But fear not, BBQ-ers! The Atlantic Wire's resident cicada expert is here to help! Cicadas and humans alike can celebrate this long weekend in peace, together, at the cicada-cue. Like so.
AT&T's olive branch on Friday only reinforces how much power cell carriers wield with the new unlocking law: they can still deny customers the freedom of truly owning a phone they bought through another company — and that's why Senators are trying to overturn it.
It's not quite that scene at the Gap in Minority Report, but the next time you leave your iPhone's WiFi signal on in public, expect a digital trail: real-world stores are tracking your every move.
The mood is "lighter" since Time Warner's deal to spin off all 21 titles in its magazine division collapsed this week, even though the new plan — spinning off the publishing branch into a publicly traded company valued at just $2.50 per share — should have nobody calming down.
The era of the Social-Mobile-Local app has finally closed at SXSW Interactive, thank goodness.
He didn't say the word "advertiser" once on Thursday, but Mark Zuckerberg may have made an historic step with Facebook's redesigned News Feed: The homepage for which he once apologized has transformed into a big, engaging platform that marketers already say they love.
Facebook has unveiled what it calls a "mobile first" new homepage look and — as expected — it takes up more space, meaning bigger ads. There's also a multi-faceted feed, seeking to transform the social network into "the most personalized newspaper in the world." Here's your first look, and how to sign up.
After about five months on the job, on top of her $1 million annual salary, the Yahoo CEO received a ton of money for such a short period of time. But she made the company way more than that.
After reading Sheryl Sandberg's "feminist manifesto" Lean In, you get the eerie impression that she knew what her critics would say.
Here's a handy little GIF from via our favorite storm-hyping network, The Weather Channel, which basically explains why the Snowquester wasn't and will never be.
About that proposed $24.4 billion buyout of Dell: the notorious shaker-upper doesn't like the sound of the deal, so it looks like he's gone and bought up a big stake to get his way — in very Icahn-ish fashion, of course.
Since talks fell through with the Meredith Corporation on Wednesday afternoon, Time Warner has decided to spin off Time Inc. and all 21 of its magazines into a separate company.
Word has leaked that Mark Zuckerberg will unveil separate feeds for different types of content at an event tomorrow, transforming the News Feed of 2013 into Facebook's September issue, only with five subdivided sections of the second most popular website in the world.
Amid all the theoretical talk about how Marissa Mayer's work-from-home ban is a terrible policy for America, those actually affected don't sound too upset about anything, really. In fact, it's working rather well as part of a broader cultural shift.
The European Commission has fined Microsoft $731 million for breaking an anti-trust promise, setting a strong precedent for how things can go for Google in its European anti-trust investigation.
If the problem with winter storm names wasn't obvious when Nemo blanketed the East Coast last month, the latest storm with a name, this week's storm, which has earned the name Saturn, drives the point home.
So Best Buy announced this week that it, too, will start making its workers come in and — well, well — nobody is calling new white-male CEO Hubert Joly a bad feminist yet. What gives?
After the success of its multi-chapter, multimedia avalanche story, the Times today has given the online splash-page treatment to another graphics- and info-driven story, Dennis Overbye's "Chasing the Higgs Boson."
Devoid of any exciting rumored features to gossip about, the rumor-bloggers have latched onto some possible, but totally unsubstantiated release dates for the next iteration of the iPhone.
A couple of weeks before the release of Samsung's Galaxy S IV, an anonymous employee who has played with the phone divulged to The New York Times that the phone will track your eyes as you read, scrolling through along with your pace, a feature that sounds a little bit nauseating.
In response to the 114,000 signature petition speaking out against the brand new law against unlocking cell phones, the White House said it thinks the law against using a phone on a different carrier is stupid, too, but where do we go from here?
In an attempt to explain the inexplicable death of Internet activist Aaron Swartz, some of the country's best journalists, most outspoken activists, and his closest friends have devoted thousands upon thousands of emotional words with few answers to why a young man took his own life nearly two months ago.
Just when Samsung had earned some respect for its advertising campaigns, the latest Galaxy S IV teaser disappoints by emphasizing secrets over product.
About that jury decision that found Samsung owed Apple over $1 billion for patent infringement, the judge on the case has decided to scrap nearly half of that—for now.
Facebook is holding a mysterious event next week to introduce "a new look" for its tired News Feed, and, yes, the speculation has begun. Here's what a revamp might look like.
With Marissa Mayer's new decree on telecommuting and Sheryl Sandberg's "feminist manifesto," everyone has an opinion about the feminine boss, but on what they're actually doing. Here's how we talk about women in power now.
