Managers: have you wanted to know what drives your employees well before their scheduled review cycles? What if you could encourage a peer review process that takes place more frequently? How about incentives: do you ever feel like you’ve run out of ideas on rewarding your employees? Or perhaps you want to provide your teams with the best support possible so they’re happy and productive?

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America’s biggest mobile phone company reported solid profit growth in its second quarter 2015 results before the bell today, beating Wall Street’s earnings estimates with EPS of $1.04, up from 91 cents a year ago. Revenue missed expectations slightly. Analysts were concerned about how Verizon’s growth and market share would stand up to stiffer competition from smaller carriers T-Mobile and Sprint, but Verizon’s EPS was up a healthy 14.3% and its operating income margins on its all-important wireless service business jumped from 50.3% last year to 56.1% in 2Q15 as it added 1.1 million postpaid customers, well above Street estimates of 970,000 (and nearly twice the net additions in 1Q15). Tablets continue to play a big role in Verizon’s new activations, accounting for half of the new adds. Verizon now has 103.7 million retail postpaid connections, up 5.2% from a year ago.

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TurboTax will no longer support Backup to Cloud for its desktop users. The option, available as part of a pilot program, ended on July 21.

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One of Japan’s most iconic robots has been immortalized in precious metal, and if you’ve got a spare 20 million yen ($160,000), you can buy it in the Tokyo district of Roppongi this July.
This gleaming Gundam consists of 1,000 grams of solid gold. It’s being displayed at “The Art Of Gundam” exhibit, along with its silver counterpart—a steal at 648,000 yen ($5,000). Bandai, a Japanese toy company, and Ginza Tanaka, the craftspeople behind several other pop culture jewelry creations, such as a $60k golden Godzilla, collaborated on the creation. Each model stands 125 millimeters high (5 inches) and weighs 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds).
See also: ‘The Art Of Gundam’ Exhibit Showcases The Craftsmanship Behind The Series
“Mobile Suit Gundam” is a Japanese animation show which premiered in 1979 and is now a world-renown franchise. The most famous character is not human at all—it’s an 18-meter manned combat system called Gundam. Since the franchise’s launch TK years ago, dozens of cartoon heroes have piloted ever-changing iterations of the Gundam. Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin is frequently listed on the  New York Times bestseller list for manga in the United States Bandai, the company that owns Gundam, reported $600 million earnings for the franchise in 2014.
Nowhere is Gundam more beloved than in its home country of Japan, where expensive commemorations of the cartoon are more common than you’d expect. In Tokyo, you can dine at a Gundam restaurant and sleep in a Gundam hotel room.

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The National Security Agency (NSA) is not perhaps known for its openness and willingness to share. That’s not what it does, essentially — and of course not why it exists. That being said, it appears that the core spirit of open source collaborative software application development is very much recognized by ‘the agency’, just as it is in any other commercial business. Community code evolution benefits all (including the NSA) if the principals of natural selection hold, which they do.

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