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New Zealand hasn't been walking the talk on climate risk, finds a sweeping new analysis of hundreds of annual reports and statements.

Climate change threatens hundreds of billions of dollars of property and infrastructure, and will require an economy-wide shift toward lower emissions. However, of more than 380 large organisations analysed, just 40 recognised the risks as of serious concern—suggesting that boards either opted not to publicly disclose the implications, or didn't discuss them at all. "Both are horrific—but the latter is particularly more horrific," said Wendy McGuinness, chief executive of Wellington-based think-tank the McGuinness Institute.

Hit by its worst weather catastrophe in decades, Japan watched in horror in the summer of 2018 as torrential rains caused more than 200 deaths and 600 landslides, with whole villages swallowed by floods. The rains, which prompted millions to flee their homes and left 250,000 houses without water or electricity, were the worst weather-related crisis for 35 years.

Crisis experts say Japan’s ageing demographics exacerbated the tragedy, as the elderly are more vulnerable and less able to protect themselves. Almost a third of the population was over 65 in the most damaged area, in the country’s south-west.

Government officials described “frantic efforts” to understand why so many elderly residents ignored evacuation orders. “I think Japan is going to have to recognise that old people either cannot, or do not want to, follow the textbook procedures in a crisis,” said one senior official.

The start-up scene in Japan has historically lagged behind the Silicon Valley and China, but several investors told CNBC that things are changing.

Workers have traditionally seen starting a company as "kind of a Plan B," according to James Riney, head of 500 Startups Japan. Finding entrepreneurial talent in the country used to be difficult because of an aversion to risk among Japanese workers. Many wanted the stability of corporate or public-sector jobs.

"If you didn't get into the major companies, the brand name companies, entrepreneurship was kind of like this second option that you could consider," Riney told CNBC.

Today, many young people are joining start-ups even as corporate Japan grapples with a labor shortage.

A "rant" is passionate, typically angry, speech or writing about a particular topic.

The topic of this rant from 2013 is the failure of marketing schools to prepare students for the new internet-based marketing industry. 

Take a deep breath and try to read as emphatically as you can.
—
"Unfortunately, the curriculum taught in today’s universities does not reflect the social media reality. Not one résumé from a 2013 marketing graduate on my desk contains a single social media account, blog or website URL. These are bare-minimum requirements to work as a marketer today. When asked, every candidate has openly admitted that they don’t read any blogs.

"The interview process proved what the résumés hinted at—that today’s marketing graduates have virtually zero Internet marketing training or knowledge. 

Forbes Coaches Council contends that boredom at work, far from being a terrible thing, offers a chance “to reflect, strategize and create”.

Here are some of the more constructive aspects of boredom, in their opinion:

1. Boredom Inspires Us To Expand Horizons 
Boredom provides a great opportunity for us to examine ourselves and seek new ways to expand our world and thinking, so go and learn something new. Get out of the rut that is creating the boredom. Do more. Be more. Live more.

2. Creativity Stems From Boredom 
Boredom leads to awareness. It signals to the brain that it needs different ideas, thoughts or things to do. Humdrum activities like taking a shower or driving have been times when great ideas and thoughts have occurred in the history of mankind.

Once upon a time, the American dream was built on the ideal that hard work leads to success. But today, with the rise of technology, the message has become: work all the time or you will fail, Melinda Gates argued in her first column on LinkedIn. 

This workaholic culture is particularly harmful to women, Gates writes, because women are still being told by society that home care and child care is up to them as well. She explained:

"We’re sending our daughters into a workplace designed for our dads... The American workplace was set up based on the assumption that employees had partners who would stay home to do the unpaid work of caring for family and tending to the house. Of course, that wasn’t always true back then, and it definitely isn’t today."

In 2013, Volvo announced a potentially revolutionary approach to designing electric vehicles (EVs). It wanted to replace some of the steel body panels in its cars with carbon fiber composite materials that can store power like a battery.

The rechargeable panels would be composed of multiple layers of carbon fiber, which are insulated from each other by fiberglass inserts. The result is a structural component that can be charged like the battery.

Though this new design would reduce weight problems associated with rechargeable car batteries, it was not without its problems. In the event that the car crashes, emergency crews would essentially be trying to fish someone out of a giant damaged battery. The cost of carbon fiber was also quite high. Due to these issues, Volvo decided not to mass produce its new cars.

Major Japanese agricultural machinery makers are developing self-driving tractors. The government plans to support the introduction of these  tractors amid growing hopes that such machines will help farmers cope with labor shortages at a time when many are aging and face difficulties finding successors.

In June 2017, Kubota Corp. started selling the country’s first tractors with autonomous driving functions on a trial basis. Utilizing the Global Positioning System (GPS), the tractors can keep tabs on where they are operating.

As the machines still need to be monitored, Kubota assumes that farmers will operate two tractors at a time, one with a driver and the other unmanned. Having two tractors operate simultaneously in this way on farmland with an area of 3,000-5,000 sq. meters would reduce the work time by around 30 percent, according to Satoshi Iida, a senior managing executive officer of Kubota.

Algorithms can learn to collude. 

Two law professors, Ariel Ezrachi of Oxford and Maurice E. Stucke of the University of Tennessee, have a working paper on how when computers get involved in pricing for goods and services (say, at Amazon or Uber), the potential for collusion is even greater than when humans are making the prices. 

Computers can't have a back-room conversation to fix prices, but they can predict the way that other computers are going to behave. And with that information, they can effectively cooperate with each other in advancing their own profit-maximizing interests.

Sometimes, a computer is just a tool used to help humans collude, which theoretically can be prosecuted. But sometimes, the authors find, the computer learns to collude on its own. Can a machine be prosecuted?