Here's What's In The $1.2 Trillion

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Here's What's In The $1.2 Trillion     Lawmakers on Thursday unveiled a $1.2 trillion bipartisan spending package that will fund the government for the rest of the year and avert a federal shutdown that's days away--so long as they pass the measure before the Saturday deadline. Spanning 1,012 pages, the massive appropriations package is financing everything from the FBI's $200 million new headquarters in Greenbelt, Maryland to a $1 billion infusion in child care and early development programs. It also carves out $55 million to assist states with election security.  Continued here

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Reddit Co-Founder Steve Huffman Says IPO Process 'Has Already Made Us Better'     The San Francisco-based social message board site officialy went public Thursday, but its debut as a publicly traded company has been in the works for more than two years. Founded in 2005, Reddit confidentially filed for an IPO in late 2021, but then dragged its feet on making the move during the stock market decline of 2022 and IPO slowdown of 2023. In a conversation with Inc. after Thursday's bell ringing on the New York Stock Exchange, co-founder and chief executive Steve Huffman disclosed that over the past two years, the company false-started the IPO process several times, with its leadership team completing five rounds of what's called "testing the waters"--when a private company speaks with potential investors to gauage their interest in an IPO. It intended upon its confidential filing to do one practice quarterly earnings report and call--but after the false start on the offering, simply continued trying to behave something like a public company, and ended up completing eight.All that work has already born fruit, according to Huffman. Asked what he would say to Reddit users who are worried that going public will change the site they love for the worse, Huffman credited the investor conversations with helping improve the company's operations. Continued here

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4 Rules for Diversifying Your Business     Although conventional wisdom suggests that companies should look for growth opportunities close to their core businesses and capabilities, the author points out that diversification can be an effective growth strategy, as long as you follow four rules: 1) focus on the business unit; 2) let the business units drive their own strategies; 3) appoint business units leaders who will act like a CEO and take initiative; and 4) foster a culture in which it is safe to take chances. Continued here

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The Feds Are Trying to Get Plants to Mine Metal Through Their Roots     Gouging a mine into the Earth is so 1924. In 2024, scientists are figuring out how to mine with plants, known as phytomining. Of the 350,000 known plant species, just 750 are "hyperaccumulators" that readily absorb sky-high amounts of metals and incorporate them into their tissues. Grow a bunch of the European plant Alyssum bertolonii or the tropical Phyllanthus rufuschaneyi and burn the biomass, and you end up with ash that's loaded with nickel."In soil that contains roughly 5 percent nickel—that is pretty contaminated—you're going to get an ash that's about 25 to 50 percent nickel after you burn it down," says Dave McNear, a rhizosphere biogeochemist at the University of Kentucky. "In comparison, where you mine it from the ground, from rock, that has about .02 percent nickel. So you are several orders of magnitude greater in enrichment, and it has far less impurities." Continued here

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Sophia Opatska on Running a University in a War Zone     Vice Rector of Ukrainian Catholic University talks about teaching and learning in a war zone.Sophia Opatska, vice rector of strategic development at Ukrainian Catholic University, joins the show to discuss teaching and running a college in a war zone, as well as the state of business in Ukraine. Continued here

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Why Has the EV Market Stalled?     Surprisingly, the EV market has stalled in recent years. Why? Because the market has reached a difficult point in the technology-adoption lifecycle. Specifically, automakers and policymakers alike can no longer make plans based on what early adopters of EVs want. Instead, if they want to boost sales and reach a much broader segment of the market, they’re going to have to cater to a different set of interests and concerns — which will probably mean offering consumers more hybrids and plug-ins as a bridge to an all-electric future. Continued here

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26 Best Deals From the Amazon Big Spring Sale (2024)     Amazon's five-day sale is the perfect chance to start fresh with new tech, including headphones, video doorbells, and chargers. Continued here

