My Retroj.am playlist from freshman year in college. Jason Cipriani/CNET It’s funny how our minds connect a song to a specific location or time in our life. The instant you hear a song you’ve all but forgotten about, it’s as if you enter a time machine and are immediately transported back in time. In that …

Studio Chudy and Grase A 2013 report found, in the UK alone, £68 million was being wasted every year from one single factor: overfilling kettles. That is the cost of electricity used to boil water that then never gets used. Of course, it’s difficult to gauge exactly how much water you’ll need for one cup when filling something like a …

Now playing: Watch this: Stop your Samsung Smart TV from spying on you 1:28 Editors’ note, March 7, 2017: This post is getting considerable attention in March 2017, now that a cache of Wikileaks documents has allegedly revealed that the CIA might be using these same Samsung TVs to spy on you. However, if that’s true, it’s unlikely that the …

Apple hopes its smartwatch becomes something people never want to take off. James Martin/CNET It’s not surprising for Apple executives to jump up at the same time during meetings. That’s because they’re all wearing the Apple Watch that’s nudging them for sitting too long, says Apple CEO Tim Cook. Cook, speaking Tuesday during the Goldman Sachs technology conference, said one …

Apple Pay can be used at 35,000 feet, as JetBlue begins taking mobile payments on flights. But it’s what Google’s doing back on Earth that could really change the future: Now playing: Watch this: Apple Pay takes to the skies, Google’s robodog stalks… 2:57 Other stories this tech-news roundup: Upcoming Apple Watch app will track glucose levels Google plays doctor …

Republicans aren’t happy with the Federal Communications Commission’s plan to regulate the Internet like telephone service, and they’re going out of their way to make sure people know it. The FCC commissioners (left to right): Ajit Pai, Mignon Clyburn, Tom Wheeler (chairman), Jessica Rosenworcel, and Michael O’Rielly. FCC The latest broadside comes from within the FCC itself, with Republican commissioner …

Yelp, the go-to site for crowdsourced reviews on nearly every sort of consumer-focused business, is jumping into food delivery. The company said Tuesday that it paid $134 million for food ordering and delivery app Eat24. Eat24, which has relationships with 20,000 restaurants in 1,500 US cities, is already integrated into Yelp’s network. That integration lets Yelp users see menus and …

Apple Watch wearers with diabetes will be able to use an app to monitor their glucose levels. Designed by medical products maker DexCom, the app will track and display your glucose levels on your watch in the form of a graph, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. The goal is to help diabetics easily and quickly read their glucose, or …

A 64GB Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 for $299? Yes, please! Sarah Tew I’ll let you in on a little Cheapskate secret: Sometimes, like a mystery writer, I’ll start with the end and work my back. Or, in my case, start with the bonus deals and then move onto the main deal. But sometimes the bonus deals pile up so high, …

The last Lumia flagship, the Nokia Lumia Icon/930, was unveiled almost a year ago. Josh Miller/CNET Microsoft’s first flagship phone better be a winner. All three of the Microsoft-branded Lumia smartphones the company has launched since the Nokia deal closed in April 2014 have been low-cost devices with entry-level specs. Yeah, yeah, the Lumia 535 and 532/435 combo are entirely …

Qualcomm president Derek Aberle, who’s served as a point person on the Chinese investigation. Josh Miller/CNET Chinese regulators may fine Qualcomm, the world’s biggest mobile-chips maker, roughly $1 billion as part of a long-running antimonopoly investigation into the company. The punishment is expected to become public in the next few days, state-run Securities Times reported Monday. Xu Kunlin, head of …

The smart home is listening to everything you say. Should you watch what you say in front of a Samsung Smart TV? A privacy policy warns that the voice-recognition feature records what you say and sends it to a third party. But as our sister-site ZDNet reports, a third party is most likely Nuance, a voice-recognition software provider that works …

Huawei will be making more phones like the Ascend P7, shown here with a sapphire screen. Sarah Tew/CNET 2015 is shaping up to be a big year for Huawei. According to Bill Plummer, vice president of Huawei’s external communications, the Chinese device-maker’s sales numbers are the highest they’ve been in Huawei’s almost 30-year history, and leadership has grand ambitions. Huawei …

Microsoft’s Work Assistant will use Cortana to work with your Office documents via voice. Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET A new video that has popped online appears to show off Microsoft’s voice-powered Office Work Assistant. Currently being tested internally as a beta product at Microsoft, the Work Assistant would handle Office-related tasks on devices running the company’s mobile OS for smartphones. …

The number of countries seeking information on Twitter users is on the rise. Twitter Social network Twitter has published its latest transparency report, and singled out the US, Turkey and Russia, for dramatically increasing the number of requests on user information over the last six months of 2014. The number of government requests on Twitter user information rose 40 percent …