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THE HEADLINES
Estimated Read Time: 3 minutes and 45 seconds
MALL MADNESS
PSA: This is how you need to be wasting your time.
If Roller Coaster Tycoon and Monopoly: The Wolf of Wall Street Edition (note: that doesn’t actually exist) had a baby, it would be the American Mall Game, brought to you by Bloomberg. Now I know what you’re thinking “gross, sounds educational,” but just think about the rush of adrenaline jacking up the rent on highly leveraged virtual merchant’s, coercing local officials and evicting that deadbeat owner of the kiosk who writes names on grains of rice. Enjoy.
SPRECHEN SIE DEUTSCH?
You may want to start brushing up on your German. The perfectors of sauerkraut and many, many varietals of delicious cased-meats are now proud owners of 28 hour work weeks. Mercedes-Benz owner Daimler and other engineering companies will be the first to roll out the option for workers.
The announcement comes on the heels of a second 24 hour strike by German union workers that have been asking for wage increases as the economy has seen its fastest growth and lowest unemployment in six years. Employees will only be eligible for the 28-hour work week for 2 years and will have to return to a 35-hour work week after that.
Before you storm into your bosses office and demand to work less hours, keep in mind that people aren’t getting paid when they aren’t working. Volker Steinmaier, spokesperson for a German firm Südwestmetall and possibly the most German named person ever, thinks that people will tend to work more in order to earn more money. Sure, you CAN work 28 hours, if you barely want to make enough money to afford a decent schnitzel. We see you, crafty German employers. We see you.
Water Cooler Talking Point: “Sounds like ze Germans are a little soft across the board. A lot of these companies already have flexible work programs. The whining reminds me of a conversation I overheard some millennials having today about how their parents are making them pay their own cell phone bills. How dare they!”
iSCREAM FOR iBOOT
I’m not sure what kind of anti-establishment types are still running iOS 9, but if you are then it might be your lucky day. Someone anonymously posted source code for the core component of the iPhone’s operating system on Github. This means that jailbreaks might be possible again.
The piece of source code that was uploaded is responsible for booting up your operating system on your phone. It loads and verifies the kernel (not popcorn, we checked Wikipedia) is signed by Apple and then executes it.
This is just the latest instance of Apple jailbreaking news over the past few months. Multiple jailbreaking tools have been released for different versions of iOS 11. This may be why you keep receiving a new 11.x.x update every week or two.
Water Cooler Talking Point: “Do you remember jailbroken iPods? I do. My friend had one back in high school and he customized it so we could play Pokemon on it. It’d pretty great it I could do that today on my iPhone. Sure, I could just take my Game Boy Advanced out to the bars, but the last time I did that I got weird looks.”
NO VICE
What’s that? Hoards of 18-34 year olds aren’t tuning in to watch a white rapper get high AF, cook food and decide if it is worthy of his “f*ck, that’s delicious” stamp of approval?
Shane Smith’s Vice Media missed its $800M revenue target by upwards of $100M. The driver of the loss? The companies struggling Viceland TV station, which features super “edgy” programming such as Gaycation and Balls Deep.
Viceland drew an average prime-time audience of 55k viewers, well below well-established channels which can reach into the millions. But what they lack in eye-balls they more than make up for in cool offices with free snacks and beanbags.
And investors are starting to take notice. The companies $5.7B valuation makes it one of the most well-funded media “start-ups” in the world. Recent allegations of sexual misconduct have shaken up the leadership team and Rogers Media ended a $100M joint venture with the preferred programming of hipsters in Canada.
Water Cooler Talking Point: “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little intimidated every time I watch Vice. It makes me feel really un-hip because all of their shows feature rappers who still put their records out on Soundcloud. Their documentaries are good but usually make me feel pretty sh*tty for not knowing about the plight of fire ants in Mogadishu and it’s effect on the local economy.”
IN OTHER NEWS
- Apple’s iPhone payment plans may soon be managed by Goldman Sachs. Apple’s current financing runs through Citizens Bank, but Goldman could take some of that business over. I have a feeling phone payment plan pricing could be going up soon.
- Tronc is selling the LA Times to Patrick Soon-Shiong. Soon-Shiong is paying $500M for the iconic newspaper, twice what Bezos shelled out for the Washington Post. It also isn’t eligible for Prime shipping.
- Telsa posted a smaller loss than expected. It’s on pace to make 5K Model 3s per week by the end of Q2. I guess shooting one of your cars into the sun isn’t that bad for business after all.
- Weight Watchers set a $2B goal for sales, and investors are happy. It’s the only time someone affiliated with Weight Watchers has been happy as their number increases.
- US indices were down yesterday:
- DOW: -0.08%
- S&P 500: -0.50%
- NASDAQ: -0.90%
TALKING SHOP
Professional motivation, tips, tricks, hacks & resources carefully-curated by yours truly. Something you’d like to see featured? Shoot me an email at team@thewatercoolest.com
“DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORDS THAT ARE COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH?”
Markets have been more volatile than Jordan Belfort’s heart rate in the mid-90’s. Esteemed journalists (read: crusty old white guys) from The Economists like to throw around four syllable words to overcompensate for the fact that they went to a mediocre liberal arts school and disappointed their parents by writing about finance (pronounced: fuh-nance) rather than practicing it.
Luckily for you and I, the powers that be (read: journos) lowered themselves to translate these jargon-laced long-reads into lay man’s terms.