June 18, 2025

Puzzle Corner

Ready for a fresh set of puzzles? Click here for the July/August 2025 Puzzle Corner, brought to you by guest editor Ed Faulkner ’03. Send problems, solutions (by August 1), and comments to puzzlecorner@technologyreview.com. Editor emeritus Allan Gottlieb ’67 launched Puzzle Corner in 1966. Find back issues through 2022 at cs.nyu.edu/~gottlieb/tr and more recent back issues at technologyreview.com/puzzle-corner.

How to save a glacier

March 27, 2025
Glaciers generally move so slowly you can’t see their progress with the naked eye. (Their pace is … glacial.) But these massive bodies of ice do march downhill, with potentially planet-altering consequences.   There’s a lot we don’t understand about how glaciers move and how soon some of the most significant ones could collapse into the…

Inside a romance scam compound—and how people get tricked into being there

March 27, 2025
Heading north in the dark, the only way Gavesh could try to track his progress through the Thai countryside was by watching the road signs zip by. The Jeep’s three occupants—Gavesh, a driver, and a young Chinese woman—had no languages in common, so they drove for hours in nervous silence as they wove their way…

NHS vendor Advanced to pay £3M fine following 2022 ransomware attack

March 27, 2025
NHS vendor Advanced will pay just over £3 million ($3.8 million) in fines for not implementing basic security measures before it suffered a ransomware attack in 2022, the U.K.’s data protection regulator has confirmed.  It’s half the fine that the Information Commissioner’s Office had initially sought in August 2024, when the data watchdog said it […]

OpenAI will reportedly close its SoftBank-led $40 billion round soon

March 27, 2025
While you’re busy Ghibli-fying your images with ChatGPT’s new image-generation capabilities, OpenAI is out raising a ton more cash. The company is close to finalizing a new $40 billion funding round led by SoftBank, according to a report from Bloomberg. The report noted that other funds, including the hedge fund Magnetar Capital, Coatue Management, Founders […]

OpenAI’s viral Studio Ghibli moment highlights AI copyright concerns

March 26, 2025
It’s only been a day since ChatGPT’s new AI image generator went live, and social media feeds are already flooded with AI-generated memes in the style of Studio Ghibli, the cult-favorite Japanese animation studio behind blockbuster films such as “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Spirited Away”. In the last 24 hours, we’ve seen AI-generated images representing […]

Nvidia is reportedly in talks to acquire Lepton AI

March 26, 2025
Nvidia is looking to get into the server rental market. The semiconductor giant is reportedly nearing a deal to acquire Lepton AI, a company that rents out servers that are powered by Nvidia’s AI chips, according to The Information. The deal is reportedly worth several hundred million dollars, according to The Information, which cited unnamed […]

ChatGPT’s new AI image feature is delayed for free users

March 26, 2025
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced on Wednesday that the rollout of ChatGPT’s viral new AI image features to free users would be delayed, citing significantly higher demand than the company expected. “Images in ChatGPT are wayyyy more popular than we expected (and we had pretty high expectations),” Altman said in a post on X on […]

Island lands $250M in funding at a $4.8B valuation

March 26, 2025
Enterprise browser startup Island just raised a sizable funding round — one that bumps up its valuation significantly, and less than one year after its last fundraise. Dallas-based Island raised $250 million in a Series E round led by Coatue that valued the company at $4.85 billion, the startup announced today. This brings the company’s […]