Jack

Are the last chapters of the iPhone saga unfolding? “Not by any stretch of imagination,” if you ask the Apple faithful or “Definitely starting,” if you ask the Android challengers. In this infographic, Finances Online traces the iPhone supply and manufacturing chain. They provide snippets of information on just who is making the parts that go into the two new iPhones, and where, exactly, these parts are made.

Now that J.J. Abrams is hard at work making Star Wars: Episode VII, Paramount Pictures and Skydance were in need of a new director for the third movie in their rebooted Star Trek franchise. Abrams directed the first two movies, 2009's Star Trek and 2013's Star Trek Into Darkness.

In what could be considered a risky move, the studios have decided not to find an established big Hollywood blockbuster director to bring in. In fact, they're not even bringing in an up-and-coming director who might be ready to break out. Instead, it has been decided to hire writer Roberto Orci to direct Star Trek 3. [...]

The post Roberto Orci Will Direct ‘Star Trek 3′ appeared first on Geeks of Doom.

Black males, overall.  Abigail K. Wozniak has a new NBER paper on this topic:

Nearly half of U.S. employers test job applicants and workers for drugs. A common assumption is that the rise of drug testing must have had negative consequences for black employment. However, the rise of employer drug testing may have benefited African-Americans by enabling non-using blacks to prove their status to employers. I use variation in the timing and nature of drug testing regulation to identify the impacts of testing on black hiring. Black employment in the testing sector is suppressed in the absence of testing, a finding which is consistent with ex ante discrimination on the basis of drug use perceptions. Adoption of pro-testing legislation increases black employment in the testing sector by 7-30% and relative wages by 1.4-13.0%, with the largest shifts among low skilled black men. Results further suggest that employers substitute white women for blacks in the absence of testing.

There is an earlier ungated version here.

There are approximately 31,251 square miles of roads, parking lots, driveways, playgrounds, bike paths, and sidewalks in the lower 48 states. 

If Julie and Scott Brusaw have their way, they will all someday be replaced with solar panels.

For the better part of a decade, the Idaho couple have been working on prototyping an industrial-strength panel that could withstand the weight of even the largest trucks.

They now appear to have cracked the formula, developing a specially textured glass coating for the panels that can not only bear tremendous loads but can support standard tire traction. 

By their reckoning, at peak installation, their panel-ized roads could produce more than 3x the electricity currently consumed in the U.S.

The material could also be able to power electric vehicles, through a a "receiver" plate mounted beneath the EV and a "transmitter" plate is installed in the road.

The project has already received two phases of funding from the U.S. Federal Highway Administration, and last year featured in Google's Moonshot series. They're now incorporated as Solar Roadways. 

Right now, they're now looking to raise $1 million on IndieGogo to move beyond the prototype and into production. So far they've received $112,000 since announcing the campaign about three weeks ago.

If you're wondering why they are choosing crowdfunding given the potentially large interest from investors, so have many others. Their reason for doing so is rather noble. As they explain on their website (via John Aziz):

The idea to launch a crowdfunding campaign came to us from so many supporters that we looked into it. We have always been concerned about protecting our vision to implement this in the way that we think will have the most benefit: creating American jobs rather than outsourcing and then adding manufacturing facilities in other countries. That way we could help the economies everywhere providing many thousands of jobs. We have a vision for the way our facilities will be - campus like - with a positive atmosphere. We want to use as many recycled materials as we can and keep our manufacturing process as green as possible. We could go on, but you get the picture. If we can raise enough funds here, we won't have to take on an investor and we won't have to worry about losing our focus. If you like our vision and want to help, we'd be honored to have you in our corner. 

Here is an artist's rendering of what it someday could look like:

It could also be used in parking lots:

Definitely something you wish you'd thought of first. 

SEE ALSO: How Solar Surged In America

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I like video mashups as much as the next person, but it's not often that I listen to one all the way through. Or ask a coworker to come check it out. 

But then I came across "Video Game of Thrones: Super Mario World." 

