On Monday evening at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon, a crowd of pre-pandemic proportions packed the Altice Arena for the event’s opening session. The night’s headline speaker wasn’t some tech executive. Instead, ex-Facebook employee turned whistleblower Frances Haugen talked about her decision to release thousands of documents from her former employer. The revelations in those documents have led to a flurry of investigative reports into Facebook’s
Two artists sponsored by the Mozilla Foundation have flipped the script on law enforcement’s troubled history of using big data to anticipate where future crimes might be committed. Their project, called Future Wake, uses artificial intelligence and data of past instances of police violence to predict where police brutality might strike next. Future Wake is an interactive website featuring the images and stories of fictional people who, the data suggests, could be victims of police brutal
Stanford remains Silicon Valley’s singular institution—the root of its vibrancy and hegemony. And because of Stanford Research Park, whose original tenants included Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors, it’s also a physical reminder of the huge role defense played in the early life of the Valley. Even though the industry around it has moved on to smartphones and social networks, a popular course at the university has made Stanford’s defense connection current
Lots of people ask me, “Why is Amazon so successful?” A few years ago, the CEO of a large European insurance company who was attending Bill Gates’s annual CEO summit contacted me through a friend on his board and wanted to meet with me. When we met, he asked, “What are Amazon’s secrets of success?” I told him, as I tell others, “Amazon has no secret management principles.” Jeff talks about them all the time at “all-hands” meet
SpaceX’s growing constellation of Starlink internet satellites will finally have some U.S.-based company—just not much of it to start. On Monday, Amazon filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission for an experimental license to launch the first two prototype satellites for “Project Kuiper,” its planned answer to Starlink. Amazon’s designs for Kuiper (named after astronomer Gerard Kuiper) involve a full 3,236 small satellites in low Earth orb
For those who prefer taking digital notes by hand instead of typing, Notability has long been an iPad must-have. The app lets users take handwritten notes on an iPad, ideally with an Apple Pencil. It supports an array of brush styles and paper formats, and it has a killer audio recording feature for lectures and interviews: Recordings and written notes are synchronized, so you can tap on what you wrote and hear the audio from that exact moment. (The app is also available for iPhones and Macs, wh
Since 2019, Wolf Entertainment, the TV and media empire behind such franchises as Law & Order and its trio of Chicago series (Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, and Chicago P.D.) has been looking for ways to expand into new media and connect with fans on platforms beyond their TV screens. The company has already ventured into podcasts with the launch of Hunted, an original audio series featuring Parker Posey as a U.S. marshal who hunts down the country’s most dangerous fugitives. Another ori
Michael Brown, director of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) within the U.S. Department of Defense, declares war rather matter-of-factly. “It’s just not war in the way we typically think,” says the longtime Silicon Valley executive who transitioned into government service in 2016. But when adversaries get to the point of “shutting down pipelines and creating other damage,” he says, you’re seeing the “kinetic effects of cyber.” When Brown an
Throughout the history of modern surgery, training has been accomplished as a one-to-one apprenticeship in the operating room. High-volume surgical training programs offer the best opportunities to see surgery and experience rare cases. But the challenge is most surgical training programs only take a handful of applicants per year. For instance, Seattle’s University of Washington Department of Neurological Surgery, where I work, only takes three applicants per year for its seven-year trai
When I go running, I take a whole set of wearables, from some high-priced running shoes to an Apple Watch to AirPods. They’re all important, but what’s going on in my ears may be the most important of all. That’s where the motivating voice of my running coach (Coach Bennett on the Nike Run Club app) is, as well as the podcasts and songs that distract me from the pain. So when the AirPods get an upgrade, it matters. Apple recently announced a new version of its wireless