Tim Wu, the law professor at Columbia University who came up with the term “net neutrality,” has argued that the concept be protected by law and regulation.Credit...Tina Fineberg for The New York Times The future of the Internet — which means the future of communications, culture, free speech and innovation — is up for grabs. The Federal Communications Commission is making decisions that may deter

If you own a mobile phone, its every move is logged and tracked by dozens of companies. No one is beyond the reach of this constant digital surveillance. Not even the president of the United States. The Times Privacy Project obtained a dataset with more than 50 billion location pings from the phones of more than 12 million people in this country. It was a random sample from 2016 and 2017, but it t

Donald J. Trump officially announced his campaign for the presidency at Trump Tower in Manhattan on June 16, 2015, with his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, at his side.Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times On the night of Nov. 16, a group of executives gathered in a private dining room of the restaurant La Chine at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Midtown Manhattan. The table was la

An illustrated map of the United States by Isaac W. Moore, 1832.Credit...Buyenlarge/Getty Images Debates about the extent to which the United States should use its power to lead and shape events in the world, and when and how it should intervene, are eternal in our history. In 1821, John Quincy Adams admonished us not to go abroad “in search of monsters to destroy.” But in a world more interconnec

Members of SEAL Team 6 and other units parachute from a plane near the Navy frigate Halyburton, in the Indian Ocean, to start the rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips from Somali pirates. They have plotted deadly missions from secret bases in the badlands of Somalia. In Afghanistan, they have engaged in combat so intimate that they have emerged soaked in blood that was not their own. On clandestine ra

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea is one of the world’s most digitally advanced countries. It has ubiquitous broadband, running at speeds that many Americans can only envy. Its Internet is also one of the most quirky in the world. A curfew restricts school-age children from playing online games at night; adults wanting to do so need to provide their resident registration numbers to prove that they

A Boom in New Housing In spite of a recession and foreclosure crisis, the mayor presided over a boom in residential construction, encompassing everything from new aeries for the rich in Manhattan to disappearing vacant lots in the South Bronx. New York has added 40,000 new buildings since he took office, and the census counted an additional 170,000 housing units in 2010, up from 10 years earlier,

Law school applications are headed for a 30-year low, reflecting increased concern over soaring tuition, crushing student debt and diminishing prospects of lucrative employment upon graduation. As of this month, there were 30,000 applicants to law schools for the fall, a 20 percent decrease from the same time last year and a 38 percent decline from 2010, according to the Law School Admission Counc

Frank Addante, 36, chief executive of the Rubicon Project, says that 97 percent of American Internet users encounter its electronic ad sales system every month. And most aren’t even aware of it.Credit...Monica Almeida/The New York Times YOU can be sold in seconds. No, wait: make that milliseconds. The odds are that access to you — or at least the online you — is being bought and sold in less than

When Apple announced last year that all iPhones would come with a voice-activated assistant named Siri, capable of answering spoken questions, Michael Phillips’s heart sank. For three decades, Mr. Phillips had focused on writing software to allow computers to understand human speech. In 2006, he had co-founded a voice recognition company, and eventually executives at Apple, Google and elsewhere pr

Editors' note: Waiting in line is a timeless form of torture. Here's a story from the archives that explains why. SOME years ago, executives at a Houston airport faced a troubling customer-relations issue. Passengers were lodging an inordinate number of complaints about the long waits at baggage claim. In response, the executives increased the number of baggage handlers working that shift. The pla