Hasta La Gadget!

President Barack Obama is sending out a fundraising email Monday morning for Russ Feingold, one of the Democrats’ best prospects for picking up a Senate seat this year. 

Feingold is running to retake his old Senate seat from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who defeated Feingold in 2010. During his 18 years in the Senate, Feingold was known as one of the chamber’s most progressive members, and this time, Democrats see him as one of their top candidates. 

“Russ isn’t afraid to stand up for what he knows is right, even when it isn’t popular,” Obama’s fundraising email reads. “He was the sole senator to vote against the USA PATRIOT Act, and one of very few who stood in opposition to the war in Iraq. Russ also took an early and loud stance in support of marriage equality for gay Americans, and he wasn’t afraid to work with me, side by side, to get the Affordable Care Act passed — helping insure millions of Americans.”

In supporting Feingold, Obama joins Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has fundraised for the Wisconsin Democrat this year and spoken highly of Feingold’s record in the Senate. 

HuffPost Pollster’s average of public polling in the race shows Feingold with a nearly 9-point lead over Johnson.

Feingold endorsed Hillary Clinton for president last week, but Johnson has had some trouble embracing his own party’s presumptive presidential nominee. Johnson has said that he won’t endorse Donald Trump, although he is supporting him. 

“To me, ‘endorsement’ is a big embrace. It basically shows that I pretty well agree with an individual on almost everything. That’s not necessarily going to be the case with our nominee,” Johnson told CNN last week, although he’d previously said he would endorse his party’s nominee. “I’ll certainly be an independent voice. Where I disagree with a particular nominee, I’ll voice it. Whether it’s Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump or somebody else, I’ll voice those disagreements.”

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By all account, it sounds like the HTC Vive is doing really well, or at least it is the most well-received out of the VR headsets we have seen so far. However it seems that HTC has decided that maybe they could expand the business further if they were to spin it off, which is what the company has announced.

According to HTC’s president for global sales Chia-lin Chang during the company’s latest general shareholders meeting, the company’s decision to spin their VR business off was explained. “Alliance agreements will help HTC enhance its competitiveness and play a more important role in the growing global VR market.”

HTC’s CEO and chairwoman Cher Wang added, “VR is a very important technology for HTC, and it is not difficult for HTC to generate profits from the technology as there will be a proliferation of VR applications in the education, healthcare, shopping and entertainment sectors over the next 10 years.”

Earlier this year it was reported that HTC was going to spin off its VR business although the rumors were later denied. However with the latest report and official statement from the company, we guess it was not confirmed at that time, but now it is. It is unclear how much of this will affect the HTC Vive which was built in collaboration with Valve.

HTC Looking To Spin Off Their Virtual Reality Business , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

After mouthing off in ways that had the effect of repeatedly shooting himself in the foot, Donald Trump tried to recover last week by puffing himself up as the jobs candidate.

“When I see the crumbling roads and bridges, or the dilapidated airports, or the factories moving overseas to Mexico or to other countries, I know these problems can all be fixed,” Trump told a New York audience, “Only by me.”

That would suggest Trump knows how to create infrastructure and manufacturing jobs. American jobs. Good-paying jobs. It suggests he appreciates the value of workers’ contributions to an enterprise. And that he understands the daily struggles of non-billionaires. This proposition is utterly ridiculous. The name Donald Trump is synonymous with the words “You’re fired!” He made money by brutally, publicly taking people’s jobs from them. And he clearly enjoyed it.

Trump’s most recent victim was was Corey Lewandowski. This employee didn’t suffer the indignity of a televised firing on “The Apprentice.” But Trump did have his guards visibly escort his former campaign manager out of Trump Tower last week. This after Lewandowski’s experienced guidance helped Trump, a political novice, defeat 16 seasoned Republican contenders.

When Trump got what he wanted out of Lewandowski, he threw the guy out. Trump showed no appreciation for the guy’s contribution to the enterprise. Trump exhibited no sense of loyalty. That is exactly the kind of corporate callousness and betrayal that has embittered American workers for the past two decades.

Workers give their all, go above and beyond to help make corporations like Nabisco and Carrier highly profitable. Then greedy corporations turn on those dedicated workers, close U.S. factories and move production to places like China and Mexico. American workers are left unemployed and billionaire owners like Trump get a few extra bucks.

Trump practices this corporate model. He manufactures Trump Collection products overseas. He makes Trump ties in China. He stiches Trump suits in Vietnam and Mexico. He produces Trump furniture in Turkey. He fabricates Trump picture frames in India. He constructs Trump barware in Slovenia.

