CATEGORIES

US SERVICE INDUSTRY GROWS MORE SLOWLY IN DECEMBER

Growth in the U.S. service industry, where most Americans work, pulled back in December after expanding at a record pace the previous two months.

US JOBLESS CLAIMS RISE BY 7,000, BUT STILL LOW AT 207,000

The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose last week but remained at historically low levels, suggesting that the job market remains strong.

Do We Need Humans For That Job? Automation Booms After Covid

Ask for a roast beef sandwich at an Arby’s drive-thru east of Los Angeles and you may be talking to Tori — an artificially intelligent voice assistant that will take your order and send it to the line cooks.

2022 Apple: Huge Innovations With New Product Categories

With 2021 coming to a close, all eyes are on where Apple is headed next.

MAGNET MILESTONES MOVE DISTANT NUCLEAR FUSION DREAM CLOSER

Teams working on two continents have marked similar milestones in their respective efforts to tap an energy source key to the fight against climate change: They’ve each produced very impressive magnets.

PLENTY OF PITFALLS AWAIT ZUCKERBERG'S ‘METAVERSE' PLAN

When Mark Zuckerberg announced ambitious plans to build the “metaverse” — a virtual reality construct intended to supplant the internet, merge virtual life with real-life and create endless new playgrounds for everyone — he promised that “you’re going to able to do almost anything you can imagine.”

ROADS, TRANSIT, INTERNET: WHAT'S IN THE INFRASTRUCTURE BILL

The $1 trillion infrastructure plan that President Joe Biden plans to sign into law has money for roads, bridges, ports, rail transit, safe water, the power grid, broadband internet and more.

Can Virtual Reality Help Seniors? Study Hopes To Find Out

Terry Colli and three other residents of the John Knox Village senior community got a trip via computer to the International Space Station, a kickoff to a Stanford University study on whether virtual reality can improve the emotional wellbeing of older people.

5 Tips For Fostering A Successful Hybrid Workplace

Businesses figured out how to work remotely on the fly when COVID-19 rapidly disrupted our way of working.

In Review - 2021: A CHALLENGING YEAR FOR APPLE

Whilst Apple has undoubtedly faced challenges this year amidst the coronavirus pandemic, the Cupertino company has continued to innovate in a number of key fields, pushing forward its vision for best-in-class hardware and software.

GLOBAL GLITCH: SWATHS OF INTERNET GO DOWN AFTER CLOUD OUTAGE

Dozens of websites went down briefly around the globe Tuesday, including CNN, The New York Times and Britain’s government home page, after an outage at the cloud computing service Fastly, illustrating how vital a small number of behind-the-scenes companies have become to running the internet.

AIRBUS-BOEING DEAL EASES US EU TENSIONS BUT CONFLICTS REMAIN

The deal the United States and the European Union reached this week to end their long-running rift over subsidies to Boeing and Airbus will suspend billions in punitive tariffs.

DOGECOIN: THE NEW BITCOIN IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW

With more than 47 million Twitter followers, Elon Musk holds a great deal of influence in the world of tech and cryptocurrency, proven by Dogecoin’s meteoric growth in recent weeks. A single tweet from Musk sparked overnight interest in the currency, first released in 2013, and now has investors taking it seriously. The payment system, developed by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, reached a market capitalization of $5,382,875,000 in January, and with its value growing rapidly, it’s a genuine Bitcoin alternative. Now could be the time to invest...

WILL GYMS GO THE WAY OF ARCADES AND MOVIE RENTAL STORES?

Going to the gym was always part of Kari Hamra’s routine until last year’s government ordered shutdowns forced her to replace the workouts with daily rides on her Peloton stationary bike.

TALK SAFER: APPS TAKE PRIVACY FIGHT TO FACEBOOK AND GOOGLE

As messaging giant WhatsApp prepares to hand over more data to Facebook, users are flocking to rival services in protest, with Signal jumping from 250,000 downloads on the App Store a week to almost 10 million. The move sparks debate over the relationships we hold with the world’s biggest technology companies and a new war on privacy is rearing its head.

