Science and Technology

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…

With restrictions on space and weight, what would you bring if you were going to Mars? An ideal option might be a single material that can shift shapes into any object you imagine.In the morning, you could mold that material into utensils for eating. When breakfast is done, you could transform your fork and knife into a spade to tend to your Martian garden. And then when it’s happy hour on the red planet, that spade could become a cup for your Martian beer.What sounds like science fiction is, perhaps, one step closer to reality. Researchers at the University of…

Last week, I was ushered by an Apple employee through a security gate, past a manicured lawn, down a flight of stairs and into a tastefully decorated faux living room inside the Steve Jobs Theater to get a preview of the company’s new Vision Pro headset.My demo, like the early tours of the Vision Pro given to other reporters, was far from exhaustive. I spent about 45 minutes wearing the device under the supervision of two watchful Apple employees, who guided me through a curated demo while I sat on a midcentury gray sofa next to them. I wasn’t allowed…

In the spring of 2020, when President Donald J. Trump wrote messages on Twitter warning that increased reliance on mail-in ballots would lead to a “rigged election,” the platform ran a corrective, debunking his claims.“Get the facts about mail-in voting,” a content label read. “Experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud,” the hyperlinked article declared.This month, Elon Musk, who has since bought Twitter and rebranded it X, echoed several of Mr. Trump’s claims about the American voting system, putting forth distorted and false notions that American elections were wide open for fraud and illegal voting by…

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…

David L. Mills, an internet pioneer who developed and, for decades, implemented the timekeeping protocol used by financial markets, power grids, satellites and billions of computers to make sure they run simultaneously, earning him a reputation as the internet’s “Father Time,” died on Jan. 17 at his home in Newark, Del. He was 85.His daughter, Leigh Schnitzler, confirmed the death.Dr. Mills was among the inner circle of computer scientists who in the 1960s through the ’90s developed Arpanet, a relatively small network of linked computers located at academic and research institutions, and then its globe-spanning successor, the internet.It was challenging…

Tesla’s profit from sales of electric cars slumped in the last three months of last year because of price cuts intended to thwart increasingly intense competition, the company said on Wednesday as it warned of a tough year ahead.Profit in the fourth quarter nearly doubled to $7.9 billion, up from $3.7 billion a year earlier. But $5.9 billion of that profit came from a tax benefit. Without that one-time accounting effect, profit would have fallen.Tesla has slashed prices for the two cars that make up the bulk of its sales — the Model 3 sedan and the Model Y sport…