New York governor Kathy Hochul says she will propose a new law allowing limited autonomous vehicle pilots in smaller cities. Full-blown services could be next. As self-driving car services from Alphabet's Waymo, Amazon's Zoox, and Tesla have slowly, quietly expanded across the US, one big, important state has mostly stayed mum: New York . The union's fourth most populous state has some of the tightest laws governing autonomous vehicles, requiring companies approved to test in the state to only do so with a driver behind the wheel. There's no current path for companies to operate the sort of commercial robotaxi services like the sort seen in San Francisco or Las Vegas.

Even the Empire State Building would eventually crumble. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. New York City is one of the noisiest cities in the world. With a population of eight and a half million people, the city is a nonstop symphony of car honks, yelling, and ambulance sirens. Now, imagine if all that noise and all those people suddenly disappeared overnight. Just how quickly would nature move into abandoned apartments? Well in a new episode of's podcast, we explore just that. So, yes, there's a reason cats love boxes and no, hot workout classes usually aren't better . If you have a question for us, send us a note .

A blackout in San Francisco revealed a new way for robotaxis to go wrong. Waymo's self-driving robotaxis can successfully nail a tricky left turn, weave through lanes to drop you off at the airport, and safely pass a U-Haul that's idling in the middle of the street. But during a blackout, they apparently turn into four-wheel bricks. On Saturday, when a major power outage in San Francisco knocked out traffic signals, many Waymo vehicles didn't pull over to the side of the road or seek out a parking space. Nor did they treat intersections as four-way stops, as a human would have. Instead, they just sat there with their hazard lights on, like a student driver freezing up before their big parallel-parking test.

The AI boom has caused as much carbon dioxide to be released into the atmosphere in 2025 as emitted by the whole of New York City, it has been claimed. The global environmental impact of the rapidly spreading technology has been estimated in research published on Wednesday, which also found that AI-related water use now exceeds the entirety of global bottled-water demand. The figures have been compiled by the Dutch academic Alex de Vries-Gao, the founder of Digiconomist, a company that researches the unintended consequences of digital trends. He claimed they were the first attempt to measure the specific effect of artificial intelligence rather than datacentres in general as the use of chatbots such as OpenAIâ s ChatGPT and Googleâ s Gemini soared in 2025. The figures show the estimated greenhouse gas emissions from AI use are also now equivalent to more than 8% of global aviation emissions.

'They mirror our own impermanence: always in motion, always fading. Magical yet melancholy, the trees offer both a celebration and a gentle farewell, rolled into one.' Evergreen trees are full of symbolism. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Used with permission of Algonquin Books, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. Imagine for a moment if visitors from another planet observed humans buying, selling, and decorating billions of trees every year.

Azalia King was the last holdout preventing the construction of a Micron megafab. Onondaga County authorities threatened to use eminent domain to take her home away by force. Azalia King moved into an upstate New York home surrounded by sprawling cattle pastures around 1965, about the time that mass production of the world's first microchips began. Now, 60 years later, the 91-year-old is on the verge of losing her home to make way for what could become the largest chipmaking complex in the US. Local authorities threatened to exercise their power of eminent domain, or taking land for public benefit, to forcibly uproot King and proceed with construction on a $100 billion campus where US tech giant Micron plans to make memory chips for use in a variety of electronics.

Plus: The SEC lets SolarWinds off the hook, Microsoft stops a historic DDoS attack, and FBI documents reveal the agency spied on an immigration activist Signal group in New York City. Eight years after a researcher warned WhatsApp that it was possible to extract user phone numbers en masse from the Meta-owned app, another team of researchers found that they could still do exactly that using a similar technique. The issue stems from WhatsApp's discovery feature, which allows someone to enter a person's phone number to see if they're on the app. By doing this billions of times--which WhatsApp did not prevent--researchers from the University of Vienna uncovered what they're calling "the most extensive exposure of phone numbers" ever . Vaping is a major problem in US high schools.

Mamdani ran against New York City's political establishment. Do his early appointments suggest he's preparing to work within it? The staff writer Eric Lach joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss Zohran Mamdani's victory in the New York City mayoral race, and what his time in office might look like. They talk about some of his early appointments to his administration and how his ambitious agenda may be at odds with other wings of the Democratic Party. They also look at how members of both parties are interpreting Mamdani's win, and how the new mayor might respond to President Donald Trump's threats to withhold federal funds from the city.

Zohran Mamdani ran an online campaign based on real people and a real message. There are many fair questions following Zohran Mamdani's decisive victory. Will his campaign be a template for others? Will he be able or allowed to follow through on his campaign promises? Will the Democratic establishment accept that its future could look something like this proud 34-year-old democratic socialist?