From customer service to the entertainment industry, businesses in China are paying big bucks for virtual employees. Tech company Baidu said the number of virtual people projects it’s worked on for clients has doubled since last year, with a wide price range of as little as $2,800 to a whopping Read more…
A list of the worst local performers includes some truly bottom-of-the-barrel returns. Cannabis tech company Agrify in Billerica suffered a 99.6 percent stock drop in 2022. Wireless Internet service Starry and diet-device maker Gelesis were close behind with losses of 99.5 and 99.3 percent, respectively. (All stock prices are as Read more…
The Australian city of Melbourne recently posted QR codes its citizens could use to report grafitti, reports Australia’s public broadcaster ABC. Unfortunately, someone overlaid “a number” of those QR codes with “alternative” QR codes leading to a pro-graffiti documentary: The City of Melbourne is investigating how many of the QR Read more…
January’s Communications of the ACM includes an essay predicting “the end of programming,” in an AI-powered future where “programming will be obsolete.” But IT analyst and ZDNet contributor Joe McKendrick remains skeptical, judging by a new essay sardonically titled “It’s the end of programming as we know it — again.” Read more…
Computers become increasingly capable and powerful by the year and new hardware is often the most visible cue for technological progress. However, even with the shiniest hardware, the software that plays a critical role inside many systems is too often antiquated, and in some cases decades old. This failing appears Read more…
Matt Welsh is the CEO and co-founder of Fixie.ai, an AI-powered software delivery company founded by a team from Google and Apple. “I believe the conventional idea of ‘writing a program’ is headed for extinction,” he opines in January’s Communications of the ACM, “and indeed, for all but very specialized Read more…
Looking back at 2022’s technology, the lead technology writer for the New York Times criticized Meta’s $1,500 VR headset and the iPhone’s “mostly unnoticeable improvements.” But then he also predicted which new tech could affect you in 2023. – It’s very likely that next year you could have a chatbot Read more…