The filmmaker, who died in January, showed us what our world was becoming, and how we should respond. In the summer, the actress Natasha Lyonne relayed an anecdote about the late director David Lynch, in which he told her that A.I. in the creative arts would soon be as ubiquitous and indispensable as the pencil. Lyonne, who happens to be the co-founder of an A.I. studio, seemed to be implying that the revered filmmaker had offered his approval to the same nihilistic and destructive technology that recently enabled President Donald Trump to imagine himself as a king in a fighter jet dropping payloads of diarrhea on the people he's sworn to serve. In an interview with magazine in November, 2024, he said that, on the one hand, "the good side" of A.I. could be "important for moving forward in a beautiful way," and, on the other, "if money is the bottom line, there'd be a lot of sadness, and despair and horror." He added, "I'm hoping better times are coming." In January, amid the wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles, Lynch was evacuated from his home and died shortly thereafter, of complications from emphysema.

The last night of tech mogul Mike Lynch's life has become fodder for conspiracy theories. For the first time, the whole story can be told. In the predawn hours of August 19, 2024, bolts of lightning began to fork through the purple-black clouds above the Mediterranean. From the rail of a 184-foot vessel, a 22-year-old named Matthew Griffiths took out his phone to record a video. The British deckhand was just a week and a half into his first official yacht job, and he wasn't on just any boat. The yacht, the $40 million, was a star of the superyacht world, considered to be a feat of minimal design and precision engineering. As thunder rolled toward the anchored vessel, Griffiths set the video to AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" and posted it to Instagram. In the video, the's aluminum mast, one of the tallest in the world, is briefly visible against the roiling sky. Below deck, the yacht's owner, Michael Lynch, had every reason to be sleeping soundly. The boat trip had been organized as a celebration. Months earlier, Lynch had walked out of a San Francisco federal courthouse a free man, acquitted of all charges in one of the largest fraud cases in Silicon Valley history. Lynch had built his fortune on understanding probability, on turning the unlikely into the possible. He had named his yacht in honor of the statistical theorem that made him a billionaire, after the sale, in 2011, of his company Autonomy. The British tech giant sold software that could find meaningful signals amid the flood of unstructured data in emails, videos, and phone calls, but it would be better known as the company that allegedly defrauded, and nearly destroyed, Hewlett-Packard. The cabins aboard the contained the people who had stood by Lynch through his 13-year-long legal ordeal. Beside him in the master suite was his wife of 22 years, Angela Bacares, a former vice president in the investment division of Deutsche Bank who had caught his eye while working an Autonomy deal. Other cabins housed the Clifford Chance attorneys who had orchestrated Lynch's legal victory, as well as longtime colleagues, their partners, and a 1-year-old baby, all supported by 10 crew members. Also onboard was Lynch's younger daughter, Hannah, 18, who was about to begin her studies at Oxford.

Nic Talbott, a transgender U.S. Army reservist, spoke with Fox News about his lawsuit challenging a Trump executive order barring transgender military personnel. A federal judge in D.C. peppered Justice Department lawyers with hypothetical questions and video game references as she presided over the second day of oral arguments about the Trump administration's attempt to restrict or ban transgender U.S. service members in the military. U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes searched in vain for answers to key questions about the nature of a Jan. 27 executive order signed by President Donald Trump that requires the Defense Department to update its guidance regarding "trans-identifying medical standards for military service" and to "rescind guidance inconsistent with military readiness." Though Trump has instructed that "radical gender ideology" be banned from all military branches, the executive order did not explain how the Pentagon should do this – a lack of clarity that Judge Reyes, a Biden appointee, zeroed in on Wednesday. For a second day, Judge Reyes led the court through a dizzying-fast line of questions that whipsawed between real and hypothetical, fact and fiction, and was flecked with her own sarcastic quips and observations.

Given the deluge of bad news emanating from the games industry over the past 10 months, it was somewhat reassuring this weekend to sit in a crowd of 20,000 happy, passionate fans, watching the biggest event in the esports calendar: the League of Legends world championship finals. The event, at the O2 arena in London, was the culmination of a globetrotting five-week competition to discover the best team in the world. Never having attended before – mostly because the final is usually held in Asia, where the best players tend to come from – I wasn't really sure what to expect. Would I be able to follow what was happening? It turns out the answers to those questions were "sort of" and "hell, yes".

