For the first time, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a treatment that’s made using donated human poop, the agency announced(opens in new tab) Wednesday (Nov. 30). The treatment, called Rebyota, contains gut bacteria collected from the stool of healthy human donors and is approved for the prevention of a potentially life-threatening bacterial infection.
By administering the liquid treatment into a patient’s rectum through a tube, doctors can help restore balance to the patient’s gut microbiome, the community of microbes living in the lower digestive tract.
Amazon says small businesses racked up more than $1 billion in sales on its platform during the Thanksgiving and Black Friday holiday weekend.
The company says sales from small business sellers were the highest volume ever at Amazon.com.
Hundreds of millions of products sold by small businesses at Amazon were sold, the company said recently.
Acts of dissent are not unusual in China.
Over the years, sudden, local explosions of defiance have been triggered by a range of issues – from toxic pollution to illegal land grabs, or the mistreatment of a community member at the hands of the police.
But this time it’s different.
There is one subject at the forefront of Chinese people’s minds, and many are increasingly fed up with it – prompting widespread pushback against the government’s zero-Covid restrictions.
This has come in the form of residents smashing down barriers designed to enforce social distancing, and now large street protests in cities and university campuses across the country
The fear of every person who reads too much sci-fi labor dystopia might be coming true: Robots could be replacing workers.
Last week, Amazon extended hundreds of its recruiters’ buyout opportunities in just one part of a very long, very trying cycle of layoffs expected from the shopping giant. And some of those jobs might have been lost to some new artificial intelligence technology the company has been experimenting with for a year, according to a confidential internal document viewed by Recode.
Amazon’s AI technology — known internally as Automated Applicant Evaluation or AAE — works by predicting which job applicants have the highest potential of being successful in certain roles, and then fast-tracking them to an interview all without a human recruiter’s oversight. According to Recode, it works by finding the middle part of a venn diagram between current Amazon employees and job applicants applying for similar jobs. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Mashable.
Two people with a rare inherited eye disorder have had their night vision restored by an experimental gene therapy, researchers say.
These two individuals are part of an ongoing clinical trial(opens in new tab) testing the safety and effectiveness of the new gene therapy, the research team wrote in a report published in October in the journal iScience(opens in new tab). This and additional trials will need to be completed before the therapy can be approved for widespread use. Still, these early data hints that the treatment can spur “remarkable gains” in patients’ night vision, the scientists wrote.
The trial participants have a genetic disorder called Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), which affects an estimated 3 in 100,000 babies, according to the University of Florida Health(opens in new tab), one of the institutes involved in developing the therapy.
There is perhaps no greater annoyance in the nickel-and-dime economy than surprise airline fees. From extra leg room to booze to unaccompanied minors, carriers seem to be finding increasingly creative ways to squeeze a little extra profit out of every last warm body in the air. And since they own the airplanes, what can we really do?
Well, some savvy flyers fought back in court, and now American Airlines has agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle a lawsuit over what the passengers said were illegitimate baggage fees. In a lawsuit filed early last year, the plaintiffs claimed that they were incorrectly charged to check their luggage, despite being part of a loyalty program that promised free bag checks or being promised free bag checks via email.
Google will pay $391.5m (£330m) to settle allegations about how it collects data from users.
The technology giant tracked the location of users who opted out of location services on their devices, 40 US states said.
Google has been told to be transparent about location tracking in the future and develop a web page telling people about the data it collects.
It is the largest privacy-related multi-state settlement in US history.
A Google official said: “Consistent with improvements we’ve made in recent years, we have settled this investigation, which was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago.”
Uber and Lyft will have to increase the minimum pay rates for drivers in New York City by the end of the year, Engadget reports. The fare increase comes amid a driver shortage post-pandemic, in large part due to rising operational costs.
The city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) voted to increase the per-minute rates of ride-hail drivers by 7.42% and per-mile rates by 23.93%. Yellow and green cab rates will also increase by 23% by the end of this year.
The commission is hoping that increasing the pay rates will attract more taxis and drivers to the roads in order to serve increasing passenger demand.
THE ICONIC BRAND’S latest venture is a metaverse play called .Swoosh, a Web3-enabled platform where people will be able to buy its virtual products. It’s essentially a marketplace, which makes sense because the breathlessly hyped internet of the future is much like the internet of the present: dominated by commerce.
Swoosh exists on a domain named “.nike” and will be an experimental digital space for registered members. It’s currently in beta, and registration to join opens on November 18.
Dispatches From The Front 