Google's driverless car is still in the early stages of development, but the unit spotted tooling around Manhattan this month was in rough shape even for a beta test. One particularly noticeable bug was the passenger hanging out the window in an Osama bin Laden mask. In another glitch, the car hit a cyclist in Soho,…

For the past few days, Reddit's quest to ferret out the Boston bombing culprits with the powers of the internet has come across as juvenile at best, embarrassingly paranoid at worst. But it turns out that those ambitious toy detectives might finally be on to something.

The man who introduced the CIA's Chief Technology Officer, Ira "Gus" Hunt, at yesterday's GigaOM Structure:Data conference in New York City thought it would be funny to quip, "If you don't give a big round of applause for our next speaker, he's gonna find out and it's gonna go on your permanent record." It was…

There are two kinds of phone users in the world: people who leave voicemails for other people and people who ignore voicemails from other people.

After a long week of people compromising corporations' Twitter presences—specifically here and here—some real-deal hackers have gone into NBC's homepage and turned it into a mine field full of malware traps.

People of color looking to break into the startup world or tech journalism will be happy to learn, per blowhard entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, that "there isn't a race wall in tech." Why, then, is tech journalism so overwhelmingly white (not to mention male)? Calacanis, who is white, isn't sure, but he has some advice:…

If you have ever given twenty bucks to the Red Cross and subsequently been deluged by form letters from 136 other charities, you may have asked yourself, "What's the deal with all this junk mail?" Here is "the deal," as you so crudely put it: the junk mail industry is now far more technologically advanced than ever.…

Like son, like father. As Instagram reels from the backlash over its new Terms of Use, announced — and then revised — earlier this week, its parent company Facebook has introduced a new service that's likely to be highly unpopular.

Instagram, the massively popular photo sharing site purchased this year by Facebook, released its latest "Terms of Use" today, to the consternation of many of its more than seven million daily users. Most of the rules, which officially take effect January 16, include rational things like "no porn" and "you must be 13…

Are you still waiting on your personalized email from President Bill Clinton thanking you for your donation to his campaign? Unless you're a maverick of space exploration or prevented a major war from escalating, that email isn't coming.

What's life without cheap thrills, really? And no thrill is cheaper than a reporter struggling to maintain composure live on television as his world crumbles around him.

Look into the history of Paula Broadwell's Wikipedia page and there's not much to it before last Friday. That's the day Republican golden boy and former CIA director David Petraeus resigned as the nation's top spy amid allegations he was cheating on his wife with Broadwell, his biographer. Broadwell's page was so…

There's a funny juxtaposition in the right-hand column of Buzzfeed today: One highlighted piece, by staff tech writer John Herrman, is titled, "Twitter Is a Truth Machine," and it delves into the idea that Twitter, despite its flaws, is a beacon for virtuous honesty in time of need. Right next to that article,…

The ascent of Twitter has been wonderful for the democratization and quickening of news and information. A few decades ago, it might take days for a person in California to see pictures of a disaster that took place in New York. Today, all a person needs is a smartphone and an internet connection and, with Twitter,…

We've known for a while now that Foxconn, the Chinese mega-plant where Apple and other technology companies have their gadgets manufactured, has struggled with suicides and rampant worker dissatisfaction. But today comes confirmation that Foxconn's labor force is involved in yet another ugly scandal: child labor.

Facebook's newest partnership will not allay the fears of anyone worried the company is going to get increasingly nosy in order turn a profit. The social-networking behemoth has a new partnership with an organization called Datalogix, which tracks millions of Americans' spending habits with loyalty cards at more than…

When a hologram slightly resembling the late Tupac Shakur popped up at this year's Coachella and started rapping along to "California Love," people everywhere thought they were glimpsing into the future.

The owner of a Los Angeles-based restaurant wants his customers to put down their cellphones and talk to each other instead.