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The dollar index , which tracks the currency against six peers, gained 0.15% to 102.64. It has fallen for the past two sessions, and is set for a 2.1% monthly fall, a victim of the market ructions induced by problems in the banking industry. The dollar touched a one week high and was last up 0.8% to 131.99 yen , while the euro gained 0.6% against the yen to 142.9. The dollar had dropped 0.5% against the yen the previous day, when it uncharacteristically moved in the opposite direction to long-term U.S. Treasury yields, which have been rising as calm returns to markets. Reporting by Kevin Buckland; Editing by Shri Navaratnam, Jamie Freed and Angus MacSwanOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Kia just unveiled its Telluride-sized EV
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-28 | by ( Peter Valdes-Dapena | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

CNN —The big Kia Telluride SUV, with three roomy rows of seats, has been a major hit for the South Korean car brand. So, for those ready to switch to electric vehicles, KIa just unveiled its all-electric big SUV. The Kia EV9, like the Telluride, has lots of seats and they can also do some neat tricks. More powerful versions will also be available, including an all-wheel-drive version with two motors capable of a combined 282 kilowatts, or 378 horsepower. Kia’s two current electric models, the much smaller Kia Niro EV and EV6, start at about $41,000 and $50,000, respectively.

☆ The Next Frontier in Farming? The Ocean.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-15 | by ( Somini Sengupta | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +10 min

For centuries, it’s been treasured in kitchens in Asia and neglected almost everywhere else: Those glistening ribbons of seaweed that bend and bloom in cold ocean waves. Far beyond South Korea, new farms have cropped up in Maine, the Faroe Islands, Australia, even the North Sea. But even as its champions see it as a miracle crop for a hotter planet, others worry that the zeal to farm the ocean could replicate some of the same damages of farming on land. “Seaweed is not going to replace all plastic, but seaweed combined with other things can tackle single use plastic,” he said. Seaweed farms are a far cry from the rows of corn and wheat that make up monoculture farming on land.

☆ The mystery of MH370 remains 9 years later — here are all the theories, dead ends, and unanswered questions from the most bizarre airline disaster of the century
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( Sinéad Baker | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +15 min

The theories so farA new Netflix documentary about the plane, "MH370: The Plane That Disappeared," was released in March 2023. The show's director called the plane's disappearance "the greatest aviation mystery of all time." But the July 2018 report had offered evidence against the idea that it was a deliberate act by the crew. But Australia's former prime minister, Tony Abbott, said in 2020 that the plane's disappearance was "almost certainly murder-suicide by the pilot." But the 2018 report said there was no technology on the plane that would allow control to be taken from the pilots remotely.

☆ 'Flamin' Hot' producer DeVon Franklin reveals why he tapped Eva Longoria to direct the film and why he's unfazed by questions over whether it's true to the origins of the fiery Cheetos flavor
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-13 | by ( Reed Alexander | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

The movie "Flamin' Hot" celebrates Mexican heritage and the invention of Flamin' Hot Cheetos. Impressed with the unlikely entrepreneur, Enrico gave it a try — and thus, Flamin' Hot Cheetos were born, and Montañez's career took off. "Flamin' Hot" stars actor Jesse Garcia as Richard Montañez. Eva Longoria directed the new film "Flamin' Hot." The LA Times article, amongst journalists and amongst this small group of people, may get some traction.

☆ With 'Flamin' Hot' movie set to premiere at SXSW, its producer tackles claims about the central character's role in creating the spicy Cheetos flavor and reveals how Eva Longoria won the director job
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-10 | by ( Reed Alexander | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

The movie "Flamin' Hot" celebrates Mexican heritage and the invention of Flamin' Hot Cheetos. An LA Times report raised doubt about the role of the film's protagonist, Richard Montañez, in creating the flavor. Impressed with the unlikely entrepreneur, Enrico gave it a try — and thus, Flamin' Hot Cheetos were born, and Montañez's career took off. Eva Longoria directed the new film "Flamin' Hot." The LA Times article, amongst journalists and amongst this small group of people, may get some traction.

