Archive for the ‘Money’ Category
Why Spending Money on Others Promotes Your Happiness
We’ve always heard that it is better to give than to receive. And the research is there to prove the old adage is right. A post at PsyBlog has links to several studies about this phenomenon.
But why? Why is it that spending our money on others—prosocial spending—makes us happier?
It’s partly because giving to others makes us feel good about ourselves. It helps promote a view of ourselves as responsible and giving people, which in turn makes us feel happy. It’s also partly because spending money on others helps cement our social relationships. And people with stronger social ties are generally happier.
Fingerprints Instead Of Credit Cards? YC-Backed PayTango Aims To Make Payments Work Through Biometrics | TechCrunch
As a mechanism for payment, the credit card remains just as hardy as ever. It has so far defied the threat of mobile phones, and less plausibly, QR codes, among many other forms of payment.
One YC-backed startup is betting that fingerprints and other forms of biometric identification may be the payment method of the future though. Called PayTango, they’re partnering with local universities to offer a quick and easy way for students to use their fingerprints to pay instead of credit cards.
The four-person team is basically almost fresh out of Carnegie Mellon University. The co-founders, Brian Groudan, Kelly Lau-Kee, Umang Patel and Christian Reyes, graduating later this summer and have experience in human-computer interaction and information systems.
They built an initial prototype with a fingerprint scanner and credit card reader with off-the-shelf parts for between $1,500 and $1,700. They’re bringing the costs down after iterating on it for 10 weeks and they have a working version of it at three locations on the Carnegie Mellon campus.
“The very earliest product was just basic,” said CEO Umang Patel. “But it was a great product to get out there and users responded to it very early on.”
The on-boarding process for users is really easy. They touch the fingerpad with their index and middle fingers and if they’re not in the system already, PayTango automatically detects that. It will ask them to swipe a card to associate with their fingerprints and then enter in their cell phone number. That sign-up process made it fast enough for 100 students to sign-up within four hours on campus.
East Capitol Press
East Capitol Press provides the latest CRS Reports, Congressional Letters and Dear Colleague Letters from the Hill at an affordable price. We started this site because subscription rates regarding congressional information are too high. In order to make this information as accessible as possible, East Capitol Press has made the documents affordable and available on a singular basis. Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports are $5. Congressional letters are $2.50. Dear Colleague Letters, letters circulated between Members of Congress, are only $1.
via East Capitol Press.
Occupy protesters were right, says Bank of England official – Telegraph
Andrew Haldane, a member of the Bank’s financial policy committee, said the Occupy movement was correct in its attack on the international financial system.
The Occupy movement sprang up last year and staged significant demonstrations in both the City of London and New York, protesting about the unequal distribution of wealth and the influence of the financial services industry. Members of the movement occupied the grounds of St Paul’s and remained camped there for more than three months until police evicted them in February last year.
“Occupy has been successful in its efforts to popularise the problems of the global financial system for one very simple reason; they are right,” Mr Haldane said last night. Mr Haldane, the Bank’s executive director for financial stability, was speaking to Occupy Economics, an offshoot of the Occupy movement, at an event in central London.
In a speech entitled Socially Useful Banking, he said the protesters had helped bring about a “reformation” in financial services and the way they are regulated.
Partly because of the protests, he suggested, both bank executives and policymakers were persuaded that banks must behave in a more moral way, and take greater account of inequality in wider society.
via Occupy protesters were right, says Bank of England official – Telegraph.
Nancy Pelosi: Payroll Tax Cut Should Expire
WASHINGTON — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says Congress should let the payroll tax cut expire at the end of the year and instead work toward comprehensive tax reform.
“I would hope that we would not extend it,” Pelosi said of the tax cut, during a Friday sit-down with reporters.
The whole point of extending the payroll tax cut was to only do it for a year or two to ensure economic stability, she said. Now that things have stabilized, she continued, it’s time to get moving on bigger changes.
“Let’s deal with the budget issues. Let’s put the tax code on the table, simplify, make more fair and close a lot of the special interest loopholes that are in there,” Pelosi said. “I would not be among those advocating” to extend the cut, she said.
