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Hundreds of thousands of people had to evacuate their homes in Southern California over the span of a week due to wildfires sweeping the region. In response to the ongoing devastation, Apple announced on Monday that it is donating $1 million to aid in relief efforts. “Our thoughts are with all those affected by the…
Egyptian archaeologists working in Luxor have explored two tombs dating back to the 18th Dynasty, uncovering colorful figurines, funeral masks, a stunning mural—and a linen-wrapped mummy. As National Geographic reports, these two tombs, found in the necropolis of Dra’ Abu el-Naga in Luxor, Egypt, were originally discovered in the 1990s by the German archaeologist Friederike…
A new wave of Bitcoin-mania surged through the internet this weekend—and with it, a new crop of sketchy opportunists. Bitcoin apps were very popular in the Apple app store, and one using the name of a completely unrelated cryptocurrency wallet service now holds the number three position in the finance category. TechCrunch noticed the imposter…
If you’d told me in 2007 that people would be walking around listening to music with wireless, popcorn-sized earbuds, I would’ve called you crazy. It is now 2017, and these futuristic little gadgets are a reality. But which ones are the best? Pretty much every major tech company has now released its version of completely…
This is the year everyone—including founding executives—began publicly questioning the impact of social media on our lives. Last month, Facebook’s first president Sean Parker opened up about his regrets over helping create social media as we know it today. “I don’t know if I really understood the consequences of what I was saying, because of…
Science may be just a tool to help us understand our Universe. But we can all agree that one of its major perks is that it leads to the discovery of plenty of really cool, mind-boggling stuff. This year science was as good as ever, which is to say that people still did a whole…
Thanks in large part to the low-cost Echo Dot, Amazon grabbed an early lead in the smart speaker space. But this fall Google hit back hard with the Home Mini, which has become the best cheap smart speaker to buy for most people. Unfortunately, shortly after its launch, a bug affecting the top touch controls…
You probably don’t give it much thought, but your router is one of the most important gadgets in your home—without it there’s no wi-fi for your laptops, your phones, and all the other web-connected devices you’ve got set up. Everything that comes in and goes out of your home network goes through the router. It’s…
Silicon Valley had somewhat of a reckoning this year. The tech overlords finally had to face the music: their products and services aren’t as wholesome and life-changing as they preached them to be. Turns out, a bunch of white men didn’t anticipate issues that might impact their non-white-male users. Like sexual harassment. And biased machines.…
Bed bugs—the blood-sucking, chitinous nightmares which serve as the clearest proof that if there is a divine creator behind the universe, it hates us—were once nearly eradicated from the U.S. But in recent years they’ve come back worse than ever, beefed up from decades of exposure to insecticides and helped along by an increase in…
Lumoid, a four-year-old San Francisco startup which was reportedly partnering with Best Buy to offer try-before-you-buy rental services on products like cameras, audio gear, and fitness trackers, has gone out of business. Per Recode, company CEO Aarthi Ramamurthy posted to Facebook thanking team members and announcing that “Over the last 4 months, we gradually wound…
Bitcoin has continued to explode in value, briefly reaching a high of over $17,000 a coin before settling back down to under $16,000 just weeks after it passed into the five-figure range. But the surge is being driven by speculation, not the ease of actually using bitcoins for transactions, as shown earlier this week by…
Uber has been accused of a lot of very, very bad things over the course of its existence, including a culture of rampant sexual harassment, spying on competitors and users, and covering up hacks by paying off the hackers. But one of the worst things it’s allegedly done was shadily obtaining the medical records of…
Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky has had a rough season stateside amid claims the company’s software scans for and steals documents of interest to the Kremlin. With the use of its products at U.S. government agencies now banned, the company has elected to shut down its D.C.-area headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. “We are closing our facility…
Here’s a conversation I have a lot: Friend: WHOA. You don’t use a phone case? Me, incredulously, because you are looking at my phone and you know the answer: No. Friend, condescendingly: That’s ridiculous! You should really use a case. People who use phone cases fucking love to drag me for going naked, pointing out…
Even in the absence of giant earthquakes, this planet is still emitting a quiet hum. Researchers have measured it at the ocean’s depths. Scientists have been aware of this quiet hum for decades, and many seismic stations have measured it on the planet’s surface. No one has measured it underwater during periods without earthquakes, though—there’s…
FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel on Friday accused her agency of withholding evidence of fraud, further intensifying the ongoing battle over the future of net neutrality. “To put it simply, there is evidence in the FCC’s files that fraud has occurred, and the FCC is telling law enforcement and victims of identity theft that it is…
However quickly artificial intelligence evolves, however steadfastly it becomes embedded in our lives—in health, law enforcement, sex, etc.—it can’t outpace the biases of its creators, humans. Kate Crawford, a Microsoft researcher and co-founder of AI Now, a research institute studying the social impact of artificial intelligence, delivered an incredible keynote speech, titled “The Trouble with…
Apple’s got more cash on hand than any other company on the planet, and some of that cash may go towards acquiring Shazam. TechCrunch is reporting that Apple is “close to acquiring Shazam,” which is frustratingly vague. It could be a done deal or Apple could have called Shazam’s people up yesterday. If you’re like…
Ajit Pai has proven in the past that he can be profoundly bad at telling a joke. On Thursday, he told one bomb after another at a gathering in Washington, DC. Comedy is all about timing and Pai thought now was a great time to joke about his decision to repeal pro-consumer regulations to the…
