One Snapchat lawsuit ends and another begins.

A few weeks ago, Snapchat settled a lawsuit with its ousted cofounder, Reggie Brown, for an undisclosed sum. Now two sisters are suing CEO Evan Spiegel and Snapchat CTO Bobby Murphy.

The reason: In 2011 they willingly modeled for Snapchat's initial app, Picaboo, and they never got paid. The sisters also say that the "tawdry" nature of Snapchat's app has caused them damage. Example: The Turner sisters point out that they come up at the top of Google Image search results (along with some porn) when you type in "Snapchat Sluts."

Business Insider got its hands on the lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday. Following are all the details.

Sarah and Elizabeth Turner live in Georgia (where ousted Snapchat cofounder Reggie Brown is from). Elizabeth, the younger of the two sisters, is an aspiring model and news anchor who just graduated from Duke University. In 2011, she was 18 and doing some modeling gigs, which is where she allegedly came in contact with Spiegel.

On July 15, 2011, Elizabeth Turner was asked by a mutual friend to model for Spiegel's "class project" free, according to the lawsuit. She was living in Los Angeles at the time, where Spiegel was residing.

Elizabeth asked if her sister, Sarah, then 19, could join the shoot. On July 18, 2011, the sisters met up with Spiegel and Murphy, who allegedly took photos of them on the Santa Monica Pier, at Spiegel's home on Toyopa Drive, and the beach. Murphy allegedly helped take the photos.

Here are some of their images, which were later used for Snapchat's promotional materials:

A few days later, the girls were sent a model release form, which they signed and returned. 

The lawsuit seems to be contingent on one specific line in the form [emphasis ours]: 

I, the undersigned, do hereby consent and agree that Future Freshman LLC, its employees, and agents have the right to take photographs, videotape, or digital recordings of me on July 18, 2011 and to use these in any and all media, now or hereafter known, and exclusively for the purpose of promoting the Picaboo application for iPhone.

The girls are arguing that, because they agreed only to release their photos for iPhone promotion — their photos were also used in Android and website promotions — that they should be compensated. They claim their faces helped Snapchat soar to its $10 billion valuation and become wildly popular, citing an early email Spiegel sent to BroBible that had Elizabeth's photo attached and said she was "very good-looking."

The Turner sisters also say that the "tawdry" nature of the app and their association with it caused them "substantial injury and damage, including emotional distress, embarrassment, and loss of pecuniary value of the use of their photographs, images and likenesses." 

The model release form also stated, however, that the sisters wouldn't be compensated for their work [emphasis ours]:

"I wave any rights, claims or interest I may have to control the use of my identity or likeness in whatever media is used” and “I understand there will be no financial or other remuneration for recording me, either for initial or subsequent transmission or playback."

Here's a copy of the model release form signed by Elizabeth and Sarah Turner, separately.

Snapchat declined to comment for this story.

Here's a copy of the full complaint: 

2014-09-23 Turner v Spiegel Complaint LASC Case BC558442_redacted

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Ryan Smith, CEO of Qualtrics, feels validated. Investors just told him his company was worth $1 billion and they ponied up another $150 million in a series B investment to help him grow it even bigger.

That brings total funds invested to date to $220 million.

Two years ago, we reported that Smith took a giant gamble on himself and his family-run tech company. After about a decade of hard work, Qualtrics had bootstrapped its way into a profitable company generating just under $50 million in revenue, Smith told us. In 2012, he had about 200 employees and 3,800 customers.

And it was on fire.

Venture capitalists noticed. So did rival companies. At one point, he had a fistful of term sheets from VCs in one hand, and a $500 million acquisition offer in the other.

Qualtrics lets companies perform sophisticated employee and customer surveys in the cloud.  The tech was created by Smith's dad, Scott Smith, a well-known professor of marketing at BYU's school of business.

Smith's older brother, Jared, was also a big name in tech. He had left his prestigious job  running Google's Chinese technical operations to become his brother's copilot, running Qualtrics' engineering.

Their marketing was brilliant. With his dad's name and connections, the Smiths targeted universities. "We signed up every business school we went after," he said. Thousands of marketing students learned to use the research tool in school and then brought Qualtrics into their companies when they get hired.

When the Smiths were deciding their future, Sequoia's Mike Moritz — backer of Google, Yahoo, and PayPal — swept in. He looked Ryan Smith in the eye and told him a half a billion dollars was nothing compared to the multibillion-dollar company Qualtrics could become.

Smith was 33 years old and he turned down the $500 million offer.

Good choice.

Since then, revenues have grown to "over $100 million," he told Business Insider. He currently has 6,000 customers, 550 employees, and is expanding nationally and internationally. He just opened an office in Dublin, with offices in Sydney, Seattle, and Washington D.C. on tap.

