Issue 37
January 26, 2024
FLASH Netflix exceeds expectations adding 13m new subscribers last quarter
1 The rent is too damn high
2 For office workers, jobs are about to profoundly change
3 Community college vocational programs are surging
4 Record number not religious: poll
5 Amazon’s Ring to stop letting police access footage at-will, will require warrant
1/26/1837 Michigan became the 26th U.S. state
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1 The rent is too damn high
Rent has never been less affordable — for tenants with high and low incomes alike — even while costs for new leases are finally cooling off. Half of American renters spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs — a key benchmark for affordability — with the financial strain rising the fastest for middle-class tenants. That’s according to a new report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, which found that the number of such renters, considered to be “cost-burdened,” hit a record 22.4 million in 2022 — up 2 million from just three years before. And of those households, 12.1 million had housing costs that ate up more than 50 percent of their income, an all-time high for those with “severe burdens.”
WaPo
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/01/25/rent-housing-costs/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_Is_Too_Damn_High_Party
2 For office workers, jobs are about to profoundly change
9/27/23
For years Microsoft has been trying to coax office workers to write reports, populate spreadsheets and create slide shows using its office software. No longer: now it wants to do the writing and populating for them. At its headquarters in Redmond, a leafy suburb of Seattle, the firm demonstrates its latest wizardry. Beyond the plate-glass windows, snow-capped mountains glisten and pine trees sway. Inside, a small grey rectangle sits at the top of a blank Word document. With a few words of instruction, a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence (ai)—or “Copilot”, as Microsoft calls it—finds a vast file in a computer folder and summarises its contents. Later, it edits its own work and succinctly answers questions about the material. It can perform plenty of other tricks, too: digging out emails on certain topics, drawing up a to-do list based on a meeting and even whipping up a passable PowerPoint presentation about your correspondent. This is a glimpse into the future of work. The mind-boggling capabilities of “generative” ai look set to transform many desk jobs. It is also a glimpse into the future of Microsoft, which was once the world’s most valuable public company and hopes to reclaim the title by selling the technology that will power the transformation. Through the firm’s investment in Openai, the startup behind Chatgpt, a popular ai chatbot, it is able to inject cutting-edge ai into its products
Economist
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2023/09/27/how-microsoft-could-supplant-apple-as-the-worlds-most-valuable-firm
3 Community college vocational programs are surging
The growing debate over college costs in the US is pushing more students to community colleges, with schools that offer vocational programs seeing a big bump in enrollment. After steep declines in the pandemic, enrollment at community colleges rose 2.6% in 2023 compared with a year earlier, fueled by a 16% surge at two-year schools with a “high vocational program focus,” according to the data from the National Student Clearinghouse. Overall, undergraduate enrollment rose 1.2% — an increase of about 176,000 students. And while that was the first gain since the pandemic, there are still more than a million “empty seats on campuses today that were filled five years ago,” Doug Shapiro, the organization’s executive director, said in a statement. As college costs rise and millions struggle to pay their student loans, more people are questioning whether four-year degrees are worth it, especially in fields of study that don’t lead to high-paying jobs. And while undergraduate enrollment has not recovered after dropping in the pandemic, community colleges with a vocational focus have seen enrollment rise 3.7% above 2019 levels.
Bloomberg
4 Record number not religious: poll
Today, about 28% of U.S. adults are religiously unaffiliated, describing themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” when asked about their religion.
Surveys have consistently shown that many Americans view religion’s declining influence in society as a bad thing. “Nones” tend to vote less often, do less volunteer work in their communities and follow public affairs at lower rates than religiously affiliated people do. But the latest data shows that on a variety of measures, lower rates of civic engagement are concentrated among “nones” whose religion is “nothing in particular.” Atheists and agnostics tend to participate in civic life at rates matching or exceeding religiously affiliated people.
Pew
5 Amazon’s Ring to stop letting police access footage at-will, will require warrant
Amazon.com Inc.’s Ring home doorbell unit says it will stop letting police departments request footage from users’ video doorbells and surveillance cameras, retreating from a practice that was criticized by civil liberties groups and some elected officials. Next week, the company will disable its Request For Assistance tool, the program that had allowed law enforcement to seek footage from users on a voluntary basis, Eric Kuhn, who runs Ring’s Neighbors app, said in a blog post on Wednesday. Police and fire departments will have to seek a warrant to request footage from users or show the company evidence of an ongoing emergency.
Bloomberg
1/26/1837 Michigan became the 26th U.S. state
Have a good weekend!
