Business

Twitter announced Monday that it was adding a new feature, aptly titled 'Mute,' to the popular social media platform. 'Mute,' as the name implies, allows Twitter's 643 million active users to simply turn off tweets from friends, family, and celebs they're following. The benefit? Well, we've all had that awkward experience where we unfriend or unfollow someone on social media, only to cause them to have hurt feelings in the real world. 'Mute' allows you to shut off the annoying political rants and infinite stream of baby photos without alerting and hurting your friends. Is Twitter Creatively Bankrupt? For the most part, news of the update has landed with more of a thud than a splash! Over the last six months, the little-bluebird-that-could has released a number of updates to their servi...

According to Fannie Mae’s National Housing Survey, younger renters between ages 18 and 39 dream to be homeowners in their relatively near futures, but economic realties are getting in the way--a situation that's noticeably impeding the housing market's recovery process. According to U.S. Census statistics, the demographic's new home purchasing fell from 65.2% in 2013's fourth quarter to 64.8% in 2014's first quarter. According to Sarah Shahdad, a Fannie Mae strategic planning analyst, obstacles like staggering student loan debt, lack of savings, and less-than-perfect credit are holding Millennials back from being able to enter the housing market. Additionally, Millennials are waiting longer to get married or have kids, which means they're essentially delaying life events that would moti...

Not all experiments end well, as the auto industry has been finding out after offering gas saving hybrid models for vehicles that are known for having low fuel economy. So few of these vehicles were sold that automakers are now wondering whether they’re even worth engineering. General Motors, after offering hybrid versions of its new generations of Cadillac Escalade, GMC Yukon, and Chevrolet Tahoe SUVs, has decided to pull the plug. Even though the Escalade hybrid delivered 21 miles per gallon (combined driving conditions), up 31% from the non-hybrid’s 16 combined, “No one bought them,” says David Schiavone, marketing manager for the Escalade. “And they were great.” Mercedes-Benz and Lexus have also been pulling back on their offerings. One of the issues with selling the hybrid cars,...

A Texas couple is suing the construction company that built their home over claims of negligent construction after the home's foundations began to crack "excessively," an April 24 article in the Southeast Texas Record reported. On April 14, John and Donna English filed a lawsuit against Ronald Allen Hansen of Sandcastle Construction in the Galveston County District Court, citing breach of contract and negligence. According to the Southeast Texas Record, the complaint stated that the plaintiffs hired Sandcastle Construction to construct a house on their property in Galveston and paid Hansen in full. In the complaint, the plaintiffs also alleged that their house's foundation was now cracking excessively. The couple is seeking attorney's fees and damages to cover the repairs needed to r...

"Google says that cars it is programming to drive themselves have started to master the navigation of city streets and the challenges they bring, from jaywalkers to weaving bicyclists -- a critical milestone for any commercially available self-driving car technology," Fox News reported Monday. Google's self-driving cars previously traveled relatively straightforward, rural highways only. New software enables the automated vehicles to pick up on cyclists, hand signals, instructions from crossing guards, buses, and pedestrians walking alongside or crossing the road. With some improvements, experts argue that self-driving cars will make the roads safer. The cars will likely drive even better than humans. "A self-driving vehicle can pay attention to all of these things in a way that a human...

The U.S. has lost some 7.5 million industrial jobs since the employment sector hit its peak in 1979, in large part because companies chose to ship their manufacturing jobs to less-expensive overseas markets. However, that trend is reversing, and, according to a new report, the U.S. now ranks second in overall competitiveness. It trails only China. On Friday, the report released by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) said that the U.S. was a “rising star” of global manufacturing. It also said that China’s place as the top manufacturer was, if not being explicitly challenged, “under pressure” because of increased labor and transportation costs as well as reduced productivity growth. Conversely, the U.S. is becoming a better market for manufacturing thanks to the lower cost of natural gas...