John Ternus is a different kind of tech CEO.

 

 

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Give Us the Aliens

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“Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist, expresses his desire for the release of U.S. government files on aliens and UFOs to include an actual alien. He highlights the anticlimactic nature of the files, given prior testimonies and declassified information. Tyson also explores the human tendency to imagine aliens as humanoid, despite the vast diversity of life on Earth, and suggests that aliens might perceive humans differently based on our cultural norms and behaviors.

​

May 6, 2026, 11:00 a.m. ET

Illustration by Sam Whitney/The New York Times

By Neil deGrasse Tyson

Dr. Tyson is an astrophysicist and the author of “Take Me to Your Leader: Perspectives on Your First Alien Encounter.”

Ever since childhood I’ve wanted to be abducted by aliens. Now, as a professional astrophysicist armed with the knowledge of the size, age and composition of the cosmos, I know that nothing prevents any of us from imagining a universe teeming with life.

So the impending release of U.S. government files on aliens and U.F.O.s is a good thing, even if it feels like a distraction from other important files we’ve all been waiting to be disclosed. I expect the alien files will be anticlimactic. After a parade of alien insiders and whistle-blowers testified under oath to Congress in 2023, 2024 and 2025, what’s left to learn?

Personally, I’d be delighted if the files were accompanied by an actual alien. Alive or dead or undead. Preferably alive. Is that too much to ask for?

The whistle-blowers have already told us about the crashed flying saucers, extraterrestrial bodies and alien technology in our possession — hidden in undisclosed places. Not only that, but secret files have been declassified before. A 2017 headline in this newspaper was unambiguous: “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program.” And who could forget the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, which studied more than 12,000 U.F.O. sightings from 1952 until the project was terminated in 1969, with the goal of assessing threats to national security.

What’s clear, however, is that if an authentic alien walked out of the halls of Congress, nobody would ever again have to ask if you “believe” in aliens, just as nobody questions the existence of elephants. An alien of the alien files could become the literal elephant in the room.

Without good evidence of what actual aliens look like, we’re stuck imagining them. And imagine them we do. IMDb, an online database about entertainment, lists hundreds upon hundreds of films, TV shows, video games and documentaries about aliens — both friendly and evil. Mostly evil.

Disappointingly, in nearly all these portrayals, these aliens look a lot like us. They’re humanoid, with a head, two eyes, a nose, a mouth, a neck, shoulders, a torso, arms, fingers and legs. Remember that most life on Earth, with which we have DNA in common, looks nothing like us or any vertebrate animal. So we should expect aliens with no DNA in common — or no DNA at all — to look at least as different from humans as humans and other life-forms on Earth (like jellyfish or termites) look different from each other.

The only thing that would shock me about a living, declassified alien is if most Hollywood depictions ended up being right, violating everything we know about biodiversity on Earth and across the universe.

We care a lot about what aliens look like, but we don’t pay nearly enough attention to what we might look like to them. If an alien emissary landed in Los Angeles, for example, its first impression might be that Earth’s dominant life-form is the automobile. The city is heavily crisscrossed by major freeways, many of them 12 lanes wide. People line up in their cars on slow lines to obtain fast food handed through a window. They consume the food while still seated, never exiting their vehicles. Some of the larger life-forms on the freeway carry multiple automobiles within them. To the aliens, these car haulers are surely pregnant.

Assuming on arrival that the alien knew we were human, it would probably want to meet the person in charge. Who exactly would that be? The president? The prime minister? The pope? Or would it be a multibillionaire or captain of industry? Not knowing anything in advance about human civilization, but picking up clues from our cultural norms before arrival from leaked radio waves, an alien might instead expect to meet Ryan Gosling, Taylor Swift or Oprah Winfrey.

If we look more deeply into our own alien stories, there’s a persistent plotline that aliens are evil and want to kill us all. I suspect those fears are based not on what we believe about aliens but on what we know about humans.

In the history of our species, there’s no shortage of technologically advanced cultures that commit rampant violence against less-advanced ones. Within what we call civilization, humans oppress — or kill — one another over which creator of the universe they worship, or who they sleep with, or what side of an arbitrary line on Earth’s land masses they’re born, or how absorptive their skin is to sunlight, or what set of sounds comes out of their mouths.