"As a founder, you're either the type that gets invigorated with every milestone, or you get less interested. For me the bigger we get, the more scrappier we get, the hungrier I get," a jubilant Smith told Business Insider.

"I have to keep telling myself to look around and enjoy this. We sat in a basement and bootstrapped for 10 years so we can do this, be here. Now we have bunch of money, a ton of customers, and we're dominating our market," he says.

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Google Chairman Eric Schmidt appeared on Bloomberg TV on Wednesday, where an anchor asked him about the "desire factor" around the iPhone 6, leading to heinously long lines outside Apple Stores last week (and this week, as well).

His answer?

"I'll tell you what I think," Schmidt said. "Samsung had these products a year ago," referring to Samsung's phablets that are around the size of the iPhone 6 Plus.

The anchors were quick to point out that no one has been lining up for blocks to pick up the Galaxy Note. But Schmidt held fast to his one-liner.

"I think Samsung had these products years ago, that's what I think," he said, laughing.

Schmidt is right, technically. Samsung has been selling large-display smartphones long before Apple unveiled the iPhone 6.

But it's completely dodging the question. Schmidt can't explain why consumers aren't lining up outside their local Best Buy to pick up Android smartphones.

Or maybe he doesn't want to.

Saying "Apple wasn't there first" doesn't mean anything. That's not Apple's strategy.

In a recent interview with Charlie Rose, Tim Cook was asked if the iPhone 6/6 Plus was a response to Samsung's smartphones. Here's what he said:

Honestly, Charlie, we could have done a larger iPhone years ago.  It’s never been about just making a larger phone. It’s been about making a better phone in every single way. And so we ship things when they’re ready.

Apple's products are so widely desired because Apple isn't first-to-market. Apple waits for competitors to enter a product category, then Apple releases its take on that product. 

Android users might say Apple copies its competitors this way, but that's a debate better left untouched.

The point is: Apple not making a phablet before Samsung says nothing about the company's success. And Eric Schmidt probably knows that.

Here's the full interview:

SEE ALSO: Apple Pulled The iOS Update That's Screwing Up People's Phones

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Islamic State may be a geopolitical threat, but it has not yet posed much of a danger to business. A day's drive from the fighting, in Kurdish-run Iraq, three Western oil firms, Genel Energy, DNO and Gulf Keystone, continue to pump out crude that is piped or sent by road to Turkey.

Their combined market value plunged after IS seized the city of Mosul in June, but has recovered to $8.3 billion, down 29% from the start of the year--a hefty fall, but not so bad for firms on the front line of fanaticism.

"We've gone from a place that was a bit tricky in terms of security to a full-on war," says the chief of one firm. But he is confident that the Kurdish region's well-armed militia will protect his business. So far investors have tweaked their financial models, not run for the door. Analysts now assume a cost of capital of 15%, up from 12.5% before IS struck, he says.

That mix of instability and business-as-usual is true of the world at large. In a new book Henry Kissinger, the doyen of foreign-policy strategists, describes a world in which disorder threatens, and violence in Ukraine and the Middle East and tensions in the South China Sea vindicate him. In theory, after 20 years of global expansion, multinationals are more vulnerable than ever.

Listed Western firms have 20-30% of their sales in emerging markets, about double the level in the mid-1990s. It is not just oilmen but tech wizards and sellers of fancy handbags who face political risk. It can range from currency instability, vindictive regulation, curbs on remitting cash back home and production disturbances to sanctions or even nationalisation.

Yet none of the recent geopolitical turmoil has had much impact on firms or financial markets. There have been yelps of pain. Carlsberg, Adidas, Société Générale and others have had share-price falls or made write-offs due to Russia. Overall Russian losses by Western firms amount to $35 billion, based on announced write-offs and the value of a basket of ten companies most exposed to Russia.

But that is a drop in the multinational ocean. An index of political risk calculated by Dun & Bradstreet, an analysis firm, is at its highest level since 1994 (partly as a result of the euro-zone crisis). But the VIX index, which measures the implied volatility of America's stockmarket, and is also known as the "fear gauge", is near a 20-year low.

One explanation is obvious: the places suffering conflict are politically important but economically small. The Middle East, north Africa, Russia and Ukraine together produce just 7% of world economic output. They are mere "flesh wounds", says the head of a Wall Street bank. Only 2% of the stock of foreign investment by American, Japanese and British firms is in these places.

Many bosses are more worried by American lawyers than jihadis. Multinationals' central nervous systems--their financial operations and computer servers--are still typically based in the West, Singapore or Japan. In 1973, 1979 and 1990 the oil price transmitted unrest in the Middle East across the world, but the world's energy mix has shifted away from oil since then, and America has lots of shale gas. Loose monetary policy has also buoyed markets.

