Technology

Is it hot in here or is it just us? Summer 2024 is an absolute scorcher. In fact, it's already beating last summer's record-breaking temperatures. So it's no surprise that your home cooling costs are expected to be nearly 8% higher this summer, with the average cost of keeping an American home cool expected to hit a 10-year high. Luckily, there's still a way you can pay less without sacrificing your comfort. When dealing with sweltering temperatures, you need an air conditioner that can keep your home cool. But, while it's understandable to want a comfortable environment to live in, it's also important to remain conscious of how energy-efficient your home is. You may be tempted to turn the temperature on your thermostat all the way down, but lowering the temp will make your electric bill ...

Imagine if this happened to you. Your spouse passed away and a few weeks after the funeral, you get a message from them that says, "Hi, hope you’re having a great day." Other friends report they’re getting similar messages from your spouse. Some messages offer big returns in crypto investments.Join over 500,000 people who get tech smart with my free newsletter.It’s easy to sign up and one click to cancel if you don’t like it."Ghost hackers" have taken over your spouse’s account. It’s a sick new scam. With account owners dead and families focused on grief, the hacking is more likely to go unnoticed. It’s awful, and I want to make sure this doesn’t happen to you or someone you love.SEE WHAT THE HOME YOU GREW UP IN LOOKS LIKE NOW AND OTHER MAPS TRICKSIt’s not just trolling and ‘investments’...

What’s 2024’s hottest product? According to TikTok, there is only one answer: industrial-grade glycine from China.Yes, you read that right. A Chinese manufacturer of the amino acids, Donghua Jinlong, has found unexpected online fame, with its earnest marketing videos inspiring parodies garnering many millions of views and spawning a new meme.“I’m kinda a glycine girly at the moment,” one fan said on X. “Don’t even talk to me before I’ve had my donghua jinlong industrial grade glycine,” another said.It all started with mundane marketing posts from the company’s TikTok account, involving an upbeat voice-over extolling the company’s campus and “premium” manufacturing processes. The ads show B-roll footage from Donghua Jinlong’s factory floor, backed with instrumentals and overlaid with bold...

Which A.I. system writes the best computer code or generates the most realistic image? Right now, there’s no easy way to answer those questions.

SAN FRANCISCO — A group of Google employees staged sit-ins at two of the company’s offices Tuesday to protest the tech giant’s work with the Israeli government, escalating the conflict inside tech companies over the war in Gaza and whether U.S. companies should sell their technology to Israel.Protesters at Google’s Sunnyvale, Calif., offices entered the workspace of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian on Tuesday morning and have promised to stay there until the company meets their demand that Google pull out of a $1.2 billion contract it shares with Amazon to provide cloud services and data centers to the Israeli government. Another group of protesters is sitting-in in a common space at one of the company’s New York City offices, according to Zelda Montes, one of the workers participating in t...

Imagine a world where everything from plastics to concrete is produced from biomass. Personalized cell and gene therapies prevent pandemics and treat previously incurable genetic diseases. Meat is lab-grown; enhanced nutrient grains are climate-resistant. This is what the future could look like in the years ahead.The next big game-changing revolution is in biology. It will allow us to more effectively fight disease, feed the planet, generate energy, and capture carbon. Already we’re on the cusp of these opportunities. Last year saw some important milestones: the U.S. approved the production and sale of lab-grown meat for the first time; Google DeepMind’s AI predicted structures of over 2 million new materials, which can potentially be used for chips and batteries; Casgevy became the first...

Some people have been waiting a long time for an alternative to Microsoft’s Surface series, and niche small form factor manufacturer Minisforum is ready to give it to them. The company’s V3 tablet, which proclaims itself the “world’s first AMD 3-in-1 Windows tablet,” is now available to purchase and shipping in a little over a week. Minisforum might be being a little grandiose in its description of the V3 — it’s not as if it was ever impossible to use a Ryzen platform in a Surface form factor, it’s just that no one saw a huge demand for it. But that being said, there’s no doubt that this is some pretty impressive hardware on paper. The base model of the V3 tablet uses an 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen 7 8840U processor, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage. Again, that’s the base configurati...

It’s been a month since the release of iOS 17.4, which introduced a few minor tweaks (like new emojis) for all users, but it has a massive change to app distribution for those in the European Union. In compliance with the Digital Markets Act, that version allowed alternate app stores, changed policies and terms around apps, browsers that use their own engines, and more. Typically, a new iOS version is followed almost immediately by a beta of the next point release, so the month-long absence of any iOS beta is a strange occurrence. We expect the beta to continue for at least a few weeks; the final release of iOS 17.5 might not even come until May. Update April 16: Apple has released the second beta of iOS 17.5. What’s new in iOS 17.5 We don’t know everything that we can ex...

If you filed your taxes by the April 15 deadline, you can finally stop stressing and start keeping an eye out for your child tax credit money. If it's been more than 21 days since you filed with the IRS, it may be time to check the status of your tax return online. This story is part of Taxes 2024, CNET's coverage of the best tax software, tax tips and everything else you need to file your return and track your refund. Note that your refund could be delayed because you claimed the child tax credit or the earned income tax credit, which takes a bit longer to process. By law, the IRS couldn't begin sending tax refunds to those claiming the credits until the middle of February at the earliest.With lots of news around the child tax credit this year -- including 16 states that also have...