Journal

Medical researchers are pooling their data to find diagnoses and cures for patients with extremely rare and sometimes undiscovered diseases.

You probably haven’t heard of a disease called arterial calcification due to deficiency of the CD73 enzyme, which causes painful calcium buildup in the joints and blood vessels. Discovered in 2011 through the Undiagnosed Disease Program (UDP) at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, only a handful of individuals are believed to suffer from the disease, which is also known as ACDC.

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From paid sick days to fairer scheduling practices, Coworker.org is attracting employee networks who are influencing change.

Whether they’re seeking better pay or working conditions, employees—especially low-wage workers—have typically had to traverse a tough road of organizing to get their message across and then getting others to listen. Now, dozens of employee networks have found a new place to gather, organize, and create change: Coworker.org.

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Here’s how technologists think the world of IoT will change the workplace—and how it’s already changing how we do business today.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an exciting concept, a future where “billions of things are talking to each other,” as technology consulting company SAP describes it. We’ve seen gadgets and domestic appliances connect to the Internet and ping your smartphone with info, but it’s becoming more clear that these toys are a prelude to a vastly connected world. And yet, we spend most of our day at work. Here’s how technologists think the world of IoT will change the workplace—and how it’s already changing how we do business today.

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Many who reach the C-suite rise through the ranks, but company location and industry play a part in making it to the top slot as well.

The steps to make it to the top slot at a company aren’t cut and dried. The current CEOs of the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500 have examples of both entrepreneurs and those who climbed the career ladder in a more traditional way. There’s Jeff Bezos who started Amazon as an online bookseller in 1995, and Frederick Smith who launched FedEx. Then there’s Tim Cook, who joined Apple in 1998 and worked his way up to CEO when Steve Jobs resigned in 2011.

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But so far, Greenpeace’s offer has been rejected out of hand.

The environmental group Greenpeace is famous for direct actions that disrupt fossil fuel activities—it has confronted big ships on kayaks, scaled offshore drill rigs, and climbed up smokestacks in its quest.

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Facebook opens up about their proposed personal digital helper.

Facebook has long said its core mission is to connect everyone in the world. Now it wants to use artificial intelligence to automatically help those connected billions with everyday tasks.

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A startup called Next has a big idea for self-driving cars: Make them multipurpose, linked-together boxes.

The Google Car looks like a VW bug post-castration. The Tesla is a ride for the rich and boring. Both vehicles feature AI that can take the wheel for you—and yet, both cars are still, notably, cars with four wheels, doors, and rear trunk space. Where’s all the imagination?

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Noah Lang’s health insurance startup is at the center of a debate about the future of work.

As Uber drivers go, Noah Lang fits the basic profile. He’s male, over 30, college-educated, and drives to earn a little extra income. There’s one crucial factor that makes him different, though: His startup has $15 million in funding to help Uber drivers and other gig economy workers find an affordable health plan.

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OpenBCI, a project originally funded by DARPA, offers an EEG headset starting at $449 allowing DIYers to peer inside their brains.

Sci-fi is full of tales about people controlling machines with their minds, but sci-fi is already here, sorta. For example, earlier this year, during the Cognitive Technology exhibit at San Francisco’s Exploratorium science museum, visitors could don electroencephalogram (EEG) headsets that read brainwave patterns to move a robotic arm. They could also create images based on their brainwave activity. There are many other examples of scientists or just DIY “neurohackers,” jacking in to starting figuring out how the electric energy in their skulls can be deciphered.

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The acquisition of King Digital Entertainment by Activision Blizzard marries a mobile gaming giant with a behemoth video game publisher.

Activision Blizzard, the company behind video games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, just inked a deal to acquire King Digital Entertainment, the maker of wildly popular mobile game Candy Crush Saga. The acquisition will cost Activision a whopping $5.9 billion, and could cement the company’s position as a leading game creator—one that has yet to make its mark on the mobile front.

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