Shares in the ultra-hot quantum computing sector plunged on Wednesday after Nvidia's CEO said useful quantum computers were decades away.
Why it matters: Quantum computing stocks have been on a ferocious run, with some names rising almost 20x in the last year.
Driving the news: Nvidia held a Q&A with Wall Street analysts on Tuesday, during which CEO Jensen Huang was asked about the growth path for the still-nascent technology.
"And so if you kind of said 15 years for very useful quantum computers, that'd probably be on the early side. If you said 30 is probably on the late side. But if you picked 20, I think a whole bunch of us would believe it," Huang said.
Nvidia's dominance in AI computing gives Huang's technology forecasts outsized impact -- and his comments tend to move stocks.
By the numbers: In pre-market trading Wednesday, shares in Rigetti Computing fell 18% — albeit after gaining more than 1,700% over the last year.
Shares in Quantum Computing Inc. also fell 18%, while shares in IonQ dropped more than 11%.
Together, the losses would exceed $2 billion in market capitalization in regular trading.
Context: Quantum computing is bleeding-edge stuff, applying the principles of quantum mechanics to perform computing tasks far too difficult for traditional computing.
As MIT scientists describe it, traditional binary computers use electrical signals that can be either 0 or 1. Quantum computing uses subatomic particles that can be both simultaneously. It sounds like a small difference but the power is exponential.
Google said last year its new quantum computing chip, code named Willow, did computations in five minutes that would take today's supercomputers 10 septillion years.
But as Google itself points out, Willow's achievement is little more than a "convincing prototype" that offers a "strong sign" quantum systems can be built at scale.
New York, San Francisco and Honolulu are home to the country's slowest driving, a new report finds.
Why it matters: Drivers want to get where they're going — fast. But public transit and pedestrian advocates might point to these numbers as evidence that some cities are overwhelmed by cars and need to get serious about alternatives.
What they found: In the heart of the Big Apple, it took an average of about 30 minutes to drive 6 miles in 2024, according to TomTom's annual Traffic Index, released Tuesday. That's 2.3% longer than in 2023.
New York drivers spent a staggering 94 hours a year driving in rush hour on average, based on a twice daily six-mile trip. That's nearly four days of bumper-to-bumper misery.
San Francisco drivers took nearly 26 minutes to cover 6 miles (+1.9% longer than 2023), while those in Honolulu took nearly 20 minutes (+0.6% longer).
The other side: Richmond, Virginia, is a veritable autobahn by comparison, with drivers making a six-mile trip in under 10 minutes on average.
Reality check: New York is walkable, bikeable and boasts one of the country's best public transit systems — meaning you're not necessarily stuck driving, as you might be in so many other U.S. cities.
The latest: Drivers entering the most crowded parts of Manhattan are now being tolled under a "congestion pricing" plan meant to reduce vehicle traffic and raise money for public transit.
Between the lines: Lots of factors go into how quickly you can drive 6 miles in a given city, including traffic congestion, construction and weather.
How it works: TomTom's report is based on a representative sample of data collected by "over 600 million devices" and "over 61 billion anonymous GPS data points around the world," the company says.
The numbers above are based on city centers — "the densest areas that capture 20% of all trips within the city-connected area," per TomTom.
The bottom line: If we're meeting in New York, I'm taking the subway.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited the Cleveland-based firm for one willful violation and five serious violations.
Phynart Studio/ Getty Images
An Ohio-based bakeware company is facing fines of almost $200,000 after two workers suffered major injuries.
The workers both experienced what the Labor Department described as "amputation injuries."
OSHA cited the company for one willful and five serious violations, urging safety reforms.
A Cleveland, Ohio-based metal bakeware company is facing $182,000 in fines after two employees suffered injuries that resulted in amputations.
According to a press release by the US Department of Labor, the first incident at G&S Metal Products Co., which was founded in 1949, occurred on June 25, 2024, when a 37-year-old worker was using a power press.
As the staff member serviced the machine, the press cycled without warning because its pullbacks were not properly secured, inspectors from the department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration said. This contributed to the amputation injury.
Two weeks later, a 64-year-old worker who had been employed by the firm four months previously suffered an amputation injury when clearing scrap from a mechanical power press.
The machine's die closed unexpectedly because it lacked necessary guarding and was not locked out to stop operation during maintenance, OHSA said.
No further detail about the exact nature of the injuries was shared publicly.
G&S Metal Products did not immediately reply to a request for comment from Business Insider.
OHSA ultimately found that G&S Metal Products Co. did not equip its machinery with adequate guarding, did not enforce vital safety protocols — such as enforcing proper lockout/tagout procedures — and did not provide sufficient training to workers in machine safety.
It cited the Ohio company for one willful violation and five serious violations, resulting in $182,000 in proposed penalties.
"These two workers must live with permanent injuries because their employer failed to ensure that adequate guarding was in place," Howard Eberts, the OSHA area director in Cleveland, said in a statement.
