Techflier

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses a joint meeting of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on December 21, 2022. AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster Zelenskyy on Saturday railed against Russia over its New Year's Eve strikes on Ukraine. "They call themselves Christians. ... But they are following the devil," he said during his address. Zelenskyy traveled to Washington this month to meet with US President Biden and speak to Congress. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a Saturday address pointedly told Russia that "no one will ever forgive you" after the country unleashed a wave of missile attacks on Ukraine on New Year's Eve. Zelenskyy — who recently traveled to the United States to meet with President Joe Biden and speak before a joint session of Congress — was forceful in stating that Russians were akin to "following the devil." Russia in the last few days has led major two rounds of missile strikes on Ukraine, with t...

Insider investigated 175 recent homicides of transgender people. Insider Killings of transgender people doubled between 2019 and 2021, as anti-trans legislation and rhetoric accelerated. Most of the killers were young men in their teens and twenties, many of whom were intimate with their victims. At least 39 transgender people were killed in acts of intimate violence, by spouses, partners, boyfriends, housemates, dates, or clients. Only 28 killings out of 175 cases Insider examined resulted in murder convictions; only one resulted in a hate crimes conviction. Nearly two-thirds of victims were misgendered or misnamed by law enforcement. Starting in November, Insider published its series "Deaths in the family," a comprehensive investigation into five years of transgender homicides. It features infographics illustrating our starkest findings, including that homicides spiked just as states accelerated their introduction of anti-trans legislation, and eight long reads o...

Shared electric scooters came onto the scene five years ago with a promising vision of getting people out of cars and onto greener modes of transportation. Yet despite billions in VC money and plenty of hype , the future that micromobility companies promised still hasn’t quite arrived. In cities like Paris, most people aren’t replacing car trips with shared e-scooter jaunts in a meaningful way; the cost of riding scooters makes them an expensive option for last-mile transit connections and equitable access; and the public disclosures of Bird and Helbiz have shown us that achieving profitability is incredibly difficult. Plus, cities that allowed shared e-scooter companies in their midsts are increasingly making it difficult for scooter companies to operate sustainably. For the sake of traffic flow and carbon emissions , there need to be alternatives to cars. Are shared e-scooters the answer to that, or are they just another shitty option? What have we gained by introducing shared...

Longyearbyen, the largest city in Svalbard on May 2, 2022. JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP via Getty Images Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago by the North Pole, is one of the world's only visa-free zones.  But residents who can't support themselves or find housing can be expelled by the governor. Insider spoke with four locals (one of whom was deported) about what it's like to work in Svalbard. In a world where your passport dictates where you can live, travel, and work, there's a semi-frozen haven open to citizens of all countries — no complicated visa or employment permits required.  Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago 500 miles from the North Pole, is home to the world's northernmost human settlement. The 2,300 residents of the capital, Longyearbyen, include people of over 40 different nationalities, few of whom are "from" Svalbard, per say.  That's because you're not allowed to give birth on Svalbard — one of the many strange rules that govern...

Costco will be closed on New Year's Day 2023. David Zalubowski/AP Images Costco, Aldi, Sam's Club, and Trader Joe's are among the stores closed on New Year's Day. Chick-fil-A will be closed, as New Year's Day is on a Sunday and the chain doesn't operate Sundays. Stores and restaurants open on the holiday include Walmart, Target, Starbucks, and McDonald's. Shoppers will have many more options for stores and restaurants to visit on New Year's Day, compared to Christmas. Many major retail chains that were closed on Christmas, such as Walmart and Target, will be open on January 1 for customers who want to ring in the new year with some retail therapy. Most restaurant chains will also be open on New Year's Day. But if you want a spicy chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A, you'll be out of luck: the chain is closed every Sunday, and New Year's Day falls on a Sunday in 2023.  And some stores, such as Costco, Trader Joe's, and Aldi, will...

The first open-source equivalent of OpenAI’s ChatGPT has arrived, but good luck running it on your laptop — or at all. This week, Philip Wang, the developer responsible for reverse-engineering closed-sourced AI systems including Meta’s Make-A-Video , released PaLM + RLHF, a text-generating model that behaves similarly to ChatGPT. The system combines PaLM , a large language model from Google, and a technique called Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback — RLHF, for short — to create a system that can accomplish pretty much any task that ChatGPT can, including drafting emails and suggesting computer code. But PaLM + RLHF isn’t pretrained. That is to say, the system hasn’t been trained on the example data from the web necessary for it to actually work. Downloading PaLM + RLHF won’t magically install a ChatGPT-like experience — that would require compiling gigabytes of text from which the model can learn and finding hardware beefy enough to handle the training workload. Like ChatGP...