Companies have so far proved better than expected at absorbing risk. This has little to do with the advice of political pundits and a lot to do with common sense. One boss says there is no substitute for getting directors to visit operations. "You get a sense of what is going on. It's a lot better than sitting in a boardroom with nice charts and the latest 30-year-old analyst telling you what is happening in Africa."

Crisis, or opportunity?

For a start, it is possible to grind out profits in troubled places. Lafarge, a French cement giant, has operations across the Middle East and north Africa. Sales there have risen slightly since 2009 and gross operating profits are now $1.5 billion a year. MTN, a South African mobile-telecoms firm with a thirst for danger, has a division in Syria (and in Sudan and Iran) where gross operating profits rose by 56% in the first six months of this year.

Most multinationals have reduced their risks. The subprime and euro-zone crises inadvertently helped: big firms typically carry more cash than before, making them less exposed to a credit-market freeze. GE has twice as much cash as it had in 2006. And most big firms have pursued a policy of geographic diversification. An excessive concentration on one country is a classic mistake.

After China's revolution in 1949 HSBC, then a purely Asian bank, lost half its business. Iran's nationalisation in 1951 of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company's assets devastated the firm, a precursor of BP.

There are modern echoes of these episodes. Repsol, a Spanish oil firm, fell in love with Argentina, leaving it vulnerable when YPF, the firm it bought there, was nationalised in 2012. First Quantum, of Canada, had made a third of its profits from a mine that the Democratic Republic of Congo nationalised in 2009. But as they have expanded over the past two decades, multinationals have spread themselves more.

Only a dozen big, global, listed firms have over a tenth of their sales in Russia. BP is the country's largest foreign investor but gets only about 10% of its value from its stake in Rosneft, an oil giant. McDonald's Moscow outlets, once a symbol of détente, are temporarily shut, victims of a diplomatic tit-for-tat. Even so, the burger giant makes less than 5% of its profits in Russia.

This picture is true in other hotspots. Telefonica, a Spanish firm, and Procter & Gamble (P&G), together have billions of dollars trapped in Venezuela, which has introduced capital controls. But it represents less than 5% of their sales. Ben van Beurden, the boss of Royal Dutch Shell, recently said diversification is "the only way to inoculate yourself".

As well as boosting their liquidity and hedging their bets, firms have got cleverer at running their production networks. The cliché of a rickety global supply chain that fails if a single link breaks is still sometimes true. Floods in 2011 in Thailand, a hub for making hard drives, disrupted the global computer industry.

But whereas emerging countries were once just a source of production for rich ones, now they are a source of demand, too, allowing production to be organised into more robust regional cells and providing a natural currency hedge. Alan Lafley, the boss of P&G, has said 95% of its production is in the region where the goods in question are sold.

Very large firms can reallocate output around the world. ArcelorMittal, which paid $5 billion for a steel mill in Ukraine in 2005, is now selling its slabs outside that country.

William Fung of Li & Fung, the world's biggest sourcing company, serving big retailers such as Walmart, says that since Lehman Brothers' collapse, most firms have become more careful to ensure that they have backup plans."People wound their supply chains up too tight, until it became dangerous. What they have learned in the past five years is that you need some slack in your supply chain--you are not aiming for 100% efficiency...You need resilience, too."

Is geopolitical risk exaggerated? Executives admit there are catastrophic scenarios that keep them awake at night. Tensions with Russia could escalate, leading to much tighter sanctions and prompting Russia to turn off the supply of gas to Europe. An overthrow of Saudi Arabia's geriatric monarchy could make oil prices soar. And everyone is scared of political instability or an economic slump in China. It is simply too large, both as a centre of production and as a market, to ignore.

The Wall Street boss says, "This is China's century but not every year will be its year. When it has a bad year, everyone will panic." Another bank chief says a China blow-up is "inevitable". The head of a huge multinational says he fears a war between China and Japan.

Although geopolitics might not destroy today's multinational corporations, they may alter their investment plans. After a row over the Senkaku/Daioyu islands in 2012, Japanese firms faced boycotts in China and their exports to it fell by a fifth.

They recovered, but Japanese firms have cut investment in China: the share of Japanese foreign direct investment going there has halved since 2010, to 7%.

Likewise, Russia's conflict with the West over Ukraine has impaired its ability to attract capital to upgrade its creaking energy industry. And strife in Libya and Egypt has damaged north Africa's hopes of becoming a production hub for Europe. Like countries, multinational companies have no permanent allies--only permanent interests.

