Earlier this month when Pinterest launched Pinterest TV—a new, live video feature on the site where top creators have begun posting shoppable videos walking their followers through beauty routines and holiday cocktail recipes—the videos all shared a certain aesthetic and tone: breezy, instructional, and upbeat. This was by design. “We make sure the content is inspirational, it’s positive,” says Pinterest executive David Temple. “It’s the kind of c
IBM announced an important milestone in its years-long quest to build a quantum computer that matters. It’s built a new quantum processor called “Eagle” that breaks through the 100-qubit barrier with 127 qubits of processing power. Exceeding 100 qubits has been a tough problem for scientists: Quantum particles are by nature hard to control and given to errors. Earlier quantum machines have been used mainly by researchers to write and test quantum algorithms. Now, IBM says, r
The privacy-focused document editor Skiff believes it’s found a better way to protect your files. Instead of stashing your documents with a major cloud storage provider such as Amazon Web Services, Skiff is letting its users choose a decentralized alternative called Interplanetary File System, or IPFS. For users who opt in, Skiff will encrypt their documents, split them into pieces, and distribute them across a network of potential hosts, keeping them out of the hands of big tech companie
On a quiet weekend afternoon, I paused to reread the diary my late mother left behind as a means of remembering her and what she means to me. Mom was a professor of Sanskrit, and amid all her reflections of her day-to-day life and the challenges of being an academic, wife, and mother were observations that were more transcendental in nature, on topics ranging from nuances of ancient Sanskrit drama to her thoughts on Eastern and Western philosophers. One passage in her diary caught my attention.
Misinformation hit a crescendo during the pandemic, sowing distrust in COVID-19 vaccines and inciting riots at the Capitol. Now a coalition of experts on misinformation and disinformation are making a specific set of recommendations to lawmakers on how to fix the issue–and big tech might not be so happy. Most notably, the proposal calls for changes to Section 230, the controversial part of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that protects online platforms from getting sued over user-gener
Facebook may have changed its corporate name to Meta Platforms, but that won’t end its troubles—or efforts to rein in the social media company’s business practices. Lawmakers are pondering new ways to regulate Facebook, whose CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, wrote in 2019 that he welcomed new “rules governing the internet.” With that in mind, The Conversation asked three experts on social media, technology policy, and global business to offer one specific action the gover
Every “first” since the start of the pandemic comes with an extra dose of excitement, as well as anxiety. For me, last week included plenty of both. It was the first time I travelled on an airplane, and the first time I crossed an international border, since early 2020. I was headed to Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, the fifth time I was attending Europe’s largest tech conference. (The organizers covered my travel expenses in exchange for me moderating some panels.) There wa
The Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports, together with Microsoft and the digital cultural heritage company Iconem have unveiled a digital reconstruction of ancient Olympia, the site of the original Olympic Games, as it stood more than 2,000 years ago. A website and mobile app enables anyone to take a virtual guided tour through 27 sites such as the ancient Olympic Stadium, a gymnasium where athletes trained, and temples devoted to the Greek gods Hera and Zeus. The basic models of the buildings
To say it’s been a while since I’ve been an iPad owner would be something of an understatement. I eked every last molecule of utility out of the iPad 3, which came out in 2012, then drifted around Apple-lessly for years before finally picking up the new iPad Mini 4. I like its USB-C charging, the compact size, and my new daily routine of hand-solving crossword puzzle PDFs with a cheapo third-party stylus I bought. Oh, and iPadOS has come a long way since 2012. Though they 
Aicha Evans, CEO of Zoox, the autonomous vehicle company Amazon acquired in 2020, says she’s been informally meeting with other Amazon leaders in anticipation of potential collaborations, but she characterized her conversations as “discovery, nothing official.” Speaking at Fast Company‘s Agenda 2022: Rethink, Reimagine, Reinvent event on Wednesday, Evans says the Zoox team is singularly focused on creating its “robotaxi,” a driverless car designed for ri