What You Need to Know Today: February 24
Good afternoon, Early Risers!
Here’s what you need to know
TECH
Judgment Day is here and it has impeccable form. Google’s next gen. humanoid Atlas robot is here and with perfect squat form to boot. Recap: In 2013, Google bought Boston Dynamics, an engineering company that makes Terminator-like robots for the military. Boston Dynamics released its latest video featuring Atlas running, lifting, and getting bullied by employees (some things never change). Watch this.
You’re either going to Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad or be Angry with this news. Facebook officially rolls out “Reactions” to all its users today.
Why the FBI can’t hack into iPhones. “The reason the FBI can’t get into the phones without Apple’s help is ludicrously simple. It comes down to one setting, that anyone can turn on or off in seconds,” says Quartz. Tell me more. The mystery setting Quartz is referring to is the Erase Data option under Settings > Passcode. Enabling Erase Data will Erase all data on this iPhone after 10 failed passcode attempts. So unless the FBI has someone on staff really good at guessing passcodes in 9 guesses or less, they need Apple to do this one thing.
The best word processor for procrastinators. There’s a Zen saying that goes “If you don’t want TV spoiled, don’t go on the Internet.” Unsurprisingly, this same wisdom applies to writers. Enter the first smart typewriter. “The thing you can’t do is browse the Web, and that’s by design. It’s just you, the Freewrite, and a blank piece of e-paper,” says Wired. What I like about the Freewrite (other than the handle, cuz you know you want to show this baby off), is the fact that it’s remarkable. People will talk about this. In an environment where computers and smart gadgets are competing to do everything, this does one thing, and does it well.
CAREER
Why you should give away your Legos. Metaphorically speaking, relax. Turns out Legos are a great metaphor for explaining how managers and employees should handle growing pains. When a company scales, whether it’s a startup or your department hires another Daniel (Damn, Daniel), something funny happens: “People get nervous,” says Molly Graham. “As you add people, you go through this roller coaster of, ‘Wait, is that new person taking my job? What if they don’t do it the right way? What if they’re better than me at it? What do I do now?’” So how do you steady your team’s nerves? Give away your Legos.
Billionaire to employees: Learn to write well or lose your job. K, here’s the deal: If you want to succeed in business, take a journalism class, says billionaire Paul Tudor Jones. Not a magazine-writing class. Journalism. “You learn how to write in a hierarchical way,” says Jones. “When Jones gets a memo from someone written in magazine style, with the climax at the end, he tears it up, throws it away, and makes the author enroll in an online newspaper writing course,” saysCelebrityNetWorth. I saved you some time and found some free newspaper writing courses online. These all look promising.
Open letter to millennials like Talia… Stephanie is 29. Not much older than Talia, 22. By definition, Stephanie and Talia both qualify as millennials. Except for Talia has a lot of learning ahead of her. Here’s a brutally honest look at the “struggle” in the Bay Area. Good read for any twenty-almost-thirty-something.
LIFESTYLE
The real reason we buy bottled water. I read somewhere once that the addition of parking spaces to fast food restaurants increases a restaurant’s revenue, because customers actually want to eat in their cars. Business Insider says “In 2013, 42% of people said they’d be embarrassed to be spotted carrying a bag from McDonald’s. Eating at the fast-food chain indicated a nutrition fail that went against most Americans’ supposed active efforts to be healthier.” There’s something evergreen going on here and savvy marketers are taking advantage. Perrier was the first brand to successfully market bottled water. Now it seems Coca-Cola and Pepsi are trying to appeal to Americans’ desire to be seen as healthy, too.
What it takes to become a bestselling author on Amazon. Not much, apparently. How does $3 and 5 minutes of your time sound? Brent Underwood proved (with pics) that it really doesn’t take much to become a bestselling author on Amazon. Be wary of anyone who lists “bestselling author on Amazon” as one of their accolades.
#NOWYOUKNOW
How to Get Anything for Free… (NOT RECOMMENDED)
By Dell Cameron
When he was just 16, Jonah made hundreds of thousands of dollars ripping off some of the world’s biggest tech companies. A self-described social engineering expert, he boasts that he could steal practically anything with just a laptop and a cellphone. He made a small fortune on an online black market. He vacationed in Switzerland, toured Paris and Rome, and crashed in luxurious Las Vegas suites, always under an assumed identity. His family and friends wouldn’t see or hear from him for years at a time.
“I made thousands, money whenever I needed it,” he boasts. “I could social engineer anything. Anything I wanted.”
Now in his early 20s, Jonah — not his real name, of course — works at a private security firm, protecting the same companies he once robbed. On the condition of anonymity, he agreed to talk about the methods he once used as a criminal.
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