Category: Technology

California has long championed renewable energy, but a change in the state’s policies last year has led to a sharp decline in the installation of residential rooftop solar in the state. Thousands of companies — including installers, manufacturers and distributors — are reeling from the new policy, which took effect in April and greatly reduced…

More than $4 billion of a newly approved investment product tied to Bitcoin changed hands in the first day of trading on Thursday, as cryptocurrency enthusiasts celebrated a watershed moment for the industry. Eleven of the products, known as exchange-traded funds, or E.T.F.s, started trading on popular platforms such as the Nasdaq a day after…

The rental car company Hertz will be selling about one-third of the electric vehicles in its fleet after they lost value more quickly than expected, the company said on Thursday. The drop in value is a blow to the company’s efforts to replace gasoline vehicles with cars that do not produce tailpipe emissions. The electric…

For more than a decade, Apple was the stock market’s undisputed king. It first overtook Exxon Mobil as the world’s most valuable public company in 2011 and held the title almost without interruption. But a transfer of power has begun. On Friday, Microsoft surpassed Apple, claiming the crown after its market value surged by more…

Listen and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTube Casey is taking his newsletter Platformer off Substack, as criticism over the company’s handling of pro-Nazi content grows. Then, The Wall Street Journal spoke with witnesses who said that Elon Musk had used LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, worrying some directors and board…

The Justice Department charged eBay on Thursday with stalking, witness tampering and obstruction of justice in a rare criminal case against a well-known Silicon Valley company. The charges, which will be dropped under a deferred prosecution agreement if eBay maintains a good record for the next three years, stem from actions taken by the company…

Google laid off hundreds of workers in several divisions Wednesday night, seeking to lower expenses as it focuses on artificial intelligence and joining a wave of other companies cutting tech jobs this year. The Silicon Valley company laid off employees in its core engineering division, as well as those working on the Google Assistant, a…

Federal regulators on Wednesday approved a new financial product that tracks the price of Bitcoin, a landmark moment for the cryptocurrency industry that proponents hope will increase investment in the technology. The Securities and Exchange Commission authorized 11 applications to offer exchange-traded funds tied to Bitcoin, a potentially simpler way for people to invest in…

When Microsoft opened an advanced research lab in Beijing in 1998, it was a time of optimism about technology and China. The company hired hundreds of researchers for the lab, which pioneered Microsoft’s work in speech, image and facial recognition and the kind of artificial intelligence that later gave rise to online chatbots like ChatGPT….

For 15 minutes, the cryptocurrency industry was euphoric. At 4:11 p.m. on Tuesday, the official X account of the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that regulators had approved a new investment product tracking the price of Bitcoin, an apparent victory for the embattled crypto industry. Coinbase, a giant crypto exchange, posted a celebratory banner. Crypto…

The Justice Department is in the late stages of an investigation into Apple and could file a sweeping antitrust case taking aim at the company’s strategies to protect the dominance of the iPhone as soon as the first half of this year, said three people with knowledge of the matter. The agency is focused on…

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions. kevin roose This podcast is supported by Givewell. With over 1.5 million nonprofits in the US, how do you…

Several prominent museums have been unable to display their collections online since a cyberattack hit a prominent technological service provider that helps hundreds of cultural organizations show their works digitally and manage internal documents. The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Rubin Museum of Art in New York and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American…

What is the happiest dog you can imagine? Is it beaming with joy on a celestial plane or frolicking in a field of psychedelic flora? If those images are hard to conjure, have no fear, or perhaps a healthy dose of it: Artificial intelligence can vivify even the most absurd scenarios in vibrant color, and…

After enjoying a strong rebound in sales in 2023, the auto industry appears headed for slower growth this year as consumers struggle with elevated interest rates and high prices for new cars and light trucks. Edmunds, a market researcher, expects the industry to sell 15.7 million vehicles this year. That would amount to a modest…

