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A congressional hearing on net neutrality that was slated for September 7 isn’t happening after several major tech companies did not accept invitations for their CEOs to testify. Executives from Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Verizon were invited to address the House Energy and Commerce Committee, but—even after the committee extended the deadline to wait…
The Wells Fargo bogus account problem is about 70 percent worse than the bank originally declared in 2016. Last September, federal regulators revealed that Wells Fargo had created about 2 million unauthorized bank and credit card accounts that customers weren’t even aware of. The findings came from a consulting firm hired by Wells Fargo. The…
Before optical and then digital storage, magnetic tape was the standard. In the rush to develop dominant formats, we know Betamax lost out of VHS due to price (and because VHS captured the burgeoning porn market). But why did Phillips’s compact cassette become the standard while almost no one has ever heard of the Sanyo…
Journalists got a nice invitation today confirming Apple’s rumored press event on September 12. The keynote, held at Apple’s new campus, will very likely be the place that Apple announces its new line of iPhones: the iPhone 7s, 7s Plus and the Anniversary iPhone. The latter has been the focus of leaks out of Cupertino…
Visitors to the Burning Man festival are really getting to live out their Mad Max dreams this year. But it isn’t so much post-apocalyptic as it is just apocalyptic. Dust storms and a heat wave ensured that it was going to be a rough event from the beginning, and now an enormous wildfire has shut…
Your mouth doesn’t move when you talk and your slightly misshapen legs bend away from your body. But it’s a first date so you’re making the best of it. Mood lighting and romantic music come on, so you move in closer for a dance. “I like the way my hand goes through your entire neck.”…
Affordability and Razer are not, typically, words that go together. The PC peripheral company has developed a reputation in the last few years for making sharp looking laptops that are ultra thin and ultra pricey for the guts inside of them. But the new 1080p Razer Blade Pro, at $2300, is positively reasonable. No one…
Like millions of other kids around the world, after seeing the original trilogy, R2-D2 instantly became my favorite Star Wars character. He seemed like the perfect sidekick, but the real Artoo was from a galaxy far, far away from mine, and the toy versions of the little droid were always lifeless clones of the character…
Flashlights and toy lightsaber might do a decent job of making you feel like a Jedi when you’re twelve, and fancy prop reproductions might do the job when you’re adult. But it is all still make believe. You’re not taking on Darth Vader in your living room, you’re waving a toy and making “vrm vrrm”…
Over a hundred thousand years ago, Neanderthals used tar to bind objects together, yet scientists have struggled to understand how these ancient humans, with their limited knowledge and resources, were able to produce this sticky substance. A new experiment reveals the likely technique used by Neanderthals, and how they converted tree bark into an ancient…
If you tried visiting WikiLeaks late Wednesday evening, you might’ve gotten the impression that the website was hacked. For now at least, that doesn’t appear to be the case. For some users, wikileaks.org appeared to be defaced. The phrase “OURMINE” was just suddenly there, splashed across a blackground in red and white letters. Above it…
Ricoh has been in the 360-degree camera game for a long time—way before johnny-come-latelies like Samsung and Nikon. Things started back in 2013 with the original Ricoh Theta and now four years later, the company is back with the $430 Theta V. New features include 4K video and spatial audio capture, however, even with all…
Sony’s MDR-1000X headphones do it all. They’ve got best-in-class noise-cancelling, impressive sound, a sleek design, and loads of app-powered goodies. That’s precisely why I was excited, when Sony showed me the new WH-1000xM2. They’re just like the old 1000X headphones but better. Much to my dismay, they’re also $50 cheaper. Now I wouldn’t say all…
Apple doesn’t release new products very often, but when it does, people pay attention. In fact, it’s probably safe to say that the gadget gurus at Sony were taking notes. The Japanese company just announced two products that could safely be called ripoffs of Apple’s newest products: a slick set of wireless earbuds and a…
Like clockwork, another IFA means another batch of new Sony phones to check out. And while recent years has seen the company abandon its Z-series branding to dabble with another letter at the end of the alphabet before coming back around to Z again, there’s a growing feeling that, at least in the U.S., Sony…
Long gone are the days when robot vacuums would simply bump their way around your home while they randomly cleaned. But even with upgraded smarts and better sensors, modern robovacs can still wander into places you don’t want them, so Neato is introducing a potentially brilliant new feature letting you limit the travels of its…
Despite attempts by companies like Apple and Fossil to improve their looks, no one really wears a smartwatch as a fashion accessory. Devotees of connected timepieces wear them as either a genuine devotion to fitness, or an unhealthy addiction to notifications. But Garmin’s new vívomove HR looks like like a classic analog watch, and only…
For years, Logitech’s productivity mice have been among the best, with devices like the MX Master 2S helping to bring PC and Mac users together thanks to a cool software solution called, Flow which allows users to use the same mice with multiple computers at once. But for a long time, the company never had…
For the last couple years, fall has signaled the release of LG’s V-series phones—the kind of big, kind of funky phones that usually feel less like an attempt to put together a handset that people would actually want to buy, and more like an attempt to see how far LG could push itself. In 2015,…
Parts of Twitter lit up on Wednesday evening with the news the Federal Communications Commission, which is now headed by Donald Trump appointee and unflinching net neutrality opponent Ajit Pai, had posted a statement insulting the chairman in the grossest possible terms. The message—which is not real—is hosted on the FCC website, and purported to…