That’s more money for Trump, true. But it’s not creating American jobs.

Trump doesn’t care about the slave-wage workers producing his products overseas or the minimum-wage workers unable to scrape by in the United States. When asked if the federal minimum wage of $7.25 should be raised because nobody can live on that little money, Trump said no.

Trump was born with a silver gaffe in his mouth, raised in luxury, set up in business by his father and bailed out by his daddy when he stumbled. He has no idea what living on the minimum wage of $290 a week means. He once had to live on a strict budget of $112,500 a week. That occurred as he neared bankruptcy 26 years ago.

Not only that, the billionaire said Americans’ wages, which have been stagnant for decades, are too high. Trump thinks the truck driver or mechanic or welder who earns $52,000 a year in 2016 is making too much money. But, of course, Trump knows what scrimping is. He once had to live on $112,500 a week.

The same day Trump fired Lewandowski, Moody’s Analytics, a subsidiary of the credit rating and research agency Moody’s Corp., released a report authored by four economists predicting an economic and jobs disaster if Trump is elected president.

Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi, who has worked for both Democratic and Republican politicians, told the New York Times that he and the other authors found Trump’s policies, “will result in a lot of lost jobs,  higher unemployment, higher interest rates, lower stock prices.”

If Trump is elected and achieves all of his proposed policies, the economists projected that he would plunge the country into an economic downturn that would be longer and deeper than the 2008 Great Recession and destroy more than 3.5 million jobs.

That is the opposite of a jobs president.

On Friday, when the world learned that Britons had voted to exit the European Union, Donald Trump hailed the result as a “fantastic thing.” 

“I think it’s a great thing that happened,” he said, as financial markets worldwide plunged on the news, and the value of the British pound plummeted to depths not seen since 1985, far below its worst during the Great Recession.

The value of the Euro also dropped, and the American stock market suffered as well, with the Down Jones Industrial Average falling 610 points, the eighth largest loss ever.  

Bad stock market news is not good for jobs. And when the pound loses value, British workers get hurt.

But it’s good for Donald Trump. And that’s all he had in mind. He told reporters Friday: “When the pound goes down, more people are coming to Turnberry, frankly.”  He was referring to foreign visitors taking advantage of the currency devaluation to visit his golf course in Scotland.

Even if Brexit drives Europe back into recession and millions once again lose their jobs and their homes, the rich will still play golf at Turnberry. And that’s more money for billionaire Trump. That’s foremost in Trump’s mind.

Worse than Brexit for the global economy would be a President Trump. That’s according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, (EIU) one of the leading firms analyzing threats to the global economy. EIU ranked a Trump presidency riskier to the global economy than Britain leaving the European Union – and in just one day, that event left global markets utterly shaken.

Donald Trump definitely has expertise. It is self-promotion. It is financial self-interest. It is firing people. It certainly is not promoting American workers’ interests, raising their wages or building an economy that would generate family-supporting jobs.

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As Volkswagen continues to struggle in the aftermath of their deceptive emissions reporting scheme, they are starting to pay for some of the costs of their mistake. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Mike Spector and Sara Randazzo reported that Volkswagen:

…is nearing a $10 billion civil settlement, the largest in the auto industry’s history, to compensate U.S. owners of vehicles affected by the German car maker’s emissions-cheating scandal, said people familiar with the matter. Under the proposed deal, Volkswagen would offer to buy back cars and provide additional compensation for owners of almost 500,000 diesel-powered vehicles with two-liter engines that contain software capable of duping government emissions tests, the people said. In addition, Volkswagen is expected to pay more than $4 billion for environmental impacts and to promote so-called zero-emission vehicles…

Other payments in the U.S. and overseas are expected, and although the company has set aside $18 billion to pay the costs of damages, it is not clear that this will be enough. The company’s retail dealers have still not recovered from the public relations nightmare caused by the company’s lies, and VW’s customers report being misled and disappointed by a company they trusted to be honest.

The market and government regulators are sending a message that is clear and ought not be misunderstood: people care about the environment and the quality of their air. If people did not support air pollution regulations they would not have cared about Volkswagen’s disregard of environmental law. Government is obligated to enforce the law, but in this case you can sense that the U.S. government is devoting extra effort to this highly visible case.

In the fog of political nonsense we call a presidential election, the issue of environmental policy is mostly absent. As I observed a few weeks ago, Trump is saying nothing, and although Hillary says the right things, environment is far from the center of her campaign.

