A little more than a month ago, TCL debuted smartphones under its own name for the very first time in the US. The brand is far more commonly associated with making affordable smart televisions, but it’s also made phones for many years under different brands it owns or licensed with, like Alcatel, Blackberry, and Palm. […]
Last week, a British research team announced that a cheap, safe, widely available drug called dexamethasone makes a huge difference in saving the lives of people severely ill with Covid-19. Perhaps no one was more surprised than the people on the research team. That group, the United Kingdom’s Randomised Evaluation of Covid-19 Therapy (Recovery) Trial,
Dexamethasone and the Recovery Trial’s High-Speed Science Read More »
Last week, Washington strongly objected to a new project from Facebook and Google. It’s too risky, and offers “unprecedented opportunities” for Chinese government espionage, the Justice Department declared. The project, however, wasn’t about online speech or contact tracing, but concerned an issue that would seem far less politically charged: building an undersea internet cable from
The US-China Battle Over the Internet Goes Under the Sea Read More »
“You are going to be a gambler?” That’s my grandmother Baba Anya speaking. My last living grandparent. I’ve come to Boston for a family visit, nearly bouncing with excitement at my new project, and she is not impressed. To call her lukewarm would be the understatement of the hour. She has a way of setting
In April, with travel halted worldwide and revenue plunging, the cofounders of Airbnb raised $2 billion in debt and equity financing. Two weeks later, I was laid off. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Anna Furman is a Los Angeles-based writer. She covers arts and culture stories for the New York Times, The Guardian, and other publications. For
Airbnb Quietly Fired Contract Workers. I’m One of Them Read More »
On Saturday, the residents of Verkhoyansk, Russia, marked the first day of summer with 100 degree Fahrenheit temperatures. Not that they could enjoy it, really, as Verkhoyansk is in Siberia, hundreds of miles from the nearest beach. That’s much, much hotter than towns inside the Arctic circle usually get. That 100 degrees appears to be
Why the Arctic Is Warming So Fast, and Why That’s So Alarming Read More »
For a minute there, at the start of the global lockdown, it seemed to be an open question: Would we all be able to get everything we needed delivered? Three months in, while nobody’s getting two-day deliveries anymore, it does seem as if Amazon alone might be able to provide almost all of us with
The Future of Commerce Belongs to the Frictionless Read More »
“This year we wanted to help you with tracking in apps,” said Katie Skinner, a user privacy software manager at Apple during the keynote. “We believe tracking should always be transparent and under your control. So moving forward, App Store policy will require apps to ask before tracking you across apps and websites owned by
Apple Pushes Back Against Ad Tracking in Safari and iOS 14 Read More »
President Trump Monday signed an executive order temporarily suspending many nonimmigrant visas, including temporary H-1B visas popular among tech companies. Industry executives say the move will push highly skilled tech workers and prospective innovators to other countries. The executive order also suspends for the rest of the year most J-1 visas, designed for research scholars
President Trump Just Suspended the Tech Industry’s Favorite Visa Read More »
Instead, they pointed the finger of blame at the washing machines themselves, specifically how water moves through clothes. You might assume that synthetic clothes will shed more microfibers if they’re packed tightly in a big wash, rubbing against one another. But these researchers found that high-efficiency machines, which use less water, also created less fiber
Who’s to Blame for Plastic Microfiber Pollution? Read More »
