Law firms representing Google and Apple have warned that employees who need a visa stamp to re-enter the United States should avoid leaving the country due to longer-than-usual visa processing times, according to Business Insider. 'Given the recent updates and the possibility of unpredictable, extended delays when returning to the U.S., we strongly recommend that employees without a valid H-1B visa stamp avoid international travel for now,' the Fragomen memo reportedly said. Salon also reports that 'hundreds' of Indian professionals who traveled home to renew their U.S. work visas in December have had their U.S. embassy appointments canceled or rescheduled due to new requirements for social media vetting. TechCrunch has reached out to Google and Apple for comment. Both companies, along with other large tech employers, issued similar warnings in September when the White House announced that employers would have to pay a $100,000 fee for H-1B visa applications. Plan ahead for the 2026 StrictlyVC events. Hear straight-from-the-source candid insights in on-stage fireside sessions and meet the builders and backers shaping the industry. Join the waitlist to get first access to the lowest-priced tickets and important updates....

Try taking a tennis ball in your right hand, putting your thumb on the bottom and your middle finger on the top, and rotating the ball with the fingers of your left hand. The place where the thumb and middle finger of your right hand contact the tennis ball as it spins define the axis of rotation. The axis extends from the south pole to the north pole as it passes through the center of the ball. Over 1,000 years ago, explorers began using compasses, typically made with a floating cork or piece of wood with a magnetized needle in it, to find their way. The Earth has a magnetic field that acts like a giant magnet, and the compass needle aligns with it. The movement of the magnetic North Pole is the result of the Earth having an active core. The inner core, starting about 3,200 miles below your feet, is solid and under such immense pressure that it cannot melt. But the outer core is molten, consisting of melted iron and nickel. Heat from the inner core makes the molten iron and nickel in the outer core move around, much like soup in a pot on a hot stove. The movement of the iron-rich liquid induces a magnetic field that covers the entire Earth....

Retro, a friend-focused photo-sharing app with roughly a million users, is adding a new feature that lets you time-travel through your old photo memories from your phone's camera roll. While the app today offers a way to share photos of what's happening during your week with a private group of friends, or create shared albums, this latest addition, dubbed 'Rewind,' is private to you ' unless you choose to share the photos with others. 'If you're a new user, you don't really have the opportunity to go time-travel through your memories in this way,' said Sharp, who had spent over six years at Meta working on products like Instagram Stories and Facebook Dating, before leaving to found his own photo-sharing startup with Ryan Olson, Retro's CTO, in 2022. 'The other problem that we saw was that people take more photos than ever, but they actually do less with that volume of photos than ever before. So it's almost as if those photos go into the ether,' he added. 'As people engage with those platforms more and more, something that has to be true and will be true is that people will still want to see more of their friends,' Sharp says. 'The photos and videos you take will need to find a place where they can reach the intended audience.'...

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wants us to return to the golden age of air travel, when nobody got into a punching match for reclining a seat into someone else's lap. He says this golden age starts with us, and he has a whole campaign prepared! I assume it will involve more humane accommodations for travelers'or less harrowing working conditions for the flight attendants charged with both crowd control and safety. Or modernizing air-traffic control to make it safer and more efficient. Now to lower my tray table, take a sip from my tiny plastic cup dangerously overfilled with cranberry juice, and see what he has recommended. There's a video with footage of air travel seemingly from the 1960s' He is in a suit' And he wants us to dress 'with respect,' and 'go back to an era when we didn't wear pajamas to the airport'' Sometimes I wish I did not know the difference between correlation and causation. I think I would be happier. I would certainly have a lot more suggestions for solving problems. And I could tell people, with a straight face, to wear suits to the airport to usher back in a golden age....