Author: News Room
TikTok’s immediate future may rest in the hands of a tech company that has largely avoided the spotlight: Oracle. The company is one of the app’s leading server providers, managing the data centers where billions of 40-second videos are stored.“It could become a digital roadblock that prevents people from getting access to the content, if they make the decision to shut it down, which is uncertain,” said Bob O’Donnell, founder of TECHnalysis Research, a market research firm.An Oracle spokesman didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment. The company, which has close ties to the incoming Trump administration, has said in…
Davos is coming just in time for the inauguration of Donald J. Trump 2.0, and Europe is anxious. Mr. Trump is like an asteroid heading for Earth, argues Hubert Védrine, a former French foreign minister, and debates about the impact will dominate the cozy, internationalist bubble that gathers each year in the pricey snow of the Swiss Alps.Mr. Trump talks variously about huge new tariffs, about seizing Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal, about tying American involvement in European defense not only to Europeans increasing their military spending but also decreasing their trade surplus with the United States.Mr. Védrine and…
When Joe Kudla talks about the Vuori customer — the loyal, die-hard consumer of the company he founded a decade ago — Jimmy Spencer is exactly the kind of person he has in mind.“Oh, I’m Mr. Vuori,” said Mr. Spencer, 41, a Californian who works in sports media and bought his first Vuori T-shirt about six or seven years ago. He estimates he now has 45 items in his closet, including fleeces, jackets, shorts, a stack of those tees in various colors and Vuori’s Meta Pant — five-pocket tapered trousers that are made from a polyester fabric typically used in…
Amid the global turmoil of this young new year comes a flurry of welcome developments that will help many people — especially retirees and those close to retirement — supercharge their savings, cut prescription drug costs, keep more of the money they earn and, possibly, raise their credit scores.Fair warning, though: It’s complicated.The details of the changes, which are partly tied to the phasing in of provisions from the SECURE 2.0 and Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, can be head spinning. But the payoff — and, in one case, possible penalty — can be substantial.Here is a roundup of the…
But I’ve never once added a friend on TikTok, sent a direct message or thought of myself as a “TikToker.” And I don’t think I’m alone. For most people I know, TikTok isn’t a place to connect with other people. It’s a place to waste time, to numb out, to unplug from reality and float in the feed. That passive, dissociative quality, while great for engagement, has also made TikTok feel more replaceable than other, more social networks. If it goes away, we’ll just get our fix somewhere else.I’m also persuaded by the explanation given in The Atlantic by Hana…
Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s C.E.O., will soon be making his way to Washington, where the company is planning to host its first-ever inauguration party on Sunday, along with X and The Free Press.Days later, Khosrowshahi is expected to travel to Davos, Switzerland, for the 54th World Economic Forum — an event that has, in recent years, been a platform for making exactly the kinds of corporate promises that Trump has railed against, including commitments to E.S.G., D.E.I. and globalism.Khosrowshahi’s itinerary symbolizes a stark shift in corporate America. While many C.E.O.s once distanced themselves from Trump, they are now embracing him. And…
Chinese tech companies long looked to the United States as a key market and source of investment. Firms like ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, courted major American investment firms like General Atlantic and Susquehanna Capital. Chinese start-ups in Shanghai and Shenzhen saw an initial public offering on the Nasdaq or New York Stock Exchange as the ultimate symbol of success.But as relations between Washington and Beijing have grown increasingly strained, that is changing.Companies with ties to China now face so much regulatory and political scrutiny that some companies are reconsidering going public or doing business in the United States, investors…
Three years ago, when Bob and Sandy Curtis moved into an upscale continuing care retirement community in Port Washington, N.Y., he thought they had found the best possible elder care solution.In exchange for a steep entrance fee — about $840,000, funded by the sale of the Long Island house they had owned for nearly 50 years — they would have care for the rest of their lives at the Harborside. They selected a contract from several options that set stable monthly fees at about $6,000 for both of them and would refund half the entrance fee to their estate after…
A few weeks ago, I had dinner at LaSorted’s in Chinatown, eating pizza and drinking wine with my husband while our toddler gnawed at a crust and threw a few salad leaves onto the floor. When I walked in this past Wednesday — as thousands of acres of Los Angeles still burned — the dining room was nearly unrecognizable, its wobbly tables reconfigured into a makeshift kitchen.Pizza makers from all over the city were squashed inside, unpacking supplies and folding boxes. The line out the door looked like diners waiting for tables — blue Dodgers hats, oversize vintage button-downs, esoteric…
The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, commonly referred to as Davos, welcomes more than 3,000 global leaders from business, politics and civil society every January in the namesake Swiss city. They gather to address pressing issues such as climate change and economic and geopolitical challenges. Davos, which begins Monday and runs through Friday, was started in 1971 by the German economist Klaus Schwab, who initially named it the European Management Symposium.Severin Podolak, the head of event management and operations for the World Economic Forum since 2021, helps design the event, manage it and ensure its overall success. Before taking on…