Worldcrunch
MUNICH — Most investors just don’t understand what it’s all about — and so the scenario almost always plays out the same: Sophia Yen enters a room full of venture capitalists, almost all older men, and starts to explain to them something about a woman’s period. “They find that a bit disgusting,” she says. “Viagra […]
Tim Cook’s company is a rock of common sense in an industry that’s gone rogue.
Information gleaned from digital sources must be used in strict accordance with the law. But it’s too useful to simply vilify and disregard.
Alternative energy projects might be good for the environment. But with a few exceptions, they’re awful on the eyes.
MOSCOW — Rumor has it that Vladimir Putin is something of a techie. Though the man in charge at the Kremlin has been vague about his economic priorities after the March 18 presidential election, Igor Shuvalov, Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister, says that Putin “is obsessively interested in new technologies and the digital economy.” During […]
The city in the U.S. midwest has found a different way to make it in the modern economy.
Imagine if machines could do the job of strippers — or prostitutes. Where would it lead us?
BEIJING — Over the past decade or so, “The Low-Fertility Trap,” a hypothesis put forth by Wolfgang Lutz, Vegard Skirbekk and Maria Rita Testa, respectively Austrian, Norwegian and Italian scholars, has worried many countries facing the risks of an aging population. This includes China. The theory suggests that when a country’s birth rate is lower […]
The many ways your iPhone or Android, and their apps, are built to hook you like a drug user. The UX (user experience) designers are confessing to their sins.
The evidence so far is that corporations won’t be much affected and consumers could even benefit.
-Analysis- SAO PAULO — The idea of economic planning dominated the imagination of 20th-century economists. Unlike the classical liberal view, the planning concept supports clear government intervention in the spontaneous course of markets. By implementing one plan or another, the theory goes, governments can speed up a process or correct a wrong course. Plans are […]
-Analysis- Do GIFs have a place in serious publications? Where the hell is my giraffe emoji? Do androids dream of electric sheep? The digital world is presenting us with questions we never could have imagined we’d have to answer — and maybe we don’t. But there are also those brand new mind-boggling questions of a […]
-Analysis- To win back Mosul, the Iraqi armed forces paid with their blood. But the difficult victory — obtained with the help of the international coalition — also marks a rebirth. Against all odds, the Iraqi army, federal police and anti-terror units have all been successfully rebuilt. Back in 2014, the Iraqi troops had fallen […]
“I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings.” These wise words were written by American author and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, born 200 years ago on Wednesday. A quiet journal entry […]
Finally some serious competition for Tesla. Just days after Elon Musk said his American multi-billion dollar electric automobile startup would start producing its Model 3, the brand’s first mass-market electric car, a heavyweight automaker from the past declared “the end of the solely combustion engine-powered car.” By 2019, all new Volvo models will come with […]
It’s a match made in hummus!
Love, jealousy and courtship have become impatient, high-speed activities that play out on our computer screens and smartphones.
Ahead of the high stakes of next week’s French presidential election, a visit to ‘la France profonde,’ deep in the heartland where the country’s fate may be decided.
CAGLIARI — Danilo Spiga isn’t your everyday chef. He is a trained engineer and all the dishes he cooks are crafted by 3D printers. None of the diners were sick after Spiga’s meal at a laboratory in the Italian city of Cagliari on the island of Sardinia. No one suffered from allergies or food poisoning […]
Talent is distributed around the globe, opportunity is not. Visit to a finance-sponsored ‘datathon’ to find the next generation of quantative wizards.
-Analysis- PARIS — How could something like this happen? Some of us have spent the past week trying to find out the facts (and comprehend the enormity) of Sunday night’s Academy Awards mega-gaffe, when La La Land was incorrectly announced as Best Picture. It turns out that the blame rests with the old school audit […]
Thinking of death is inherent to being human. Technological advances, like so many human activities, reflect our desire to avoid it. But that may all be bound to change.