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How Prime Video failed so spectacularly in Africa     Richard first heard about Amazon’s plans to lay off “several hundred” employees across its Prime Video and MGM Studios divisions in South Africa on January 10. A film development executive at Prime Video in Cape Town, Richard felt confident that the job cuts would not impact him. After all, he had been brought into the role less than two years ago.“Being sacked barely two years after joining the company is unbelievable,” Richard, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym to protect his future job prospects, told Rest of World. “Many of us employees in South Africa were hired in 2022. Didn’t the company think long-term about the African market before making the hirings?” Continued here

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Lincoln Corsair PHEV review: A luxury car shouldn't squeak this much     It probably hasn't escaped notice that electric vehicles, having captured everyone's attention, are having a bit of a slide into what Gartner calls "the trough of depression." But as skeptics push back on battery EVs, another style of electrified car looks set to travel back up the slope of enlightenment. Plug-in hybrids are finding their second wind, as automakers and regulators look to PHEVs as a way to reduce transport-related carbon emissions. Continued here

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Honest Tea Founder Seth Goldman Shares How He Builds Teams to Change the World     The Honest Tea founder, known for innovative, healthy, and environmentally conscious food brands, was getting his first business off the ground, "It was just this really intense time," says Goldman. "I had left a job, a good paying job, to start this startup." The startup, Honest Tea, would become a great success, landing on Inc.'s list of fastest-growing companies seven times before selling to Coca-Cola in 2011. Now, Goldman is building his next venture, Eat the Change, a Bethesda, Maryland-based snack company that makes nutrient-dense snacks that are kind to the planet. Continued here

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The 27 Best Movies on Hulu This Week     From Poor Things to All of Us Strangers, here's everything you need to watch on Hulu right now. Continued here

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MLB Spring Training     Wharton’s Cade Massey, Eric Bradlow, and Adi Wyner discuss the latest news in Spring Training and the analytics around MLB pitching.©2024 Knowledge at Wharton. All rights reserved. Knowledge at Wharton is an affiliate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Continued here

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Reddit Stock Surges on Its First Day of Trading     The road to Reddit's initial public offering has been a long one; in the 19 years since its founding, the social media giant has led many lives. It was an independent startup, and then it wasn't, until it was again. It despised the idea of selling ads or censoring user content, but eventually found itself deeply pursuing both. It's had half a dozen leaders, including current CEO Steve Huffman—also known by his username Spez—who is on his second tour of duty.Now its post-IPO life has begun. Reddit shares surged as much as 60 percent before falling back in the company's first hour of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, under the ticker RDDT. As a publicly traded company, Reddit will have to meet user and revenue growth expectations quarter after quarter or face the public wrath of investors. Huffman told NPR last year it was time for Reddit to "grow up and behave like an adult company." Continued here

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Is Sam Bankman-Fried a 'Super-Villain' or Just a Bad Trader?     Disgraced former cryptocurrency magnate Sam Bankman-Fried is going to jail, but for how long? That's the question prosecutors and defense attorneys are arguing as a sentencing hearing looms on March 28th.Previously, lawyers for Bankman-Fried made the case that the former mogul, convicted of defrauding investors of $8 billion, should serve a sentence of no more than six years, the New York Times reported in February.  Continued here

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5 Tips for Attracting Venture Capital Investment in 2024     The business landscape is always evolving, as are the dynamics between investors and founders. The bear markets of 2023 prompted a renewed emphasis on market traction, substance, and capital efficiency from capital providers and in turn, a refocusing of business principles that has raised the bar for founders.Focus on what motivates venture partners. Conduct detailed research on the venture funding landscape that aligns with your vision. Feel free to ask an investor upfront what types of deals they have led or would like to lead within a category. Prequalify potential venture partners to ensure a fruitful and efficient process. Are there fund-seeking companies at your stage? Does the lead investor have the draw to catalyze the entire round? Do they have the capacity and capability to lead your financing round? Continued here

