Scientists achieve a nuclear fusion breakthrough with 192 lasers, Tesla’s approval rating plummets fast, and Bahamas government claims back the $256 million spent by FTX on the island’s real estate.
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That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Wednesday December 14th and I am your host, Samira Balsara.
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have achieved a major milestone in reproducing the power of the sun or fusion, which is the nuclear reaction that makes stars shine, the New York Times reported. The breakthrough announced yesterday, is the first fusion reaction in a laboratory setting and it produced more energy than it took to start the reaction. The experiment took 192 giant lasers to blast through a small cylinder containing a frozen nubbin of hydrogen, resulting in a flood of neutron particles, the product of fusion. This experiment represents the possibilities to leverage fusion as a clean energy source.
Source: The New York Times
FTX executives have spent $256 million on 35 properties across New Providence, Bahamas. Now the island’s regulators are attempting to claw back the property, claiming that ceding the properties back to FTX’s U.S. bankruptcy protection proceedings would be illegal and ineffective under Bahamas law. Bahamian lawyers are arguing that because all of the property was in the Bahamas, and because “Bahamian law does not allow recognition of a foreign insolvency proceeding for a Bahamian company” that the U.S. bankruptcy proceedings should be suspended and Bahamas regulators should be allowed to assume full control of the Bahamian real estate process. This move will spark pushback from FTX’s US attorneys who are committed to maximize recovery for FTX clients in the US and abroad.
Source: CNBC
According to UK research firm YouGov, Tesla’s approval rating is sinking into negative territory. The firm, which conducts daily surveys to monitor consumers’ perceptions of popular brands, reported that Tesla started 2022 with a net positive score of 5.9 per cent, but dipped to -1.4 per cent, as of early November. Politics has something to do with it, YouGov added. Liberals are more likely to see Tesla negatively than conservatives. Although on average, even conservatives have a negative view of Elon Musk’s carmaker company. Some reports suggest that Musk’s involvement in Twitter ended up being negative for Tesla.
Source: MarketWatch
A recent analysis of millions of teleconference meetings, by teleconferencing and collaboration analytics company Vyopta suggests that remote workers increased their engagement with colleagues, between 2020 and 2022, contrary to previous assumptions, TechSpot reports. The company collected metadata from Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Webex conferences from 10 large global companies. The report shows that employees are now attending more meetings and companies have increased the number of meetings held and decreased the duration of those teleconferences compared to in 2020. Impromptu, one-on-one meetings have increased by 20 per cent in 2022, suggesting that these meetings could be replicating frequent-but-brief in-person interactions in offices.
Source: TECHSPOT
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash briefings or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops every Thursday morning. If you have a suggestion or a tip, drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thank you for listening, I’m Samira Balsara.