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Six years after a startup called Uber made it easier than ever for anyone to make money driving their car, a startup called Cargo is making it easier than ever for anyone who makes money driving their car to also make money running a convenience store. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So, I was at Comic-Con International in San Diego in 2008, the year of Twilight and True Blood. I’d never heard of either then—a blind spot, I admit—but that year something changed. Women have always attended SDCC, of course, but this year the lines switchbacking outside Hall H, the high altar of the annual nerd pilgrimage, were majority female for the first time I'd ever seen. Learn more about yo...

Just six months after joining Apple, Sal Soghoian's job was already on the line. In July of 1997, then-CEO Gil Amelio had just been ousted and the company's stock was plummeting. To right the ship, Apple brought Steve Jobs back as the company's interim CEO. When Jobs took over, he went on a campaign to salvage Apple's remaining resources by hacking and slashing under-performing departments. The pr...

Elon Musk is tweeting up a storm, and he’s loving every minute of it. With 21 million followers, Musk has emerged as one of the defining Twitter voices of 2018, someone who will happily and democratically engage with anybody who @s him. Like other gazillionaires before him—Rupert Murdoch, Marc Andreessen—he’s found in Twitter a fun and unfiltered platform for self-expression. Unlike Murdoch and An...

What do you look like when you’re excited? How about a little nervous? Bored? Full-on freaked out? If you happen to hop on one of the two very special shuttles that are now running one-mile loops around the University of Michigan’s North Campus, a bunch of people with fancy degrees may very soon find out. Those shuttles, you see, will drive themselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podca...

Christie Hemm Klok’s 3-year-old son couldn't get enough of firefighters. He had a toy engine truck, a plastic helmet he wore all the time, and a collection of books showing firefighters dousing fires and saving lives. But most of them were men, and the lack of women bugged Hemm Klok. "There was maybe one female in any of the books," she says, "and she had short hair and maybe a pink shirt on." Hem...

Ready for the summer? We are! Whether you have road trips, camping, or other outdoor activities coming up, it's a great idea to bring a computer or tablet with you. Throw your itinerary in a doc, use it for editing photos on the go, and post your latest brilliant missive to your blog once you get to the hotel. We have discounts on a Lenovo notebook and an awesome Apple iPad that are worth looking...

The scooters have disappeared from San Francisco. In anticipation of regulations that took effect today, Bird, Lime Bike, and Spin have warehoused their fleets of the shared electric two-wheelers. They won’t be able to redeploy them unless the city grants them a special permit, which could take the better part of the month. Good riddance, many will say. The city should cap their numbers, control t...

The internet makes sense in metaphors. Superhighways, clouds, pages, links. Facebook is a town square. Wikipedia, a kind of brain. So what about 4chan, the imageboard site where users post just about anything, with anonymity and impunity? If you trust 4channers themselves, it’s the internet’s soul. 4chan has never been a nice place. Most people don’t spend time there, but most people feel its effe...

A tidal wave of change is barreling toward the auto industry—and as with any wicked swell, some of the surfers in the water will ride to glory, others will wipe out. The difference between them isn’t necessarily who has the right board or the experience or the natural skills. Success or failure can simply depend on who’s in the right position to catch the wave. Learn more about your ad choices. Vi...

People seeking a set of wheels traditionally had two options: buy or lease. But the advent of ride hailing turned the next generation of drivers into backseat riders. Now app-based subscriptions—think car sharing that’s paid by the month, not the hour—are vying for consumers who fall between Uber addicts and car owners. Car sharing is projected to grow globally from 5.8 million users in 2015 to 35...

First off, let's get one thing straight: The "console wars" don't exist. The idea that Sony's PlayStation and Microsoft's Xbox are engaged in some kind of dogged, winner-take-all battle is both outdated and toxic. It lets fans indulge in the idea that they're noble partisans, which in turn gives them an excuse to say offensive things about their so-called opponents. The videogame market is a big o...

