Worldcrunch
A healthy dose of cynicism and short cuts allows parts for weapons and other technology to still make their way into Russia. Independent Russian-language media Vazhnyye Istorii traces the way both Moscow and much of the rest of the world circumvent export bans.
PARIS — There’s a dual story about the U.S. tech scene circulating in the world’s media. The first is structural, about trendlines and economics as Silicon Valley’s all-powerful platforms and companies have seen their stocks tanking and announced large layoffs for the first time ever. The second storyline is about the big tech titans themselves. […]
Around China, Zero COVID policy has shut down entire towns and workplaces. But in the high-tech Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, famous for cranking out iPhones, employees were forced to work even if they tested positive. Exclusive testimony from some of those who fled Foxconn premises last week.
A missile attack early Friday kills four, as civilians try to evacuate the largest Ukrainian city under Russian occupation.
Bot did you get it?
Ai-Da is touted as the first bonafide robot artist. But should we consider her paintings and poetry original or creative? Is this even art at all?
Lower-caste cleaners must wear GPS-enabled smartwatches, raising questions about their privacy and data protection.
With 43 campuses in 27 countries, Le Wagon has become the world’s leading network for intensive coding education, revolutionizing how coding is taught.
Faced with a $32 billion drop in their wealth this year, Russian oligarchs are looking for assets to allow them to overcome sanctions that will increase with the invasion of Ukraine. Familiar with crises, they see bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as an escape from the hegemony of the dollar, and a way to diversify their holdings.
A first-hand experience of how illegal bots are making it impossible for many immigrants in France to live here legally.
The change of Facebook’s name to Meta is a hint to the general public of where social media and digital sovereignty risks taking us in a future “virtual” world.
Conceived in the early 1990s, the QR Code has spread exponentially during the pandemic. Its creator, Masahiro Hara, is one of the many continuing to innovate his most famous invention, which has changed everything from medicine to how we dine.
A Swiss-German anti-vax dating app is the latest tool for COVID-19 skeptics. As the pandemic becomes increasingly politicized around the world, will it permanently change how and who we date?
In just a few months, NFTs, the digital equivalent of collectables, have generated over $10 billion. Now, luxury champagne and wine brands are moving into the world of digital assets. But as investors and vineyards toast to the future, will the concept pop or fizzle?
? Hallo!* Welcome to Tuesday, where Omicron now looms over the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics, Philippine strongman Duterte unexpectedly quits his Senate race, and the NFT world witnesses a very costly slip of the keyboard. In French economic daily Les Echos, Adrien Lelièvre wonders whether the jig is up for the “gig economy.” [*German] […]
Even as it celebrates this year’s literature prize going to Tanzanian author Abdulrazak Gurnah, Africa is again completely absent from the list of Nobel winners in science. In research as elsewhere, money is the key.
Startups that offer to deliver groceries in less than 15 minutes have learned from the past and are hiring full-time employees, even if they need temporary workers to meet demand.
So a dozen of the top CEOs in the world (including heads of Google, Microsoft, IBM and now Twitter) come from a country with 18% of the world’s population. But there are other numbers our overly proud fellow Indians should be running.
Hologram idols are the new stars of the entertainment industry in China, performing in live concerts and in front of audiences of millions. It’s not just tech companies that are happy about the boom, the leadership in Beijing is too for more political reasons.
A recent unmanned attack could heighten tensions in the conflict zone and have broader geopolitical consequences.
Slow Food calls for an action plan to significantly reduce and improve the production and consumption of meat, dairy, and eggs by 2050.
Mark Zuckerberg boasted that his U.S. tech giant will begin a hiring spree in Europe to build his massive “Metaverse.” Touted as an opportunity for Europe, the plans could poach precious tech talent from European tech companies.
Long perceived as a country chasing Western tech, China’s business and technological innovations are now influencing the rest of the world. Still lagging on some fronts, the future is now up for grabs.
? Na ngeen def!* Welcome to Tuesday, where much of the world gets back online after a six-hour outage of Facebook-linked apps, the rich and powerful try to close the Pandora Papers box, and a Star Trek icon will boldly go where few have gone before. And remember that polluted Argentine lake that turned pink […]
Government regulators in Beijing have banned the TV and streaming appearance of what is referred to with the slur “niang pao” – literally, “girlie guns.” It is clearly a homophobic and transphobic measure, but the real aim may be to keep the increasingly powerful tech platforms in line.
Let’s not underestimate the impact on the planet of industrial, intensive agriculture, focused on exploiting machines, pesticides and fertilizers across wide tracts of land.
Important digital innovations have been put into practice in the areas of translation, subtitling and text-to-image.
Anne-Claire Bennevault, founder of consulting firm BNVLT and think tank SPAK.fr, weighs in on the rise of the so-called “finfluencers”.
As the world gets more homogenized and closely connected, geographic-specific languages risk vanishing — with one-third of languages having fewer than 1,000 speakers left. But tech can help.
Five Questions for the Head of Business Innovation at Veolia on the launch of its new ‘Open Playground’ program.
In remote — sometimes unmapped — regions of China, thousands of computers are ‘mining’ bitcoin, the queen of virtual currencies. The country may boast all the right conditions to dominate the cryptocurrency market today, but will its mining boom last?
Announced several years ago, 3D-printing in the building industry is becoming a reality with the first houses already going on sale in the United States. Start-ups and manufacturers predict this could be a revolution for the construction industry.
Critics of Ilham Aliev’s regime accuse the government of using sexually explicit material — including images of wives and daughters — to strong-arm its opponents.
Glittering virtual lounges are popping up, inviting people to participate, solely by audio, in debates on all subjects. And, in the Middle East, the powers that be disapprove of the elites’ infatuation with a trendy new app.
The concept of smart cities is a kind of received wisdom among planners and technologists, but our digital world of today is not sustainable.
There’s a reason many Africans are wary of the identification technology: It doesn’t work as well for people with dark skin. That’s where Charlette N’Guessan, a young Ivorian researcher, comes in.
By closing Donald Trump’s social media accounts, the Big Tech platforms have recognized for the first time their fundamental responsibility for the content they broadcast. But for this and other reasons that now also means the regulators must step up.
Europe is moving forward in a united front to force Big Tech that could lead to a historic showdown on the future of how the digital economy functions.
For a number of weeks now, Beijing has been trying to regain control of its internet heroes, who are considered too dominant. E-commerce giants and their standard-bearer, Alibaba and its founder Jack Ma, are directly in the line of fire.
Even in our sprawling, globalized world, it’s possible to produce nutritious, wholesome food without negatively impacting the planet or undermining its myriad cultures and farming traditions that rely on local resources: land, water, seeds and the many benefits of biodiversity. While this may seem idealistic as we’re told that a handful of multinational companies are […]