THE ATLANTIC – Technology | Internet & Technology

There’s a scene near the start of Avatar: Fire and Ash that sums up the premise of the franchise, and its approach to making movies: Jake Sully, a colonialist Marine reborn as a blue-skinned freedom fighter, is trying to persuade his wife (also an alien) to accept the human weapons he’s found at the bottom of the ocean. As a proud Pandoran, she won’t touch the cursed technologies of the “sky people.” So instead he starts to strap grenades onto her wooden arrows, Rambo-style. This can be their compromise, he says: the traditions that she loves, but optimized for kicking ass.Over the past decade and a half, James Cameron’s three Avatar movies, all shot in three dimensions (and the latter two at a high frame rate), have meted out an argument for going big in film—for strapping on the most explosive new technologies in cinema and using them to blow… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

Brendan Foody is 22 years old and runs a company worth billions. This August, I met the young CEO in a glass conference room overlooking the San Francisco Bay. While his peers are searching for their first jobs, Foody is pursuing a “master plan,” as he calls it, to upend the global labor market. His start-up, Mercor, offers an AI-powered hiring platform: Bots weed through résumés, and even conduct interviews. In the next five years, Foody told me, AI could automate 50 percent of the tasks that people do today. “That will be extremely exciting to see play out,” he said. Humanity will become much more productive, he thinks, allowing us to cure cancer and land on Mars.Although Foody does not have much by way of conventional work experience, he is already a seasoned entrepreneur. By his account, in middle school, he ran a business reselling Safeway donuts to his… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

Late on the Friday afternoon before Christmas, and just hours before a deadline mandated by Congress, the Department of Justice released part of the trove of documents known, colloquially, as the Epstein files. The contents, most of which I’ve reviewed, are, at different times, unnerving, enraging, banal, even absurd (in the case of a photo of Jeffrey Epstein posing with a giant Winnie the Pooh mascot). More than anything, they are ████, which is to say, unknown, as many of the files are heavily redacted.The majority of this tranche of files consists of thousands of documents containing more than 3,000 of photos of Epstein’s homes, in New York City and in the U.S. Virgin Islands, filled with art and photographs of nude and half-clothed women. One photograph in the files appears to be a framed mirror selfie of Epstein and Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist. There are photos… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

This December, Americans are coming together with their loved ones to celebrate what really matters: Toyotathon. During the holidays, when car companies offer sales to clear out their leftover inventory, “well-qualified buyers” can find some of the year’s best deals. You can have yourself a Happy Honda Days, make the most of the Chevy Red Tag Savings Event, or splurge during Lexus December to Remember.But things are a bit different this year. Cars are getting more expensive, with no relief in sight. If you can find a 2026 Toyota RAV4, the latest iteration of one of America’s best-selling cars, be prepared to shell out at least $31,900—a retail price that is nearly $6,000 higher than what it was five years ago. A 2026 Chevrolet Suburban will put you out at least $63,400, which is about $10,000 more than it was five years ago as well. It may sound like cars… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

To celebrate the start of a nationwide ban on social media for kids under the age of 16, the Australian government lit the Sydney Harbour Bridge with the slogan Let Them Be Kids.As of December 10, younger teenagers in Australia can no longer make accounts on popular social-media sites, including Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, and Twitch. The minister for communications’ rule for the ban defines a social-media site as one that primarily exists to encourage interaction among users and allow them to post their own content. (By this definition, so far, Pinterest, the super-popular chat site Discord, and the online game Roblox, though they have social features, are not included.) Social-media companies are required to make “reasonable” efforts to keep people under 16 off of their apps, and they face hefty financial penalties for noncompliance.The government’s argument for the ban has been clear: Getting kids off of social media will… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.