The piece is being shown as part of the festival Art In Odd Places, which celebrates art by (as the name suggests) placing it all over the city in odd places. The festival itself, which is running from Thursday through Sunday, is on 14th Street from the Hudson River to Avenue C. The theme of the festival is "Free."
Dessicino made the Snowden sculpture last year while studying at the University of Delaware as a graduate student. Dessicino started constructing the sculpture in September 2013, just months after Snowden famously leaked secrets from the NSA to journalist Glenn Greenwald. Dessicino says as soon as the Snowden leaks came out, he knew he wanted to make an art piece about it.
"What he did is possibly the most significant act of anyone from my generation," Dessicino told Business Insider. "He put truth over the rule of law and committed a huge self-sacrifice."
When asked whether he sees Snowden as a patriot or a traitor, he dismissed the question as "irrelevant" because the act "was bigger than him."
Here's a closer look:
Unfortunately for Dessicino, despite the prominent location of the statue, no one seemed to know who he was. Of the 12 passersby we asked — many of whom stopped to look at the sculpture — not one could identify him.
When told who it was and asked their opinion of him, the responses ranged from indifference to resolutely positive.
"He's our generation's Daniel Ellsberg," one man told us, referring to the leaker of the Pentagon Papers. "What he did needed to be done."
The statue is made primarily out of gypsum cement. The head was made out of clay and then cast in a mold, while the body is made out of steel piping and insulation foam.
"It's pretty sturdy," Dessicino said.
The statue will be in Union Square all weekend, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Dessicino will sit next to the statue during that time, making sure it doesn't fall over or get defaced.
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.
Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates has has purchased a 228-acre horse farm in Rancho Santa Fe, California, the Wall Street Journal reports. According to property records, the purchase price was a cool $18 million.
The estate formerly belonged to weight-loss expert Jenny Craig, who initially listed the property for $30 million several years ago. Its last listing price was $25 million, though it was no longer on the open market when Gates made the purchase.
The property, known as the Rancho Paseana, includes a racetrack, guesthouse, office, veterinarian's suite, orchard, and five barns.
Gates' daughter Jennifer regularly participates in equestrian competitions, and the family owns another horse farm in Wellington, Florida.
It's a beautiful property, with wide-open pastures and plenty of California palm trees.
Rancho Paseana is located about 20 minutes north of San Diego, in a valley in Rancho Sante Fe, California.
On a patch of palm-tree-abundant land by the Bay, the small city of East Palo Alto is an often forgotten corner of the Silicon Valley landscape.
Situated between the Google and Facebook campuses, the racially mixed city has seen rapid gentrification since the technology industry boom of the last decade. Tech workers in search of affordable housing have moved in, driving up rent and house prices and helping to level off an unemployment rate that is nearly triple that of the county.
Still, East Palo Alto can't manage to shed its reputation for once having the country's highest murder rate. Gang activity persists in the form of turf feuds and drug-vendetta-inspired violence, despite an overall drop in crime.
One issue deepening the divide between the tech industry and the city's locals is the lack of opportunities for East Palo Alto residents to get in on the success. There are very few places to learn computer science in the area.
Two students at Stanford University set out to change that.
Earlier this month, we featured Shadi Barhoumi and Rafael Cosman on our list of the 15 Incredibly Impressive Students At Stanford. The duo, who met and became friends as computer science majors, launched a learn-to-code program this summer called CodeCamp. More than 50 students, ages 14 to 23, who live in East Palo Alto learned to write and design software with the help of over 40 mentors from nearby high schools, universities, and tech companies.
At CodeCamp, students gather in the glow of a computer monitor, rather than around a campfire. Arts and crafts are replaced with coding sprints, and campers explore major tech company campuses instead of the woods.
Far from being your typical camp, CodeCamp gives these kids an outlet into the vibrant world of technology, which suddenly doesn't seem so off-limits.
When you think of a traditional camp, you might picture log cabins, a picturesque lake, and hoards of middle schoolers braiding macramé bracelets and competing in Color Wars. But CodeCamp is no ordinary camp.
In its inaugural summer, more than 50 middle school, high school, and college-aged students from East Palo Alto — all with little to no programming experience — learned to write and design software for free.
Its founders, Shadi Barhoumi and Rafael Cosman, became friends as computer science majors at Stanford University. The rising sophomore and senior spent last summer teaching programming at an after-school program at a local charter school, where they got the idea for CodeCamp.
