Infiniti is investing big in China. With sales up 130% this year, China is already the luxury automaker's second-largest market after the US.

A big engine is essential for American muscle-car enthusiasts, and automakers who cater to that crowd know this. The Chinese luxury-car buyer is equally enamored by a large back seat. And Infiniti has taken this to heart.

Since its debut in China last year, the brand's flagship Q70 sedan has been available solely in a long-wheelbase version, priced at about $68,000. "Long wheelbase" simply means that the car has been stretched a bit, to add space in the back seat and to equip the vehicle for limousine lite duty.

Infiniti might be struggling to define itself — or redefine itself — in the US, where it's supposed to be going up against luxury sedans from Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, Audi, and, to a lesser degree, Cadillac and Acura. The whole long-wheelbase thing isn't as important in the US, however, where affluent drivers prefer to drive themselves. If they want more room, they buy a high-end SUV. 

China is obviously a different story, and it's to Infiniti's competitive credit that it's successfully established itself there. Its long-wheelbase cars are important to the carmaker's ongoing strategy in China. The bottom line is that variant could help Infiniti makes a lot of money in the Middle Kingdom.

The current Q70 (formerly known as the M37/56 — Infiniti recently revamped their naming scheme) has been around since 2009 and was growing a bit long in the tooth. So for 2015, Infiniti has given the model a refresh, a common practice in the auto industry that's one notch below a full redesign.

In the U.S., the Q70 will be available in both long- and short-wheelbase models, along with the choice of a V6 or V8. Like the smaller Q50, the Q70 looks to offer great bang for the buck. With a starting price just under $50,000 for the short-wheelbase V6 and just over $51,000 for the base Q70L, there are few flagship sedans on the market that can rival the Infiniti in value.

Recently, I sampled a couple variations of Infiniti's updated Q70/Q70L around the winding country roads of southern New York.

Here's how it went:

For the 2015 model year, Infiniti gave the Q70 a visual update. The 2015 version (right) got a larger Q50-style front grill and headlight design.

The results are impressive. The front end looks aggressive, but blends effortlessly into the curvaceous body.

I spent most of my time behind the wheel of a long-wheelbase Q7 0L, which is powered by a 3.7 liter 330hp V6. This engine is shared with the musclebound Nissan 370Z sports car.

This post is sponsored by Verizon.

The Urban Assembly New York Harbor School, a marine biology-focused public high school located on Governors Island, has pledged to restore a billion oysters to the harbor by 2030 through its Billion Oyster Project.

The project is giving students a hands-on education about marine biology and will help preserve native marine species for decades to come.

The school has partnered on the project with Verizon, which is contributing equipment and technology — such as a self-cleaning underwater camera and Verizon's 4G LTE network, which the students are using to collect data.

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Oysters eat by pumping water through their body and cleaning it with their gills. A single oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water per day.

Pollution has devastated natural oyster populations. The Urban Assembly New York Harbor School, a public high school that focuses on marine biology, decided to do something about it.

The Harbor School has its own oyster hatchery. Students cultivate up to 100 million oysters per year and then transplant them into the ocean floor.

Usually, a New York City's 'best restaurants' list would blow almost any budget.

But the city has amazing food at every price point.

We asked the so-called "eats experts" at The Infatuation, a restaurant review site, to help us develop a list of the best "cheap eats" spots in NYC.

The eateries range in cuisine from Middle Eastern to classic burgers.

Los Tacos No. 1 serves up small, flavorful tacos and quesadillas

75 9th Ave.

In the back of Chelsea Market is Los Tacos No. 1. It's a gem, but a tiny one — there are no tables and barely any room to stand, but the snack-sized tacos will blow your mind.

The prices are super affordable, running from $3 tacos to a "Nopal (cactus) Plate" with beans, cheese, and meat for $6. Lines can get long, but the staff is efficient at turning out their delicious Mexican food.

