Technology

The race to fix space-weather forecasting before next big solar storm hits

April 3, 2024
Tzu-Wei Fang will always remember February 3, 2022. It was a Thursday just after Groundhog Day, and Fang, a physicist born in Taiwan, was analyzing satellite images of a cloud of charged particles that had erupted from the sun. The incoming cloud was a coronal mass ejection, or CME—essentially a massive burst of magnetized plasma…

Purpose-built AI builds better customer experiences

April 2, 2024
In the bygone era of contact centers, the customer experience was tethered to a singular channel—the phone call. The journey began with a pre-recorded message prompting the customer to press a number corresponding to their query. Today’s contact centers have evolved from the confines of just traditional phone calls to multiple channels from emails to…

Yahoo is acquiring Instagram co-founders’ AI-powered news startup Artifact

April 2, 2024

Yahoo is acquiring Artifact, the AI-powered news app from Instagram’s co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the company announced on Tuesday. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Artifact will no longer operate as a standalone app, and its proprietary AI-powered personalization technology will be integrated across Yahoo, including the Yahoo News app […]

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Modal raises $25M to train corporate workers on data and AI

April 2, 2024

A few years ago, Darren Shimkus, ex-president of Udemy, had a conversation with Dennis Yang about skills building. Shimkus was of the belief that building skills in the corporate sector was a difficult, but not intractable, challenge — one that could perhaps be solved with the right technology. He brought it up to Yang, who […]

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The Download: inside chipmaking giant ASML, and why Taiwan loves Threads

April 2, 2024
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. How ASML took over the chipmaking chessboard On a drab Monday February morning in California, at the drab San Jose Convention Center, attendees of the SPIE Advanced Lithography and Patterning Conference gathered to…

Why Threads is suddenly popular in Taiwan

April 2, 2024
For most people around the world, Meta’s text-based social network Threads is a platform that they haven’t thought of for months. But for Liu, a design professional in Taipei, it’s where she’s receiving unprecedented attention.  “My casual posts often receive a large number of reposts now. It used to only happen every few months on…

Why Trump’s digital media company is different from other money-losing startups

April 1, 2024

Former president Donald Trump’s digital media company is losing money, and lots of it. But why is that any different from other “startups,” which often struggle to post a profit for years, if they ever do? There are a couple reasons. First, as a recap: Trump Media and Technology Group recently merged with Digital World […]

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Scaling customer experiences with data and AI

April 1, 2024
Today, interactions matter more than ever. According to data compiled by NICE, once a consumer makes a buying decision for a product or service, 80% of their decision to keep doing business with that brand hinges on the quality of their customer service experience, according to NICE research. Enter AI. “I think AI is becoming…

How ASML took over the chipmaking chessboard

April 1, 2024
On a drab Monday morning in San Jose, California, at the drab San Jose Convention Center, attendees of the SPIE Advanced Lithography and Patterning Conference filed into the main ballroom until all the seats were taken and the crowd began to line the walls along the back and sides of the room. The convention brings…