Author: NY TIMES

The guys in Bad Dog, a folkie duo from Washington, D.C., weren’t hoping to get rich off the album they recorded this summer. David Post and Craig Blackwell have been devoted amateurs for decades, and they’re long past dreams of tours and limos. Mostly they wanted a CD to give away at a house party in December.But not long after “The Jukebox of Regret” was finished in July and posted on SoundCloud, nearly every song on it somehow turned up on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and at least a dozen other streaming platforms. This might have counted as a pleasant…

Sal Khan, the chief executive of Khan Academy, gave a rousing TED Talk last spring in which he predicted that A.I. chatbots would soon revolutionize education.“We’re at the cusp of using A.I. for probably the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen,” Mr. Khan, whose nonprofit education group has provided online lessons for millions of students, declared. “And the way we’re going to do that is by giving every student on the planet an artificially intelligent but amazing personal tutor.”Videos of Mr. Khan’s tutoring bot talk amassed millions of views. Soon, prominent tech executives, including Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief…

The U.S. defense secretary is facing scrutiny after failing to immediately disclose to the White House his recent prostate-cancer diagnosis and a related hospitalization, a breach of protocol for which he has apologized.But while the secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, as a cabinet member, faces certain expectations about what he must disclose publicly regarding his health, and when he should do it, mental health experts who work with patients who have serious illnesses, such as cancer, say that reticence is common — even in the era of oversharing online.“I see it with my patients all the time,” said Dr. Andrew…

Dear listeners,The music video for “Yes, And?,” Ariana Grande’s first new solo single in more than three years, opens with a tight shot of a ruby-red business card bearing the phrase “ag7.” In modern pop parlance, this is a way of hinting that her seventh album is coming soon.I’ve long felt that the seventh album — if an artist is lucky enough to get that far — is a pivotal moment. Sometimes it’s the perfect time for a sonic and aesthetic reinvention, à la U2’s glammy 1991 album (and my favorite in its discography) “Achtung Baby.” It can also be…

The Houthis have long built their legitimacy on hostility toward the United States and Israel, and support for the Palestinian cause. Part of the group’s slogan is “Death to America, death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews.” Before the strikes on Friday, the group’s leaders had welcomed the prospect of war with the United States.Strikes are therefore “extremely unlikely” to stop the group’s Red Sea attacks, Ms. Porter said.“The Houthis are very comfortable operating in a wartime environment,” she said. “They are more successful as a military group than they are as a government.”The strikes could also help the…

The heirs of a woman who was forced to surrender a painting to the Nazis were dealt a blow on Tuesday in a decades-long legal feud between them and the Spanish museum that now owns the work, when a Federal Court in California ruled that the museum should retain ownership.The ruling, in one of the longest-running Nazi restitution cases, involves a Camille Pissarro painting titled “Rue Saint-Honoré Après-midi, Effet de Pluie” (“Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon, Effect of Rain”) that is estimated to be worth millions of dollars. The painting was surrendered by a Jewish woman, Lilly Cassirer, to get…

And she’s not exactly following the rules. Source link

Note that the average fund substantially lagged the broad stock market averages. Most funds are actively managed, by professionals trying to beat the market. By contrast, broad low-cost index funds, which merely seek to mirror the markets, generally did their job well.For example, the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund returned 12.3 percent for the quarter and 26.1 percent for the year, beating the average fund as well as the S&P 500. That, in a nutshell, is why I believe it’s better for most people to use low-cost index funds.Most global markets also did well in 2023 — and, as…

Many modern cars are internet-connected and have apps that allow an owner to see a car’s location, turn it on remotely, honk its horn and even adjust the temperature. These apps for car control and tracking are designed for convenience, but a New York Times article last month detailed how they have been weaponized in abusive relationships, allowing for unwanted stalking and harassment.Domestic violence survivors and experts said car companies had not been responsive when asked to cut off abusers’ digital access to cars. Customer service agents at the car companies were unable to help when the abuser was the…

The Quaker Oats Company added more products this week to a recall that started last month over possible salmonella contamination, raising the total number of products to more than 60.Quaker Oats, which is owned by PepsiCo, initially recalled 43 products, including granola bars, cereals and various snack foods. On Thursday, the company added 24 products to the list.The newly recalled items include Quaker Chewy Granola Bars, Gatorade protein bars, Cap’n Crunch bars, Quaker Simply Granola Cereals, Gamesa Marias Cereal and other cereals.“To date, Quaker has received no confirmed reports of illness related to the products covered by this recall,” the…