DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ Paul Krugman warns a US debt default would mean economic disaster. Here are 3 things Biden can do if lawmakers fail to strike a deal.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Jennifer Sor | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

A US default cause be failure to raise the debt ceiling would bring on disaster, Paul Krugman said. Krugman listed three options for the Biden administration to avoid a default if lawmakers don't raise the ceiling. On Monday, Speaker Kevin McCarthy said the House would vote on a bill to lift the debt ceiling until 2024, though he didn't specify what would be included. Mint a $3 trillion platinum coin: The Treasury Department has the authority to mint commemorative coins. Krugman said this is a way to borrow money without technically adding to the national debt burden.

☆ The 11 best cheap places to live in the US
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Alcynna Lloyd | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

The website Niche ranks the best places to live on factors like home value, income, and diversity. Here are the cities with the lowest cost of living on Niche's list of best places to live in the US. Each year, Niche identifies the best places to live across America — spots where, among other qualities, residents can relatively easily afford housing, send kids to good schools, and find great jobs. Insider took Niche's overall list of best places to live as of April 12 and filtered it by the most affordable cities. Read on to learn more about 11 of the best and most affordable cities to live in 2023, including what they're known for, how much people make, how much homes cost, and what residents say about them.

☆ The best cities for homebuyers in America, where houses are relatively cheap, cost of living is lower, and schools are good
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Kelsey Neubauer | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

Neighborhood ranking site Niche has determined the best cities to buy a house in the US in 2023. Housing costs versus incomes, public school quality, and cost of living factored into the ranking. From on-the-map locales in Indiana to zip codes in Texas, neighborhood and school ranking site Niche has honed in on the best cities for homebuyers in 2023. Some of the factors it considered were income versus typical home values, cost of living, public school ranking, property tax, crime, and safety. Here are the 15 best cities to buy a home in America right now, according to Niche.

☆ A professor says he's stunned that ChatGPT went from a D grade on his economics test to an A in just 3 months
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-26 | by ( Ryan Hogg | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

An economics professor was stunned by the progress ChatGPT made in an exam in just three months. Bryan Caplan of George Mason University said the chatbot got a D in his economics test in January. Bryan Caplan, an economics professor at George Mason University, told Insider the latest version of ChatGPT could now be responsible for the first big bet he's ever lost. Caplan told Insider the bot failed to understand basic concepts, such as the principle of comparative and absolute advantage. "I'm probably going to lose this AI bet but I am totally on board to do a bunch more end-of-the-world AI bets because I think these people are out of their minds."

[1/3] Visitors pass a logo of Teck Resources Ltd mining company during the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) annual convention in Toronto, Ontario, Canada March 4, 2019. REUTERS/Chris HelgrenTORONTO, March 21 (Reuters) - Investors have yet to embrace Canadian miner Teck Resources Ltd's (TECKb.TO) proposal to spin off its highly polluting coal business and focus on production of copper to help supply society's move toward electric vehicles. Last month, Teck announced a split into copper-focused Teck Metals and Elk Valley Resources (EVR), which will focus on high-margin coal for steel making. In 2021, South African miner Anglo American demerged and listed its thermal coal business. "The coal business is profitable for now, and using its proceeds to fund its copper business is a pragmatic way towards transition," said Dustyn Lanz, Senior Advisor ESG Global Advisors.

☆ What credit ratings have to do with the fallout at Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic — and why they matter so much to banks
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Huileng Tan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

As panic shoots across the banking sector, US banks' credit ratings have come under the spotlight, and investors are zooming in on how these institutions are graded. Moody's, S&P Global, and Fitch are three big credit ratings agencies that control about 95% of the credit ratings in the financial markets. In fact, during the global financial crisis, credit ratings agencies had been blasted for giving better ratings to risky mortgage-backed securities and collateralized loans. Fears of the crisis spreading have also hit the credit ratings of First Republic Bank. First Republic Bank is now considering various options —including a sale – Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

Indexed universal life insurance: Another type of permanent life insurance, these flexible policies carry lifelong coverage but few guarantees. While Mutual of Omaha's term life insurance rates are average, its Guaranteed Whole Life Insurance (the company's only whole-life option) is one of the industry's cheapest insurance plans. Before beginning, be sure you have the following details:Policyholder's information (including dates of birth and death)Insurance policy numberBeneficiary's informationMutual of Omaha Life Insurance FAQsWhat is life insurance? Experienced life insurance agents can run quotes and advise you on premiums, life insurance loans, accelerated death benefits, and more. Mutual of Omaha Life Insurance Competitors New York Life InsuranceNorthwestern Mutual LifeLife Insurance Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options.

