2017 Year in Review: Day 3 | Economics, Business, and STEM

6-word summary of business, economics, and STEM in 2017: Booming economy/sexual allegations slow businesses.

• Scientists urge that more people in STEM should run for office and the also had a march to protest Brexit and Trump.
• Apple has delayed the release of their HomePod, which is a competitor to Amazon's Echo and Google Home, until 2018.
• Twitter expanded its word limit to 280 characters, a step up from the 140-character limit the site launched with.
• NASA has delayed their plans to launch a rocket to 2019.
• Cyperransom became a thing.
• Apple patented its own pizza box design.
• House Republicans passed a bill that'd dismantle the strict banking laws introduced after the financial crisis.
• Youtube TV
• The FCC repealed net neutrality.
• Facebook has hired many people to monitor violence on their site, while companies like Uber have fired employees who have been accused of sexual assault.

  

  Courtesy of Youtube

• Twitter has developed Twitter Lite for developing nations who have slow internet connections on cheap phone devices.
• Amazon has devised a system to help parents monitor their children's browsing--parental controls.
• Trump has defunded family planning for Planned Parenthood.
• Ikea + pet furniture = furry fun
• Congress has increased funding for medical research by $2 billion.
• Youtube is on the crackdown of videos that exploit children in inappropriate or suggestible situations or positions, especially with adults, even from their own site's verified channels.
• U.S. wars have cost an average of $23,386 since 9/11.
• Twitter has developed a bot to listen to the comments, complaints, and suggestions of their users in order to improve their site.
• Google has developed AutoDraw to edit drawings and other images.
• Corporate landlords are listing thousands of apartments on Airbnb.

  

  Courtesy of Egypt Innovate

• Uruguay is the first nation in the world to sell recreational cannabis. 
• Banks are increasing rates for taking out loans and credit cards.
• In other news, for-profit colleges are beginning to suck? Did I say "beginning"? Yeah, they've been sucking since they've been conceptualized. As a result, the U.S. Education Department is converting such colleges as Kaplan University and the Art Institutes into non-profit colleges.
• Women of color are booming in the cosmetics industry.
• The 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics has been awarded to three scientists who discovered more about gravitational waves.
• According to CNN Money, the unemployment rate is 4.1%, a record low for 84 consecutive months, the longest streak in U.S. history. Additionally, wages and inflation haven't increased as much as economists and data analysts have expected.