He’s Lost His Marriage, His Followers and His Lamborghini

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…

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Amazon Enters Chatbot Fray With Shopping Tool

Amazon entered the consumer chatbot fray on Thursday, announcing a new artificial intelligence personal shopping assistant as the company races to catch up with other tech giants. Customers can ask the tool, Rufus, product questions directly in the search bar of the company’s mobile app, Amazon said in a blog post. The A.I. will then…

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A Shape-Shifting Plastic With a Flexible Future

With restrictions on space and weight, what would you bring if you were going to Mars? An ideal option might be a single material that can shift shapes into any object you imagine. In the morning, you could mold that material into utensils for eating. When breakfast is done, you could transform your fork and…

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How to Quit Your Smartphone

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…

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Developers pan Apple’s new plan for app store in Europe

After 15 years of dictating how apps are distributed on iPhones, Apple has been forced to take marching orders from European regulators. A new law to bolster tech competition has demanded that Apple open its devices to competing app stores and payment alternatives. But app makers say Apple’s response to the law, which is intended…

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A.I. Fuels a New Era of Product Placement

Product placement, one of the oldest tricks in advertisers’ toolbox, is getting an A.I. makeover. New technology has made it easier to insert digital, realistic-looking versions of soda cans and shampoo onto the tables and walls of videos on YouTube and TikTok. And a growing group of creators and advertisers is grabbing at the chance…

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