“I had my qualms about diving, but once I got started, I knew I would never stop,” Robert Hernandez tells me before pulling a heavy black garbage bag up from the street curb.
We’re in downtown Brooklyn, New York, in front of a Key Foods grocery store, and Hernandez is just getting started for the night. A lifetime resident of the borough, Hernandez is middle-aged and Hispanic, and tonight he wears a baseball cap with the words “Never Give Up” emblazoned along the top. He’s offered to take me and Yana Maximova, a Portland, Oregon-based journalist, dumpster diving.
Just a year ago, Hernandez was frequenting the supermarkets in downtown Brooklyn as a customer. Every so often he’d see perfectly good food wasting away near the dumpster and would be tempted to grab it. It wasn't until a new roommate told him about dumpster diving and encouraged him to attend a monthly dumpster-diving group that he realized it was a viable practice. A group of "freegans," people who forage for discarded food as part of a larger anticonsumerist ideology, led Hernandez on a trash tour. During the nighttime walk, he saw what neighborhood grocery stores like Trader Joe’s, Garden of Eden, and Perelandra Natural Foods were leaving behind every day.
He was stunned.
“We have so many people starving in this country and then you head to the supermarkets and you see all this waste,"Hernandez says. "It makes no sense.”
Hernandez now makes the rounds of downtown Brooklyn's grocery stores twice a week to pick through what they leave behind, which according to him, is bountiful.
The legal situation around dumpster diving is murky and depends on the city you're in. If you get caught in New York, what happens more or less depends on the attitude of the police officer. If you're looking through a dumpster and a cop is having a bad day, or a store owner complains, you can be booked for trespassing, littering, or disorderly conduct. But most of the time the police and store owners don't get involved, as long as you are clean and don’t make a ruckus. It’s only a mildly risky endeavor.
At our first stop, a still open Key Foods, we find 20 or so neatly stacked garbage bags from the supermarket on the street corner.
Maximova and Hernandez take to the garbage bags with gusto, stepping right into the pile, untying the first ones they grab, and sticking their hands and a flashlight inside.
Maximova has been dumpster diving since she moved to the US from St. Petersburg, Russia, five years ago. In that time, she has fed herself almost completely from food she finds. She tells me proudly that she even catered her entire wedding in Pennsylvania using dumpstered food.
I am more apprehensive about the idea. It’s not that I have any problem with garbage — a job at a swim-and-tennis club in my teenage years ensured I did my fair share of handling nasty garbage — but I am more skeptical that I am going to find anything of use. I have distinct memories of handling hot, sticky garbage bags filled with unidentifiable garbage juice. There was never anything remotely appetizing.
Nonetheless, I get into the pile and untie a bag. All I find is soggy cardboard and some mushy peaches. I’m starting to think this adventure might be a bust.
“Look for the heavy ones,” Maximova says. “They usually have the best stuff.”
She pulls out a heavy, half-empty bag and unties it. Inside is the first find of the day: no fewer than 30 containers of various flavored yogurts from Fage, Chobani, and a small organic company I’ve never heard of.
I rush over in amazement. A few customers cycle out of the store and look confusedly at us. We take turns pulling out the yogurt containers and wiping them off to place in a box. I look at the expiration date: more than two weeks away. Why the yogurt is being thrown away is a mystery, but I have a hunch.
Most Americans have little idea what expiration dates, sell-by dates, and best-by dates really mean. Many tend to use these dates as deadlines for when to use or buy products, despite the fact that they mostly indicate guidelines for stores. Often, as stores get new shipments of food to place on the shelves, older — but still fresh — food with approaching expiration dates gets replaced in favor of new inventory. The old inventory gets discarded, despite being perfectly good.
Emboldened by the yogurt find, we keep searching through the bags, but Hernandez has gone through seven or eight with no luck and loses interest. I find a bundle of grapes and a package of Brussels sprouts, but we decide to leave those behind.
It's here that I learn a counterintuitive rule about dumpster diving: Divers are picky about what they keep. Because there is so much good food thrown away every day there is a garbage pickup (three times or more per week), the question quickly evolves from “what will we find?” to “what do we want to take?” Instead of sticking around at Key Foods to look through every last bit of trash, we head to Garden of Eden, a high-end organic market a few blocks away.
