Technology

The Key Number: 3.88 megajoules.The experiment in December generated a whirlwind of accolades when it produced about three megajoules of energy — equivalent to about 1.5 pounds of TNT, or about 1.5 times the energy of the incoming lasers. It was the first time that a fusion reaction in a laboratory setting produced more energy than it took to start the reaction.The July experiment was essentially identical to the December one. “We expected a similar yield,” Dr. Town said. “On the order of three megajoules.”The actual output was 3.88 megajoules.The better-than-predicted result indicates that with a few tweaks, laser fusion can become markedly more efficient. But minuscule variations could yield fusion duds as well.A fusion experiment in June, just a month earlier, was also predicted to prod...

I got a sneak peek into Apple’s vision for the future of computing on Monday. For about half an hour, I wore the $3,500 Vision Pro, the company’s first high-tech goggles, which will be released next year.I walked away with mixed feelings, including a nagging sense of skepticism.On one hand, I was impressed with the quality of the headset, which Apple bills as the beginning of an era of “spatial computing,” where digital data blends with the physical world to unlock new capabilities. Imagine wearing a headset to assemble furniture while the instructions are digitally projected onto the parts, for instance, or cooking a meal while a recipe is displayed in the corner of your eye.Apple’s device had high-resolution video, intuitive controls and a comfortable fit, which felt superior to my exper...

Last November, the company behind Facebook released a chatbot called Galactica. After a torrent of complaints that the bot made up historical events and spewed other nonsense, Meta removed it from the internet.Two weeks later, the San Francisco start-up OpenAI released a chatbot called ChatGPT. It was a worldwide sensation.Both bots were powered by the same fundamental technology. But unlike Meta, OpenAI had sharpened its bot using a technique that was just beginning to change the way artificial intelligence is built.In the months leading up to the release of ChatGPT, the company hired hundreds of people to use an early version and provide precise suggestions that could help hone the bot’s skills. Like an army of tutors guiding a grade school student, they showed the bot how to respond to ...

The moderators of hundreds of Reddit forums, known as subreddits, closed off access to their groups on Monday to protest the company’s plan to charge for access to the data that outside developers need to run apps on the site.Many said the new pricing scheme could kill off some of the most popular third-party apps that many users rely on to browse and comment on the site. Others said the charges had sowed uncertainty about the tools that moderators use to manage discussions. An estimated 57 million people a day visit the platform.Reddit announced in April that it would begin to charge some large-scale users for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of memes, gifs, vi...

Teen-to-Teen AdviceYou don’t have to reply right away.Reminders to do your homework. DMs in every app. Multiple group chats blowing up. All of these notifications can feel endless and overwhelming. Niki Shiva, 17, from Hayward, Calif., said she sets her phone to “do not disturb for everyone except mom” to mitigate her anxiety. Niki explained that she often obsesses about whether people have written back to her, so she tries to minimize the temptation to check her phone constantly. She also said she removed her messaging app from her home screen — it’s now tucked away in a folder in her app library — “so I didn’t have to look at the number of notifications.”Unfollow people and pages that make you feel bad.Several of the teens we spoke to said that, when possible, they remove accounts from t...

Many of us are desperate to travel this summer after a pandemic stifled our plans for years. But travelers — and I’m sorry to be a killjoy — should beware: Those seemingly cheap plane tickets or hotel rooms advertised online may be a trap to make you spend more than anticipated.That’s because hotels and airlines, struggling to recoup their losses from the pandemic, are increasingly resorting to nickel-and-diming consumers with hidden charges, according to studies and travel experts. Regulators call these “junk fees.”You have probably encountered junk fees at least a few times in your travels. The extra charges can come in many forms, such as fees for resort amenities, checked luggage and seat selection, and they’re typically not disclosed upfront when you use an online search engine. They ...

In a nondescript office park minutes from Disneyland sits a nondescript warehouse. Inside this nameless, faceless building, an era is ending.The building is a Netflix DVD distribution plant. Once a bustling ecosystem that processed 1.2 million DVDs a week, employed 50 people and generated millions of dollars in revenue, it now has just six employees left to sift through the metallic discs. And even that will cease on Friday, when Netflix officially shuts the door on its origin story and stops mailing out its trademark red envelopes.“It’s sad when you get to the end, because it’s been a big part of all of our lives for so long,” Hank Breeggemann, the general manager of Netflix’s DVD division, said in an interview. “But everything runs its cycle. We had a great 25-year run and changed the en...

When I recently turned on Google’s new Pixel Fold smartphone and unfolded it as if it were a book, it transformed into a miniature tablet, similar to an iPad Mini or an Amazon Fire. Then something unexpected happened.For the next few hours, I found it difficult to put the device down, as if I were sucked into a great novel. The phone’s performance was smooth and fast, and the bigger screen made reading emails, watching videos and reading comic books more delightful than on a normal phone screen.I was surprised because I have been wary of foldable phones. The earliest models released by Samsung, Motorola and Huawei about four years ago had glaring flaws. They were thick and heavy, had durability issues and lacked software to take advantage of their novel hardware. But I immediately knew the...

This coming week, as the network fall television season gets underway, ABC will begin airing “The Golden Bachelor,” a spinoff of “The Bachelor” that centers on an offbeat twist: The main contestant is a 72-year-old man, and the 22 women vying for his affection range in age from 60 to 75.On Sunday nights, the network will carve out three hours for “The Wonderful World of Disney,” a television tradition that dates back to the 1950s. On Tuesdays, there’s “Dancing With the Stars.” On Wednesdays, there will be special prime-time episodes of decades-old standbys like “Wheel of Fortune" and “Jeopardy!”It’s no secret that network television ratings have plummeted in recent years as viewers have fled prime-time lineups in favor of stream-at-your-leisure outlets like Netflix and Hulu.But there’s one...

Summer is in full swing now, but along with vacation trips, camp and lazy days, extreme weather has arrived for many parts of the country. If you live in an area that’s prone to such conditions, it helps to be ready. Here are some tips to help you use your tech through major meteorological moments — sometimes, even when power and cell service are shaky.Stay UpdatedGetting accurate local weather information helps you stay ahead of nearby threats like hurricanes, flash floods, tornadoes or wildfires. Setting up alerts on Apple’s default Weather app, the Google app or a specialized weather app keeps you notified. Bookmarking government web pages in your browser — like those for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Hurricane Center or the U.S. Air Quality Index — i...