Egg prices rose 60% in 2022: Consumers paid $4.30 on average in December for a dozen eggs compared to $1.80 a year earlier. "Everyone tries to make money, but ... it's a very low-margin industry," said Angel Rubio, senior analyst at Urner Barry, a market research firm that specializes in the wholesale food industry. But the egg industry is volatile, too, sensitive to market changes and environmental factors. Much of the price increase of eggs over 2022 stemmed from the deadliest outbreak of bird flu in U.S. history, which killed millions of egg-laying hens. The egg industry also has its fair share of controversy.

☆ The white-gold, black-blue dress controversy raised scientific questions about visual perception, but the way our eyes and brains work explain the illusion
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-26 | by ( Dina Spector | Morgan Mcfall-Johnsen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Depending on whom you ask, this dress might be black and blue or white and gold. Some people saw a blue and black dress, while others saw a white and gold dress. It makes the blue part look white and the black part look gold. In other words, our individual sensitivity to the blue background lighting of the photo is changing how we see the object in the image. The blue bars are the same at the top, bottom, and middle but appear to change color (look darker) as your eyes move down the figure.

☆ Job postings can reveal signs of trouble ahead with a potential employer or role. Here are the red flags that candidates should look for.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-12 | by ( Sarah Jackson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

A job post is often one of the first things you encounter when searching for a new position. But some are ridden with red flags — if you know how to spot them. If you know what red flags to look for in a job ad, you may be able to spare yourself the pain of dealing with a bad job or employer. Here are the red flags experts say you should look for in job posts, and what they may signal about a potential employer or position. Going overboard with must-havesMeanwhile, listing too much can be a problem in other areas, particularly the requirements and qualifications section of a job post.

☆ A $162,500 per year Swiss boarding school — possibly the world's most expensive — says it's embracing AI tech like ChatGPT to help students learn
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-11 | by ( Pete Syme | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

The Swiss boarding school's director told Insider it is embracing AI tech like ChatGPT and DALL-E.She says banning ChatGPT is "mass hysteria," and students need to be taught the ethics of AI. The Swiss boarding school, which says it is "possibly" the world's costliest, requires a non-refundable fee of over $1,000 just to apply. Another student used DALL·E to generate pictures in an essay about the role of women in the First World War. The AI didn't score more than a C."I would say that if you're getting C level answers from ChatGPT, you're asking the wrong question," Gademann adds. "Can you imagine a scenario where we're throwing millions and millions of dollars to find out if a student used a calculator in math homework in the '80s?"

☆ Eagles Fans Hated Drafting Jalen Hurts—Until He Took Them to the Super Bowl
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-09 | by ( Andrew Beaton | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

PHOENIX—Fans of the Philadelphia Eagles aren’t exactly known for their restraint, and the only thing that stopped them from rioting when the team used a second-round pick on a quarterback named Jalen Hurts in 2020 may have been that it happened during the early pandemic lockdowns. When more than 12,000 fans graded Hurts’s selection in an online poll for an Eagles fan blog, 61% gave it a big fat F. The second most popular grade: D. Social media declared that the Eagles were clueless because they already had what was touted as a franchise quarterback, and using a prized pick on someone who looked like a backup was an utter waste.

☆ This little-known fintech stock could emerge as an industry leader and gain nearly 20%, Loop Capital says
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-09 | by ( Hakyung Kim | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Triumph Financial is a "new fintech leader in payments" that the market is underappreciating, according to Loop Capital. The firm initiated coverage of Triumph with a buy rating and a price target of $76 per share. This, along with its emerging open loop payment platform, TriumphPay, makes the company unique, according to Goetsch. TriumphPay connects brokers, factoring companies, and carriers in the trucking industry to facilitate payments. To be sure, Goetsch believes the company will not become profitable until 2024, as freight demand slows in 2023.

