In late November, during a conversation that would have ended with a shrug in any other year, I became aware that something had changed. Almost casually, a friend who works in corporate treasury for a mid-sized European industrial group mentioned that her team had paid a cross-border supplier over the weekend. Not on Monday. Not even on Sunday evening. Half the office was watching football on a Saturday afternoon. A stablecoin was the rail. Surprisingly, the bank of the counterparty did not recoil. It’s the kind of detail that doesn’t make news, which is exactly why it’s important. The sector…
A discovery that went unnoticed for almost twenty years has a subtle thrill. While the…
Spotlight
The King Abdulaziz International Conference Center in Riyadh doesn’t seem like the birthplace of international tech regulations. Footsteps are absorbed by the thick carpets. Besides the translation headsets are half-finished coffee cups. Attendees lean forward and pay close attention as presenters go over a topic that was previously thought to be solely Californian: the proper conduct of artificial intelligence. Silicon Valley is not the source of this conversation. In collaboration with the Islamic World Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority has started to develop an ethics charter that goes beyond governing AI in the…
Driving in Abu Dhabi these days feels like you’re being watched, but not in the oppressive way you might anticipate. If you’re driving down Sheikh Zayed Road on a Tuesday afternoon, there aren’t any noticeable changes. The traffic is moving. The signals fulfill their purpose. However, beneath that unremarkable exterior, a vast amount of machine learning is sorting through each lane change, brake tap, and instance in which a driver uses a phone for a half-second too long. These are the kinds of numbers that make traffic engineers take notice. Speaking at Gulf Traffic Week, officials said that since 2019,…
More Stories
When people discuss how the UAE passport is once again rising in the world rankings,…
By all accounts, the floor of Bender’s Cave resembled something from a fever dream. Paleontologist…
Seeing a 100-year-old entertainment company attempt to reinvent itself in real time gives you a…
A grainy, warm-toned, more than twenty-year-old video of a lanky twenty-year-old entering an American Idol…
According to her online biography, she loves taking walks on the beach and instilling in…
People who construct massive structures and then vanish behind them are surrounded by a certain…
Watching gold, the metal once regarded by entire civilizations as the closest thing to permanent…
Near the end of a challenging quarter, a certain kind of silence descends upon trading…
A $250 million insider sale attracts a particular kind of attention, more akin to a…
Sometimes in the course of a single trading session, gold has the ability to make…
On July 5, 2008, a small star in the far-off universe accomplished something it shouldn’t…
In practically every product category, there comes a point at which technology transitions from being…
On a Monday afternoon, stroll through the subterranean plaza beneath one of the corporate skyscrapers…
The unsolicited all-cash bid targets one of the enterprise software sector’s most cash-generative businesses, as…
At first glance, the stone doesn’t seem like much. It could be mistaken for a…
There is a certain stillness to the night in the desert outside of Riyadh. It’s…
The camera’s science is not the first thing that catches the eye. It’s just its…
Not too long ago, Dubai’s skyline appeared to offer more than just opulent apartments and…
When someone first described how quantum computers could crack encryption, it sounded almost dramatic. Large…
Not too long ago, discussing GME stock was synonymous with discussing chaos. Reddit threads are…
Observing a company control culture while remaining financially unattainable is an odd experience. Despite being…
Beauty in Black has a subtly unnerving quality. Not in the obvious sense—the violence, the…
Like many contemporary prestige dramas, it starts with a broken piece. Three slightly inebriated and…
Francisco Partners and Vista Equity Partners have made a preliminary all-cash approach to acquire Progress…