Month: June 2019

MoMo Productions | Getty Images When Laika Kayani started to lose her voice late one night last year, she picked up her iPhone and got connected to a doctor through a video-chat service called American Well. Kayani, who works at a health-tech company in San Francisco, used the app because her young son and husband

Last week, Reddit quarantined “r/The_Donald,” a pro-Trump message board, after the company determined that the subgroup had encouraged and threatened violence. Likewise, Twitter is signaling that it will flag—but not remove—posts by government officials who violate its rules. As with YouTube’s demonetization (rather than deletion) of anti-gay videos, these are welcome, but insufficient measures. Until

Investors should put their money in small- to mid-cap biotech stocks as rhetoric about changing the U.S. health-care system ramps up during the Democratic primary debate season, Jefferies analyst Michael Yee said Friday. “The big biotechs have to buy the big and small biotechs, and that’s where most [health-care] investors have been playing,” Yee said

Beyond Meat surprised the stock market when the company turned out to be the best IPO of 2019. Alternative meat was having a moment. Alternative milk, on the other hand, has been quietly revolutionizing the dairy industry for years. Milk, the kind from cows, was once a staple of the American diet. But now consumers

The Supreme Court’s conservative justices ruled Thursday that the highest court doesn’t have the power to address partisan gerrymandering, the practice in which politicians redraw district maps to help their own party win more elections. In two cases, Lamone v. Benisek and Rucho v. Common Cause, the court split along ideological lines 5 to 4.

David Marcus, vice president of messaging products for Facebook Inc., speaks during a Bloomberg Television interview on the sidelines of the Wall Street Journal D.Live global technology conference in Laguna Beach, California, U.S., on Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2017. Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images David Marcus, the Facebook exec who helped hatch its Libra

Axon, creator of the Taser, did something unusual for a technology company last year. The Arizona corporation convened an ethics board of external experts to offer guidance on potential downsides of its technology. Thursday, that group published a report recommending that the company not deploy facial recognition technology on its body cameras, widely used by

Former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb speaking at the Healthy Returns conference in New York City on May 21, 2019. Astrid Stawiarz | CNBC Scott Gottlieb, who stepped down as Food and Drug Administration Commissioner in April, will join Pfizer‘s board of directors, the company announced Thursday. Gottlieb resigned from the agency this spring after

The next time a public official, politician, or a certain president violates Twitter’s rules, the company says users will notice. The offending tweet will either be removed from the platform entirely, or quarantined behind a new gray interstitial that warns users that it ran afoul of the platform’s content guidelines and limits its reach. The

Every six hours, at his home in the high desert outside Kingman, Arizona, midway between Phoenix and Las Vegas, Brian Goss downloads the latest blocks from the bitcoin blockchain via satellite. He receives the transmission through a dish he installed this January; it arrives with messages, too—tweets, blogs, odes to Satoshi—sent by bitcoiners around the

U.S. stock index futures were higher Thursday morning, amid hopes the world’s two largest economies could soon reach a truce in their protracted trade war. At around 02:10 a.m. ET, Dow futures rose 66 points, indicating a positive open of more than 72 points. Futures on the S&P and Nasdaq were both seen slightly higher.

It wasn’t long after Mark Zuckerberg took the stage at the Aspen Ideas Festival Wednesday that he was heckled by the audience. Facebook’s CEO was talking to Cass Sunstein, the Harvard Law School professor who has also served as a Facebook adviser, and discussing the complexities of combatting election interference. One problem, Zuckerberg proclaimed, is

YouTube has been at the center of a long series of scandals in recent years, many concerning one of its main features: the recommendation algorithm. The software encourages users to watch one video after another, which are served up on a menu labeled “Up Next.” Dubbed the “great radicalizer,” the algorithm has been accused by

Ford trucks parked in a lot in 2008 when U.S. automakers were hit by plummeting auto sales. Spencer Platt | Getty Images U.S. auto sales are estimated to have fallen by about 2% during the first half of the year, setting the industry up for its second year-over-year decline since emerging from the Great Recession

A person uses a Juul Labs electronic cigarette device in San Francisco, on Monday, June 24, 2019. David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images San Francisco on Tuesday became the first city in the country to ban e-cigarettes after city officials approved an ordinance that prohibits selling nicotine pods or devices that haven’t been

