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 S24The Milky Way's stars are gradually being ejected  Whenever we look up at the great expanse of the night sky, it’s easy to forget, from a cosmic perspective, just how confined our views are to our own backyard. The brightest objects of all are the Sun, Moon, and planets like Venus and Jupiter: objects right here in the Solar System. The glittering canopy of a dark night sky contains thousands of stars visible to the human eye: all of which are within our Milky Way, and most of which are within a few thousand light-years. Even the deep-sky objects, like nebulae and galaxies, are all contained within our Local Group. Despite the tens of billions of light-years that the expanse of the observable Universe stretches out for, nearly all of what’s most easily visible to us is right here in our local cosmic neighborhood.But the grandest sight of all is the expanse of the Milky Way itself, stretching across the entire night sky. Within it, streams of light-blocking neutral matter stand in the way of hundreds of billions of stars, creating a diffuse glow that — with powerful enough observatories — can be resolved into individual points of light. It was once thought that these stars were all relatively stable in orbit around the Milky Way: like the planets within our Solar System. However, some revolutionary scientific discoveries have happened since that outdated picture held sway, and we now know that some of these stars have already received kicks that will soon eject them from the galaxy entirely. By investigating further, we can learn something about the Milky Way and, in turn, all galaxies: after a finite amount of time, they’ll dissociate, rather than being devoured by their central black holes. Here’s the story of stellar ejection.
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S25The #1 superpower every leader needs Everybody wants to rule the world — or at least lead their corner of it — and the reasons are obvious enough. When you’re in charge, you get power and status. People look to you for guidance, and you make the decisions. Did we mention the money? Because the pay is definitely better at the top.But as Adam Bryant, author and the senior managing director of the ExCo Group, is quick to point out, that image of leadership only represents the highlight reel. It’s far from the whole picture.
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S26AI model uses human irrationality to predict our next moves Human beings behave irrationally — or as an artificially intelligent robot might say, “sub-optimally.” Data, the emotionless yet affable android depicted in Star Trek: The Next Generation, regularly struggled to comprehend humans’ flawed decision-making. If he had been programmed with a new model devised by researchers at MIT and the University of Washington, he might have had an easier go of it.In a paper published last month, Athul Paul Jacob, a Ph.D. student in AI at MIT, Dr. Jacob Andreas, his academic advisor, and Abhishek Gupta, an assistant professor in computer science and engineering at the University of Washington, described a new way to model an agent’s behavior. They then used their method to predict humans’ goals or actions.
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S27S28Shareholder Sues Elon Musk, Alleging 'Unlawful' Tesla Stock Sale Profits Tesla shareholder sues Musk to return billions in alleged unlawful profitsWILMINGTON, Delaware (Reuters) -Elon Musk made billions of dollars by selling Tesla stock using insider information, an institutional shareholder accused in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, asking the court to direct the Tesla CEO to return "unlawful profits."The lawsuit comes two days before a critical vote by Tesla shareholders on whether to reinstate Musk's $56 billion pay package, after a Delaware judge voided it in January because she found that Musk had improperly controlled the process. Â Â
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S29Defense Contractor RTX Accused of Discrimination With Ads Seeking Recent College Grads The lawsuit filed in federal court in Boston accuses RTX Corporation of posting ads that target younger workers at the expense of their older peers in violation of the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Massachusetts Fair Employment Practices Act, and the Virginia Human Rights Act.RTX, formerly Raytheon Technologies Corporation, is an American multinational aerospace and defense conglomerate headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. The lawsuit alleges it posted ads seeking job applicants who are recent graduates or have less than two years' experience, which excluded older workers from consideration or deterred them from applying in the first place.
