AT&T to Make $500M ... by Charging You 61 Cents

If you're an AT&T wireless customer, your May bill will feature a new charge: a 61-cent monthly administrative fee. Before you pooh-pooh it as small potatoes, consider this: The Wall Street Journal reports that the move could tally up to an extra $518 million for the company in 2014. And...

Amazon Building Huge, Tree-Filled Biodome in Seattle

Amazon has big plans for its new campus. Big, sphere-shaped plans. The company revealed earlier this month that it will build a biosphere in Seattle, a 65,000-square-foot structure made up of three domes, where the temperature will always be a perfect 68 to 72 degrees, Fast Company reports. The...

Twitter Rolls Out Beefed-Up Security

Twitter has finally rolled out its two-step log-in process , cracking down on security in the wake of a number of high-profile hacks and bringing it on par with other major tech companies. Called Log-in Verification, the new system adds an extra layer of security by allowing users to have a...

Solar Plane Sets Distance Record in 18-Hour Flight

The Solar Impulse—the entirely solar-powered plane you have to be a little bit crazy to fly —isn't even close to finished with its ambitious cross-country odyssey , but it's already made history. The Impulse broke its own record for the longest solar-powered flight today when it landed safely in Dallas...

Tesla Pays Off US Loan 9 Years Early

Tesla has come a long way since Mitt Romney labeled it a "loser" in the presidential debates. The company has paid off its $465 million 2010 loan from the Department of Energy—plus interest—nine years before it was due, Businessweek reports. With yesterday's payment for $451.8 million, "Tesla...

Apple Case Clinches It: We Need Tax Reform Now

So what can we take away from Apple chief Tim Cook's testimony on Capitol Hill yesterday about the company's byzantine tax strategy ? Not that Apple did anything illegal, only that it's savvy enough to employ "smart accountants and tax lawyers," says the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal...

US Power Co. Cyberattacked 10K Times a Month

Could foreign hackers take out America's electric grid? A new congressional report says it's a very real threat, with more than a dozen of nearly 100 electric utilities surveyed reporting constant or frequent cyberattacks, Reuters reports. One utility said it was battered by a staggering 10,000 attacks a month;...

Teens Name Their Biggest Beefs With Facebook

The vast majority of teens (to the tune of 94% in 2012) are on Facebook, but many of them are gravitating toward Twitter and other social media sites that their parents don't tend to use, according to a new Pew Research Center poll. Researchers found that teenage Facebook users—70%...

Microsoft Reveals New XBox, Focuses on TV, Not Games

Microsoft unveiled its long-awaited next-generation XBox today, touting more than anything its bevy of advanced entertainment features, calling it an "all-in-one system for games, movies, and entertainment," and announcing an exclusive, live-action Halo TV show produced by Steven Spielberg. Here's what you need to know, drawn from TechCrunch , the Guardian...

Apple CEO on Tax Shelters: 'I'm Not an Unfair Person'

Tim Cook is on Capitol Hill today to answer criticism that Apple uses overly creative—but legal—accounting practices to avoid paying billions in taxes . The highlights amount to Cook defending the company's practices, while critics such as Carl Levin and John McCain accuse it of shirking its tax duties....

Melissa Joan Hart: Why My Kickstarter Totally Flopped

Melissa Joan Hart's Kickstarter campaign had so many problems, you probably cringed when you read about it . But the actress thinks she's zeroed in on the particular reason she attracted only 315 backers: "We didn’t give [fans] the two things it takes to sell a movie: a poster and a...

Unlikely Presence in Court: the Racy 'Urban Dictionary'

Your average court may not be able to define "nut" as a verb; it may struggle to figure out why a pair of thieves called themselves "jack boys." That's where the Urban Dictionary comes in. In the former case, its definition of "to nut"—"to ejaculate"—helped a court decide...

Tumblr Founder a High School Drop-Out

At 14, David Karp—who would one day found Tumblr—was already obsessed with computers and bored with school. So his mom, a science teacher, suggested he drop out. "It became very clear that David needed the space to live his passion. Which was computers," Barbara Ackerman tells the New...

Guy Fined $2.4K for Renting Out Condo on Airbnb

This may give you pause if you were considering renting out your apartment on Airbnb : A New York City man did just that, and now he'll have to pay a $2,400 fine. New York officials initially fined Nigel Warren $7,000 after he rented part of his condo to...

Teen Girl Invents Insanely Fast Battery Charger

Prepare to feel inadequate: 18-year-old California student Eesha Khare has created a supercapacitor that could recharge a cellphone battery in 30 seconds. The invention won her $50,000 in the Society for Science & the Public's huge international science fair, beating out more than 1,600 others from over 70...

