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The US Federal Reserve has raised interest rates by a quarter-point in its battle to tame inflation but has left open the possibility that further hikes could be put on hold. The move on Wednesday, which lifted rates to a range of 5 per cent to 5.25 per cent‚ represents the Fed’s 10th rate increase in a little over a year. The increase announced on Wednesday will push interest rates to levels last seen in the United States in 2007. Martin Wall reports from Washington.
Cantillon marvels at the money hose the Government is currently wielding and wonders what the future holds for online news platforms.
This year, writes Chris Horn in his column, is seeing an extraordinary revolution in technology, quite possibly as significant a transformation as the introduction of the printing press in the mid-15th century. The capabilities of large language models, as exemplified by ChatGPT (from OpenAI), Bing Chat (from Microsoft) and Bard (from Alphabet), suggest inflection opportunities for most business sectors to innovate new products, streamline operations and ease staff workloads.
Is the cost-of-living crisis over? According to the head of Ibec, it never happened
Can power-hungry data centres help our green energy targets?
‘I could have gone to California. At this rate, I probably would have raised about half a billion dollars’
Christmas tech for kids: great gift ideas with safety features for parental peace of mind
Irish investment house Elkstone has raised €5 million in strategic capital to expand its business on the island of Ireland. The company, which invests in venture, property and other impact areas in the economy, said it would use the money to target a wider client base. It is also planning to expand its presence in Northern Ireland, along with the development of a digital, client-focused platform. Ciara O’Brien has the details.
Walled garden platforms would be foolish to ignore the threat of a user shift towards more open options (see: AOL). Yet, walled gardens, if already full of your friends and things you like, have definite attractions, writes our columnist Karlin Lillington. Shall we stay or shall we go? I’d like to think we’ve reached a moment of reconsideration where people will opt for an open web model with more freedom, less surveillance and greater user control. But user inertia creates its own walls, and may keep people inside even such blasted, weed-choked gardens as Twitter and Facebook.
An Irish-cofounded company has become the newest addition to Google’s product line-up, offering a platform to help simplify privacy and reduce risk for mobile app developers, writes Ciara O’Brien. Checks uses artificial intelligence to help companies with Play and IOS mobile apps quickly discover, communicate and solve privacy compliance issues. Previously one of the projects in Google’s Area 120 internal incubator, Checks has now exited the programme and been made a fully fledged Google product. That puts the founders in an elite group that have made the cut, including work tracking tool Tables. Other Area 120 projects include Tangi and Keen.
Niamh Murray and Amy Boyden both have personal experience of caring for a family member living with dementia. Amy’s stepmother had the condition and Niamh’s two grandmothers have also been affected by it. Olive Keogh meets them.
The OneOdio Focus A10 hybrid ANC headphones were a bit of a surprise. The phrase “you get what you pay for” is often bandied about and, at €75, you wouldn’t expect much more than the basics – headphones with basic active noise cancelling and decent sound but nothing spectacular. But the reality went above and beyond that initial expectation, writes Ciara O’Brien in her review.
The fact that the winning the League of Ireland Premier Division is less lucrative than a Uefa Europa Conference League qualifying round tie speaks volumes about the financial state of football here. Could government intervention have a positive impact? Perhaps a redistribution of the tax income from betting is a good place to start. On our Inside Business podcast, Business Editor Ciarán Hancock gets some insight from chief executive of Platinum One Group, Fintan Drury and Longford Town manager Stephen Henderson.
