Guyana, a tiny South American nation home to more than 800,000 people, made big headlines in December. The reason? Its neighboring country, Venezuela. Venezuela’s autocratic leader Nicolás Maduro called for a referendum in the first week of December 2023 to seek approval to annex Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s land. Venezuelans approved it … Read more
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images The use of artificial intelligence by the general population in developed countries such as the US to a “significant” degree will start to take place in the next 18 to 24 months, according to Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates in his year-end letter released last week. The impact on things such … Read more
An AI sign is seen at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai on July 6, 2023. Aly Song | Reuters BEIJING — Excitement over artificial intelligence isn’t yet fueling a boom in cloud services spending in mainland China. “The Chinese cloud services market remains conservative, relying heavily on government and state-owned enterprises to drive … Read more
KAMPALA, Uganda — Lilian Nabulime hasn’t forgotten the time in the 1990s when the Ugandan capital had just one commercial art gallery, a small space that emerging artists struggled to get into. Now, there are at least six in Kampala, including one whose curator recently exhibited the sculptor’s contrarian work. Nabulime’s show, which has attracted … Read more
A couple years ago, when the pandemic was still in full swing, Raj Kapoor and Josh Felser started making some investments in climate tech startups. They called their operation Climactic, and initially they placed bets using their own money. Both are experienced founders, operators and investors, but they were new to focusing on this particular … Read more
The history of artificial intelligence has been punctuated by periods of so-called “AI winter,” when the technology seemed to meet a dead end and funding dried up. Each one has been accompanied by proclamations that making machines truly intelligent is just too darned hard for humans to figure out. Google’s release of Gemini, claimed to … Read more
Copper mines like Rio Tinto’s Bingham Canyon mine on the outskirts of Salt Lake City are on the frontline of America’s transition to clean energy. Global demand for copper, a major component of electric vehicles, is expected to grow from 25 million metric tons to nearly 49 million metric tons by 2035, according to S&P … Read more
SpaceX’s gargantuan, methane-fueled Starship soared 90 miles above Earth on Saturday morning, though it exploded before it could complete its space journey. Federal officials said no one had reported injuries or public property damage after the test. Starship, a 400-foot-tall, super-heavy-lift rocket and spacecraft, took off shortly after 7 a.m. local time from SpaceX’s private … Read more
Not all survival food is ready to eat. Some must be cooked in a pot over a source of heat, like offerings from My Patriot Supply, which sells a four-week kit that provides 2,000 calories per day for $237. The catch is that each recipe—including mushroom rice pilaf, chili mac, and potato soup—needs to simmer … Read more
The US is experiencing a boom in semiconductor production after the passage of the CHIPS Act, but that progress could be impeded by a serious labor shortage in the industry. According to a July report from the Semiconductor Industry Association, an industry trade group, and Oxford Economics, there will be 85,000 new technical jobs in … Read more