Upon bearing witness to our irrational ways, any visiting alien that might have accompanied the release of the alien files surely long ago escaped back home to report, “There’s no sign of intelligent life on Earth!”

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist who is the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. He is the author of “Take Me To Your Leader: Perspectives on Your First Alien Encounter.”

 

Apple Reaches $250 Million Settlement Over Claims It Misled People on A.I.

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“Apple agreed to a $250 million settlement over claims it misled consumers about the capabilities of its artificial intelligence system, Apple Intelligence. The settlement resolves lawsuits alleging Apple oversold the features of the iPhone 16 and some iPhone 15 models. Apple denied wrongdoing but acknowledged the challenges in the global technology race to dominate A.I.

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Some iPhone owners will be eligible to receive $25 to $95 over claims that the tech giant oversold its artificial intelligence system, Apple Intelligence.

May 5, 2026

The Apple store at Grand Central Station in Manhattan.Lucia Vazquez for The New York Times

Apple agreed on Tuesday to pay $250 million to settle legal claims that it misled consumers about the abilities of its artificial intelligence system, Apple Intelligence, according to court filings.

The settlement resolves a handful of class action lawsuits filed against Apple last year, which claimed the company oversold what its product could do during its rollout in 2024. Those suits were consolidated last year by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where a judge still needs to approve the settlement.

Consumers who purchased an iPhone 16 and some models of the iPhone 15 between June 2024 and March 2025 will be eligible to collect up to $95 per device, according to the filings. As part of the settlement, Apple denied any wrongdoing.

The settlement underscores Apple’s challenges in a global technology race to dominate A.I. The iPhone maker has largely sat it out, in part because it hasn’t built its own A.I. models like Google’s Gemini. Tech companies like Microsoft and Nvidia soared in value as they bet heavily on the technology.

Since “the launch of Apple Intelligence, we have introduced dozens of features across many languages that are integrated across Apple’s platforms,” Marni Goldberg, an Apple spokeswoman, said in a statement. “We resolved this matter to stay focused on doing what we do best, delivering the most innovative products and services to our users.”

Apple first teased Apple Intelligence in June 2024 as an answer to products like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The company promised big improvements to its personal assistant, Siri, which has been part of its devices for more than a decade.

Apple also said it planned to introduce A.I. features to summarize notifications and offer help on improving writing in emails and text messages. In advertisements, the actor Bella Ramsey used Apple Intelligence to remember someone’s name and to catch up on an email.

But those features weren’t available on the iPhones that Apple shipped in September 2024. Instead, the company gradually rolled out the promised features and soon ran into problems. Notification summaries misrepresented news reports, for example, and Apple disabled that feature. In March 2025, Apple delayed the release of an upgraded Siri over quality problems.

Apple misrepresented the “capabilities of the series 16 iPhone and deceived millions of consumers into spending hundreds of dollars on a phone they did not need, based on features that do not exist,” according to one of the class action lawsuits.

In December, Apple announced the retirement of its head of A.I., John Giannandrea. In January, the company said it would use Google’s Gemini to power its A.I. products, including Siri.

David McCabe is a Times reporter who covers the complex legal and policy issues created by the digital economy and new technologies.

Kalley Huang is a Times reporter in San Francisco, covering Apple and the technology industry.“

 

DJI Osmo Pocket 4 Is a Great Vlogging Camera, but Not for the US

“From its new sensor, film profiles and built-in storage, the Osmo Pocket 4 has a lot to offer. Shame it won't be on sale in the US at launch.

Andrew Lanxon

April 16, 2026 5:01 a.m. PT

4 min read

Andrew Lanxon/CNET

I've filmed with my DJI Osmo Pocket 3 all over the world, including up in the frozen Arctic, so I was excited to test out the latest version, the Osmo Pocket 4. The camera doesn't make a lot of changes to what's already a superb vlogging setup, but there are some key upgrades, from better dynamic range to a suite of new filmic color profiles. 

I've been using the camera for a few days, and I'm pleased with what I've seen so far. But before I get to the details, I must address the elephant in the room: It won't be officially on sale in the US when it launches. It's a murky situation; while DJI's drones have been banned for sale in the US, the company's other products are subject to FCC regulations that, at the very least, delay their launch.