☆ Carbon-Credit Raters Aim to Assess a Notoriously Opaque Market
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-07 | by ( Shane Shifflett | Dieter Holger | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +7 min

Carbon-credit-rating firms aim to give buyers confidence in assessing the unregulated market for carbon offsets, voluntary credits that can help companies fulfill their decarbonization promises. Traders, online marketplaces and corporate sustainability departments are typical customers for carbon-credit ratings, but companies increasingly encounter the scores through intermediaries selling the offsets. Sylvera Ltd., one of the carbon-credit raters, said that less than a third of projects aimed at preventing deforestation are high quality. The market for voluntary carbon credits topped $2 billion in 2022, according to publisher and researcher Ecosystem Marketplace. BeZero has fully rated around 280 projects, Calyx around 260, Sylvera around 115 and Renoster has fully reviewed nine.

☆ Generative AI is coming for the classroom, whether teachers like it or not. Here's why many in education think it should be embraced rather than shunned.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Madeline Renbarger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Fears of generative AI helping students cheat are rampant, and some school districts are banning it. Instead, educators should think about how generative AI can be used as a classroom learning tool. Insider spoke with multiple AI researchers and academics, startup founders, and education-nonprofit leaders to learn how they're approaching generative AI in the classroom. If used effectively, generative AI tools like ChatGPT can help students develop critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, which are crucial learning outcomes for most teachers. That way, students are actively engaged and wouldn't be able to use generative AI to complete a full assignment, he said.

☆ ChatGPT passes exams from law and business schools
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-26 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —ChatGPT is smart enough to pass prestigious graduate-level exams – though not with particularly high marks. The powerful new AI chatbot tool recently passed law exams in four courses at the University of Minnesota and another exam at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, according to professors at the schools. To test how well ChatGPT could generate answers on exams for the four courses, professors at the University of Minnesota Law School recently graded the tests blindly. ChatGPT fared better during a business management course exam at Wharton, where it earned a B to B- grade. “ChatGPT struggled with the most classic components of law school exams, such as spotting potential legal issues and deep analysis applying legal rules to the facts of a case,” Choi said.

☆ Harvard professor says he gets thank-you notes from prisoners secretly using smartphones to take his free computer-science class
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Britney Nguyen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

An inmate in Georgia told The Marshall Project he uses a contraband phone to teach other prisoners. The Harvard professor told Insider he's received thank-you notes from prisoners who took the class. Malan told Insider over email that he's received thank-you notes from students in prison over the years. In addition to inmates taking online classes like the man in Georgia, some pose as regular students in online classes, something that online learning through Zoom allows. An incarcerated man in California told The Marshall Project that prisoners "have to acquire contraband phones from the people who are supposed to be watching us.

☆ A ChatGPT bot passed a Wharton business school exam, but a professor says he would've only graded the effort a B or B-minus
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-23 | by ( Lakshmi Varanasi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Wharton professor Christian Terwiesch tested ChatGPT with questions from his final exam. Terwiesch found that ChatGPT could answer basic questions well but sometimes made "surprising mistakes" in simple calculations. Terwiesch concluded that ChatGPT might earn a B or B- on his final exam. Based on an analysis of similar retailers, the founders expect to turn their inventory 1.5 times per year. To achieve an annual revenue of $3,000,000, how much inventory expressed in $'s should the founders expect their operation to require?

☆ An AI rival to ChatGPT passed a university level law and economics exam, and did better than many humans, professor says
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-19 | by ( Sawdah Bhaimiya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

An AI received a marginal pass in a law and economics exam, economics professor Alex Tabarrok said. Tabarrok, a professor at George Mason University, said the AI's answer was "better than many human responses." The AI, known as Claude, was built by Anthropic, a company part-funded by Sam Bankman-Fried. Tabarrok said the exam was graded blind and that he considered Claude "a competitor" and "improvement" to OpenAI's GPT3, the tech underlying viral sensation ChatGPT. There has been an explosion of interest in AI capabilities since the launch of OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT in November.