YouTube user NicksplosionFX remade the opening credit sequence of HBO's "Game of Thrones" as if it were set in the World of Super Mario. He even found an 8-bit version of the iconic "Game of Thrones" theme song. 

The opening sequence for "Game of Thrones" changes every week, highlighting the places that will be included in that episode. I wouldn't know, I usually fast-forward the intro. But if it looked a little more like this, I probably would be more apt to watch. 

Check it out for yourself: 

And for reference, here's what the original theme song and the Super Mario remake look like side by side:

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In 2012, at the age of 14, a Taliban gunman climbed onto a bus Malala Yousafzai was riding in and shot her in the head. Though she nearly died in the attack, Yousafzai recovered, and courageously returned to advocating on behalf of girls' education rights. She has become internationally famous for her activism in favor of allowing women the same educational opportunities as men, both in her native Pakistan and abroad.

Unfortunately, the Indian mattress company Kurl-on decided to use the shooting incident as fodder for one of its latest print ads.

In it, a cartoon version of Yousafzai is seen being shot with a rifle. The ad then shows several iterations of Yousafzai as she recovers in a hospital and ultimately goes on to win an award for her advocacy. Along the way, she falls on a Kurl-on mattress and "bounces back."

The ad is one in a series of three made by Ogilvy India that shows several famous figures as they go through times of difficulty only to hit a Kurl-on mattress and bounce back. None of the other ads, though, depict the shooting of a teenage girl.

Here's the ad Kurl-on made documenting the late Steve Jobs' departure from Apple and ultimate comeback:

And here's Kurl-on's ad featuring Gandhi:

It's also not clear whether these are real ads or whether they are "spec" creative — speculative ads that never ran in paid media and made only for the attention they'll get. However, the fact that an Ogilvy creative team has taken credit for the ads suggests they were at least approved within the agency itself.

(Via Fast Company)

SEE ALSO: 16-Year-Old Malala Yousafzai Leaves Jon Stewart Speechless With Comment About Pacifism

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FA Insights is a daily newsletter from Business Insider that delivers the top news and commentary for financial advisors.

Why Advisors Shouldn't Exclusively Use Active Funds (Vanguard)

Advisors that use active funds exclusively risk losing clients in volatile markets, according to Vanguard white paper that argues for combining active and practice strategies. And this risk can't really be offset by client referrals that come through when times are good. "That is, although the upside of outperformance may be a marginally greater share of wallet or referrals, underperformance can lead to a client’s questioning of the strategy or withdrawing of assets—plus nonexistent referrals."

"Indexing can help alleviate this asymmetry by truncating the risk of unwise investor behavior and negative feedback loops for the advisor’s practice. Moreover, adding a slice of passively managed funds or ETFs can help free up resources typically spent on manager research and oversight. These resources can then be redirected toward improving relationships with existing clients or attracting new clients." Vanguard is of course known for championing index funds — funds that are created to replicate an index.

Morgan Stanley Advisors Depart For Wells And Raymond James (The Wall Street Journal)

Stephen Besse has joined Raymond James from Morgan Stanley, with about $360 million in client assets and $1.35 million in annual fees and commissions. Meanwhile, a team of brokers that managed over $236 million in client assets departed Morgan Stanley Wealth Management for Wells Fargo Advisors.

Here's The Best Indicator Of The Start Of Bear Markets (LPL Financial)

While we've seen stock market volatility this year and can expect more, LPL Financial's Jeff Kleintop thinks a 2014 bear market is very unlikely. "A key basis for our high degree of confidence in this forecast is an indicator with a flawless track record over the past 50 years: the yield curve," he writes. While many are worried that the Fed will begin its rate hikes next year, Kleintop thinks "bull markets end and bear markets begin, as they did in 2000 and 2007, when the Fed pushes short-term rates above long-term rates. This is referred to as 'inverting the yield curve.'"

