The nation’s top student aid official is stepping down, the Education Department said Friday, after the disastrous rollout of a new financial aid form that upended the college admissions process for millions of students this year. Richard Cordray, who took over as the leader of the Federal Student Aid office in 2021, will hand over […]
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On a Monday morning last month, tech executives, engineers and sales representatives from Amazon, Google, TikTok and other companies endured a three-hour traffic jam as their cars crawled toward a mammoth conference at an event space in the desert, 50 miles outside Riyadh. The lure: billions of dollars in Saudi money as the kingdom seeks […]
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The swift passage this week of legislation to force the sale or ban of TikTok was the first time a federal tech law has been approved in years. And after a logjam of dozens of bills to rein in the business practices and power of tech giants, it appeared some momentum was building for further […]
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In China, there is no TikTok. There is only Douyin. After President Biden signed a bill on Wednesday forcing Chinese company ByteDance to sell its ownership of TikTok, the United States moved one step closer to an internet without the short video app. The legislation opened the door to a possible ban of the social […]
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Meta on Wednesday reported a 27 percent increase in revenue and profit that more than doubled in the first quarter, as the company said it planned to spend billions of dollars more than expected on infrastructure to support its artificial intelligence efforts. Revenue for the company, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, was $36.5 […]
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As Congress voted Tuesday night on legislation that could ban TikTok, Americans were posting their real-time reactions on the embattled video-sharing app. The Senate passed a revised TikTok bill, tied to a package to provide aid for Israel and Ukraine, with a 79-18 vote, and President Biden signed it into law Wednesday. It will force […]
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Just over a year ago, lawmakers displayed a rare show of bipartisanship when they grilled Shou Chew, TikTok’s chief executive, about the video app’s ties to China. Their harsh questioning suggested that Washington was gearing up to force the company to sever ties with its Chinese owner — or even ban the app. Then came […]
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The debate over TikTok has shifted very quickly. Just a few months ago, it seemed unlikely that the U.S. government would force ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to sell it. The platform is popular, and Congress rarely passes legislation aimed at a single company. Yet a bipartisan TikTok bill — packaged with aid […]
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In the last few days, you may have noticed something new inside Meta’s apps, including Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp: an artificially intelligent chatbot. Within those apps, you can chat with Meta AI and type in questions and requests like “What’s the weather this week in New York?” or “Write a poem about two dogs living […]
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In the run-up to Meta’s first-quarter earnings report this week, a video image of Mark Zuckerberg suddenly started going viral. Not because of the artificial intelligence assistant he was touting or because of the expected ad revenue growth, but because of the silver chain he was wearing around his neck. “Mark Zuckerberg made an announcement […]
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A bill that would force a sale of TikTok by its Chinese owner, ByteDance — or ban it outright — was passed by the Senate on Tuesday and is expected to be signed quickly into law by President Biden. Now the process is likely to get even more complicated. Congress passed the measure citing national […]
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Andreas Bechtolsheim doesn’t like to waste time. The entrepreneur made one of the most celebrated investments in the history of Silicon Valley — the initial $100,000 that bankrolled a search engine called Google in 1998 — while on the way to work one morning. It took just a few minutes. Twenty one years later, Mr. […]
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In the dizzying race to build generative A.I. systems, the tech industry’s mantra has been bigger is better, no matter the price tag. Now tech companies are starting to embrace smaller A.I. technologies that are not as powerful but cost a lot less. And for many customers, that may be a good trade-off. On Tuesday, […]
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In the night, the mountain air not quite chill enough to still the insects, young people gathered around a glow. The light attracting them was not a phone screen, that electric lure for people almost everywhere, but a bonfire. From around the blaze, music radiated. Fingers strummed a guitar. Voices layered lyrics about love, democracy […]
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A new flood of child sexual abuse material created by artificial intelligence is threatening to overwhelm the authorities already held back by antiquated technology and laws, according to a new report released Monday by Stanford University’s Internet Observatory. Over the past year, new A.I. technologies have made it easier for criminals to create explicit images […]
