If Meta thought a rebrand would put the nightmare of 2021 to bed, the company was in for a rude awakening on Thursday. The company was hit by the worst one-day slump in stock-market history. But that unwelcome landmark merely scratches the surface of Meta’s problems. To truly capture the turmoil, we need to dig into the numbers that are spooking investors. $200 billion: Meta’s loss in value After Meta reported a rare decline in quarterly profit on Wednesday, shares in the company plummeted by mo
Understanding when and why a cell dies is fundamental to the study of human development, disease, and aging. For neurodegenerative diseases such as Lou Gehrig’s disease, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s, identifying dead and dying neurons is critical to developing and testing new treatments. But identifying dead cells can be tricky and has been a constant problem throughout my career as a neuroscientist. Until now, scientists have had to manually mark which cells look alive and which look dead under
Artificial intelligence (AI) has now closely matched or even surpassed humans in what were previously considered unattainable areas. These include chess, arcade games, Go, self-driving cars, protein folding, and much more. This rapid technological progress has also had a huge impact on the financial services industry. More and more CEOs in the sector declare (explicitly or implicitly) that they run “technology companies with a banking license”. There is also a rapid emergence and growth of the f
The tech world can’t stop talking about Spotify — but it doesn’t seem like the streaming giant is actually listening. For the uninitiated, Neil Young and others have removed their music from Spotify, because they believe Rogan’s podcast — something consumed by millions — contains vaccine misinformation. You can read about the saga here. The streaming service responded with a blog post saying it will publish its platform rules, and a COVID-19 hub containing globally verified information about the
Wi-Fi is everywhere and we can’t really do without it. But the current-gen Wi-Fi standard is limited to data transfer between devices, and with every new iteration, we just see better speeds and throughput. For IEEE — the body that overlooks formations of networking-related protocols like ethernet — the challenge is to enhance the standard’s capabilities beyond data transfer. The aim of this upcoming protocol is to enable devices like phones and laptops to sense things in the environment — like
Apple’s object-tracking AirTags have been rife with controversy since their launch, particularly around the unfortunate fact that they make good tools for thieves and stalkers. It is therefore my sad duty to inform you that one of the security measures Apple has implemented for the AirTags is already being circumvented. Long story short: people are modifying AirTags to have the internal speaker — which can serve as a warning for those being stacked — disabled. Long story long: for those of you w
If you’re a Twitter user, you’ll know that when scrolling through your home feed, in between posts from accounts you follow, you’ll sometimes see tweets tagged “you might like”. In other words, Twitter is recommending content to you that it deems may appeal to you. This is done using an algorithm based on your past activity on the platform, such as the tweets that you have liked or engaged with. It may also be based on your preferences on your profile, where you have indicated topics you would l
For most of us, the idea of getting a city to dismantle a historic bridge is ludicrous, but for the Big Dog Boss Man Jeff Bezos? Don’t make him laugh. Let’s backtrack: Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame is having a custom yacht built. Known as Y721, it’s set to become the world’s largest sailing yacht, reaching 127m tall when fully, uh, erect. It’s being made by a company called Oceanco in Rotterdam — but here’s where the Bald King has bumped into a problem: the Koningshaven bridge. Even with the central
There’s no way around it: work is changing. However, regardless of what hundreds of uninformed articles will argue on the matter, working itself is not going away anytime soon, however worthy of our time that discussion may be. Work is, in fact, ever-changing, ever-evolving, always progressively, never at once, as we create new problems just as fast as we solve old ones. Case in point: technology has allowed us to “invent” the Gig Economy, which has led to the creation of an entirely new industr
When you’re thinking of switching one music streaming service to another, you don’t want to ruin your library. All of us want to migrate all our albums, songs, and playlists, and we want to carry over our meticulous curation to the new app. With that in mind, I’ve tested a bunch of apps that help you migrate your preferences and curated playlists from one streaming music service to another. Before you get started, it’s worth noting that none of these tools will transfer the songs you’ve uploaded