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A Gene-Edited Pig Kidney Was Just Transplanted Into a Person for the First Time     In a world first, surgeons in Boston have transplanted a genetically altered pig kidney into a 62-year-old man. The procedure is a step toward providing more readily available organs to patients who are in desperate need of a transplant.The four-hour surgery was carried out on March 16 at Massachusetts General Hospital. Shortly after the kidney was placed in the patient's body, it started producing urine—a sign that it was functioning as it should. Tatsuo Kawai, one of the surgeons involved, said the operating room erupted in applause. "It was truly the most beautiful kidney I have ever seen," he said in a press conference on Thursday. Continued here

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NASA Wants to Shut Down Its Greatest X-ray Observatory--and Astronomers Aren't Happy     The Chandra X-ray Observatory faces a premature end under new funding cuts proposed by NASA—and astronomers aren’t happyAn illustration of NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in a high orbit around Earth. Launched in 1999, Chandra remains a critical tool for x-ray astronomy—but budget cuts may soon draw its mission to a close. Continued here

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How to choose clothes for longevity, not the landfill     Buying cheap clothing online can be satisfying, but it comes with not-so-hidden environmental costs. When designer Diarra Bousso was growing up in Senegal, her family bought and created new outfits for longevity rather than on impulse — an intention she carries forth in her fashion tech brand. Outlining three sustainable principles, including crowdsourcing designs and limiting excess inventory, Bousso shows it's possible to decrease waste while increasing profit — and shares how to apply this wisdom across the fashion industry. Continued here

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When You Know You Weren't the First Choice for Your New Role     It’s common to experience imposter feelings when taking on a new, more senior role. That negative self-talk can feel justified when you were originally rejected from the job. But you can use this second chance as an opportunity to become a better leader. The author presents four strategies to quiet the imposter syndrome voices in your head if you weren’t the first pick for the job. Continued here

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Apple's green message bubbles draw wrath of US attorney general     The US Department of Justice is angry about green message bubbles. Announcing today's antitrust lawsuit against Apple, US Attorney General Merrick Garland devoted a portion of his speech to the green bubbles that appear in conversations between users of iPhones and other mobile devices such as Android smartphones. Continued here

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A Completely New Approach to Crops Could Boost Nutrition across Africa     Cary Fowler, the U.S. State Department’s leading figure on global hunger, explains a new way to improve nutritious food supplyAgriculturist Cary Fowler is best known as former executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust and co-founder of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which houses more than 1.2 million seed samples covering every crop variety imaginable on an island in the Norwegian Arctic. Now he’s engaged in an ambitious new plan to use the genes in neglected seed varieties that he fought to save to produce crops that will feed hungry people in Africa and help farmers there prepare for the climate-changed future. Continued here

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World's first global AI resolution unanimously adopted by United Nations     On Thursday, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously consented to adopt what some call the first global resolution on AI, reports Reuters. The resolution aims to foster the protection of personal data, enhance privacy policies, ensure close monitoring of AI for potential risks, and uphold human rights. It emerged from a proposal by the United States and received backing from China and 121 other countries. Continued here

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February's Unprecedented Cyber-Attack Creates Opportunity for Small Business Response to Huge, Diverse Health Care Security Needs     Countless private companies and public organizations in U.S. healthcare continue struggling to overcome last month's massive cyberattack on UnitedHealth Group's main clearinghouse operator, Change Healthcare. It laid bare the enormity of the online threat to the sector, whose myriad users of interconnected computer networks each represent a potential weak link for ransomware criminals to target. Given the gigantic scope and multiple points of vulnerability, it may be that small businesses offer the best remedy for the problem. How better to cure the disease of cyber vulnerability than using the innovation, adaptation, and swift reaction to market demands that set smaller businesses apart? Continued here

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Android 15 gets satellite messaging, starts foldable cover app support     Android 15 continues its march toward release with the Android 15 Developer Preview 2. Android 15 won't be out until around October, but the first preview shipped a month ago. It's time for another one! Continued here

