Month: July 2019

Amazon announced Thursday that it will spend up to $700 million over the next six years retraining 100,000 of its US employees, mostly in technical skills like software engineering and IT support. Amazon is already one of the largest employers in the country, with almost 300,000 workers (and many more contractors), and it’s particularly hungry

Amarin Corp.: “You know, it’s pretty good. … I say, you know what, speculative but” buy, buy, buy. MPLX: “These pipeline compnies have been so painful, but they’re actually moving up. … I am literally going to stick my neck out … and say it’s O.K. to own.” Zynerba Pharmaceuticals: “Very interesting, but you know

Google, Amazon, and Apple say their AI-powered virtual assistants make it easier to get things done on smartphones or at home. Last month, a couple in the Waasmunster area of Belgium got an unexpected lesson in how these supposedly automated helpers really work. Tim Verheyden, a journalist with Belgian public broadcaster VRT, contacted the couple

The Wallich Residence is located within the Tanjong Pagar Centre (second from right), Singapore’s tallest building. Everett Rosenfeld | CNBC British technology firm founder James Dyson and his wife have bought a luxury penthouse in Singapore for a record 73.8 million Singapore dollars ($54.2 million), according to The Business Times newspaper on Wednesday. The privately

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York. Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images Strong, widespread gains in June catapulted hedge funds to their best start to a calendar year in a decade as equity bets, trend-following and activist strategies paid off. Funds rose 5.7% in the

Depending on who you ask, blockchains are either the most important technological innovation since the internet or a solution looking for a problem. The original blockchain is the decentralized ledger behind the digital currency bitcoin. The ledger consists of linked batches of transactions known as blocks (hence the term blockchain), and an identical copy is

Last year, Ben Bartlett, a member of the Berkeley City Council, proposed an unusual idea to his colleagues: putting affordable housing on the blockchain. The city was facing an unprecedented housing crisis and the prospect of cuts to federal housing assistance. Why not turn to local residents to help fund a solution? The city would

The US women’s national soccer team is extremely good at two things: scoring goals and selling merchandise. Even before it won a second consecutive World Cup championship Sunday, the players’ home jersey, which is designed by Nike, became the top-selling soccer jersey ever in one season on Nike.com, according to the athletic-wear company. Sales were

Canopy Growth is in the best position to win in the emerging marijuana space and a new chief will be able to guide it through the next stage of the business. That’s what Constellation Brands CEO Bill Newlands told CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Monday, days after the company abruptly ousted founder Bruce Linton from the

European stocks are set to open lower Monday morning, after stronger-than-anticipated jobs data on Wall Street tempered expectations for a Federal Reserve rate cut. The FTSE 100 is seen 13 points lower at 7,540, the CAC is expected to open down around 17 points at 5,576, while the DAX is poised to start 53 points

Bojan Fatur | E+ | Getty Images Within weeks of giving birth, first-time mother Kyra Davis realized she was producing more milk than her baby needed. So she began storing it in her fridge and freezer at her San Francisco home. Davis had heard about the well-documented shortages at donor banks across the country. The

In October 2017, Twitter general counsel Sean Edgett faced difficult questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee about foreign interference in the 2016 election. Flanked by representatives from Facebook and Google, Edgett explained how Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) had systematically spread fake news and stoked partisan sentiment through a carefully coordinated, years-long social media campaign.

Richard Harbaugh | Disney Parks The shelves at Disney’s new theme park land Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in California aren’t bare, but there are a few items you won’t be able to get your hands on right away. The Black Spire Outpost on the planet Batuu is a mecca for Star Wars fans. Here fans

Amazon turned 25 years old this week. In its quarter century of existence, it has created roughly a trillion dollars in shareholder value. Amazon dominates e-commerce, has the biggest cloud-computing infrastructure offering and leads the market for home assistants with its Alexa technology. Additionally, it has a burgeoning online ad business and is becoming a