"G&S Metal Products Co. Inc. must take immediate action to evaluate and address machine safety across its operations," he added. "Employers have an obligation to adhere to basic safety standards to ensure every worker returns home safely."
In 2017, the firm was also cited after an employee suffered amputation injuries while adjusting a power press.
Kevin Hall is a physicist who studies the regulation of body weight and metabolism. He has published groundbreaking work showing that ultra-processed foods cause weight gain.
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health.
A nutrition researcher who studies ultra-processed foods doesn't categorically ban them at home.
He relies on nutrition basics to choose snacks that are a bit healthier for his family.
Prioritize beans, whole grains, and vegetables, while avoiding added sugar and excess sodium.
NIH scientist Kevin Hall pioneered the first study to definitively prove that ultra-processed foods — like chicken tenders and prepackaged snacks — drive us to overeat and gain weight.
And yet at home, he doesn't avoid convenience food, and buys ultra-processed snacks for his kids.
Hall says his strategy is not as contradictory as it seems, if you understand the nutrition science behind his choices.
What we know — and don't know — about ultra-processed foods
This was a big deal: beforehand, scientists could only draw vague connections between ultra-processed diets and long-term health outcomes. There wasn't a definitive cause-and-effect relationship established between ultra-processed foods and poor health.
Hall's team at the National Institutes of Health put people into a laboratory, gave them strictly prepared foods, and studied every morsel they digested for several weeks at a time, seeing what different diets did to their health.
Since then, research on UPFs has snowballed. Today, ultra-processed foods are the poster child for everything that's wrong with American diets. Politicians on both sides of the aisle are promising to weed them out of our diets as a result of all the new research that has cropped up since Hall's landmark study.
Do not let perfect be the enemy of good, Hall says
Ultra-processed? Yep. But also rich in vegetables, with a decent amount of fiber and protein.
Insider
Hall is not so strict about cutting all UPFs out, and he isn't going to tell people what to eat.
"I don't stand on my soapbox to claim to know all the answers," he said.
Scientists still don't know exactly why ultra-processed foods are so bad for us. More importantly, he says that we don't actually know yet whether all ultra-processed foods are, by definition, bad.
The NOVA scale — used to differentiate between unprocessed, processed, and ultra-processed foods — only looks at how food was prepared. It does not account for nutritional value.
Is a can of ready-to-heat chili just as unhealthy as a jelly donut? They're both ultra-processed, but one contains meat, beans, and non-starchy veggies. The other is sugar, maybe some butter, refined flour, and lots of oil.
At home, Hall tries not to let perfect be the enemy of good. He makes educated guesses about which ultra-processed foods are the best for his health, while also being a realist about convenience.
Like many nutrition and longevity professionals, he prioritizes non-starchy vegetables, whole grains, fruits, legumes, and beans. He also stocks chicken nuggets in his freezer for nights when the kids need a quick dinner. Goldfish crackers are not forbidden.
Hall thinks big picture, and tries to avoid too much added sugar, saturated fat, and sodium in the ultra-processed foods he picks out for his family.
"Would it be better if you had made the homemade version of that?" Hall wondered aloud. "Maybe. It's possible that there's some weird additive or some ingredient in that food that is not good for you. We don't have the science on that yet, but applying what we do know, I think you can still make educated choices."
Plastic packaging doesn't mean it's bad for you
This is not an ultra-processed food.
DigiPub/Getty Images
Canned and frozen foods can be great options for busy folks trying to eat healthier. And they're not all ultra-processed.
"People kind of mistake processed and ultra-processed," Hall said.
"There is some degree of confusion. It's typically people using these rules of thumb: if it comes in a can or a box or a package and has plastic around it, it's ultra-processed. I'm sorry, they put cucumbers in plastic at my supermarket, they're not ultra-processed!"
That kind of rigid thinking leads people into fearing foods like canned beans, tinned fish, or frozen vegetables, pantry staples that can make it easier to cook at home, and regularly eat foods that are great for longevity.
"There's so many canned beans that are just like, seasoned," Hall said. "They don't have some weird additives associated with them. A lot of people don't realize those are just processed foods."
Suns guard Bradley Beal has not discussing waiving his no-trade clause, with his agent telling ESPN that "Bradley's total focus is on helping the Suns turn things around."
The iPhone 16 is still banned from sale in Indonesia, despite Apple promising to invest a billion dollars in the country’s economy.
Apple had initially had offers of first $10M and then $100M rejected by the Indonesian government, before offering a cool billion dollars’ worth of manufacturing – which is exactly what the country demanded …
The fires in Southern California are expected to cause devastating losses to residents—many of whom have had their insurance policies canceled last year.
Lawmakers have called for pushback on China's presence in the Arctic, with diplomats say they are sharing more information and intelligence with Allied nations.
Whatnot, the platform that allows users to sell items such as trading cards, comics, and sneakers through live videos, announced on Wednesday that it has secured $265 million in a Series E funding round, a significant investment for a livestream shopping platform. This round puts Whatnot’s valuation at $4.97 billion. The investment marks an important […]
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