Новости за 20.04.2016

Learning to code may be almost as important now as learning to read. But most five-year-olds aren't interested in staring at lines of code. A new robot makes things more interesting: AntBo, which looks like an ant, is simple enough to program that kids can learn to code while they play with it.

Before the strawberries forgotten in the back of your fridge sprouted a layer of mold and ended up in the trash, they had a life. A clever new ad tells the backstory of a single berry from the field to a store to a garbage can, in an attempt to make more people think about food waste.

Introducing new food technologies comes with a price, often literally. And the new Biowish food wash is no different. It's a proprietary wash that gives fruit a longer shelf-life, but of course you have to buy it, and once a farmer switches over they're on the hook for yet another product to help them remain competitive.

Between 2011 and 2013, companies with a female CEO got only 3% of the total venture capital dollars available. That's $1.5 billion out of the total $50.8 billion invested in that two year period—a tiny slice of the pie. This year's Crunchies, the Oscars for the tech community, had a new award category: the Diversity Include Award. Silicon Valley is as guilty as Hollywood for its lack of diversity.

The idea of a universal basic income, where the state gives everyone in society enough money to meet basic needs, has a long history. The conservative economist Milton Friedman championed it in the early 1960s, and President Richard Nixon even passed a basic income bill through the House of Representatives (before the measure was killed—by Democrats!—in the Senate). But while it's a great idea on paper and every small experiment with it has been a success, it's never really been properly tried... Читать дальше...

Here is some good news for 54 million people classed as "overweight" or "obese" according to their body mass index score: You may not actually be unhealthy. A new study finds that BMI frequently mischaracterizes people and is a crude measure of health despite its wide use.

If you're like most people, you can't draw a bike from memory. It's actually a classic psychological test: Researchers say the inability to draw a simple bicycle is an example of how people overestimate our ability to explain how things work.

Ask yourself, honestly: If Uruguay or Guinea-Bissau disappeared off the face of the Earth, would you really notice? Now what about if Google disappeared from your Internet browser or Coca-Cola from your grocery store shelves?

Minority businesses could boost the economy by as much as $300 billion.