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San Francisco wants Airbnb to help enforce rental law

Airbnb could be held responsible for policing San Francisco listings that violate the city’s short-term rental law. San Francisco Supervisors David Campos and Aaron Peskin plan to introduce legislation on Tuesday that will hold sites like Airbnb responsible for verifying that hosts are following the city’s law. Current law requires hosts to register, carry liability insurance, pay transient occupancy taxes …

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Dating website for ‘beautiful people’ hacked, customer data leaked

The sensitive data of 1.1 million users of dating website BeautifulPeople.com has allegedly been leaked online and is being sold, according to a report by Forbes. This data includes names, addresses, sexual preference, relationship status, phone numbers, email addresses and even private messages. The website was hacked in December 2015, and at the time BeautifulPeople.com said the incident occurred on …

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True crime: Harper Lee piece about murder investigation discovered

A previously unknown work by the late author Harper Lee seems to have emerged, but it’s not fiction. Lee’s feature story about a quadruple murder in Kansas was found in an FBI publication called Grapevine, the Guardian reported Monday. The murders also inspired Truman Capote’s nonfiction book, “In Cold Blood,” which Lee helped Capote research. Lee biographer Charles J. Shields …

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FCC signs off on Charter purchase of Time Warner

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler on Monday said he’s recommending the agency’s commissioners approve Charter Communications’ acquisition of Time Warner Cable. Separately, the US Department of Justice also said it will allow the $78 billion deal to go ahead; it also approved Charter’s $10.4 billion purchase of Bright House Networks. Those acquisitions will make Charter the second-largest provider of …

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I see you: Facebook rumored to plan camera app

Facebook is working on an app that would launch as a camera, encouraging users to share photos and live videos to the social network, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. Based on accounts from anonymous sources, the Journal said the app could be part of Facebook’s plan to counter a troubling trend for the social media juggernaut: Users are still …

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NFL’s Deflategate started with a tweet

The NFL’s Deflategate saga emerged with a single tweet shortly after midnight. Just hours after the New England Patriots thrashed the Indianapolis Colts in a crucial playoff game in January 2015, Indianapolis TV sports columnist Bob Kravitz tweeted that the league was investigating whether the victors had gotten an edge by deflating footballs. The ensuing brouhaha, which now is once …

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Brixo brings Internet of Things to Lego

Lego has its own Mindstorms kits for building robotics projects, but Brixo wants to give you a lot more creative freedom. Brixo is a series of Lego-compatible bricks that perform various functions so that you can design and build your own projects. There are three types of bricks: chrome-coated connector blocks that connect and close circuits; trigger blocks that contain …

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How to find an unsaved Word document in Windows 10

Word has an auto-save feature, but there are times when your documents don’t show up in the recovery pane when you open Word. Maybe your computer shut down unexpectedly or you accidentally clicked “Don’t Save” as you closed your document. We’ve all been there. In any case, you can recover your file in seconds with this quick tip: Go to …

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Add 128GB of flash storage to any PC for under $30

The cloud is great and all, but local storage is still important. That’s typically where you store your media libraries, to say nothing of the data you’ll still need access to when you can’t get online. (Hey, it happens.) So here’s the problem: Many a modern PC — especially if it’s of the Chromebook, MacBook, Ultrabook or Windows tablet variety …

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