Business and Finance

If you’re old enough to remember watching the hit kid’s show Animaniacs, you probably remember Napster, too. The peer-to-peer file-sharing site, which made it easy to download music for free in an era before Spotify and Apple Music, took college campuses by storm in the late 1990s. This did not escape the notice of the record companies, and in 2001, a federal court ruled that Napster was liable for copyright infringement. The content producers fought back against the technology platform and won. But that was 2001 —…

The Biden administration has proposed a new rule that would curb overdraft fees incurred when consumers withdraw more than the available funds in their bank account. Banks currently collect about $9 billion annually in overdraft fees, and people who pay overdraft fees pay about $150 on average every year on them, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). As Emily Stewart has written for Vox, overdraft fees are just one of the many ways “banks have ... of extracting funds out of consumers.” The new…

Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman has a lot of opinions, and he’s going to make sure you hear them. How Ackman came to be a main character at the center of not one but two academic plagiarism scandals is a messy tale indeed. It started with Ackman amplifying allegations of academic dishonesty leveled against Harvard University president Claudine Gay by right-wing activists; Gay resigned from her post in early January due to the controversy. Ackman, who is Jewish, first set his sights on Gay after she failed, in his…

Fans who are excited to finally be getting their hands on the OnePlus Pad are now able to preorder the tablet … sort of. Preorders for the OnePlus Pad went live today. However, it’s not a preorder in the traditional sense where someone would pay full price for an item upfront and then receive it when it launches for no extra charge. Instead, fans are able to put down a $99 down payment to reserve their spot in “line” for the tablet when it releases later this year. OnePlus Currently, there is no set price…

If you ever thought Meta Verified was anything other than a money grab, this should change your mind. An unexpected thing happened on Instagram over the weekend. In hindsight, it shouldn’t have been unexpected. I’ve been using Insta since it finally became available on Android in April 2012, and for me, it’s mostly been an enjoyable experience. (That said, I’m spending more time with Glass and Vero, but that’s another thing for another time.) I’ve had a relatively high-profile job since those days, and Instagram has…

In the new age of online creators, fans are always looking for new ways they can support their favorite content. Websites like Patreon have allowed them to do just that by giving fans a direct way to monetarily support creators while also being given exclusive content in exchange for their support. A new site named Fanfix has been making waves recently as a new way for creators to connect with their audiences and receive more monetary support. As with all new sites that handle money exchanges, some people have been a…

While many electric cars offer advanced driver assistance tech these days, most of those boil down to a few different technologies working together — like lane-keeping and adaptive cruise control. Generally, they work quite well. Together, they can essentially allow a car to drive itself on the highway under the right conditions. But companies are also working on the next generation of self-driving cars, and there’s been no company more public about this than Tesla, which offers its Full Self-Driving tech. But while…

Apple’s upcoming mixed reality headset hasn’t even launched, yet it’s already being touted as the “last hope” for the virtual reality (VR) headset industry. It shows what a dire situation the market it is, at least according to some estimates. The grim appraisal comes from respected industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. In a post on Medium, Kuo explained that other headset makers have cut their production plans and are shipping far fewer units than previously expected. The malaise affects augmented reality (AR) and mixed…

ChatGPT and similar generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools are only going to get better, with many experts envisaging a major shake-up for white-collar professions in the coming years. The new wave of AI-powered chatbots that have been garnering so much attention in recent months can converse in an impressively human-like way and before long will be able to comfortably handle numerous tasks across a range of industries. Speaking at a conference in Scotland this week, Nobel Prize-winning labor…

The rumor mill for the Apple iPhone 15 has been ramping up lately, and if the whispers are true, this would be the biggest overhaul for the iPhone yet. Many of the reports have been circulating around the state of the buttons on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, specifically that they’re rumored to have a single volume rocker and that the mute switch will be replaced with a button — all solid-state as well. The latest rumor to come out, though, is that the iPhone 15 Pro mute switch may not be replaced with a…