Technology

How A.I. Is Remodeling the Fantasy Home

How A.I. Is Remodeling the Fantasy Home

I was scrolling through Instagram recently when I found a new page slipped into my feed through a suggested post: @tinyhouseperfect. It seemed designed to poke at my frustrated longings for a space of my own. I want to own a house; I cannot currently buy a house. But what if the house were very small? Very small, and also perfect?Soon I was navigating the reading nooks and chef’s kitchens of an elfin cottage, a gothic coastal A-frame, a cozy “loch house” in the Scottish Highlands. I had projected my future self to the Scottish seaside, wondering how much the…
Read More
He’s Lost His Marriage, His Followers and His Lamborghini

He’s Lost His Marriage, His Followers and His Lamborghini

With its streamlined curves and glow-in-the-dark sound system, the silver Lamborghini Huracán Performante was the stuff of teenage fantasy: $350,000 of aerodynamic metals and lightweight upholstery, packed into a taut and powerful body. Ben Armstrong loved it dearly.When he started shopping for a Lamborghini, Mr. Armstrong, a cryptocurrency evangelist with more than one million YouTube subscribers, worried that he’d have to spend months searching. “I think I have to go to Italy to get the Lambo I want,” he texted a business partner. “I don’t want to compromise.” But fate smiled on him. In the fall of 2021, a car…
Read More
Takeaways From the Senate Hearing With Tech C.E.O.s on Online Child Safety

Takeaways From the Senate Hearing With Tech C.E.O.s on Online Child Safety

“I’m sorry for everything you have all been through,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “No one should go through the things that your families have suffered.” He said that his company was working so that no one else would have to do so, and did not address Meta’s role.The leaders of Meta and TikTok took most of the heat.Though executives from Meta, Snap, Discord, X and TikTok were all called to the hearing — the latter three were subpoenaed to testify — it was Mr. Zuckerberg and Shou Chew, TikTok’s chief executive, who spent the most time in the spotlight. Senators grilled…
Read More
G.M. Profits Hurt by Unsold Electric Vehicles and Strike

G.M. Profits Hurt by Unsold Electric Vehicles and Strike

General Motors said on Tuesday that its profit in the final three months of 2023 was depressed by losses stemming from unsold electric vehicles and the cost of a 40-day strike at some of its U.S. plants.The automaker, which has been banking on a rapid rise in sales of battery-powered models, earned $2.1 billion in the fourth quarter, it said, up from $2.0 billion a year earlier. G.M.’s revenue jumped about 10 percent, to $171.8 billion.“The pace of E.V. growth has slowed, which has created some uncertainty,” the company’s chief financial officer, Paul Jacobson, said in a conference call.G.M. took…
Read More
Ring to Stop Allowing Police to Request Videos From Security Cameras

Ring to Stop Allowing Police to Request Videos From Security Cameras

Ring, a home security camera company owned by Amazon, said that it would stop letting police departments request users’ footage in its app amid longstanding concerns from privacy advocates about the company’s relationship with law enforcement.Eric Kuhn, the general manager of subscriptions and software for the Ring app Neighbors, announced on Wednesday that the company was shutting down a feature that allowed the police to request and receive videos from users of the app, a social platform similar to Nextdoor and Citizen where people can share alerts about crime near their home.Mr. Kuhn did not say why Ring was eliminating…
Read More
23andMe Breach Targeted Jewish and Chinese Customers, Lawsuit Says

23andMe Breach Targeted Jewish and Chinese Customers, Lawsuit Says

The genetic testing company 23andMe is being accused in a class-action lawsuit of failing to protect the privacy of customers whose personal information was exposed last year in a data breach that affected nearly seven million profiles.The lawsuit, which was filed on Friday in federal court in San Francisco, also accused the company of failing to notify customers with Chinese and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage that they appeared to have been specifically targeted, or that their personal genetic information had been compiled into “specially curated lists” that were shared and sold on the dark web.The suit was filed after 23andMe submitted…
Read More
The Sleepy Copyright Office in the Middle of a High-Stakes Clash Over A.I.

The Sleepy Copyright Office in the Middle of a High-Stakes Clash Over A.I.

For decades, the Copyright Office has been a small and sleepy office within the Library of Congress. Each year, the agency’s 450 employees register roughly half a million copyrights, the ownership rights for creative works, based on a two-centuries-old law.In recent months, however, the office has suddenly found itself in the spotlight. Lobbyists for Microsoft, Google, and the music and news industries have asked to meet with Shira Perlmutter, the register of copyrights, and her staff. Thousands of artists, musicians and tech executives have written to the agency, and hundreds have asked to speak at listening sessions hosted by the…
Read More
A.I.’s Latest Challenge: the Math Olympics

A.I.’s Latest Challenge: the Math Olympics

For four years, the computer scientist Trieu Trinh has been consumed with something of a meta-math problem: how to build an A.I. model that solves geometry problems from the International Mathematical Olympiad, the annual competition for the world’s most mathematically attuned high-school students.Last week Dr. Trinh successfully defended his doctoral dissertation on this topic at New York University; this week, he described the result of his labors in the journal Nature. Named AlphaGeometry, the system solves Olympiad geometry problems at nearly the level of a human gold medalist.While developing the project, Dr. Trinh pitched it to two research scientists at…
Read More
Even Rats Are Taking Selfies Now (and Enjoying It)

Even Rats Are Taking Selfies Now (and Enjoying It)

When Augustin Lignier, a professional photographer in Paris, was in graduate school, he began to ponder the point of picture-taking in the modern world: Why did so many of us feel compelled to photograph our lives and share those images online?It was not a novel question, but it led Mr. Lignier to a surprising place, and before long he found himself building what was, in essence, a photo booth for rats.He took inspiration from B.F. Skinner, the famous behaviorist who had devised a test chamber to study learning in rats. The Skinner box, as it became known, dispensed food pellets…
Read More
Power cuts are plaguing southern Africa with renewable energy

Power cuts are plaguing southern Africa with renewable energy

Simply sit, stand or lie in a comfortable position and close your eyes. Take in a deep breath, inhaling slowly and all the way into your belly. Hold your breath for a moment, then exhale slowly. Repeat for however long you like. Short or long, meditation has the power to change your mood, your day, and even your life. If you’ve never tried a short meditation, why not do it today? You might be amazed at what happens. Several people on Twitter and other theatre kid-dominated social media platforms have responded to these offensive, misguided reviews of The Lightning Thief by demanding…
Read More