Watch this: DJI OSMO Pocket 4 Hands-On Q&A

36:40

DJI's Osmo Nano, for example, still isn't sold directly via DJI's online store, but you can pick it up in major retailers like Best Buy and B&H Photo. For the Pocket 4, DJI states it "will not be available in the US market as the application for authorization is still pending." The word "pending" suggests that the situation could change, but as of right now, it might be tough to get hold of for US shoppers. And, even if you do get your hands on one, service and support could prove tricky.

There are two new buttons beneath the display; a digital zoom button that crops in 2x and a custom function button you can program to enable a variety of settings.

Andrew Lanxon/CNET

In the UK, the Pocket 4 will start at £445, and a Creator Combo (including an attachable fill light, wireless mic and battery handle) will set you back £549. For reference, those UK prices translate to $604 and $745, respectively. 

DJI Osmo Pocket 4: What's new

Physically, you'd struggle to tell the difference between the new model and its predecessor. It's marginally bigger, but it maintains the 2-inch rotating LCD and the camera unit mounted on the gimbal above. The camera has the same 20mm field of view with the same f2 aperture. Beyond that, a lot has changed. 

The camera still uses a 1-inch image sensor, but it's a new version that offers up to 14 stops of dynamic range for better results in high-contrast situations. Its resolution maxes out at 4K (like before), but it'll now shoot at up to 240 frames per second for silky smooth slow motion. 

There's a variety of new color profiles built in, designed to help you get a cool-looking filmic tone for your clips without having to apply filters or presets in post-production -- just pick a tone and hit record. Or if you take your color grading more seriously, it'll shoot in 10-bit D-Log for greater flexibility than its predecessor offered. 

A clip-on fill light is available as part of the Creator Combo. It could be handy for those times when you're trying to record a vlog in darkness. Perhaps when exploring a haunted house. 

Andrew Lanxon/CNET

I've had a play with the presets and they're fun. A little much for my tastes, though you can turn the intensity down to look more natural. I think these are great for quick footage, but if I were shooting a more involved project where I know I want the best possible quality, I'd shoot everything in D-Log to apply my own filmic tones later -- and have full control over them as a result. 

Despite the aperture remaining the same, DJI reckons the Pocket 4 has superior low-light performance, thanks to advances in image processing. I've not had a chance to take it out in the dark yet, but I'm looking forward to putting the old and the new side by side. There's also a new slow-shutter video mode for creative nighttime shooting, which again sounds like a fun thing to play around with. 

The Pocket 4 has a slightly larger battery than the Pocket 3 (1,545 mAh, up from 1,300 mAh), along with fast charging support, which will apparently take it from empty to 80% full in just 18 minutes. It also has 100GB of built-in storage, unlike the Pocket 3. I love this: I can't remember how many times I've grabbed my camera for a day's filming only to later realize I left the microSD card back in my computer. 

The 100GB of built-in storage is great for those occasions when you go out without a microSD card to hand. I do that often.

Andrew Lanxon/CNET

DJI Osmo Pocket 4 Pro: Where's the dual-lens model?

The Osmo Pocket 4 I've been testing is broadly similar to the Pocket 3, but with most specs bumped up slightly. But the rumor mill has been churning for months about a "Pro" version of the Pocket 4, which, according to alleged "leaked photos," will feature a larger camera module with multiple lenses -- likely including a telephoto zoom option, similar to the multilens setups seen on most phone cameras.

DJI has remained silent on the matter, with no mention of a Pro model in its launch materials; whether this more full-featured camera ever arrives remains to be seen. Personally, I'd love to see a Pro version feature an even bigger sensor and even interchangeable lenses, as DJI offers with its Ronin 4D. I won't hold my breath, though. 

The various filmic color profiles are handy for adding a bit of extra flair to your footage.

Andrew Lanxon/CNET

DJI Osmo Pocket 4: Should you buy it?

If you already have the Pocket 3, I don't think there's a significant reason to upgrade to the new model (which is good news for potential buyers in the US). Sure, you might see marginal gains in dynamic range and perhaps battery life, but otherwise the video you'll be capturing will be broadly the same. 