The NES Classic Mini is an elusive little beast. The teeny tiny Nintendo Entertainment System packed with 30 classic 8-bit games originally hit store shelves in late 2016 ... and promptly sold out. It's been nigh impossible to find ever since, and was sent off into the sunset in favor of Nintendo's Super NES Classic. We weren't thrilled with Nintendo's decision to discontinue it. Learn more about...

On Sunday night, around the same time Westworld hit HBO and Game 7 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals aired on ESPN, people watched the season finale of Killing Eve. A lot of people. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Going on vacation? You probably already know how to set an out-of-office auto reply for your email. That's great for letting your coworkers know that no, you cannot make it to that meeting, because you're off sipping mojitos and sunbathing in the Caribbean. But what about when your friends text you? There used to be easier ways of telling people we were "away" from your devices. Learn more about y...

In medicine, false positives are expensive, scary, and even painful. Yes, the doctor eventually tells you that the follow-up biopsy after that bloop on the mammogram puts you in the clear. But the intervening weeks are excruciating. A false negative is no better: “Go home, you’re fine, those headaches are nothing to worry about. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So, Solo: A Star Wars Story is finally in theaters. It’s fun! It might not be blowing up the box office, but folks are still seeing it in droves and when they do they’re in for a really nice time. (Alden Ehrenreich is a fun, swaggering Han Solo; Donald Glover is a sexy, swaggering Lando Calrissian; Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a smartass, swaggering droid.) They’re also in for at least one big surprise...

Despite many developers’ efforts to teach cars to steer themselves around roads filled with human drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists, the first great wave of autonomous vehicles may not arrive on land. Instead, it might follow the time-honored tradition of running away from tricky problems by heading for the open seas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Don’t leave your latest gaming obsession at your desk. With these powerful laptops, you can level up wherever, whenever. The newest Blade laptop comes with top-tier Nvidia graphics, a quad-core Intel processor, and an optional 14-inch, 4K touchscreen. Razer’s customizable Chroma LED system lets you choose the color and animation style of your keyboard backlighting, so the Blade looks as good as it...

If you’re looking for attention, drive an American muscle car, like a Chevrolet Camaro. The unmistakable exhaust growl of a V8 turns heads pretty quickly. If you’re desperate for attention, you can try what I did on Tuesday, and drive one covered in red, black, and grey racing stripes and 60-odd sponsor logos—through packed Hollywood streets. But as I turned through the intersection at Hollywood a...

Prepping for a big presentation is stressful, and your boss isn’t making it any better. He’s leering at your coworker Rachel in the middle of a meeting (!), asking if she’s bringing a date to the company dinner (!!). I mean, what do you do? Say something? Take it to HR? Talk to Rachel? Every choice feels kinda wrong—even though you’re just seeing all this in a virtual-reality headset. Learn more a...

When you set up a Wi-Fi-enabled robot vacuum, you’re usually required to name it. Sometimes, this seems like a cheesy and pointless affectation, like those people who spend ages trying to think of clever monikers for their wireless network. I don't name my dishwasher or my air purifier. Maybe robot vacuum manufacturers are trying to make you feel a little better about spending such an outrageous s...

Memorial Day may be a sacred holiday to honor our fallen veterans, but somehow it's also become a major weekend for tech and appliance sales because it unofficially kicks off the summer season. We've already rounded up our favorite Memorial Day Camping Gear and below are a bunch of PC, TV, audio, mobile, and home tech sales that caught our eye. And hey, if you're looking for a true bargain, you ca...

If anyone is destined to be the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, it’s Emilia Clarke. As the woman who plays Daenerys "Mother of Dragons" Targaryen on Game of Thrones, she’s got more of a right to sport dragon ink than anyone. Well, it turns out, she’s got one in the works. That’s not the only one; the star of Solo: A Star Wars Story is also thinking about getting a Chewbacca tat, too. Learn more about...

What even happened this past week? Sure, there was that brief, glorious moment when people cared about whether a sound clip said one word or the other. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices