Work & Money
Most people reuse the same passwords across dozens of websites
Most people protect their digital lives with a handful of passwords they've memorized—a security practice so common it's become catastrophic.
Technology & Power · Work & Money
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Technology & Power
Estonia's startup boom: billion-dollar companies per capita outpace the US
Estonia ranks second in the cited per-capita tally—and first in the EU—with about 7.1 startups that have reached a billion-dollar valuation per million residents.
Technology & Power
A Vilnius woman's clothing swap became a €10.8 billion secondhand platform
A Lithuanian clothing-swap site born from one woman’s move became a major European secondhand marketplace, moving billions in goods and building a large delivery-partner network.
Work & Money
Why scrolling through feeds can feel more exhausting than reading a book
Rapidly changing feed content may increase task switching and decision-making, which can make scrolling feel mentally tiring.
Work & Money
Sellers admit flaws more than buyers expect in used gadget sales
Across five studies of secondhand-market haggling, sellers were often more candid than buyers expected. Three minutes of small talk before the haggling narrowed the gap, and so did asking buyers to think about the seller's conscience first.
Work & Money
People who find their entire identity in work lose the ability to recognize when enough is enough
When work becomes your only mirror, you lose the ability to recognize when enough is enough.
Technology & Power
New York's congestion pricing cuts Manhattan traffic 11 percent in first year
The program that New York bet could untangle Manhattan traffic is delivering fewer vehicles, modestly faster buses, and revenue for transit projects; first-year studies did not find a clear air-quality effect.
Technology & Power
Solar telescope found to underestimate sun's most violent eruptions
By turning thousands of solar flares into calibration targets, scientists discovered their X-ray telescope has been systematically underestimating the sun's most violent eruptions.
Work & Money
How well couples talk about money matters more than how often
Two relationship researchers followed 136 couples through a single November, asking both partners every Sunday how often they had discussed money and how well it had gone. Conversation quality showed a link to how satisfied each partner felt at the end of the month. Frequency showed no such link. The study was not preregistered, and its authors call the analyses exploratory.
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Technology & Power
Technology, AI, capital and institutions, examined through who builds systems, who controls them and who benefits.
Satellite detects forest decline two years before it becomes visible to human surveys
Forests are dying faster than we can see them—but a pollution-tracking satellite is catching the collapse two years early.
- EU AI Act mandates human oversight for high-risk systems, but not in the way many expected
- From playing cards to the NES: how Nintendo reinvented itself in 96 years
- Kodak engineer invented digital camera in 1975, then Kodak buried it
Work & Money
Work, careers, companies and money: how organisations, incentives and markets shape the way people work, earn and decide.
Why some people struggle to disconnect from work after they get home
When work won't leave your mind at dinner, it may not be ambition talking—it's a deeper need to prove your worth through constant availability.
- Why High-Cost Consumer Debt Is Easy to Underestimate
- Men built more Lego models when their work stayed intact, Harvard study finds
- Why some retirees regret the hours they spent at work
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Canal Letter
SoftBank is putting $200 million into the excavator-automation startup…
Gravis says its retrofit kits deliver "up to a 30% boost" against peak manual operation. It also told Inc. the machines have delivered "about 30 percent on multiple projects" against human-operated equipment. The specialist Inc. asked wants to know what was measured.
- Cambridge Aerospace was just valued at $3.4 billion, less than two…
- Fresh disclosures revealed separate containment failures at two of…
- A federal judge ruled one Pentagon action against Anthropic…
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Across 37,073 European Research Council applications, the same proposal…
Two economists contracted by the ERC's own executive agency compared how a single proposal was scored by reviewers who matched the applicant and reviewers who did not. Sharing both citizenship and country of work moved the first-stage project score by 0.164 of a point on a five-point scale. The link to actual funding decisions is weaker, and correlational.
- The company behind Singha beer removed one of its heirs from every…
- South Korea approved single-stock leveraged ETFs, then banned new…
- The EU’s AI Act starts requiring chatbot and deepfake labels on…
Work & Money
Field Notes
Sellers admit flaws more than buyers expect in used gadget sales
Across five studies of secondhand-market haggling, sellers were often more candid than buyers expected. Three minutes of small talk before the haggling narrowed the gap, and so did asking buyers to think about the seller's conscience first.
- How well couples talk about money matters more than how often
- Adults who see singlehood as growth stay more satisfied being single
- Thinking it over tends to improve how people judge your character…
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How money, ownership, and power actually move behind the companies you think you know. Built for people who watch our documentaries. Sundays you also get The Undercurrent.