California approves Waymo expansion to LA and highways
SAN FRANCISCO — California regulators on Friday granted Alphabet’s self-driving car division Waymo permission to expand its robotaxi service to include highways in several Bay Area cities and large swaths of Los Angeles, a massive expansion that comes amid concerns about the impact more driverless cars will have on city streets. The decision by the […]
Grab Yourself a Lifetime Subscription to Babbel for Just $150
Learning a new language can be fun, but it can also be hard to do if you’re the type of person who struggles with self-learning. Luckily, Babbel is a great language learning app that will guide you on your lanuguage journey, and with 14 languages to pick from, you have a lot of choice. Even […]
Gemini’s Culture War, Kara Swisher Burns Us and SCOTUS Takes Up Content Moderation
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 transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions. kevin roose Have you — I’m obsessed with this story about the Willy Wonka event. Have you seen this? […]
This Is What Your Brain Does When You’re Not Doing Anything
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Whenever you’re actively performing a task—say, lifting weights at the gym or taking a hard exam—the parts of your brain required to carry it out become “active” when neurons step up their electrical activity. But is your brain active even when you’re zoning out on […]
Panic about artificial intelligence is real, but is it justified?
If you’ve followed the news in the last year or two, you’ve no doubt heard a ton about artificial intelligence. And depending on the source, it usually goes one of two ways: AI is either the beginning of the end of human civilization, or a shortcut to utopia. Who knows which of those two scenarios […]
Spotify’s Song Psychic offers spiritual insight via the power of music
Spotify is journeying into mystical new areas with an in-app version of a Magic 8 Ball. Spotify is well-known for its quirky features, whether that’s wrapping up your year in Spotify Wrapped or the rumored increasing use of AI in song recommendations. Spotify’s new feature, Song Psychic, can apparently answer your questions with a simple […]
Researchers create AI worms that can spread from one system to another
Jacqui VanLiew; Getty Images As generative AI systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini become more advanced, they are increasingly being put to work. Startups and tech companies are building AI agents and ecosystems on top of the systems that can complete boring chores for you: think automatically making calendar bookings and potentially buying products. […]