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Aspiring Designers Set to Get Help From Shein Production Access--For a Fee     Designers and small apparel manufacturers who'd love to see their creations go big with worldwide consumers may soon get help from global fast-fashion heavyweight Shein. The trendy garment giant is reportedly set to offer access of its monumentally successful production and supply chain system to clients willing to pay for the potentially game-changing partnership.According to a report in the Wall Street Journal Thursday, Singapore-based Shein will "make its supply-chain infrastructure and technology available to outside brands and designers" who want to leverage the company's highly lucrative production and distribution assets. Though Shein is famous for the furious rate at which it churns out the garments it then sells cheaply, it will likely demand considerably higher prices from prospective third-party customers. In a letter to investors viewed by the Journal, company executive chairman David Tang described the innovation as "supply chain as a service," and another profitable revenue stream. Continued here

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Choose your side in a civil war with House of the Dragon's dueling S2 trailers     It's been a long wait for the second season of HBO's House of the Dragon, in which House Targaryen descends into civil war over the heir to the Iron Throne. It's set to premiere in June, and HBO is ramping up its marketing with a rather clever twist: not one official trailer, but two, each presenting the perspective of one side in the bloody conflict. And we get to choose which trailer we'd like to view—although if you're like us, you'll elect to watch both. Continued here

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One Man's Army of Streaming Bots Reveals a Whole Industry's Problem     A man in Denmark was sentenced to 18 months in prison today for using fake accounts to trick music streaming services into paying him 2 million Danish kroner ($290,000) in royalties. The unusual case reveals a weak spot in the business model behind the world’s biggest music platforms.The 53-year-old consultant, who had pleaded not guilty, was convicted of data fraud and copyright infringement after using bots to listen to his own music through fake profiles on both Spotify and Apple Music, collecting royalties in the process. The data fraud took place between 2013 and 2019. Continued here

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Mathematician Who Tamed Randomness Wins Abel Prize     Michel Talagrand innovative work has allowed others to tackle problems involving random processesA mathematician who developed formulas to make random processes more predictable and helped to solve an iconic model of complex phenomena has won the 2024 Abel Prize, one of the field’s most coveted awards. Michel Talagrand received the prize for his “contributions to probability theory and functional analysis, with outstanding applications in mathematical physics and statistics,” the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo announced on 20 March. Continued here

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The Antitrust Case Against Apple Argues It Has a Stranglehold on the Future     The Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit against Apple says the company's grip on iPhone users and developers is blocking future innovation in tech. Continued here

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Kitten Season Is Out of Control. Are Warmer Winters to Blame?     The summer “kitten season” is starting earlier and lasting longer, which is bad news for both animal shelters and wildlifeIt’s almost that magical time of year that the Humane Society of America likens to a “natural disaster.” Kitten season. Continued here

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Report: Superconductivity researcher found to have committed misconduct     We've been following the saga of Ranga Dias since he first burst onto the scene with reports of a high-pressure, room-temperature superconductor, published in Nature in 2020. Even as that paper was being retracted due to concerns about the validity of some of its data, Dias published a second paper claiming a similar breakthrough: a superconductor that works at high temperatures but somewhat lower pressures. Shortly afterward, that got retracted as well. Continued here

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The Challenges of Becoming a Less Hierarchical Company     More and more organizations are looking to create flatter, less hierarchical models to increase collaboration, agility, and employee empowerment. But recent research at a food processing company in Colombia outlines some stumbling blocks companies might face when trying to change their structure. Specifically, the researchers and company CEO highlight a series of structural and people dynamics leaders should look out for in their own efforts. Continued here

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More than half of chickenpox diagnoses are wrong, study finds     Thanks to the vaccination program that began in 1995, chickenpox is now relatively rare. Cases of the miserable, itchy condition have fallen more than 97 percent. But, while children have largely put the oatmeal baths and oven mitts behind them, doctors have apparently let their diagnostic skills get a little crusty. Continued here

