All posts tagged: technology

EU Health Technology Assessment to revolutionise patient care

EU Health Technology Assessment to revolutionise patient care

Published by skeptic

The European Union’s long-awaited Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Regulation comes into effect on 12 January, ushering in a new era of healthcare innovation across the EU. On Sunday, the EU takes a pivotal step forward with the implementation of the Regulation on Health Technology Assessment (HTA). This groundbreaking framework aims to enhance the availability of innovative and effective health technologies, ensuring patients across the EU benefit from timely access to life-changing treatments. Discussing the HTA, Olivér Várhelyi, Commissioner for Health and Animal Welfare, noted: “I welcome the start of application of the new EU rules on Health Technology Assessment. “European patients need quicker access to innovative and lifesaving medicines and medical devices, and we are one step closer to making this a reality. “We must now ensure that these rules are fully put into practice across the EU – to make better use of available resources, to ensure faster entry into the market for pharmaceuticals with lower costs, less red tape and faster administrative procedures to get them included into the reimbursement schemes. “This is …

55 Tech Gifts for Gadget Freaks and Non-Geeks Alike (2025)

55 Tech Gifts for Gadget Freaks and Non-Geeks Alike (2025)

Published by skeptic

Last updated on 1/8/2025 at 3:45 PM. Shopping for the coolest tech gifts used to be pretty simple. Grab a Sharper Image catalog, flip to a random page, point your finger at almost anything, and done. It’s way more difficult now. For one, our phones do most of what we need. Second, technology is so pervasive these days…what isn’t a tech gift? And third, you need something that has fast shipping because the big day is right around the corner. That’s why, as we put together this gift guide, we hunted for the kind of gadgets, gear, and gizmo-adjacent presents that’ll actually make ’em smile—many of which you can snag directly from Amazon with two-day shipping. Here at GQ, we know that it’s tough to keep track of all the worthwhile new tech among all the duds without pulling up a dozen review guides, which is where we come in. We’ve gathered up a short list of some of our favorite new (and new-ish) tech gifts for anyone—even the folks who don’t know their Bluetooth …

Seven advances in technology that we’re likely to see in 2025

Seven advances in technology that we’re likely to see in 2025

Published by skeptic

In the grand scheme of things, 45 years is not a long time. Back in 1980, it would take me three weeks to run a computer program, written in the programming language Cobol, that worked using punched cards. Each card represented one line of code and it required multiple re-punches to correct errors. Eventually, I would have a working program that did something useful. How times have quickly changed in technology – now, my mobile phone has vast processing capability compared to the machine that processed that Cobol program. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, that same phone is able to instantly translate between languages on a live call, among many other features. With eye-catching announcements being made all the time, what can we expect in 2025 from the world of technology? Here are seven developments to look out for. 1. AI agents come into their own Unsurprisingly, we’re likely to see further important developments in AI. One area that’s likely to take off is the use of AI agents. These are intelligent …

Five Cold Cases Solved in 2024 Because of New Technology

Five Cold Cases Solved in 2024 Because of New Technology

Published by skeptic

Handcuffs Source: Klaus with K / Wikipedia Commons As the year 2024 ends, police have solved some of the oldest cold-case murders using new crime-solving methods that didn’t exist when the crimes occurred. DNA and genetic genealogy are technologies that continue to grow across the country, and more law enforcement agencies are using them to solve crimes, as evidenced by their recently solved murders. Below are five of those cases, which coincide with projections that the national homicide rate in 2024 is on track to return to levels close to those recorded in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, per the Brookings Institution. The lower homicide numbers mark a trend for the third year in a row. Included in those statistics is a murder in California that happened 45 years ago. It was the case of Lewis Randy Williamson, who killed 17-year-old Esther Gonzalez just off Highway 243 in Riverside County in 1979, which remained unsolved–until now. In November 2024, the Riverside County Regional Cold Case Homicide Team announced that they had identified the killer as …

Boomer Boss Reprimands Worker For Using Celebratory Emojis In Chats

Boomer Boss Reprimands Worker For Using Celebratory Emojis In Chats

Published by skeptic

The generation gap has always been a thing in the workplace, but nowadays, it often feels more pronounced than ever.  We constantly hear about older generations judging younger workers as entitled and incompetent, but stories like the one a young professional recently told on X pull things into much sharper focus — and turn the tables on all those cranky office boomers in the process. A worker’s boomer boss claimed that certain emojis ‘cost the company extra’ to use. At this point, we’re in what feels like year 497 of the situation that has been the subject of myriad jokes about working with Boomers and older people in the office — that they’re so out of touch with modernity they need a young person’s help any time they want to, say, open a PDF. fizkes | Shutterstock That was the plight of basically the entire millennial generation throughout the 2000s, after all — basically getting paid to save their bosses from learning how to use the printer or figure out how to make a pivot …