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S30Addition of Affirm's BNPL on Apple Pay Could Offer Lilt to Retailer Sales Amid the raft of developments coming from Apple's annual Worldwide Developer Conference was one that should catch the attention of retailers and other consumer-facing businesses. Later this year, in addition to the other fast, non-contact payment methods it already offers, Apple Pay will include fintech company Affirm's buy now, pay later (BNPL) option, a choice that's become increasingly popular with budget-pinched shoppers.The Cupertino, California-based tech giant announced that Affirm's BNPL will be among several new service additions to Apple Pay and Apple Wallet. The updated menu of choices, Apple said, will permit customers to "view and redeem rewards, and access installment loan offerings from eligible credit or debit cards, when making a purchase online or in-app with iPhone and iPad." In offering those extra convenience and financing choices to customers, the update will also facilitate transactions with stores, restaurants, and other businesses.
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S31Strikes Push Waffle House to Raise Tipped Workers' Pay In a video message to employees late last month, Waffle House CEO Joe Rogers III said base pay would rise to at least $3 per hour in June and then gradually rise to at least $5.25 per hour by June 2026. Base pay doesn't include workers' tips, and will be higher in some states depending on minimum wage laws, Rogers said.Rogers said wage increases will be paid for by higher menu prices, and that wages will rise more slowly in some rural markets than in urban ones. The company is also adding tenure bonuses and premiums for working later shifts.
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S32Amazon Adds $1.4 Billion to Housing Fund for Areas Where it Has Corporate Offices Amazon is adding $1.4 billion to a fund it established three years ago for preserving or building more affordable housing in regions where the company has major corporate offices, CEO Andy Jassy announced Tuesday.The Seattle-based company said the new sum would go on top of the $2.2 billion it had already invested to help create or preserve 21,000 affordable housing units in three areas: the Puget Sound in Washington state; Arlington, Virginia; and Nashville, Tennessee. When it launched its Housing Equity Fund in January 2021, Amazon said it aimed to fund 20,000 units over five years.
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S33Thousands of Amazon Flex Drivers File Arbitration Claims for Misclassification as Contractors Thousands of Amazon.com Flex drivers filed arbitration claims on Tuesday, alleging they were misclassified as independent contractors rather than employees, the lawyer representing the drivers told Reuters. About 15,800 drivers have submitted arbitration claims with the American Arbitration Association, seeking compensation from Amazon for unpaid wages, overtime and work-related expenses such as mileage and cellphone use, the lawyer said. Other 453 similar cases are already being litigated. Â
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S34After the Key Bridge Collapse, Supply Chains Rose to the Occasion but Local Businesses Suffered When the Francis Scott Key bridge plunged into the Patapsco River in March, killing six construction workers and shutting down the Port of Baltimore, questions swirled about the disaster's broader economic impact. Would other ports be swarmed with re-routed shipping vessels? How would local businesses dependent upon the Port fair with the artery clogged by the wreckage of the Dali, the 948-foot cargo ship that slammed into the bridge?Â
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S35How a 3-Time Inc. 5000 Honoree Is Helping Sales Reps Work More Efficiently With AI That's why, today, Seattle-based sales execution platform Outreach rolled out a handful of AI-powered tools to help its more than 6,000 users--like Salesforce and Verizon--to work more efficiently throughout the sales process.The first is a pipeline generation report, which evaluates sales activities like outbound calls and prospecting. The goal of this tool is to help managers see which of those activities have the greatest impact on sales teams' pipeline generation, which can help shape sales strategy. It also launched a tool to help track managers' coaching efforts with the help of an AI virtual assistant and an AI-powered search engine that will identify gaps in deal progression for managers. The majority of these features will be available to users with its most common pricing package, Engage. Additional features are available at elevated pricing tiers.Â
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S36Governor Hochul Said $15 Congestion Pricing Would Hurt New York City Businesses. This Expert Disagrees At the end of this month, New York was set to become the first city in the country to charge drivers a fee to use the city's busiest streets during peak rush hour times, all in an effort to cut down on traffic and emissions. To enter lower Manhattan, passenger cars would have to pay a $15 toll. The pricing program, which New York Governor Kathy Hochul halted just weeks before launching, was expected to reduce traffic and raise an additional $1 billion in revenue that would be set aside for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to fund public transportation. Gov. Hochul instructed the MTA to pause the program indefinitely. Why? To protect small businesses, whose customers drive into Manhattan, she said.Congestion pricing is not a new concept. The policy has been batted around for more than 60 years. Singapore became the first place to put the pricing scheme to the test back in the 1970s when it began charging vehicles a toll to drive into the central business district during morning rush hour. Other cities like London, Stockholm, and Milan followed with their own versions, but advocates of congestion pricing have struggled to make headway in the car-centric United States. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland, Oregon have considered pricing programs, but no American city has implemented one yet.
