Zoom CEO Eric Yuan told staff an all-hands meeting earlier this month that he wants employees to return to in-person work because Zoom is making them too “friendly” and unable to build trust. “Over the past several years, we’ve hired so many new ‘Zoomies’ that it’s really hard to build trust,” Mr Yuan says in the audio, which was obtained and first reported by Insider. “We cannot have a great conversation. We cannot debate each other well because everyone tends to be very friendly when you join a Zoom call.” Mr Yuan’s thoughts were accompanied by action: On 3 August, Zoom instituted a new policy requiring employees who live within 50 miles of a physical Zoom office to report to work at least two days per week. The return to the office policy at Zoom is striking considering that it was the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting stay-at-home orders that turned the platform from one few people had ever heard of to a part of everyday life for millions. But Mr Yuan is not alone among senior executives at tech firms. Apple, Meta, and Amazon have all instituted return-to-work policies in recent months, angering employees who have enjoyed the increased flexibility afforded by work-from-home policies. Since Covid-19 vaccines have facilitated the re-opening of the economy, workers and bosses in many sectors have clashed over the importance of in-person work and the ability of companies to exercise control over their employees whereabouts and schedules. Some, like Zoom and a number of other tech companies, have adopted hybrid policies in which workers are required to come into the office on certain days of the week but are allowed to work from home on others. But even those companies have faced backlash from workers, many of whom were hired at a different stage of the pandemic when most or all work at their respective companies was being conducted remotely. Mr Yuan’s comments, which were not meant for public consumption, may provide a measure of insight into how he and other top executives truly feel about Zoom and remote work more broadly — suggesting that it somehow limits innovation by not allowing for the sometimes uncomfortable kinds of interactions that can build trust. Mr Yuan, who was born and raised in China, moved to Silicon Valley during the late 1990s. He founded Zoom more than a decade ago and became a multibillionaire during the pandemic. Read More Maui residents are still reeling from wildfire devastation. Now investors and realtors are trying to cash in

You may have never noticed the extra holes on the sides of your Chuck Taylor All-Stars, but they serve a clever purpose.

FARMINGTON, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 27, 2023--

Hazardous smoke from wildfires has become a near-annual occurrence on the West Coast since 2017. But the hazy

IBM said on Wednesday it is notifying customers of Janssen CarePath, a Johnson & Johnson unit, of a

SAVE $70: As of July 10, Walmart+ members can snag an Xbox Series S bundle

SHANGHAI (Reuters) -Zeekr, Chinese automaker Geely's premium electric car brand, will this week publicly release some details of its plans

Microsoft has announced plans to build a quantum supercomputer after researchers said the next-generation machines will be able to outperform standard computers within the next two years. Quantum computers have the potential to be orders of magnitude more powerful than today’s leading supercomputers, but have so far failed to compete when it comes to practical tasks. A recent benchmark experiment from quantum computing researchers at IBM suggests that the machines will soon be able to perform useful calculations “at a scale where classical computers will struggle”, opening up a vast number of applications. “These machines are coming,” Sabrina Maniscalco, chief executive of quantum computing startup Algorithmiq, told the scientific journal Nature which published the research this month. Microsoft revealed its roadmap for building its first “quantum supercomputer” on Wednesday, following several years of research and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment into the technology. Quantum computers work by replacing traditional bits – the ‘ones’ and ‘zeros’ used to store and transfer digital data – with quantum bits, called qubits, that make use of a quantum phenomena known as superposition to exist in two states at once. This means they can serve as both a ‘one’ and a ‘zero’ simultaneously, so that each qubit added makes them exponentially more powerful than their traditional counterparts. Microsoft said it made its own breakthrough by engineering a new type of qubit, described in the journal Physical Review B on Wednesday, that is stable enough to work at scale on a quantum supercomputer. Microsoft describes a quantum supercomputer as one that can perform one million quantum operations per second, claiming its construction will be completed within the next decade. “Microsoft has achieved the first milestone towards creating a reliable and practical quantum supercomputer,” the firm wrote in a blog post detailing the roadmap. “Today marks an important moment on our path to engineering a quantum supercomputer and ultimately empowering scientists to solve many of the hardest problems facing our planet.” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said it was his company’s goal “to compress the next 250 years of chemistry and materials science into the next 25.” The announcements from IBM and Microsoft follow several major quantum computing breakthroughs in recent years. In 2019, scientists at Google announced that they had achieved something known as quantum supremacy, when their Sycamore quantum computer was able to solve a problem in 200 seconds that would have taken the most powerful supercomputer in the world 10,000 years to solve. The milestone has since been repeated by researchers in China, whose quantum computer is able to perform computations nearly 100 trillion times faster than the world’s most powerful supercomputer. While impressive, neither the Chinese machine nor Google’s Sycamore had any practical use. John Martinis, one of the Google researchers behind the 2019 milestone, said the latest news made him “optimistic that this will work in other systems and more complicated algorithms”. Read More Quantum computer discovers bizarre particle that remembers its past Quantum computing adopted by airlines and car makers in hunt for world's first commercial applications Breakthrough could soon allow us to actually use quantum computers, scientists say Elon Musk confirms cage fight with Mark Zuckerberg Apple starts letting developers make apps for its upcoming headset