Ms. Cox bought her son a version of a Nintendo console called a RetroN, which used the same hardware as the original Nintendo console, from a pawnshop, as well as an old cathode-ray tube television to help him get started. In a given week, Willis said, he plays about 20 hours of Tetris. “I’m actually…

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. devoted his annual year-end report on the state of the federal judiciary, issued on Sunday, to the positive role that artificial intelligence can play in the legal system — and the threats it poses. His report did not address the Supreme Court’s rocky year, including its adoption of an…

Crucial Events on the Path Back to the Moon NASA wants to put American astronauts on the moon’s surface in the years ahead with the Artemis III mission. Before that can happen, though, many things have to go right, and two of the most important are scheduled for 2024. The first is the Artemis II…

Jerry Yu reúne las características de lo que los chinos llaman un rico de segunda generación. Estudió en una escuela preparatoria de Connecticut. Vive en un condominio de Manhattan que le vendió Jeffrey R. Immelt, exdirector ejecutivo de General Electric, en 8 millones de dólares. Y es el dueño mayoritario de una mina de bitcóin…

When Thomas Wong set foot in the United States Embassy in Beijing this summer for a new diplomatic posting, it was vindication after years of battling the State Department over a perceived intelligence threat — himself. Diplomatic Security officers had informed him when he joined the foreign service more than a decade ago that they…

In the last few months, Beth Fletcher, a 39-year-old photographer in Derbyshire, England, built a small following on TikTok by recapping and analyzing the British reality show “I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!” When the latest season ended in early December, Ms. Fletcher was at a loss for content because, she said,…

Meet the Millers, George and Roxanne, proprietors of the world’s largest collection of mechanical puzzles: physical objects that a puzzler holds and manipulates while seeking a solution. In total, the Miller collection — an accumulation of collections, and collections of collections — amounts to more than 80,000 puzzles. It comprises some five thousand Rubik’s Cubes,…

Michael D. Cohen, the onetime fixer for former President Donald J. Trump, said in court papers unsealed on Friday that he had mistakenly given his lawyer bogus legal citations generated by the artificial intelligence program Google Bard. The fictitious citations were used by Mr. Cohen’s lawyer in a motion submitted to a federal judge, Jesse…

For generations, Western space missions have largely occurred out in the open. We knew where they were going, why they were going there and what they planned to do. But the world is on the verge of a new era in which private interests override such openness, with big money potentially on the line. Sometime…

Neri Diaz thought he was ready for a crucial juncture in California’s ambitious plans, closely watched in other states and around the world, to phase out diesel-powered trucks. His company, Harbor Pride Logistics, acquired 14 electric trucks this year to work alongside 32 diesel vehicles, in anticipation of a rule that says that after Monday,…

The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement on Wednesday, opening a new front in the increasingly intense legal battle over the unauthorized use of published work to train artificial intelligence technologies. The Times is the first major American media organization to sue the companies, the creators of ChatGPT and other popular…

As the year winds to a close, many frenzied smartphone users haven’t had the chance to explore major updates to the Google and iPhone operating systems that arrived this fall. As you finally get a breather — or maybe even a new phone in your gift haul — why not start with some of the…

In the tech industry, 2023 was a year of transformation. Spurred by the success of last year’s breakout tech star, ChatGPT, Silicon Valley’s giants rushed to turn themselves into artificial intelligence companies, jamming generative A.I. features into their products and racing to build their own, more powerful A.I. models. They did so while navigating an…

Jerry Yu has the trappings of what the Chinese call second-generation rich. He boasts a Connecticut prep-school education. He lives in a Manhattan condominium bought for $8 million from Jeffrey R. Immelt, the former General Electric chief executive. And he is the majority owner of a Bitcoin mine in Texas, acquired last year for more…

A federal judge on Friday gave the go-ahead to a lawsuit against the social media company X, formerly known as Twitter, in which workers claim that the company promised but never paid millions of dollars in bonuses. In June, Mark Schobinger, a former senior director of compensation for Twitter who lives in Texas, sued the…