Read The Infatuation's Los Tacos No. 1 review here

Order fried chicken with outlandish flavors like wasabi at Sticky's Finger Joint

31 W. 8th St.

Fried chicken lovers, Sticky's Finger Joint is your new go-to. The fried chicken is well-done, but what makes Sticky's extra special is the sheer amount of house-made sauces and flavors like Wasabi, General Tso, and Salted Caramel.

Each finger ranges from $2.50 to $4.50, which may seem expensive, but they are huge, juicy, and crunchy. The $4 truffle fries will also meet anyone's high expectations.

Read The Infatuation's Sticky's Finger Joint review here   

Max in Williamsburg makes traditional, mouth-watering Italian dishes

740 Driggs Ave.

The South Williamsburg location of Max has everything a neighborhood staple could offer — friendly service, affordable food, and piping-hot, huge portions.

Though all of the menu items are worth trying, it's the homemade lasagna (in a bowl) that will seal the deal. The pasta dishes range from $9-$14 while entrees like pan-seared cod are $14 to $17.

Read The Infatuation's Max review here

Harvard is one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts school accepted just 5.9% of roughly 34,000 applications for its class of 2018. As Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust recently said, "We could fill our class twice over with valedictorians."

The school seeks out students who not only have high grades, but also have outstanding achievements under their belts — from overcoming homelessness to starting their own nonprofits. The students who manage to catch the attention of admissions officers overcome exceptional odds, but they should maintain some perspective.

Many things in life — like landing a job at some Wal-Mart locations — are harder to achieve than getting into that prestigious university.

A Job At Some Wal-Mart Locations

Met with both merriment and protest, Wal-Mart came to Washington, D.C. at the end of 2013. 

The store received more than 23,000 applications but only hired 600 associates, NBC Washington reported. That's a 2.6% acceptance rate — almost half as selective as Harvard. 

While many Harvard graduates can expect a 6-figure income, Wal-Mart employees pocket an average of $11.83 an hour or nearly $25,000 annually,,according to the company.

The Top 50 Posts On A Friend's Newsfeed

When Facebook compiles your Newsfeed, it chooses from roughly 1,500 different posts.

The company uses an algorithm based on the popularity and relevance of posts, along with other factors, to decide what goes where.

The chances of a certain post finding its way into the top 50 stories on someone's Newsfeed is about 3.3%.

If you want to boost your chances, posts with photos do far better than links or text-based posts.

The American Dream

A recent report from researchers at Harvard and Berkeley Universities shows that in many major US cities, it's very hard to achieve a rags-to-riches success story. 

The report analyzes the number of people who were born into the lowest income quintile but ended up in the highest income quintile. The results don't bode well for upward socioeconomic mobility.

The chances were below 5% in Atlanta, Georgia; Charlotte, North Carolina; Jacksonville, Florida; Columbus, Ohio; Dayton, Ohio; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Indianapolis, Indiana.

Even at the top of the list, people in San Jose, California showed just a 12.9% chance of living the American dream.

You’d be hard-pressed to find an area of Berlin that hasn’t been invaded by a legion of global hipsters, but there’s one area of the city that still manages to attract the hippest of the hip.

With its impressive and ever-changing array of street art and its eclectic mix of international cuisine, gourmet coffeehouses, and trendy bars, Kreuzberg is Berlin’s hipster hotspot.

Kreuzberg (or X-Berg, as the locals call it) was once Berlin’s poorest neighborhood, straddling both East and West Berlin. Its central location was once a disadvantage (when Berlin was a divided city), but today the neighborhood is the epicenter of Berlin’s unique style and culture.

Berlin is often called the startup capital of Europe (Silicon Allee, as it is sometimes called), so it’s no surprise there’s an abundance of co-working spaces in town. The newest? Überlin, started by the city’s best Berlin blog.

Kreuzberg hipsters shop at the countless second-hand vintage shops in the neighborhood. Just be warned: Prices for vintage clothing are disproportionally expensive.

Sing Blackbird sells vintage clothes, but also has great juices and cakes. The second-hand shop sells its wares at flea markets, too.

West Midlands police in Birmingham, UK have posted this hilarious video of a thief trying to steal a commemorative WWI piece of artwork to YouTube.

