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Illegal Price-Gouging Runs Rampant After Disasters. The LA Fires Proved It

Last January, a series of massive wildfires broke out across the Los Angeles area, fueled by high winds and dry temperatures. The fires raged for weeks, incinerating entire neighborhoods in the wealthy Pacific Palisades and in middle-class Altadena. They killed at least 30 people and destroyed at least 10,000 homes. As the embers cooled, thousands of displaced Angelenos scrambled to find new housing in a rental market that was already among the nation’s toughest. They scoured Zillow and Airbnb

Amazon and Apple best deliver on affordable housing promises, as other tech giants falter

One of the downsides of tech giants creating Silicon Valley was the affordable housing crisis it spurred. That has made it next to impossible for those on typical salaries to rent or buy in the area. Apple was one of a number of tech companies which pledged to help out back in 2019, and so far has delivered more than most … The growth of tech companies within the Bay Area led to dramatically increased demand for housing, alongside price pressure created by the relatively high salaries paid to

Fairphone’s new cables and chargers are both faster and tougher

Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Repairable phone manufacturer Fairphone has announced a new range of USB cables and chargers. While they’re not user-repairable, the company says that they’re more durable and sustainably manufactured than its previous peripherals. And even for people without a Fairphone device, they should make for a more affordable entry point to its more ethical take on tech. The new USB cables are all C-to-C, but includ

Android 16’s support for external keyboards blew my mind

Rita El Khoury / Android Authority It’s been years since I last tried to pair a Bluetooth or USB keyboard with my Android phone. After being a physical QWERTY proponent for years and hating on touchscreen typing, I wholly but slowly embraced pecking on a glass surface. There were a few times I wished I had a keyboard for my Android tablets, but it wasn’t frequent enough to make me pay for one. That changed a few weeks ago when I started testing the Clicks Keyboard with my Pixel 9 Pro, which is

Black Hat 2025: Why your AI tools are becoming the next insider threat

Want smarter insights in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get only what matters to enterprise AI, data, and security leaders. Subscribe Now Cloud intrusions increased by 136% in the past six months. North Korean operatives infiltrated 320 companies using AI-generated identities. Scattered Spider now deploys ransomware in under 24 hours. However, at Black Hat 2025, the security industry demonstrated that it finally has an answer that works: agentic AI, delivering measurable resu

States and cities decimated SROs, Americans' lowest-cost housing option

Overview Low-cost micro-units, often called single-room occupancies, or SROs, were once a reliable form of housing for the United States’ poorest residents of, and newcomers to, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and many other major U.S. cities. Well into the 20th century, SROs were the least expensive option on the housing market, providing a small room with a shared bathroom and sometimes a shared kitchen for a price that is unimaginable today—as little as $100 to $300 a month (in 2025 dollar

States and Cities Decimated Americans' Lowest-Cost Housing Option

Overview Low-cost micro-units, often called single-room occupancies, or SROs, were once a reliable form of housing for the United States’ poorest residents of, and newcomers to, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and many other major U.S. cities. Well into the 20th century, SROs were the least expensive option on the housing market, providing a small room with a shared bathroom and sometimes a shared kitchen for a price that is unimaginable today—as little as $100 to $300 a month (in 2025 dollar

Realizing we needed two sorts of alerts for our temperature monitoring

You're using a tool with a too-generic User-Agent You're probably reading this page because you've attempted to access some part of my blog (Wandering Thoughts) or CSpace, the wiki thing it's part of. Unfortunately whatever you're using to do so has a HTTP User-Agent header value that is too generic or otherwise excessively suspicious. Unfortunately, as of early 2025 there's a plague of high volume crawlers (apparently in part to gather data for LLM training) that behave like this. To reduce th

This retro camcorder upgrades Super 8 film cameras with modern conveniences

is a senior reporter who’s been covering and reviewing the latest gadgets and tech since 2006, but has loved all things electronic since he was a kid. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Camp Snap, a brand known for its budget-friendly screen-free digital cameras, has announced its first video camera. The new Camp Snap CS-8’s design was inspired by the Super 8mm film cameras released by companies like Kodak and Canon in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Its

Topics: camera camp cs snap using

Deal: Only have one HDMI input? Multiply it with the Anker HDMI Switch

Some monitors and TVs only have a single HDMI port. This is fine if your entertainment system is simple, but if you have multiple devices, it can get really annoying to plug and unplug the HDMI port constantly. This is when something like the Anker HDMI Switch comes in handy. It can turn one HDMI input into two, and you can take it home for a mere $9.99 right now! Buy the Anker HDMI Switch for just $9.99 ($10 off) This offer is available from Amazon. It’s a “limited time deal,” meaning it shoul

