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The reason I cannot watch network news anymore is that they are obsessed over whether Secretary of State Tillerson called Trump a moron or not. It is a huge story. Yesterday, Tillerson called a news conference. They carried on and on about how unusual it was for a Secretary of State to do such a thing. He called it mostly to scold them, yet they were too stupid to realize it. Despite media reports that the two do nothing but squabble and that he has had it up to here with the President's dumb ways, Tillerson said he has never even once thought about quitting, that he and the President get along just fine, that he regards him as smart and demanding of results, that he…

Tesla drag racing fanatic behind the Tesla Racing Channel on YouTube has set a new 1/4 mile record in their stripped-down Model S P100D. The always-Ludicrous crew known to troll the streets for a good ol’ fashioned head-to-head battle of acceleration has spent the past month dropping weight on their Model S. The end result was a weight reduction of nearly 500 lbs (220 kg) from its factory 4,941 lbs weight and a record-setting 1/4 mile blast at 10.41 seconds at 125.12 mph. This beats their previously held record at 10.44 seconds. Tesla CEO Elon Musk had acknowledged that simple weight reduction techniques is a contributing factor to better acceleration. As to whether t…

On the heels of Amazon and Apple’s product extravaganzas, Google unveiled new hardware of its own. We’ve got the highlights: Smart Speakers Introducing the Home Max, with improved sound quality and, yes, it’s bigger than the original. Of course, it runs on the voice-activated Assistant platform (Google’s clever name for its home assistant). But if you’re into something more byte-sized, check out the new Home Mini, a competitor to Amazon’s Echo Dot. Expect more product differentiation from Google as it tries to claw away at Amazon’s huge lead in the smart speaker market (75-80% market share). Smartphones Following up on last year’s introduction of the O…

With any good sugar high there’s always a crash—PepsiCo’s (+0.19%) North America business reported quarterly sales ($5.3 billion) down 3% and profit down 10%. The reason? It didn’t spend nearly enough time (or $$) promoting Pepsi and Mountain Dew. That’s because Pepsi’s been chasing consumers’ preferences for healthier options. The dynamic low-sugar duo of its LIFEWTR and sparkling lemonade brands took center stage over the company’s flagship sodas. And it wasn’t wrong to make the switch—U.S. soda demand has fallen about 1% each of the last three years. But this quarter’s poor performance reminded Pepsi: don’t neglect brands that account for 12% of your revenu…

President Trump sent Puerto Rican bonds ducking for cover when he suggested he might “wipe out” the U.S. territory’s $73 billion in debt. And while that would alleviate the devastated island’s battered balance sheet, this would spell trouble for its investors. No surprise that prices on PR’s 2035 general obligation (GO) bonds slid to a record low of 30.25 cents on the dollar from 44 cents the day before. Two questions we have about Trump’s remarks: 1) If he is serious, could he do this? and 2) What are the chances it’ll happen? 1) Trump can’t wave his hand and make over $70 billion in debt disappear…he’ll need help from bankruptcy courts. 2) Mick Mu…

Travis Kalanick, who resigned as Uber’s CEO three months ago, appointed two new directors to the ride-hailer’s board: former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns and former CEO of CIT Group John Thain. Forget soap operas—Uber’s the biggest drama around. On Thursday, Uber proposed restructuring the board to give Khosrowshahi control over more seats, while stripping board control away from Kalanick (h/t NYT). So what did Travis do? He unleashed a preemptive strike on Friday by giving the two open board seats to a pair of his cronies. And remember, these are the same board seats that are the subjects of a lawsuitfrom Benchmark Capital, an early Uber investor and now mortal ene…

Tesla Model 3’s sleek and minimalistic interior has arguably become the poster child for what self-driving cars of the future should look like. Going sans instrument cluster in favor of a center-mounted, single 15-inch, horizontal touchscreen, in one respect is groundbreaking and dares to be different from the status quo. But behind Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen’s bold center dashboard design is a purpose – one of many: maximize Model 3’s interior space. Thanks to Joe Torbati at OCDetailing who in recent weeks has become a God amongst men in the Tesla community after posting a series of Model 3 walk around videos, we have a detailed look at how Model 3’s …

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Back in August, a study came out about bacteria in kitchen sponges that sent home chefs into a frenzy. But when we looked carefully at the study, we realized much of the news coverage about it was incorrect. The study, published in Scientific Reports, undertook a thorough investigation into how many critters are living in used kitchen sponges. And the results were jawdropping. "We found 362 different species of bacteria, and locally, the density of bacteria reached up to 45 billion per square centimeter," says Markus Egert, a microbiologist at Furtwangen University in Germany, who led the study. Forty-five billion microbes per square centimeter? Are yo…

SpaceX’s launch schedules have already solidified, but Elon Musk confirmed on Oct. 3 that the company is “aiming for two rocket landings in 48 hours this weekend”. In fact, a brief examination of the schedules suggests that SpaceX could attempt those two launches and landings in as few as 38 hours, easily beating the company’s previous launch cadence record of ~50 hours. Separated by the continental United States, both Falcon 9 boosters will attempt to land aboard SpaceX droneships within a period of 38 hours. Elon Musk proudly touted the fact that SpaceX had successfully recovered 16 Falcon 9 boosters since the company began recovery attempts, with 12 of those recove…

