Snapchat vanishing video viewing hits 6 billion daily

Snapchat on Monday confirmed that six billion vanishing videos are viewed daily at the service, in a three-fold surge from early this year. "It is a huge number for them," analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group said of the Snapchat video viewing number. Facebook revealed during a quarterly earnings call last week that more than eight billion videos are viewed daily at the leading social network, jumping to a level twice as high as it was early this year.

Swiss watchmaker Tag Heuer teams up with big tech for smartwatch

By Silke Koltrowitz and Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi NEW YORK (Reuters) - LVMH's Tag Heuer became on Monday the first Swiss watchmaker to offer a "smartwatch" to customers that combines Swiss design with U.S. technology, seeking to tap a growing market for wearable devices amid flagging sales of traditional watches. Co-developed with Google and Intel, the "Tag Heuer Connected" will cost $1,500.

Ireland still sees EU tax decision on Apple by year-end

Ireland continues to expect European Union regulators to issue a decision on the country's tax deal with Apple before the end of the year, the country's finance minister said on Monday, a move which could force the iPhone maker to pay substantial back taxes. The European Commission has already ordered Dutch authorities to recover up to 30 million euros ($32.23 million)from U.S. coffee chain Starbucks and Luxembourg to do the same with Fiat Chrysler for their tax deals. Rulings on Apple and Amazon's tax arrangement with Luxembourg authorities are still pending.

The Encouraging Poverty News That Official Data Isn't Telling Us

Poverty in the U.S. is not as bad as official stats make it out to be, according to a recent report that has optimistic conclusions about prevention programs. 

Economists Bruce Meyer of the University of Chicago and Nikolas Mittag of CEIRGE-EI in Prague released a working paper last month for the National Bureau of Economic Research that examines how people underreporting their government benefits in Census surveys skews data.

Meyer, the lead author on the paper, compiled records of payouts to recipients of four types of government assistance -- housing benefits, food stamps and two cash benefit programs (welfare) -- in New York between 2007 and 2012. Then he compared what the records said individuals received with what they said on their Census surveys.

The records are confidential, so Meyer spent a decade poring over the data in a windowless room that requires fingerprinting and passing three security checkpoints to enter. Those years resulted in findings that reveal a flawed picture of poverty and substantial errors in the way we measure it.

More than one-third of people receiving welfare didn’t report it to the Census, and underreporting rates were higher for SNAP and housing benefit recipients. 

“[U]nderreporting in the [Census Community Population Survey] causes us to severely underestimate resources available to the poor and thereby makes poverty look more severe and inequality worse,” Meyer and Mettig conclude in their paper.

Misreporting is a natural part of surveying that researchers try to account for, and Meyer was expecting to see it. It was the frequency, and the degree that it affected the data that surprised him.

According to the Census survey, people in severe poverty receive about $1,400 in benefits, but that amount doubles under Meyer’s analysis. And those dollars have real impact: Correcting for misreporting nearly doubles the poverty-reducing effect of government benefits and puts 2.5 percent more people above the poverty line.

The numbers are most striking for single mothers. Their poverty rate is reduced by 11 percent when reporting errors are corrected.

Though poverty is an ongoing problem in the U.S., Meyer worries that the standard figures don't reflect progress that has been made or the role government assistance has had in addressing it.

“The growth in the economy over the last 35 years and the success of government programs really have meant that people at the bottom are much better off,” Meyer said. “But that’s not what the official statistics say.”

There are troubling implications for how we think about poverty and fund and legislate the programs that fight it. For example, Meyer and Mettig note that people in deep poverty report food stamp benefits accurately at a much higher rate than they do welfare or housing vouchers, so in official data, food stamps appear to be a much more valuable program. Instead, housing assistance was actually the most-used program among the four they looked at.

Meyer said that if this research was duplicated in other states, the results would reflect differences in demographics and use of benefits -- housing assistance is particularly prevalent in New York -- but would have a similar trend.

While there is a push to measure poverty differently, there's no easy way to solve underreporting or to get researchers, let alone the public, to look at the poverty rate figures with a more nuanced view -- especially as the expansive Census data is essential.

“Until we make a bigger effort to do the kind of thing that Mittag and I did in this paper on a more routine basis, I think people just aren’t going to have good data to work with,” Meyer said. “So people will probably use the bad data that we have."

 Kate Abbey-Lambertz covers sustainable cities, as well as land use, housing and inequality. Tips? Email: kate.abbey-lambertz@huffingtonpost.com.

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What Warren Buffet, Sir Richard Branson and Elon Musk Know About Success (and You Should Too!)

Since the baseball playoffs just ended, picture this scene. Johnny steps up to the plate. Three pitches thrown, three swings, three strikes -- Johnny's out.

