The Chinese firewall blocked the site less than 24 hours after Alphabet was unveiled.
Well, that was fast: Less than a day after Google revealed its newly created parent company, Alphabet, its website has been barred in China.
Ecuador Is The World’s First Country With A Public Digital Cash System
The government is circulating low-fee paperless currency in hopes of reducing the costs and failings of the cash economy.
The runaway success of mobile money products like M-Pesa, which first took off in Kenya, has inspired dozens of copycats around the world. Many countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America now have services allowing people to store and transfer money using their cellphones. But there’s something different about Ecuador’s new Sistema de Dinero Electrónico. It’s being operated not by a private phone carrier or financial company, but Ecuador’s left-leaning government.
M-Pesa-like products have been hailed for bringing millions of people into the formal financial system, enabling commerce between people in different locations, and cutting theft and tax avoidance. But Diego Martinez, an economist in Ecuador’s central bank, says the government wanted its own service, because it thinks it can reduce the transaction costs that come with private offerings.
This Is The Worst Business Jargon, Ever
Warning: this video is extremely cathartic.
Synergy. Circle back. Value add. We created a bracket of some of the worst and most offensive business jargon phrases of all time. And the winner of the worst business jargon of all time is: “opening the kimono.” So we took this phrase and put it on a piñata. And gave a few disgruntled employees a bat. Watch what happens and enjoy. Just remember: whatever you do out there, please never open that kimono again.
The Invention Of Alphabet Is The Ultimate Larry Page Move
Once you get your head around it, Google’s mind-bender of an announcement makes perfect sense.
When a coworker shared the news that Google was creating a new holding company called Alphabet and splitting off all its non-core activities from the Google brand, I reacted in the only rational way: I wondered for a nanosecond if it was a wonderfully wacky hoax. Then I checked the URL on Larry Page’s blog post, in which he explained the rationale and announced that longtime Googler Sundar Pichai would become Google’s CEO. It seemed to be legit.
The Nice Person’s Guide To Criticism
Giving and receiving criticism is an uncomfortable but necessary part of career growth. Here are six ways to do it without being mean.
Even when your intentions are good, it can be tough to give constructive criticism. It’s an awkward conversation for the giver, and it can spark a negative reaction in the receiver.
Peek At These Photos That Show The View From People’s Windows Around The World
People may live in very different neighborhoods, but the feelings our streetscapes inspire are often universal.
It sounds like a mundane question: What’s the view from your window? But in a new photo series, looking at the view from someone’s apartment in Lahore or Singapore or Brisbane, it’s possible to glimpse something about life on the other side of the planet that a typical spread in a travel magazine might miss.
Here’s What Happens When Starchitects Hack Together A Kitchen From Ikea
The Danish company Reform asked BIG, Henning Larsen Architects, and Norm to design modified fronts and table tops for Ikea kitchen cabinets.
Reform is a new Danish furniture company with an intriguing business model: By taking Ikea flat-pack kitchen components and modding them into custom units, it aims to give everyone the opportunity for high-end design at a reasonable price. For its current endeavor, the company is outfitting Ikea’s Metod line of kitchen cabinets with customized fronts and table tops designed by three of Denmark’s leading architecture firms—BIG, Henning Larson Architects, and Norm.
Revisiting The Architectural Landmarks Of Past World’s Fairs
Some aged gracefully. Others not so much.
We owe a handful of some of the most iconic works of architecture to World’s Fairs, like the Eiffel Tower, the Space Needle, and Habitat ’67. Today the structures might be a photo-op for design-savvy tourists, but they’re also relics that reflect aspirations of generations past. After photographer Jade Doskow visited one of the sites on a family vacation, she was hooked on documenting their present-day conditions.
U.S. productivity growth rebounds to 1.3% in 2Q
U.S. productivity rose at a moderate pace in the April-June quarter as growth picked up and hiring remained steady
Read More Feds: Group made $30M with hacked press release info
Defendants are accused of accessing news releases and traded on the information in them before they were made public
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