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☆ Big tech companies continue cost cutting
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-03 | by ( Paayal Zaveri | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Tech companies have chased short-term fads in a desperate attempt to win the favor of Wall Street investors — and it's making the online experience worse. As tech companies continue to focus on efficiency, it's clear that one metric is the most important: revenue per employee. After years of over-hiring, tech companies are now looking to squeeze the most efficient performance from each worker, my colleague Hasan Chowdhury reports. But it's another sign that tech companies are drifting away from pro-remote work policies. Google, Meta, and Microsoft have all failed to make their AR and VR devices into mainstream successes.

☆ Dozens of AI enthusiasts gathered in San Francisco's Cerebral Valley for a summit on Thursday. Here are the top 3 takeaways from the event.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Dozens of AI enthusiasts gathered in SF's Cerebral Valley on Thursday for Eric Newcomer's AI summit. The handful of streets between San Francisco's Fillmore and Mission neighborhoods have been called a variety of names in recent times — Cerebral Valley, Bayes Valley, Hayes Valley — but on a Thursday morning in March, they were the home for dozens of AI enthusiasts, founders, and VCs looking to learn more about the space at independent journalist Eric Newcomer's Cerebral Valley AI Summit. The model to rule them allWith representation from several OpenAI competitors, including Anthropic, Adept, and Stability AI, a common question during panels was how the landscape of AI model providers would shake out. Others, like Stability AI founder and CEO Emad Mostaque, claimed that the question of AI models went beyond performance or cost to issues around transparency and accessibility. The future of codingWith the recent AI boom, a flock of startups have emerged to help developers build AI and non-AI applications.

☆ Guinness World Record holder and author of 'Brainhacker': This is the key to boosting your memory
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-12 | by ( Renée Onque | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

"For memory and mental focus in general, the key is novelty," Farrow, author of " Brainhacker: Master Memory, Focus, Emotions, and More to Unleash the Genius Within ," tells CNBC Make It. In one sitting, Farrow recalled the order of 52 shuffled decks, or 2,704 cards, when he was just 21 years old. He even reclaimed the title after his record was broken, by memorizing the order of 59 decks of shuffled cards, which is 3,068 cards. If there's anyone who can give you advice for strengthening your memory , it's Dave Farrow , two-time Guinness Record holder for memorizing the most decks of playing cards by a single sighting. "The key is to trigger focus at will, not try to force your brain to focus for 24 hours."

☆ 'My call sign is 'Grandad.'' The retirees who are frontline fighters for Ukraine against the Russian invaders
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-11 | by ( Isobel Van Hagen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Some volunteer fighters in Ukraine are considerably older than the average age of a typical soldier. 63-year-old Leonid Onyschenko, for example, is fighting for Ukraine near the city of Bakhmut. While the classic image of a soldier in battle evokes a fit young person with a chiseled jawline, the diverse volunteer fighters in Ukraine defy this expectation. The Territorial Defense Forces (TDF) — a volunteer military reserve — said that Onyshchenko had been serving the country for nine years since Russia's invasion and illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. Many of the older volunteers the news outlet spoke to appeared eager to stay in eastern Ukraine at the time.

☆ WeightWatchers is buying a company that lets you pay $99 a month to see a doctor on video and get a prescription to popular weight-loss drug Ozempic
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-07 | by ( Lakshmi Varanasi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

WeightWatchers announced Monday it was buying Sequence, a clinical weight management platform. Members will get Sequence's services including telehealth visits and prescriptions for weight loss drugs like Ozempic. Through Sequence's $99-a-month subscription program, customers can schedule telehealth appointments with doctors who will prescribe weight loss and diabetes management drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. "As science advances rapidly, we know there is a significant opportunity to improve outcomes for those using medications," WeightWatchers' CEO Sima Sistani said in a press release. Doctors are even adding the hashtags to videos that are about weight loss solutions that don't rely on those medications.

☆ Shares of this under-the-radar cell therapy stock are set to double, says Baird
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-07 | by ( Michelle Fox | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Shares of biotech company bluebird bio should double in the coming year, thanks to its treatments for sickle cell disease, a genetic blood disease and a rare genetic brain condition, according to Baird. The Wall Street firm initiated coverage of the stock on Monday with an outperform rating and $10 price target, which implies 104% upside from Monday's close. The company's management said in January that 40 patients had initiated benefits verification for Zynteglo during the last three months of 2022. Lastly, Baird expects the use of bluebird's Skysona treatment for CALD, which was approved in September 2022, to increase significantly in the coming years. The under-the-radar stock, which has a market cap of over $500 million, is down about 29% this year, as of Monday's close.

