Percent of HIV Strains Neutralized

The National Institutes of Health has announced encouraging progress on a vaccine regimen that could treat some types of HIV. While a preliminary human trial will begin late next year, in animal trials the regimen neutralized up to 31 percent of viruses from a panel of 208 HIV strains. Right now NIAID is working on making the treatment more potent and getting it ready for clinical trials, which is super exciting.
National Institutes of Health

Percent of Employees

A new PayScale survey of over 160,060 workers found that only 37 percent have asked for a raise at their current employer. The good news? Of those who asked for a raise, 70 percent said they received one, and 39 percent got the amount they asked for. Still, a troubling finding from the survey is that people of color were less likely than their white counterparts to receive a raise, after controlling for both tenure and job level.
P ayScale

Opposition to Refusing Service To LGBT Customers

Generally speaking, Americans oppose allowing small businesses to refuse service to LGBT individuals, even if they claim selling goods or services to lesbians and gays violates their religious beliefs. Overall,57 percent of U.S. adults oppose denial of services based on LGBT status, including majorities of Christians and Catholics and a plurality of Protestants.
Joanna Piacenza, Morning Consult

Account Details Leaked

MyHeritage, a genealogy and DNA testing service, appears to have had a data breach last year, with a file of 92,283,889 customers' email addresses and hashed passwords making its way on to a private server. A scare of this magnitude at a genetic database of all places is giving some users pause because, while passwords can be reset, I don't think gene editing is where we'd need it to be to get out of that one.
M akena Kelly, The Verge

New York Taxi & Limousine Drivers

In 1999, the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission oversaw 97,000 licensed drivers. Today, it oversees 180,000 drivers. The influx of rideshare drivers to the city has been been hard on the people making a living taking fares, 91 percent of whom are immigrants and many of whom are being pushed into a perilous financial situation by the competition.
R eihan Salam, The Atlantic

U.S. Tax Credits

Alphabet's self-driving car unit is poised to buy a bunch of cars. Waymo is specifically eyeing 62,000 partially electric Chrysler Pacifica minivans. This means it may reap the benefits of a tax credit for up to $7,500 per vehicle, and if the deal goes through that's $465 million in tax credits for pursuing clean energy vehicles.
David Yanofsky, Quartz

Hong Kong Dollars

One Hong Kong parking space has sold for a record 6 million Hong Kong dollars, or about $760,000 USD. Even better, this was a quick turnaround real estate play for the investors, as they booked a cool HK$2.6 million profit flipping the 16.4 foot by 8.2 foot space after 9 months. Per square foot, that's just a tiny bit lower than the actual price of a luxury apartment in a nearby building.
Lam Ka-sing, South China Morning Post

Billions of Dollars in Stock

WhatsApp founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum sold their company to Facebook in 2014 for a $21.94 billion price tag. They haven't gotten along well with management, prompting early, expensive exits. Acton resigned last September, and Koum announced he will leave in mid-August. By leaving before November 2018, they're respectively forfeiting $900 million and $400 million in unvested shares at current Facebook stock prices. Everyone has, at one point or another, been a little unhappy at work. But I have never been $1.3 billion worth of ticked off at my job, and I tremble at the thought of that kind of mad.
Kirsten Grind and Deepa Seetharaman, The Wall Street Journal

Numlock News

Numlock News: June 6, 2018

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