California has become the third state to pass legislation that makes it unlawful for companies to ask its workers to forfeit their social media account passwords. On Friday, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Assembly Bill 1844 (AB 1844) and Senate Bill 1349 (SB 1349). AB 1844 protects employees from having to give their passwords…
A rumor that NBC News projected Elizabeth Warren as the winner of the race for Massachusetts’ open Senate seat went viral on Twitter Tuesday evening, duping some news sites into publishing stories about the news. NBC News hadn’t projected her to be victorious at the time of the rumor, which came about at approximately 9…
The amount of time Americans spend on mobile devices and social networking sites is accelerating rapidly — and their news consumption habits are shifting accordingly. In a Pew Research Center survey of 3,003 U.S. adults, 17% said they accessed news on cell phone or tablet device the day before. Even more — 20% —…
Right as the U.S. government shut down on Oct. 1, the new national health-care exchange went live at healthcare.gov. Intended for people who want to buy health insurance under the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, the website failed from the start. It was unusable to hundreds of thousands of Americans who wanted to enroll.…
Power failures aren’t that common in the U.S., but they are more likely to happen in the summer, when people crank up the air conditioning. Back in August 2003 a blackout covering much of the northeast happened because the control systems for the grid system did exactly what they were designed to do — but…
Image: Mary Altaffer/Associated Press The formerly troubled airline industry has rebounded to record profits, but don’t expect that to bring down the price of your next roundtrip ticket. The average round trip airfare ticket within the United States, including taxes, reached $509.15 in the first six months of this year, up nearly $14 from the…
Image: Mashable McLEAN, Va. — Police in Virginia said Thursday that they no longer will pursue efforts to take sexually explicit photos of a 17-year-old in an effort to prove a sexting case against him. Police and prosecutors faced a wave of criticism following media reports that they had obtained a warrant to take photos…
The giant oarfish is the longest bony fish in the world, measuring — according to some reports — about 56 feet from tip to tail, although recorded lengths are somewhat more modest. Its size and its snake-like shape suggest that it may have been the source of at least some legends of sea serpents. In…
Dropbox is the latest tech company to have fallen victim to a security breach, and there’s a good chance your account is at risk. But unlike recent hacks on sites such as Yahoo, LinkedIn and eHarmony, account names and passwords weren’t posted online, making it more difficult to check via a tool if yours was…
An archaeological team sets the stegomastodon head right side up in Elephant Butte State Park outside Albuquerque, New Mexico.Image: New Mexico Museum of Natural History Randall Gann Most bachelor parties are hazy memories of booze-addled debauchery. But one group of guys stumbled onto something lasting longer than a hangover. The men were hiking through Elephant…
Payphones in New York City have largely been made obsolete by the fact that almost everybody’s got a cellphone for staying in touch on-the-go. Luckily for the long-forgotten phones that still dot the city’s streets, they’re about to get a twenty-first-century upgrade. New York City’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications introduced on Wednesday the…
Here’s another one to add to the charming Elena Kagan anecdote file providing a wonderful glimpse into how the least transparent of the three branches of government operates. Speaking during an interview at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, D.C., Wednesday night, Supreme Court Associate Justice Kagan elaborated…
Oh, White House. Haven’t you learned that any and all images on Twitter can and will be Photoshopped to use against you? The President and his social media team learned the Internet’s version of Miranda rights the hard way Thursday, when they tweeted an image of Obama holding a sign prompting people to sign up…
Tumblr — home of the blogger and land of the .GIF — is planning a unique, true-to-style approach to covering the upcoming presidential debates: it’s live-GIFing them. That’s right: As potentially viral moments happen on stage, Tumblr’s team — along with a reporter from The Guardian — will be turning debate video into GIFs at…
Will Barack Obama win another four years in the Oval Office or will Mitt Romney be the country’s next president? You can make your predictions with the “You Decide 2012 Map,” a new iPad app from Fox News. The app lets you make your own election forecasts based on the electoral college — just tap…
US President Barack Obama holds a press conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, DC, August 28, 2014. Image: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images President Obama, likely knowing full well that stricter fashion rules go into place following Labor Day, wore a tan suit to a press conference on Thursday. The…
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Twitter account saw two sudden and massive spikes in new followers over the weekend. The spikes were first noticed by Zach Green of 140elect.com, a blog which monitors Twitter trends relating to the 2012 presidential election. According to Green’s data, Romney “was gaining around 3000-4000 new followers per day for…
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has unveiled his plans for the future of NASA and American space exploration, unleashing a blistering attack on President Barack Obama in the process. In a policy paper released on Sept. 22, Romney and running mate Paul Ryan pledge to secure the nation’s global leadership position in space, which, they…
The Federal Trade Commission is considering an update to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a 1998 bill designed to protect children’s online privacy. Most of COPPA’s regulations are geared toward websites specifically designed for children under 13, such as Club Penguin. COPPA’s also the reason that children under 13 can’t sign up for…
Holiday shopping is about to kick into high gear, and retailers are ramping up efforts to capture sales at multiple touchpoints — not just their stores. Google’s retail team, in fact, is calling this the first “Nonline” shopping season, contending that consumers, accompanied by smartphones wherever they shop, no longer see a divide between online…