NurPhoto/Getty Images A group of FTX.com customers want their identities to be kept secret during the crypto exchange's bankruptcy process. The users, who claim to be owed $1.9 billion, asked for a court order to keep their names shielded from the public. Companies in bankruptcy usually disclose the names and amounts of debt held by creditors. A group of 15 non-US FTX customers, who say they are owed $1.9 billion from the troubled crypto exchange, want their identities to stay redacted from the firm's bankruptcy filings.  The FTX.com users asked for a court order to continue to shield their names, adding that public disclosure of their identities puts them at risk of various scams and cyber crimes, according to a filing on Wednesday. "It is difficult to imagine a more compelling case that would warrant withholding and redacting the information of the thousands of FTX.com customers who had their funds stolen and never anticipated that their use of cryptocurrency...

As Meta faces antitrust scrutiny over its acquisition of VR fitness developers Within, the tech giant is making another acquisition. Meta confirmed to TechCrunch that it is purchasing Luxexcel , a smart eyewear company headquartered in the Netherlands. The terms of the deal, which was first reported in the Belgian paper De Tijd, have not been disclosed. Founded in 2009, Luxexcel uses 3D printing to make prescription lenses for glasses. More recently, the company has focused its efforts on smart lenses, which can be printed with integrated technology like LCD displays and holographic film. “We’re excited that the Luxexcel team has joined Meta, deepening the existing partnership between the two companies,” a Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch. It’s rumored that Meta and Luxexcel had already worked together on Project Aria , the company’s augmented reality (AR) research initiative. In September 2021, Meta unveiled the Ray-Ban Stories , a pair of smart glasses that can take photos an...

Tom Lee. Cindy Ord/Getty Images Fundstrat's Tom Lee expects the S&P 500 to soar more than 20% in 2023 to 4,750 as inflation cools off. But he highlighted a big risk to his forecast on Friday that centers around sticky wages and a hawkish Federal Reserve. "If [wages] begin to accelerate it means the Fed has a lot more wood to chop and that raises the risk," Lee said. Fundstrat's Tom Lee is the biggest bull on Wall Street, as his 2023 S&P 500 price target of 4,750 exceeds Wall Street's median forecast by 17%. But during an interview with CNBC on Friday, he acknowledged there's a big threat next year that could derail his bullish outlook.  "The risk remains that the Fed has to stay tighter and therefore it actually doesn't lead to a soft landing, it leads to an outright recession and maybe even a financial crisis. So I think the thing that remains the biggest risk is if wages actually accelerate," Lee said. His bull case hin...

You can access and play a variety of Snapchat Games with other users. NurPhoto / Getty Images Snapchat includes a library of multiplayer games within its Chat pages. To start a game, tap the Rocket icon while you're in a chat with a friend or group.  You can continue chatting even while you are in a Snapchat game with your friend. While you probably already use the Snapchat app for text chats as well as voice and video calls, you can also use it for gaming.  Here's everything you need to know about the "hidden" Snapchat Games feature. Snapchat has a library of built-in games Snapchat Games are designed as another way to keep you engaged with friends. They are generally short and simple multiplayer games designed for two or more players.  You can browse and launch Snapchat games from within the Snapchat app, and the games are an extension of the Chat page, so you can easily launch a game while having a conversation with someone. While these games are relat...

Big thanks to Joyce Sidopoulos, Peter Barrett and Ken Goldberg for filling in the last few weeks . I’m excited by the boost this newsletter has been getting in recent months and wanted to keep the light on while I was out. Three weeks is the longest break I’ve taken for work in…ever, really. Went to a bunch of museums (do yourself a favor and check out Edward Hopper at the Whitney and Morris Hirshfield at the American Folk Art Museum — can’t recommend them enough) and spent a few days in Aruba, of all places. Still not sure why flights were so cheap, but if you’re ever looking for a nice place to stay on the island for $150 a night, let me know. There’s also a great animal rescue. Go make friends with a miniature donkey. The minute you get off the plane at JFK, however . . . Let’s just say the inner peace from meditating on a white sand beach every morning wears off even faster than the tan. Suddenly you’re tossed back into New York during travel season in 30-degree weather. If anyon...

Setting up dual monitors can boost your productivity and free space. Nisian Hughes/Getty Images To set up dual monitors on Windows 10, connect the monitor to your PC and open "Display settings." On a Mac, you can connect another monitor to it using the "Display" menu in "System Preferences." You can set up your dual monitors to display the same image, or work separately. In an office, it's common to see people using multiple monitors at the same computer. It's a great way to expand your workspace and use lots of different apps at once. Luckily, dual monitors aren't just for professionals. You can set up dual monitors on your PC and Mac easily. You just need the monitors and cables to connect them. Important : You can set up dual monitors on a laptop, too. The laptop's screen will just count as one of the monitors. How to set up dual monitors on a Windows 10 computer 1. Connect both monitors to the computer tower or laptop yo...