Michaela Cross wrote about a trick that some have used to substantially reduce the cost of college:

• When determining eligibility for financial aid those deemed as “dependents” are evaluated based on their parent’s ability to pay – even if parents don’t way to pay.
• While those deemed as “independent” are evaluated based on their own income which, typically, for a college student, is next to nothing.
• There are many ways to be considered an “independent”. You could be an orphan or serve in the military. Or you could get married.
• Not only could this make your tuition free, it may also allow you to opt out of requirements like living in expensive on-campus housing.
• In the past a budding entrepreneur even set up a website to facilitate marriages between college students looking to save on costs.
• This is, of course, all highly illegal, and, if caught, perpetrators could be sentenced to several years in jail and be forced to pay multi-thousand dollar fines.

Read from people who have gotten married for the purposes of college, and what their experiences have been like over here.

Source: Vice

The falling price of oil is wreaking havoc in markets across the world, including the pirate one, writes Cassie Werber:

• As we’ve reported before, rates of piracy have been in decline for a while now.
• However, the little bit of piracy that did remain usually focused on oil tankers. The black gold could be siphoned off for a nice profit.
• Now with oil prices having dropped by $100 in less than a year, to about $30 now, pirates seem to be calculating that it’s no longer worth the effort and are stopping their attacks.

It’s unclear what the drones will target next.

Read more here.

Source: Quartz

Zheping Huang wrote about the peculiar role that Uber has gone onto play in China:

• Due to the one-child policy, few middle-aged middle-class people have individuals like cousins or siblings their own age to spend time with.
• In China one is also less likely to see random conversations being struck up at places like bars.
• Some have taken to driving for Uber. It gives them short bursts of conversation with varied strangers.
• Often these people make far more from their standard day jobs, than they do driving for Uber.
• If they’re interested in finding someone to play tennis with, they may try to pick up passengers around tennis courts and form weekend plans with them.
• At times Uber itself becomes the subject of socialization – some Uber drivers looking for social contact have come together to form communities.
• For others Uber is about business opportunities. One driver who sells electronics parks in front of the aerospace academy and picks up passengers from there in an effort to keep up with industry trends.
• And yet others just like the thrill of exploring massive cities like Beijing through people’s lives.

Read more about why Uber, rather than some of its more successful Chinese competitors, is the app of choice for those looking for socialization, and interviews with Chinese Uber drivers here.

Source: Quartz

Facebook has expanded its “Like” functionality to encompass more reactions. Will Oremus wrote about how Zuckerburg and co. could use this to their advantage:

• With the Like button users told Facebook that they wanted to see more of a certain thing. But with the new buttons Facebook can understand how users truly feel about something.
• Facebook could use this, for example, to figure out the perfect mix of emotions to elicit in you through the posts it shows, to keep you coming back.
• It could also, of course, figure out the mix of emotions that get you to click on the most ads.
• In fact, advertizers could now be asked to pay more if they want to ensure that their posts are shown alongside those that generate positive feelings.

Read other musings about why Facebook made some of the choices that it did, and what this means about the future of the social network here.

Source: Slate

Minorities in the United States usually earn less than a typical white heterosexual male. Yet there’s one minority group that defies this in both the United States and the wider world: lesbians. The Economist took a look at why:

• Since men usually earn more than women, lesbians might be working longer to compensate for the lost income of a male partner. Longer hours mean more experience which means promotions and higher wages.
• It might also be because lesbian couples share more childcare and housework responsibilities, freeing them to focus on their careers.
• Perhaps employers are promoting lesbians over other candidates because they’re less likely to take maternity leave.
• Or maybe having to deal with all of the discriminations that result from being a sexual minority make lesbians more competitive.

The full article provides more details and points out potential problems with the data. It’s worth a read here.

Source: The Economist

People always find a way wrote Chuin-Wei Yap:

• Due to concerns about China’s economy the rich are increasingly looking for ways to move their cash to safe havens abroad.
• To prevent sudden capital flight the government has limited transfers of cash out of the country to $50,000 a year.
• One company tried to hire a law firm to exploit a loophole by sueing itself for breach of contract. The plan was that the company would lose the lawsuit, and thus pay $3.5 million to its foreign subsidiary abroad.
• It was hoped that going through the entire legal process would keep the government blind to what was really going on.

Read more here.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Via: Marginal Revolution

Lindsay Kolowich posted an infographic showing Google’s biggest revenue generators:

• The most expensive keyword on Google is “San Antonio Car Wreck Attorney”.
• If someone has an ad on those keywords, and the ad is clicked, Google earns $670 from them.
• Lawyers in general seem to use Google to identify clients. Of the top 10 most expensive key words on Google, nine relate to legal inquiries.
• Rounding out the top 10 is “Austin Drug Rehab” – ads for which cost $463 per click.
• Ads for water damage, insurance, and online education are also amongst the 100 most expensive.

See the infographic here.

Source: Hubspot

Studios are changing how they think about release dates wrote Molly Driscoll:

• The summer months used to be when audiences could expect to see the blockbuster action movies that drew crowds.
• This movie season though Star Wars came out in December – traditionally a fallow period– and anticipated movies like Deadpool and Batman v Superman are coming out well before the summer.
• This is in part because there’s less competition. The highest grossing films – Avatar and Titanic – came out in December, allowing them an unchallenged run in theaters for several months.
• Movie studios are also trying to compete against a golden age of television. Now top quality TV content is released around the year, and the movie industry is trying to keep up.

Read more here.

Source: The Christian Science Monitor