Author: NY TIMES

Andrew McCaskill slid into Marcus Dwayne Johnson’s Instagram direct messages in September 2019 with a flirty note, telling him that he looked really cute in a suit he was modeling. The message he finally got back six weeks later wasn’t quite as playful.“I’m thinking he’s going to be like, ‘Hey, Big Papa,’” Mr. McCaskill said with a laugh.Instead, “Marcus was like, ‘Hi Drew, I see you’ve recently made a career transition, and I have a current career scenario I’m navigating,’” he said.Though the corporate speak they settled into just after wasn’t exactly a love language, Mr. McCaskill, then an independent…

Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, for breaching a contract by prioritizing profit and commercial interests in developing artificial intelligence over the public good.Mr. Musk, who helped create OpenAI with Mr. Altman and others in 2015, said the company’s multibillion-dollar partnership with Microsoft represented an abandonment of its founding pledge to carefully develop A.I. and make the technology publicly available.“OpenAI has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company, Microsoft,” said the lawsuit, which was filed Thursday in Superior Court in San Francisco.The lawsuit is the latest chapter…

This week sees the release of “Dune: Part Two,” the second installment in Denis Villeneuve’s eye-popping adaptation of the 1965 Frank Herbert novel. “Dune” was also adapted in 1984, by David Lynch, who hated his version (or the cut that made it to theaters, anyhow) so much that he disavowed it.Perhaps you’ve seen the Lynch version, which I find kind of charming in its flawed state. (Nobody should be that sweaty on the planet Arrakis.) But if you’re heading to “Dune: Part Two” this weekend, you owe it to yourself to be acquainted with another “Dune” adaptation that doesn’t technically…

The number of aid trucks entering Gaza dropped significantly in February, data shows, even as humanitarian leaders warned of famine and demanded that Israel and others increase aid to civilians trapped in the enclave. The deaths of dozens of people amid a rush for food aid on Thursday underlined the degree of desperation in the territory.​​An average of 96 trucks a day entered Gaza through Feb. 27, a 30 percent drop from the January average and the lowest monthly average since before a cease-fire in late November, according to data from UNRWA, the U.N. aid agency for Gaza.“It has been…

It took authorities more than 30 years to hunt down one of Germany’s most wanted fugitives. For Michael Colborne, an investigative journalist running old photographs through a facial recognition service, it took about 30 minutes.At the request of a German podcasting duo, he’d been asked to search for matches to the decades-old wanted photographs of Daniela Klette, a member of the leftist militant group Red Army Faction, Germany’s most infamous postwar terrorist group, originally known as the Baader-Meinhof gang.Instead, the facial recognition software he used lighted upon a woman called Claudia Ivone. In one image, she posed with her local…

Avery Woods has deleted a video that made her the subject of recent online discussion, but that doesn’t matter. The internet never forgets.Ms. Woods, an influencer and podcast host with more than two million followers on TikTok, posted the video earlier this month, in which she appeared in the eyes of some to prefer one of her children over the other.It shows her sitting in her car after receiving her son’s recent school pictures. “My boy moms feel me on this,” Ms. Woods says in the video, “but my son has my heart. My heart and my soul.”She adds that…

The NewsInflation rates across most economies in Europe continued their descent last month. Consumer prices in the 20 countries that use the euro as their currency rose at an annual rate of 2.6 percent in February, down from 2.8 percent in January, the statistical office of the European Commission reported on Friday.Why It Matters: Interest rates won’t go down until inflation does.The sooner inflation rates drop closer to the European Central Bank’s target of 2 percent, the sooner the bank may be inclined to lower interest rates, which now stand at 4 percent. Christine Lagarde, the bank’s president, has said…

Listen and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTubeGoogle removed the ability to generate images of people from its Gemini chatbot. We talk about why, and about the brewing culture war over artificial intelligence. Then, did Kara Swisher start “Hard Fork”? We clear up some podcast drama and ask about her new book, “Burn Book.” And finally, the legal expert Daphne Keller tells us how the U.S. Supreme Court might rule on the most important First Amendment cases of the internet era, and what Star Trek and soy boys have to do with it.Today’s guests:Kara Swisher, tech journalist…

On “The Daily Show” this week, the host Jon Stewart broke down as he announced the death of his beloved, three-legged brindle pit bull, Dipper — a raw, touching segment that exemplified the deep grief many pet owners feel.When an animal dies, owners lose companionship, affection and “just plain unconditional love — and we don’t find that in many places in our lives,” said Sherry Cormier, a psychologist and author of “Sweet Sorrow: Finding Enduring Wholeness After Loss and Grief.”Our society tends to be “grief-phobic,” Dr. Cormier said, and there is a sense that the feelings prompted by the loss…

Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of March’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘Road House’Starts streaming: March 21The original 1989 “Road House” is one of those movies that became a pop culture classic through brute force. The story of a nightclub bouncer fighting small-town corruption is by no means high art; but it’s a solidly crafted, entertaining pulp melodrama, which won fans thanks…