messages to spread virally with little accountability.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/19/17997516/facebook-election-war-room-brazil-whatsapp

  • The economics of immigration
  • Open offices have driven Panasonic to make horse blinders for humans

    “As open offices and digital nomads are on the rise, workers are finding it ever more important to have personal space where they can focus,” the company told Dezeen. “Wear Space instantly creates this kind of personal space – it’s as simple as putting on an article of clothing.”

    The device, which debuted as a prototype at SXSW earlier this year, is now the subject of a crowdfunding campaign. Early birds can snag one for around $260, but we’re going to say neigh on this one.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/17/open-offices-have-driven-panasonic-to-make-horse-blinders-for-humans/

  • Sorry, Goldfish: People’s Attention Spans Aren’t Shrinking, They’re Evolving

    The research, presented in detail in Prezi’s 2018 State of Attention Report, found that well over half — 59 percent — of business professionals feel they can give a piece of content their undivided attention more so today than they could just one year ago. Also, nearly half (49 percent) of respondents said they are more selective about the content they consume now compared to one year ago.

    The State of Attention study also found evidence that attention spans are not only intact across generations, but also expanding in younger generations. That’s important information for businesses: Many organizations struggle to communicate effectively with, and develop engaging content for, all groups in their multigenerational workforce — but that’s especially true with millennials. And millennials, according to Pew Research Center, are the largest generation in the workforce as of 2017.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/321266

Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash

Posted on

News You Can Use: 6/13/2018

Can this guy take your picture? Joey Lombardi Presents The Source

  • Plot twist: GDPR is actually helping Google’s ad business

    In the short term, this seems to be helping Google’s ad business. Because the company is receiving user consent faster than smaller ad exchanges, it’s able to deploy more targeted ads, according to data reported by the Wall Street Journal. What’s more, Google’s DoubleClick Bid Manager has been channeling advertisers to its own exchanges as a way to ensure it is adhering to the new regulations. Smaller exchanges are still scrambling to gain consent, and Google is being very rigorous about confirming which companies are adequately complying with the new rules.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40579534/plot-twist-gdpr-is-actually-helping-googles-ad-business

  • How Bad is GDPR for Photographers?

    If you’re a photo enthusiast, then things get tricky.

    See, the GDPR sees photography as something even the first Terminator could do: processing personal data. Yes, your dreamy picture of that girl in the sunflower field is the “collection and sharing of personal data” in the eyes of a data protection officer. Many things in a photo are personal data: her face, the location, the time and date, and everything that is tied to her identity.

    The legal consequence: you need to provide some kind of justification to take that picture and to put it on your hard disk or — god forbid — to share it on Instagram. If you’re a pro, you have a model release. If you’re just a friend, it’s out of the scope of the GDPR (again, “personal or household activity”). But an enthusiast sits uncomfortably in the middle.

    https://petapixel.com/2018/05/30/how-bad-is-gdpr-for-photographers/

  • “Dear Old People: Meet Today’s Teenager” | Talks at Google

    This guy is not a great speaker, but the data is interesting and compliments the last article on this post.
  • Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

    “In my experience young people, especially the post-90s generation, are reluctant to work overtime – they are more self-centered,” says labour rights expert Li Jupeng, one of many who have observed some millennials challenging the 996 concept.

    The relative affluence of their parents and grandparents is part of the reason. China’s rapid economic transformation has given rise to a sizeable middle class, with almost 70% of the country’s urban population making between $9,000 and $34,000 annually in 2012. In 2000, that figure was just 4%.

    As only children, millennials are receiving a lot of support from their families – including a financial safety net should their careers not go as planned.

    http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180508-young-chinese-are-sick-of-working-overtime

  • Teens Are Increasingly Ditching Facebook. Here’s How Entrepreneurs Should Respond.

    In just three years, the percentage of teens using Facebook dropped 20 percent, reaching 51 percent in 2018. And though Facebook was the most-used online platform for teens in the Pew Research Center’s 2014-2015 survey, it’s now lagging behind. Three other social media platforms now lead the way for individuals ages 13 to 17: YouTube (85 percent), Instagram (72 percent) and Snapchat (69 percent). (It’s worth noting that YouTube wasn’t a response option in the previous survey, and it’s now snagged the top spot.)

    In the same three years, the percentage of teens reporting they use the internet “almost constantly” has nearly doubled, reaching 45 percent in 2018. In fact, about nine in 10 teens go online multiple times per day. One driving factor here is the growing universality of smartphones, as 95 percent of teens currently have or have access to one.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/314380

Photo by Cameron Kirby on Unsplash