Uber, After Buying Postmates, Lays Off More Than 180 Employees
New York Times
SAN FRANCISCO — Uber on Thursday laid off roughly 185 people from its Postmates division, or about 15 percent of Postmates’ total work force, said three people with knowledge of…
Month: January 2021
132 posts
We could know soon whether vaccines work against a scary new coronavirus variant
MIT Technology
When it was first detected, the South African variant looked worrisome because of the large number of mutations it had gained, 23 in all, and how many of these were…
Help With Vaccination Push Comes From Unexpected Businesses
Amazon[1] wrote to President Biden on Thursday offering to assist with communication and technology. Microsoft is opening up its largely empty office campus as a vaccination center as part of…
Director of Amazon's 'Tandav' Cuts Scenes After Pressure From India's Hindu Nationalists
ARPORA, India — The director of a big-budget Amazon web series has bowed to pressure from Hindu nationalists[1] and cut several scenes that they had deemed offensive, demonstrating the sway…
Facebook Invokes Its ‘Supreme Court’
This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it weekdays.[1] Facebook’s new “Supreme Court” is taking on its biggest case: Donald Trump.…
The Biden administration’s AI plans: what we might expect
I suspect we will see OSTP emphasize tech accountability under her leadership, which will be especially pertinent to hot button AI issues like facial recognition, algorithmic bias, data privacy, corporate…
An Australia With No Google? The Bitter Fight Behind a Drastic Threat
SYDNEY, Australia — In a major escalation, Google threatened on Friday to make its search engine unavailable in Australia if the government approved legislation that would force tech companies to…
These virtual robot arms get smarter by training each other
A virtual robot arm has learned to solve a wide range of different puzzles[1]—stacking blocks, setting the table, arranging chess pieces—without having to be retrained for each task. It did…
This is Biden’s seven-point plan for tackling the pandemic
This is Biden’s seven-point plan for tackling the pandemic | MIT Technology Review You need to enable JavaScript to view this site. Skip to Content The news: President Biden has…
“Everyone is impressed by Israeli vaccination, but I don’t think we’re a success story”
Hadas Ziv, head of policyand ethics at Physicians forHuman Rights-Israel Israel was originally praised for its approach to covid-19 vaccine distribution, and was hailed as a model for how to…