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S11S12Silicon Valley's Biggest Investor Is Canadian  A startup's location is often an indication of which VCs will give them attention and, of course, the money needed to finance what they do. New data from Pitchbook ranks the top investors by deal count and region across North America--and it's clear that some things haven't changed. The biggest names in venture capital are gung-ho on startups on the West Coast.Â
Yet across the first quarter, the most active investor in West Coast startups was a Canadian outfit, Pioneer Fund, which inked 35 total deals. That makes the Toronto-based financier a geographical outlier (or interloper), but firms that have long been mainstays in Silicon Valley were right behind. Industry heavyweights were common on the West Coast list: Y Combinator was second with 23 deals, Andreessen Horowitz was third with 19 deals--but tied with New Hamphsire's Alumni Ventures, which also had 19 deals.Â
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S13Bill Gates Says This Book Is a 'Timely Masterclass' for AI in Education The co-founder of Microsoft says a new book by renowned education technology pioneer and "Khan Academy" founder Salman Khan on AI and education is a "timely masterclass for anyone interested in the future of learning in the AI era." Gates also shared his hopes for the future of AI and education, including why he's so bullish on "AI tutors."Â
On May 14, Khan released his latest book Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing). In a post on X, Gates (who is also quoted on the cover) said, "If you're passionate about education, you need to read this book," which argues that AI will "complement traditional classroom instruction" by adapting to each student's individual pace and style, and offering tailored feedback and support.Â
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S14What to Expect for Subscription e-Commerce in 2024 I've been involved with subscription commerce for over a decade, since the industry started taking off in 2014 and Birchbox was at the helm. Curation and replenishment models were driving the appeal of this subscription boom, while consumers were starting to appreciate the convenience factor.Â
But, just like everything else in business, trends and consumer behaviors evolve, which brings change and new challenges to how we (brand teams) adapt and sell recurring products. As the founder of a floral subscription company, I want to share four insights on what we can expect for subscription commerce throughout 2024.Â
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S15There's a Right Way and a Wrong Way to Run an Internship Program For many folks these days, that first job, by necessity, is an internship. In fact, a 2021 survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that companies view internships as the most influential factor in a hiring decision when choosing between two equally qualified early career candidates.
And while internships are a great opportunity for students and young workers to get their foot in the door somewhere and learn valuable on-the-job experience that they can't get in a classroom, interns can also be a great pipeline for emerging talent, fresh perspective, and of course, extra hands during your busiest seasons.Â
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S16Your Team Members Aren't Participating in Meetings. Here's What to Do. Traditional advice for leaders who want to increase meeting participation call for clarifying expectations, setting clear agendas, and asking open-ended questions. While these strategies have their merits, they might not always work because they’re usually based on the leader’s assumptions about what the team needs, rather than facts about what they actually need. Managers who want their teams to be more engaged in meetings need to foster a safe, inclusive team culture, which requires a deep understanding of their team’s unique dynamics. The author presents several strategies for encouraging employees to engage during meetings.
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S17How One Company Added Carbon Estimates to Its Customer Invoices Soprema is an international building materials supplier, producing millions of square meters of waterproofing, insulating, and roofing products each year. In 2022, Pierre-Etienne Bindschedler, the company’s president and third-generation owner, committed to reporting the carbon footprint of each product on every customer invoice, and to help customers reduce the embedded GHG emissions in the products they purchased. Paper co-author Melotte, an experienced operations director, was selected to lead a pilot project to measure and subsequently lower the carbon embedded in its products. Melotte decided to follow the E-Liability Pilot Playbook, which divides a pilot project into four stages: Project Design, Data Collection; Data Analysis, and Action. This article describes how the pilot, which focused on the company’s bitumen waterproofing systems, unfolded at Soprema. The company estimates a potential carbon footprint reduction of 34% from the project.
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S18Rideshare work attracts older drivers. Older drivers attract criminals At around 9 p.m. one Friday evening in December, 50-year-old Uber driver Nolwazi Mtshekexe got a ride request from a passenger in Soweto, a particularly dangerous corner of Johannesburg. She knew it was risky to pick up passengers from the area at night but decided to take a chance.
The fare, to be paid in cash, was about 150 rand ($8.30) to drop the passenger off at a nightclub in Rosebank, 35 kilometers away. But when Mtshekexe arrived at the pick-up point, three men were waiting for her, she told Rest of World. They seemed drunk, and two of them looked to be carrying weapons in their pants pockets, which made her hesitant.
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S19How to Remove Your Personal Info From Google's Search Results It can be quite frightening to find personal information about yourself in a Google search, like a home address or phone number, but you can take proactive steps to protect your privacy. A couple of years ago, Google expanded the ways you can submit removal requests for search results containing personal info. While you previously had to meet a very high threshold for results containing sensitive data to be wiped, the process is now available for more people.
