Technology

Imran Khan Uses A.I. To Give Victory Speech in Pakistan

Imran Khan Uses A.I. To Give Victory Speech in Pakistan

Imran Khan, Pakistan’s former prime minister, has spent the duration of the country’s electoral campaign in jail, disqualified from running in what experts have described as one of the least credible general elections in the country’s 76-year history.But from behind bars, he has been rallying his supporters in recent months with speeches that use artificial intelligence to replicate his voice, part of a tech-savvy strategy his party deployed to circumvent a crackdown by the military.And on Saturday, as official counts showed candidates aligned with his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or P.T.I., winning the most seats in a surprise result that threw…
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Does Technology Rule Our Sex and Dating Lives?

Does Technology Rule Our Sex and Dating Lives?

“I never really thought about the fact that it’s connected to the internet,” she said. “Being Gen Z, I feel like sex is so connected to technology already that it didn’t feel weird having something that’s a bit more technological than just say, watching something online.”While the pitch for products like Lovense and WeVibe, another popular brand of remote controlled vibrators and stimulation rings, might seem self-evident — to create pleasure — much of the latest sex tech often has a loftier goal in mind. Make Love Not Porn, a user-generated social sex platform, aims to eradicate the unrealistic standards…
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After Figma’s  Billion Windfall Evaporated, It’s Picking Up the Pieces

After Figma’s $20 Billion Windfall Evaporated, It’s Picking Up the Pieces

On Dec. 18, a $20 billion deal by Adobe, the software giant, to buy Figma, a San Francisco start-up darling, fell apart after more than a year of regulatory scrutiny.In a blog post that day, Dylan Field, Figma’s chief executive and co-founder, painted an optimistic picture of what would come next. “Figma’s best, most innovative days are still ahead,” he wrote.Behind the scenes, the start-up, a design platform, is picking up the pieces. In recent weeks, Figma said it had reset its internal valuation to $10 billion — half of what Adobe planned to pay for it. Some employees, who…
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Meta Calls for Industry Effort to Label A.I.-Generated Content

Meta Calls for Industry Effort to Label A.I.-Generated Content

Last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta, called a nascent effort to detect artificially generated content “the most urgent task” facing the tech industry today.On Tuesday, Mr. Clegg proposed a solution. Meta said it would promote technological standards that companies across the industry could use to recognize markers in photo, video and audio material that would signal that the content was generated using artificial intelligence.The standards could allow social media companies to quickly identify content generated with A.I. that has been posted to their platforms and allow them to…
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Anxiety, Mood Swings and Sleepless Nights: Life Near a Bitcoin Mine

Anxiety, Mood Swings and Sleepless Nights: Life Near a Bitcoin Mine

On a sweltering July evening, the din from thousands of computers mining for Bitcoins pierced the night. Nearby, Matt Brown, a member of the Arkansas legislature, monitored the noise alongside a local magistrate.As the two men investigated complaints about the operation, Mr. Brown said, a security guard for the mine loaded rounds into an AR-15-style assault rifle that had been stored in a car.“He wanted to make sure that we knew he had his gun — that we knew it was loaded,” Mr. Brown, a Republican, said in an interview.The Bitcoin outfit here, 45 minutes north of Little Rock, is…
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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…
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Silicon Valley Battles States Over New Online Safety Laws for Children

Silicon Valley Battles States Over New Online Safety Laws for Children

Last summer, Ohio enacted a social media statute that would require Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube to get a parent’s consent before permitting children under age 16 to use their platforms.But this month, just before the measure was to take effect, a tech industry group called NetChoice — which represents Google, Meta, Snap, TikTok and others — filed a lawsuit to block it on free speech grounds, persuading a Federal District Court judge to temporarily halt the new rules.The case is part of a sweeping litigation campaign by NetChoice to block new state laws protecting young people online — an…
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Elon Musk’s Tesla Pay Package Is Voided by Judge

Elon Musk’s Tesla Pay Package Is Voided by Judge

Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, suffered a stunning rebuke Tuesday when a Delaware judge voided the pay package that helped make him a billionaire many times over and the world’s wealthiest human being.In a decision that cast a harsh light on the behavior of Mr. Musk and Tesla’s board of directors, Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery said the chief executive had effectively overseen his own compensation plan — currently worth about $50 billion — with the help of compliant board members.“The process leading to the approval of Musk’s compensation plan was deeply…
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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…
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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…
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