In March 2020, when corporate offices shuttered in the face of the coronavirus pandemic and employees began working from home, companies were forced to find more efficient ways to do business. Call it “The Great Digital Transformation.” Before the pandemic, the average company estimated that transitioning to remote work would take 454 days, according to…
Monthly Archives: July 2022
As soon as Roe v. Wade was overturned on Friday, June 24, calls for people to delete their period-tracking apps were all over social media. These apps gather extremely personal data that could pinpoint a missed period. The fear is that in the hands of law enforcement, this data could be used to bolster a…
The White House is developing a research plan that would guide and set standards for how scientists study one of the more controversial ways of counteracting climate change: solar geoengineering. The basic idea is that we might be able to deliberately tweak the climate system in ways that release more heat into space, cooling an…
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The US Supreme Court just gutted the EPA’s power to regulate emissions The news: The Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions has been dealt a massive blow…
For Zeng, a young Chinese woman, an hour scrolling Douyin, the domestic version of TikTok, has become a daily ritual. Among its broad range of videos and livestreams, she particularly likes one creator: “Lawyer Longfei.” Every day, Longfei answers her 9 million followers’ legal inquiries live. Many deal with how women should approach tricky divorce…
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. China wants to control how its famous livestreamers act, speak, and even dress For Zeng, a young Chinese woman, an hour scrolling Douyin, the domestic version of TikTok, has become a daily ritual….
Suman Shakya wants me to touch the concrete wall of her bedroom, where her one-year-old son lies soaked with sweat. It burns my hand as if it were a hot pan. “Now imagine sitting in front of a hot pan in this weather for as long as it takes to make rotis for the whole…
The UN’s climate panel warns that the world may need to remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year in the coming decades, on top of rapid emissions cuts, to prevent or pull the planet back from increasingly dangerous warming levels. A growing number of research groups and startups are working…
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. No power, no fans, no AC: The villagers fighting to survive India’s deadly heatwaves The residents of Nagla Tulai, a farming village in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, have always had…
When enabled by flexible AI programming languages, quantum computing performs AI calculations much faster, and at a greater scale.Read MoreRead More