每日三篇英语新闻随记122
2019年7月15日
Lyft just got a step closer to bike-share domination
Lyft won a major victory in court for its bike rental service last week. Motivate, the bike-share operator that Lyft purchased one year ago, has exclusive rights to rent both docked and dockless bikes in the city.
The preliminary decision in the case, originally filed by Lyft in June when the city first began soliciting dockless bike-rental proposals, also says that Lyft has the “first offer” on electric bikes. It’s all about the last mile and this ruling was a major step in the right direction for Lyft’s ecosystem to further penetrate this market opportunity. There were worries about the outcome of this and Lyft came away as the winner.
Lyft doesn’t break out individual metrics for its bike and scooters business, but Wall Street analysts believe it could prove beneficial in the long run as the company seeks to grow its total users and trip counts, especially since the company’s contracts in other major cities are similarly exclusive. A Lyft spokesperson said the company is looking forward to expanding its e-bike program, which also hit the streets in the East Bay, about 12 miles outside of San Francisco, last week.
The FTC's $5 billion fine for Facebook is so meaningless, it will likely leave Zuckerberg wondering what he can't get away with
Mark Zuckerberg must be feeling a bit like President Donald Trump now. During the 2016 presidential campaign, a confident Trump famously said that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York and “wouldn’t lose any voters.”
After the news on Friday that the Federal Trade Commission is close to finalising a settlement with his company for a mere $US5 billion, Zuckerberg has got to be feeling similarly untouchable. He repeatedly pushed privacy boundaries in terms of the data Facebook collected from its users and what it did with that information. When controversies arose about that – as they repeatedly did – the company simply took a step back only to quietly push forward again soon thereafter.
Facebook was already under scrutiny for the hijacking of its service by Russian-linked figures to spread propaganda that benefited Trump’s campaign during that election. Its service had played another hidden role in Trump’s victory, allowing Trump’s campaign to exploit the data of Facebook users – collected without their knowledge – to target election ads. And, according to a report in The New York Times, the company gave preferential access to its user data to certain companies even after supposedly curtailing access to it to most companies.
Facebook will get to put to bed all of the agency’s investigations into its privacy practices. Although it will face some additional oversight over its privacy practices, it won’t have any restrictions on its ability to collect or share data with other companies or organisations. The two Democrats on the commission appeared to recognise that the agency was letting Facebook off easy. They reportedly voted against the deal. It will go forward because the three Republicans on the commission approved it.
5 ways to build wealth using a high-interest money market account
Interest rates may get a lot of attention in the news, but it’s for good reason. Whenever the Federal Reserve sets a new target interest rate, the rates we earn and pay variable interest accounts, like credit cards and savings accounts, will likely follow suit. Among savings accounts, money market accounts can offer even better interest rates than regular savings.
1. Keep your emergency fund safe: Most people should try to keep at least three to six months of expenses in an emergency fund. If you are self-employed or don’t have a stable job, you should double that to at least six to 12 months.
2. Earn the best interest rates on your cash: high-yield accounts currently pay around 2% or more, which is as much as 200 times as much as the lowest-paying accounts.
3. Save for multiple goals automatically: If you open an account for each unique goal, you can create automatic transfers every payday that will move the funds without your having to remember or lift a finger.
4. Build an investment fund: We have a good start on the down payment for a second property, but we are not there yet. In the meantime, our funds are sitting in a high-yield money market account at Capital One Bank earning us a little something in the meantime.
5. Create a loan sinking fund: Businesses in a similar scenario use a “debt sinking fund” where they save up cash, earning interest, that they will later use to pay off a debt.
6. Use your high-interest account any way you want: The best online high-interest accounts have no minimum balances, no recurring fees, and give you much better rates than you would get at a local bank branch.