☆ Australian cerebral palsy advocate hopes Disney creates princess with disabilities
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Cordelia Hsu | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

SYDNEY, March 3 (Reuters) - Hannah Diviney, diagnosed with cerebral palsy at birth, is hoping Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) will create a princess character with disabilities, spearheading a campaign that has garnered support from Reese Witherspoon, Jameela Jamil and Mark Hamill. "The campaign is basically to create a disabled Disney princess and the reason for that specifically is because Disney princesses are the ones that get the most visibility," Diviney told Reuters in an interview. Diviney began an online campaign for Disney to create a princess character with disabilities in 2020 and the petition has now received 64,000 signatures. Diviney last year called out Beyonce and Lizzo on Twitter for using 'spaz', a derogatory term for spastic diplegia, in their songs. Cerebral palsy affects a person's ability to move and maintain posture, affecting around 0.1% of Australia's near 26 million population.

☆ Cerebral to Cut 15% of Staff in Fresh Round of Layoffs
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-28 | by ( Joseph Pisani | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Cerebral didn’t say how many jobs would be cut in its latest round of layoffs. Cerebral Inc. is cutting 15% of its workforce, the latest round of layoffs at the telehealth startup. The layoffs are part of Cerebral’s yearlong plan to reorganize the company and focus on the services patients want, a spokesman for the company said Monday. The spokesman didn’t say how many jobs would be cut, or what areas would be affected. The layoffs were earlier reported by Business Insider.

☆ Troubled mental-health startup Cerebral is cutting 15% of staff as it fights to stay afloat
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Rebecca Torrence | Blake Dodge | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Cerebral plans to cut 15% of its staff, or 285 employees, Insider has learned. Cerebral has been struggling to stay afloat following scrutiny of its prescription practices. Mental-health startup Cerebral is laying off 15% of its workforce, or about 285 employees, as the company reels from a tumultuous year of public scrutiny and federal investigations into its prescribing practices. Impacted employees will be notified through March 1, per Mou's email to Cerebral staff. Cerebral's rocky futureIn 2021, Cerebral called itself the fastest-growing mental-health company.

☆ The generative AI boom is bringing San Francisco’s tech scene roaring back to life
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Diamond Naga Siu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Techies fled from San Francisco during the pandemic, and its resurgence stalled for a while. It's just south of Japantown, mere blocks from San Francisco City Hall, and north of the Mission District. Someone even said it would be "irresponsible" to not work on generative AI in San Francisco. There aren't any skeptics in the space yet, and the majority of generative AI investments land in the Bay Area. Email dsiu@insider.com or tweet @diamondnagasiu) Edited by Matt Weinberger (tweet @gamoid) in San Francisco and Hallam Bullock (tweet @hallam_bullock) in London.

☆ The ChatGPT and generative AI 'gold rush' has founders flocking to San Francisco's 'Cerebral Valley'
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Because of pandemic-era closings, San Francisco became somewhat of a ghost town for two years. Now, a race to succeed in the fledgling space of generative AI has founders flocking back. Generative AI takes training data — for instance, a vast corpus of written text — and teaches itself how to produce completely new, unique works. After giving New York a try for several weeks, the generative AI boom picked up. Thomas Maxwell/InsiderPerez said that the sense of urgency to get working on building better AI models comes from how generative AI improves with more data.

☆ A supportive and educational online community exists for people with chronic illnesses. They call themselves "spoonies."
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-27 | by ( Laura Wallis | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

The online spoonie community offers social connection, support, and education. From there, spoon theory was born, and today, the idea has grown in popularity, sparking a supportive online community around those living with chronic illnesses or who are disabled. The online community is made up of spoonies who self-identify and may have a range of diagnoses, such as Crohn's disease or endometriosis. The online community also represents neurological identities and divergences including autism and ADHD. Those who are disabled or have chronic illnesses may find that doctors and those around them don't take any pains or symptoms they experience seriously.