There we encounter another hazard of dumpster diving: garbage trucks. Dumpster divers hunt during a small window of time, between when stores put out their garbage (usually when they close) and when the garbage trucks pick it up, usually within an hour or two. This can make dumpster diving a race.
At Garden of Eden, a garbage truck is busy emptying out a dumpster across the street, and it will be soon moving onto the Eden dumpster. We start looking through the dumpster quickly, and the garbage men don’t seem to mind. The Eden dumpster is overflowing with clear bags, which makes the process easier because you can see what’s inside and how salvageable it is. The only issue is that, because there are so many bags over the lip of the dumpster, it is hard to see what could be hiding underneath.
Within seconds, I find a large bag filled with breads of many different shapes, sizes, and types. From the other side of the dumpster, I hear that Maximova has found tons of produce and Hernandez has found some donuts. I sort through my bag. The bread is still fresh, and I reason that it will probably last a week or more and take out several rolls and a loaf of ciabatta.
I go over to have a look at Maximova’s find. There are multiple bags filled with hundreds of ripe plums and nectarines. She starts pulling them out four at a time and I have to stop her because there is no way that she or I or Hernandez will be able to eat all of it before it goes bad.
Not everything is good. There is a bag of mutilated avocados that look more like dirty guacamole than fruit. When I find a bag of potatoes and yams, I have to feel through for ones that aren’t damp. The general warm, wet temperature inside the bag is off-putting and I only take two sweet potatoes. Despite the disappointments, we’ve gotten quite a bit from this dumpster and we decide to move on.
We head off to Starbucks and Hernandez tells me that in the 1980s, he used to work at the American Stock Exchange as a data clerk. While the work was satisfying, he couldn’t stand the culture on Wall Street and he grew disillusioned with capitalism as a system.
"The money was good, but I couldn't stand to see the greed that people sold their souls for," says Hernandez. "It felt shameful."
“We’re killing the Earth by throwing away good food. It could be going to food banks, pantries, or churches. But instead it just gets thrown in a landfill,” says Hernandez.
Over the course of the night, we visit three Starbucks, all within a few blocks of each other. All three have bulging trash piles, but most of the bags have wet coffee grinds in them, rendering whatever else is in there useless. This is another problem for divers: sabotage, both intentional and unintentional. According to Hernandez, some stores, to dissuade divers from going through their garbage, will intentionally mix good food with liquids, coffee grounds, or other contaminating trash, essentially destroying it.
At the last Starbucks, we hit the jackpot — a clear garbage bag filled with the day’s unsold pastries and sandwiches. Inside are rolls, croissants, cake pops, pecan pies, brownies, scones, flatbread chicken sandwiches, egg salad, etc. The expiration dates range from a day or two away to a week. I bite into a croissant. It tastes as good as any I’ve paid for.
A Starbucks employee pokes her head outside of a door on the side of the store.
“All we ask is that you clean up after yourselves,” she says. “Otherwise we get fined.”
Dumpster-diving etiquette dictates that divers untie and retie garbage bags, stack the bags the way they found them, and avoid leaving litter lying around the area. Most, but not all, divers abide by this.
On our way out from Starbucks, Hernandez shakes hands with a tall, heavy-set man, who tells him that the Trader Joe’s dumpsters are now out. Hernandez thanks him and we keep walking. Hernandez tells us the man is homeless, one of the many he has made a point to talk to and show how to dumpster dive.
“It’s about extending a hand to humanity,” says Hernandez.
As if on cue, we pass a shivering homeless man on the street. He is covered in a torn, bright blue windbreaker and has a scraggly blond beard. His face is whittled down. All three of us stop. Hernandez walks up to the man and asks him if he’d like something to eat. He opens the bag of Starbucks sandwiches and tells him to take as many as he’d like. The man takes an egg-salad sandwich but refuses to take more, despite Maximova's insistence. He thanks us repeatedly. The homeless man seems overwhelmed by the generosity.
The incident brings up another interesting wrinkle: Most homeless people won’t go into the dumpsters. Both Maximova and Hernandez have tried to feed homeless people with their dumpstered findings — which they eat themselves — and have been repeatedly denied. Only rarely do homeless people take them up on the offer.
“It’s all about people’s perceptions,” says Hernandez. “Everyone is so brainwashed that food has to come from the store shelves, that it has to have a far-off expiration date.”
