Society

Network security appliances like firewalls are meant to keep hackers out. Instead, digital intruders are increasingly targeting them as the weak link that lets them pillage the very systems those devices are meant to protect. In the case of one hacking campaign over recent months, Cisco is now revealing that its firewalls served as beachheads…

President Joe Biden signed a bill on Wednesday that could ban TikTok from operating within the United States as early as next year. After years of trying, the US House of Representatives and the Senate managed to pass a measure that would force TikTok to divest from ByteDance, its Chinese owner, within a year, or…

A virtual private network (VPN) is like a protective tunnel you can use to pass through a public network, protecting your data from outside eyes. Whether you’re worried about hiding your browsing activity from your internet service provider so it doesn’t sell your data to advertisers, or you want to stay safe on a public…

The pathway leading into Rabbit’s venue for the launch event of the R1, an artificial-intelligence-powered device announced at CES 2024, was paved with gadgets from the past. First was the orange JVC Videosphere, then the Sony Walkman, a Tamagotchi, a transparent Game Boy Color—heck, even the original Pokédex toy from 1998. At the very end…

The US Senate passed a bill late Tuesday that allows the government to ban TikTok within a year if it doesn’t make meaningful progress toward separating from its China-based owner, ByteDance. President Joe Biden said in a statement after the vote that he would sign it into law on Wednesday. The version of TikTok impacted…

In 2022 I wrote an op-ed for NBC News Think about leg hair, of all things. The piece detailed a monthlong experiment during which I stopped shaving. Aside from one paragraph about bodily autonomy and Roe v. Wade, I thought it was a mild article. Boring, even. The internet disagreed. Within an hour of publication,…

In the fall of 2020, bored and restless in Covid-restricted Spain, Ángel Guerra doodled a dream car. The automotive designer, then 38, wanted to make a tribute to his first four-wheeled love: the time-traveling DeLorean DMC-12 that rolled out of a cloud of steam in Back to the Future. The sketch that took shape on…

When Mayor Brandon Johnson announced in February that Chicago would stop using the gunshot-detection system known as ShotSpotter by year’s end, local activists were elated. Ever since 2021, when the police fatally shot 13-year-old Adam Toledo while responding to a ShotSpotter alert, the Stop ShotSpotter Campaign has been pressuring the city to ditch the technology.…

On Tuesday, the Senate passed a massive foreign aid package that included an ultimatum for TikTok: Divest or be banned from operating within the US. The package was approved by the House of Representatives on Saturday, and President Joe Biden said that he intends to sign the bill on Wednesday. “Even as our social media…

More US workers will soon be free to leave their employers to work for rivals, thanks to a new federal rule that will block the long-standing practice of locking in workers with noncompete agreements. The US Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday issued a final rule that bans most noncompetes nationwide. The agency estimated that by…