Comment on Markets Right Now: Stocks start higher on Wall Street

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Bing, Microsoft's search engine platform, went down in the very early morning today. That meant that searches from Microsoft's Edge browsers that had yet to change their default providers didn't work. It also meant that services relying on Bing's search API—Microsoft's own Copilot, ChatGPT search, Yahoo, Ecosia, and DuckDuckGo—similarly failed. Services were largely restored by the morning Eastern work hours, but the timing feels apt, concerning, or some combination of the two.

Enlarge (credit: Microsoft) The Windows 11 24H2 update isn’t scheduled to be released until sometime this fall, but testers can get a near-final version of it early. Microsoft has released Windows 11 24H2 build 26100.712 to its Release Preview testing channel for Windows Insiders, a sign that the update is nearly complete and that the company has shifted into bug-fixing mode ahead of general availability. Microsoft has generally stuck to smaller but more frequent feature updates during the Windows 11 era, but the annual fall updates still tend to be a bigger deal.

Enlarge (credit: YelenaYemchuk) Commercialization has not dealt kindly with the Mayan Food of the Gods. Modern chocolate products are filled with sugar and calories, contributing to the obesity epidemic in the West. And the cocoa crop is hardly in great shape; climate change is decreasing production, causing prices to rise; farmers in West Africa have responded by clear-cutting rainforests to plant more cocoa plants.

Enlarge / President Joe Biden at a Rose Garden event at the White House on May 1, 2023, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Alex Wong ) A Democratic consultant was indicted on charges of voter suppression and impersonation of a candidate after admitting that he commissioned a robocall that used artificial intelligence to imitate President Joe Biden's voice.

Enlarge / American black bear seen along the Red Rock Parkway inside Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada. (credit: Getty | Artur Widak) In the summer of 2022, a family gathered in South Dakota for a reunion that included a special meal—kabobs made with the meat of a black bear that one of the family members had "harvested" from northern Saskatchewan, Canada, that May.

Enlarge / Scarlett Johansson attends the Golden Heart Awards in 2023. (credit: Sean Zanni / Contributor | Patrick McMullan) OpenAI is sticking to its story that it never intended to copy Scarlett Johansson's voice when seeking an actor for ChatGPT's "Sky" voice mode. The company provided The Washington Post with documents and recordings clearly meant to support OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's defense against Johansson's claims that Sky was made to sound "eerily similar" to her critically acclaimed voice acting performance in the sci-fi film Her. Johansson has alleged that OpenAI hired a soundalike to steal her likeness and confirmed that she declined to provide the Sky voice.