☆ Britain's early retired resist calls to work, despite higher living costs
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( David Milliken | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +8 min

The exodus of older workers has no equivalent in other advanced economies. "The best part of 90% of people who say they are early retired ... say that they will probably or definitely never work again." Based on data from before the pandemic, Britain's Resolution Foundation found the richest fifth of 50-59 year olds were 10 times likelier to retire early than the bottom fifth. Other companies say they value older workers for their experience. "Older workers are the ones that have got the skills - we don't find young people with the skills that we need.

Higher rates benefit the dollar by improving its yield and as traders look for safety while global stockmarkets drop. The dollar hit a two-month high against the euro of $1.0524 , extending Tuesday's 1.2% jump. The Australian dollar has weakened for a similar reason as the Reserve Bank of Australia has softened its tone. Having dropped over 2% on Tuesday, the Australian dollar weakened a bit more to hit a four-month low of $0.6568 on Wednesday. China's yuan finished the domestic session at 6.9706 per dollar, the weakest such close since Dec. 29, 2022.

☆ Millennials in their 30s are sitting in an economic quagmire that could stick with them through retirement
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Jason Lalljee | Madison Hoff | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

In the long run, this generation may also be hit by cuts in Social Security benefits. In the longer run, millennials' retirement may also be affected if Social Security benefits are cut. Millennials in their 30s are accruing debt faster than their peersWhile Experian and Credit Karma research show Gen X has the highest average debt, millennials still hold a lot of debt too — and are accumulating it faster than anyone else. Millennials face looming retirement insecurityIf all of that wasn't enough, millennials' retirement situation in the future could be different from Gen X and baby boomers. Additionally, millennials' retirement safety nets are likely to be affected if they can't get full Social Security benefits.

☆ What's a mortgage rate buydown? 3 things you need to know to avoid 'lighting money on fire'
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-05 | by ( Jason Stauffer | Elizabeth Gravier | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +11 min

How does a mortgage rate buydown work? The terms are sometimes used interchangeably, so it's important to understand how your individual mortgage lender is defining the buydown. When you pay for discount or mortgage points, you permanently lower your mortgage's interest rate (as opposed to buydowns which only temporarily lower the rate). So it may make less sense for these types of borrowers to pay for a lower rate. You'll want to pay attention to your mortgage's closing costs because the fees you pay can wipeout the potential savings from securing a lower mortgage rate.

☆ Michigan Attorney General Nessel says she and other Jewish officials were targeted for murder
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Dan Mangan | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

EAST LANSING, MI - OCTOBER 16: U.S. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel speaks at a campaign rally held by U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) designed to get Michigan State University students, faculty and staff out to the polls on October 16, 2022 in East Lansing, Michigan. The race between Congresswoman Slotkin and Michigan State Senator Tom Barrett for Michigan's newly configured 7th Congressional District is one of the two most expensive U.S. House campaigns in the country. In her tweet, Nessel wrote: "The FBI has confirmed I was a target of the heavily armed defendant in this matter." "Probable cause exists that [Carpenter] made threats to cause injury and death to Jewish members of the Michigan government," an FBI agent wrote in a complaint against Carpenter. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said Thursday that the FBI told her that she was among the group of Jewish state elected officials targeted for murder by a "heavily armed defendant" who has been arrested.

☆ Warren Buffett praised the practice of long-term investing in his annual shareholder letter. These are the 10 longest-held stocks in Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-28 | by ( Matthew Fox | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Warren Buffett has long praised the practice of long-term investing when it comes to stocks. "The world is full of foolish gamblers, and they will not do as well as the patient investor," Buffett said in Berkshire Hathaway's 2022 shareholder letter. These are the 10 longest-held stocks in Berkshire Hathaway's $299 billion stock portfolio. These are the 10 longest-held companies in Berkshire Hathaway's $299 billion individual stock portfolio. UPSJustin Sullivan/Getty ImagesTicker: UPSTime Held: 17 yearsPortfolio Value: $10.3 million7.

