Before the car can drive without a human, one must first get behind the wheel. As the driver accelerates, stops and turns on local streets, sensors on the car record what he sees and track how he responds. Then a team of engineers builds software that can learn how to behave from that data. The […]
Read moreFacebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his mission in 2018 is to fix Facebook’s large list of issues, including foreign interference on the platform, ongoing instances of harassment, and potential threats to the mental health of its users. “My personal challenge for 2018 is to focus on fixing these important issues,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post […]
Read moreIntel shares fell again on Thursday morning amid revelations surrounding widespread security exploits that could affect almost every type of electronic device. Although the vulnerabilities, called Meltdown and Spectre, affected leading processors in many devices, Intel is bearing most of the fallout after rival AMD distanced itself from the bulk of the issues. Intel shares […]
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“THE geopolitical environment has changed considerably since…a year ago.” That was the explanation given this week by Alex Holmes, chief executive of MoneyGram International, a Dallas-based American money-transfer firm, for Ant Financial abandoning its $1.2bn deal to buy his firm. Ant, the online-payments affiliate of Alibaba Group, a Chinese e-commerce giant, had outbid Euronet, an […]
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VISIBLE from nearly every corner of San Francisco and from up to 30 miles away, the new skyscraper that will be the headquarters of Salesforce, a software giant, stands 1,100 feet (326 metres) tall, making it the highest building in America west of Chicago. On January 8th, after four years of building, workers will start […]
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AS KIM SANG-JO was preparing last May to make the switch from snappy shareholder activist to a regulatory role as South Korea’s fair-trade commissioner, he had a simple message for the country’s big conglomerates: “Please do not break the law.” Not one to make bosses quake in their brogues, exactly. And yet the chaebol, as […]
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WHEN reports surfaced in 2016 of foreign students with no known income buying homes worth millions of dollars in Vancouver, locals said it was yet more evidence that foreigners were inflating prices in Canada’s dearest property market. It was also evidence of a home-grown problem. The students turned out to be figureheads for anonymous firms […]
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DATA-GATHERING is the least sexy part of economics, which is saying something. Yet it is also among the most important. The discipline is rife with elaborate theories built on assumptions that turned out to be false once someone took the time to pull together the relevant data. Accordingly, one of the most valuable papers produced […]
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STOCKMARKETS in the Gulf do not observe Christian holidays, but still had a generally quiet day on December 25th. Shares in Dana Gas, an exploration business listed in Abu Dhabi, however, did make some noise, leaping by 13.2% on Christmas Day, to complete a buoyant six months for the stock (see chart). The surge may […]
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Domino’s Pizza remains “one of the best” stories in food retail and should remain a key player in delivery, according to one Wall Street bank. Shares of the world’s second-largest pizza chain jumped 3.5 percent Thursday after Credit Suisse upgraded its rating on the company’s stock, telling investors that the pizza restaurant should outperform in […]
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