Artificial intelligence can help accurately map and track penguin colonies in Antarctica by analysing tourist photos. "Right now, everyone has a camera in their pocket, and so the sheer volume of data being collected around the world is incredible," says Heather Lynch at Stony Brook University in New York. Haoyu Wu at Stony Brook University and his colleagues, including Lynch, used an AI tool developed by Meta to highlight Adélie penguins in photographs taken by tourists or scientists on the ground. With guidance from a human expert, the AI tool was able to automatically identify and outline entire colonies in photos. This semi-automated method is much faster than doing everything manually because the AI tool takes just 5 to 10 seconds per image, compared with a person taking 1 to 2 minutes, says Wu. The team also created a 3D digital model of the Antarctic landscape using satellite imagery and terrain elevation data.

During a recent stay in London, my wife and I took an early evening stroll down Lamb's Conduit Street, in the West End district of Bloomsbury, a mere 15-minute walk from the din of Piccadilly Circus but a world away: peaceful, elegant, a medley of quaint shops and stately houses, tucked amid which was a restaurant called Noble Rot. The atmosphere was convivial, the food delicious, the wine exquisitely paired. On the bar counter were copies of a small but thick magazine, also called Noble Rot, adorned with a bright hipster-cartoon cover. Out of curiosity, I bought one--and, as sometimes happens in random moments, my take on a whole slice of life began to change. In this case, what changed was my attitude toward wine and its seriously playful possibilities.

In a statement confirming their parents' deaths, the Bloomer family described the couple as "incredible people and an inspiration to many". Mr Thomas was described by his friend, Gareth Williams, as being a "well-loved, kind human being with a calm spirit" A spokesperson for Clifford Chance, the law firm where Chris Morvillo was a partner, said the team was "in shock and deeply saddened". Mike Lynch had been a significant figure in the UK tech industry since helping to establish Cambridge Neurodynamics - a firm that specialised in using computer-based detection and recognition of fingerprints. Five years later, he co-founded the British tech firm Autonomy. In 2011, Lynch made his riches by selling his company to US computing giant Hewlett-Packard (HP) for 11bn ( 8.6bn).

OpenAI has struck a multi-year deal with Condé Nast to allow the Microsoft-backed startup to use content from media brands including The New Yorker, Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair and Bon Appétit. Under the agreement announced on Tuesday, OpenAI will have permission to display content from Condé Nast's stable of media properties in its artificial intelligence-powered products, including ChatGPT and its SearchGPT prototype. Sam Altman-led OpenAI and Condé Nast did not disclose the terms of the deal. "We're committed to working with Condé Nast and other news publishers to ensure that as AI plays a larger role in news discovery and delivery, it maintains accuracy, integrity, and respect for quality reporting," OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap said in a statement posted on the startup's website. In a memo to staff, Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch said it is important to embrace new technologies and protect intellectual property at a time when tech companies are eroding media companies' ability to monetize content.

Condé Nast, the media conglomerate that owns publications like The New Yorker, Vogue and Wired, has announced a multi-year partnership OpenAI to display content from Condé Nast titles in ChatGPT as well as SearchGPT, the company's prototype AI-powered search engine. The partnership comes amid growing concerns over the unauthorized use of publishers' content by AI companies. Last month, Condé Nast sent a cease-and-desist letter to AI search startup Perplexity, accusing it of plagiarism for using its content to generate answers. "Over the last decade, news and digital media have faced steep challenges as many technology companies eroded publishers' ability to monetize content, most recently with traditional search," Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch wrote to employees in a memo that was first reported by Semafor's Max Tani. "Our partnership with OpenAI begins to make up for some of that revenue, allowing us to continue to protect and invest in our journalism and creative endeavors."

Condé Nast and OpenAI have struck a multi-year deal that will allow the AI giant to use content from the media giant's roster of properties--which includes the New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Bon Appetit, and, yes, WIRED. The deal will allow OpenAI to surface stories from these outlets in both ChatGPT and the new SearchGPT prototype. "It's crucial that we meet audiences where they are and embrace new technologies while also ensuring proper attribution and compensation for use of our intellectual property," Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch wrote in a company-wide email. Lynch pointed to ongoing turmoil within the publishing industry while discussing the deal, noting that technology companies have made it harder for publishers to make money, most recently with changes to traditional search. "Our partnership with OpenAI begins to make up for some of that revenue, allowing us to continue to protect and invest in our journalism and creative endeavors," he wrote.