Spotted by Digg, the video is from security cameras at the Castle Fine Art Gallery on the 17th of August. According to the West Midlands Police website, the gallery staff stopped the thief as he left and recovered the poorly concealed artwork. 

The man in the video, however, left unpunished. Police have now released the security footage on Wednesday to try and discover the would-be thief’s identity.  

Investigating officer PC Patrick Higgins said in a statement: “The thief was quite optimistic in his attempts to conceal the artwork, valued at several hundred pounds, but fortunately he made off empty handed. We are now keen to identify the man in the CCTV to prevent him from turning his attention to smaller objects." 

Watch the full (unintentionally funny) video below.

And in case you were curious, this is what he was trying to steal.

SEE ALSO: 19 New Works Of Art That Have The World Buzzing

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Larry Ellison is stepping down as CEO of Oracle. 

In honor of his long career, let's take a look back at his life. 

Ellison is a true rags-to-riches story. After growing up in a poor neighborhood in Chicago, he decided to drop out of college and drive across the country to California, where he would found Oracle. 

He now has a net worth of $51.3 billion and the fabulous lifestyle to go along with it.

He's been called"the nation's most avid trophy-home buyer" and has all but taken over entire neighborhoods in Malibu and the Lake Tahoe area. He even purchased the entire Hawaiian island of Lanai for an estimated $300 million in 2012. He also has an amazing collection of supercars, planes, and yachts.

Ellison was born on August 17, 1944, on the Lower East Side of New York City. After he contracted pneumonia as a baby, his mother was unable to care for him, and instead sent him to live with her aunt and uncle on the South Side of Chicago. He has never met his birth father, and didn't even know he was adopted until much later in life.

Source: CNN

He went on to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, but dropped out after his second year. After spending a summer in northern California, he decided to transfer to the University of Chicago, where he first studied computer design. He left there after one semester and moved to California in 1966, at the age of 22.

Even from a young age, Ellison had a taste for flashy cars. Before moving out to California, he went out and bought himself a turquoise Thunderbird that he thought would make a good impression on new acquaintances. He used it to drive the thousand-mile journey to his new home in Berkeley.

Source: Bloomberg News, YouTube

Since the early days of the internet, entrepreneurs have dreamed of moving grocery shopping online. It's finally starting to happen. 

We've created these slides to preview our report on how e-commerce is finally beginning to carve up the groceries market, the biggest untapped e-commerce opportunity. Americans spend $600 billion a year on groceries, the largest retail category by far. Less than 1% of those sales occur online. Same-day delivery services, specialty grocers, and meal-preparation businesses will drive fast growth in online groceries — much faster rate than offline.  

BI Intelligence is a research and analysis service focused on e-commerce, mobile computing, digital media, and payments. Only subscribers can download the full report on e-commerce groceries as well as the individual charts and datasets in Excel, along with the PowerPoint version of this deck. Please sign up for a free trial here.

After the biggest public offering in history, the enormous Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba will start trading on the New York Stock Exchange Friday.

The two most popular Alibaba websites — Taobao and Tmall — are Chinese marketplaces and rather inaccessible if you don't know the language, but there's also Alibaba.com, an English site for sales between importers and exporters in more than 240 countries.

Alibaba.com has been known to sell different types of well-disguised counterfeit goods. Not only that, but a lot of the stuff on the site is just straight up bizarre or oddly labeled (we found quite a few normal products that for some reason had the phrase "hot" or "girl" tacked onto them).

We dug around Alibaba.com, and here are some of the gems we found:

Heard of a barf bag? Alibaba one-ups that concept with the barf bib.

You can find these Buddha-shaped pears for only $12 for a set.

Or how about a worm train for $30,000?

Scotland votes on its independence today, and regardless of where you stand, when all is said and done you may want to raise a glass.

If that's the case, your drink has to be scotch whisky — the native spirit of the country itself.

To help you with that process, Business Insider put together a list of award winning whiskys from the International Wine and Spirit Compeition. Distillers and winemakers have been holding that competition since 1969, so you're sure to learn a thing or two.