Check out the companies making headlines in the premarket Friday: Amazon — A U.K. regulator is looking into the e-commerce giant’s investment in food-delivery start-up Deliveroo. The Competition and Markets Authority said Friday it has “reasonable grounds” for suspecting the two companies could “cease to be distinct. ” This would give the regulator the authority

Last week, at the Aspen Ideas Festival, I interviewed Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School and author of a new book called The Curse of Bigness. We talked about antitrust and innovation, and he addressed arguments on the topic made by Facebook. An edited transcript follows. Nicholas Thompson: What I’m going to do

David Gelernter’s giant macaw, Ike, has taken a tumble. One moment he was there, offering agreeable squawks as Gelernter spoke, and then, in a flash of lightning, he wasn’t. Ike is fine, the 64-year-old Yale computer scientist assures me, simply stunned. “Luckily he’s as light as a bird. So he can fall great lengths and

Courtesy Fairmont Orchid Fairmont Orchid In-room coffee makers, Wi-Fi, a bottle of water and, sometimes, complimentary nationwide phone calls are now among the standard amenities travelers will find included with most hotel rooms. But to stand out — and in many cases, justify — the sometimes hefty “resort” or “convenience” fees many properties now tag onto

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos tours the facility at the grand opening of the Amazon Spheres, in Seattle, Washington on January 29, 2018. Jason Redmond | Getty A federal appeals court ruled that Amazon can be held liable for defective goods sold on its site by third-party vendors, who now account for more than half of the

Facebook has begun pilot tests of new content moderation tools and policies after an external audit raised numerous issues with the company’s current approach to tackling hate speech. In a report published by Facebook on Sunday, auditors criticized Facebook’s intense focus on “achieving consistency in review decisions,” which they said “translates to a blunter set

On Sunday, Pride celebrations shut down a rainbow swath of San Francisco. In the shadow of the city’s iconic Coit Tower, chipmaker Intel held a nerdier and more select party. At the five-hour event, 100 attendees from startups, venture capital, and tech giants drank in semiconductor-themed cocktails and detailed explanations of how sand is processed

Apple CEO Tim Cook (L) and Jonathan Ive, Apple’s Chief Design Officer, look over the new Mac Pro Display and computer at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Jose, California on June 3, 2019. Brittany Hosea-Small | AFP | Getty Images Apple announced last Thursday that Jony Ive, its head of design and the

A replica ‘Betsy Ross Flag’ is posted on the side of the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on August 27, 2016. Raymond Boyd | Getty Images An apparent attempt at celebrating America’s history turned into political outrage this week, when Nike pulled its sneakers depicting an early version of the American flag, after former

A replica ‘Betsy Ross Flag’ is posted on the side of the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on August 27, 2016. Raymond Boyd | Getty Images Nike is pulling sneakers featuring an early American flag after former NFL football player Colin Kaepernick told the company it shouldn’t sell a shoe that he and others

Huawei doesn’t leap to mind as an innovative company. In the US, the Chinese telecom giant is best known for the government’s national security concerns—and allegations that it stole intellectual property from companies like Cisco and Motorola. Yet Huawei was the fifth-biggest research and development spender in the world in 2017, according to a European

In May 2019, WIRED joined the One Free Press Coalition, a united group of pre-eminent editors and publishers using their global reach and social platforms to spotlight journalists under attack worldwide. Today, the coalition is issuing the fifth monthly “10 Most Urgent” list of journalists whose press freedoms are being suppressed or whose cases are

On television and radio, the ads are fairly innocuous: “Hey guy,” a female narrator says playfully in one TV spot for Hims, a men’s wellness brand that sells prescription drugs to treat erectile dysfunction, oral herpes, social anxiety, hair loss, and other conditions. “Hi there. Welcome to Hims.” The ad invites viewers to “get ED

Chinese employees working on an energy-saving bulb production line in Suining, Sichuan province, China. STR | AFP | Getty Images China’s manufacturing activity shrank unexpectedly in June, coming in at its weakest level since January, according to a private survey.  The Caixin/Markit factory Purchasing Managers’ Index for June was 49.4. Analysts polled by Reuters had