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Caroline Mullet, a ninth grader at Issaquah High School near Seattle, went to her first homecoming dance last fall, a James Bond-themed bash with blackjack tables attended by hundreds of girls dressed up in party frocks. A few weeks later, she and other female students learned that a male classmate was circulating fake nude images […]
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When Pinduoduo, the Chinese discount shopping app, debuted nearly a decade ago, the tech giants Alibaba and JD.com dominated China’s e-commerce business. Pinduoduo felt more like a gimmick than a future rival. It was a combination of a game arcade, a shopping mall and a social network. Its main selling point was lower prices for […]
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You open your eyes and grope for your phone. You check your inbox and discover dozens of spam emails that made it past the filter. Tapping over to Instagram, you find a request for a supposed brand collaboration in your DMs. Your WhatsApp notifications, meanwhile, consist solely of strangers asking you to invest in a […]
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People are bombarded online each day with ads for newfangled products that promise dramatic life improvements. Modish tumblers. Sleek pans. Miraculous cleaning solutions. Overblown air purifiers. Just click this link and — voilà! Productivity. Happiness. Nirvana. Don’t buy it. Wirecutter, The Times’s product recommendation service, tests many of the wares that clog Americans’ social media […]
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Since its first episode aired in 2012, “Catfish: The TV Show” has held up a mirror to our online lives, reflecting how we present ourselves and make sense of love, lust, trust, companionship and loneliness in an increasingly digital world. Each episode unfolds like a detective show, with the host Nev Schulman summoned to untangle […]
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A push to force the sale in the United States of the short-form video app TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, took a leap forward as the U.S. House of Representatives voted on Saturday to ban the social media platform unless it is sold to a government-approved buyer. The Senate is expected […]
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In the coming days, Congress may advance a bill to ban TikTok or force its sale to an American company. Politicians in both parties call the app a threat to national security. But its reach is felt most acutely in our culture. Since it first arrived in the United States in 2018 (after merging with […]
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Apple said it pulled the Meta-owned apps WhatsApp and Threads from its app store in China on Friday on government orders, potentially escalating the war over technology between the United States and China. The House of Representatives was preparing to vote on a bill as soon as this weekend that would force the Chinese internet […]
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The Biden administration will give Micron up to $6.1 billion in grants to help build its semiconductor plants in New York and Idaho, the latest multibillion dollar award aimed at ramping up the nation’s production of vital semiconductors. Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, announced the grant on Thursday and […]
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Cryptocurrency enthusiasts have eagerly anticipated the third week of April, counting down the days until a potentially crucial moment in Bitcoin’s development called “the halving.” Essentially, the halving is a scheduled reduction in the number of new Bitcoin that go into circulation. As the supply falls, some analysts anticipate that the digital currency’s price will […]
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On a call with investors last spring, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, said he believed that he had an opportunity to introduce artificially intelligent assistants “to billions of people in ways that will be useful and meaningful.” A year later, he is making good on his statement. On Thursday, Meta will begin incorporating […]
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In 2009, long before Jeff Yass became a Republican megadonor, his firm, Susquehanna International Group, invested in a Chinese real estate start-up that boasted a sophisticated search algorithm. The company, 99Fang, promised to help buyers find their perfect homes. Behind the scenes, employees of a Chinese subsidiary of Mr. Yass’s firm were so deeply involved, […]
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After former President Donald J. Trump was kicked off Twitter in 2021, conservative entrepreneurs rushed to promote social media alternatives tailored to him and his supporters. There were Parler and Gab, Twitter-like sites popular among the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Then came Gettr, a social media app created by one […]
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Somehow, thousands of pages of sealed court documents relating to the birth of TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, were mistakenly released by a Pennsylvania court. Before they were made secret again, I read them. The documents — emails, chat transcripts and memos — are a fascinating window into ByteDance’s origins. They show that Susquehanna International Group, the […]
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Google on Wednesday fired 28 workers after dozens of employees participated in sit-ins at the company’s New York and Sunnyvale, Calif., offices to protest the company’s cloud computing contract with the Israeli government. A day earlier, nine employees were arrested on charges of trespassing at the two offices. “Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing […]
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