Technology

Efforts to fight global warming could suffer a setback next year when new rules reduce the number of electric cars that qualify for a federal tax credit.The credits, up to $7,500 a vehicle, have helped make electric cars more affordable, bringing the cost of some models below $30,000. Next year, for the first time, dealers will be able to give buyers the credit when they purchase a car, rather than telling them to claim it on their tax returns.But qualifying for the subsidy will become more difficult on Jan. 1 because of Biden administration rules intended to encourage automakers to manufacture vehicles and parts in North America, while bypassing China. Most automakers are still years away from breaking their dependence on China for batteries and essential materials like refined lithium.Th...

The maker of the blockbuster video game The Last of Us, which was adapted into the hit HBO series by the same name earlier this year, announced that it would cancel development of its long-anticipated online multiplayer version of the game.“We realize many of you have been anticipating news around the project that we’ve been calling The Last of Us Online,” the developer, Naughty Dog, said in the announcement Thursday. “There’s no easy way to say this: We’ve made the incredibly difficult decision to stop development on that game.”The studio said the decision to drop the game had come after it became clear that it would have needed to commit resources “for years to come,” at the expense of future single-player games.Naughty Dog said it was faced with two options: to “become a solely live ser...

Crisis as OpportunityIn Amsterdam, Mr. Brown described Praxis as his response to being trapped inside his apartment during Covid, mixed with his longstanding interest in colonial America. “Ready to join America in 1776?” reads a company pitch deck.In 2022, Mr. Brown had been more specific about his motivation to build a city from scratch, telling a speechwriter that he got the idea for Praxis after witnessing looters break shop windows in SoHo during the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd.(Mr. Brown gave detailed biographical information to the speechwriter, Webster Stone, during hours of recorded meetings in 2022, of which The New York Times has reviewed a transcript. In an email response to a detailed list of questions, Mr. Brown disputed several of his own statements to t...

Dr. Stephenie Lucas Oney is 75, but she still turns to her father for advice. How did he deal with racism, she wonders. How did he succeed when the odds were stacked against him?The answers are rooted in William Lucas’s experience as a Black man from Harlem who made his living as a police officer, F.B.I. agent and judge. But Dr. Oney doesn’t receive the guidance in person. Her father has been dead for more than a year.Instead, she listens to the answers, delivered in her father’s voice, on her phone through HereAfter AI, an app powered by artificial intelligence that generates responses based on hours of interviews conducted with him before he died in May 2022.His voice gives her comfort, but she said she created the profile more for her four children and eight grandchildren.“I want the ch...