The ride-hailing company looks to be maturing but that brings its own demands. Here's what Wall Street wants to see.

TL;DR: As of September 4, get this 3-in-1 Apple Watch, AirPods & iPhone Charging Cable

Mark your calendars: Smartphone vendor Nothing plans on holding a launch event for its second-generation

By Luc Cohen and Jody Godoy NEW YORK (Reuters) -Sam Bankman-Fried's college roommate and ex-colleague, Gary Wang, testified on Thursday

By Hadeel Al Sayegh, John O'Donnell and Elizabeth Howcroft LONDON/DUBAI Palestinian militant group Hamas uses a global financing

'The Legend of Zelda' is being adapted into a live-action movie.

China delivered 2.24 million cars wholesale in August, the most for a month this year and a record

We all crave a bit of peace and quiet every now and then; just some time to be alone with our thoughts. But silence isn’t as golden as we’ve been led to believe, according to the people who’ve been to the quietest place on Earth. You might expect this to be in a remote part of some great desert whereas, in actual fact, it’s located in a research lab in Minnesota. Inside the anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories, it is so silent you can hear your own blood flowing and bones moving. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Made of 3.3ft-thick fibreglass acoustic wedges and double walls of insulated steel and thick concrete, the room absorbs 99.99 per cent of sound. The conditions within its Fort Knox-style walls are so intense that the longest amount of time anyone’s been able to endure in there is 45 minutes. “We challenge people to sit in the chamber in the dark,” the lab’s founder Steven Orfield told Hearing Aid Know. “When it’s quiet, ears will adapt. The quieter the room, the more things you hear. You’ll hear your heart beating, sometimes you can hear your lungs, hear your stomach gurgling loudly. “In the anechoic chamber, you become the sound." What he means by this is that, with the absence of external noise, your ears are forced to adapt to unimaginable silence and start to focus inwards on your own mind and bodily functions. Furthermore, after as little as 30 minutes subjects begin to hallucinate. Orfield explained that it is also impossible to stay in the room for more than half an hour without sitting down because a person’s orientation is largely grounded in the sounds they make when moving. "How you orient yourself is through sounds you hear when you walk," he told the Daily Mail. In the anechoic chamber, you don't have any cues. "You take away the perceptual cues that allow you to balance and manoeuvre. If you're in there for half an hour, you have to be in a chair." The Quietest Place on Earth: Orfield Laboratories youtu.be For anyone who reckons they could top that 45-minute record, it is possible to experience the chamber for yourself. The Laboratories offer a tour, named “The Anechoic Experience”, which enables participants to take on the challenge, provided they’re willing to fork out a cool $600 (around £470) per hour for the privilege. The Orfield website states: “We have witnessed many seeming miracles, some of which have explanations and some of which remain mysteries, as a result of time spent in our anechoic chamber. “We remain curious about the nature of the chamber's impact on all people, its therapeutic properties, and how it can influence human perception. While anechoic chambers are traditionally used to study products, ours is becoming also about the people. “The Anechoic Experience is designed to be an opportunity to personally inquire about the chamber's therapeutic and spiritual effects.” We reckon we might be better off just lying in bed with the duvet over our heads next time we want a moment's peace. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The head of the artificial intelligence company that makes ChatGPT is testifying before Congress as lawmakers call for new rules to guide the rapid development of AI technology

Apple’s sales have fallen, and will continue to fall, the company warned in its latest results. But the company’s long-term investment in services – such as its streaming TV and music platforms and other monthly subscriptions – helped offset the fall in the number of people buying products such as iPhones and iPads. Apple shares dropped about 2% after the company predicted what could be the fourth quarter in a row of declining sales. For the just-ended period, strength in services drove the profit beat, but weaker than expected sales of Apple‘s most famous device, the iPhone, underwhelmed investors. Executives said iPhone sales would improve in the fourth quarter, but did not say how much. Apple is in a delicate position, with its entrenched iPhone battling for share against Android rivals in a mature market, while its next big product - the Vision Pro mixed-reality headset announced in June - is not yet in the hands of consumers. Apple said sales for the fiscal third quarter ended July 1 fell 1.4% to $81.8 billion and earnings per share rose 5% to $1.26. That topped analyst expectations of $81.69 billion and $1.19 per share, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. Weaker iPhone sales were balanced by strong sales in the services segment that contains Apple TV+ and by sales in China that grew 8% year over year. Apple Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said the company expects a year-over-year revenue performance in the company’s fiscal fourth quarter ending in September similar to the drop the company reported on Thursday. That sales forecast is below analyst expectations of roughly flat fiscal fourth-quarter sales of $90.19 billion, according to Refinitiv data. “There is a real concern about when volume picks up and what the horizon is for iPhone sales growth,” said Daniel Newman, chief executive and principal analyst at research firm Futurum Group. Apple pegged the gross profit margin in the September quarter at 44% to 45%, above analyst expectations of 43.4%, according to Refinitiv data. While Appleexpects growth in its service segment that contains Apple TV+, iPad and Mac sales will fall by “double digits,” Maestri said on the call. Apple‘s research and development spending also hit $22.61 billion for the fiscal year so far, about $3.12 billion higher than at this point in the previous year. Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook told Reuters in an interview that the increased R&D spending was in part driven by work on generative artificial intelligence, the same field that is driving spending at other big technology companies. “We’ve been doing research across a wide range of AI technologies, including generative AI, for years. We’re going to continue investing and innovating and responsibly advancing our products with these technologies to help enrich people’s lives,” Cook said. “Obviously, we’re investing a lot, and it is showing up in the R&D spending that you’re looking at.” In the meantime, Apple appeared to outperform what has been the weakest smartphone market in China in almost a decade. Overall smartphone sales declined 8% in China in the calendar second quarter to their lowest levels since 2014, according to Counterpoint Research. By contrast, Cook told Reuters that Apple‘s iPhone sales in China grew by “double digits” and that sales were also high in other segments in China. That helped Apple push sales in its greater China region to $15.76 billion, from $14.60 billion in last year’s same quarter. “This was really done by attracting a quarterly record of switchers to the iPhone, as well as having a strong upgrader activity,” Cook said. “We also set quarterly records in China for both wearables, home and accessories, and services.” Apple said iPhone sales were $39.67 billion, below analyst expectations of $39.91 billion, according to Refinitiv data. Cook said the installed base of iPhones hit a new high but gave no numbers. “The company continues to face headwinds caused by waning growth in the smartphone market,” said Insider Intelligence analyst Jeremy Goldman. “All eyes are now on its earnings call for any potential Vision Pro or AI-related announcements that could further push the boundaries of their business model.” Apple‘s services segment, which includes its Apple TV+ service which has announced a deal to carry Major League Soccer, had $21.21 billion in revenue, compared with analyst estimates of $20.76 billion, according to Refinitiv data. Cook said Apple now has 1 billion subscribers on its platform, which includes both Apple services and third-party apps, up from 975 million a quarter ago. The company’s wearables business, which includes the Apple Watch and AirPods, had revenue of $8.28 billion, compared with analyst estimates of $8.39 billion, according to Refinitiv data. Mac and iPad sales were $6.84 billion and $5.79 billion, respectively, compared with analyst estimates of $6.62 billion and $6.41 billion, according to Refinitiv data. “Almost half of the Mac buyers during the quarter were new to the product, and we continue to see strong upgrader activity to Apple Silicon,” Cook told Reuters. Additional reporting by Reuters Read More Apple planning new version of AirTags – but not for some time The iPhone 15 is going to help Apple achieve one very big dream New iPhone might have a mysterious button on its side – and this is what it could do iPhone users urged to check their photo library amid fears they could be deleted Rumours are growing about some bad iPhone news Meta’s Twitter rival Threads sees ‘steep drop in daily users by 80 per cent’

Named Friday as Elon Musk's successor as Twitter CEO, Linda Yaccarino is a respected media and advertising executive considered...

The XDefiant Open Beta Twitch Drops, featuring two weapon skins, are now available for viewers to earn and claim as they watch streamers play XDefiant.