#MeToo founder Tarana Burke has heard it before. Every time there’s a legal setback, the movement is declared dead in the water. A legal success, and presto, it’s alive again. So Burke, who nearly two decades ago coined the phrase “Me too” from her work with sexual assault survivors, found herself again declaring after New York’s highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction: The #MeToo reckoning is greater than any court case. It’s still there, and it’s working. The most obvious proof, Burke said: “Ten years ago we could not get a man like Harvey Weinstein int ..read more

In the span of a week, Google has reportedly fired about 50 employees over protests of its cloud computing contract with the Israeli government. The move came after dozens of employees participated in demonstrations and sit-ins at Google’s offices in New York and California last Wednesday, during a day of action organized by the group No Tech for Apartheid, which has spoken out on this issue since 2021. A handful of protesters were arrested on trespassing charges in both New York and Sunnyvale, California, where they spent over nine hours in the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian. The cr ..read more

A high school athletic director in Maryland has been accused of using artificial intelligence to impersonate a principal on an audio recording that included racist and antisemitic comments, authorities said Thursday. Authorities said the case appears to be among the first of its kind in the country and called for new laws to guard against the technology. Experts also warned that artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly powerful, while the ability to detect it may lag behind without more resources. Dazhon Darien faked the voice of Pikesville High School’s principal in response to conv ..read more

Until late yesterday, major tech stocks were having a pretty rough few weeks. But thanks to premarket surges this morning from Google, Microsoft, and Snap, the final week of April could be a very good one for select tech giants. Here’s what to know: Netflix changes the rules The tech earnings period kickstarted last week in earnest with streamer Netflix reporting its Q1 2024 results, which saw the company beat on both revenue and profit. But shares fell after the company announced it would stop disclosing the number of its subscribers next year. Subscriber numbers have traditionally been a key ..read more

Rooting for Donald Trump to fail has rarely been this profitable. Just ask a hardy band of mostly amateur Wall Street investors who have collectively made tens of millions of dollars over the past month by betting that the stock price of his social media business—Truth Social—will keep dropping despite massive buying by Trump loyalists and wild swings that often mirror the candidate’s latest polls, court trials and outbursts on Trump Social itself. Several of these investors interviewed by The Associated Press say their bearish gambles using “put” options and other trading tools are driven l ..read more

Getting a salaried job is great until you realize your bosses may now believe they own your soul and don’t need to pay overtime for it. You are always on the clock in their minds. Thankfully, a final rule announced on Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is working to change that for millions of salaried workers. The rule amends the Fair Labor Standards Act section 13(a)(1). Under these new guidelines, lower-paid salary workers who work more than 40 hours a week will receive overtime protections. Say hello to time and a half and possibly even double time. Who qualifies for overtime un ..read more

Meta has flooded its social media platforms with artificial intelligence. Soon enough, Meta AI will be everywhere: In your Facebook news feed, Instagram search bar, and even your conversations with friends on Messenger. The company’s Llama 3 large language model is also perhaps the most powerful open-source model on the market (though its openness is an ongoing debate). Meta is flexing its muscle and betting that AI ubiquity will actually improve user experience.  So far, at least, that looks like a misguided bet. The Meta AI experience has so far been a spam-filled one. Nowhere is that c ..read more

Our homes, schools, and offices are made up of concrete, timber, metals, and textiles. But as we spend our days in these spaces, we rarely think about where the materials came from or the people who helped create them. With Every Fiber, a new exhibition that launches May 4, encourages people to consider the materials that make up the built world around us. And there’s plenty we should be caring about. The tragic reality is that there is a lot of forced and child labor that goes into making building materials. But the exhibition at Grace Farms in New Canaan, Connecticut, makes the case that whe ..read more

Nearly a year after their last sold-out collaboration, Tyler “the Creator” Okonma and Converse are back with a new take on a classic sneaker. Okonma’s apparel brand, Golf le Fleur, is bringing his eclectic, vibrant style to four dialed-up versions of Chuck 70 low-tops.  The sneakers are available in new colorways of le Fleur’s signature digi camo print, a leopard-esque pattern rendered in chunky pixels. Fans can choose from neon pink and red, multicolored rainbow, white and blue, or subtle monochromatic green. The Fleur Camo Chucks dropped online this week for $120 a pair, and based on th ..read more

Greenhouse gas emissions generated by our global food system surpass the sum of emissions from all the world’s cars, trains, and airplanes combined. The complexities within globalized food supply chains, which foods we produce, how, when, and where we produce them, and how they reach the world’s billions of eaters are nuanced facets of our food system in dire need of decarbonization. Compounding the environmental shortcomings of our food system further, a staggering one-third of all food is wasted on a global scale. In the United States, the statistics are more severe; 40% of all food ultimate ..read more