Small investors are becoming a force in the stock market, and company executives are beginning to take notice
By Matt Phillips
After CarParts.com reported its quarterly results last month, executives at the company, which sells replacement auto parts, did what many of their ilk do: They held a conference call with Wall Street analysts, fielding questions about inventory levels, profit margins and corporate strategy.
Roughly 30 minutes later, the same executives were on Clubhouse, hosting an entirely different kind of audience. Their 2,000 or so guests had gathered at the buzzy online meeting spot to learn about the company. Their questions were far more straightforward. How did the business work? Why was CarParts.com able to offer lower prices…
With acceptance from traditional investors, a profitable start-up that eases transactions is offering proof of the industry’s staying power
By Erin Griffith
SAN FRANCISCO — Digital currency, once mocked as a tool for criminals and reckless speculators, is sliding into the mainstream.
Traditional banks are helping investors put their money into cryptocurrency funds. Companies like Tesla and Square are hoarding Bitcoin. And celebrities are leading the way in a digital-art spending spree using a technology called an NFT.
On Wednesday, digital or cryptocurrencies will take their biggest step yet toward wider acceptance when Coinbase, a startup that allows people to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, goes public on Nasdaq. …
Making the digital artworks requires colossal amounts of computing power, and that means greenhouse gases
By Hiroko Tabuchi
When Chris Precht, an Austrian architect and artist, first learned about nonfungible tokens, the digital collectibles taking the art world by storm, he was so enthralled, he said, he “felt like a little kid again.”
So Precht, who is known for his work on ecological architecture, was devastated to learn that the artworks, known as NFTs, have an environmental footprint as mind-boggling as the gold-rush frenzy they’ve whipped up.
“The numbers are just crushing,” he said from his studio in Pfarrwerfen, Austria, announcing that he was canceling his plans, one of a growing number of artists who…
The president’s choice to set a firm date for a full withdrawal reflected a belief that the priorities of 2021 require moving on from policies set in 2001
By David E. Sanger
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s decision to pull all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11 was rooted in his belief that there is no room for continuing 20 years of failed efforts to remake that country, especially at a moment when he wants the United States focused on a transformational economic and social agenda at home and other fast-evolving threats from abroad.
Though Biden would never use the term, getting out of Afghanistan is part of his own version of “America First,” one that differs drastically from how his predecessor, Donald Trump, used the phrase…
Wish, the ultra-budget e-commerce app, is about as online as shopping gets. What happens when it comes to your neighborhood?
By John Herrman
NEW YORK — At MRK Computing Solutions, in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, Marc Anglade helps customers with technological needs: computer repair; web and app design; CCTV installation; printing, faxing, scanning. Anglade, 34, described his small business, which has earned many positive reviews on Google and Yelp, as “a neighborhood Staples.”
Since 2019, however, it has doubled as a miniature warehouse, distribution point and delivery hub for Wish, the discount e-commerce platform. Between frequent phone calls and walk-ins, Anglade fishes for orders in boxes stacked high on shelving units he installed in the middle of his…
Even before the pandemic, many female scientists felt unsupported in their fields. Now, some are hitting a breaking point.
By Apoorva Mandavilli
Like many women during the pandemic, Alisa Stephens found working from home to be a series of wearying challenges.
Stephens is a biostatistician at the University of Pennsylvania, and the technical and detail-oriented nature of her work requires long uninterrupted stretches of thought. Finding the time and mental space for that work with two young children at home proved impossible.
“That first month was really hard,” she recalled of the lockdown. Her infant daughter’s day care was closed, and her 5-year-old was at home instead of at school. With their nanny unable to come to the house…
Nearly a year after the Internet Engineering Task Force took up a plan to replace words that could be considered racist, the debate is still raging
By Kate Conger
Anyone who joined a video call during the pandemic probably has a global volunteer organization called the Internet Engineering Task Force to thank for making the technology work.
The group, which helped create the technical foundations of the internet, designed the language that allows most video to run smoothly online. It made it possible for someone with a Gmail account to communicate with a friend who uses Yahoo and for shoppers to safely enter their credit card information on e-commerce sites.
Now the organization is tackling an even thornier issue: getting rid of computer engineering terms that…
The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control will stop using the vaccine at federal sites and urge states to do so as well while they investigate the safety issues
By Noah Weiland, Sharon LaFraniere and Carl Zimmer
WASHINGTON — Federal health agencies Tuesday called for an immediate pause in use of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose coronavirus vaccine after six U.S. recipients developed a rare disorder involving blood clots within about two weeks of vaccination.
All six recipients were women between the ages of 18 and 48. One woman died and a second woman in Nebraska has been hospitalized in critical condition.
Nearly 7 million people in the United States have received Johnson & Johnson shots so far, and roughly 9 million more doses have been shipped out to the…
We were spread across three continents, at the mercy of vaccine geopolitics. Which of us would be inoculated last?
By Pui-Wing Tam
In early February, my sister posted a video in our family’s WhatsApp group.
It was a seven-minute CNN report on Malawi, a country in East Africa that is one of the world’s poorest. Coronavirus vaccines were nowhere to be found in Malawi, the report said, because richer countries were hogging the supplies. The video focused on Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi’s second-largest city, showing the strain the facility was under as it battled the virus. The hospital’s workers were tending to infected patients but had little prospect of getting vaccinated soon.
My sister Pui-Ying, a…
Some families have come to prefer stand-alone virtual schools and districts are rushing to accommodate them — though questions about remote learning persist
By Natasha Singer
Rory Levin, a sixth grader in Bloomington, Minnesota, used to hate going to school. He has a health condition that often makes him feel apprehensive around other students. Taking special-education classes did little to ease his anxiety.
So when his district created a stand-alone digital-only program, Bloomington Online School, last year for the pandemic, Rory opted to try it. Now the 11-year-old is enjoying school for the first time, said his mother, Lisa Levin. He loves the live video classes and has made friends with other online students, she said.
In December, Bloomington Public Schools decided to…
