"If you have multiple Google Homes today in your house, sometimes it'll answer in the wrong place," Chandra pointed out. That's been one of my biggest complaints about the Assistant, and I vehemently agreed when he brought that up. Thankfully, Chandra is aware of the issue and said, "We're working on that.""But that, in my…

Elena Lacey; Getty ImagesA lawsuit filed by the former information security director of Linden Lab—the company behind the online virtual world Second Life, which, yes, is still a thing—claims the company mishandled sensitive user data and turned a blind eye to simulated acts of child molestation and the potential for money laundering.Paris Martineau covers platforms,…

Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesIf lightning strikes a few hundred miles from the North Pole, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Yes, because there’s a global array of sensors that’s always listening, pinpointing lightning strikes in time and space from as far away as 6,000 miles.This past weekend the North…

Facebook doesn't have the most stellar privacy and security track record, especially given that many of its notable gaffes were avoidable. But with billions of users and a gargantuan platform to defend, it's not easy to catch every flaw in the company's 100 million lines of code. So four years ago, Facebook engineers began building…

In the National Football League's kingdom of stunted progress, what you see is not always what you get. For decades the NFL has tried to scrub difficult political and social discourse from its brand. This has meant keeping the games going even as the league faced everything from domestic abuse cases to brain injuries. But…

Imagine a couple of caffeine-addled biochemistry majors late at night in their dorm kitchen cooking up a new medicine that proves remarkably effective at soothing colds but inadvertently causes permanent behavioral changes. Those who ingest it become radically politicized and shout uncontrollably in casual conversation. Still, the concoction sells to billions of people. This sounds…

These are our favorite Windows Notebooks, MacBooks, and Chromebooks.Buying any laptop is a big decision: You may end up using it for years before buying another, and there are many makes, models, and chip configurations to choose from. Lucky for you, we’ve tried out many of the new models in the past year. These are…

Rocket Lab and other space outfits are hoping to catch their spent boosters midair in a bid to make launches cheaper and faster.Rocket LabIn the span of just four years, reusable rockets have gone from never-been-done to almost routine, at least at SpaceX. Blue Origin was the first to land a rocket booster, in 2015,…

We love a good how-to, especially one that saves early-stage startup founders money and positions them for mad success. We’re talking about how to apply to be a TC Top…

Chinese mobile-phone and device maker Transsion is teaming up with Kenya’s Wapi Capital to source and fund early-stage African fintech startups. Headquartered in Shenzhen, Transsion is a top-seller of smartphones in…