Technology

Solar panels above parking spaces at the QCells solar panel manufacturing plant in Dalton, Georgia.  Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesEnergy prices, and the prices of just about everything else, are up over the last few years. At the same time, solar energy keeps getting cheaper as technology improves and government incentives give renewable sources of power a boost.Add concerns about climate and carbon emissions into the equation and it's as good a time as ever to think seriously about adding a solar system to your home or small business. It's an investment that can not only lower utility bills but also increase the value of whatever structure it's installed on.One company making waves in the solar industry lately is Qcells, a subsidiary of the large South Korean conglom...

We recently received an alarming message from one of our readers, Kurt, from Victorville, California, about a vacation rental scam. Here's what he has to share. "Beware of vacation rental scammers. My brother-in-law owns a vacation rental in Fiji and someone set up a fake listing for it on booking.com. He received a text from someone who booked a time in July but had not yet paid. The villa is already booked through the summer so my brother-in-law knew something was awry.  The fake and real listings appear together on the same booking.com page and in the app. The potential renter already purchased non-refundable flights to the location, but fortunately double-checked before making the required wire payment in full within 24 hours to an overseas bank. It should be noted that there were a l...

Comment on this storyCommentThis article is a preview of The Tech Friend newsletter. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Tuesday and Friday.My colleagues and I frequently encourage you to repair your phones, computers and other electronics instead of replacing them. It’s better for your wallet and our planet and there’s immense satisfaction from reviving a zombie TV set.Just like finding a good car mechanic, though, it can be hard to find an electronics repair person you want to trust with your precious gadgets.I have tips on how to search for reliable electronics repair help, what questions you should ask and steps you can take to ensure a repair ends happily.Know that you’re not necessarily better off having a chain store such as Apple, Best Buy or Verizon do your fix-it tasks. Y...

“We’ve never had an accident like this,” James Cameron, the Oscar-winning director of “Titanic,” said on Thursday.Mr. Cameron, an expert in submersibles, has dived dozens of times to the ship’s deteriorating hulk and once plunged in a tiny craft of his own design to the bottom of the planet’s deepest recess.In an interview, Mr. Cameron called the presumed loss of five lives aboard the Titan submersible from the company OceanGate like nothing anyone involved in private ocean exploration had ever seen.“There’ve never been fatalities at this kind of depth and certainly no implosions,” he said.An implosion in the deep sea happens when the crushing pressures of the abyss cause a hollow object to collapse violently inward. If the object is big enough to hold five people, Mr. Cameron said in an ...

Comment on this storyCommentTwitter’s recent decision under new owner Elon Musk to charge more than $500,000 annually for a once-free tool to analyze posts on the platform is hampering disinformation and war crimes research, and could slow rescue efforts during natural disasters, according to experts and nonprofit groups.Since 2006, users have had unlimited access to the social media platform’s application programming interface, or API — allowing researchers to extract and analyze data that provided critical insights into the website’s role in election meddling and the spread of disinformation, as well as to gather and synthesize photographic and video evidence that could be used to indict potential war criminals in international tribunals.Twitter announced in April that access to the API...

TikTok COO Pappas Steps Down | Time ...

Google testers now have the chance to check out another new Duet AI feature in Google Workspace. Starting today, they'll see a new sidebar for Google Sheets. They can describe what they want to do and Duet AI can create a custom template to help them get the ball rolling. According to Google, this could come in useful for those looking to carry out tasks that involve complex organization and tracking. The company suggests product roadmaps, company retreats and team budgets as potential use cases. If the feature works as intended, it could help save users a ton of time. It's available in Workspace Labs for the time being. Google Google has been quickly expanding the AI's toolset since it announced Duet for Workspace at its I/O conference last month. When testers enter a prompt in the web v...

By some measures, Android is the most-used operating system on the planet. And Google achieved this act of domination in less than 10 years, thanks to smart choices during a fundamental shift in the nature of human communication. And the Nexus and Pixel lines, while not as dominant as other Android manufacturers like Samsung or Xiaomi, are a big part of that story. So why can’t Google stick the landing on any hardware besides phones? A little context. A recent report from 9to5Google says that Google is preparing a big push for its Chromebook laptops later this year, introducing the “Chromebook X” label as a clear indication of high-end models. It’s similar to Dell’s XPS line or Intel’s Evo certification, a way for consumers to quickly and easily tell a more powerful, premium Chro...