☆ I quit the NFL to trade Pokémon cards. I was making just as much playing football, so I decided to do something I love.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Nathan Rennolds | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Martinez, 29, retired from the NFL in November 2022 to trade Pokémon cards. I first got involved with Pokémon cards when I was 6. We ended up doing a box break on Whatnot, and we turned $50,000 worth of Pokémon cards into $108,000 in that first show. That's what I try to tell the team — you're in control on that screen. cards, sports cards, shoes, and clothes.

☆ Massachusetts is the best place to raise a family in the U.S.—see which other states made the top 10 list
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Celia Fernandez | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

In a January report, WalletHub ranked the best states to raise a family in. A January report from WalletHub compared the 50 U.S. states across five key aspects to find the best states to raise a family: Family FunHealth & SafetyEducation & Child CareAffordabilitySocio-economics WalletHub evaluated those factors using 51 relevant metrics, each graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for family life. 1 best state to raise a family: MassachusettsMassachusetts topped the list for the best state to raise a family. The state is home to some of the country's best schools, including Harvard and MIT. 10 best U.S. states to raise a family

☆ 2022 was the year the Overconfidence Man fell back to earth
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( Maureen Tkacik | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +22 min

Naturally, Elon Musk, the platonic ideal of the peculiar self-aggrandizing, self-parodying personality type that thrived during the Trump years and peaked during the pandemic, tops this list. By 2022, the media had pronounced him variously the next Warren Buffett, J.P. Morgan and Charles Koch. "bye bye @trussliz Congrats to lettuce", tweeted Putin's one-time stand-in Dmitry Medvedev, to which Elon Musk could not resist replying, "pretty good troll tbh." Elon Musk speaks at the 2020 Satellite Conference and Exhibition in March 2020. Elon MuskIt's weird to recall now that Elon Musk once seemed like, graded on the billionaire curve anyway, a net positive for a cursed American society.

Guaranteed Whole Life Insurance: As you might expect, the Guaranteed Whole Life Insurance product from Mutual of Omaha comes with guaranteed coverage with no medical exams or health-related questions. Indexed universal life insurance: Another type of permanent life insurance, these flexible policies carry lifelong coverage but few guarantees. While Mutual of Omaha's term life insurance rates are average, its Guaranteed Whole Life Insurance (the company's only whole-life option) is one of the industry's cheapest insurance plans. Insider's Featured Life Insurance Companies Lemonade Life InsuranceNationwide Life InsuranceGuardian Life Insurance Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Experienced life insurance agents can run quotes and advise you on premiums, life insurance loans, accelerated death benefits, and more.

☆ Cramer: What I learned about investing from the first millionaire I met as a kid
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( Jim Cramer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +10 min

He didn't talk much on the drive in, just listened to call-in radio shows and then the opera, the Metropolitan Opera, brought to you by Texaco. And if you ran out of those, you might have to close on one of the most important business days leading up to Christmas. But Mr. Paul was a supplier, a decent man, and most importantly a retired Marine Corps colonel. One day Pop asked me to summon up the courage and ask Mr. Paul to show him his stock ledger. Mr. Paul, in short, was a millionaire.

☆ 1 in 5 studio films included an LGBTQ character in 2021, GLAAD report finds
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-15 | by ( Jo Yurcaba | Jo Yurcaba Is A Reporter For Nbc Out. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +6 min

Sixteen of the 77 films released by those studios (20.8%) featured 28 LGBTQ characters, the report found. That percentage is down slightly from 2020, during which 10 of the 44 theatrical releases (23%) featured 20 LGBTQ characters, according to the report. Of the 16 films that included LGBTQ characters in 2021, 11 films (69%) included gay male characters, four (25%) included lesbian characters and two (13%) included bisexual characters, according to the report. For the second year in a row, GLAAD found that there were zero LGBTQ characters with disabilities or LGBTQ characters living with HIV represented in the year’s films. The majority of the 28 characters, 17, received fewer than five minutes, and six of those characters received less than a minute of screen time.

Search resuls for: "Graded"

25 mentions found