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We have lost track of time. Social media users felt it, then Wired confirmed it. There are no seasonal signposts, like birthday celebrations or the first spring picnic, just tired memes hanging in the air like stale farts in the unventilated apartment of our collective memory. Consider this your weekly check-in. To help sort our…
Apple is set to reopen its retail stores in Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, and South Carolina next week. The vast majority of its stores outside of China have been closed for more than a month amid the coronavirus outbreak. In a statement to CNBC, Apple said its decision was based on local health data and government…
Covid-19 has us thinking a lot about or daily interactions, how to keep us and our loved ones safe and how we will be able to interact physically in the future. Zoom isn’t exactly an adequate substitute for social interaction, and large gatherings will continue to be discouraged for some time. That hasn’t stopped Production…
Until recently I was not the biggest fan of CBS All Access. As a smaller service with pretty niche offerings, I didn’t see a ton of appeal when stacked against the many, many other options out there. But I’ve got a confession: This is a streaming service you should absolutely consider subscribing to as your…
Joined by Senators Bernie Sanders and Ed Markey, Kamala Harris is pushing new legislation that would provide up to $2,000 a month for every U.S. resident. There’s another term for that: a universal basic income. While UBIs are usually associated with the magical thinking that we’ll at some point reach a fully-automated post-work economy, the…
If you’re keen to start your very own podcast, now’s the time—you’re bored at home, you’ve got a captive audience of people also bored at home, and everything you need to get up and running can be got at affordable prices and operated within the confines of your own four walls. Before you start though,…
The Google Authenticator has long been a useful tool when it comes to adding two-step verification to your accounts. But now, thanks to its first update since April 2019, Google has just made it way easier to securely migrate 2SV codes from one device to another. Alongside its new account transferring feature, the latest version…
Are you afraid of going to work during a global pandemic that’s sickened over 1.25 million Americans and killed more than 75,000? Fuck you. At least that’s the message from state officials in Ohio, where roughly 3,000 workers have been “turned in” by their employers for staying home. And states like Pennsylvania, Texas, and South…
Samsung Pay has been around for five years, but it looks like the company isn’t content to just leave it at that. In a blog, Samsung vice president and general manager of Samsung Pay in North America Sang Ahn announced the company will be the latest tech giant to roll out a debit card. The…
The Boston Dynamics robot known as Spot has been deployed to a park in Singapore to remind people they should follow social distancing guidelines during the pandemic, according to a new report from Singapore’s top government technology agency. And it almost feels like the robots are there to taunt us as this point, because unlike…
Zoom, the video conferencing platform du jour while nearly everyone’s stuck inside under shelter-in-place orders, has been gradually beefing up its security as part of a 90-day plan after a wave of disturbing troll attacks drew international ire. On Thursday the company announced its latest step: finally implementing the kind of encryption protocols that it…
The question of whether you own your digital purchases, or whether you’re simply licensing that content from whatever tech giant du jour hosts it, has always been a bit of a black box for consumers. Recently, this lack of transparency has prompted one California user to file a lawsuit against Amazon for saying customers can…
Two free-roaming archivists are wildly uploading hundreds of early Windows Desktop themes from the ‘90s and early aughts to the Internet Archive, populating the site with a trove of off-brand fan art you can install as your desktop wallpaper. Why? I do not know, but they have a captive audience. They probably would anyway, but…
Lyft, which has somehow spent the last few months of the coronavirus pandemic merely suggesting passengers and drivers wear face coverings, said on Thursday that it will soon make it a requirement. Per CNN, the app will request that both parties agree to a “personal health certification” within a few weeks. Said update will inform…
Alamo Drafthouse is bringing a slate of very good films to your desktop, and soon your phone, with its new streaming service Alamo on Demand. Alamo on Demand—available now to stream in-browser with iOS and Android apps on the way—offers a highly curated selection of films for rental or purchase, with many ranging between $3…
A U.S. private military contractor with a plagiarized website and unclear connections to Trump’s White House recently attempted to invade Venezuela and depose its authoritarian leader Nicolas Maduro and replace him with a U.S.-backed puppet government this month—leading to predictably disastrous results. In the aftermath, the record of incompetence involved in this story has only…
This is Sick Days, a series documenting how jobs are changing during the coronavirus pandemic, as told by workers themselves. This week, we hear from workers in city government, a car dealership, and elsewhere as they navigate financial and mental health struggles. If you’d like to submit a story, use this Google form and provide as…
The revolution will be on a website for a midcentury modern bungalow, CNBC reports. After Airbnb hosts complained that they’re getting nothing from the federal relief package (calling it a “publicity stunt”), and little from Airbnb’s own $250 million relief package in the form of 25 percent cancellation fees, the forgotten men and women of…
For the past two years and change, Google’s smart-city-centric sister company Sidewalk Labs has put millions on the line to build what it called a model smart city in downtown Toronto. The planned neighborhood, called “Quayside,” was supposed to be nothing short of utopic, boasting everythingfrom affordable housing to its own power grid—but like most…
Twitch, the service popular for live gameplay streams, is reportedly planning to launch a slate of unscripted series that include dating and game shows—because we certainly have nowhere near enough half-baked reality TV being churned out already. Citing an internal document it obtained, Bloomberg reported Wednesday that Twitch plans to drop between $50,000 and $250,000…