☆ Apple and Meta's cold war over privacy is coming to a head
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-17 | by ( Diamond Naga Siu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Do you know any marketing/ad execs who are figuring out how to use generative AI? But experts told my teammate Paayal Zaveri that Meta needs to entirely reinvent its advertising model to escape Apple. Microsoft's new ChatGPT-powered Bing loves to pick fights and sling insults — and people are sharing their wild, wild, wild experiences with the chatbot. Generative AI like ChatGPT can do these side-hustles for you. Freelancers are relying on generative AI to increase their productivity and take on more projects.

☆ Returns from top venture firms NEA, DCM, and Khosla have been dismal over the past 2 decades, according to filings from California's largest pension fund, CalPERS
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

CalPERS is the US's largest public pension plan, managing the retirement accounts of 1.5 million California employees and retirees. Unlike many other financial institutions, VC funds are not required to show their return on investment in startups. The CalPERS fund's $75 million bet in 2001 on a venture fund managed by the Carlyle Group lost money. A $25 million investment in DCM's 2000 fund had a 1.9% IRR. Its $260 million investment in two Khosla Ventures funds in 2009 yielded an IRR of 11.8% for the early-to-midstage fund and 6.9% for the seed-stage fund.

☆ ChatGPT frenzy sweeps China as firms scramble for homegrown options
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-11 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Microsoft -backed OpenAI has kept its hit ChatGPT app off-limits to users in China, but the app is attracting huge interest in the country, with firms rushing to integrate the technology into their products and launch rival solutions. OpenAI or ChatGPT itself is not blocked by Chinese authorities but OpenAI does not allow users in mainland China, Hong Kong, Iran, Russia and parts of Africa to sign up. Dozens of bots rigged to ChatGPT technology have emerged on WeChat, with hobbyists using it to make programmes or automated accounts that can interact with users. ChatGPT supports Chinese language interaction and is highly capable of conversing in Chinese, which has helped drive its unofficial adoption in the country. SleekFlow, a Tiger Global-backed startup in Hong Kong, said it was integrating the AI into its customer relations messaging tools.

☆ Why the Super Bowl still matters: Football is 'the glue' holding network TV together
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-11 | by ( Christina Cheddar Berk | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

And it came on top of a 9% bump in viewership during the 2021-22 football season, he said. Nathanson said the NFL is the biggest single driver of network ratings — and ultimately advertising dollars — during the fall TV season. "Sunday Night Football" is aired on NBC, while Disney, which owns ESPN and ABC, has the rights to show "Monday Night Football." Amazon has the rights to "Thursday Night Football" through 2033 . All this is to say, that there is a reason why advertisers still care about putting their commercials on during football games.

☆ ChatGPT frenzy sweeps China as firms scramble for home-grown options
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-10 | by ( Josh Ye | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

[1/2] A response in Chinese by ChatGPT, an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, is seen on its website in this illustration picture taken February 9, 2023. OpenAI or ChatGPT itself is not blocked by Chinese authorities but OpenAI does not allow users in mainland China, Hong Kong, Iran, Russia and parts of Africa to sign up. Dozens of bots rigged to ChatGPT technology have emerged on WeChat, with hobbyists using it to make programmes or automated accounts that can interact with users. ChatGPT supports Chinese language interaction and is highly capable of conversing in Chinese, which has helped drive its unofficial adoption in the country. CENSORSHIPReuters' tests of ChatGPT indicate that the chatbot is not averse to questions that would be sensitive in mainland China.

☆ Toyota's Q3 profit jumps 22% as weak yen helps
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-09 | by ( Daniel Leussink | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Operating profit for the three months ended Dec. 31 was 956.7 billion yen ($7.28 billion). That beat the average 764.54 billion yen profit estimated by 10 analysts, according to Refinitiv data. In the same period a year earlier, Toyota reported a 784.4 billion yen profit. While it trimmed its annual production target by about 1%, to around 9.1 million vehicles, it stuck to its forecast for annual profit of 2.4 trillion yen for the year to end-March. The automaker is likely to comfortably exceed that forecast, given that it has now delivered 2.1 trillion yen in the first nine months of the year, said Koji Endo, senior analyst at SBI Securities.