☆ Precision Neuroscience, co-founded by Neuralink alum, is creating a brain implant thinner than a human hair
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Ashley Capoot | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Precision was co-founded by Benjamin Rapoport, who also co-founded Elon Musk's BCI company, Neuralink , and Michael Mager. But while Neuralink's BCI is designed to be implanted directly into the brain tissue, Precision relies on a surgical technique that is designed to be less invasive. A BCI is a system that deciphers brain signals and translates them into commands for external technologies, and several companies have successfully created devices with this capability. The device is called the Layer 7 Cortical Interface , and it's a brain implant that aims to help patients with paralysis operate digital devices using only neural signals. "I think that the brain is, in a lot of ways, the next frontier for modern medicine," he said.

☆ Draymond Green Sets Us Straight on the Real N.B.A.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( David Marchese | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +20 min

Mamadi Doumbouya for The New York Times Talk Draymond Green Sets Us Straight on the Real N.B.A. Celtics have a die-hard fan base that’s going to root hard for the Celtics. But when I’ve listened to it, it’s not as if you’re saying things that are all that far away from what pundits or analysts are saying. I don’t think it affected who I was, who I am, because my mom never allowed it to. So when I say what he said is irrelevant, I’m saying that from the standpoint of, Let me not deflect.

Once considered taboo in film and television, gay entertainers and characters will be hard to miss at the 80th Golden Globe Awards. Some of the evenings most nominated films — including sci-fi dramedy “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and psychological thriller “Tár,” — and TV series that include “The White Lotus” and “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” — star LGBTQ actors or feature fictional queer characters. And to top off the evening, the Golden Globes will honor gay television writer and producer Ryan Murphy, perhaps best known for co-creating “Glee,” “Pose” and the “American Horror Story” franchise, with a lifetime achievement award. While this year’s pool of Golden Globe nominees ups the awards ceremony’s queer factor, many of the most anticipated wins involve seemingly straight actors playing queer characters. The Golden Globes airs on Jan. 10 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on NBC and Peacock.

☆ L'Oréal made a handheld, motorized device that helps people with disabilities apply lipstick. It's meant to give users independence.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( Marguerite Ward | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

The makeup giant L'Oréal announced a handheld, computerized lipstick applicator. On Wednesday, at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, L'Oréal unveiled a handheld, computerized makeup applicator called Hapta. Now, Balooch said the makeup world was approaching a revolution in technology that could help many with disabilities. Hapta is essentially a miniature robotic arm that helps users stabilize a tube and apply lipstick. L’OréalOver the past few years, Balooch said, L'Oréal engineers have been working to make the company's packaging easier to open for people with disabilities.

☆ DEA Pressed ADHD-Drug Makers About Impact of Telehealth Firms on Surging Demand
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-31 | by ( Rolfe Winkler | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The Drug Enforcement Administration told makers of medication for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder that it was concerned that “aggressive marketing practices” by companies including telehealth providers could be driving excessive prescriptions, according to a letter from the agency. While the letter doesn’t cite specific companies, it reflects the DEA’s concerns about marketing efforts for ADHD treatment by telehealth companies such as Cerebral Inc. and Done Global Inc., whose prescribing practices the agency has been investigating. The DEA said in December that it wouldn’t allow any increase in 2023 production of pharmaceutical ingredients that go into Adderall and other stimulants used to treat ADHD. The letter, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, was sent to drugmakers over the summer but hasn’t previously been reported.

☆ 'The music stopped': 6 founders tell how they survived this year's bursting VC funding bubble, customers unwilling to spend, and a graveyard of fallen startup peers
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-27 | by ( April Joyner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

This year's economic caution marked a huge contrast to 2021's exuberance and record VC funding. Insider spoke with six founders about how they've handled the abrupt switch from market exuberance to economic caution. But at the same time, they said, they've sought to pounce on new opportunities created by the economic downturn. ElektraShifting landscapes, changing prioritiesAfter a year of record venture capital funding, the abrupt shift in investor sentiment hit hard in 2022, founders told Insider. Artificial intelligence startups are the latest beneficiary of VC hype, buoyed by breakthrough software tools such as DALL-E and ChatGPT.

