We learn in email 101 that hyperlinks from unfamiliar senders are breeding grounds for scams. Microsoft has warned against clicking on foreign links for decades. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has repeatedly cautioned Americans to be wary of malware and phishing expeditions. Last year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) alerted consumers to a new cyber…

Plastic is everywhere. No, really, it is everywhere. Tiny bits of plastic waste, called microplastic, have come to permeate nearly every part of the planet. We drink it in our water. We breathe it in the air. It is inescapable. On this episode of the Gadget Lab podcast, WIRED science writer Matt Simon joins Mike,…

Henry the sex robot is the “mind” of a “woman” trapped in the “body” of a “man.” When you talk to Henry, you’re really talking to an artificial intelligence database Realbotix developed for its female predecessor, Harmony. To masculinize Henry, Realbotix founder and CEO, Matt McMullen, and five other “robot heads” sit with Henry doing…

Not so long ago, stories about cyberwar started with scary hypotheticals: What if state-sponsored hackers were to launch widespread attacks that blacked out entire cities? Crippled banks and froze ATMs across a country? Shut down shipping firms, oil refineries, and factories? Paralyzed airports and hospitals?Today, these scenarios are no longer hypotheticals: Every one of those…

A northeasterly breeze blows across the football field at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. To me the wind provides some glorious relief: It's the middle of the day in the middle of July, and a heat wave has just descended on the region. But to Harrison Butker, who is standing with me at the 40-yard line,…

The bitter fight against robocalls has raged for years, but today it gets a boost from significant players: attorneys general from all 50 US states and the District of Columbia, working in concert with a dozen major telecoms, including AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Comcast.The group has collectively agreed to a set of anti-robocalling "principles," which…

The scene was organized chaos. Rows upon rows of artists displaying their latest work, engrossed in conversation with fans. Panels of podcasters and performers. So much cosplay. It was pretty much what you’d expect to see at a comic convention—but a whole lot gayer.This is Flame Con, the world’s largest queer comic convention, a two-day…

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week we were helmed by Kate Clark, Alex Wilhelm, and yet another extra…

Some eight months after it was reported that Ping Identity’s owners Vista Equity had hired bankers to explore a public listing, today Ping Identity took the plunge: the Colorado-based online…