Biological computers could use far less energy than current technology – by working more slowly

Biological computers could use far less energy than current technology – by working more slowly

Published by skeptic

Modern computers are a triumph of technology. A single computer chip contains billions of nanometre-scaled transistors that operate extremely reliably and at a rate of millions of operations per second. However, this high speed and reliability comes at the cost of significant energy consumption: data centres and household IT appliances like computers and smartphones account for around 3% of global electricity demand, and the use of AI is likely to drive even more consumption. But what if we could redesign the way computers work so that they could perform computation tasks as quickly as today while using far less energy? Here, nature may offer us some potential solutions. The IBM scientist Rolf Landauer addressed the question of whether we need to spend so much energy on computing tasks in 1961. He came up with the Landauer limit, which states that a single computational task – for example setting a bit, the smallest unit of computer information, to have a value of zero or one – must expend about 10⁻²¹ joules (J) of energy. This is …

8 Ways I Use Technology to Reflect on My Year

8 Ways I Use Technology to Reflect on My Year

Published by skeptic

As the year comes to a close, I like to take some time to reflect on my growth, achievements, and lessons learned. Technology has become an essential part of this process—it helps me organize my thoughts, track progress, and find patterns in my habits. 1 Journaling My Successes and Losses Each year, regardless of how successful or unsuccessful it was, is often laden with wins and losses. Acknowledging these is vital to quantify my progress. When conducting my yearly review, I quickly write about my biggest successes and losses. Normally, I’ll do this in Notion with bullet points. I also try to reframe my “losses” as lessons and understand what I can do to make the following year better. 2 Reviewing My Apps I rely on a variety of apps to stay organized and track my progress. For instance, I use Things 3 to organize my day, and Strong to track my gym progress. Reviewing these apps is a great way to determine how productive you were throughout the year as you can see everything …

2024 in Photos: A Look at the Middle Months

2024 in Photos: A Look at the Middle Months

Published by José

As the end of the year approaches, here is a look back at some of the major news moments of 2024. Events covered in this essay (the second of a three-part photo summary of the year) include the opening of the Paris Olympics, widespread flooding in Brazil, an assassination attempt on the presidential candidate Donald Trump, and much more. Check back tomorrow for the last installment, and be sure to see the first part and our “Top 25 News Photos of 2024.” To receive an email notification every time new photo stories are published, sign up here. Source link

Taking on the Tyranny of the Tech Bros

Taking on the Tyranny of the Tech Bros

Published by skeptic

The glow of the tech bros’ halo is dimming and, in 2025, the computing industry’s sheen of glamor will continue to fade, too. While other STEM fields are making strides in broadening participation in their workforces, year after year, computing, a supposedly innovative field, fails to recruit, retain, and respect women and nonbinary workers. For example, precision questioning, abstraction, aggression, sexism and a disdain for altruism—serving the social good—are a few of the core values driving culture in computing worksites. These values and the ways they are policed via bias, discrimination, and harassment in high-tech companies form the “Bro Code.” The Bro Code perpetuates high tolerance of sexual harassment. It also contributes to the field’s failure to rectify its stark segregation. Only 21 percent of computer programming positions are held by women. Of that 21 percent, only 2 percent are African American, and only 1 percent are Latina. While sorely underrepresented in the field overall, women are disproportionately affected during industry’s downsizing. For example, nearly 70 percent of those laid off in the 2022 tech …

Better ways to recover metals needed for technology from electronic waste could benefit the environment and human health

Better ways to recover metals needed for technology from electronic waste could benefit the environment and human health

Published by skeptic

Our increasing reliance on technology is placing pressure on the global supply of materials that are essential for manufacturing electronic devices. Raw materials are being mined to cover the demand for smartphones, laptops, computer servers and electric vehicles, placing strain on the environment. A greater emphasis on renewable technology and on artificial intelligence will only add to this challenge. But can we recover more of the materials we need for these devices from waste electronics? Improved methods to extract these metals and other elements will be key to reducing the pressure on our planet and its resources. Some of the most important materials required for electronic devices include gold, platinum, rhodium, cobalt and lithium, as well as the 17 “rare-earth elements”, which includes materials such as neodymium and lanthanum. All these metals are mainly used in current and emerging technology, and the demand for them is likely to outstrip supply over the next few decades. Gold is found in the printed circuit boards crucial for electronic devices, while various rare-earth metals are used in display …