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S37Face Your Fear of Becoming Obsolete Professionals across the career spectrum have moments where they fear they’re already obsolete, or becoming so. Different than the occasional bout of self-doubt, fearing obsolescence means we fundamentally question our professional significance. When we over-indulge the fear, it creates cognitive distortions of ourselves, others, and our environment that can bring us to the worst versions of ourselves. Whether you’re early in your career and facing a lifetime of technological and economic disruption, or later in your career and questioning your future relevance to the world, feelings of obsolescence don’t have to mire you in fear or futility. The question isn’t how to avoid these feelings, but rather how to spot evidence you’re having them and address them in healthy, honest ways.
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S38How GitLab Leads Its Fully Remote Workforce In this episode, the company’s CEO Sid Sijbrandij shares the lessons he’s learned about how to manage a distributed workforce. He explains how to recruit talent who are well-suited for remote work and how to onboard them effectively. He also shares how GitLab leaders reinforce company culture remotely and how they create virtual space for informal relationship building.
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S39How Booking.com Sustains a Culture of Innovation Booking.com was founded by a Dutch university student in 1996. It grew slowly for almost a decade. By 2011, the company was generating more than a billion dollars in profits annually — making it the most financially successful digital travel market at the time. The secret to that accelerating growth was the company’s use of large-scale testing and experimentation.
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S40How Gen AI Can Make Work More Fulfilling Research by BCG shows that workers who spend too many hours on tasks they dislike (“toil”) are at risk for quitting, and employees who spend sufficient time on work that creates joy are less of a flight risk. A study of the consulting firm’s administrative employees demonstrates how they can use AI to reduce time spent on toil and increase time on joy-creating tasks. The research also explores the key factors that drive successful gen AI adoption; the main finding is that having a manager who is immersed in using AI will drive employee engagement with the technology.
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S413 Ways to Compassionately Hold Your Team Accountable Why are some teams more successful than others when it comes to meeting deadlines, hitting targets, and growing revenues? Researchers at the NeuroLeadership Institute looked at the cognitive processes associated with leaders who cultivate accountability on their teams. They identified three distinct habits practiced by these leaders: They think ahead, obsess about commitments, and anchor on solutions.
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S42S43Vietnam's made-to-measure fashion brands are thriving in the TikTok era When Jennie from South Korean girl band Blackpink posted pictures of a new eyewear collection, her fans zeroed in on her gray miniskirt. They tracked down the lace-edged skirt to Vietnamese brand L Seoul, and nearly crashed its website with their orders, cementing its reputation as a favorite of K-pop stars and fashionistas alike.The “Jennie effect” brought hundreds of new fans to the Ho Chi Minh City-based brand, which is riding a wave of popularity on social media. Hashtags such as #Vietnamfashion and #Vietnamesefashion on Instagram and TikTok have amassed tens of thousands of gushing posts and millions of likes, in contrast to the growing disenchantment with Chinese fast fashion brands Shein and Temu.
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S44Swatch Drops 3 New Earth-Based MoonSwatches (We Want 2 of Them) Less than three months after the launch of the Snoopy MoonSwatch, Swatch has this morning dropped not one but three new models, this time all based on our home planet.The new watches, according to Swatch, have been inspired by the fact that "all throughout history, people have wondered what the world looks like from above."