We head to the evening's grand finale: Trader Joe's. The chain is considered something of a mecca for dumpster divers all over the country. The stores are so large and throw out so much food that every day the dumpsters are put out, you can guarantee that you will find good food. Add in that so many of Trader Joe’s products — from meat to vegetables, fruit, cookies, and salad — are packaged, and you can see why its a diver’s paradise.
In front of Trader Joe’s are no fewer than 10 dumpsters, all filled with bags, most of which have usable food inside. On some nights, Hernandez tells me, the scene at Joe’s can become competitive, as divers from all over the city converge to pick through the findings. On those nights, Hernandez prefers to wait out “the wolves,” as he calls them, because he believes the competition is not in the spirit of freeganism, which is about community and sharing.
In quick succession, we find a dumpster filled with egg cartons, Brie, organic chicken, hummus, salad packages, squash, and pita bread. All of it is still fresh, and sell-by dates aren't even close. There’s another dumpster filled with packages of tilapia, but fish seems a little too risky for me to take. Maximova confirms this suspicion, telling me to be very careful with meat and fish. Any packages that have bulging plastic, look swollen, or smell funky should be avoided, she says.
It isn’t long before we’ve filled up the shopping bags we have on us, and we’ve barely gone through four dumpsters.
“I have no idea why they throw these things out,” Hernandez says. “I don’t know what their standards are. If I knew, maybe I’d understand why so much goes to waste.”
I thank Hernandez for taking Maximova and me out for the tour. He reminds me not to eat anything before washing it, a cardinal rule of dumpster diving.
Here's a look at my take home at the end of the night:
And here's what the produce looked like after it was washed with hot water and white vinegar (as per Hernandez's suggestion):
Uber is a massive company that's now valued at $18 billion, likely making its CEO Travis Kalanick a billionaire.
But that wasn't always the case.
Uber was the third in a series of startups Kalanick had helped get off the ground, and the first that has been truly successful.
It took Kalanick years to get where he is now. At one point before Uber even existed, Kalanick was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and sleeping in his parents' house.
This is the story of how Travis Kalanick built Uber's empire.
Kalanick grew up in Northridge, Calif., a suburb outside Los Angeles. When he was a kid, he wanted to be a spy.
However, Kalanick would eventually follow in the entrepreneurial footsteps of his mom, a retail advertiser. He went door-to-door, selling knives for Cutco as a youngster. He started his first business at age 18, an SAT-prep course called New Way Academy.
You can go to any old New York bar to down a stiff drink, but if you're the kind of person that really wants to enjoy and savor a thoughtful cocktail, you'll need to look a little harder.
With help from Yelp reviewers, we put together a list of the best cocktail bars in New York City.
The bartenders and mixologists at these establishments know how to whip up everything from classic cocktails to innovative creations that won't fail to impress.
With a cocktail list the size of a short novel, Nitecap's knowledgeable mixologists are ready to effortlessly whip up a carefully crafted drink — even a nightcap — at your leisure.
"Nitecap goes the extra mile,"says Yelp reviewer Sarah H., "whether it comes to their delicious old-fashioned or ensuring that the place is not sardine crowded."
Note: Yelp's search results are based on an algorithm that is designed to provide the best results based on a number of different factors including review text, ratings, and number of reviews. Because several factors are taken into account, this is why you may see a 3.5-star restaurant with 500 reviews showing above a 4-star one with 15 reviews.
Honestly, what's more "Brooklyn" than a vintage-style cocktail? Dram delivers strong, liquor-based beverages in a modern speakeasy setting. The bar also serves beer and wine, but come on — we know why you're really here.
"The drinks are pricey,"Yelp reviewer Dinah B. admits, "but after watching the bartender vigorously at work, you'll agree it's worth the splurge."
Note: Yelp's search results are based on an algorithm that is designed to provide the best results based on a number of different factors including review text, ratings, and number of reviews. Because several factors are taken into account, this is why you may see a 3.5-star restaurant with 500 reviews showing above a 4-star one with 15 reviews.
An upscale bar and lounge in the Village, Analogue has the laid-back ambience to accompany the refined quality of the mixed drinks. Take your drink to the back "Record Room" and sip in style.
"The perfect place to go for a low-key drink,"says Yelp reviewer Edmund T. "They have a wonderful selection of whiskey and they make some pretty tasty cocktails."