"Why does an inverted yield curve signal a major peak for the stock market? Because every recession over the past 50 years was preceded by the Fed hiking rates enough to invert the yield curve. That is seven out of seven times—a perfect forecasting track record. The yield curve inversion usually takes place about 12 months before the start of the recession, but the lead time ranges from about five to 16 months. The peak in the stock market comes around the time of the yield curve inversion, ahead of the recession and accompanying downturn in corporate profits."

Compliance Concerns Is Prompting Firms To Cut Their International Business (The Wall Street Journal)

Barclays' U.S. based financial advisors won't be able to service clients in Latin America in the second quarter of this year. Barclays is also curbing its international business, though it isn't the only one to do so. "There's been a big uptick in firms that have been restricting activities of these foreign accounts," Brian Hamburger, founder and CEO of MarketCounsel told Corrie Driebusch at the WSJ. These firms "are taking a much more conservative position than they ever have before." While firms aren't outright saying it, compliance is expected to be the biggest cause, and this has left many advisors with an international clientele scrambling.

More Assets Don't Make For More Diversification (Richard  Bernstein Advisors)

Investors are focused on protecting against the downside risk in equities but  "continue to confuse the number of asset classes with diversification," writes Richard Bernstein at Richard Bernstein Advisors. "Diversification isn’t based on the number of asset classes, it’s based on the correlation of returns among the asset classes."

The chart below shows that 1. "Very few asset classes have exhibited true downside protection." 2. "Only one asset class, long-term treasuries had negative correlation to stocks, i.e., negative upside and downside capture ratios;" 3. "Although we don’t find gold attractive within the current market environment, gold was a reasonable diversifier over the past ten years;" 4. "Hedge funds are not a panacea. Note that hedge funds have historically offered about 70% of both the upside AND the downside;" 5. "Cash is generally a worthwhile diversifier. It exhibited minimal upside, but slightly negative downside."

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The reviews site rolls out a new tool that lets customers book restaurant reservations directly from its website on mobile or desktop.

Every cop who patrols New York state's transit system will now carry a life-saving drug to give people who are overdosing on heroin, the state's attorney general said Tuesday.

That drug, naloxone, is sprayed into the nose or injected into body to counteract the effects of an opioid overdose and allow a person to breathe normally.

When people take heroin, it converts into morphine in the brain, where it binds to opioid receptors. When too many opioids attach to receptors on the brain stem, which controls critical automatic processes like respiration and blood pressure, "people just slowly stop breathing," as the physician Robert Hoffman has written in The New York Times.

To counteract an overdose, naloxone pushes opioids away from the brain's opioid receptors long enough to restore normal breathing for the victim.

There are few, if any, drawbacks to naloxone. If it turns out opioids are not in a person's system, naloxone has no effect on the body. It is non-addictive, and civilians with little training can administer it if emergency workers or police aren't available.

Once distributed to drug users, their families, healthcare workers, and others, the drug is used very effectively. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveyed 48 U.S. programs that made naloxone available to 53,000 people who could administer it between 1996 and 2010, and it found that there were 10,171 overdose reversals.

"Providing opioid overdose education and naloxone to persons who use drugs and to persons who might be present at an opioid overdose can help reduce opioid overdose mortality, a rapidly growing public health concern," the CDC said in that 2012 report.

In 2010, the police department in Quincy, Massachusetts became the first in the country that requires officers to carry naloxone. As of this February the police department has administered naloxone 221 times and reversed 211 overdoses, a 95% success rate, according to New York's attorney general.

The use of naloxone is rising as more people realize its benefits.

Last month, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick declared opioid use in his state a public health emergency and ordered police to use Narcan, a brand of the naloxone medication. A police officer and EMT there said he's seen overdose victims who have turned blue from not breathing "get up and walk out to the ambulance," moments after naloxone is administered, substance.com reported.

The federal government has also begun championing the overdose-reversal medication. In March, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called for more law enforcement agencies to supply their members with naloxone.

SEE ALSO: Why Heroin Is Spreading To US Suburbs

DON'T MISS: Why Heroin Relapse Often Ends In Death

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Finnish gaming company Supercell is a $3 billion company largely in part to the success of its game Clash of Clans. 

