The US now can claim the top two machines on a list of the 500 fastest supercomputers, as Sierra, an IBM machine for nuclear weapons research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, edged out a Chinese system that last year was the very fastest. The Top500 list ranks supercomputers based on how quickly they perform a …

Google is committed to diversity and supports its employees in their protests, the company’s financial chief said Monday. Ruth Porat, chief financial officer of Alphabet and Google, said Monday during the Wall Street Journal D.Live conference in Laguna Beach, Calif., that she participated in this month’s walkouts with her financial team.  “Diversity overall makes an organization stronger,” she said. “People …

The Apple iPad Pro 11-inch and its new best friend, the Apple Pencil 2, enter the pantheon of iFixit teardowns. Published Monday, the iPad Pro teardown reveals that underneath the new gadgets’ slick surfaces lies a tap-happy array of sensors, smaller battery, the usual gluefest and a field of magnets. Once you remove the sleek white case and unroll the ribbon cable you …

The 6T smartphone from OnePlus has only just been unveiled, but quick as a flash, the company is already here with a limited edition version. The new “Thunder Purple” colour of the phone blends from black to purple “like a thunderstorm on a summer night,” explained OnePlus founder and CEO Pete Lau.  “We experimented extensively to test how light interacts with …

Twitter is a confounding place for many reasons, but perhaps its oddest quirk is that since its founding in 2006, it hasn’t had an edit button. That may change, and soon. CEO Jack Dorsey reportedly told an audience in India that the company is considering adding the edit functionality to tweets, primarily to fix typos. “We have been considering this for …

Black Friday — and Cyber Monday — is a great invention because we get to go crazy buying stuff at lower prices. But you know what’s even better? Alibaba’s Singles Day shopping bonanza. Called the 11/11 Global Shopping Festival, it’s an annual 24-hour online shopping spree of sorts by the Chinese internet giant which falls on Nov. 11, otherwise known …

Washington may not “agree on the freezing point of water,” as AT&T’s CEO put it, but it should pass legislation to protect consumer privacy and net neutrality.  Randall Stephenson, speaking Monday at the Wall Street Journal D.Live conference in Laguna Beach, California, called for Congress to figure out a way to protect consumers. “I’d love to see legislation, not regulation,” …

Let’s talk storage. Do you work with video files? Images? Audio? That stuff seems to grow exponentially, probably because it’s so damn easy to create. (I’m looking at you, phones capable of capturing 4K video.) How about a game console — got one of those? Now you need as much storage as humanly possibly to store your growing game collection, …

Did you have trouble accessing your Facebook feed? If so, you aren’t alone. Facebook was down this morning in the US, as well as other parts of the world. The outage, caused by a test the social network was conducting, lasted about 40 minutes. “Earlier today, a routine test caused users to have trouble accessing or posting to all Facebook …

On this podcast, we talk about: How the Japanese company Zozo hopes to reinvent online clothing shopping. Amazon will start direct sales of a lot more new Apple devices. Alibaba’s Singles’ Day hits yet another sales record. Now playing: Watch this: Buying clothes online is about to get super weird (The… 4:37 The 3:59 gives you bite-size news and analysis …