Note: Yelp's search results are based on an algorithm that is designed to provide the best results based on a number of different factors including review text, ratings, and number of reviews. Because several factors are taken into account, this is why you may see a 3.5-star restaurant with 500 reviews showing above a 4-star one with 15 reviews.
Getting a job in the legal industry can be tough, but getting into law school can be even tougher.
The Princeton Review just released its 2015 guide to law schools, which includes lists of the "Best Professors,""Most Competitive Students," and of course, "The Toughest to Get Into."
To create the list, The Princeton Review surveyed 19,500 current law students and administrators from 169 schools. The Review also compiled LSAT scores, undergraduate GPAs of the first-year class, acceptance rates, and enrollment rates.
Here are the most competitive law schools in the U.S., according to the Princeton Review:
Yale University – Law School (Acceptance Rate: 9%; Total Enrollment: 625)
Stanford University – School of Law (Acceptance Rate: 10%; Total Enrollment: 574)
Harvard University (Acceptance Rate: 16%; Total Enrollment: 1,741)
University of California, Berkeley – Berkeley Law (Acceptance Rate: 10%; Total Enrollment: 916)
Duke University – School of Law (Acceptance Rate: 19%; Total Enrollment: 629)
University of Pennsylvania – Law School (Acceptance Rate: 17%; Total Enrollment: 786)
University of Virginia – School of Law (Acceptance Rate: 18%; Total Enrollment: 1,048)
University of Chicago – Law School (Acceptance Rate: 20%; Total Enrollment: 612)
Columbia University – School of Law (Acceptance Rate: 21%; Total Enrollment: 1,250)
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – School of Law (Acceptance Rate: 18%; Total Enrollment: 737)
Before a startup has a product ready to sell, it usually keeps its mouth shut about what it's working on. In the tech industry, that's called "stealth mode."
Most startups either bootstrap or live on a small seed investment while in stealth mode. They use that time to build the product, get some beta testers, and make a business case. They take all of that to the venture capitalists to raise the funds they need to operate.
But some startups are able to raise huge amounts of cash while still underground.
Total raised to date: $18 million from Accel Partners and Google Ventures.
What we know about it:NextBit Systems is doing something in mobile, possible a mobile storage product. Cofounded by Tom Moss and Mike Chan. Moss ran the Android Business Development team at Google from 2007 until 2010) and is a board member at Cyanogen, an open version of Android.
Chan was an Android engineer at Google, left for Android security startup 3LM, acquired by Motorola Mobility, and then Google bought Motorola.
Total raised to date: $20 million from IDEA Fund Partners and Sierra Ventures.
What we know about it:CNEX Labs is a San Jose startup working on big data storage. Cofounded by Yiren Huang, a chip engineer formerly of Huawei/Brocade/Cisco and Alan Armstrong, formerly of semi-conductor company Marvell.
Despite what has been a 200% rally in the market since early 2009, Goldman Sachs' David Kostin believes the S&P still has the ability to go from 1,960 today to 2,050 by the end of the year. From there, Kostin sees it going to 2,200 by the end of 2016.
While further gains in the market are likely to be modest, some stocks are certainly going to outperform others.
Kostin's new quarterly chartbook includes a list of 40 stocks offering the most upside relative to Goldman Sachs analysts' price targets.
There are a significant number of oil and gas companies including Halliburton, Cabot and Alcoa inc. Also on this quarter's list of the stocks with the biggest upside are tech high-flyers like Amazon and salesforce.com.
40. Dow Chemical
Ticker: DOW
Price as of September 30: $52.44
Upside to target: 24.0%
Comment: The company reported $0.74 per share on an adjusted basis in the second quarter, a 16% year-over-year gain.
Source: Goldman Sachs
39. Amazon.com Inc.
Ticker: AMZN
Price as of September 30: $322.44
Upside to target: 24.1%
Comment: “We’ve recently introduced Sunday delivery coverage to 25% of the U.S. population, launched European cross-border Two-Day Delivery for Prime, launched Prime Music with over one million songs, created three original kids TV series, added world-class parental controls to Fire TV with FreeTime, and launched Kindle Unlimited, an eBook subscription service," founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said in Amazon's second quarter earnings statement.