Tesla is already taking the world by storm with its fleet of consumer electric cars and the company’s push toward fully autonomous self-driving technology. Now, the Silicon Valley-based car maker and technology company has set its sights on the trucking industry, with the introduction of a fully electric semi-truck on the horizon. What will this mean to the trucking industry if Tesla succeeds? Electric Semi-Trucks With the official unveiling set for Oct. 26, Tesla fans and industry experts are speculating about the kind of impact its electric semi-truck could have on the commercial trucking industry as a whole. Production will be the other big question. Tesl…

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This may be one of the most evil schemes I have ever read, and it is all the more evil in that it is perfectly legal. It is more evil still in that perpetrators may think themselves benefactors. Rachel Aviv deserves a Pulitzer. No punishment is too severe for the perpetrators, who may be legion. People who insist upon gun rights will say this is exactly why they advocate for them. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderly-lose-their-rights

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What is it When an investor bets on a stock price to drop instead of rise. How does an investor do that? Let’s say you think Facebook is overvalued at $109 per share and you want to short one share. Here’s how it might play out: You’d call your broker and ask to borrow one share of Facebook (he might lend you a share from one of his other clients who already owns the stock). You sell that one share in the market, netting you $109. Facebook’s stock then falls to $89 over the next two weeks because word gets out that Zuckerberg is still on MySpace. You then buy the stock back, which is known as “covering” your position. Finally, your …

Microsoft (-0.47%) showcased its new virtual reality acquisition, Altspace VR, at an event in SF.

Yahoo clearly couldn’t stand being one-upped by Equifax. Its parent Verizon revealed that the 2013 data breach affected 3 billion accounts—three times more than previously disclosed. You think Verizon has buyer’s remorse? It placed a bid for Yahoo in the summer of 2016 for $4.5 billion. Then the onslaught began… September 2016: Yahoo announced that a 2014 hack on its systems had compromised 500 million accounts. December 2016: The company revealed an earlier hack (2013), where hackers made off with passwords, usernames, phone numbers, and even DOBs associated with 1 billion more accounts. Now, it turns out the hackers were batting 1.000, compromising…

EU regulators will continue their round-up of multinational “outlaws” today, slapping Amazon (-0.22%) with a several hundred million dollar bill for avoiding EU taxes since 2004 (h/t FT). The European Commission’s head bounty hunter, Margrethe Vestager, alleged Amazon funneled over $3 billion in profits to its Luxembourg-based subsidiaries to protect them from European taxes. How? Luxembourg supposedly offered a cap on taxable profits to Amazon. In return, Amazon would place its core European operations in Luxembourg. This isn’t the first de-Luxe treatment Luxembourg, a tiny nation of 580,000, has cemented itself as the “cool uncle” of the EU, offerin…

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My wife and I went to the County Agricultural Show and one of the first exhibits we stopped at was the breeding bulls. We went up to the first pen and there was a sign attached that said: THIS BULL MATED 50 TIMES LAST YEAR My wife playfully nudged me in the ribs ..... Smiled and said, "He mated 50 times last year, that's almost once a week". We walked to the second pen which had a sign attached that said: THIS BULL MATED 150 TIMES LAST YEAR My wife gave me a healthy jab and said, "WOW~~That's more than twice a week! .......... You could learn a lot from him". We walked to the third pen and it had a sign attached that said: THIS BULL MATED 365 TIMES LA…

Electric vehicles now account for six of the ten fastest selling used car models in the US. Compared to the 33.4 days that conventional cars sit on the market, electric and plug-in electric hybrid vehicles now sell within 24.6 days on average, or 27% faster than gasoline cousins, reports automotive research company iSeeCars.com. The firm analyzedthe sales of 2.1 million one- to three-year old cars sold between January and August of 2017 to rank the models. Read more: https://qz.com/1090343/most-of-the-fastest-selling-used-vehicles-in-the-us-are-now-ev/?mc_cid=682ab2f687&mc_eid=bca088da12

Diners at Hearth, the newly health-conscious, 13-year-old restaurant from James Beard award-winning chef Marco Canora, may have noticed a new addition to their place settings in recent weeks. Next to plates, napkins, and utensils there are now boxes. Some are old cigar boxes, others kitschy Etsy finds — but all of them are big enough to contain a few cell phones, because the boxes are Canora’s solution to what he views as harmful cell phone addiction. “If there’s one time in the 24 hours in your day that’s a time to engage with the person you’re with, it makes sense to me that it’s around the dinner table,” Canora says. Canora isn’t personally bothered by people…

Men can get breast cancer Everyone recognizes the pink ribbons that signify breast cancer awareness, but few think the cause relates to men. After all, women are 100 times more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer than men. More than 2,400 new cases of male breast cancer will be diagnosed this year, reports the American Cancer Society, but there’s still a lot to be discovered about the disease. “Research needs to better understand the biology of male breast cancer,” says Ayca Gucalp, MD, an oncologist who specializes in male breast cancer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Read more: http://www.health.com/breast-cancer/male-bre…