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SEE ALSO: Here's Which Countries Are Helping Syria's Refugee Crisis — And Which Ones Are Refusing

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Scams that target Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks are on the rise. Based on data from the Cheetah Mobile Threat Lab charted for us by Business Insider Intelligence, there’s been a rise of apps that are designed to trick customers into thinking they’re the real McCoy, asking for personal information so they can access a user’s phone for the sake of stealing personal and financial information.

According to researchers at the Cheetah Mobile Threat Lab, in the first eight months of this year, more than 15,000 fake apps have affected more than 100 million users across all the major social networks, with Facebook being the most vulnerable site with 8,107 imposter apps detected. To make sure you haven’t downloaded a fake app, check the app file size (scam apps are usually very small), and check the app’s permissions, since fake apps will usually ask to send text messages and be able to access the internet on your behalf. And if it asks for a password or any sensitive financial information, avoid it at all costs.

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Ghanaian President John Mahama referenced the killing of an unarmed African-American man by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri that led to protests and a violent response from law enforcement in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly Thursday. 

Mahama's speech focused on the "need to effect change in the areas of human rights and social justice, in education and health administration." He referred to the situation in Ferguson as well as other incidents where African-American men were killed by police as examples of things that might make people fear the world was regressing rather than progressing.

"Reports of police brutality in the United States against an unarmed black man takes me back to 1999 when 23-year old Guinean-born Amadou Diallo was shot 19 times by four New York City police officers. Or to 1991 when Rodney King was brutally beaten by five Los Angeles police officers," said Mahama. "Both of those incidents caused a tremendous public outcry, as has this year’s shooting to death of 18-year old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, with the singular message of 'no justice, no peace.'"

In addition to the police shootings in the US, Mahama cited "beheadings" in the Middle East and the many civilian deaths caused by Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip this summer as potential signs the world is moving backwards. However, after referencing these situations, Mahama hit an optimistic note. 

"Do such events indicate an outright regression? Does the uncomfortable familiarity of some current world events mean that despite the changes so many individuals and organizations have worked to achieve, we have made little or no progress?" Mahama asked. "I would like to believe this is not so. I would like to believe these events of recent times are merely setbacks that will motivate us to find more sustainable solutions, slight reversals on that sinuous path toward true progress."

Mahama went on to discuss the ebola epidemic in West Africa, terrorism, the "global recession," and "the growing problem of inequality," among other challenges facing the world. He said these threats might make it harder for people to affect change but encouraged "those of us who envision a just and peaceful world" not to "yield." 

"In the words of one of the greatest teachers and leaders of nonviolence, Mahatma Gandhi, 'You must be the change you wish to see in the world,'” said Mahama. 

Mahama isn't the only leader who referenced Ferguson in his address to the General Assembly. US President Barack Obama's speech acknowledged the country's critics might point to the incidents there as a moment when America "failed to live up to our ideals."

Read Mahama's full speech here. 

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Bridgewater Associates founder and chair Ray Dalio is one of America's most powerful investors and has an estimated net worth of $15.2 billion. It's safe to say he understands success.

He and fellow self-made billionaire and Harvard Business School alum Michael Bloomberg talked about that subject at the Bloomberg Markets Most Influential Summit on Monday.

At one point moderator Stephanie Ruhle asked the two how they deal with an accomplished new hire's huge ego. Dalio said Bridgewater's culture always breaks them down because the new hire sees really quickly that no one is resting on their laurels. He says that's the key to being successful.

"Everybody's struggling. If you're not struggling then you're not operating at a high enough level. Right? As you go to a new job, as you go to higher and higher levels, you're gonna be struggling, you're gonna fall," he said.

To Dalio, arrogance can become an excuse to be lazy.

"[I]f you want to be powerful, you have to have humility," Dalio said.

In an earlier comment, Bloomberg said that the most successful people never lose a constant, exhausting drive, whether they're just starting out or decades into their career.

"From the moment you get up to the moment you go to bed, you want to be overscheduled and rushing from one thing to another. There's no greater high," Bloomberg said.

You can watch the full interview over at Bloomberg.

SEE ALSO: The 25 Most Successful Harvard Business School Graduates

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Nike shares are surging after earnings beat expectations.

In after hours trade on Thursday, Nike shares were up more than 5% in after hours trade on Thursday after the company reported better than expected earnings and revenue.

In the first quarter reported first quarter earnings per share of $1.09 against expectations for $0.88, according to data from Bloomberg.

Revenue in the quarter totaled $8 billion against expectations for $7.83 billion.

Nike also reported gross margins of 46.6%, beating expectations, and worldwide future orders — excluding the impact from currencies — that were up 14% against expectations for a 10% increase. Inventories were up 14% to $4 billion at the end of the quarter when compared to the prior year period. 

The company also reported that market expenses rose 23% during the quarter, which it said was mostly related to the World Cup. 

During the first quarter, Nike repurchased 10.6 million shares for about $819 million.

