Pavel Alpeyev | The Seattle Times

Eileen Carroll, left, works on her laptop as her daughter, Lily, 11, attends school remotely from their home in Warwick, R.I, Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2020. When Carroll’s other daughter tested positive for the coronavirus, state health officials told her to notify anyone her daughter might have been around. Contact tracers, she was told, were simply too overwhelmed to do it. It’s the same story across the U.S., as a catastrophic surge in infections has made it difficult or impossible to keep up with the calls considered critical to controlling outbreaks. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

July 5, 2021 at 6:30 am

Pay up to stay home is one company’s approach to remote work

Disco, a maker of semiconductor equipment, has a decade-old internal currency called "Will" that's created its own micro-economy. When the pandemic hit, it set up...

January 16, 2020 at 8:50 am

Toshiba says it built an algorithm that’s faster than a supercomputer

It's a tantalizing prospect for traders whose success often hinges on microseconds: a desktop PC algorithm that crunches market data faster than today's most advanced...

January 9, 2016 at 4:17 pm

For hoverboards at CES, patents a marquee feature

One Chinese maker of electric skateboards, Hangzhou Chic Intelligent Technology, brought along framed copies of its patents to CES in Las Vegas

Business

March 8, 2015 at 8:00 pm

Sony kit helps tinkerers invent sensor devices

MESH, with mix-and-match buttons, lights and sensors, operates with an Apple iPad and allows do-it-yourselfers to create devices able, for instance, to trigger a camera,...

Business

July 29, 2011 at 12:44 pm

Geiger counters in demand in Japan — and increasingly in question

Geiger counters have sold out and prices quadrupled in Tokyo because of worries about radiation fallout since the Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown in March. The...

Nation & World

May 16, 2011 at 10:00 pm

PlayStation security breach shows Amazon’s cloud appeal for hackers

For three pennies an hour, hackers can rent Amazon.com's servers to wage cyber attacks such as the one that crippled Sony's PlayStation Network and led...

Business

March 1, 2011 at 10:11 pm

Book business stacks up for scanners in Japan

Yusuke Ohki's 2,000 books were crowding out his Tokyo apartment, so he scanned them all into an Apple iPad. Six months later, the 28-year-old...

Business