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The U.S. Justice Department is said to be investigating the questionable sale of stock by Equifax executives in advance of the company’s public announcement of its massive data breach. The…

US Justice Department investigating Equifax execs who dumped shares before announcing breach

What happens when a mad scientist’s musicbots rebel against their own precision? You get “Automatica”, the latest video from Nigel Stanford, who scored 13 million views controlling water, fire, and…

Watch this robot rock band destroy their instruments

Those hoping to find out if their Social Security number and other identifying info was stolen, along with a potential 143 million other American’s data won’t find answers from Equifax.…

PSA: no matter what, Equifax may tell you you’ve been impacted by the hack

A group of hackers used a bug earlier this week to scrape the phone numbers and email addresses of six million Instagram accounts and are now selling that information on…

Hackers claim to have personal info of millions of Instagram accounts, including celebs

Since Trump took office, how many times have you asked yourself “What fresh hell is this?” Today is one of those days I feel I’m asking every five minutes. Our…

The White House has removed an important report on sexual violence from its website

It’s not really clear just what “humanoid” robots are actually for. I’ve seen them do all kinds of things, but almost none of them well; at our recent Robotics event…

Pepper the robot can perform funerary rites, but it shouldn’t

The “Ludicrous” Teslas are ludicrous indeed. And this video posted to YouTube by DragTimes is just the latest in a series of evidentiary exhibits that proves it. In the video,…

For its latest trick, watch this Tesla Model X smoke a Lamborghini supercar

On KQED’s Forum show today host Queena Sook Kim discussed venture capital’s sexist culture. But during the call, someone claiming to be a VC emailed the show to say he would…

Someone claiming to be a VC admits he doesn’t hire women out of fear he’ll get sued

Correction below Stories of countesses bathing in virgin blood, or vampiric nobles sucking the juice out of the young, have captured our attention for centuries. But when stories started coming out…

No, Peter Thiel is not harvesting the blood of the young

At least one Uber board member didn’t seem to get the memo about sex discrimination and the changes Uber is trying to make from within. In an audio taping of…

Uber board member gets sexist at a sexism apology all-hands

Uber has fired more than 20 people involved in a harassment probe, TechCrunch has confirmed. The ride share company began investigating at least 215 employees after the company was hit…

Uber has fired more than 20 people over harassment probe

Joining an overwhelming chorus that includes most Americans, several major businesses in the U.S. and much of the global community, several investors have come out swinging against President Trump’s decision…

Venture investors blast US decision to withdraw from Paris Climate Accord

John Oliver has again fired off his quick wit at the new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and the Trump administration for trying to roll back Obama-era Net Neutrality rules. This…

John Oliver reminds us that Net Neutrality is still under siege

Well, this is something else. A bunch of mostly male Uber employees decided to get together to spray taint (paint) a wall in San Francisco, basically begging people to reinstall…

Uber employees thought it’d be a good idea to paint a ‘#Undelete’ mural

For every bad idea, there’s a crowdsourcing campaign with a soapbox and a big-ass megaphone, ready to make it even worse. Interested? In case you missed it, it’s not too…

Vote now to eliminate your favorite government agency!

Making the character models you see in games is a very involved process, and as a few recent titles have shown, the faces especially are hard as hell to do…

Unreal’s ‘photorealistic character sample’ is like a Rob Lowe from the uncanny valley

We’ve all been there: You turn up to the gate and there are more passengers than there are seats on the plane. You wouldn’t be the first person to think,…

Why do airlines overbook their flights?

Corporate identities! We love ’em. But boy is it hard to come up with good ones. Sounds like we decided to go with “Oath: A Verizon Company.” We already have…

Pros and cons of “Oath: A Verizon Company”

And a bar called SPiN, where photos of them playing ping-pong have the tech media in a great mood this Friday morning. The reason? At the same time as Houston’s…

Houston, Kalanick and Zuck walk into a headline

Mike Rothenberg has been in a heap of trouble over a series of purportedly fraudulent transactions within his investment firm Rothenberg Ventures and his virtual reality startup River Studios. Now…

Transcend VR sues investor Mike Rothenberg for fraud and breach of contract

And so the transition of power begins. First up is the WhiteHouse.gov site where several pages are now changing or altogether disappearing — including a page on lesbian, gay, bisexual…

The White House’s LGBT rights page has disappeared

Furlenco’s new “Pod” might just be the most outrageous product hitting the market this holiday season. The Bangalore, India based furniture rental startup has always had a penchant for targeting the…

This bed with built-in subwoofer, TV, lamp and power outlets may be your last purchase, ever

The Wynn Las Vegas hotel is adding an Amazon Echo to every one of its 4,748 rooms. A first for a hotel to do and a great way to market…

Amazon Echo may be listening in on your conversations in your Vegas hotel room
Privacy

Secret is coming back

8:43 pm PST • November 12, 2016

Secret, the anonymous sharing app developed by David Byttow and Chrys Bader-Wechseler, looks to be on its way to resurrection. The app was part of a wave of anonymous apps…

Secret is coming back

The internet found a new way to amuse itself in the final hours of the presidential election cycle. Basically, there was a glitch on the press release page of Donald Trump’s…

For a brief, glorious moment, you could do weird things to Donald Trump’s website

This day will be a stressful one for many Americans, so naturally we turn to the internet: to paraphrase Homer, the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems.…

Need some good news today? A mutant snail just found love via Twitter

Do you, like many others, wake up each morning, gaze upon your Amazon Echo, and think, “Damn it, Echo. Instead of a shiny cylinder, why can’t you be a singing…

Finally, at long last, someone hacked Amazon’s Alexa into one of those singing fish

Hillary mentions internet

2:24 pm PDT • October 13, 2016

Hillary says Trump “makes you just want to look at cat GIFs”, and she even pronounced it correctly.* Hillary Clinton appealed to the tech crowd of San Francisco today at…

Hillary mentions internet

The debate over what to do about San Francisco’s homeless population has been building for awhile among the many startups and residents here. But now tech billionaires Ron Conway, Michael…

Billionaire tech investors support divisive plan to ban San Francisco’s homeless camps

As we first reported last month, Mike Rothenberg, the beleaguered founder of the San Francisco-based venture firm Rothenberg Ventures, has been involved in an ongoing SEC inquiry into possibly deceptive financial practices…

Mike Rothenberg allegedly wired $5.2 million from Silicon Valley Bank without investor permission