Clash of Clans and Hay Day are both among the top 10 grossing apps in the iTunes Store, according to AppData. Today, Clash of Clans still reigns supreme in the Apple App Store.

Back in October, Clash of Clans' projected revenue estimate for a single day was $654,000, according to AppData. That same day, Hay Day had a projected revenue estimate of $413,000.

Overall in 2013, Supercell saw its revenue soar nearly nine-fold, with earnings of $464 million on $892 million in revenue.

Clash of Clans is a strategy game that is free to play, but some people end up paying hundreds of dollars on in-app purchases and upgrades. 

So it's no wonder why Clash of Clans is among the top 10 grossing apps in the iTunes Store, according to AppData.

So what's the appeal behind Clash of Clans?

Clash of Clans is the number two top-grossing iOS game, according to AppData.

In a single day, Clash of Clans brought in about $654,000, according to AppData.

Clash of Clans is a strategy game where players have to build and protect their respective villages.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Apple's App Store is dominated by free and cheap apps. 

But, there are more expensive options in the store, too.

And some are way more expensive.

Some of them show that the App Store can be a really big software market for a number of different industries.

Surprisingly, others are poorly designed gimmicks and don't justify the sky-high price.

Despite that, these apps show the long-term potential of iPhones and iPads to up-end lots and lots of markets. 

$99.99 — Sexy Finger Print Test HD

This gimmicky app lets you find out your "sexy score." It claims it can tell you the perfect time to meet members of the opposite sex, and says you should use it once a day to get results in 30 seconds.

Price: $99.99

$199.99 — G-Map U.S. West

G-Map is a voice-prompted turn-by-turn navigation system, and you don't need Wi-Fi or an internet connection to use it. It includes goodies such as 3-D view and text-to-speech, but with Google Maps and Apple Maps, there's no real reason to drop this much money on an app that does practically the same thing.

Price: $199.99

$219.99 — Water Globe

Water Globe is just a set of interactive screen toys. You can play around with globes and make them snow, change gravity, and snowflake size. We're not sure why anyone would pay more than $200 for this app, when you can probably get a real snow globe for way cheaper. 

Price: $219.99

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Pinterest has become a popular tool for people looking to plan a vacation.

After introducing Place Pins less than six months ago, the photo-sharing network already has nearly one billion places pinned on more than 100,000 Place Boards. 

When Pinterest mined this data to find the places most frequently added to people's travel wish lists, it found that most of those destinations were in the U.S. and Canada.

But there were also some unexpected destinations, like a famous lagoon in Iceland and "The Most Magical Place on Earth."

10. Four Corners National Monument at the border of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico

Source: Pinterest

9. Brooklyn Bridge in New York City

Source: Pinterest

8. Yosemite National Park in central California

Source: Pinterest

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

"Everything has been figured out, except how to live." —Jean-Paul Sartre

In a recent Quora thread, users responded to the question: What life lessons are counter-intuitive or go against common sense or wisdom?

We trawled through the list looking for the best and most surprising advice. Many of these insights have been confirmed by social science. 

Here are the takeaways. 

1. If you strongly dislike a trait in someone else or are critical of something, you're probably that way yourself. Freud called it projection, or "the attribution to others of one's own rejected tendencies." For example, people worried about their looks call others ugly, and folks that are self-conscious about salaries and status criticize others' jobs. —Anonymous

2. Behavior is controlled more by your environment than your willpower. Situations tend to make people virtuous or nasty, focused or distracted. In other words, sell your TV and unsubscribe from Netflix if you can't stop procrastinating. —Alan Rutledge

3. When you "sit with" a feeling, you can move beyond it. If you flee from having to experience an unpleasant emotion — feeling incompetent when first learning a skill, for example — then you end up being controlled by it. If you can't handle feeling incompetent, it's going to keep you from trying new things. —Alexis Bright