FUKUSHIMA — In 1970, electronics company Panasonic inaugurated a factory in the Japanese city of Fukushima to assemble radio sets. In the 1980s, when Japanese electronics were at their peak, the site expanded to produce video material and CD players. In 2011, the earthquake that destroyed the Daiichi nuclear power plant left the Panasonic factory […]
The ills of the Smartphone industry go beyond the meltdown of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7. A market sector that was still booming not so long ago is now expected to suffer losses this year for the first time, and is forecast to stagnate for the foreseeable future, a recent report from tech research and advisory […]
Droughts, demographics, industrialization, pollution, climate change … The need for more clean and accessible water is growing urgent in many places around the world. But beyond praying to the rain gods, what real-life responses are out there? Innovation is key both to help preserve clean water sources, as well as finding new ways to purify […]
LIMA — Sometimes it seems the popular smartphone gaming app Pokémon Go knows no bounds. But Lima-based daily El Comercio reports that the capital’s seafront district of La Punta recently banned the game in most areas, restricting players to a limited zone. The district council moved ahead with the ban this week after receiving numerous […]
Instead of global stability, the end of the Cold War has ushered in an age of high-tech changes and social turmoil. New tales of two cities for the 21st Century.
Is simulation turning people into escapists, wonders this Argentinian philosopher and science-fiction expert.
Countries and industries around the globe must make the painful choice between lucrative fossil fuel exploitation and efforts to prevent climate change.
ALESSANDRIA — A small portable tool developed in Italy now allows doctors to treat patients with heart conditions in remote areas that don’t have access to medical facilities. A 27-year-old doctor, Alessandro Faragli, and his colleague, Edoardo La Porta, a nephrologist, created the imaging device known as Impedance App. The device measures bio-impedance or how […]
To understand why design is important, take a look at Silicon Valley. Forty-two design firms in the U.S. technology hub have been bought up since 2004. About half these acquisitions were made this past year alone. The 25 startups that got the most venture capital financing were founded by designers. Google snapped up the two-person […]
An artist duo from Zurich is using sex-talk avatars to pose some burning questions about the future of human-computer relationships.
Ramadan is a sacred month of prayer and fasting from dawn to dusk observed by Muslims around the world. But the holy month, which this year runs from June 6 to July 5, comes with different rules and schedules (and soap operas) that must be integrated into busy modern lives. And yes, there’s an app […]
KIGALI — About a 20-minute drive from the Rwandan capital of Kigali, there’s a barren road that leads to a construction site amid cornfields and banana trees. A single blue sign from the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation indicates the entrance to the location, which stands at the top of a hill. There, across a […]
Kazakhstan-born computer engineer Alexandra Elbakyan is now an international copyright outlaw. Her Sci-Hub website offers free access to millions of academic publications, a direct challenge to the entire publishing and academic establishment.
PARIS — Imagine securing a loan in just minutes — without having to visit a bank, fill out complicated paperwork, sit down with a loan officer. What if it could all be done with a few clicks on a smartphone? For some consumers and small businesses in the United States, China, the Philippines, Mexico and […]
-Analysis- BEIJING — An in-depth report recently published by this newspaper, titled Robot Industry Development, Great Leap Forward-Style depicted the sector’s troubling situation in China. The article, needless to say, triggered plenty of discussion. According to Caixin’s investigative data, China currently has as many as 800 robot enterprises, although this statistic already excludes those which […]
Airline passenger traffic is not slowing down, registering worldwide growth of 6.8% in 2015. The growing demand means more opportunity but also more competition, and airports need to be innovative to attract both business and pleasure air travelers. Long layovers can be tiresome, but not necessarily in Changi, Singapore. With free video games, film screenings, […]
Skype founder Jaan Tallinn wants to program machines to keep them from becoming a threat to the human race. Yes, he believes, the threat is real.
At the futuristic Enosis wine lab, the Genesis robot brings wine into the 21st century.