After Manish Lachwani founded the Silicon Valley software start-up HeadSpin in 2015, he inflated the company’s revenue numbers by nearly fourfold and falsely claimed that firms including Apple and American Express were customers. He showed a profit where there were losses. He used HeadSpin’s cash to make risky trades on tech stocks. And he created…

For years, Ben Black’s phone annoyed his family. It was the only Android device in a family message group with eight iPhones. Because of him, videos and photos would arrive in low resolution and there would be green bubbles of text amid bubbles of blue. But a new app called Beeper Mini gave him the…

Apple has opened negotiations in recent weeks with major news and publishing organizations, seeking permission to use their material in the company’s development of generative artificial intelligence systems, according to four people familiar with the discussions. The technology giant has floated multiyear deals worth at least $50 million to license the archives of news articles,…

Under pressure from critics who say Substack is profiting from newsletters that promote hate speech and racism, the company’s founders said Thursday that they would not ban Nazi symbols and extremist rhetoric from the platform. “I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either — we wish no one held those…

Listen and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTube Last year, we predicted what 2023 in tech would look like. This week, we take a look back at those predictions, see what we got right and wrong, and make new ones for 2024. Then, the actor, comedian and writer Jenny Slate joins us…

The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday proposed sweeping changes to bolster the key federal rule that has protected children’s privacy online, in one of the most significant attempts by the U.S. government to strengthen consumer privacy in more than a decade. The changes are intended to fortify the rules underlying the Children’s Online Privacy Protection…

A man involved in a brazen plot to manipulate the stock price of a New Jersey deli’s parent company pleaded guilty to securities fraud on Wednesday. James T. Patten, 64, of North Carolina, admitted to orchestrating a series of misleading trades in an apparent bid to enrich himself and two co-defendants in U.S. District Court…

“Buy now, pay later” loans are helping to fuel a record-setting holiday shopping season. Economists worry they could also be masking and exacerbating cracks in Americans’ financial well-being. The loans, which allow consumers to pay for purchases in installments, often interest-free, have soared in popularity because of high prices and interest rates. Retailers have used…

On Dec. 11, NASA engineers anxiously gathered at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., to view a cat video, wondering if it would be in the pristine high definition for which they had hoped. To their relief, it was. For the first time, high-definition video — this one of a lab employee’s cat named…

Drivers of Tesla vehicles will automatically receive the software updates the company is issuing to address concerns from federal auto safety regulators about its driver-assistance system, Autopilot. The updates, which Tesla will send to cars over cellular networks, will include new warnings and checks to make sure drivers are paying attention to the road and…

Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine last year, engineers at Convex, a Russian telecommunications company, needed to find American equipment to transmit data to the country’s feared intelligence service. But no gear was flowing in after Western nations imposed sweeping new trade limits on Russia. Convex’s employees soon found a solution. While Cisco, a U.S. tech…

The founder of the electric truck company Nikola was sentenced to four years in prison on Monday in a fraud case that highlights the financial carnage left behind by a crop of electric vehicle start-ups and their promoters. A federal judge in Manhattan, Edgardo Ramos, sentenced Trevor Milton, Nikola’s founder and former chief executive, after…

Parents, schools and even attorneys general have increasingly been raising concerns about how TikTok may be hooking children to the app and serving them inappropriate content. But some lawyers say bringing legal action against the company could be more difficult after TikTok quietly changed its U.S. terms of service this summer. In July, TikTok removed…

Want to go viral on TikTok right now? Grab some pink ribbon and a random object. A roll of toilet paper, a houseplant, or a kosher dill spear will do. Tie it up in a bow and film it. Post the video online, and voilà. In recent weeks, bows in all the wrong places have…

Efforts to fight global warming could suffer a setback next year when new rules reduce the number of electric cars that qualify for a federal tax credit. The credits, up to $7,500 a vehicle, have helped make electric cars more affordable, bringing the cost of some models below $30,000. Next year, for the first time,…