Journal

The Edge may be the most connected—and greenest—office anywhere in the world. Is this the future of working?

When you pull up for work at Deloitte’s new office building in Amsterdam, the garage automatically recognizes your car or bike, opens the gate, and guides you to a parking spot and a free electric charger. The office app assigns you a desk, based on your schedule for the day and whether you’re in the mood for a standing desk or a place to concentrate. Once you start work, you can use the app to tweak the lighting or heat until it’s just right.

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Over the last few decades, Lego bricks have gotten a lot more diverse.

In what is perhaps the most literal chart you will read today, one member of the Lego fan site Brickset has graphed the last 52 years of Lego bricks sold, by color.

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City trees do amazing things: from sucking pollution out of the air to filtering stormwater. The more the better.

When New York City first set a goal to plant a million new trees in a decade, it was more ambitious than any city tree planting project that had ever been attempted before. Now they’ve finished two years ahead of schedule.

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The crowdfunding site is relaunching Indiegogo Life, its personal fundraising platform, as a standalone site called Generosity.

Last December, crowdfunding site Indiegogo introduced a new section called Indiegogo Life, through which people could raise money for personal causes—say, medical bills for a cancer patient—without having to pay the fees that usually accompany listings on the platform. On Wednesday, Indiegogo said it was renaming the venture and devoting a separate site, Generosity.com, to its charity wing.

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Months before its big Hollywood break, Angry Birds creator Rovio is laying off hundreds of employees.

With a major animated film on the horizon, Rovio, the struggling company behind the Angry Birds franchise, is laying off almost a third of its workforce. In a statement, the Finnish game developer confirmed it is cutting over 200 jobs and initiating a massive reorganization.

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Elizabeth Holmes defends Theranos against a scathing Wall Street Journal exposé—while speaking at a WSJ event.

When Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes agreed to be interviewed at the Wall Street Journal‘s WSJ.D Live conference here in Laguna Beach, California, she didn’t know that the event would end up taking place a week after the Journal published an in-depth exposé charging that the company’s blood-testing system had serious problems and that it was actually using commercially available devices for much of its work.

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Annual survey reveals that ethics, work-life balance, and job security are top of mind for leadership at the best places to work.

Here’s a bit of optimism to brighten your day: Great Place to Work just announced that not only do employees at America’s best small and medium-size workplaces say their companies are treating people fairly and making it easier to integrate work and personal lives, but the businesses are growing. The businesses on the list are hiring new staff nearly seven times faster than U.S. companies overall.

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YouTube Red will let viewers watch YouTube videos without ads—and eventually access exclusive content for $10 per month.

The world’s biggest online video site is going freemium. As widely speculated for some time, YouTube is launching a pay subscription service, on October 28. The premium tier, called YouTube Red, will let viewers watch videos without ads and save videos for offline, among other perks. It will cost $10 per month on the web or Android, $13 per month on iOS due to Apple’s 30% fee.

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When will then be now? Soon.

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In response to geopolitical unrest, Israel’s Ministry of Tourism hopes to entice tourists with discounted vacation packages on Groupon.

In response to a wave of stabbings, lynchings, and rioting, the Israeli government is taking an unusual approach to woo tourists: offering discounted vacations on Groupon. Starting next week, Israel’s Ministry of Tourism will sell discount vacation packages to American tourists via Groupon in a rare example of a government agency directly offering vacation tours via the coupon service.

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