4. Being interesting comes from being interested. Being a fascinating, charismatic person is a result of being fascinated by the humans, history, and objects outside of yourself. —Jamie Beckland

5. Money can buy happiness. If you spend it on the right things: investing in a nicer bed will give you better rest at night and more energy in the day, while moving closer to your work and reducing your commute will directly improve your happiness levels, according to research. —Yishan Wong 

6. Conflict can be healthy. Productive disagreement is a hallmark of successful teams (just ask Jeff Bezos). —Benjy Feen

7. Flaunt your weaknesses. If you're open about the things you're awful at, then it's harder for jerks to attack your insecurities, plus you'll seem more honest and trustworthy in the process. —Dean L Longmore 

8. Laziness can be a great trait for a leader. Insanely hard workers have a tough time delegating, while the constructively lazy are happy to delegate tasks to the team, thus making their direct reports feel happier and more empowered. —Jeremy Liew

9. It's not all about intelligence. Beyond IQ, successful people have grit and are conscientious. —Will Mitchell 

10. Thinking about your death can be good for you. Reflecting on your mortality forces you to consider your life as a whole, plus the legacy you want to leave behind. This helps you to better distinguish between seeking meaning and pleasure. —Alice Rebekah Fraser

11. We suck at predicting what will make us happy. For example, getting a ridiculously high raise isn't going to be sufficient for making you happy at work in the long term, since it's just a "hygiene factor." —Steve Upstill 

12. Vulnerability can be a good thing. Sociology shows that vulnerability isn't weakness; it can be a conduit to creativity and successful relationships. —Aimee Whitcroft 

13. Some of the best opportunities come from distant acquaintances. Social science shows that job opportunities and dream dates come from the full extent of your network. —Heidi M. Petersen

14. "Getting out" your anger just makes you an angrier person. Rather than "venting" your frustrations, expressing your anger whenever you feel the urge just reinforces a pattern of aggression. —Brock Atkinson

SEE ALSO: 14 Surprising Things That Affect Your Willpower And Decision Making

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Streaming music revenue is growing quickly, while the rest of the music industry is contracting. 

This explains, at least in part, why Apple is reportedly buying Beats for $3.2 billion. Beats makes expensive headphones, and it has a music streaming service. The headphones business pays for the deal, and the music streaming is free. 

Apple's rise to the world's most valuable company started with the iPod and iTunes. However, the iTunes model of paying for downloads is going away. Apple has thus far whiffed on streaming, and now it's going to have to pay up for that mistake.

Here's a chart from Statista illustrating the rise of streaming music revenue.

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Last year, for the first time, people in the United States purchased more wine than people in France, according to a report from the International Organization of Vine and Wine.

France's per capita consumption is still much higher than America's, but total wine consumption in France fell while it rose in the U.S. Americans bought 29.1 million hectolitres of wine in 2013, while the French bought only 28.1 million hectolitres, a decline of almost 7% from the previous year.

The New York Times wrote about wine's decline in Europe last year, explaining:

Americans who are embracing wine live in the greatest era in wine history, when more fascinating wines are readily available than ever before and in a greater diversity of styles from more different places.

But travel to Europe and what do you see? Europeans behaving more like Americans, working longer hours with shorter lunches, as well as grabbing dinner on the go rather than gathering as a family.

Wine is still hugely popular in Europe, however. Reuters notes that the average French person drinks 1.2 bottles of wine per week, which is six times higher than consumption for the average American, according to 2011 data.

And France still produces more wine than the U.S., but a significant portion of the world's wine is consumed in America.

Check out the map below (it's in French — darker colors indicate more wine consumed):

As the map notes, nearly half of the world's wine is consumed by just five countries.

One explanation for the decline in wine drinking in France could be a focus on higher quality wines that the French buy in less quantity.

