10 Things to Know for Thursday

This Feb. 26, 2017 file photo shows Martha L. Ruiz, left, and Brian Cullinan from PricewaterhouseCoopers at the Oscars in Los Angeles. Film academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs says the two accountants responsible for the best picture mistake will not work the Oscars again.

flake8-bugbear 17.3.0

A plugin for flake8 finding likely bugs and design problems in your program. Contains warnings that don’t belong in pyflakes and pycodestyle.

Wells Fargo: preventing the customers we ripped off from suing us is doing them a favor

Wells Fargo admits that its employees opened more than 2,000,000 fake accounts in order to run up fraudulent charges against its customers ; it also says that the customers it stole from can’t sue the company because fake account paperwork bearing their forged signatures includes a promise to enter into binding arbitration rather than suing. Binding arbitration is a system created to allow giant companies to settle their differences without costly litigation, but a Supreme Court decision has allowed it to be applied to the dealings between individuals and giant companies — leading to a plague of companies that make you surrender your constitutional legal rights as a condition of shopping with them .

10 Things to Know for Thursday

This microscope image made available by Matthew Dodd in February 2017 shows tiny tubes in rock found in Quebec, Canada. The structures appear to be the oldest known fossils, giving new support to some ideas about how life began, a new study says.

Pointe- -Calli re exhibits Montr al! Bell’s historical collections

The exhibition follows the development of this amazing device from its invention by Alexander Graham Bell in 1874 up to the digital communications revolution of today. Pointe-A -CalliA re , the MontrA al Archaeology and History Complex, in collaboration with Bell, is presenting Hello, MontrA al! Bell’s Historical Collections, a lighthearted and entertaining exhibition that looks at the evolution of communications through the advances in telephony and the role telephony plays in our lives.

Snap IPO Values Fading-Photo App Maker at Twice Facebook’s Worth

Snap Inc. , maker of the disappearing photo app dependent upon the fickle favor of the millennial demographic, is going public at a valuation at least twice as expensive as Facebook Inc., and four times more costly than Twitter Inc. statement Wednesday. At that price, it has a market value of about $20 billion, based on 1.16 billion shares outstanding after the IPO.

French artist emerges ‘stunned’ from week inside rock

French performance artist Abraham Poincheval poses during a photo session in Paris on February 20, 2017. Poincheval will perform “Pierre” , during which he will live inside a rock, from February 22 to March 1, 2017 and “Oeuf” , during which he will sit on eggs until they hatch, from March 29, 2017 at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

UN Climate Chief’s Request to Meet Tillerson Goes Unanswered

The top United Nations climate change official continues to wait for a response to her request to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson over whether the U.S. will remain in the landmark Paris environmental accord. Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, asked for a sitdown with Tillerson before leaving for a visit to the U.S. this week.

Natural Disasters Cost $520 Billion a Year, World Bank Says

Global natural disasters cost $520 billion of consumption loss annually, 60 percent larger than asset losses that are commonly reported, the World Bank said in a report. The estimate is based on the impact of disasters such as floods, windstorms, earthquakes, and tsunamis on people’s well-being, measured by the decline in their consumption, Stephane Hallegatte, one of the authors of the report which was released on Wednesday, said in an email.

Poor Man’s Gold Is Spurned in India as Farmers Strapped for Cash

Silver imports by India, one of the world’s top buyers, will probably shrink this year to the lowest since 2012 as the government cracks down on black money, farmers struggle for cash and stockpiles remain ample. Purchases from overseas plunged 60 percent to about 3,000 metric tons last year and will contract further in 2017, according to Chirag Sheth, an analyst at Metals Focus Ltd., an independent precious-metals research firm, in Mumbai.

AMD launches Ryzen 7 processors

AMD the American semiconductor company launched the much-awaited Ryzen 7 family of processors last February 22nd. In an exclusive, by-invitation event held in San Francisco, California last week, AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su unveiled an array of Ryzen 7 processors to members of the media.

AMD Ryzen 7 1800X unboxed

Members of the international press present at AMD Ryzen Tech Day in San Francisco, California last February 22 were given a Press Preview Kit. We unboxed our kit that comes complete with an AMD Ryzen 7 1800X processor, Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 memory stick modules, ASUS ROG Crosshair VI motherboard, and a Press Kit Edition Noctua AMD AM4 U-type tower cooler.

Gene therapy lets a French teen dodge sickle cell disease

A French teen who was given gene therapy for sickle cell disease more than two years ago now has enough properly working red blood cells to dodge the effects of the disorder, researchers report. This 2009 colorized microscope image made available by the Sickle Cell Foundation of Georgia via the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a sickle cell, left, and normal red blood cells of a patient with sickle cell anemia.

The Oculus Rift Just Got A Massive Price Cut

One of the major factors inhibiting people from taking a dive into the world of VR is price. Virtual reality headsets are extremely expensive, and a lot of people aren’t ready to invest that kind of money into what’s been portrayed as little more than a gimmick.

