Author: Reporter

Post a comment on Reddit, answer coding questions on Stack Overflow, edit a Wikipedia entry, or share a baby photo on your public Facebook or Instagram feed and you are also helping to train the next generation of artificial intelligence. Not everyone is OK with that — especially as the same online forums where they’ve spent years contributing are increasingly flooded with AI-generated commentary mimicking what real humans might say. Some longtime users have tried to delete their past contributions or rewrite them into gibberish, but the protests have not had much effect. A handful of governments — including...

Google will give California millions of dollars to help pay for local journalism jobs in a first-in-the-nation deal, but journalists and other media industry experts are calling it a disappointing agreement that mostly benefits the tech giant. The agreement will direct tens of millions of public and private dollars to keep local news organizations afloat. Critics say it is a textbook political maneuver by tech giants to avoid a fee under what could have been groundbreaking legislation. California lawmakers agreed to kill a bill requiring tech to support news outlets they profit from in exchange for Google’s financial commitment....

It started a couple of years ago when Juliana Pache was doing a crossword puzzle and got stuck. She was unfamiliar with the reference that the clue made. It made her think about what a crossword puzzle would look like if the clues and answers included more of some subjects that she WAS familiar with, thanks to her own identity and interests — Black history and Black popular culture. When she could not find such a thing, Pache decided to do it herself. In January 2023, she created blackcrossword.com, a site that offers a free mini-crossword puzzle every day....

Lou Gehrig’s disease took away Grace Armant’s ability to speak, but the 84-year-old still has plenty to say about her insurance. UnitedHealthcare has rejected several requests from her doctors for coverage of a machine Armant needs to breathe as she deals with the fatal illness. “They are no good,” Armant said, typing slowly into a device that speaks for her. “I can’t do without the machine.” Doctors around the country say UnitedHealthcare and other insurers have made it harder to get coverage for certain home ventilators that patients like Armant need as their lungs fail. They say patients often...