CATEGORIES

Another OILY COP

The annual climate conference known as COP (for Conference of the Parties, in United Nations-speak) will take place from late November to mid-December in Dubai.

A Path Out of Poland's Isolation

Voters in Poland will head to the polls this fall. The results of the election could ripple through the rest of the European Union.

TECHNOLOGY DOWN WITH THE AD DUOPOLY

For more than a half-decade, Alphabet Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. have ruled the digital advertising market—the money machine that funds the modern internet. They’ve collected more than half of all online ad dollars, year after year, to the point that competitors and regulators feared there would be no realistic way to break their hold.

Real Estate Recovery? Depends Where You Live

For millions of Americans, the end of cheap money hit home—literally. The Federal Reserve’s rapid-fire interest-rate increases paralyzed the housing market as buyers decided to wait for lower prices and relief from mortgage rates that had doubled. Would-be sellers kept inventory scarce by clinging to low-interest loans and memories of home values that hit records in the pandemic. Pending sales plunged 39% in November from a year earlier to the second-lowest level on record—behind only April 2020, when the US was locked down.

TRAINING YOUR REPLACEMENTS

In November a lawyer and computer programmer named Matthew Butterick sued the tech companies GitHub, Microsoft and OpenAI, saying a tool called GitHub Copilot that automatically generates computer code is essentially plagiarizing the work of human software developers in a way that violates their licenses.

HOT SEAT: Masayoshi Son

For years, SoftBank Group Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son directed unprecedented sums of money to hundreds of startups, inflating valuations worldwide by forcing rivals such as Tiger Global Management and Sequoia Capital to match his big bets.

SWALLOWING THE STARTUPS

The conventional goal for startup founders is to take their company public, with a top consolation prize being a lucrative sale to a larger company.

F1 to Women: We want you

Only five women have competed in Formula One. The last one to start in an F1 race was Lella Lombardi … in 1976. A former delivery van driver for her family’s butcher shop in Italy, Lombardi won fans with her punishing speed and grit. When a journalist asked her how it felt to pilot such big cars, she replied, “I don’t have to carry it, I just have to drive it.”

Hot Seat: ESG investing

Only a year ago, finance executives were waxing lyrical about environmental, social and governance investing, or ESG, a strategy that weighs risks from societal problems such as climate change and inequality and spots ways to profit from addressing them.

California Wants to Run Out of Gas

In late august, California air regulators announced that the state would ban the sale of most gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035, a policy aimed at encouraging a shift to electric vehicles (E.V.s). A week later, amid a massive heat wave, California officials begged E.V. owners not to recharge their cars during peak evening hours so as not to overload the state's energy grid.

Can Ron De Santis Ride 'Woke' To the White House?

The Florida governor’s attacks on business leaders who promote progressive values are finding traction with the Republican grassroots

New York, Decarbonized

A 2019 city law threatens big fines for landlords who don’t clean up their buildings

At This CES, Pragmatism Reigns

After years of focusing on nascent technologies, interest shifts to areas with near-term profit

FTX Was Targeting Main Street

○ Before it collapsed, the crypto exchange saw novice small investors as its future

Muffling Mumbai

Activists battling the cacophony say they can show the way for other noisy places

In a World of Data, A Power Play Over Chips

In 2022 the whole world seemed to wake up to the idea that semiconductors, rather than data, are the new oil. A confluence of factors—from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the fallout from Covid-19—has turned a thesis into a widely accepted doctrine that’s spurring almost $100 billion in new state investment.

I'm Leavin' It

Before the invasion of Ukraine forced McDonald's to exit Russia, the company won millions of people over to American fast food, revolutionized the country's supply chain and changed Russian enterprise for good

Japan's Carmakers Are EV Laggards

○ Not one of them is among the world’s top 20 electric-vehicle makers, risking their futures

The Great Compuppance

○ For some billionaires used to having their own way, 2022 was a reckoning

China's Tech Truce

The country's technology giants are finding out how to operate within Xi's tacit rules

The Education of Susan Collins

○ For the Boston Fed’s new president, the study of economics began during family vacations

The End of 'Made in the USA'?

○ Los Angeles’s fashion industry is feeling the effects of a workers’-rights push

THIS ISN'T ROCKET SCIENCE

A group of former SpaceX engineers is building a pizza-making robot and taking the project very seriously

WHERE TO GO IN 2023

As tourists of all types are set to spend a record amount on travel this year, it's time to go big-because you're definitely not staying home

Apple's Stock Has A Teflon Shield

The iPhone maker’s shares, down for the year, are still doing far better than those of its tech peers

Missing Children

Classrooms sit empty at day-care centers despite 24 billion in federal grants

Bosses Bite Back

Unions had some key wins in tech in 2022, but so did their opponents

A Sanctions-Proof Trade Route

Russia and Iran are spending billions to build an inland corridor stretching all the way to India

The Chatbots Are Coming for Google

ChatGPT and acrop of startups run by Google alumni reimagine search for the AI era

Thwarting Data Nightmares

The finance industry has built a digital vault for sensitive data in case of a hack. So far, no one has had to tap into it