And just like that, Jeremy Bray found himself with a new line of credit for $1,500. While shopping online last year, the 28-year-old entrepreneur decided to sign up for PayPal Credit to buy a $1,000-plus laptop. After a short application process, he was approved in less than a minute and even got six months to …

Get ready to talk to your toaster. If you’re an Amazon Echo owner, chances are you’re already pretty comfortable chatting up its digital assistant, Alexa. Ask any major tech company, whether it’s Apple, Google or Microsoft, and it’s clear that voice is how you’ll be controlling your gadgets in the future. That trend is flowing down to smaller companies such …

The push toward gender equality in the tech world is, at best, a mixed bag. And the industry knows it. Many of its biggest companies, including Apple and Facebook, admit they need to do more to attract women to their workforce. A few, such as Salesforce.com and Intel, now make sure women and men doing the same work are paid …

Hoverboards were hot items over the holidays — for all the wrong reasons. The popular self-balancing scooters grabbed headlines after reports that some had the unhealthy tendency to overheat and burst into flames. Last month, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission found all hoverboards unsafe, saying they pose an “unreasonable risk of fire.” Soon after, Amazon, Toys “R” Us, Target …

“Alexa, how did you sneak inside my Bose speakers?” For the past year, Amazon’s Echo speaker, which houses a digital voice assistant called Alexa, has become a breakout hit of the connected home. People all over the country are now calling out to these voice-activated devices: “Alexa, what’s the weather today?” “Alexa, order more beef jerky.” “Alexa, play some classic …

Amazon’s Echo smart speaker had twins. The e-retailer unveiled on Thursday two new devices powered by Alexa, the same digital voice assistant housed inside the Echo. There’s the $130 Amazon Tap, essentially a portable, battery-powered Echo, and the $90 Echo Dot, which adds Alexa’s brains to any speakers you already have. Preorders started Thursday and the devices are scheduled to …

Pay with your voice. Google on Wednesday released to the public a new app called Hands Free, which lets people pay for items in stores by simply telling the cashier, “I’ll pay with Google.” But don’t tell just any local store owner that this one’s on Google and then walk out with a Snickers bar. The app, available for Android …

This latest installment of The 3:59 podcast kicks off with more news on Apple’s battle with the feds. The tech giant has been fighting a court order compelling it to hack into an iPhone used by one of the attackers in the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. Apple says helping the FBI in this situation could jeopardize the privacy …

Any daredevils still interested in buying a hoverboard will find it harder to get one now. On Tuesday, Amazon.com pulled all its hoverboards from its website, leaving only accessories such as decals and wheels still available. An advertisement for the Razor Hovertrax hoverboard leads to a nearly empty page on the website. Amazon’s decision comes days after the US Consumer …

HP, one of the biggest names in printers and computers, also has a history of making phones. No, really. The Palo Alto, California, company has largely flown under the radar with its phones because, well, they’ve all flopped. But that isn’t deterring the world’s second-largest PC maker from trying again with the HP Elite x3, which it revealed Sunday at …