Author: KnowledgeHippo

This month, Airbnb announced that, starting April 30, the company will ban the use of surveillance cameras in its rentals. The news was welcomed by those concerned about privacy.“Cameras are both creepy and threatening,” said Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, which has campaigned to ban cameras from Airbnbs by 2022. “People are afraid to take pictures of their privates. moments without consent and the ability for owners to monitor their activities within a rental.”For many travelers, Airbnb’s new policy has raised some fundamental questions: What were the cameras doing there in the first…

Catherine, Princess of Wales, has been diagnosed with cancer and has started chemotherapy, she announced in a video on Friday, in which she described the last two months as “incredibly hard for our whole family”.Her diagnosis follows that of King Charles III, who announced his own cancer diagnosis and treatment in early February. It comes after a period of intense uncertainty over the health of Catherine, who underwent abdominal surgery in January and has largely disappeared from public view as she tries to recover.Like the king, Catherine, 42, did not specify what kind of cancer she has, but asked the…

Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll see why this season was a first for women’s college basketball in New York. We’ll also learn how LaGuardia Community College will spend a $116.2 million grant from a foundation run by Alexandra Cohen, whose billionaire husband bought the New York Mets in 2020.This was the first season that the Columbia University women’s basketball team reached the NCAA Division I tournament.The New York University women’s team, undefeated in 31 games, also reached the postseason, making it the first year the two colleges have done so at the same time — Columbia in Division I, at-large…

There seems to be little to worry investors right now.The S&P 500 is on track for its best week of the year so far, up more than 2%. That added to gains that have lifted the benchmark more than 10 percent this year, marking a string of record highs.Other major indexes, such as the Dow Jones industrial average and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, recently traded at or near record highs, as did individual companies as diverse as Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase and Walmart. Shares of social networking company Reddit jumped nearly 50% in their first day of trading on Thursday, a…

General Motors announced Friday that it has stopped sharing details about how people drive its cars with two data brokers who have created risk profiles for the insurance industry.The decision followed a New York Times report this month that GM had, for years, shared data about drivers’ mileage, braking, acceleration and speed with the insurance industry. Drivers signed up — some unknowingly, they said — to OnStar Smart Driver, a feature in GM’s internet-connected cars that collected data about how the car was driven and promised feedback and digital signals for good driving.Some drivers said their insurance rates had increased…

Automaker Stellantis is recalling hundreds of thousands of vehicles — specifically Dodge Chargers and Chrysler 300s designed from 2018 to 2021 — citing side airbags that could rupture and deploy, according to documents released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.The documents say the airbags on both sides may have defectively inflated, putting passengers at risk of projectiles flying into the vehicles. No injuries have been reported.Chrysler and Dodge are two of the many car brands in the Stellantis portfolio. The total number of Dodge Chargers being recalled is 217,802, while for Chrysler, that number is 67,180. Stellantis estimated in…

Rat droppings from New York. Heavy from dog parks in Wisconsin. Human waste from a Missouri hospital. These are some of the materials that prepare us for the next chapter of the coronavirus story.More than four years after the pandemic, the virus has taken its toll on most people’s bodies and minds. But a new variant that can better evade our immune defenses may yet emerge, derailing a hard-won return to normalcy.Scientists across the country are watching for early signs.”We’re no longer in the acute phase of a pandemic, and I think it’s understandable and probably a good thing” that…

The letter from Australia is a weekly newsletter from our office in Australia. Sign up to receive it by email. This week’s issue is written by Natasha Frost, a reporter based in Melbourne.The other week, some 32 years into my career as an experienced flyer, I experienced air travel as if for the first time – the flight of angels, of billionaires, of dreams. (He was still in the coaching class.)On a recent reporting trip to New Zealand, I arranged to spend the weekend visiting an old friend who now lives near Havelock, a town of about 600 at the…

The US accused Apple of having a monopolyThe Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Apple, alleging that the company had violated antitrust laws by using practices intended to keep customers connected to iPhones.The lawsuit accused Apple of preventing other companies from offering apps that compete with products like its digital wallet. making it easier for iPhones to connect to other Apple products than to those of competitors; and it undermines messaging across smartphone operating systems. (Read the filing here.)Apple, which is worth nearly $2.75 trillion, said these practices made its iPhones more secure than other smartphones. But app developers and…

When it comes to the artificial intelligence that powers chatbots like ChatGPT, China lags behind the United States. But when it comes to producing the scientists behind a new generation of humanoid technologies, China is leading the way.New research shows that China has by some measures eclipsed the United States as the biggest producer of artificial intelligence talent, with the country producing nearly half of the world’s top AI researchers. By contrast, about 18 percent come from U.S. undergraduate institutions, according to the study, by MacroPolo, a think tank run by the Paulson Institute that promotes constructive ties between the…