Source: Goldman Sachs
38. Newfield Exploration
Ticker: NFX
Price as of September 30: $37.07
Upside to target: 24.1%
Comment: In July, Newfield Exploration increased its capital investment outlook for 2014 by $100 million to $1.7 billion, reflecting a surge in the pace of their drilling.
Instagram users @HumzaDeas, @lastsuspect, and @demidism are three of New York City's "Outlaw Instagrammers."
Outlaw Instagrammers are young teens and 20-somethings who illegally scale buildings and bridges late at night to score some amazing images.
The phenomenon was brought from underground when New York Magazine profiled @HumzaDeas. After that, New Yorkers couldn't get enough of the Instagrammers' risky photos.
We compiled a few of our favorite pics from the three photographers listed above.
Buying a phone can be difficult. If you're shopping for a phone on contract, you're committed to that device for two whole years.
And even if you're not on contract, you'll want to keep your phone for a while to at least get your money's worth.
There are a few important questions you should consider before buying a smartphone.
Factors like price, size, and the type of software and app selection are all crucial to the overall experience.
First, choose a carrier.
If you're not already committed to a certain carrier, this is the first thing you should ask yourself when shopping for a phone. Your selection can change depending on which carrier you go with. Here's a look at what each major US carrier has to offer.
How much do you want to pay?
Smartphones don't come cheap, but some are certainly more expensive than others. Across carriers, previous generation phones such as the iPhone 5s, HTC One M7, and LG G2 are generally on the cheaper side (around $99 on a two-year contract, sometimes less depending on the carrier). The new Moto X, which is an excellent phone, also falls into this price range.
Newer phones like the iPhone 6, HTC One M8, and Galaxy S5 will cost more (about $199.99 on a two-year contract), but if you're looking to save a few bucks the phones above will suit you just fine. Phablets (i.e. giant phones like the iPhone 6 Plus or Galaxy Note 4) start even higher at $299 on contract.
But, keep in mind, you'll be committing to a two-year contract at those prices. So even though the phones may not seem dated now, if you opt for a previous-generation phone it will be about 3 years old when you're in the second year of the contract.
How big do you want it?
Screen size is another major factor you should consider when buying a phone. If you want something relatively small in the 4- to 4.7-inch range, check out the iPhone 5C, iPhone 5S, HTC One M7, iPhone 6, previous-generation Moto X, or Nokia Lumia 928.
There are more options when you branch into the 5- to 5.2-inch range. Many popular Android phones, such as the Samsung Galaxy S5, HTC One M8, LG G2, and Samsung Galaxy S4, fall into this category. While 5- to 5.2-inch phones may seem large if you're used to something tiny like the iPhone 4, they're still compact enough to use with one hand.
Stanford is easily considered the best college in the west. It's also the best in the country, taking the No. 1 spot on our list of the Best Colleges in America this year.
Known in particular for its exceptional computer science and engineering programs, Stanford is an active hub for talented and impressive students in all fields, from art to tech to business.
We've profiled 15 incredibly impressive undergrads at this top "dream college". They're starring in feature films, playing with the U.S. National Soccer Team, teaching kids to code, and a whole lot more.
Catalin Voss developed a facial recognition app that revolutionizes the way we learn.
Class of 2016
By the time he was 15, Catalin Voss produced the No. 1 podcast on the German iTunes store and commuted back and forth between his native Heidelberg and Silicon Valley to work with Steve Capps, one of the designers of the original Apple Macintosh computer.
By freshman year he founded Sension, a visual interface company seeking to revolutionize the way we learn. Voss and his team of roughly eight employees developed a lightweight facial recognition software, one that could track and understand many points in a person's face.
Their software can be used in testing and web lectures to improve the user experience (it might prompt you with a question if it senses you're not paying attention, or explain something further if you appear confused), and provide analytics to instructors about which test questions stumped students the most. Voss expects the product to be adopted by most major standardized test associations and universities in the next year.
His passion project, however, is Sension's groundbreaking Google Glass app, which allows the wearer to recognize people's facial expressions in real-time. It begins clinical trials with young people diagnosed with Autism later this month.
Clancey Stahr raises seven-figure sums as a partner at a Silicon Valley venture capital firm.
Class of 2015
At 21 years old, you're probably more likely to expect Clancey Stahr to be pitching to venture capitalists, rather than being one. But Stahr has been working at cross-border venture capital firm ZenShin Capital for the last two years, advising startups on product design, business strategy, intellectual property, and general legal advice. He was recently made partner at the firm — the third after the company's two co-founders.
