Science and Technology

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday outlawed unwanted robocalls generated by artificial intelligence, amid growing concerns over election disinformation and consumer fraud facilitated by the technology.The unanimous decision by the F.C.C. cited a three-decade-old law aimed at curbing junk phone calls, clarifying that A.I.-generated spam calls are also illegal. By doing so, the agency said it expanded the ability of states to prosecute creators of unsolicited spam robocalls.“It seems like something from the far-off future, but it is already here,” the F.C.C. chairwoman, Jessica Rosenworcel, said in a statement. “Bad actors are using A.I.-generated voices in unsolicited robocalls to extort…

Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery announced on Tuesday that they would join together and sell access to all of the sports they televise through a new streaming service. It will be available this fall, but many other details, like price or who would run the service, are not yet known.The subtext of the agreement — and of most decisions media companies make — is that the cable bundle is collapsing. A decade ago, about 100 million homes in the United States subscribed to a package of cable or satellite television channels. Today, that number is around 70 million, and…

Snap, the parent of messaging app Snapchat, on Monday said it would lay off more than 500 employees, joining other tech companies in a wave of new cost-cutting measures.The layoffs amount to 10 percent of its global work force; the majority will occur in the first quarter of 2024. “We have made the difficult decision to restructure our team,” the company said in a securities filing, adding that it would take pretax charges of $55 million to $75 million, primarily for severance and related costs.Amazon, Google and Microsoft have announced layoffs this year, following tens of thousands across the sector…

With its streamlined curves and glow-in-the-dark sound system, the silver Lamborghini Huracán Performante was the stuff of teenage fantasy: $350,000 of aerodynamic metals and lightweight upholstery, packed into a taut and powerful body. Ben Armstrong loved it dearly.When he started shopping for a Lamborghini, Mr. Armstrong, a cryptocurrency evangelist with more than one million YouTube subscribers, worried that he’d have to spend months searching. “I think I have to go to Italy to get the Lambo I want,” he texted a business partner. “I don’t want to compromise.” But fate smiled on him. In the fall of 2021, a car…

Last May, Fabuwood, a kitchen cabinet manufacturer in Newark, instituted a new company policy: No phones allowed during meetings.To enforce it, the company installed “device shelves” outside each of its six glass-walled conference rooms. On a recent Wednesday morning, there were animated meetings in three of the conference rooms, and the shelves outside were full of smartphones, tablets and ’90s-style flip phones. The 1,200-person company pays the cost of a flip phone for employees who give up their smartphone, and 80 people have acted on the offer.Surprisingly, employees say they like it. Rena Stoff, a project manager, said that while…

A lawmaker in the Australian state of Victoria sat down to watch the nightly news on Monday, expecting to see herself featured as a prominent opponent of duck hunting.But the member of Parliament, Georgie Purcell, noticed that in one photo used on 9News, the tattoos on her midriff were missing.“I saw the image come up on the screen and I thought, ‘That’s really odd,’ because my stomach is heavily tattooed,” Ms. Purcell said on Wednesday.She compared the image with the original photo, which was taken last year by a local newspaper and realized that not only had her tattoos been…