However, if you're still using the much older Osmo Pocket 2, or if you're considering getting one for the first time ahead of your upcoming summer vacation, then the Pocket 4 has a lot going for it. I'll be spending a lot more time testing it over the coming weeks and months to see how well it performs in both pro and enthusiast environments and how it compares with its new rivals, the Mission 1 series from GoPro.” 

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What Elon Musk’s Clash With Sam Altman of OpenAI Is Really About - The New York Times

Et Tu, Brute? What Elon Musk’s Clash With Sam Altman Is Really About.

"Mr. Musk’s lawsuit against Mr. Altman and OpenAI makes the case that all-encompassing greed is Silicon Valley’s defining feature.

April 28, 2026

Illustration by Ben Denzer; Photographs by Eric Lee/The New York Times, Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Illustration by Ben Denzer; Photographs by Eric Lee/The New York Times, Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

One of the most controversial and overexposed men in the world is suing another man, who is equally unsympathetic and equally inescapable. Both are insanely rich.

It is so tempting to look away.

Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman involves onetime colleagues and buddies who became peevish enemies. Now they would like to take each other down. Happens all the time. These guys just have more lawyers.

Ignoring this conflict would be a mistake, however. The rancorous dispute between Mr. Musk and Mr. Altman, which went to trial this week with opening statements in an Oakland, Calif., federal courtroom on Tuesday, goes to the heart of Silicon Valley, a place that has always cloaked itself in virtue.

Mr. Altman and Mr. Musk started working on what was supposed to be a different sort of tech lab in 2015. OpenAI was a Manhattan Project for artificial intelligence, a nonprofit venture that would act as a shield against rapacious behavior by less benevolent outfits. The goal was to “shift the dialog toward being about humanity winning rather than any particular group or company,” according to a document in the case.

Mr. Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, provided the initial funding. Mr. Altman was OpenAI’s leader and spokesman. But Mr. Musk says their interests quickly diverged when it became clear just how much money was up for grabs. OpenAI converted to a for-profit company last year. “A textbook tale of altruism versus greed,” Mr. Musk asserted in his suit’s opening salvo.

The fact that the person calling himself an altruist here is likely to become the world’s first trillionaire doesn’t necessarily make it untrue. In his lawsuit, filed in 2024, Mr. Musk said Mr. Altman, OpenAI president Greg Brockman and others “unjustly enriched” themselves in the development of OpenAI “to the tune of billions of dollars.”

OpenAI, whose value is approaching $1 trillion, had the inevitable response: No, you’rethe one who is greedy. The company argued that Mr. Musk walked away when he could not take over the entire enterprise.

“This case has always been about Elon generating more power and more money for what he wants,” OpenAI said in a statement.

One of the few things the moguls agree on is that their feud evokes the works of a certain Elizabethan playwright. Mr. Musk, 54, said in his suit that Mr. Altman’s “perfidy and deceit are of Shakespearean proportions.” Mr. Altman, 41, mused in a blog post this month that “there has been so much Shakespearean drama between the companies in our field.”

If there is a Shakespeare play that could sum up this soured friendship, it’s “Julius Caesar.” Brutus wants to stop Caesar from gaining too much power, or so he says. Caesar is quite surprised that he’s being assassinated by a supposed friend. “Et tu, Brute?” he cries. Brutus ends the play as dead as Caesar but is mourned as “the noblest Roman of them all.”

Mr. Musk should be so lucky to draw such praise.

‘For the Good of the World’

In the middle of the last decade, Mr. Altman was a Silicon Valley insider running the top start-up incubator, Y Combinator. Ambitious and persuasive, he didn’t want just to fund companies. He was on a mission to save humanity, which — unknown to the masses — was at great risk.

“I think A.I. will probably, most likely, lead to the end of the world,” Mr. Altman said in 2015. It was a fear he would often express. Why not, he asked, create a bulwark against the other A.I. companies “for the good of the world”?

Mr. Altman drew in Mr. Musk, who was even more worried about where A.I. was heading. “We are summoning the demon,” Mr. Musk once said.

Immediately, there was a problem. People everywhere work on nonprofit ventures for modest salaries. They sacrifice for their ideals. Mr. Altman knew that would not fly in Silicon Valley. The engineers and scientists would “get start-up-like compensation if it works,” he promised.

