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As a result of these gains, wealth has increased exponentially, and world poverty is now at all-time lows. Life expectancy continues to improve in most countries, global literacy is near 90%, and there are well over 100 democracies throughout the planet. But not every positive trend can keep going forever. Sometimes things regress temporarily, only to be corrected later on. Other times things change more fundamentally – and that regression can be the beginning of a newer, long-term reality....

While Y Combinator has made a clear impact on the tech sector, the company also launched an internal side project in 2007 that would end up becoming highly influential in a different and surprising way. Its user-powered news aggregator called Hacker News, which is now visited by 20 million people per month, has become a mainstay for entrepreneurs, tech professionals, and venture capitalists around the world. Using a Reddit-like interface, users can upvote and downvote articles that they think have the most relevance to trends and issues affecting the tech sector....

Based on how much cocoa comes from West Africa, it’s likely that most of the chocolates we eat have a little bit of Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana in them. The $130B chocolate industry relies on cocoa farming for supply of chocolate’s key ingredient. Yet, many cocoa farmers make less than $1/day. The above graphic maps the major trade flows of cocoa and allows us to dive deeper into its global supply chain....

Commodity Scoreboard: Uranium and Silver Led the Way in Q1 [Chart] The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays. The overall commodities market (S&P GSCI) tanked -5.1% in Q1, weighed on by fossil fuels with oil and natural gas down -11.7% and -7.1% respectively. However, it was a different energy-related commodity that had the last laugh. Uranium quietly led the pack in Q1 with an impressive 11....

Death and taxes are both inevitable, but at least the experience of death does not repeat itself every year. This infographic shows the Discretionary Budget of the United States for 2015, and omits mandatory spending for programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. In other words, it shows where the government’s priorities are with the money that it chooses to spend. While fiscal 2015 has been already underway for awhile and the budgets for some departments may have been amended, the biggest benefit that this visualization brings is context....

Facebook has found itself in the headlines a lot in 2018, but not for reasons investors are likely to be excited about. The tech giant battled privacy scandals, policy changes, and dwindling user engagement throughout the year, and in July the company made history with an overnight drop of $119 billion in market capitalization – the single largest drop in U.S. history. We did today’s chart in conjunction with Extraordinary Future 2018, a tech conference featuring Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie as a speaker on Sep 19-20 in Vancouver, BC, to show Facebook’s volatile year in perspective....

This data from Recode looks at how many minutes U.S. adults spend on various forms of media, comparing mobile, desktop, radio, television, and magazines. How Many Minutes are Spent on Media? In 2021, collective media consumption continues its upward trajectory, and is set to be at the highest it’s ever been. In 2021, overall media consumption among U.S. adults is estimated to be around 666 minutes per day, or 11....

26 Surprising Facts About Google Like many companies in Silicon Valley, Google has its own famous folklore that helps explain the culture and identity behind the technology giant. From secrets to idiosyncrasies, this infographic rounds up 26 crazy facts that you likely did not know about Google. The company was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. This part you know, but did you know that the original name of the search engine was “Backrub”?...

Millennials clearly value entrepreneurship, and 67% of this group says that their goals involve eventually starting a business. Statistics show that millennials are always “on”, motivated to make a difference, and consider flexible hours to be a key to boosting productivity. Unfortunately, millennials do not necessarily walk the walk – yet, anyways. In 2014, only 2% of millennials in the U.S. were self-employed, compared to 7.6% and 8.3% for Gen X and Boomers respectively....

Here’s 48 Hedge Fund Terms Every Investor Should Know For many investors, hedge funds appear to be shrouded in mystery. There’s a practical reason for this. The best hedge funds are extremely careful about protecting their ideas and tactics, because they provide an important competitive advantage for making profits. An example that illustrates the paranoia around this was described in Flash Boys by Michael Lewis, where he noted that at the ultra-secretive firm Citadel, it took five ID card swipes for an employee to simply start her day....

