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For many Americans, regardless of politics, race, gender, or creed, the Thanksgiving dinner table is an emotional minefield hiding underneath a kitschy tablecloth. As turkey time draws nearer, expectations and worries about relatives’ behavior begin to mount, while the media drum toll doles out advice about how to manage tensions. In truth, the holidays are one of the few times when an assortment of people with different political beliefs are apt to meet in real life.

Earlier this year, I asked a friend to dog-sit for us while my family was on vacation. I lured her in with the promise of access to our fully-equipped smart house. She could peruse the full extent of my Apple Music subscription on our Sonos, or watch Netflix on our Apple TV. She could fiddle with the Hue lights. She could even start the robot vacuum, if she wanted! No pressure or anything. That afternoon, I got a call.

There are some harsh truths you'd rather not face, like what you really look like eating a turkey drumstick, or how you sound while you sleep. Similarly, how many hours you spend on Facebook and Instagram is a potentially shame-inducing data point that for years you’ve had no real way to assess. But today, Facebook has been widely—and quietly—rolling out a tool that lets you measure how much time you spend using both the Facebook and Instagram apps.

Stan Lee, the avuncular, controversial longtime writer and publisher of Marvel Comics, died Monday in Los Angeles. He was 95 years old. Popping a big character death on people like that was just the kind of thing Lee liked.

High-end chefs spend a lot of time figuring out how to get foods to taste their best. Are they seasoned correctly? Is there a balance between fat and acidity that makes you want more? Is there a way they could pull off the ultimate feat of making a food taste more like itself? Using the trick I've just learned from rising-star chef Eric Rivera, you can up your holiday game rather easily and I'm willing to share it: using powdered freeze-dried foods to amp up the flavors in your favorite recipes.

Consider how Spencer Salter spent the last two years, and the auto industry seems like a terrific business. The Jaguar Land Rover researcher rode on boats, trains, and planes. He hooked himself up for zip lines, braved roller coasters, flew in helicopters, and climbed into rally cars, all on company time and the company dime. But, “I made myself sick a lot of times,” Salter says. The resulting vomit was not an unfortunate side effect of Ferris Beuller-esque adventures.

Mark Zuckerberg would like you to know that despite a scathing report in The New York Times, which depicts Facebook as a ruthless, self-concerned corporate behemoth, things are getting better---at least, the way he sees it.

I always feel a bond with people who tell me they owned a Zune back in the day. Microsoft’s also-ran MP3 player never became a hit, but it was a fabulous little music machine and its influence can still be felt in the company's hardware and software a decade later. Its Surface devices have put a focus on high-quality design since they debuted in 2012, and now Microsoft is using the brand to re-enter the audio market with the Surface Headphones.

From where Trina Hill is stationed at the corner of 16th and Illinois streets, she can see the future of San Francisco rising all around her. This is the Mission Bay neighborhood, the new hotbed for science, tech, and medicine. Warriors Stadium is right across 16th. Behind her stands the building she and her coworkers are finishing, future research laboratories for the University of California at San Francisco—one of the leading medical research institutions in the world.

The trouble started almost immediately. A few minutes after taking off from Lisbon on Sunday, the pilots of an Air Astana Embraer 190 jet called Mayday. “We have flight control problems,” he told air traffic control, asking for a path to the sea for an emergency landing. “We have six people on board,” one pilot said a few minutes later, according to an audio recording available via LiveATC.net. “Airplane is completely uncontrollable.