Glenfiddich 125th Anniversary Edition Single Malt Scotch Whisky

Producer: William Grant & Sons Distillers Ltd

Judge's Tasting Notes:"Complex nose with ripe fruits and a fine oaky spiciness. A nice malty and biscuity texture, some pleasant barley sugars. A gentle smokiness in the end."

Source: IWSC

Glenfiddich Malt Master Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky

Producer: William Grant & Sons Distillers Ltd

Judge's Tasting Notes:"Poached pears and citrus fruit. Concentrated sweetness with toffee cream, honey and sweet buttery caramel. Great fruity vanilla spice in the mouth and a lovely fruity finish." 

Source: IWSC

Old Particular Craigellachie Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky 17YO

Producer: Douglas Laing & Co Ltd

Judge's Tasting Notes:"Very attractive nose rich spice and toffee on a wonderfully mature backing. Big floral wave pushes all the character in front. Very attractive oak. Warm and mellow in the mouth with rich fruit, coffee and hints of light smoke. Vanilla and cinnamon with polished oak. Long, complex, mature finish."

Source: IWSC

Tom Brady publicly posted a photo of his post-college resume on Thursday, showing the world just how close he came to working a normal job.

It's easy to forgot how unlikely Brady's rise to the top of the American sports pyramid really was. He was taken in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL draft, 199th overall.

Now he's the NFL's biggest celebrity with massive endorsement deals, a wildly successful significant other, and the ability to build $40-million mansions from scratch as a side job.

Brady earned $38 million in 2013, making him the 11th highest-paid athlete in the world.

Source: Forbes

A huge chunk of that came from a $30 million signing bonus he got from his unusual new Patriots contract.

Source: PFT

The contract was designed to help the Patriots salary cap situation. As a result, Brady will only be paid $2 million in 2014.

Larry Ellison is without a doubt one of the people who has influenced the tech industry the most. 

Today's news that he is stepping down as CEO comes a shock.

Ellison, who is co-founder and now CTO of Oracle, has influenced the tech industry, business world, and your daily lives in numerous ways, whether you realize it or not.

College degree not required

Larry Ellison certainly isn't the only billionaire college dropout to find success in Silicon Valley but he was one of the first: Before Bill Gates, before his best friend Steve Jobs, before Michael Dell.

Ellison dropped out of college not just once, but twice, before moving to Northern California at age 22, in 1966.

He stayed in school long enough to learn about computer design and, a few years later,  invented a database by reading a paper about it written by an IBM scientist.

Today that database is run by all of the world's biggest companies. Just about every time you use a credit card, book an airline ticket, or get a prescription drug, Oracle has helped you do it.

Never retire

In just a couple of months, Larry Ellison will turn 70. He was the longest-running founder CEO the tech industry has ever seen. He held the CEO role at Oracle since 1977.

Back then, a 70-year-old CEO would have been unheard of. Even today, IBM has a tradition where CEOs are asked to retire at age 60.

With Ellison as a role model, other CEOs have decided to staying on longer, too, including Cisco's John Chambers and EMC's Joe Tucci.

Ellison has never even publicly discussed retirement and even though he will no longer be CEO, he still isn't really retiring. He will stay on as both executive chairman of Oracle and as its CTO.

A competitive spirit is the greatest motivator

Ask Ellison why he still comes to work every day — what drives him after all he's achieved — and he'll tell you the same answer: he loves to compete.

"I'm addicted to winning. The more you win, the more you want to win," he says.

More recently he described his motivation like this:

"What drives me is this constant testing of limits. Constant learning. ... How can you move the world just a bit, make a difference, change lives ... and how much can I help [while] discovering my own limits?"

Here is a photo from 1978 of Oracle's co-founders celebrating their company's first anniversary.

This was even before the company was named Oracle. At that time it was still called Software Development Laboratories (SDL).

The co-founders couldn't know that their company would one day become a multi-billion empire, the world's largest database maker, one of the world's largest enterprise software AND hardware vendors.

Here they are (left to right) Ed Oates, Bruce Scott, Bob Miner and yes, that tall guy on the far right is Larry Ellison.

