The Price of Bitcoin Mining and More: The Week in Reporter Reads
This weekend, listen to a collection of articles from across the New York Times, read aloud by the journalists who wrote them.
Written and narrated by Gabriel JX dance
Winter storm Uri had knocked out power plants across Texas, leaving tens of thousands of homes in freezing darkness. Meanwhile, in the shell of a former aluminum smelter an hour outside of Austin, rows upon rows of computers used enough electricity to power about 6,500 homes as they raced to earn Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency.
The New York Times has identified 34 such large-scale operations, known as Bitcoin mines, in the United States, all of which are putting enormous pressure on the power grid and most of which are finding new ways to profit from doing so. Their operations can create costs — including higher electricity bills and massive carbon pollution — for everyone around them, most of which have nothing to do with Bitcoin.
Until June 2021, most Bitcoin mining was in China. Then it drove out Bitcoin operations, at least for a time, citing among other things their power usage. The US quickly became the industry’s global leader.
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Written and narrated by James Poniewozik
“I’m so tired of smiling,” says Danny Cho (Steven Yeun) in the first episode of Netflix’s “Beef.” You may have noticed that he is not alone in this. Blame the pandemic, the culture, the economy, but people are crazy right now, on planes and on trains and — like Danny and his car-crossed antagonist, Amy Lau (Ali Wong) — in cars.
“Beef,” a dark comedy about an accident that goes disastrously off-road, has good timing, but it’s not enough to make a great TV series. What makes this one of the most invigorating, surprising, and insightful debuts of the past year is how personal and culturally specific the study of anger is. Each unhappy person in it is unhappy in a different and fascinating way.
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Written by Nico Grant and Karen Weise | Narrated by Nico Grant
In March, two Google employees, whose job it is to evaluate the company’s artificial intelligence products, tried to stop Google from introducing an AI chatbot. They believed it generated inaccurate and dangerous statements.
Ten months earlier, similar concerns were raised at Microsoft by ethicists and other employees. They wrote in several documents that the AI technology behind a planned chatbot could flood Facebook groups with disinformation, impair critical thinking and erode the factual foundations of modern society.
The companies released their chatbots anyway. The aggressive moves by the normally risk-averse companies were fueled by a race to control what could be the tech industry’s next big thing — generative AI, the powerful new technology that powers these chatbots.
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Written and narrated by Erika Solomon
Russian and Danish naval vessels disappearing in the Baltic Sea, days before an underwater pipeline explosion. A German charter yacht with traces of explosives, and a crew with forged passports. Blurred photographs of a mysterious object found near a single surviving pipeline strand.
These are the latest clues in the hunt to reveal who last September 26 blew up most of the Kremlin-backed Nord Stream pipeline, some 260 feet below the Baltic Sea, which was once Europe’s largest supplier of natural gas. A flurry of new discoveries and competing narratives have sown mistrust among Western allies and opened the door to Russian diplomatic pressure that has increased the geopolitical stakes in Europe’s Baltic region.
Nowhere is the tension felt more strongly than among the 98 inhabitants of Christianso in Denmark – an island so small that you can walk across it in 10 minutes. Living just 12 nautical miles from the blast site, everyone from the herring picker to the innkeeper sees the skies and waters filled with foreboding.
Morénike Giwa Onaiwu was shocked when daycare providers flagged something about the behavior of her daughter, Legacy. The toddler did not respond to her name. She avoided eye contact, spoke little and liked to play on her own.
But none of this seemed unusual to Dr. Onaiwu, a consultant and writer in Houston.
“I didn’t realize anything was wrong,” she said. “My daughter was just like me.”
Legacy was diagnosed with autism in 2011, just before she turned 3. Months later, at the age of 31, Dr. Onaiwu was also diagnosed.
Autism, a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by social and communication difficulties as well as repetitive behaviour, has long been associated with boys. But over the past decade, as more doctors, teachers and parents have been on the lookout for early signs of the condition, the proportion of girls being diagnosed has increased.
The Times’ narrated articles are written by Tally Abecassis, Parin Behrooz, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Jack D’Isidoro, Aaron Esposito, Dan Farrell, Elena Hecht, Adrienne Hurst, Emma Kehlbeck, Tanya Pérez, Krish Seenivasan, Kate Winslett, John Woo and Tiana Young. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Ryan Wegner, Julia Simon and Desiree Ibekwe.
