Category: Technology

LONDON – Owners of some iPhones are in line to get cash payments of up to $95 from Apple after the company on Tuesday reached a $250 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit for false advertising of its artificial intelligence capabilities. Apple trumpeted new AI features for its virtual assistant Siri when it rolled out…

WOODS HOLE, Mass. – Green cells whirl around a red-light chamber, propelled by a blade through bubbling water. These little seaweed cells, called gametophytes, will develop into a strain of fast-growing kelp — part of what was once a government-funded initiative to develop sustainable biofuels for American transport. Electricity from solar and wind energy can…

CONCORD, N.H. – In 1985, a 13-year-old girl in New Zealand spotted a pair of purple, lip-shaped sunglasses in “Young Miss” magazine. In March, I traveled 9,000 miles from New Hampshire to deliver them to her, finally fulfilling my pen pal’s decades-old request. International Youth Service, the agency that matched us up 40 years ago,…

SANTA FE, N.M. – New Mexico state prosecutors are seeking fundamental changes to Meta’s social media apps and algorithms to safeguard children in the second phase of a landmark trial on allegations that platforms such as Instagram have created a public safety hazard. Opening statements are scheduled Monday in the three-week bench trial to decide…

NAIROBI – Rising diesel prices linked to the Iran war are adding urgency to a shift already underway across Africa to move cellphone towers off fossil fuels and onto solar power. Diesel, which powers the majority of Africa’s roughly 500,000 telecommunications towers, has become more expensive and sometimes harder to secure in recent weeks as…

HARRISBURG, Pa. – Building trades unions — long fashioned as the voice of the American worker — are now intertwined with the richest companies in the world as they create America’s artificial intelligence economy. Unionized workers are employed on a huge number of massive data center projects and scrambling to recruit new apprentices to feed…

SANTA FE, N.M. – Meta is raising the prospect of shutting down its social media services in New Mexico in response to a push by state prosecutors for fundamental changes to the company’s platforms, including Instagram, to protect the mental health and safety of children. The possibility emerged amid legal gamesmanship in the runup to…

Google’s transition into the era of artificial intelligence continued to pay off for its corporate parent, Alphabet Inc., which on Wednesday announced another quarter of the stellar growth that helped to more than double its already lofty market value during the past year. Alphabet earned $62.6 billion, or $5.11 per share, during the January-March period,…

SAN FRANCISCO – Amazon announced what it called a “major expansion” of its partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI on Tuesday, a day after the artificial intelligence company said it was loosening its ties to longtime backer Microsoft. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the collaboration with Amazon’s cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services, would involve co-developing…

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The spacecraft that flew four astronauts around the moon is back where its record-breaking journey began. NASA’s Artemis II capsule returned to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday, almost a month after blasting off on humanity’s first lunar trip in more than a half-century. Following its splashdown in the Pacific on…