Salesforce Inc. has eliminated more workers beyond a previously announced 10% reduction in a renewed focus on profitability.

The first ever commercial-scale carbon capture facility has begun operations in the US, marking a significant milestone towards meeting cleaner climate targets. San Francisco-based startup Heirloom Carbon Technologies opened the carbon removal plant in Tracy, California, on Thursday, claiming it will be able to capture 1,000 metric tons per year of CO2. The renewable energy-powered plant leverages the natural power of limestone to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. “Rocks are some of the planet’s most vital carbon sinks. Over geological timescales, CO2 from the atmosphere binds to minerals and permanently turns to rock - a process known as carbon mineralisation,” Heirloom notes on its website. “Limestone is one of the most abundant rocks on the planet, capturing massive amounts of CO2 from the air over years, Heirloom’s technology accelerates this natural process to just days.” The process works by placing hundreds of trays of calcium oxide powder onto 12-metre-tall racks, which turns into limestone as it comes into contact with CO2 from the atmosphere. Workers then heat up the limestone, which releases the carbon dioxide and turns it back into calcium oxide that can be reused to capture more CO2. The atmospheric CO2 that is captured through the facility is permanently sequestered in concrete through a partnership between Heirloom and CarbonCure Technologies. Heirloom aims to remove 1 billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere by 2035 using its Direct Air Capture technology, with funding coming from companies buying carbon removal credits in order to offset their own emissions. It is not the first company to achieve direct carbon capture from the atmosphere, but Heirloom claims to be the first in the US. Switzerland-based startup Climeworks AG has commercial facilities in Switzerland and Iceland, which are capable of removing 4,000 metric tons of CO2 each year. Carbon capture technologies have faced criticism for the large amounts of energy and resources they require to operate, though some scientists claim they will be a vital part of keeping global net emissions below zero by 2050. In response to criticism from green groups in 2021 claiming that such projects are a costly distraction, Professor Stuart Haszeldine from Edinburgh University said: “Carbon capture and storage is going to be the only effective way we have in the short term to prevent our steel industry, cement manufacture and many other processes from continuing to pour emissions into the atmosphere. “If we are to have any hope of keeping global temperature [increases] down below 2C then we desperately need to develop ways to capture and store carbon dioxide.” The US government announced in August that it would fund a $1.2 billion effort to develop and deploy carbon capture technologies, with Heirloom among the recipients. Major companies, including Microsoft, have already signed deals to purchase carbon removal credits from Heirloom. Read More Breakthrough solar system outperforms military-grade diesel generator Breakthrough solar system outperforms military-grade diesel generator Solar panel world record smashed with ‘miracle material’ Google issues three-week warning to Gmail account holders

The head of the lidar start-up isn't happy with the performance of his company's stock. Shares are down 86% from record highs reached in December 2020.

The Russian space agency says its Luna-25 spacecraft has crashed into the moon after it had spun into uncontrolled orbit