Business Environmental

Power play: why your electric bill may be changing soon

As reported on The Verge. By Adrianne Jeffries In the near future, power companies may have to decouple electricity use from prices Americans are buying bigger homes, using more appliances, and firing up more data centers than ever before. You’d expect electricity demand to skyrocket accordingly, but the trend is actually the opposite. Total electricity use in the US has actually declined in the past four out of five years, according to a new government study, and…

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News

The Year in Review: the biggest stories of 2013

As reported on The Verge. By Verge Staff The news that mattered, disappointments that didn’t, essential products, and what to look forward to in 2014   What a year you were, 2013. Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks turned up the heat on a cauldron of privacy concerns that’s sure to boil over in the next year. Drones expanded from killing machines to potential package-delivery robots. The US government shut itself down and revealed a disheartening lack of…

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Culture

These Apps Will Help You Make 2014 Less Filthy

As reported on TechCrunch. by Catherine Shu This year, several notable apps that connect users with house cleaners have launched or gained traction. These include Homejoy,Exec and laundry service Prim. There are a lot of benefits to hiring a professional cleaning service but, unfortunately, I live outside the area covered by these apps. Letting people I don’t know into my apartment also makes me feel exposed. I just don’t like having strangers judge my lovingly curated collections of masking…

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Business

HP woes continue as 5,000 more employees face the axe

As reported on Engadget. BY MARIELLA MOON It certainly won’t be a happy new year for thousands of HP employees — not when the company has increased its layoff numbers yet again. Hewlett-Packard alreadyadjusted the number of people it needed to let go from 27,000 to 29,000 a year ago, but it’s now added another 5,000 to the total. According to HP’s new SEC 10-K filing, cutting off 34,000 positions will save the ailing firm $4.1 billion per fiscal year.…

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