Apple Kept Billions Out of IRS' Reach: Probe

A Senate inquiry into Apple has accused the company of keeping billions out of the reach of the IRS through tax havens and a complex network of overseas subsidiaries. The company runs its non-American operations through affiliates based in Ireland, which has a low tax rate. However, investigators say many...

Takeout Tycoons GrubHub and Seamless Merge

Yahoo and Tumblr weren't the only online properties getting into bed together today: GrubHub and Seamless, two of the largest food-delivery websites in the US, have announced a merger, combining forces to fend off an increasing number of startup rivals, Bloomberg reports. "This has nothing to do with cost savings;...

Yahoo Promises Not to 'Screw Up' Tumblr

As Marissa Mayer puts it , "Tumblr. + Yahoo! = !!" As Tumblr CEO David Karp puts it , "F--- yeah." The two companies this morning announced that a definitive agreement has been reached and that Yahoo will indeed acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion, a transaction that Mayer expects will close in...

France Goes Shopping for US Drones

France is looking to assemble a fleet of intelligence gathering drones to use in its military operations in Mali, and is in talks with both the US and Israel to get its hands on some. The Pentagon has already approved the sale of two Reaper drones (Congress still needs to...

Yahoo to Buy Tumblr for $1.1B

The rumors were apparently pretty accurate : Yahoo will indeed acquire Tumblr, and its board has approved a $1.1 billion cash deal for the blogging site. The board met today and unanimously OKed the deal, in what AllThingsD 's Kara Swisher reports was "a foregone conclusion." It's the biggest acquisition...

Americans Are Cheating on Their Partners ... on Netflix

Are you guilty of "Netflix adultery"? That's secretly watching a video on Netflix you were supposed to be waiting to watch together with your significant other. According to a survey by the site itself, 51% of adults in committed relationships said they had or would cheat. Only 12% of those...

100M Facebook Users Are Not Human

Apparently not everyone on Facebook has an actual face. A new analysis of Facebook user data has found that of the site's much-boasted-about 1 billion users, only 889.3 million of them are actual people, reports Quartz . The other 100 million? Probably brands, pets, parodies and kitchen appliances . Yet Facebook...

eHarmony Looks to Match Bosses, Workers

EHarmony is moving from the business of love to the business of, well, business. The dating website is developing a job service that aims to cut through what one eHarmony exec calls the "artificial and weird interaction" of the job interview in much the same way it does the date....

Brazil's Ambitious Plan: Erect 10K-Mile Virtual Fence

Brazil's border is pretty mammoth (here's a visual reminder ), and a growing economy has made illegal activities (chief among them illegal immigration) an equally growing concern. But the country has a plan: a 10,000-mile fence ... except that this one is virtual. For reference, America's southern border is only...

Report: Yahoo In 'Serious' Talks to Buy Tumblr

The tech world is abuzz today over reports that Yahoo is in talks to invest in, partner with, or just plain buy Tumblr, in an attempt to, to quote Yahoo CFO Ken Goldman, make the company "cool again." Goldman uttered those words earlier this week, saying that the company's chief...

Google Glass Could Make Us Less Annoying

Given all the hate that's been piled on Google Glass lately, Farhad Manjoo strapped on a pair "expecting to experience the digital equivalent of a machine hacked together with duct tape and construction paper." Instead, he came away convinced that Glass, or something like it, will define the way we...

Google Maps Reunites Boy With Family, 23 Years Later

A Chinese man who was abducted as a 5-year-old boy finally found his way home, 23 years later, thanks in part to Google Maps. After he was snatched on his way to kindergarten in a small town in Sichuan province, Luo Gang was raised by adoptive parents (no word on...

Fired Groupon CEO Records 'Business Music' Album

Groupon's co-founder seemed to take it pretty well when he got fired , which somehow still doesn't detract from the nuttiness of what Andrew Mason has done since: recorded an album ... of "motivational business music." The tidbit comes in an otherwise fairly unremarkable Chicago Tribune piece about Mason's decision to start...

Georgia Tech Offering $7K Master's Degree

In what the dean of computing calls a "revolutionary step," Georgia Institute of Technology will offer a $7,000 online master's degree in computer science—that's one-sixth the cost of its traditional degree, and officials say the two degrees will be comparable. The university will partner with Silicon Valley startup...

Google's Spotify Rival Is Here

Google today announced its Spotify competitor, although we have to say that when it comes to names, Spotify has the edge: Google's service is called Google Play Music All Access, VentureBeat reports. The streaming music service is available today for $9.99 a month, after a free 30-day trial. A...