For the first time since 2006, Goldman Sachs hosted one of its famous partners galas, and we know all about the lavish affair thanks to... Instagram, meaning the recession has officially ended and photo sharing apps are legitimate reporting tools.
Now that Groupon's "quirky" co-founder and former CEO Andrew Mason has finally left, it sounds like the daily deals company will take the opportunity to appoint someone a little less childish and a little more concerned with the bottom line.
It looks like those very bad earnings were the final straw for Groupon CEO and co-founder Andrew Mason, who said late Thursday that he had been fired by the tumbling deal site he saw rise, fall, and fall even harder.
Considering Bloomberg Businessweek's generally stellar covers, a lot of people are wondering how exactly this one with its absurd caricatures and racial undertones got through the editorial process.
Despite inheriting the title of Woman Who Has It All in Chief, the Yahoo CEO doesn't want to lead the feminist tribe, according to comments she said over a year ago that have resurfaced in light of her recent scandalous order to end work-at-home setups.
Remember that judge who made Apple rewrite its too-sassy public apology to Samsung? Well, Samsung has turned around and hired him as an expert in its patent battle with Ericsson, which seems totally unethical, but is actually quite legal.
There's a new little Twitter game happening that we will call the Vortex of Wow in which someone tweets "Wow." and then a link to another person tweeting "Wow." with a link to another person tweeting "Wow." and then, well, you get the picture.
The Google founder Sergey Brin's remarks about how his smartphone makes him feel emasculated was either an alienating off-color remark or a suggestion that he is turning into a robot.
Groupon's stock is down over 20 percent in after-hours trading after an earnings report that not only missed analyst expectations, reporting $683 million in revenue compared to an expected $640 million, but also posted a dismal forecast for next quarter.
Up until now dating apps, not to be confused with online dating websites, have had a male heavy demographic—that is, until Tinder came along.
In all this Twitter $10 billion valuation talk a lot of theoretical numbers and estimates get thrown out there as fact.
Least compelling of all the arguments against Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's new tyrannical order — outlawing permanent work-from-home arrangements for her employees — come from people who feel like their particular work-life patters are about to be upset .
Don't be confused: Cablevision's anti-trust suit decrying the evils of "anti-consumer" bundling by Viacom, which have pushed cable-bills up oh-so-high, has nothing to do with the frustrations consumers have with cable bundling.
In an attempt to get more schools to offer programming classes, Code.org has released a promotional video filled with celebrities and "celebrities" that basically says: learn code and you too can work in a hip Silicon Valley office.
After some delays, the movie industry's home-brewed system to fight Internet pirates has finally arrived, and depending on their internet service provider, pirates may not have all that much to fear.
The main appeal of the Chrome-powered notebooks to this point has been their super low price, but Google's brand new touchscreen Chromebook Pixel laptop starts at $1,299, a full $100 more than a 13-inch MacBook Air.
Despite emotional arguments that the tech world's meritocracy obsession comes with the best intentions, there are increasing calls from actual female and minority start-up employees who suggest very much the opposite. In Silicon Valley, it appears, start-up culture has actually reinforced its own glass ceiling.
Another reason to welcome our inevitable robot overlords: not only will they be doctors, able to operate and save our lives, they will also deal with the insurance hassles. Sign us up!
Props to Google for working with the hip glasses maker Warby Parker in an attempt to make its wearable A.I. goggles more stylish, but it will take a lot of social acceptance of robot aesthetics before a face-computer looks cool.
Sony is set to unveil the first new PlayStation console in seven years at an event this evening, in hopes of catching up to Microsoft and Nintendo.
For those not inclined to watch Google's new demo video, here are all the the adventures you can take with this particular gadget of the future.
After months of leaks, Yahoo finally unveiled its new homepage today and though it may not look that different, its new personalized news feed is the most important, and potentially most lucrative, part of the new look.
From The New York Times and the Defense Department to Facebook and now even Apple, there's one increasingly sophisticated type of spam to watch out for — and here are some tips, just in case the Chinese hacker war hits your inbox next.
Following a string of disclosures from big companies that could point to a larger Chinese threat, Apple on Tuesday became the latest to admit that its internal computers had been hacked — and by the same malware malfeasance that got inside Facebook.
In its latest attempt to take down Google with a negative fervor unseen since, well, November, Microsoft has begun a three-month ad campaign for Outlook that will cost between $30 and $90 million — and focus almost entirely on how terrible Gmail is.
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