Excluding Thursday's after hours rally, shares of Nike were up just over 1% year-to-date. 

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The new Keurig lets you brew up to 30 ounces of coffee at a time, but it also uses a different kind of K-cups than the original — a discovery that is leaving some customers furious. 

Customers who bought the Keurig 2.0 on Amazon complain they bought the machine only to realize they needed a new kind of coffee pod for it to work.

The machines are RFID-limited, meaning only items with a Keurig code work. This restricts consumers from buying coffee pods from other brands. 

"I have ten different boxes of K-cups purchased about two months ago or so and none of them are usable in this machine," writes Amazon user Steveostevestevenson. "You can only use boxes that have a circle with a check on them that says good for all Keurigs on the outside of the box." 

The older machines take coffee pods from many different brands, not just Keurig. They also have an option for using your own coffee beans, while the newer version does not. 

The 2.0 uses two pod sizes — one for an individual cup of coffee and one for the full pot — and it's supposed to be one of the most popular items this holiday season because it brews an entire pot of coffee. 

But so far, the machine has a 2.5 star average on Amazon, and more 1-star reviews than all other ratings combined. 

The Keurig 2.0 sells for $162.75 on Amazon. 

Keurig's new machine is also angering rivals, who have filed lawsuits saying that limiting coffee pods to its own brand is anti-competitive.

But Keurig's alleged monopoly might not last long. 

Keurig competitors TreeHouse Foods and Mother Parkers have already figured out how to produce coffee pods compatible with the new machine, TechDirt reports. 

Meanwhile, customers who still want to use non-Keurig coffee cups have found a way to hack the system. 

This YouTube video shows how to cut out a piece of a Keurig cup and use it to disable the sensor in the new machine.

We've reached out to Keurig for comment, and will update when we know more. 

SEE ALSO: How Tory Burch Built A $3.5 Billion Company In Less Than A Decade

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Baikonur (Kazakhstan) (AFP) - A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying a NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts, including the first woman cosmonaut for 17 years, blasted off on schedule Friday, Russian mission control said.

The Soyuz-TMA14M spacecraft took off at 12:25 am Moscow time (2025 GMT Thursday) from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and is headed for the International Space Station.

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Athletes blowing millions of dollars and going broke seems to happen far too often.

Eddie Johnson, who played in the NBA for 17 seasons and who is now a commentator for the Phoenix Suns, a motivational speaker, and the author of a book, "You Big Dummy," a guide for athletes to have a successful career, both on and off the court, recently did a short video for USA Today. Johnson outlines the five most important things every young professional athlete should do to keep from going broke.

These are the 5 most important things to do according to Johnson.

1. Hire a team of financial advisors.

Specifically, Johnson says every player should hire a "dream team" that includes a reputable agent, a great accountant, and a great financial company. Johnson was emphatic that the last one be a company and not a single person.

Johnson also says it is better if the three parts of the dream team do not know each other. This way, they can police each other and the player will have less to worry about.

However, Johnson makes it clear that with the financial advisors, a player should never sign a power of attorney, noting that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar lost millions in his career after giving somebody else control of his finances.

2. Pay your own bills.

Johnson urges athletes to "take out a checkbook and pay your own bills" rather than giving somebody else that responsibility.

This is important because when a player is accountable for their own affairs they will have a better understanding of just how much money they are spending.

3. Don't buy an abundance of toys, especially toys that depreciate.

Johnson talks about players that have "6, 7, 8 cars" and notes that they can only drive one at a time and an athlete can only live in one house.

4. Focus on your kids' education.

Johnson says it is important for athletes to focus on the education of their children because for most they will be retired when their kids are ready to go to college.

If an athlete starts focusing on the education early, they won't be surprised how much a college education can cost, especially at private schools.

5. Just learn to say "no."

Johnson notes that it is hard to say no, "especially when it comes to family and friends." However, the sooner an athlete learns to say "no," the better off a player's bank account will be.

Here is the full video.

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The market for precious metals is not as big as you might think.

One year's worth of mined platinum is only the size of a car. But it's worth about $8 billion.

Visual Capitalist took one year's production of eight commodities, lumped each of them into a three-dimensional cubes, and put them next to landmarks around the world.

They also calculated the value of each cube.

Gold

Uranium

Copper

Companies like Google, Amazon, eBay, and Uber are operating and expanding services that allow shoppers to order something online and have it that same day, without ever leaving home.

If they manage it, despite the expense and complexities involved in delivering over the "last mile," these companies will grow e-commerce's customer base (as well as its share of retail dollars), and siphon off one of offline retail's last real competitive advantages. 