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Past Lives: This untranslatable Korean word for eternal love has ancient Buddhist roots     Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro star in Celine Song's Oscar-nominated film Past Lives, which explores the word inyeon, the ancient concept of fated love. Continued here

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Epic Games Reveals EU App Store for Apple Devices, Keeps Its Third-Party Fee     Epic Games, the multibillion dollar software giant that owns Fortnite, a global gaming phenomenon, revealed plans to launch its own app store on Apple devices in the wake of new, hard-fought European Union regulations. These new rules forced Apple to relax its grip on its fiercely-protected App Store ecosystem. Epic will take advantage of the change and launch its own Epic Games Store (EGS) for iPhones. That may sound like a win, but whether or not this ultimately benefits the many Mom-and-Pop scale app store developers who sell apps for Apple devices is totally unclear.Epic chose the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week to unveil some details for the EGS system--an app-distribution platform it says will actually be the "first ever game-focused, multiplatform store," working across "Android, iOS, PC and macOS." It will sell Epic's own games alongside some third-party developer games. It will also use the same revenue split system as Epic's current PC store. That means Epic will charge a 12 percent Epic fee for third party app purchases, with 88 percent going to the developer. Developers do get to keep 100 percent of their revenue if they use their own payment system for in-app purchases, though. Epic's statement says that these are "fair terms." Continued here

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Never-before-seen data wiper may have been used by Russia against Ukraine     Researchers have unearthed never-before-seen wiper malware tied to the Kremlin and an operation two years ago that took out more than 10,000 satellite modems located mainly in Ukraine on the eve of Russia’s invasion of its neighboring country. Continued here

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The return of Cambodia's food lost during the Khmer Rouge regime     A Cambodian chef is one of a few women looking to revive her culture's nearly forgotten Khmer recipes; her recent cookbook, Saoy, was named 'the best cookbook in the world'. Continued here

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Apple's iMessage Encryption Puts Its Security Practices in the DOJ's Crosshairs     For well over a decade, Apple has been praised by privacy advocates for its decision in 2011 to end-to-end encrypt iMessage, securing users' communications on the default texting app for all its devices so thoroughly that even Apple itself can't read their messages. This was years before WhatsApp switched on end-to-end encryption in 2016, and before Signal—now widely considered the most private end-to-end encrypted messaging platform—even existed, Apple quietly led the way with that security feature, baking it into a core piece of the Apple ecosystem.So it's ironic that the US Department of Justice has now hit Apple with a landmark antitrust lawsuit, alleging that it has sought for years to monopolize the smartphone market and gravely harmed consumers in the process, iMessage's end-to-end encryption has become Exhibit A for an argument about Apple's privacy hypocrisy—that Apple's allegedly anticompetitive practices have denied users not only better prices, features, and innovation, but also better digital security. Continued here

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Is college still worth it? Yes (for now, at least)     In 2023, a Wall Street Journal-NORC poll revealed that 56% of Americans think a four-year college degree isn’t worth the cost. Respondents aged 18 to 34 — the most likely to be enrolled in college — were most dubious of its value, with 61% percent holding negative views.A recent analysis suggests these broadly critical perceptions of college’s worth aren’t merited. Although the value of a college degree has declined in recent decades, it remains a sound financial investment — for now, at least. Continued here

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The new science of optimism and longevity     Being optimistic or pessimistic is not just a psychological trait or interesting topic of conversation; it’s biologically relevant. Indeed, there is mounting evidence that optimism may serve as a powerful tool for preventing disease and promoting healthy aging.People with an optimistic mindset are associated with various positive health indicators, particularly cardiovascular, but also pulmonary, metabolic, and immunologic. They have a lower incidence of age-related illnesses and reduced mortality levels. Optimism and pessimism are not arbitrary and elusive labels. On the contrary, they are mindsets that can be scientifically measured, placing an individual’s attitude on a spectrum ranging from optimistic to pessimistic. Framing the baseline of each subject in this way, researchers are able to verify the correlation between optimism level and relative health conditions. Continued here