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Amazon has agreed to pay nearly $4 million to settle charges that the e-commerce company subsidized its labor costs by taking tips its delivery drivers received from customers, District of Columbia Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb said Friday. The settlement came four years after Amazon forked over $61.7 million to resolve a complaint the Federal Trade Commission brought over similar accusations. In 2022, the office of D.C.’s attorney general at the time followed up with a lawsuit alleging Amazon violated the District’s consumer protection laws by misleading residents about how tips paid digitally were used. According to the lawsuit, the affected drivers were…

LG Electronics USA is recalling half a million electric ranges that have been involved in at least 28 fires, resulting in numerous injuries and a few pet deaths. But instead of issuing a refund or replacement, the home appliance maker is sending customers warning label stickers. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) posted an alert on Thursday that it received at least 86 reports of “unintentional activation of the front-mounted knobs” leading to “at least five fires,” which “caused extensive property damage totaling over $340,000” as well as burns and eight minor injuries, with three fires resulting in pet deaths. According to the announcement, customers …

If you scroll through your old photos from the mid-2010s—the golden era of Snapchat—chances are a fair number of those pictures feature a dog filter or a flower crown. Now, nearly a decade later, one TikToker has now been struck by a unique dilemma. “Your daughter wants to see her baby pictures, but she was born in 2016,” user @themkidzmama3 posted in a video that has since gone viral. As the Adele’s 2015 hit “Hello” plays, a slideshow of her daughter’s baby photos flashes across the screen. Each photo uses a different filter, from the dog ears to a Sia wig. It’s undeniable: Her daughter is a product of the Snapchat filter era. There was a time when b…

There was a time when few people in the coastal Pakistani city of Gwadar understood what climate change was. After a decade of extreme weather, many more do. Rain battered Gwadar for almost 30 consecutive hours last February. Torrents washed out roads, bridges, and lines of communication, briefly cutting the peninsula town off from the rest of Pakistan. Homes look like bombs have struck them and drivers swerve to avoid craters where asphalt used to be. Gwadar is in Balochistan, an arid, mountainous, and vast province in Pakistan’s southwest that has searing summers and harsh winters. The city, with about 90,000 people, is built on sand dunes and bordered by the Ar…

It’s peak season for fevers and runny noses, and when it comes to the flu, the illness has been rampant this year. In some areas, the flu has been so widespread, schools have even closed to help communities get well. This week, local news outlets have reported school closures in at least 10 states due to higher than normal flu numbers. Alabama, Kentucky, Indiana, Oklahoma, Iowa, Missouri, Texas, Ohio, Virginia, Georgia, and Tennessee, have all kept kids home in order to disinfect, and allow teachers and students time to get well. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent data, 27 states and Washington, D.C., are experiencing “v…

László Toth, a Hungarian Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor, emigrates to the United States after World War II in search of a new life. After a rough start, a wealthy businessman recognises his talent and offers him a job that will change his life. This is a very brief summary of Brady Corbet’s film The Brutalist, which stars Adrien Brody as Toth. While the protagonist of this almost four-hour film is fictional, his story is inspired by many real figures. During the rise of Nazism in Germany, and especially after the de facto demise of the Weimar Republic in 1933, many intellectuals, scientists and other educated people chose to emigrate in search of a…

From devastating climate change to ongoing wars to the dismantling of the globe’s largest aid agency, there’s no shortage of problems facing the world. And now we can add another one to the list: An asteroid could conceivably hit the planet in just under eight years. And while the chances of that happening are very small, they have now nearly doubled. In December, the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Chile, developed by the University of Hawaii and funded by NASA, discovered the existence of an asteroid known as 2024 YR4. That ATLAS should discover an asteroid is no surprise—there are millions of them in our cosmic neck of the woods alone.…

It’s game time for Meta’s wearables: The tech giant has bought two ad spots for its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses during Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast, including one that has Chris Hemsworth and Chris Pratt wreaking havoc on Kris Jenner’s art collection. The star-studded spot is part of a bigger push to bring AI-powered wearables to the masses. Last week, Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the company had sold more than one million of its high-tech Ray-Bans in 2024, and hinted at plans to sell many more in the near future. “This will be a defining year that determines if we’re on a path towards many hundreds of millions and eventually billions of AI glasses,” he told investor…

As Los Angeles reels from deadly January wildfires that destroyed thousands of homes, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday he will order the state to advance long-delayed regulations requiring homeowners in high-risk areas to clear combustible materials around their homes. His office didn’t immediately say if the executive order will set a timeline for implementing the rule, which was passed by lawmakers in 2020 and originally set to take effect by January 1, 2023. Newsom is expected to sign it after his trip to Washington to advocate for disaster aid. The rule requires homeowners to clear materials like dead plants and wooden furniture within 5 feet (1.5 me…

Pinterest shares (NYSE: PINS) are skyrocketing in premarket trading this morning after the company announced Q4 results for its fiscal 2024 yesterday. PINS stock is currently up over 22% to above $41 per share as of the time of this writing. It hasn’t seen that price point seen since last July. Here’s what you need to know about Pinterest’s latest results and its surging stock. Pinterest’s revenue and growing user base shine in Q4 Almost any way you look at it, Pinterest had a great Q4, with two metrics really seeming to have made investors happy: Revenue: $1.15 billion Global Monthly Active Users (MAUs): 553 million For its fourth quarter, Pinterest ge…

With over 900 million users worldwide, LinkedIn often feels like the ultimate goldmine for professional networking and career growth. But figuring out the right blend of authentic expertise, personal flair, and audience engagement can feel more daunting than it’s worth. Yes, it’s crucial to know how to boost engagement, but it’s just as important to understand which kinds of posts can hurt your reputation and sabotage your efforts to be seen as an expert. Here are three types of posts you’re better off avoiding. Algorithm-chasing posts LinkedIn’s algorithm is constantly changing, influencing the likes, views, and social interactions your posts receive from potenti…

The other day, my 15-year-old daughter and her friend were smelling candles in the local grocery store just two blocks from our home. I frequently send my daughter, and my younger son, 10, to grab a few items there when I’m busy—especially in the summer when no one gripes about the walk. But on this particular day, an employee approached the girls and asked them to leave the store immediately. “Why?” they responded in unison, taken aback. The answer: Because they didn’t have a parent or guardian with them. Annoyed, but not entirely shocked, I popped by and spoke to a manager (in the least Karen-like fashion I could muster). I was told that the grocery store does…

Ahead of Super Bowl Sunday, online privacy groups Fight for the Future and the Algorithmic Justice League are reiterating a call for the NFL to put an end to the use of facial recognition in football stadiums, where the groups say the technology is used to authenticate employees, vendors, and authorized media. “That means that anyone who is going into a stadium to work on any football game has to go through a facial recognition system just in order to get to their job, which is a complete invasion of people’s privacy,” says Caitlin Seeley George, campaigns and managing director at Fight for the Future. The group has launched a petition demanding the NFL put an end…