Consumers are hungry for data. To give it to them, mobile carriers say they need access to more of the wireless spectrum that carries cellular data, broadcast programming, and all other wireless signals. Carriers complain that the parts of the spectrum reserved for smartphone use are increasingly crowded, at least in urban areas. To keep

This story was co-published with ProPublica. Ariella Russcol specializes in drama at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Queens, New York, and the senior’s performance on this April afternoon didn’t disappoint. While the library is normally the quietest room in the school, her ear-piercing screams sounded more like a horror movie than study

U.S. stock index futures were slightly lower Tuesday morning, amid expectations of more dovish talk from the Federal Reserve. At around 02:30 a.m. ET, Dow futures slipped 43 points, indicating a negative open of more than 16 points. Futures on the S&P and Nasdaq were both seen slightly lower. Market focus is largely attuned to

McDonalds employee prepares a burger Remy Gabalda | AFP | Getty Images Launching fresh beef at McDonald’s took more than four years and cost its meat suppliers more then $60 million to pull it off. But it looks like the risky decision — and logistical hurdles to speed the turnaround from cow to beef patty

Help, I’ve been atomized! Obliterated! Shattered and scattered in the cyber-ether! My corporate overlords have heard the call: “Decentralized” is the new “disrupted.” It’s not just about putting stuff “on the blockchain” anymore—it’s fuzzier than that, hipper, more notional. Whatever can hold without a center, must. Ditch the banks for crypto; crowdsource justice; blow up

An American Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 arriving from Washington’s Ronald Reagan National Airport is seen taxiing to its gate at the Miami International Airport on March 12, 2019 in Miami, Florida. Joe Raedle | Getty Images American Airlines is prepared to further delay returning the Boeing 737 Max to its schedule as regulators review

Image Source | Getty Images Dietary advice seems to change every decade. Fat is bad, then suddenly it’s good again. Nowadays, for many people, carbs are the enemy. But it turns out that healthy dietary guidelines can’t be boiled down into simple rules. A new crop of studies, which leverage the latest health testing and

Tourists rest at Bavaro beach, in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, on January 16, 2012. Erika Santelices | AFP | Getty Images Over 2 million Americans travel to the Dominican Republic every year, but following a number of mysterious deaths on the island, tourists are rethinking whether they want to travel there. So far nine Americans

Jim Cramer on “Mad Money.” Scott Mlyn | CNBC The Federal Reserve likely wants to see June’s nonfarm payrolls report and any U.S.-China trade developments from this month’s G-20 meeting before making a commitment on cutting interest rates, CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Friday. The central bank voted Wednesday to keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged.

San Francisco said goodbye to e-cigarettes, an airplane maker went all-electric, and a Minnesota cop was awarded money because of her snooping colleagues. Here’s the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Want to receive this two-minute roundup as an email every week day? Sign up here! Today’s Headlines San Francisco’s e-cigarrette

San Francisco city officials voted unanimously on Tuesday to suspend the sale and delivery of electronic cigarettes until the products are approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The legislation, which still requires a second vote from SF’s Board of Supervisors and the mayor’s signature, would go into effect seven months after being passed—giving e-cigarette

A post-mortem by British lawmakers and regulators into the suspension of the U.K.’s best known stockpicker’s flagship fund could expose some systemic flaws in the fund industry, analysts have suggested. Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Nicky Morgan, chair of the Treasury Committee, last week wrote to the CEO of Britain’s most influential investment platform, FTSE

It’s official: Investors love Slack. The workplace chat company went public Thursday through an unusual direct listing, where it simply made its shares available on the New York Stock Exchange, without bankers. Slack shares closed at $38.62, nearly 50 percent above the “reference price” set a day earlier, valuing the company at $19.47 billion. Of

So, you’ve heard about this thing called artificial intelligence. It’s changing the world, you’ve been told. It’s going to drive your car, grow your food, maybe even take your job. You’ll be forgiven for having some questions about this chaotic, AI-driven world that’s predicted to unfold. First off, it’s true that AI is overhyped. But

The workplace-messaging firm Slack is confident that it will speed toward ending the world of email as we know it inside companies in the next seven years, predicts co-founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield. However, he said, “The broader world of email will stick around.” Slack’s paying customers total over 85,000 people, and it has more