MUSIC: CLIMBING THE CHARTS TO BECOME NUMBER ONE

Though Apple Music may still be playing catchup to Spotify in terms of users, new data from the Mechanical Licensing Collective has revealed Apple is the industry leader when it comes to royalties, demonstrating the company’s commitment to paying talent. As Apple continues to expand its services, the future looks bright, with new Music innovations coming their way.

YOU: INTERFACE DEEPER INTEGRATION IS COMING. JUST FOR YOU

According to a new study from WhistleOut, the average consumer spends an eye-watering nine years of their lives looking at their smartphones, and that’s without mentioning the use of computers, televisions, and other devices that increasingly control our lives.

FED TO ACCELERATE WITHDRAWAL OF ECONOMIC AID AS PRICES SURGE

Under Chair Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve is poised this week to execute a sharp turn toward tighter interest-rate policies with inflation accelerating and unemployment falling faster than expected.

EU PLAN FOR SWEEPING UPDATE OF BIG TECH RULES GAINS MOMENTUM

The European Union’s ambitious plan to update its pioneering internet rules gained momentum Tuesday after a key committee passed measures requiring technology companies to better police content and lawmakers prepared to vote on regulations to rein in Big Tech.

EX-NETFLIX EXECUTIVE GETS PRISON FOR ACCEPTING TECH BRIBES

A former Netflix executive was sentenced this week to 2 1/2 years in federal prison for taking bribes and kickbacks from tech companies to approve lucrative contracts with the streaming giant.

YOUTUBE STAR MRBEAST RETHINKS OLD NOTIONS OF PHILANTHROPY

The line of cars started forming at dawn. It was early November in Greenville, North Carolina, and drivers waited in a line that stretched for miles to pick up Thanksgiving turkeys — 10,000 free frozen birds to anyone who asked.

NASA CRAFT ‘TOUCHES' SUN FOR 1ST TIME, DIVES INTO ATMOSPHERE

A NASA spacecraft has officially “touched” the sun, plunging through the unexplored solar atmosphere known as the corona.

DELTA AIR LINES NO LONGER EXPECTS TO LOSE MONEY IN Q4

Delta Air Lines no longer expects to lose money in the fourth quarter with travel during the holiday season heating up.

A SPIDEY SENSE OVERDOSE IN ‘NO WAY HOME'

Spider-Man movies have come in such flurries over the last two decades that you could almost tell time by them. Who needs the long centuries of the Triassic, Jurassic and the Cretaceous, when, in the span of just one generation you can have the Tobey epoch, the Garfield era and the Tomozoic?

BANKS SLOWLY RECONSIDER OVERDRAFT FEES, AMID PUBLIC PRESSURE

The banking industry appears to have overdone it on overdraft fees.

CAN YOUR PET GET COVID-19?

Yes, pets and other animals can get the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, but health officials say the risk of them spreading it to people is low.

2021 NOTEBOOK: BILLIONAIRES AND THE SPACE RACE

Captain Kirk — aka William Shatner — finally made it into space, part of the new wave of civilian travelers sponsored by names like Bezos, Musk and Branson who are slipping the surly bonds of Earth 10 years after NASA’s shuttle program ended. But there are big differences.

Group: Pandemic Tech Tools Raise Risk Of Everyday Tracking

Tech tools like digital contact tracing apps and artificial intelligence that European governments rolled out to combat COVID-19 failed to play a key role in solving the pandemic and now threaten to make such monitoring widely accepted, a new report shows.

European Activists Fight for Right to Repair Electronics

At a table scattered with tools and wires, volunteer repairers sit across from the owners of an assortment of inoperable electronics. The volunteers at a free “repair cafe” in Copenhagen disassemble and diagnose gadgets while the customers watch, each doing their part for the environment - one broken blender, radio or laptop at a time.

BIDEN ORDER WOULD MAKE US GOVERNMENT CARBON NEUTRAL BY 2050

President Joe Biden signed an executive order to make the federal government carbon-neutral by 2050, aiming for a 65% reduction in planetwarming greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and an all-electric fleet of car and trucks five years later.