But even if political reporters are ignoring sustainability, corporate leaders are taking note of this settlement. It may set a precedent for future deals to settle environmental mismanagement. While Volkswagen is rich enough to take a $10-20 billion dollar hit, most companies would be driven out of business by a penalty of that size.

The risk of such a mistake provides leverage to people inside corporations attempting to bring the physical dimensions of sustainability into routine corporate decision-making. This includes careful consideration of the environmental impacts of the company’s production processes and products. Much of the damage done by Volkswagen’s deception has already taken place and been absorbed by the environment. The question for Volkswagen and for other companies is: What are the lessons learned from this error and how do we reduce the probability of a repeat?

Most of the management experts who have reviewed Volkswagen’s emissions scandal consider it a failure of an insular corporate culture. The diesel engine designed by VW’s heralded engineers could not meet environmental emissions standards. Rather than look outside the company for help in designing a better engine that could meet standards, VW’s engineers designed deceptive software that fooled emissions-testing equipment. Quite the creative “around”–talk about imaginative engineering. The corporate culture was focused on selling the most cars of any company in world history, and that single-minded focus made it difficult for information that might slow the pace of sales to get any type of hearing.

At the time of the emissions scandal, Volkswagen was run by Martin Winterkorn, a strong-willed leader who resigned in September 2015, when he took responsibility for the scandal. While Winterkorn did not have specific knowledge of the deception, Jack Ewing, New York Times business reporter, observed at the time that:

Volkswagen’s command-and-control structure probably made it difficult for Mr. Winterkorn to escape responsibility, even if there was no direct culpability. Critics, including management experts and analysts, have long faulted what they say is a company culture that hampers internal communication and may discourage midlevel managers from delivering bad news.

However, even organizations that have a less directive management culture and more open communications may still ignore environmental costs, benefits, and risks. In some organizations, “soft” issues–not directly related to revenues and profits–are considered frills. These include occupational health and safety, rigorous adherence to ethical standards of behavior, fairness in human resource management, including biases related to race, gender, ethnic origin and sexual orientation, and of course, environmental sustainability. But as the values of fairness, ethics, and environmental sustainability become more widespread, the most sought after employees want to be sure that the organizations they are working for adhere to these standards. Google famously asserted that “you can make money without doing evil.” While some question Google’s devotion to that principle, it remains a powerful and attractive element of the company’s vision of its corporate culture.

In a world economy and society dominated by instantaneous, global, and sometimes viral communication, image and messages matter. I like to think that facts matter too. We live in a more observed world. Satellites, drones, smartphone videos, and security cameras have made secrecy and, unfortunately, privacy more difficult then ever. Only information overload prevents everything from being known by everyone. But in the new world we live in and in a brain-based economy where competition requires new and creative ideas all the time, organizations cannot be run by dictatorial fiat. A leader’s vision must be tempered by the vision and ideas of the organization’s members and stakeholders. The 21st century manager not only articulates a vision and manages against it, but must develop a vision based on a process of facilitation among stakeholders and other key players within the organization. By definition, the most talented people within your organization are the most mobile and sought after. Incorporating their views into organizational strategy and management may not be easy, but it is typically necessary. Leaders that ignore their key people risk losing them to the competition.

However, although more open and effective management is necessary, it is not a sufficient condition for sustainability management; another step must be taken. Management must explicitly add the costs of energy, water, raw materials, and waste to the organization’s financial control system. They must also add the risk of damage to the environment into the organization’s strategic and operational planning process. Senior management must ask if the potential cost of environmental impact has been considered and, if not calculated, at least estimated. The key lesson of the Volkswagen emissions scandal is that no one seemed to think that the damage to the environment was a factor worth considering. Even if that was not assessed, what about the potential reputational damage that might be caused if the company was caught installing deceptive software?

The International Council On Clean Transportation, a small but determined nonprofit organization, uncovered VW’s emission testing scheme. For several years, VW tried to counter their claims, but in the end the truth prevailed. One element of living in an observed world is that no one has a monopoly on information. The Clean Transportation group partnered with a team of researchers at West Virginia University and ultimately with the U.S. EPA to discover and publicize the truth. A key lesson from the VW emissions scandal is the same one your parents and first grade teacher probably taught you: if you lie, you will probably get caught.

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai has had his Quora account hacked by OurMine, the same hacker group that gained access to Mark Zuckerberg’s twitter and Pinterest accounts earlier in June. Since Pichai’s Quora account was tied to his twitter account, the messages the hacker group sent out also went out to the 508,000 followers of the Google CEO on twitter. The … Continue reading