Government Shutdown: Senate Passes Stopgap Spending Bill
WASHINGTON, Sept 22 (Reuters) – A deeply divided and unproductive Congress wrapped up its final business before November’s elections early on Saturday as the U.S. Senate passed a stopgap measure to fund federal programs and avoid an Oct. 1 government shutdown.
The 62-30 vote on the funding bill, which now moves to President Barack Obama’s desk to be signed into law, was delayed by days of partisan bickering over votes on unrelated measures aimed at boosting both Democrats’ and Republicans’ political fortunes.
For the new fiscal year which begins on Oct. 1, the $524 billion measure slightly raises discretionary spending – which funds government agencies and everything from defense to national parks – from current levels.
via Government Shutdown: Senate Passes Stopgap Spending Bill.
Even If You’re All-Powerful, It’s Hard To Fix The Economy : Planet Money : NPR
The world inside Mark Zandi’s computer model feels pretty familiar. It’s full of people who are worried about the economy. Their homes are being foreclosed on. They’re paying more for gas. Something like 13 million of them can’t find jobs.
Zandi is the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, and he built his model to predict what’s going to happen in the real world. When he plugs what he thinks is going to happen in the real world, his model spits out a pretty grim result: Four years from now, the unemployment rate will be 6.6 percent. That’s lower than today, but still much higher than the 5 percent rate that was typical before the recession.
via Even If You’re All-Powerful, It’s Hard To Fix The Economy : Planet Money : NPR.
Twitter releases Occupy protester’s tweets to NY judge: Why it caved on users’ privacy.
Twitter surprised and impressed civil liberties groups this summer by taking a stand on behalf of an Occupy Wall Street protester’s privacy. Ordered by the judge in a New York criminal case to dredge up and hand over deleted tweets from activist Malcolm Harris (@destructuremal), Twitter fought back and appealed, arguing its users own their own Twitter data. Groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU joined the fight on Twitter’s side.
The government, though, played dirty. Judge Matthew Sciarrino, Jr. this week told Twitter on Tuesday that if it didn’t fork over Harris’ data within three days, it would face contempt of court and a stiff fine. That’s not the dirty part. As Sciarrino noted, “I can’t put Twitter or the little blue bird in jail, so the only way to punish is monetarily.” The dirty part is that Sciarrino claimed that, in order to determine the appropriate fine, he would need Twitter’s financial records from the past two quarters. That’s anathema for a private startup clawing to keep its competitive edge, as Sciarrino surely knows.
The company’s response was predictable. “They’re going to tweet like canaries,” the New York Post reported this morning. Indeed, Reuters reports that the company asked the judge “pretty please” one last time in court on Friday, then gave up the goods. Harris’ records will remain under seal pending another appeal from his own lawyers next week.
via Twitter releases Occupy protester’s tweets to NY judge: Why it caved on users’ privacy..
Thaw At Brain Bank Deals Setback To Autism Research : Shots – Health Blog : NPR
The details sound like something out of a bad science fiction movie.
A freezer storing human brains for research went on the fritz, and nobody at the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center knew for days. Two separate alarms that should have alerted staff to the problem failed to sound late last month.
By the time one of the managers at the federally funded repository opened the affected freezer on May 31, the temperature was well above freezing and 150 brains had begun to thaw. The Boston Globe first reported on the mishap, which looks like a painful blow to autism research.
Johns Hopkins neuroscientist Carlos Pardo told the Globe the damage to the brains in the autism collection could slow research on the disorder by 10 years.
via Thaw At Brain Bank Deals Setback To Autism Research : Shots – Health Blog : NPR.
Stephen King tells rich people upset over tax increases: ‘Tough s**t’ | The Raw Story
Wealthy Americans adverse to paying higher taxes may have found a new enemy in famous novelist Stephen King, who lashed out at his fellow high income earners Monday afternoon for complaining about a possible increase in their rates.
In a brutally candid and colorful op-ed column for The Daily Beast, King was relentless in his criticism of rich people upset over tax increases and Republican figures who defend them.
“Tough shit for you guys, because I’m not tired of talking about it,” King said. “I’ve known rich people, and why not, since I’m one of them? The majority would rather douse their dicks with lighter fluid, strike a match, and dance around singing ‘Disco Inferno’ than pay one more cent in taxes to Uncle Sugar.”
via Stephen King tells rich people upset over tax increases: ‘Tough s**t’ | The Raw Story.
