Outside of Lyon, the road to the research campus feels almost purposefully unremarkable, with modest office buildings and logistics warehouses hidden behind metal fencing. Yet, behind those subdued exteriors, France is putting together something much more ambitious than it first seems: the National Quantum Computing Center, a project that was conceived out of President Emmanuel Macron’s €1.8 billion wager that the nature of computing is about to change. It seems as though Lyon was picked out of instinct rather than chance. The city, which has always been more focused, less theatrical, and industrious, has always existed in the shadow of…
Author: errica
With its propellers slicing through the humid morning air, the drone slowly rose from the edge of a concrete landing pad close to India’s western coastline. Fishermen nearby stopped for a moment as they watched the machine raise a tiny white container, which was said to contain diagnostic samples that would typically take hours to transport by road. Perhaps something more significant than a standard logistics test was caught in that instant. It seemed like a subtle change in the direction of healthcare. India and the United Arab Emirates have started collaborating on the delivery of medical supplies via coastal…
Pinghu City’s greenhouse doesn’t smell like a farm. It has a fresh scent. The typical mixture of moist soil and fertilizer is barely perceptible, replaced by the sterile silence of silent machinery. Tiny sensors that measure everything from temperature to moisture are arranged in tidy rows next to leafy greens and blink dimly. As you watch them, you get the impression that farming has changed from being something that is done with the hands to something that is done with numbers. IoT-powered smart farming has started to spread throughout Zhejiang Province’s agricultural areas, and the shift is more disturbing than…
That morning, there was an eerie silence over Livigno Snow Park, the thin, anxious silence that precedes danger. Workers carefully brushed away the snow that clung to the metal rails because they knew that even a thin layer could ruin a run. The mountain appeared more like a test than a venue as the men’s snowboarding slopestyle final for the 2026 Winter Olympics got underway. Su Yiming appeared almost at ease as she stood at the top of the course, which raised suspicions in and of itself. With the expectations of a nation that had started making significant investments in…
Tyra Banks’ estimated net worth of $90 million seems almost too tidy for a career that hasn’t been at all predictable. In her case, wealth wasn’t acquired easily. While the public concentrated on her face, her voice, and her occasionally divisive television persona, it quietly accumulated in layers. An anxious adolescent girl entered Parisian casting rooms long before the television studios and executive producer credits. She later acknowledged that she was scarred by the fact that she had already been turned down by multiple agencies in Los Angeles. However, something changed in Paris. Designers took notice of her right away.…
Before a big game, there is a certain stillness in the air at Milano Santagiulia Arena. Arena workers move across the surface, adjusting nets and blending the subtle scars from past battles, hours before the puck drops. The fact that the upcoming USA men’s hockey game is more than just a matchup dawns on them during these quiet moments. Everything feels vulnerable all of a sudden when Sweden is playing an elimination game. With convincing, if not always effortless, efficiency in their victories over Latvia, Denmark, and Germany, Team USA is unbeaten going into the quarterfinals. The Americans coasted through…
Fluxer feels almost unnervingly quiet in the middle of the night, when most messaging apps are glowing with unread notifications and subliminal pressure to reply. A few servers and conversations are displayed on its silent, dark interface, but none of them are vying for the user’s attention. Perhaps part of its allure is its tranquility. After years of platforms fighting to maintain user engagement at all costs, Fluxer doesn’t seem to be making as much of an effort. Unbelievably, Fluxer started out as a stand-alone project created in Sweden by a programmer named Hampus, who developed it publicly on GitHub.…
As these things frequently do, it began with an email that didn’t appear to be very dangerous. Between grocery delivery receipts and streaming subscriptions, there’s just another notification. While waiting in line for coffee in Austin, a freelance photographer opened it and saw that she would shortly receive a Form 1099-K from PayPal. She blinked. She hadn’t considered herself a company. America is losing that illusion. For many years, PayPal and Venmo seemed almost inconspicuous, like electronic tip jars that sat in the background of contemporary life. After class, a yoga instructor takes payments. At midnight, a college student is…
A job seeker checks their inbox once more on a dreary Tuesday morning in a tiny apartment that is primarily illuminated by laptop light. Nothing. The coffee is cold now. The email tab remains obstinately quiet. Five hundred applications were submitted. No interviews. It’s difficult to ignore how commonplace this has become. Nowadays, looking for a job doesn’t feel like a conversation. It has the feel of an upload. An Applicant Tracking System is the software that sits behind almost every corporate careers page. It silently scans resumes in milliseconds, parses keywords, assigns scores, and eliminates the majority of them…
In Armonk, New York, workers still arrive early outside IBM’s glass headquarters, coffee cups in hand, badges clipped to belts. It’s the kind of business custom that hasn’t altered much over the years. However, another has. The business that contributed to the demise of traditional pensions is subtly reviving one inside those buildings. IBM declared that it would automatically deposit roughly 5% of employee salaries into a defined benefit account in order to replace its long-standing 401(k) matching contributions with a cash-balance pension credit. It sounds almost nostalgic on paper. The word “pension” conjures up a sense of security and…