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Tesla CEO and founder Elon Musk on Friday announced via Twitter and the company blog that the drivetrain warranty for the 85 kWh Model S has been extended, giving it an eight-year, infinite-mile warranty to match that of the battery pack. This new warranty arrangement applies retroactively to every Model S ever produced, too, meaning Continue Reading →

Patrick Willis, the San Francisco 49ers Pro Bowl linebacker, is in two places at once. He is posing for a photo with me at the 49ers museum at Levi’s Stadium, the NFL team’s new home in Silicon Valley, some 40 miles south of San Francisco. Simultaneously, he is on the other side of the complex Continue Reading →

An IT guy, Ed Konowal, wanted to bring a bit of the analog world back to his office; he stared at computers for too long every day. So, rather than tracking his clients’ Internet usage on digital graphs for hours on end, he created a system called the Internet SteamGauge, to let him track bandwidth Continue Reading →

Microsoft on Friday quietly recommended that customers uninstall one of last week’s security updates after users reported that it crippled their computers with the infamous “Blue Screen of Death” (BSOD). The update, identified as MS14-045 in Microsoft’s numbering, was one of nine released on “Patch Tuesday,” Aug. 12, was designed to fix three separate flaws, Continue Reading →

If you really want to be able to emulate the characters in Apple’s promotional videos then you need to be able to tell Siri to “call mom” and “email dad.” Thanks to the custom label field built into iCloud contacts, you can assign any kind of relationship to people you know. Tell Siri about your Continue Reading →

The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset offers many new types of experiences, but its latest use may one day save your life. The Rift is currently being used by med students to view surgeries from a first-person perspective. After a donation from the MOVEO Foundation, surgeons have begun recording medical procedures using GoPro’s Dual HERO Continue Reading →

Twitter is back in experimental mode, but its latest test is annoying people. A sizable number of users are seeing tweets favorited by others in their timeline, just like retweets. They are also getting notifications when others follow someone new. This was first brought to my attention a couple of weeks ago, but Twitter appears Continue Reading →

Technology revolutions come in measured, sometimes foot-dragging steps. The lab science and marketing enthusiasm tend to underestimate the bottlenecks to progress that must be overcome with hard work and practical engineering. The field known as “big data” offers a contemporary case study. The catchphrase stands for the modern abundance of digital data from many sources Continue Reading →

Maureen McDonnell could use a solid reference right about now. Instead, the former first lady of Virginia is on trial for corruption alongside her husband, former Governor Bob McDonnell. The two are accused of accepting gifts from Jonnie R. Williams Sr., a well-to-do businessman, in exchange for promoting Williams’ dietary supplement, Anatabloc. During the trial, witnesses have called Continue Reading →

Ethan Zuckerman is sorry. Zuckerman, who leads the Center for Civic Media at MIT, says he didn’t realize what he was bringing into the world when he wrote the code for the first pop-up ad more than 20 years ago.  He tells the story of how it happened in an exquisite essay about how the Continue Reading →