Business Highlights

A new initiative from the Biden administration is helping organic farmers by stoking demand for their products. As a young brand, Little Sesame has spent the past few years doing what most startups do: looking for capital.

Luxury car, hotel, and watch brands are taking over the skyline with buildings reflecting their likeness and logos. Porsche. Bentley. Dolce & Gabbana. Armani. Even for people who will never be able to afford their products, these luxury brands are household names. Now, they’re also becoming homes.

With everything a smartphone can do these days, it is often easy to overlook one of the device’s most basic functions: voice calls. Communicating by telephone has become more complicated in a world of robocalls and automated voice trees, but your phone may already have the tools to make talking to people (or not) easier.

WASHINGTON — Don Beyer’s car dealerships were among the first in the U. S. to set up a website. As a representative, the Virginia Democrat leads a bipartisan group focused on promoting fusion energy. He reads books about geometry for fun. So when questions about regulating artificial intelligence emerged, the 73-year-old Beyer took what for him seemed like an obvious step, enrolling at George Mason University to get a master’s degree in machine learning.

On a recent afternoon, I held a bagel in front of me and said: “Look and tell me if this is healthy.” A monotone voice responded that the bagel was unhealthy because it was high in carbohydrates, which could contribute to weight gain. I wasn’t talking to a tech bro obsessed with the ketogenic diet.