5% of the richest billionaires are women 6% of S&P 500 companies have women CEOs 20% of Fortune 500 board members are women There are many arguments that can be made for closing this gender gap, but the most compelling one is very simple: there’s a growing body of research that shows that gender diverse companies make more money. Women and Profit Today’s infographic comes to us from Evolve ETFs, a company that has launched an ETF focused on gender diversity, and it shows that companies with more women in senior roles are making better decisions and ultimately higher profits....

Is this the right route to take, and does America really need to negotiate new trade deals? There are arguments either way, but the the reality is that trade agreements like NAFTA are perceived to have a mixed track record of success. Under NAFTA, trade volume has exploded, prices have been lowered, and U.S. reliance on oil imported from the Middle East has decreased, but at the same time, it is clear that manufacturers, especially in the auto industry, have been setting up shop in Mexico....

The Billion Dollar Startup Club The Wall Street Journal has released a standalone interactive infographic that allows you to read through all 73 companies valued at over $1 billion dollars (USD) in detail based by country, time of last raise, and other useful details. It looks like it will be constantly updated as well based on new raises and valuations, so it is definitely a link worth bookmarking. We do have one issue with it though – it seems that they have missed some of Canadian “narwhals” that are valued at over $1 billion dollars....

The History of Wearable Technology Today’s infographic not only highlights the history of wearable technology, but it also shows the noticeable acceleration in the advancement and adoption of new innovations. At the beginning, it would take hundreds of years between breakthroughs such as eyeglasses and the abacus ring. Today, new wearable tech innovations happen every month. In the last ten years, we’ve had the Google Glass, Fitbit, Oculus Rift, and countless others....

Silver Series Part 2: Who Controls The World’s Silver? Within the Earth’s crust, there is 1 gram of silver for every 12.5 tonnes of earth (27,600 lbs). This makes silver very difficult to find. To understand silver supply, we must first discover how economic silver deposits form. Silver is typically mined as a byproduct in polymetallic deposits with a variety of metals. Other key metals found in these ores include lead, zinc, gold, and copper....

However, we know that only 6.4% of American adult population are millionaires, and the reality is that not all of those are self-made. What habits and practices helped this elite group in accumulating large amounts of wealth, and how can we apply these to our own careers to become more financially independent? Copying the Habits of Millionaires Today’s infographic from StocksToTrade.com skips the silver bullets and “get rich quick” tricks to show the real habits of millionaires that have led to wealth accumulation over time....

Visualizing the Emerging Markets of the Future China’s rapid pace of growth is slowing, and no one knows if India can become the next China. So who will lead global economic growth? Today’s infographic looks at the emerging markets of the future, or to say more confusedly, the “emerging” emerging markets. The data speaks for itself. By 2050, Nigeria will be the 9th biggest economy in the world when measured by purchasing power parity (PPP)....

Last year, on a global basis, more net power generating capacity was added through renewable sources than via all other power sources combined. Which countries are leading this charge, and what power sources are being adopted the fastest? Today’s infographic comes to us Raconteur, and it breaks down various metrics around energy investment. The graphic looks at absolute and per capita power consumption by countries, as well as dollars being invested into each particular type of green energy....

Visualizing What the World Thinks About Waste See the high resolution of this graphic by clicking here for best viewing. Waste is a seemingly inseparable part of modern life. In every industrialized society, humans consume many goods ranging from fresh food to automobiles. Inevitably, the majority of these goods are associated with waste that ends up clogging up our landfills, recycling systems, or even our oceans. While garbage is widely universal, our perceptions on it vary from culture to culture – and when it comes to thinking about the future of our planet, these differences are important to think about....

Around this time, Bloomberg had an article titled “Oil Topping $116 Seen Possible as Iraq Conflict Widens” while even Investopedia forecasted on June 19, 2014 that oil prices could “hit $118.75” in the coming weeks. Forecasting is hard, and that’s why we don’t usually do it. In this case, oil prices stunned many investors by dropping off a cliff, tumbling to less than $50/bbl close to six months later. As Warren Buffett says, many people were caught swimming naked when the tide of high oil prices went out....