In a new report, BI Intelligence takes an exhaustive look at the same-day delivery market, sizing the percentage of people who will purchase goods to be delivered the same-day this year. We uncover the demographics of same-day delivery customers, the markets where these services have the best chance of taking off, and assess how each of the many new same-day delivery entrants compares to the others. We also look at the technology that really could make getting a package delivered to your door hours after you order it a common phenomenon.

Access The Full Market Forecast By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today >>

Here are some of the key points from the report: 

• USE:BI Intelligence estimates that 2% of shoppers living in cities where same-day delivery is offered have used such services. In dollar terms, we estimate that roughly $100 million worth of merchandise will be delivered via same-day fulfillment this year in 20 US cities.
• CONSUMER EXPECTATIONS:Consumer interest in same-day delivery is already fairly high. Four in 10 US shoppers said they would use same-day delivery if they didn't have time to go to the store, and one in four shoppers said they would considering abandoning an online shopping cart if same-day delivery was not an option. 
• DEMOGRAPHICS: The most common same-day delivery shopper fits a very specific profile — millennial, highly likely to be male, urban-dwelling, and young. The products people want delivered same-day are also fairly niche.
• BARRIERS: Despite all the competition in the same-day delivery market, it still won't be easy to get people to pay for these services. 92% of consumers say they are willing to wait four days or longer for their e-commerce packages to arrive. 

In full, the report:

• Estimates the market for same-day delivery from 2013-2018, including the percentage of people who will use these services and the total sales volume
• Looks at the most likely same-day delivery customers and the cities where these individuals are concentrated
• Unpacks the kinds of goods people are likeliest to order for same-day delivery
• Lays out how the different same-day delivery services stack up against each other in terms of prices, location, and selection
• Considers the barriers that could keep same-day delivery from ever becoming a mainstream preference among consumers
• Identifies the technology that could make same-day delivery cost-effective and commonplace

To access the Same-Day Delivery Market Forecast Report and BI Intelligence's ongoing coverage on the future of retail, mobile, and e-commerce — including charts, data, and analysis — sign up of a free trial. 

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Some of today's most successful fitness trackers are famous not only for their wearables, but also for what they do with the data they collect. Jawbone and Fitbit, for example, both offer apps that can give you smart recommendations

One former Apple employee that worked on the original iPhone, however, doesn't believe Apple will do as great of a job utilizing the information it collects from users with its first smartwatch.

"They're terrible," Andy Grignon, who went on to found Quake Labs after working at Apple, said at an event called Wearable Wednesday hosted by startup incubator Wearable World, CiteWorld reported. Grignon's response was in reference to whether or not Apple actually does anything useful with the data it collects.

Grignon considers devices that simply regurgitate data to be useless. His argument is one that we've heard time and time again when it comes to wearables. For it to be truly useful, it needs to provide useful feedback and some type of service we wouldn't already be able to get through our smartphones.

Grignon also believes that sensors on the wrist aren't necessarily the only solution when it comes to keeping track of your health. He imagines a world where we would wear sensors on our shoes to track our feet movement and inside our underwear to detect sweat levels. 

SEE ALSO: Apple's Watch May Come In Two Storage Sizes

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New York (AFP) - Chrysler recalled almost 350,000 older-model cars Thursday over ignition-switch problem that could cause a loss of engine power or reduced braking power.

The automaker, a unit of Italy-based Fiat Chrysler, said it would correct switch defect "that may cause ignition keys to become stuck or inadvertently move."

The company said it knew of one "minor" accident that was possibly related to the problem, but that it was "unaware of any related injuries."

The ignition-switch problem is similar to that which led General Motors to recall 2.6 million cars this year, a decade or more after the company became aware of the flawed part. The largest US automaker has acknowledged 21 deaths to date that resulted from the faulty ignition problem.

Chrysler's safety recall affects 349,442 model-year 2008 cars, made before May 12, 2008. Most of them, 292,224, were in the United States.

Chrysler said the recall covers Dodge Charger sedans, Dodge Magnum station wagons, Chrysler 300 sedans, and Jeep Commander and Jeep Grand Cherokee sport-utility vehicles.

In July, Chrysler recalled about 790,000 Jeep SUVs in the model years 2006-2007 to fix an ignition problem that allowed the key to move unintentionally from the "on" position.

In its latest recall, Chrysler said that the ignition keys may not fully return to the "on" position after being turned to the "start" position, potentially causing a loss of windshield defroster and wiper function.

In a "less probable" circumstance, it said, the key may inadvertently slip from the "on" position to "accessory" or "off", reducing braking power and cutting engine power, power steering, and one or more of the cars' safety features, including front air bags.

While awaiting their vehicles to be fixed, "owners of these models are advised to confirm their ignition keys are set in the 'on' position after starting their vehicles," the company said.

