Uber raised eyebrows last month when its chief lawyer asserted that “drivers’ work is outside the usual course of Uber’s business” in a call laying out the company’s resistance to a California bill that would alter the employment status of many gig workers.

“Chinese netizens hail Apple’s removal of app that aids HK rioters." That was how the Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party outlet, covered Apple’s removal of HKmap.live, an app that helped Hong Kong protesters track police, from the iOS App Store. It was emblematic of the adulatory coverage news outlets controlled by the Chinese government have bestowed on Apple this week.

Evocative labels such as “twisted citrus glazed carrots” and “ultimate chargrilled asparagus” can get people eat more vegetables than they otherwise would—as long as the food is prepared flavorfully, a nationwide study shows.

Babies learn to speak by mimicking their parents – just ask anyone who’s caught their child casually repeating an obscenity they didn’t realize they'd heard. While studying just what’s going on in the brain during this kind of vocal learning, researchers from the University of Texas Southwestern have managed to implant “memories” into the brains of zebra finches, teaching them to sing a song they’ve never actually heard.

A team of researchers is carrying out the first in-depth archaeological survey of part of Saudi Arabia, in a bid to shed light on a mysterious civilisation that once lived there. The Nabataean culture left behind sophisticated stone monuments, but many sites remain unexplored. The rock-strewn deserts of Al Ula in Saudi Arabia are known for their pitch-black skies, which allow stargazers to easily study celestial bodies without the problem of light pollution.

Game of Thrones’ finale was divisive, to say the least, namely because the fantasy epic fans invested the best part of a decade to have their ending rushed into six episodes. There were countless storylines that never wrapped up, questions that will never be answered and now creator George RR Martin has lashed out at HBO producers for forcing him to throw the spotlight on characters he otherwise wouldn’t have and cutting the finale short.

“Looking back, it’s a little surreal,” he said. Just this year, the company that Andrew Duplessie co-founded with Daniel Taylor, AskTipster -- a style advice app and social growth engine with over 1 billion impressions, 250 million views, and 3 million installs -- was acquired by the DTX Company, Tim Armstrong’s new venture.

Nutrition researcher Kevin Hall strives to project a Zen-like state of equanimity. In his often contentious field, he says he is more bemused than frustrated by the tendency of other scientists to “cling to pet theories despite overwhelming evidence that they are mistaken.” Some of these experts, he tells me with a sly smile, “have a fascinating ability to rationalize away studies that don’t support their views.”

Edward Burtynsky travels the world trying to capture striking images of humanity's impact on the planet, from the fossil-like shapes left behind by drills in a Potash mine to the luminescent colours of lithium ponds.

Ever since their inception, games have been viewed as a form of escapism. You can’t rob a bank in real life because it’s, you know, bad, so you plan a heist in GTA 5. Sadly, it’s impossible to become a supernatural assassin, but Dishonored’s there to fulfill this fantasy. You can’t hunt dragons in real life because that would go against the Endangered Species Act or whatever, so you boot up nearly every RPG released in the last 30 years and get to the slaying.

The perfect reading environment is hard to come by, which may be why it so often comes with a high price tag. For around $1,500, you can own a leather library chair from Restoration Hardware (“reminiscent of chairs found in the great reading rooms of Europe”). The Levenger Catalog, which specializes in reader-friendly gewgaws, promotes a genteel fantasy of reading constructed around an “ergonomic and ambidextrous” reading table, personalized bookmarks, bespoke pens for note-taking and be...

The Apple Watch Series 5 is set to launch this Friday, September 20, but the embargo for the first reviews of Apple's latest smartwatch ended this morning. Several journalists and media outlets were provided with review units, so we've gathered together some key takeaways and highlights.

You’re preparing for an important meeting, and the pressure’s on. If it’s bad now, how will you cope when you actually have to perform? Will you fly? Or will you sink?

Social media has been a quintessentially American journey rooted in ideas about creative expression and freedom of speech. But the rise of the Chinese video app TikTok could signal an end to Western dominance of the Internet’s megaphones — and an ideological change in what people see on the Web.

Two-thirds of Americans believe climate change is either a crisis or a serious problem, with a majority wanting immediate action to address global heating and its damaging consequences, major new polling has found. Amid a Democratic primary shaped by unprecedented alarm over the climate crisis and an insurgent youth climate movement that is sweeping the world, the polling shows substantial if uneven support for tackling the issue.

Software that can detect and delete unsolicited penis pictures sent via private messages on Twitter is being developed by researchers in Seattle. The project was started after developer Kelsey Bressler was sent an unsolicited nude photo by a man. She is now helping a friend refine an artificial intelligence system that can detect the unwanted penis pictures and delete them before they are ever seen.