11 more billionaires agree to give money away – read their pledge letters

From The Wall Street Journal: Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have persuaded 11 more of their billionaire peers to promise to give away half of their wealth, including tech luminaries Gordon Moore (co-founder Intel) and Reed Hastings (co-founder Netflix). The new 11 will join the Giving Pledge, a campaign Gates and Buffett launched in 2010 …

The Millennium Development Goals – wiping out disease, famine, and poverty on Earth

By Bill Gates People sometimes say that the United Nations doesn’t do enough to solve the big problems of the world. I’ve never really agreed with that point of view, but if anyone is looking for evidence of the UN’s impact, a good place to start is the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). They were agreed to …

ARPA-E – a new federal agency created to fund research of promising, but unproven, energy technologies

ARPA-E: A Good Beginning for U.S. Energy Innovation By Bill Gates Clean energy and innovation are two areas that I’m passionate about, so I’ve been looking forward to investigating some interesting new energy technologies at the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit this week. ARPA-E is a new federal agency—the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy—created in 2009 to fund …

Apple has staged a massive comeback, stopping Android…for now

In the past three months, Nielsen says, Apple has grabbed a 43% share of the smartphones sold in the U.S. Android’s share has increased versus a year ago–it still leads the market with 48%–but Android’s share gains appear to have stalled. Apple’s gains are the result of a few key factors, all of which demonstrate …

An election year Democrat promise – 1 million more graduates in science, math, and engineering

President Barack Obama proposed $80 million in new government funding for a program to boost science and math education in U.S. schools. The aim of the new proposed funding is to train 100,000 specialized teachers, who would help to “meet an ambitious goal, which is 1 million more American graduates in science, technology, engineering, and …

The college dropout bubble

Did you know that every year $4 billion is lost due to college dropouts? The number comes from lost income and compounds every year with new dropouts adding to the roll call. It’s an interesting statistic that highlights a problem in education. One that I call the college dropout bubble, but unlike most bubbles this …