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In the 1960s, the Soviet Union undertook a major water diversion project on the arid plains of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. The region’s two major rivers, fed by snowmelt and precipitation in faraway mountains, were used to transform the desert into farms for cotton and other crops.

Before the project, the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya rivers flowed down from the mountains, cut northwest through the Kyzylkum Desert, and finally pooled together in the lowest part of the basin. The lake they made, the Aral Sea, was once the fourth largest in the world.

Although irrigation made the desert bloom, it devastated the Aral Sea. This series of images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite documents the changes. At the start of the series in 2000, the lake was already a fraction of its 1960 extent (black line).

The Northern Aral Sea (sometimes called the Small Aral Sea) had separated from the Southern (Large) Aral Sea. The Southern Aral Sea had split into eastern and western lobes that remained tenuously connected at both ends.

By 2001, the southern connection had been severed, and the shallower eastern part retreated rapidly over the next several years. Especially large retreats in the eastern lobe of the Southern Sea appear to have occurred between 2005 and 2009, when drought limited and then cut off the flow of the Amu Darya.

Water levels then fluctuated annually between 2009 and 2014 in alternately dry and wet years. Dry conditions in 2014 caused the Southern Sea’s eastern lobe to completely dry up for the first time in modern times.

As the lake dried up, fisheries and the communities that depended on them collapsed. The increasingly salty water became polluted with fertilizer and pesticides. The blowing dust from the exposed lakebed, contaminated with agricultural chemicals, became a public health hazard.

The salty dust blew off the lakebed and settled onto fields, degrading the soil. Croplands had to be flushed with larger and larger volumes of river water. The loss of the moderating influence of such a large body of water made winters colder and summers hotter and drier.

In a last-ditch effort to save some of the lake, Kazakhstan built a dam between the northern and southern parts of the Aral Sea. Completed in 2005, the dam was basically a death sentence for the southern Aral Sea, which was judged to be beyond saving.

All of the water flowing into the desert basin from the Syr Darya now stays in the Northern Aral Sea. Between 2005 and 2006, the water levels in that part of the lake rebounded significantly and very small increases are visible throughout the rest of the time period. The differences in water color are due to changes in sediment.

The lake in 2000:

The lake in 2014:

SEE ALSO: Here's What Makes China's Pollution So Bad

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They come for the dead. They used to come for the living, but with little funding and far too few health care workers to treat the mushrooming number of the West African nation's sick, Liberia's government employees now arrive only to pick up the bodies of those who have succumbed to Ebola.

Finally, the West is recognizing the scale of the crisis. On Sept. 15, President Obama pledged to send 3,000 people to fight the epidemic in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, the three West African nations hit hardest by the virus. Five days later, former President Bill Clinton sent a chartered jet packed with gloves, gowns, and other protective medical equipment — the largest single shipment of aid to the Ebola zone to date — from New York to West Africa.

But even now, it's hard to feel the full impact of this epidemic from millions of miles away. It can be easier to understand how terrifying it is when you look at the numbers.

1.4 million: The number of Ebola cases expected by Jan. 20, 2015, if nothing changes in the way patients are treated.

71%: The death rate of this epidemic: The percentage of people who, after becoming infected with Ebola, die as a direct result of the virus.

718: Number of new Ebola cases between Sept. 8 and Sept. 14 in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, as reported by the WHO.

14,607: The approximate number undetected Ebola cases.

The official case count is 5,843, including 2,803 deaths (according to the WHO), but the CDC predicts the actual number of cases is 2.5 times higher than the official figure.

15 days: The time it takes for Ebola cases to double in Liberia, according to CDC estimates. In Sierra Leone, cases are doubling every 30 days.

82%: The percentage of Ebola patients in Liberia who are being cared for outside hospitals or other isolated settings necessary to reduce the risk of transmission. To stop the epidemic from spreading further, this number needs to be 30% or lower.

21 days: The time it can take a person infected with the Ebola virus to develop physical symptoms.

While people are not infectious until they develop symptoms, the longer a virus has incubated in someone, the lower their chances of getting rapid treatment and recovering.

49 days: The number of days after recovery that a man previously infected with Ebola can still transmit the virus through his semen.

14x: The number of times larger the current Ebola eruption is than the last largest outbreak, which hit 425 cases in Uganda in 2000.

As of March 2014, the current flare-up was already eight times the size of that outbreak. As of Sept. 2014, more people have been infected and died of Ebola than as a result of all the previous outbreaks combined.

20x: The number of times more health personnel needed to beat back the epidemic, according to the WHO. That's 20,000 national and 1,000 international staff.

54.2%: The percentage of health care workers who have died after becoming infected with the virus, despite being well-informed and having full access to treatment.

2nd: Sierra Leone's global ranking in terms of real GDP growth rate in 2013,before the Ebola outbreak. Liberia held position 11.

