The photographer and her husband came across an abandoned boat while out walking and took the opportunity to float a surreal idea

Every September, Carla Vermeend and her husband go on holiday to Terschelling island, in the Netherlands.

“It has lots of nature, right in the middle of the Wadden Sea, which is listed by Unesco as a world heritage site,” says Vermeend, a Dutch photographer. During their visit in 2014, the couple were walking by the sea together.

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© Photograph: Carla Vermeend

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© Photograph: Carla Vermeend

The invisible downside to our online lives is the data stored at giant energy-guzzling datacentres

It’s been called “the largest coal-powered machine on Earth” – and most of us use it countless times a day.

The internet and its associated digital industry are estimated to produce about the same emissions annually as aviation. But we barely think about pollution while snapping 16 duplicate photos of our pets, which are immediately uploaded to the cloud.

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© Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

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© Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Google and Samsung used to update smartphone software for only three years. That has changed.

© Derek Abella

New chatbot technology can talk, laugh and sing like a human. What comes next is anyone’s guess.

© Warner Bros.

Travel-focused A.I. bots and more eco-friendly transportation options in online maps and search tools can help you quickly organize your seasonal getaway.

© Layla

The company continues to lean on customers’ appetite for apps and services, as demand for its devices weakens.

© Qilai Shen for The New York Times

Meta, Google and others are driving a renaissance for voice assistants, but people have found the technology uncool for more than a decade.

© Derek Abella

It doesn’t take a lot of work to keep copies of your phone’s photos, videos and other files stashed securely in case of an emergency.

© Apple; Google

This fall, the company will begin allowing customers to replace broken parts with used iPhone components without its previous software limits.

© Ulysses Ortega for The New York Times

The $700 Ai Pin, funded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Microsoft, can be helpful — until it struggles with tasks like doing math and crafting sandwich recipes.

© Andri Tambunan for The New York Times

Even if you manage to ditch your iPhone, Apple’s hooks are still there.

© Ariel Davis