The nonprofit was dead almost before it began. OpenAI is owned by its employees and investors, including Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank, as well as the OpenAI Foundation. (Mr. Altman has no direct equity in OpenAI but has other investments that make him comfortably a billionaire.) OpenAI is planning to sell shares to the public in one of the richest stock offerings in history.

Silicon Valley is the great wellspring of wealth in modern America. Nine of the 10 richest Americans are tech entrepreneurs, with Warren Buffett the only exception. People might be offended by OpenAI’s turnabout, but few could say they were shocked.

Except the richest man in the world, whose own A.I. venture, xAI, is now part of one of his other companies, SpaceX. SpaceX will soon sell shares to the public as a decidedly for-profit operation.

No Happy Ending

Tech companies are subject to relatively few constraints these days. Congress is generally passive. Federal regulators have been hobbled. The Trump administration is stocked with venture capitalists and others receptive to tech and its money, as is President Trump.

What’s left for tech opponents are civil suits. Social media companies face an onslaught of cases. One of the first, in Los Angeles last month, found that Meta and YouTube were to blame for anxiety and depression in a young woman who was a heavy user.

“Trials are all we have right now, and things are better because of them,” said Max Tegmark, a co-founder of the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit trying to reduce catastrophic technology risks. “Trials provide information that is not otherwise accessible.”

The exhibits in the Musk/Altman trial are an example of material that presumably would never have seen the light otherwise. That includes emails between the two leaders as they tried getting OpenAI off the ground.

“Do you have any objection to me proactively increasing everyone’s comp by 100-200k per year?" Mr. Altman wrote to Mr. Musk in 2015. “I think they’re all motivated by the mission here but it would be a good signal to everyone we are going to take care of them over time.”

The Future of Life Institute gives OpenAI an overall grade of C plus for safety while xAI got a D. “A.I. is less regulated in America than sandwiches,” said Mr. Tegmark, who is also a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “You can’t open a sandwich shop without having your kitchen inspected. But you can release an A.I. girlfriend for 11-year-olds and that’s fine.” A defeat for OpenAI might begin to change that, he said.

Some A.I. watchdogs said they would like to see OpenAI brought to justice the way Meta and YouTube were. But they would prefer almost any plaintiff to Mr. Musk.

“I don’t have long-term faith in a system where we’re legislating through private litigation,” said Sacha Haworth, executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, a Washington-based advocacy group. “I don’t want to rely on a billionaire with a grievance.”

If Mr. Musk wins, she pointed out, it would weaken or even destroy OpenAI, “opening up a large share of the market that an Elon Musk company can then gobble up.”

And if OpenAI gets the suit dismissed? “It would send a signal that it’s OK to launch as a nonthreatening nonprofit working for the public’s benefit and then cynically change to a for-profit without any accountability,” she said.

Ms. Haworth’s conclusion: “There’s no happy ending here.”

(The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023 for copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied those claims.)

Some critics are worried that, in the worst scenario for OpenAI, its charitable arm would shutter. That, they said, would wipe out a very large foundation that could have helped people. Mr. Musk says he will give any damages he receives to the foundation.

Others take a more benign view.

“The law doesn’t rely on you being a good person to act in the public interest,” said Shaoul Sussman, a former official with the Federal Trade Commission. “A lot of the dirty laundry of OpenAI is going to come out.”

In a different environment, Mr. Musk’s pursuit of OpenAI might have been brief, ending with a tip to regulators. But he is not keen on government oversight, which during the Biden administration produced investigations and enforcement actions into his companies.

Instead, Mr. Musk’s case against OpenAI uses a legal doctrine called ultra vires, which means “beyond the powers.” It holds that a corporation is restricted to activities defined in its charter. This approach was widely used in the early 19th century when the federal government was small and weak and only a competitor could rein in your company.

Most corporations now have wide-ranging charters that allow them to pursue multiple goals. But there is one exception: nonprofits.

“This is the first high-profile case that I know of being pursued under these statutes for 100 years,” Mr. Sussman said.

In a trial expected to last several weeks, the very old laws will meet the very new technology. As Shakespeare said, what’s past is prologue.

David Streitfeld writes about technology and the people who make it and how it affects the world around them. He is based in San Francisco."

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