Ed Oates, the project manager

Ed Oates retired from the company in 1996. "I had told Larry, when the company gets to 10,000 people, I'm out of there. I couldn't quit fast enough. I quit when the company had 20,000 people," he told attendees of a San Jose State University lecture he in 2011.

He then bought a high-end home theater store, called the Audible Difference which had clients like Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison. He sold it in 1999.

He is currently a member of the board of advisors of big data analytics company Auguri Corp. and is on the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Zoological Society and a guitarist in the band CHOC'D, with an album on iTunes.

Here's how he describes the co-founders: "What we brought to the table: Larry brought chutzpah. Technical wizardry, Bob Minor. Project management and knowledge of how computers worked at their core level, that was me. Notice we didn't have any business acumen. We weren't marketeers. We weren't sales guys. Other than a little bit of project management, we couldn't run a large organization to save our lives. We had to learn."

Bruce Scott, the first employee

Although Bruce Scott is widely considered an Oracle co-founder, technically he wasn't. He was its first hired employee -- or, if you count the founders, employee No. 4.  He was the co-architect of the first three versions of the Oracle database.

Scott was with Oracle its first five years and left in 1982 to help launch Gupta Technologies with another ex-Oracle employee, Umang Gupta. (It was later known as Centura Software). The company created the first client/server SQL database and flew high for a while but eventually filed for bankruptcy, and its tech was sold to investors.

Scott landed on his feet, co-founding another database company, PointBase which was acquired by DataMirror, a company that would later be acquired by IBM. Ironically, PointBase is still being used in Oracle's WebLogic software.

Scott took on a number of other engineering roles in the Valley since then and in 2012 co-founded a startup called Cedarcone, a tool to help salespeople.

Bob Miner, the technical genius

Bob Miner was the architect of Oracle's database and for most of his career at the company he led product design and development.

In 1992, he left that role and spun off a small unit within Oracle that worked on advanced technology.

If Ellison was considered the hard-driving "brains" of the company, Miner was considered its heart, a well-liked manager that counterbalanced Ellison. He wanted his employees to see their families, not work through the night.

He died in 1993 at age 52 from a rare form of lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos.

Air Force boneyards appeal to the child in us. The rows of rusted out planes look like old, forgotten toys, which a child could reach out and grab and lift into the air again.

The feeling is even stronger for airmen.

In an excellent article in Airman Magazine, Air Force Tech. Sgt. Matthew Bates describes retired Col. Bill Hosmer admiring a derelict F-86 Sabre:

To retired Col. Bill Hosmer, it’s still beautiful. He walks around the old fighter and stares in admiration. He slides a hand over the warped metal fuselage and a flood of memories rush over him.

“I haven’t been this close to one of these in years,” he says. “Of course, that one was in a lot better shape.”

So was Hosmer. Time has weathered and aged them both, the plane’s faded paint and creased body match Hosmer’s own worn and wrinkled skin. Even the plane’s discarded wings stand as a metaphor for Hosmer’s own life now – a fighter pilot who can’t fly, standing next to a fighter jet with no wings.

Aircraft from all military services cover the desert landscape of the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group "Boneyard" at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz.

An old, weathered flight manual sits inside the remains of a CH-3E Jolly Green Giant. After years of standing in the desert sun of the boneyard, aircraft and equipment slowly age and erode.

The Boeing YAL-1 Airborne Laser Testbed, (formerly Airborne Laser) weapons system now sits decommissioned in the boneyard. The YAL-1 was primarily designed as a missile defense system to destroy tactical ballistic missiles with an airborne laser system.

Alibaba, the enormous Chinese e-commerce company, is expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange this Friday.

At its helm is founder Jack Ma, a charismatic leader who started the company with 18 friends out of his small apartment in 1999. Although Ma is no longer CEO of Alibaba, he's still the face of the company.

Ma has succeeded because he is relentless, and some of his more memorable quotes — "Today is cruel, tomorrow is crueler"—  illustrate how that relentlessness has formed his thinking.

