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New York City's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection reached a settlement requiring DoorDash to pay $131.5 million after an investigation into late, missing, or miscalculated payments to delivery workers. More than 260,000 workers will share over $115 million, with the remainder covering civil penalties and disputed pay for time Dashers spent online awaiting deliveries.
New York City is rolling out 17 high-tech, self-cleaning public restrooms across the city under an initiative championed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The units are designed to automatically limit each visit to 10 minutes, after which the door reportedly opens or users are prompted to leave regardless of whether they're finished.
Women interviewed by WIRED describe being secretly filmed on dates by men wearing Meta's AI-powered Ray-Ban smart glasses, which can capture photo and video from the wearer's point of view. One woman, Courtney McAnuff, discovered footage of her date posted to Instagram without her consent, prompting her to describe the experience as a violation. Meta sold over 7 million pairs of the glasses in 2025, and the devices have earned the nickname "creep glasses" amid growing complaints about covert filming in social settings.
Jacob Komarow started selling baklava on New York City streets in 2021 while six months into recovery from drug addiction, building a mobile business called Good Baklava that operates from vans, pop-up stands and online orders rather than a fixed storefront. A viral moment handing out free pastries near Madison Square Garden and a subsequent New York Times profile drove explosive growth, with monthly revenue averaging over $20,000 and peaking near $70,000.
The Manhattan District Attorney's Office announced it has seized 12 domains used to create, share and sell nonconsensual deepfake sexual content, in what appears to be the largest such takedown to date. Roughly 1,200 people, mostly women including celebrities, politicians and athletes, were depicted without consent. DA Alvin Bragg said investigations into the operators and uploaders behind the sites are continuing, and encouraged victims to contact his office's cybercrime bureau.
Restaurants are increasingly using AI image generators to create menu illustrations, and experts say these images share a distinctly artificial sameness—symmetrical, glossy, and subtly wrong. Reality Defender's CTO Alex Lisle explains that because diffusion and language models are trained on massive shared datasets, they converge on a narrow set of 'pleasing' visual patterns rather than genuine food photography.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has ordered a one-year moratorium blocking New York City public schools from using AI tools with students from age two through eighth grade. The policy forces schools to disable more than 38 AI features in existing programs, including the Amira reading assistant, and only allows AI use starting in high school through limited 'AI literacy' courses. Exceptions exist for students with learning disabilities or those learning English, and the rules also cap daily screen time for younger grades.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a one-year moratorium on generative AI tools for roughly 600,000 New York City public school students through eighth grade, beginning in the 2026-2027 school year. High schools are exempt and can run monitored AI pilot programs, while teachers may still use AI for lesson planning and administrative tasks. The policy also sets non-mandatory daily screen time guidelines of 30 minutes for elementary students and 45 minutes for middle schoolers.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled a one-year moratorium starting in the 2026-2027 school year that blocks roughly 600,000 students from pre-K through eighth grade from using AI in class, and bars teachers from using AI to grade their work. Companion and mental-support chatbots will be prohibited at all grade levels, individual screens are banned until third grade, and screen time guidance caps middle schoolers at 45 minutes daily. High schoolers will get limited AI access, twice-yearly AI literacy lessons, and a small pilot program testing vetted AI tools in a handful of classrooms.
A new NBER working paper examines how New York City's congestion relief zone, launched January 5, 2025, affected emergency medical service response near the toll boundary at 60th Street. Using half a million EMS dispatch records and traffic camera data, researchers found hospital transport times fell by 54-59 seconds and total EMS travel time dropped by roughly 63-70 seconds within a 5-kilometer band around the zone's edge.
New York's subway system is swapping traditional underground newsstands for automated vending machines that dispense grab-and-go items like snacks and drinks. The shift comes as many of these kiosks, once staples for commuters, have sat unused or fallen into disrepair since the pandemic reduced foot traffic and demand for print media.
The Verge's weekend editor reflects on rediscovering the Professor Murder Rides the Subway EP while re-ripping old CDs, calling it a standout artifact of the mid-2000s NYC dance punk scene. The 16-minute release is described as built on synth blasts, chanted vocals and syncopated percussion layered over a disco-stomp foundation, distinguishing the band from contemporaries like LCD Soundsystem and The Rapture.