Stahr leads the firm's investments in two major startup clients, Iotera and Simple Emotion, and sits on Simple Emotion's board of directors. Stahr has also raised significant capital, an undisclosed seven-figure sum, for the first close of ZenShin's Core Technology Fund.
School doesn't stop for the Management Science and Engineering major, who still manages to get all his coursework done while working anywhere from 30 to 40 hours a week in Silicon Valley.
Stahr graduates in May and plans to continue in his role as partner at ZenShin, but hopes to someday start his own company.
Garima Sharma is working to end the child bride epidemic in India.
Class of 2015
This past summer, Garima Sharma set off to teach human rights education to girls in Forbesganj, India on a Stanford fellowship. While there, she interviewed 80 mothers in order to better understand the constraints that often compel parents to have their daughters marry at young ages.
India is home to 24 million child brides, according to the New Delhi native. The consequences of marrying so young can be devastating: A child bride is twice as likely to suffer from spousal domestic violence and 1.5 times more likely to die in child birth.
"The aspirations that parents have for their daughters shape decisions around education, marriage, and career choices," Sharma says. "I want to better understand the incentives that drive parents' decision-making process[es]." She designed a research study and spent more than 100 hours interviewing the mothers.
Sharma, who also designed and implemented a curriculum to engage adolescent girls in Forbesganj who are at risk of trafficking, plans to pursue a joint MBA/MPA-ID degree and one day run an organization that provides sustainable livelihoods to girls and women in small-town Indian communities.
Dressing like your favorite character from comics, video games, anime, movies, or television is a favorite tradition of the Con — one that presents a unique opportunity to let your freak flag fly in a welcoming and safe environment.
Cosplay, if you don’t already know, is the combination of the words "costume" and "play." The term was likely coined at the 1984 World-Con science fiction convention, where a Japanese reporter was blown away by the attendee’s outfits and returned home not knowing what to call the elaborate display.
So far this weekend, we’ve seen a seven-foot-tall, life-like Groot just begging to be hugged, video game villains that still give us nightmares, and a mashup of Thor and Ronald McDonald the internet has coined McThor.
We rounded up photos of the best cosplay we saw at the ninth annual New York Comic Con. We’ll continue to update this post as the weekend continues.
See any great cosplay? Email us at mrobinson[at]businessinsider.com and kacuna[at]businessinsider.com.
What better way to kick off the Con than with Batman? Larry Smith was first in line for the unveiling of the new Batman Limited Edition Forever Stamps Thursday morning.
Smith told us this is his third or fourth version of the Batman Beyond costume. You can check out more of his work here.
There are always plenty of Batmen at the Con, and swarms came out for the Dark Knight's 75th anniversary. 1960s Batgirl and Batman show off how they pack a punch.
The Caped Crusader's nothing without his villains and this Harley Quinn was among Friday's best.
With almost one-third of the NFL season in the books, there are three clear-cut favorites at the top of the power rankings.
Below that, though, is a crapshoot.
Teams No. 4 through No. 14 are more or less interchangeable.
Elsewhere in the rankings, the Falcons continued to tumble and the Browns climbed.
1. Seattle Seahawks (previously: 1st)
Record: 3-1
Week 5 result: 27-17 win over Washington
One thing to know: On a team with no obvious weaknesses, the offensive line might be something to watch. They had two key penalties that negated touchdowns in Week 5.
2. Denver Broncos (previously: 2nd)
Record: 3-1
Week 5 result: 41-20 win over Arizona
One thing to know: What do we make of the sluggish rushing offense? Denver hasn't broken 100 yards rushing since Week 1.
3. San Diego Chargers (previously: 4th)
Record: 4-1
Week 5 result: 31-0 win over New York Jets
One thing to know: Phillip Rivers is down to the fourth-string center, and he's still putting up MVP-type numbers.
Early Friday morning, a mysterious statue of Edward Snowden appeared in Union Square Park in New York City, opposite the Abraham Lincoln statue.
Smoky Mountains National Park website
On a patch of palm-tree-abundant land by the Bay, the small city of East Palo Alto is an often forgotten corner of the Silicon Valley landscape.
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A Starbucks employee pokes her head outside of a door on the side of the store.-1.jpg)
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The S&P 500 has gained 7% so far this year. 
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