What does Johnny's failed at bat have to do with success?

Everything, depending on what Johnny does with his failure.

How we fail, how we perceive our failures and perhaps, most importantly, how we respond to them (the actions we take following our failures) will determine how successful we are in business and life.

Intimate Link between Success & Failure

The most successful people in history have failed. They've failed epically, miserably and repeatedly.

Yet we tend to see successful people and erroneously think they have the Midas touch, that is, everything they touch turns to gold. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Warren Buffet, Sir Richard Branson & Elon Musk all know failure is a mandatory prerequisite for success. If you were to ask these men to name what was most critical to their success, they would resoundingly tell you had they not experienced their failures, they would have not achieved their future successes. Their success was rooted in failures.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway

Following Warren Buffett's initial purchase of Berkshire Hathaway, the company proceeded to consistently lose millions of dollars for years. Fast forward and we all know Berkshire Hathaway is considered to be one of the most successful companies -- ever!

It's hard to imagine Berkshire Hathaway being considered a monumental failure, but that was, indeed, the case! Click here to read more about the initial failures of Berkshire Hathaway.

Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Cola

Remember Virgin Cola? Virgin Vodka? Virgin Vie? Virgin Bride? Virgin Clothing? Probably not. All these were failed companies created by Branson. When Branson speaks about these failed companies he speaks about every one of them being a terrific learning experience.

Branson states: "Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again."

Today, Virgin Group Ltd. is a British multinational branded venture capital conglomerate founded by Branson worth billions of dollars.

Elon Musk's SpaceX Falcon 9 Failure

This past summer Elon Musk's company SpaceX watched its Falcon 9 rocket break apart shortly after launch. This launch was an epic failure.

Following the failed launch, Musk stated that due to the company's past successes, a culture of complacency had set in. Musk stated that having experienced such an epic failure, his company will become better and stronger due to increased vigilance and new parameters that would be established to avoid future disasters.

Click here to read more about the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket explosion after launch.

Musk remains intensely committed to space exploration.

"Failure is success if we learn from it."
Malcolm Forbes

4 Reasons Why Failure is a Prerequisite for Success

1. Failure is a prerequisite for success because it builds character. When you experience failure, you have one of two options. You can throw in the towel, quit (and perhaps blame others) for your failure. Or you can choose to learn from the experience. Choosing to learn from your failures will increase your resiliency, help you gain confidence and ultimately build character.

It's easy to act graciously when you win; its much more difficult to act graciously when you lose. Doing so, however, reflects character.

2. Failure is a prerequisite for success because it forces you out of your comfort zone to face new challenges that stretch your mind and capabilities. Failing compels us to think outside "our" box and seek solutions from angles and perspectives we might not have normally pursued. Failure forces us to look at ourselves through a harsh realistic lens and ask ourselves difficult questions: "What went wrong?" "what do I need to do differently?" "how can I improve on this situation next time?"

3. Failure is a prerequisite for success because it increases self-esteem, without which one cannot succeed. Of course it is difficult to pick yourself up after being knocked down. However, each time you do so your self-esteem increases because you've proven to yourself that you can overcome adversity. This is why today's parents not allowing their children to fail, in fact, sets them up for a lifetime of failure as adults (but that is a blog topic for another day).

4. Failure is a prerequisite for success because it is our most powerful teaching tool. Once a failure has been examined and explored, it provides us with a golden opportunity to develop and learn new skills that one didn't have prior to the failure.

We learn far more from our failures than we will ever learn from our successes. Success makes us feel good and reinforces our strengths. Failure highlights our weaknesses and provides us with the invaluable opportunity to minimize them -- and most importantly, learn from them.

Remember, absolutely no one has ever achieved success in life without failing.

Consider your failures to be the pathway for your future successes.

Can you think of a time when your failure brought you future success?

To learn more about Dr. Patty Ann, CEO & Founder of Relationship Toolbox LLC, go here

Amazon best selling author of: Not Tonight Dear, I've Got a Business to Run!

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British police make fourth arrest in TalkTalk cyber attack

British police have made a fourth arrest in connection with a cyber attack on telecoms company TalkTalk (TALK.L) in which the company said bank details of more than 20,000 customers were hacked. A 16-year-old boy from Norwich in eastern England was in custody and his address was being searched, London police said in a statement on Tuesday. TalkTalk shocked customers last month when the broadband, TV, mobile and fixed-line service provider said it had been hacked, potentially putting the private details of its 4 million customers into the hands of criminals.

Automakers post big Oct. sales gains; record year in sight

DETROIT (AP) — The U.S. is speeding toward what could be a record year for auto sales.