People in New York don’t actually need cell phones, do they? Photo: Dariusz Sankowski/Pixabay

Have you heard the one about the phone encryption bill in New York that will fine retailers $2,500 for each cell phone they sell that can’t be decrypted?

That set-up is its own punchline. This bill is a terrible idea.

Live Photos to appear on new Samsung’s? Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Android

Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S7 will reportedly deliver with a new feature called “Vivid Photo,” which will be a clone of the Live Photos function on iPhone 6s, allowing users to shoot images that come alive when they are pressed.

Sign up to Prime to pay less. Photo: Amazon

Amazon made Prime an even greater deal this week by adding 20% off the latest games, but if that couldn’t persuade you to finally sign up, perhaps a discounted membership will.

This weekend only, a year of Prime will cost you just $73 — down from $99.

The interview process is getting longer, but at least that gives you an extra day or two to decide what kind of tree you would be. Photo: Ibrahim Adabara/Pixabay

If you’re dreaming about being a software engineer at either Google or Apple, you should brace yourself for an ordeal.

A new report comparing the difficulty, experiences, and lengths of interview processes from a variety of tech companies says that a Google interview is the hardest one you can undertake. Apple did slightly better in that regard; it was the fourth toughest. But the data suggest that one of those two processes is considerably more pleasant.

We may have to wait a bit longer for the Minority Report future of driverless cars. Photo: Dreamworks Pictures

As it stands now, self-driving cars may be more accident report than Minority Report.

In a disclosure to the California Department of Motor Vehicles, the search-engine giant outlined specifics of its driverless-car testing from November 2014 to December 2015. Demo vehicles reportedly logged about 423,000 miles over that period. During that time, testers recorded over 300 “anomalies” that required them to take control from the vehicles, either through hardware malfunctions or on their own judgment.

The report suggests that we’re not quite as close to the fully autonomous future that science fiction and our amazing dreams have hoped.