For some perspective, the United States was 157th. This is significant when you think about how well the country was doing — in a pure economic sense — before Ebola hit. After the outbreak, this is likely to drop drastically and all the progress the country has been making will be lost.

SEE ALSO: We're Losing The Fight Against Ebola

SEE ALSO: Here's A Terrifying Chart Of Projected Ebola Cases

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The Information’s Martin Peers wrote an interesting column on Thursday arguing traditional media companies are simply denying how online streaming services, like Netflix and Amazon, are disrupting the $100 billion-plus TV network industry.

And more disruptive services are coming. Dish Network, for example, plans to launch an online service with a smaller package of channels but programs from big media companies like ESPN, A+E Networks, and Scripps Networks Interactive.

Time Warner’s chairman Jeff Bewkes, however, shrugged off Dish’s upcoming service, saying, “Some people do (want less channels); a lot of people don’t.”

Even the TV networks getting involved with Dish's fledgling service are clearly wary of what it might mean in terms of cannibalizing their other deals with cable networks. Peers offers this particularly startling bit of information:

To be sure, programmers are taking steps to limit erosion in their deals with Dish. One industry executive says the Disney agreement with Dish has a provision that if the streaming service signs up more than a certain number of subscribers, the deal is off. Dish declined to comment.

In other words, Disney will play along with Dish Network's new service, but if it succeeds to a certain extent, they will be forced to pull out — likely to honor their partnerships with longstanding cable providers like Time Warner and Comcast.

Peers offers two potential reasons for why big media companies like Time Warner are downplaying streaming and other disruptive services:

The simple answer is that most media company CEOs are nearing the end of their careers and are more focused on short-term quarterly performance than trends that might or might not happen for a decade. Another answer is that they’re in denial about the implications of what they’re doing.

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With Eric Holder on the way out as attorney general, one of the men viewed as a potential leading candidate to replace him is the same man who argued the most visible Supreme Court case in recent memory.

Multiple former federal officials pegged US Solicitor General Donald Verrilli as the early favorite to replace Holder, who announced Wednesday he will step down once his successor is confirmed by the US Senate. Other candidates frequently mentioned: California Attorney General Kamala Harris, former White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, and Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

But Verrilli's name came up most as the leading candidate. He is most known for representing the Obama administration in the Supreme Court case that dealt with the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate. 

Verrilli's oral argument before the Supreme Court in that case was widely viewed as a disaster. And legal experts told Business Insider afterward that attorney Paul Clement, who represented the challengers, completely "tore apart" his argument. Still, in the end, Obamacare survived on a narrow, 5-4 vote with the surprising help of Chief Justice John Roberts.

Verrilli's record at the Supreme Court wasn't much better this year, as he lost four high-profile cases involving setbacks from everything from the Affordable Care Act to labor unions. And earlier in the term term, the court dealt the most serious blow to campaign-finance laws since the landmark Citizens United decision in 2010.

But Supreme Court observers say he'd be the natural choice to replace Holder — and that he'd likely sail through Senate confirmation without much of a fight.

"Verrilli would be the obvious choice given that his low-key, managerial style would be a contrast from Holder’s polarizing ways," said Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute. 

Verrilli served in the Department of Justice at the beginning of Obama's term as the Associate US Deputy Attorney General. He subsequently moved onto the White House in 2010 as the deputy counsel to the president. He is highly respected for his legal acumen within the White House. Obama nominated him to the post of Solicitor General in January 2011. He was confirmed by a 72-16 Senate vote. 

His overwhelming vote for confirmation could prove enticing as an option for a president who faces the possibility of Republicans taking control of the US Senate later this year. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has already suggested Congress waits until next year before considering confirming a new appointment.

"To ensure that justice is served and that the Attorney General is not simply replaced with another extreme partisan who will likewise disregard the law, the Senate should wait until the new Congress is sworn in before confirming the next Attorney General," Cruz said.

"Allowing Democratic senators, many of whom will likely have just been defeated at the polls, to confirm Holder’s successor would be an abuse of power that should not be countenanced."

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Obama was notified by Holder recently that he would step down. The process to replace Holder, he said, is already underway.

"I’m confident there are members of the president’s team who have been thinking about who solid candidates might be," Earnest said. "... I’ve not seen the list. I’m sure the president has his own ideas and there will be a formal process."

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Kevin Durant is not decent at 'NBA 2K15' -- he's "really good." Or so Durant claimed when he stopped by "The Tonight Show" to promote the new game which features him on the cover.

But Durant never plays as himself in the game -- he uses LeBron James. Fallon asks Durant, "You play as you?" To which Durant quickly responds, "No that's kind of arrogant." 

Check out the whole video below:

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