False information spurred these migrants to come to the US. Now they receive even more misleading information about navigating their new home This article is co-published with Documented, a multilingual news site about immigrants in New York, and the Markup, a non-profit, investigative newsroom that challenges technology to serve the public good. One video told viewers that new migrants easily get work permits and good jobs in the United States. Another warned viewers, once they are in the US, not to change their postal address or transfer their asylum case if they move to another state. Another instructed them to reapply for asylum if they do not receive an acknowledgment letter within a few months. Continue reading...

Curtis Priem has a vision for a quantum computing future and believes the area along the Hudson valley is fertile for the next tech boom The “quantum chandelier” that sits within a glass box in the chapel at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s campus in Troy, New York, is the symbolic centerpiece of an ambitious effort to turn upstate New York into an advanced technology center – what Silicon Valley is to social media or Cambridge, Massachusetts, is to biotech. The silver sci-fi object, named for interior gold lattices that suspend, cool and isolate its processor, is the heart of a “quantum computing system” that could herald a new age of computing. It’s the centerpiece of the dream Curtis Priem, a co-founder of Nvidia, the $2.8tn artificial intelligence hardware and software company, has of turning Rensselaer, or RPI, into an advanced computing hub and refashioning this area of upstate New York into a new Silicon Valley. Continue reading...

White House calls decision – that could have major implications for web use – ‘victory for the American people’ Google violated antitrust laws as it built an internet search empire, a federal judge ruled on Monday in a decision that could have major implications for the way people interact with the internet. Judge Amit Mehta found that Google violated section 2 of the Sherman Act, a US antitrust law. His decision states that Google maintained a monopoly over search services and advertising. Continue reading...

I’m no expert, but knowing my neighborhood’s trees and flowers by name makes me feel grounded Eighteen months ago, I adopted a dog. Now I’m out on the streets of Brooklyn with my hound mix for at least an hour a day, strolling and wrestling discarded chicken bones from her jaws. You notice a lot when you visit the same few blocks over and over: which avenues are the quietest, or when the rusty scaffolding around a nearby building vanishes overnight. Most of all, I love to admire neighborhood greenery. I’m an adoring fan of the tulips, peonies and dogwood flowers that burst forth in the spring. Yet I quickly realized how limited my plant vocabulary was. Yes, I knew that was a silver birch, because of its papery bark. But what was that taller tree, glossy and looming, or that pale shrub with tiny, ornate leaves? I grew up in Australia, where the vegetation is pretty different from that of the US north-east, and I really hadn’t made an effort to learn about the locals. It felt disrespectful, to say the least. Continue reading...