☆ Premarket stocks: Welcome to the 'rolling recession' economy
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-09 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

Yet US manufacturing has likely already contracted into a recession, housing sales have plummeted, tech layoffs keep coming and corporate earnings growth is souring. “We continue to think the economy will suffer from rolling recessions, evidenced by the fact that corporate earnings growth is now entering its downturn,” wrote Sonders in a note on Wednesday. For five straight weeks, the bank’s clients have been big buyers of individual stocks and sellers of ETFs, she wrote. Disney revenue in the quarter rose 8% to $23.5 billion, edging past estimates of $23.4 billion from analysts surveyed by Refinitiv. The company reported revenue of $8.6 billion for the quarter, beating Wall Street’s estimates and marking a 49% increase from the prior year.

☆ Google’s AI chatbot Bard had an inaccurate response in public demo
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-08 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

CNN —Google’s much-hyped new AI chatbot tool Bard, which has yet to be released to the public, is already being called out for an inaccurate response it produced in a demo this week. Bard’s blunder highlights the challenge for Google as it races to integrate the same AI technology that underpins Microsoft-backed ChatGPT into its core search engine. In trying to keep pace with what some think could be a radical change spurred by conversational AI in how people search online, Google now risks upending its search engine’s reputation for surfacing reliable information. Like ChatGPT, Bard is built on a large language model, which is trained on vast troves of data online in order to generate compelling responses to user prompts. The executive said AI technology would pave the way for the “next frontier of our information products.”

☆ Whoops: Google's ad for new ChatGPT rival Bard shows the AI chatbot giving an inaccurate answer
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-08 | by ( Britney Nguyen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Google recently revealed its experimental AI chatbot, Bard, a rival to OpenAI's viral ChatGPT. In an ad for Bard, the chatbot gives an inaccurate answer to a question about the James Webb Space Telescope. The ad depicts the chatbot giving an inaccurate answer to a question about the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Reuters first reported. In the ad, a user asks Bard, "What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9 year old about?" Shares of Alphabet, Google's parent company, have fallen by over 8% since Google's AI showcase in Paris this morning.

☆ Walter Mosley Thinks America Is Getting Dumber
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( David Marchese | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +17 min

Mamadi Doumbouya for The New York Times Talk Walter Mosley Thinks America Is Getting DumberWalter Mosley is best known as one of contemporary literature’s pre-eminent crime novelists, but he’s actually four or five different writers rolled into one. You have to tell stories about real people experiencing it and not real people with a Ph.D. People who are not stupid but ignorant, who don’t know things about the world. There are people who don’t know how to spell, they don’t know how to think. You have these people coming out into the world, and they don’t know what to do. That’s going to happen.

☆ The founder behind ChatGPT once gave a lecture on how to launch a startup. It's still required viewing 9 years later.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( Jennifer Ortakales Dawkins | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

He gave a lecture at Stanford in 2014 explaining what it takes to build a successful startup. Aspiring founders today still find his advice on things like coming up with great ideas relevant. The best ideas are often the ones that seem like bad ideasAltman also told aspiring founders that good startup ideas are often considered seem like bad ideas for a while. "Most die because they themselves fail to make something users love; they spend their time on other things." Once you've gained those users, Altman said, it's important to listen to them and learn everything you can about them.

☆ Google just introduced Bard, a new rival and competition for ChatGPT
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( Lakshmi Varanasi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

The technology is powered by LaMDA, a large language model Google unveiled in May 2021. On Monday, Pichai unveiled its Bard AI service in a blog post on Google's website, which he described as "an experimental conversational AI service." Bard is powered by LaMDA, a language model trained on dialogue that Google announced in May 2021. Pichai noted that Bard will draw on information from the web to provide "fresh, high-quality responses." However, Pichai noted that Google is releasing Bard with a "lightweight model version of LaMDA."

During the pandemic, mortgage rates plummeted below 3%, flooding the real estate market with homebuyers trying to snag a good rate. "Mortgage rates have trended down in the past couple of months," he says. So... [for] someone waiting for a 3% or 4% mortgage rate, it's not going to happen." For example, Rocket Mortgage is currently offering a mortgage rate buydown program called Inflation Buster. Evaluate whether you're buying for the right reasons and determine if you and your budget are ready for this important milestone.

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