Intermediate

Fasten your seatbelts for a flight departing to Paris—and never leave the ground.

That’s exactly what 12 passengers did at First Airlines in central Tokyo this week, where they relaxed in first and business-class seats and were served four-course dinners, before immersing themselves in 360-degree virtual reality (VR) tours of the City of Light’s sights.

“A real trip is a hassle to prepare for, and expensive, and takes time. So I think it is good that we can enjoy all this hassle-free,” said Takashi Sakano, 39, who was on his first VR trip, adding that he wanted to try Rome next time.

At 6,600 yen ($62), a fraction of the cost of an actual trip overseas, it’s easy to see why First Airline’s two-hour “flights” to Paris, Rome, Hawaii and New York have been fully booked since the company opened in 2016.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, became the world's richest man, defeating Bill Gates, co-founder Microsoft.

The recent surge in Amazon stock has pushed Bezos' fortune to over $90 billion, vaulting him past Bill Gates. Bezos has been chasing Gates for the number one spot for a few years now and finally succeeded in superseding him. But this dream run was short-lived. On Thursday, Bill Gates was crowned again as the world's richest man as Amazon stocks went down by 1%. 

Because their wealth is largely a result of the shares they own of their company and its fluctuating price, it is possible that the wealthiest title may go back and forth between Gates and Bezos.

In a global study of IT security architecture, IT practitioners from Japan (79%) and Canada (74%) are the most concerned about millennials in the workplace posing a significant risk to security.

As the world’s first “connected” generation, millennials are hyperactive on their mobile devices, using apps and social media platforms for both personal and professional purposes. 

There are far too many stories of employees saving private information on their laptops and USBs only to have the devices stolen, leaking confidential information out into the world. Business leaders are urged to enforce strategies and policies that ensure all employees are keeping confidential company information safe.

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 America, on a unanimous voice vote, a Senate committee approved legislation that authorizes self-driving car makers to sell as many as 80,000 vehicles a year within three years that would be exempt from current safety standards as manufacturers develop technology for autonomous vehicles.

The legislation only allows for the exemption—which gives car makers the chance to test and design new technology while potentially foregoing traditional standards for items such as the placement of controls and displays, rear-view mirrors or protection from the impact of steering wheels in a crash—in cases where manufacturers can show the exempted car or component is as safe as that already on the road.

 “This is cutting-edge technology that is advancing extremely fast,” said U.S. Sen. Gary Peters. “It’s going to happen a lot sooner than people realize. This is not decades—it’s a matter of a few years.”

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.

In 2030, there will be more jobs than workers able to fill them in many of the world's largest economies, according to Boston Consulting Group senior partner Rainer Strack.

In his October 2014 TED Talk, Strack explained that the world is facing a labor shortage and skills mismatch. However, he said it's not too late to begin employee development and recruitment strategies that take a global perspective.

Part of the problem will be a surplus of low-skilled workers and a significant lack of high-skilled workers. The emergence of new technologies will simultaneously replace low-skilled jobs and create high-skilled ones.

Across Beijing's historic alleyways known as hutongs, construction workers are knocking down local restaurants and bars to make way for new, bigger developments. The historic alleyways are seeing more and more corporate ventures moving in. This is apparently to restore the city to a type of grandeur, but many residents say it is invading their lives and that the "soul" of their community is being lost.