People are using ChatGPT to write their text messages - here's how you can tell

Kirill Stytsenko/Getty Images ZDNET's key takeaways People are using AI to write sensitive messages to loved ones. Detecting AI-generated text is becoming more difficult as chatbots evolve. Some tech leaders have promoted this use of AI in their marketing strategies. Everyone loves receiving a handwritten letter, but those take time, patience, effort, and sometimes multiple drafts to compose. Most of us at one time or another have given a Hallmark card to a loved one or friend. Not because

3D Line Drawings

This is an experiment examing how to create a 3D line drawing of a scene. In this post, I will describe how this can be done by augmenting the process of generating 3D Gaussian Splats 3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering, by Kerbl et al. and leveraging a process to transform photographs into Informative Line Drawings Learning to Generate Line Drawings that Convey Geometry and Semantics, by Chan, Isola & Durand. Examples The majority of scenes shown above are generated u

Verizon is cutting loyalty discounts, raising fees, and removing perks, all at once (Updated)

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority TL;DR Verizon is removing loyalty discounts, which could increase monthly bills by $10 to $25 per line. Several service charges are also increasing, while Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass perks are ending. Despite no base plan price changes, the overall monthly bill will rise for a lot of users due to the loss of discounts and the hike in fees. Update, August 04, 2025 (09:28 AM ET): Verizon has shared the following statement through a spokesperson on the

Why I'm Leaving NixOS After a Year?

Why I'm Leaving NixOS After a Year? Around a year ago, I published a blog post explaining my overall experience Switching from Arch to NixOS. You can read it if you’re interested in my early experiences, but, to give you a spoiler, that post ends with me saying: Unfortunately, though, I don’t think the benefits I’ve gotten in this one month of using NixOS so far justified the cost I’ve initially spent and continue to spend learning Nix and NixOS. — Ultimately, whether the benefits of learnin

Verizon is cutting loyalty discounts, raising fees, and removing perks, all at once

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority TL;DR Verizon is removing loyalty discounts, which could increase monthly bills by $10 to $25 per line. Several service charges are also increasing, while Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass perks are ending. Despite no base plan price changes, the overall monthly bill will rise for a lot of users due to the loss of discounts and the hike in fees. Verizon has recently been in the news for revamping its customer support experience, but also for losing 51,000

If you use a password manager app, you probably aren’t using it right

Andy Walker / Android Authority Password managers have their purpose set in their names: to manage passwords. Right? Wrong — they’re meant to do so much more. I used to be in the same boat as many of you probably are, using password managers exclusively for generating and storing strong passwords. Then one day, my life took a wonderful turn: I started using my password manager for more than just passwords. It may sound silly at first, but it’s made my life so much better and more convenient.

Flourishing chemosynthetic life at the greatest depths of hadal trenches

The investigation was carried out during TS42 cruise between 7 July and 18 August 2024 by RV Tan Suo Yi Hao with the full-ocean-depth human-occupied vehicle Fendouzhe, which was fitted with hydraulically powered manipulators on two swing arms. Under the guidance of operators in the human-occupied vehicle, the arms efficiently acquired the samples and stored them safely in a biological box and a geological box of the vehicle. Processing of benthic fauna and sea floor video footage Upon retrieva

People still use our old-fashioned Unix login servers

You're using a tool with a too-generic User-Agent You're probably reading this page because you've attempted to access some part of my blog (Wandering Thoughts) or CSpace, the wiki thing it's part of. Unfortunately whatever you're using to do so has a HTTP User-Agent header value that is too generic or otherwise excessively suspicious. Unfortunately, as of early 2025 there's a plague of high volume crawlers (apparently in part to gather data for LLM training) that behave like this. To reduce th

Show HN: NaturalCron – Human-Readable Scheduling for .NET (With Fluent Builder)

NaturalCron NaturalCron is a human-readable scheduling engine for .NET. It lets you write schedules in a clear and intuitive way instead of memorizing cryptic cron strings. Why? Because memorizing 0 18 * * 1-5 is harder than understanding every day between monday and friday at 6:00pm . Readable schedules reduce mistakes, write expressions that you can understand at a glance. Note: NaturalCron is not a cron converter. It’s a new expressive syntax for better readability. 💡 Why use NaturalCron

Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Samsung revise advertising over exaggerated AI claims after regulator scrutiny

Cutting corners: As the landscape for AI-powered products evolves, companies face growing demands to deliver not just innovation, but clearly supported and honestly communicated claims about what their technology can actually do. "When you market AI like magic, you're going to invite scrutiny," said George Heudorfer, an adjunct professor at the University of New Haven's Pompea College of Business. "Sometimes that exaggeration isn't just puffery. It's a performance claim, and you need to back tha