In addition to the removal of personal information, Google considers removal requests for images of minors, as well as deepfake pornography and other explicit content. Although getting results scrubbed from Google Search wonâÂÂt remove web pages from the internet, it will divert a huge driver of traffic.
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S20You can now buy a 4-foot-tall humanoid robot for $16K Does anyone want to buy a humanoid robot for $16,000? The latest product from Unitree hopes that you will: Meet the Unitree G1, a "Humanoid agent AI avatar," aka a robot. If you haven't heard of Unitree, it's sort of the go-to "budget Chinese option" in the robot space. You're going to have to deal with company promotional materials that are just barely written in English, but you get some impressive bang-for-your-buck robots. You may have seen the Spot-knockoff Unitree Go2, a $1,600 robot dog that various resellers have equipped with a flamethrower or just straight-up military rifles.
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S21Judge: Craig Wright forged documents on "grand scale" to support bitcoin lie A British judge found that Craig Wright "lied repeatedly and extensively" in a case related to Wright's claim that he is bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto. "Dr. Wright's attempts to prove he was/is Satoshi Nakamoto represent a most serious abuse of this Court's process," Justice James Mellor of England's High Court of Justice wrote in a ruling published today.
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S22S23S24Who Would Benefit From Ebrahim Raisi's Death? If the Iranian president turns out to have lost his life in a helicopter crash, it will set off a fierce scramble for power.Accidents happen everywhere, but not all accidents are equal. Many hours after initial news broke about an "incident" involving a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country's state media has still not confirmed whether he is dead or alive. Various state outlets have published contradictory newsâWas Raisi seen on video link after the accident? Was he not? Was the National Security Council meeting? Was it not?âsignaling chaos and panic. A source in Tehran close to the presidency told me that Raisi has been confirmed dead, and that the authorities are looking for a way to report the news without causing mayhem. I have not been able to independently confirm this.
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S25Mapped: The Top Export in Each EU Country Other products help diversify the EU economy. France’s top export is planes, helicopters, and/or spacecraft, while Italy and Denmark excel in the packaged medicines industry. Ireland has a significant pharmaceutical industry, hosting major companies such as Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Novartis.
America’s third-biggest economy, New York, grew just 0.7% in 2023, falling far below the U.S. average. High interest rates took a toll on key sectors, with notable slowdowns in the construction and manufacturing sectors. In addition, falling home prices and a weaker job market contributed to slower economic growth.
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S26So-called 'SMART goals' are a case of style over substance | Psyche Ideas is an associate professor in psychology at Southern Cross University in Coffs Harbour, Australia where he leads the Physical Activity, Sport and Exercise Research (PASER) theme. He studies goal-setting – with a particular focus on open goals – the psychology of exceptional performance, and mental health in sport, as well as providing strategic advice and consultancy to help organisations set goals effectively.
If you’ve ever sought out advice on how to set yourself effective goals in life – from diet and fitness contexts, to finance, to work and productivity – you’re bound to have encountered the claim that the most successful approach is to use so-called SMART goals. The SMART approach typically advises that, for the best chance of obtaining what you want, your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timebound. Here are some examples of SMART goals:
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S27AI Needs Enormous Computing Power. Could Light-Based Chips Help? | Quanta Magazine Moore's law is already pretty fast. It holds that computer chips pack in twice as many transistors every two years or so, producing major jumps in speed and efficiency. But the computing demands of the deep learning era are growing even faster than that â at a pace that is likely not sustainable. The International Energy Agency predicts that artificial intelligence will consume 10 times as much power in 2026 as it did in 2023, and that data centers in that year will use as much energy as Japan. "The amount of [computing power] that AI needs doubles every three months," said Nick Harris, founder and CEO of the computing-hardware company Lightmatter â far faster than Moore's law predicts. "It's going to break companies and economies."
One of the most promising ways forward involves processing information not with trusty electrons, which have dominated computing for over 50 years, but instead using the flow of photons, minuscule packets of light. Recent results suggest that, for certain computational tasks fundamental to modern artificial intelligence, light-based "optical computers" may offer an advantage.
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S28New 9/11 Evidence Points to Deep Saudi Complicity Two decades of U.S. policy appear to be rooted in a mistaken understanding of what happened that day.
For more than two decades, through two wars and domestic upheaval, the idea that al-Qaeda acted alone on 9/11 has been the basis of U.S. policy. A blue-ribbon commission concluded that Osama bin Laden had pioneered a new kind of terrorist groupâcombining superior technological know-how, extensive resources, and a worldwide network so well coordinated that it could carry out operations of unprecedented magnitude. This vanguard of jihad, it seemed, was the first nonstate actor that rivaled nation-states in the damage it could wreak.
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