At first, residents of the upscale cul-de-sac in West Lake Hills, Texas, did not know who had moved into the 6,900-square-foot, six-bedroom mansion next door. Then construction workers arrived to erect a 16-foot chain-link fence around the $6 million property, which is one of four homes on the leafy street. …
Spend enough time in San Francisco, peering into the cyberpunk future, and you may find that weird things start seeming normal. Fleets of self-driving cars? Yawn. A start-up trying to resurrect the woolly mammoth? Sure, why not. Summoning a godlike artificial intelligence that could wipe out humanity? Ho-hum. You may …
This article is part of our Museums special section about how artists and institutions are adapting to changing times. On a recent overcast morning at the Computer History Museum, there was a bike near the entry painted in the colors of the Google logo. These bikes allow employees to navigate …
On Instagram feeds, martini glasses clink in what feels like a never-ending loop. Photo carousels from nights out show low-lit steakhouses, tartare and soufflés, Luxardo cherries. (What, in this economy, is screaming Luxardo cherries?) A roommate’s random co-worker is somehow lounging on yet another cabana in yet another tropical bathing …
In mid-2023, TikTok had just eluded an effort in Congress to ban the video app, the latest Houdini-like escape for the young tech company. For several years, during both Republican and Democratic administrations, lawmakers and officials had trained their sights on the app, saying its Chinese ownership posed a national …
Shortly after Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, was arrested by the police in France last summer and charged with failing to prevent illicit activity on the app, a French law professor specializing in cybersecurity got online messages from a man named Isaac Steidl. “I would like to talk with …
A pair of 50-page policy proposals laying out the plan in detail. Discussions about the specifics with President-elect Donald J. Trump and his advisers. And talks with cabinet nominees about how to pay for it. On the eve of Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the cryptocurrency industry is pushing his incoming administration …
What a plan B might look like As TikTok faces a countdown to a potential ban in the United States, Chinese officials are reportedly weighing an unexpected plan B: letting Elon Musk take over the popular video platform. On paper, such an arrangement makes sense, given Beijing’s existing ties to …
Lauren Eager got into thrifting in high school. It was a way to find cheap, interesting clothes while not contributing to the wastefulness of fast fashion. In 2015, in her first year of college, she downloaded the app for Poshmark, a kind of Instagram-meets-eBay resale platform. Soon, she was selling …
Mark Zuckerberg kept the circle of people who knew his thinking small. Last month, Mr. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, tapped a handful of top policy and communications executives and others to discuss the company’s approach to online speech. He had decided to make sweeping changes after visiting President-elect …