On not giving up: "Today is cruel. Tomorrow is crueler. And the day after tomorrow is beautiful."

Source. 

On past mistakes from "the dark days at Alibaba": "If you don't give up, you still have a chance. And, when you are small, you have to be very focused and rely on your brain, not your strength."

Source. 

On teamwork: "If we are a good team and know what we want to do, one of us can defeat 10 of them."

Source. 

So you're about to get your brand-new iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, and chances are you'll want to get a case to protect it. iPhones have a reputation for breaking easily, and early reviews of the iPhone 6 have said that Apple's newest phone is especially slippery.

iPhone accessory makers have been hard at work creating new cases since before Apple even unveiled the phone, so there are plenty to choose from. 

Here's a look at some of the best offerings so far.

Apple's iPhone 6 Leather Case ($45)

Apple has a new leather case for the iPhone 6 that has a soft microfiber lining on the inside for protection. It comes in five different colors: black, red, blue, brown, and white. 

Spigen's iPhone 6 Case Wallet S ($29.99)

Spigen's Wallet S Case for the iPhone 6 comes with three slots for holding your credit cards, ID, cash, and anything else you may need to keep on you. There's also a kickstand that's adjustable, which means you can easily change up the viewing angles. 

Otterbox Symmetry ($39.95-$44.95)

If you're looking for something a little more durable than your standard iPhone case, try an Otterbox. The Symmetry is one of Otterbox's slimmer cases, and it comes in a wide variety of color combinations and patterns. 

Apple's two new iPhones, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, launched Friday.

We got our hands on both phones a little early. Take a look at what's inside the box.

Here are the boxes for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Let's see what's inside.

That's the iPhone 6 on the left and the iPhone 6 Plus on the right. The iPhone 6 has a 4.7-inch screen. The iPhone 6 Plus has a 5.5-inch screen.

Another angle.

On Friday, Apple's iPhone 6 finally hit stores around the world.

People have been lining up since last week in some cities waiting for the big day.

This tweet from Walt Piecyk at BTIG tells you a lot: "Streets are a mess in $AAPL line including bags of feces. Security presence is higher."

Even better than a tweet? Photos. Here's a look at the insanely long lines from around the world. 

Dozens upon dozens of people waited in line in Berlin to get the iPhone 6.

People in Berlin expected to wait for a long time, so they brought chairs.

The line starts moving in Berlin.

If you want to be an executive, billionaire, or US president, it's a good idea to graduate from Harvard Business School.

Founded in 1908, HBS was the first institution in the world to grant a Masters in Business Administration.

The Harvard MBA has since been a hallmark of the elite, with George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, and Michael Bloomberg all earning the degree.

We sifted through HBS's sterling history to find the most powerful, prominent, and financially successful grads that came out of Cambridge.

Walter Haas, Jr., Class of 1939, succeeded his father as the CEO of Levi Strauss & Co. He grew Levi's from a regional California brand to one of the world's biggest apparel companies.

1939 MBA Robert S. McNamara served as the US Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War.

After nabbing his MBA in 1942, Philip Caldwell took over as the first non-Ford to run Ford Motor Company, where he led one of the biggest turnarounds in American business history.

The world will never be the same — there is now a one-piece suit concept called “The Suitsy.” 

Spotted on GQ, San Francisco-native Jesse Herzog is seeking funding for his suit onesie on Betabrand, an online clothing design community that designs, manufactures, and releases new retail products.

The shirt is connected to the jacket and the pants at the waist. There is a false sleeve to give gentlemen the appearance of a shirt cuff as well as a zipper hidden behind the shirt’s fake buttons to zip up the front of the suit.

“Imagine looking professional but feeling like you are in pajamas,” Herzog’s proposal reads. “Consider wearing a suit and a onesie at the same time.”

But perhaps the weirdest part about The Suitsy is that it doesn’t look that bad, all things considered. Many of the commenters are enthusiastic, with some cautiously wondering how men would use the bathroom.

The Suitsy currently has 375 votes on Betabrand with 27 days left to go. Only time will tell if this will become a reality.

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