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S45Medical-Targeted Ransomware Is Breaking Records After Change Healthcare's $22M Payout When Change Healthcare paid $22 million in March to a ransomware gang that had crippled the company along with hundreds of hospitals, medical practices, and pharmacies across the US, the cybersecurity industry warned that Change's extortion payment would only fuel a vicious cycle: Rewarding hackers who had carried out a ruthless act of sabotage against the US health care system nationwide with one of the largest ransomware payments in history, it seemed, was bound to incentivize a new wave of attacks on similarly sensitive victims. Now that wave has arrived.In April, cybersecurity firm Recorded Future tracked 44 cases of cybercriminal groups targeting health care organizations with ransomware attacks, stealing their data, encrypting their systems, and demanding payments from the companies while holding their networks hostage. That's more health care victims of ransomware than in any month Recorded Future has seen in its four years of collecting that data, says Allan Liska, a threat intelligence analyst at the company. Comparing that number to the 30 incidents in March, it's also the second biggest month-to-month jump in incidents the company has ever tracked.
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S46An AI Bot Is (Sort of) Running for Mayor in Wyoming Victor Miller is running for mayor of Cheyenne, Wyoming, with an unusual campaign promise: If elected, he will not be calling the shotsâan AI bot will. VIC, the Virtual Integrated Citizen, is a ChatGPT-based chatbot that Miller created. And Miller says the bot has better ideasâand a better grasp of the lawâthan many people currently serving in government."I realized that this entity is way smarter than me, and more importantly, way better than some of the outward-facing public servants I see," he says. According to Miller, VIC will make the decisions and Miller will be its "meat puppet," attending meetings, signing documents, and otherwise doing the corporeal job of running the city.
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S47Meet the Photographer Behind the Social Media App for Everyone Sick of Meta's AI âÂÂI was about to go to bed and then realized we had this interview,â Jingna Zhang tells me. ItâÂÂs 9 am in Seattle, where sheâÂÂs currently living. The photographer and art director has been pulling all-nighters trying to keep up with demand for her social platform for artists, Cara, which recently exploded in popularity in response to widespread opposition to MetaâÂÂs policies around art and artificial intelligence. (Meta includes art from users in its training data.) More users has led to an onslaught of complications, including a hefty $96,000 bill from the social networkâÂÂs cloud storage provider, as well as service outages. Cara began as a side project, but its newfound prominence means that Zhang is now an accidental startup founder, keeping the hours to match.Zhang started Cara to give artists who oppose unethical use of AI a place to share images and network with like-minded peers. The platform takes an explicit stance against generative AI tools developed with training data acquired without permission from artists, and it currently filters out all AI images. It also offers beta integration with Glaze, a tool developed by University of Chicago researchers to give artists a way to stop generative AI companies from training on their work without consent. Launched in early 2023, Cara had just a few thousand users for the first year of its life; last week, it jumped from having around 40,000 accounts to 650,000, and is now closing in on a million users.
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S48S49How to Choose a Camera (2024): Sensors, Megapixels, Terms The first thing to know about buying a digital camera in 2024 is that it's virtually impossible to buy a bad one. You probably have a great camera in your hand right now. For many people, a smartphone will be camera enough, but if you want a camera separate from your phone, read on.The current crop of digital cameras is almost universally fantastic. Everything on the market is capable of capturing great images, provided you learn how to use your camera and understand the basics of photography: composition, light, and timing. That said, you don't want a technically good cameraâyou want the right camera for you.
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S50Best Microsoft Surface: Which Models to Buy or Avoid (2024) Microsoft operates Windows, so you'd think its Surface laptops would be the best representation of the desktop operating system, right? Well, these machines were innovative and feature-rich at the start, and the lineup has expanded from a standard laptop to a giant desktop. But Microsoft has stuck with minor spec bumps over the years, and Surface laptops don't feel as well regarded as they once were.That might be changing as the company recently announced two new AI-powered Surface laptops, injecting some life into these computers. But it begs the question, what's the best Surface laptop to buy? We're currently testing the latest machines and will have our thoughts soon, but read on for more advice on the current Surface lineup.
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