☆ How Cerebral went from a hyped $4.8 billion mental-health startup to fighting for its survival
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Blake Dodge | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

It called itself the fastest-growing mental-health company. Some Cerebral clinicians told Insider they were uncomfortable treating the patients assigned to them and felt their licenses were at risk. In the past few years, highly funded startups have tried to disrupt mental-health care and struggled. Cerebral's next steps will dictate its future, and its story could influence what's ahead for online mental-health care. A former Cerebral provider told Insider the ban was frustrating because many patients who were improving on the drugs lost access to care at Cerebral.

☆ A therapist from online provider BetterHelp reportedly told a 22-year-old gay patient to turn straight so he could reunite with his family
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-21 | by ( Lakshmi Varanasi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

But according to Hill, the therapist that online provider BetterHelp matched him with did exactly that. "He said either you sacrifice your family or you sacrifice being gay," Hill told The Wall Street Journal. A former clinical director at the company told The Journal that therapists were "treated like Uber drivers." The company told the Journal it goes thorough background checks and also relies on state licensing boards, which certify therapists. A spokesperson for BetterHelp told Insider by email: "We firmly stand behind the high-quality service provided at BetterHelp, both in successful therapist matching and ongoing care."

☆ Star Gymnast Simone Biles Breaks With Embattled Telehealth Provider Cerebral
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Rolfe Winkler | Louise Radnofsky | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The gymnast Simon Biles appeared to stop posting ads for Cerebral Inc. to her social media profiles after the spring, when controversy enveloped the company. Star gymnast Simone Biles and the embattled telehealth provider Cerebral Inc. have parted ways, the company said, after announcing a partnership last year that sought to use Ms. Biles’s mental health advocacy to power growth at the startup. Ms. Biles, who became a widely discussed mental-health symbol after her stunning mid-event withdrawal at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, had been unveiled in October 2021 as the “chief impact officer” for Cerebral. The company provides online access to therapists and prescribers for mental health treatment. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

☆ DEA Alleges Online Pharmacy Truepill Wrongfully Filled Stimulant Prescriptions
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Jennifer Calfas | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said an investigation found Truepill Inc., an online pharmacy company, filled illegitimate prescriptions for stimulants such as Adderall to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. The DEA said prescriptions from Truepill, which at one time was a preferred pharmacy provider for telehealth company Cerebral Inc., were unlawful because they were either written by prescribers without state licenses or surpassed 90-day supply limits.

☆ The DEA is alleging Truepill, Cerebral's former pharmacy partner, broke the law in filling prescriptions for highly regulated drugs
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Blake Dodge | Rebecca Torrence | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

The agency alleges that the pharmacy startup unlawfully dispensed stimulants used to treat ADHD. Truepill partnered with the mental-health startup Cerebral to send prescriptions to its patients. The Order to Show Cause requires that Truepill show evidence to justify its prescribing practices for controlled substances, which are highly regulated drugs. If the evidence isn't convincing, the pharmacy startup could have its DEA license revoked, which would leave the company unable to fill prescriptions for controlled substances. In "numerous instances," the startup dispensed prescriptions that weren't issued for a legitimate medical purpose, the DEA alleges.

☆ Over 150,000 tech workers have lost their jobs in 2022 with education, health, and crypto sectors among the worst affected
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-15 | by ( Riddhi Kanetkar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Over 150,000 tech workers have lost their jobs in 2022, according to tracker site Layoffs.fyi. More than 150,000 tech workers have lost their jobs this year, according to data from tracker site Layoffs.fyi. Industries that grew rapidly during the pandemic — such as health tech, education tech, and crypto — have been the worst affected in 2022. The issue, he said, was that some investors in crypto, education tech, and health tech paid little heed to economic fundamentals. Amid recessions, B2B sub-sectors such as corporate education tech and employee coaching remain promising pockets within education tech, the investor added.

A woman accused Backstreet Boys’ Nick Carter of raping her at a concert in Washington State two decades ago, when she was 17, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday. "He also said he’d turn people against me because he’s Nick Carter and he would wreck my life," the woman is quoted as saying in a news release from her lawyer, Mark Boskovich. In a statement, Michael Holtz, an attorney for Carter, called the allegations "legally meritless" and "entirely untrue." Holtz said the woman had been "manipulated into making false allegations about Nick — and those allegations have changed repeatedly and materially over time. Carter raped her a second time on a bed near the back of the tour bus while she begged him to stop, the suit alleges.

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