Josh Horwitz

Of all the conservative commentators to rise to prominence after Trump’s election, few are more polarizing than Jordan B. Peterson, a Canadian psychologist and author with a large following on YouTube. Economist Tyler Cowen named him one of the five most influential public intellectuals in the West today. New York Times columnist David Brooks devoted a full column to him (paywall). In a video, Vice described him as “Canada’s most infamous” academic. Noted Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek called his work “ridiculous.”

In the past, Olympic host cities spent billions of dollars on grandiose structures that soon become “white elephants.” Montreal’s “Big O” Olympic stadium, used for the 1976 games, currently costs the Canadian province about $32 million to maintain each year and has never been able to pay for itself, despite its afterlife hosting trade shows and movie shoots. More recently, Athens and Rio de Janeiro each saw their Olympic venues deteriorate soon after the games concluded.

One of the symbols of New York luxury is now in the hands of Beijing.

The race to commercialize 5G, the latest iteration of wireless network technology, is speeding up, and rival telecom companies are both claiming “firsts” for a milestone in its deployment.

Black Panther stormed the box office this week, raking in $192 million by Sunday (Feb. 19) in North America, according to Box Office Mojo. That marked the fifth-highest opening weekend ever for a film, and the second-highest weekend opening for a Marvel film.

Alibaba is best known-as China’s largest e-commerce company, but it’s lately made forays into artificial intelligence and cloud computing. Through a program it calls ET Brain, it’s using AI to improve traffic and city planning, increase airport efficiency, and diagnose illness.

All people are created equal, but in the eyes of the algorithm, not all faces are just yet.

When Uber first began expanding widely outside of the US, its strategy was simple—identify a new market and barge right in.

Following a massive rout in US markets overnight, Asian markets—many of which had recently hit record highs—are doing just the same today (Feb. 6).

A high court in South Korea on Monday (Feb. 5) freed Samsung’s de facto heir Lee Jae-yong from serving any more time for his convictions for bribery and embezzlement last year—commuting a sentence that had been seen as a message to large Korean conglomerates over their cozy ties with politicians.

YouTube has a a new feature that will label certain news channels that have received funding from governments, a change that comes as social networks wrestle with how to contain the spread of misinformation online. It already looks set to be a contentious move.

Apple released its latest results yesterday (Feb. 1), and investors were largely pleased. Globally the tech giant reported its best-ever quarterly revenue, despite a slight annual drop in the number of iPhones sold.

Uber is adopting a sharing model that has swept Chinese cities, often to the annoyance of pedestrians and city planners, and that has made its way to US cities in the last six months.

Facebook has announced a new policy that will ban ads for initial coin offerings (ICOs), cryptocurrencies, and other goods and services that “promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices.”

Alibaba is one of the world’s largest tech companies. But for its new global-facing ad campaign, it’s embracing the small underdog.

The Trump administration is worried about China—its trade policies, its expansionism, and its growing technological prowess. After imposing tariffs and blocking tech acquisitions by China, the White House is reportedly mulling something much bigger: a nationalized next-generation wireless network to contain China.

Call it clickbait diplomacy?

City governments that host the Olympics often face a dilemma—after spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build arenas and event spaces, what do you do with them once the games are over?

Chinese social media giant Tencent, best known for the messaging app WeChat, has surpassed Facebook’s market value, and this time has held on to the lead for at least seven days of trading. The company briefly passed Facebook’s valuation in November.

Today Amazon is officially opening Amazon Go, a cashier-less grocery store in Seattle that lets shoppers buy items without paying cash, swiping a card, or interacting with a single human being.

Chinese investment in the United States plummeted in 2017, a product of policies stemming both from Beijing and Washington. The drop comes after 2016’s record levels of foreign direct investment (FDI) from China in the US, and looks set to continue this year.

The US and China already appear on track for deeper tensions this year surrounding trade and technology. Now Beijing and Washington look set to also spar over information and news media.

The US government has arrested a former spy who may have significantly derailed the CIA’s operations in China in the early part of this decade. The capture highlights quiet tensions that the US and China have maintained over intelligence operations, as the two countries work to keep up appearances of positive relations.

South Korea’s Office for Government Policy Coordination issued a statement today (Jan. 15) suggesting that a cryptoasset crackdown in the country will not necessarily come imminently. That would come as relief to the bitcoin-mad country.