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Archive for the ‘business’ category: Page 109

Feb 22, 2022

Virgin Hyperloop lays off 111 staffers as it abandons plans for passenger transport

Posted by in categories: business, transportation

They’re focusing on cargo transport instead of passengers. So they’re downsizing.


Virgin Hyperloop has fired 111 of its employees as it abandons the idea of making its system ready for passenger use. The Financial Times is reporting that the company is exclusively focusing on moving cargo, and has slashed almost half of its total workforce. A spokesperson confirmed to the paper that the shift in business was taking place, with supply chain issues and COVID contributing to the change.

Since its inception, the company has been developing its vacuum-tube system to carry both passengers and freight. One of the earliest concepts VH floated was an “inland port,” in which cargo vessels would put containers onto capsules that are shot inland before they’re processed. That way, the main logistics hub wouldn’t need to be beside the sea, and could instead be at the heart of a transit hub closer to customers.

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Feb 20, 2022

Are Space Elevators Growing Closer to Reality?

Posted by in categories: business, space

Theories on how to build a space elevator have been around for decades. Scientists say not only would such technology change humanity, but that we could have built one by now.

#Space #Moonshot #BloombergQuicktake.
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Feb 18, 2022

A next-generation Chevrolet could have airless tires

Posted by in categories: business, sustainability, transportation

Michelin has been working with General Motors to develop airless tires that will be sold on a next-generation Chevrolet Bolt electric car, expected to go on sale in the next few years, a Michelin executive said. It could mark the decline of over 130 years of tire tradition but also the end of one of the most annoying aspects of car ownership: keeping air in the tires.

“We want to bring the next generation of the Chevrolet Bolt with airless tires,” Alexis Garcin, president of Michelin North America said in an interview with CNN Business, “and it’s going to happen now in the next three to five years.”

Feb 17, 2022

Google plans privacy change similar to Apple’s, which wiped $230 billion off Facebook’s market cap

Posted by in categories: business, mobile phones

“[It is] encouraging to see this long-term, collaborative approach to privacy-protective personalized advertising from Google,” Graham Mudd, vice president of product marketing, ads and business at Facebook said on Twitter. “We look forward to continued work with them and the industry on privacy-enhancing tech through industry groups.”

Google said it will continue to support the current identifiers for the next two years, which means other companies have time to implement changes.

Apple was criticized by Facebook and other companies for rolling out its App Tracking Transparency feature, which reduces targeting capabilities by limiting advertisers from accessing an iPhone user identifier. With that change, users were given a pop-up window that let them block apps from tracking their data for advertising purposes.

Feb 15, 2022

Nigerian immigrant begins manufacturing first-ever Black-owned fleet of self-driving pods

Posted by in categories: business, robotics/AI, transportation

A Black-owned tech firm based in Miami, Florida, has begun manufacturing self-driving vehicles called JéGO Pods. The firm will start releasing the pods in late 2022 and will be used to mobilize healthcare services.

JéGO Technologies Inc is founded by Frederick Akphoghene, a Nigerian immigrant, who started his career in tech as early as 16. Since he started his journey, he has built and partnered with hundreds of companies and startups including Abovav Technologies and Oddio Tribe Holdings.

According to Akphoghene, the purpose of his company is to use its mobile platform to connect users with businesses that provide on-demand services like Flu Testing, COVID testing, IV therapy and other services which can be brought directly to customers using driverless JéGO pods.

Feb 14, 2022

Elon Musk — People Don’t Realize What’s Coming!

Posted by in categories: business, climatology, education, Elon Musk, law, space, sustainability

He’s absolutely right about birth rates and its implications for our species. OVER population is a disproven concept as far as our near and near-far future goes.


Elon Musk is the charismatic co-founder of PayPal and Tesla, as well as the founder of SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company. He serves as CEO of Tesla and CEO/lead designer of SpaceX. Watch along as he explains why earth doesn’t have a lot of time left.

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Feb 12, 2022

Married Couple Steals $4.5 Billion in Bitcoin Heist [Bitfinex]

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, business, media & arts

A video on what happened.


What a wild ride!

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Feb 12, 2022

How Remote Workers Are Secretly Juggling Two Full-Time Jobs

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, business, employment, neuroscience

Work remotely, work more jobs.


With the pandemic’s turbocharged acceleration of remote work options, many employees have sought to capitalize on the lack of personal supervision by secretly working two (or more) full-time jobs at once. But while there’s more money to be made, the strategy brings with it significant tradeoffs, namely mental health.

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Feb 11, 2022

IBM Announces Quantum Computing Partnership With Quebec

Posted by in categories: business, government, quantum physics, robotics/AI

IBM has just announced a partnership with the Government of Quebec to create the Quebec-IBM Discovery Accelerator in Bromont, Quebec. The accelerator will focus on using quantum computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and High-Performance Computing (HPC) to develop new projects, business/scientific/academia collaborations, and skills-building initiatives in research areas including energy, life sciences (genomics and drug discovery), new materials development, and sustainability. This is the fourth such center that IBM has announced. The three previously announced partnerships are with Cleveland Clinic, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council Hartree Centre. IBM’s formal mission statement for these Discovery Accelerators is: “Accelerate scientific discovery and societal impact with a convergence of AI, quantum, and hybrid cloud in a community of discovery with research, academic, industry, startup, and government organizations working together.” IBM’s formal mission statement for these Discovery Accelerators is:

“Accelerate scientific discovery and societal impact with a convergence of AI, quantum, and hybrid cloud in a community of discovery with research, academic, industry, startup, and government organizations working together.”

In addition, the company has developed individual mission statements for each of the four Discovery Accelerators:

Feb 9, 2022

Whistleblower Alleges NSO Offered To ‘Drop Off Bags Of Cash’ In Exchange To Access To US Cellular Networks

Posted by in categories: business, cybercrime/malcode, government, mobile phones

The endless parade of bad news for Israeli malware merchant NSO Group continues. While it appears someone might be willing to bail out the beleaguered company, it still has to do business as the poster boy for the furtherance of human rights violations around the world. That the Israeli government may have played a significant part in NSO’s sales to known human rights violators may ultimately be mitigating, but for now, NSO is stuck playing defense with each passing news cycle.

Late last month, the New York Times revealed some very interesting things about NSO Group. First, it revealed the company was able to undo its built-in ban on searching US phone numbers… provided it was asked to by a US government agency. The FBI took NSO’s powerful Pegasus malware for a spin in 2019, but under an assumed name: Phantom. With the permission of NSO and the Israeli government, the malware was able to target US numbers, albeit ones linked to dummy phones purchased by the FBI.

The report noted the FBI liked what it saw, but found the zero-click exploit provided by NSO’s bespoke “Phantom” (Pegasus, but able to target US numbers) might pose constitutional problems the agency couldn’t surmount. So, it walked away from NSO. But not before running some attack attempts through US servers — something that was inadvertently exposed by Facebook and WhatsApp in their lawsuit against NSO over the targeting of WhatsApp users. An exhibit declared NSO was using US servers to deliver malware, something that suggested NSO didn’t care about its self-imposed restrictions on US targeting. In reality, it was the FBI and NSO running some tests on local applications of zero-click malware that happened to be caught by Facebook techies.