Facebook steps up suicide prevention – with robots

Facebook added suicide prevention tools to its live video service Wednesday, in hopes of bringing real-time help to users who may harm themselves while broadcasting on the social media platform. The new Facebook Live tools will allow users to report dangerous behavior and suicidal comments directly to Facebook, which will then intervene with help.

In the search for life on Mars, are robots nearing their limits?

Curiosity and the upcoming Mars 2020 rover will continue the search for indirect signs of microbial life on Mars, but some scientists suggest it might take a human touch to uncover conclusive evidence. Is there – or was there ever – life on Mars? NASA has spent decades investigating the question with orbiters and rovers, including its upcoming Mars 2020 rover, but at least one scientist suspects he already knows the answer.

Engility to Introduce TDL Lite for Android and Windows during 2017…

This latest Engility innovation brings a streamlined and responsive user interface, reliable connectivity and functional support to in-theater operations through a user-friendly platform that is native for next-generation forces. “As a leader in the data link community, Engility is dedicated to engineering new solutions that anticipate and address the evolving needs of our customers,” said Engility CEO Lynn Dugle.

Snapchat maker prices shares at $17

The Los Angeles company known for its Snapchat messaging app generated the largest initial public offering in Southern California history on Wednesday, raising at least $3.4 billion while valuing the firm at $23.8 billion. Snap Inc.’s IPO is the most lucrative in the U.S. since online shopping company Alibaba raised $22 billion in 2014 and the biggest for a tech company since Facebook’s $16-billion haul in 2012.

Gene therapy lets a French teen dodge sickle cell disease

A French teen who was given gene therapy for sickle cell disease more than two years ago now has enough properly working red blood cells to dodge the effects of the disorder, researchers report. About 90,000 people in the U.S., mostly blacks, have sickle cell, the first disease for which a molecular cause was found.

These red tubes might be the oldest evidence of life on Earth…

In August 2016, a team of researchers announced they’d found 3.7 billion-year-old fossils of bacteria called stromatolites. The fossils were the oldest-known evidence of microbes on the planet at the time, prompting scientists to say the discovery had “staggering” implications for the history of life on Earth.

Meet Fairtrade farmers at Exeter Library’s Fairtrade Fortunes…

Exeter Library’s Business and Intellectual Property Centre is offering people the chance to meet two Fairtrade farmers from Ghana and a local jeweller at its Cocoa producers Isaac Baidoo and Veronica Mintah from Kuapa Kokoo, a cocoa farmers’ co-operative, will be talking about their businesses and revealing how Fairtrade has impacted their lives in West Africa. Local jeweller, Erin Cox, will also speak at the event, talking about her bespoke handmade jewellery and why she chose to source Fairtrade materials, including precious metals and stones, as well as detailing the process surrounding Fairtrade use within business.

Google once bought $32,000 in magnets from Home Depot for a…

Google Cardboard turns smartphones into makeshift VR headsets, and over 10 million of the inexpensive headsets have been shipped, according to Google. But once upon a time, in 2014, it was a nascent project at Google, with employees putting together the first run of devices with parts bought from a Silicon Valley Home Depot.

The Top Hedge Funds of 2016 Share Best Bets for This Year

To find out what hedge fund managers are looking out for in 2017, we asked several who topped Bloomberg’s 2016 global ranking of the 50 best-performing hedge funds with more than $1 billion in assets. After riding a jump in equities, oil and high-yield debt in the past year, some of the managers see more opportunity in commodities, energy and corporate debt.

McDonald’s Sees $100 Billion Delivery Market as Way to Grow

The fast-food chain will rely heavily on delivery to reignite sales, especially in the U.S., according to executives speaking at McDonald’s investor day in Chicago on Wednesday. The company also is turning more aggressively to digital technology, such as mobile ordering and payments, to meet its growth targets.

U.S. Equities Set Records on Heaviest Volume So Far This Year

U.S. stocks advanced as investors embraced President Donald Trump’s cooler rhetoric in a speech to Congress that was short on details and after comments by Federal Reserve officials that signaled the central bank may increase borrowing costs as soon as this month. The S&P 500 Index jumped 1.4 percent to a record 2,395.96 at 4 p.m. in New York, the biggest single-day advance since the election.

3 Real Estate Investments That Produce Good Returns

Editor’s Note: This was originally published on RISMedia’s blog, Housecall. See what else is cookin’ now at blog.rismedia.com : Since the early days of America’s Wild West when homesteaders competed in land lotteries, the allure of owning your own piece of property has never wavered.

5 Lego sets that should exist if there’s any good in the world

After a successful pass through the Lego Ideas review board, a Lego Women of NASA set will hit toy store shelves at the end of 2017. Designed by science writer and editor Maia Weinstock, her set includes minifigures of women who’ve broke ground in space exploration: Katherine Johnson, Mae Jemison, Sally Ride, Margaret Hamilton and Nancy Grace Roman.

Snap prices IPO to give US$24b valuation

Snapchat parent Snap Inc. priced its share offering on Wednesday to give the popular social network a market value of some US$24 billion, media reports said. Snapchat parent Snap Inc. is the biggest share listing in the tech sector since Chinese e-commerce group Alibaba in 2014.