Not only have I had the privilege of working in and covering Silicon Valley for the past 40 years, but I was also born here. I remember what it was like when it was called the “Valley of Heart’s Delight.” Back then, the entire valley was orchards of apricots, peaches, and cherries and fields of strawberries. In fact, at that time, the area’s primary business was fruit-packing canneries that processed these fruits and made jams and jellies. The summer mornings of my
Roughly a year ago, the online learning nonprofit Khan Academy launched Khanmigo—an experimental AI tutor designed to give students one-on-one guidance without doing their homework for them.
In that time, the limited access pilot has expanded to roughly 65,000 students across more than 53 school districts, with plans to expand to anywhere from 500,000 to 1 million students and teachers by the fall. Khanmigo can help students do things like practice math problems, brainstorm p
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Candor is a great new site that helps others get to know you beyond your job title. Answer icebreaker-style questions about when you’re at your best, what you’re curious about, what you love about your work, hobbies, and other aspects of yourself. The result is a professional profile you can share—
As state abortion restrictions started to tighten in the aftermath of the June 2022 decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, two longtime veterans of the fight for abortion access wanted to help.
Former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards and Tom Subak, the nonprofit’s former chief strategy officer, wanted to help. They started by conducting a deep dive into the online behavior of abortion seekers both before and after the Supreme Court’s ruling on Dobbs v. Jacks
“Few people on this planet know what it is to be truly despised,” says Nick Naylor, the tobacco lobbyist at the center of 2005’s Thank You for Smoking. Nearly 20 years after the film’s release, Elon Musk, who many don’t realize was one of its executive producers, has come to know the feeling well.
“I have no problem being hated. Hate away,” Musk told Andrew Ross Sorkin during last November’s DealBook Summit. His remarks came as
Five years ago, the automotive industry appeared poised for frenetic growth, with global carmakers snapping up autonomous driving startups for billions of dollars and making rosy promises to go fully electric. Then the COVID-19 pandemic stalled the roseate advance toward a greener, more Jetsons-esque streetscape.
During the resulting fallout, many companies working on battery-electric or self-driving technology, including Ford’s Argo AI and General Motors’ Cruise subsi
Warnings about deepfakes and disinformation fueled by artificial intelligence. Concerns about campaigns and candidates using social media to spread lies about elections. Fears that tech companies will fail to address these issues as their platforms are used to undermine democracy ahead of pivotal elections.
Those are the worries facing elections in the U.S., where most voters speak English. But for languages like Spanish, or in dozens of nations where English isn’t the domina
Meta announced this month that in August it will be closing CrowdTangle, the platform monitoring tool the company bought in 2016. The tool, which tracks the top performing links posted on Meta’s platforms, has been deprioritized by Meta for years and victim of various internal reorganizing efforts.
Meta says that CrowdTangle will be replaced by two new tools, Meta Content Library and Content Library API, which the company says “provide useful, high-quality data to
Olin Pickens sat in his wheelchair facing a life-size image of himself on a screen, asking it questions about being taken prisoner by German soldiers during World War II. After a pause, his video-recorded twin recalled being given “sauerkraut soup” by his captors before a grueling march.
“That was a Tuesday morning, February the 16th,” Pickens’s on-screen likeness answered. “And so we started marching. We’d walk four hours, then we&#x
Americans from Maine to Texas are set for a rare treat on April 8, 2024, when a total solar eclipse will be visible across much of the U.S.
In ancient times, eclipse-viewers thought they were watching the sun be eaten by wolves, a dragon, or a demon.
Of course, we now know that the sun isn’t really eaten during an eclipse. Instead, it does what it always does: rain ultraviolet rays on everything in its path. That’s why you should never look at a solar eclipse witho