SEE ALSO: Here Are The Most Popular Types Of Alcohol Around The World

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Spurious Correlations is the virtual embodiment of a useful rhetorical cudgel: correlation does not equal causation. Sift through its data sets, and you'll find all sorts of statistics that can be mapped onto each other — margarine consumption and the divorce rate, crude oil imports and number of train collision deaths, bee colony growth and the marriage rate. If you ever need to demonstrate that two things can appear connected purely by chance or some entirely separate factor, this is your site. If you need "news of the weird" fodder and are willing to play fast and loose with the facts, the charts are still technically accurate.

The clever thing about Spurious Correlations is that it's fairly transparent about how it generates...

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For many, the title Godzilla conjures up memories of bad dubbing and men in rubber suits — or even worse, the big-budget debacle that Roland Emmerich subjected audiences to back in 1998. It makes Godzilla a hard character to take seriously, particularly in an era when even our most fantastic superheroes are receiving dark, character-driven makeovers. Fold in the fact that Pacific Rim revealed domestic audiences aren’t as infatuated with giant monsters as some thought, and Gareth Edwards’ new...

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Today I found out how to drastically increase the life of your shaver razor blades, such as Gillette or Schick brand razors. This trick is incredibly simple and just as incredibly effective. It will also save you a nice chunk of change over time and make all your dreams come true.

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Childhood bullying has been linked to a number of physical and mental health effects, including lower self-worth, depression, and serious illnesses later in life. But until now, researchers had largely focused on examining these effects in victims of abuse, not the bullies themselves. This may soon change, as a long-term study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences was able to demonstrate that "pure bullies," people who have never experienced bullying themselves, do in fact face a long-lasting health effect from abusing others. As it turns out, that effect is actually beneficial — even when compared to people who aren't involved in bullying at all.

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Americans will soon have a much easier time figuring out how their tax dollars are being spent. The United States government is going to begin standardizing its spending data and publishing it on a single website within three years, in a move that's hoped to dramatically enhance transparency around federal spending. The new policy is a result of what's being hailed as the first "open data" law, the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (the DATA Act), which was just signed last Friday. It'll be several years before all of its components go into effect, but the result should be federal agencies using a standardized reporting method to detail even more of their expenditures than were previously disclosed.

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Artist James Haggerty makes Darth Vader, Greedo, and C3P0 like you've never seen them.

sciencehabit (1205606) writes "Are your lectures droning on? Change it up every 10 minutes with more active teaching techniques and more students will succeed, researchers say. A new study finds that undergraduate students in classes with traditional stand-and-deliver lectures are 1.5 times more likely to fail than students in classes that use more stimulating, so-called active learning methods."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The US as a whole may strongly believe in free trade, but that seems to go to out of the window whenever Elon Musk is involved. According to KOLR 10 News, Missouri's legislature has sneakily included a ban on Tesla Motors' direct-selling model,...

After the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the idea that a plane could simply vanish in an age of information seemed impossible. Satellite company Inmarsat is pledging to prevent the situation from happening again, and will offer...

There's a train speeding down the tracks towards five innocent people who will never get away in time. You can save them by pulling a switch, but it'll kill another person on a different track. It's a thought experiment people have debated for ages, but it's about to become a real dilemma when we program robots to pull the switch, or not.

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Ah, to see the world through greyscale-colored lenses. Photographer David Friedman took these charming pixelated pics of New York way back in the year 2000... ON A GAME BOY. They're not only a technological time capsule, but an urban one.

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A home in Brentwood, New Hampshire, exploded today live on TV as an ABC News helicopter was flying over the area, filming as it was burning.

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If you've got a smartphone in your pocket, chances are you've got a digital assistant in there too (or you will very soon). For all her smarts, though, Siri can't help much when you hunker down in front of a UNIX shell, so former Google engineer Jeff...

It's been a couple of weeks since rumors that AT&T is going to purchase DirecTV popped up, so how about another look? Today Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal are reporting that the usual "people familiar with the matter" say a deal could happen...

Alexander Kostov has spinal muscular atrophy, a disease that makes impossible for him to use most traditional game controllers. Rather than let that hold him back, he just got creative with the help of UK-based gaming charity Special Effect. The...