Yearly Organiser

👋 Hello! If you print this page, you’ll get a nifty calendar that displays all of the year’s dates on a single page. It will automatically fit on a single sheet of paper of any size. For best results, adjust your print settings to landscape orientation and disable the header and footer. Take in the year all at once. Fold it up and carry it with you. Jot down your notes on it. Plan things out and observe the passage of time. Above all else, be kind to others. Looking for 2026? Here you go! Mad

Amazon already plans to put ads in Alexa+ conversations

Which would you rather have: an AI-powered Alexa+ that advertises to you, or an AI-lacking Siri that doesn’t? Hopefully Apple can sort out its AI struggles and users never have to face that decision. But if you’re an Alexa+ user, it sounds like more ads are definitely in your future. Amazon CEO touts opportunities for advertising through Alexa+ Amazon reported its quarterly earnings this week, and the AI-powered Alexa+ unsurprisingly came up. What perhaps was a surprise is how fast Amazon CEO

9 things you shouldn't use AI for at work

Mensent Photography / Getty Images ZDNET's key takeaways Sometimes an AI can cause you or your company irreparable harm. Sharing confidential data with an AI could have legal consequences. Don't let an AI talk to customers without supervision. A few weeks ago, I shared with you "9 programming tasks you shouldn't hand off to AI - and why." It's full of well-reasoned suggestions and recommendations for how to avoid having an AI produce code that could ruin your whole day. Then, my editor and

The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong

The sharpest criticisms of the book Abundance have sometimes come from the antitrust movement. This group, mostly on the left, insists that the biggest problems in America typically come from monopolies and the corruption of big business. In housing, for example, Ezra Klein and I write that a key bottleneck to homebuilding in the last few decades has been legal barriers to construction, including zoning laws and minimum lot sizes. This is a mainstream view supported by economists and scholars w

Amazon CEO wants to put ads in your Alexa+ conversations

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sees an opportunity to deliver ads to users during their conversations with the company’s AI-powered digital assistant, Alexa+, he said during Amazon’s second-quarter earnings call Thursday. “People are excited about the devices that they can buy from us that has Alexa+ enabled in it. People do a lot of shopping [with Alexa+]; it’s a delightful shopping experience that will keep getting better,” said Jassy on the call with investors and Wall Street analysts. “I think over

The Anti-Abundance Critique on Housing Is Dead Wrong

The sharpest criticisms of the book Abundance have sometimes come from the antitrust movement. This group, mostly on the left, insists that the biggest problems in America typically come from monopolies and the corruption of big business. In housing, for example, Ezra Klein and I write that a key bottleneck to homebuilding in the last few decades has been legal barriers to construction, including zoning laws and minimum lot sizes. This is a mainstream view supported by economists and scholars w

The hype is the product

Large publicly traded tech companies seem to no longer consider their customers – that is, people and organizations who actually buy their products or pay for access to their services – their core focus. The focus has instead turned towards the stock price. Their real clients, the entities they really care about, are the stockholders. Reasons are many, perhaps one of them being that people making decisions tend to own stock options or have bonuses tied to stock performance of the companies they

The Hype is the Product

Large publicly traded tech companies seem to no longer consider their customers – that is, people and organizations who actually buy their products or pay for access to their services – their core focus. The focus has instead turned towards the stock price. Their real clients, the entities they really care about, are the stockholders. Reasons are many, perhaps one of them being that people making decisions tend to own stock options or have bonuses tied to stock performance of the companies they

A month using XMPP (using Snikket) for every call and chat (2023)

A month using XMPP (using Snikket) for every call and chat 2023-08-31 For the last month, I’ve been using XMPP (using Snikket) for every call and chat between me and my wife Sandra, at least. Sandra and I switched from using Matrix to using XMPP a while back. Matrix was pretty good for messaging, although quite a few encryption-related issues, but it - or my installation of it, possibly - was unreliable for audio and video. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it would not. Moving to XMPP - usi

With iOS 26, Safari will counter one of the web’s most invasive tracking methods

Introduced for Private Browsing sessions in Safari 17.0, Advanced Fingerprinting Protection was also optionally available for regular non-private sessions. With iOS 26, it will be enabled by default. Here’s what that means. Starting with iOS 26 (as well as iPad 26, and macOS 26), Apple is flipping the switch on Advanced Fingerprinting Protection for all browsing sessions, not just Private Browsing. From Apple’s iOS 26 press release: “Browsing in Safari gets even more private with advanced fing