Back in June 2016, Facebook issued a statement. "Facebook Does Not Use Your Phone's Microphone for Ads or News Feed Stories," is its headline. The copy of the post goes into more detail: "Some recent articles have suggested that we must be listening to people's conversations in order to show them relevant ads. This is…
BRAD HOOPER quit his previous job at a grocery in Madison because his boss was “a little crazy”. The manager threatened to sack him and other cashiers for refusing orders to work longer than their agreed hours. Not long ago, Mr Hooper’s decision to walk out might have looked foolhardy. A long-haired navy veteran, he…
MARACAIBO, Venezuela — Zimbabwe’s collapse under Robert Mugabe. The fall of the Soviet Union. Cuba’s disastrous unraveling in the 1990s. The crumbling of Venezuela’s economy has now outpaced them all. Venezuela’s fall is the single largest economic collapse outside of war in at least 45 years, economists say. “It’s really hard to think of a…
When President Donald Trump suddenly hiked tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports last week, China said it would respond with “necessary countermeasures.” But then it announced a tariff increase on just $60 billion of U.S. goods. China simply doesn’t import enough from the U.S. to match tariffs “tit-for-tat,” hence the $140 billion shortfall…
By giving Huawei Technologies the " death penalty," the Trump administration has escalated tensions between the US and China to a level of hostility akin to a tech Cold War. On Tuesday, the Trump administration put Huawei on the Commerce Department's "Entity List." It sounds benign, but the listing can make it nearly impossible for…
FIGHTING OVER trade is not the half of it. The United States and China are contesting every domain, from semiconductors to submarines and from blockbuster films to lunar exploration. The two superpowers used to seek a win-win world. Today winning seems to involve the other lot’s defeat—a collapse that permanently subordinates China to the American…
WASHINGTON — President Trump has sought to put the brakes on a brewing confrontation with Iran in recent days, telling the acting defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan, that he does not want to go to war with Iran, administration officials said, while his senior diplomats began searching for ways to defuse the tensions. Mr. Trump’s statement,…
It’s noon on a sunny Friday in San Francisco’s Jackson Square neighborhood and the Allbirds store, nestled in the shadow of the Transamerica Pyramid, is buzzing. Filled with tech bros and soccer moms, twentysomethings and retirees, most were returning customers, there to pick up a second or third pair of Runners, the now nearly ubiquitous…
Pictures showing Iranian paramilitary forces loading missiles onto boats are behind a recent sharp escalation in tensions between the US and Iran, The New York Times reported Wednesday night. The May 3 overhead images showed fully assembled missiles being loaded onto boats in the Persian Gulf, three officials told The Times, raising concerns that they…
THOUGH CHINA runs a massive trade surplus with America, over the past year it has run a massive rhetoric deficit. During that period President Donald Trump has tweeted about China 133 times; Chinese leaders, by contrast, have mostly kept mum about the trade dispute with America. But in the past few days that has begun…
