Molly Rants

Open letter to Apple: You have the power to force good working conditions across the consumer-electronics industry, and it's time to make it happen.

Over the past year or so, stories about working conditions at Chinese manufacturers have trickled into the public consciousness. There were spikes of awareness when, for example, an explosion at the Foxconn factory in Chengdu, China, killed four. Then again when another factory explosion occurred a few weeks later.

Most recently, an amazingly detailed story from The New York Times and a heartbreaking episode of This American Life highlighted conditions in China, and Apple's more

I love to drive. And yet, I cannot wait for self-driving cars. Question is: who will bring them to the masses first? And how soon?

I hear your comments right now: "I will never let a computer drive me to work, it's not safe!" "I'm a great driver, it's everyone else who is the problem." "But I love my BMW/Audi/Mercedes/Hyundai Genesis/Ferrari/Jetta Sportwagen too much to ever let the car do the driving!"

Let's try to separate the mind from the machine, because trust me: mainstream adoption of automated cars will help more

In the aftermath of Wednesday's SOPA/PIPA blackout protests, the Internet community amassed quite a bit of goodwill, flexed its muscles in a friendly, humorous, civil-disobedience kind of way, and, remarkably, even managed to change quite a few minds.

Just 24 short hours later, Anonymous legions nuked that goodwill and took cyber security into thermonuclear territory. The real question now is: were they played?

As I write this, #OpMegaUpload is in full effect. The Internet is seemingly coming down all around me. Global Internet traffic is fluctuating between 13 percent and 14 percent above normal, and, as you can more

When is a phone just a phone? A TV just a TV? A Blu-ray player just a Blu-ray player? How about last year? Because in 2012 and beyond, the next wave of consumer electronics evolution is all about the "ecosystem."

That concept, in fact, is the topic of CNET's Next Big Thing Supersession at CES 2012. We'll be talking about this idea of the ecosystem, and how it's changing the landscape of consumer electronics--and turning media and service companies into hardware partners, if not actual hardware makers.

We'll talk one on one with Google's Eric

I'm afraid to click any links on Facebook these days.

No, it's got nothing to do with the spam attack and the flood of nasty images making their way into news feeds all last week. Instead, it's because the slow spread of Facebook's Open Graph scheme is totally ruining sharing.

I know you've seen this at the top of your news feed: a list of stories your friends have been reading. Or, simply, a single post with a great headline leading to a story that you'd really like to read. So you click it, more

I won't mince words here: I'm a food poster. (See what I did there? "Mince"? Geddit?)

I'm that friend you have on Facebook who's constantly posting photos of her food. I have a Facebook photo album called "Food," almost all of my vacation albums include a significant percentage of food pictures, and even pedestrian food-related items like the seasonal red cups at Starbucks might show up in my feed.

To be sure, I do this because I'm a foodie. I consider food to be one of the great joys of life. I'm delighted by more

Now that we've had a few days to digest the MPAA-backed Stop Online Piracy Act (PDF), can we all finally agree that the MPAA is evil and Hollywood wants the Internet to die? And then can we stop letting them write laws for us?

SOPA is the latest--and perhaps the most brazen--effort in a string of attempts by the MPAA and RIAA to bend the Internet to their corporate will and undermine all kinds of consumer rights. It's a breathtaking piece of work that would give Hollywood and private companies free reign to censor, remove, or prevent the more

The morning of October 4, I had my credit card in hand, ready to buy an iPhone 5 and wave good-bye to Android forever.

Sadly, the iPhone 4S isn't quite what I'd hoped for: it's too expensive for the high-capacity models I'd prefer, I want a bigger screen, there's no 4G, and I'd hoped for integrated turn-by-turn directions. The 4S has left an opening for Android to reassert itself and win my continued loyalty...but it's a tiny opening, indeed. This is Android's last chance, and here's why.

Fragmentation (still)
I'more

In retrospect, it shouldn't be a surprise that Apple released a half-step iPhone this week, instead of a revolutionary and redesigned iPhone 5. Think about it--the real reason for the iPhone 4S is the same as for the iPhone 3GS: carrier contracts are two years long.

The 4S isn't meant to be an upgrade for iPhone 4 users--it's a lure to get new iPhone users in the door, and you iPhone 4 folks will get your iPhone 5 upgrade just in time for a new contract. And if you decide you can't wait and spend big more