Skip to main content
All Stories By:

Barbara Krasnoff

Barbara Krasnoff

Reviews Editor

Barbara Krasnoff is currently Reviews Editor for The Verge, and has been working as an editor and writer at tech publications for longer than she cares to admit.

She came to The Verge from a stint as a freelancer; before that, she was Senior Reviews Editor for Computerworld. When she is not writing and editing how-tos, or asking staff members what's on their desks, she writes (and occasionally publishes) science fiction and fantasy short stories.

B
The Verge
It’s time to wave goodbye to Mint, Intuit’s free budgeting app.

The company was originally going to shut it down on January 1st, but now the end has finally come: Mint will disappear after tomorrow, March 23rd (so it’s a good time to finally download that data). Intuit has urged Mint users to move to Credit Karma, which is also free but not quite the same thing; however, there are alternatives. We’ve laid out a few for you:


Mint is going away, but these easy budgeting apps can take its place

There are plenty of other apps that can help you watch your budget.

Vernor Vinge, science fiction writer and creator of the concept of the technological singularity, has died at the age of 79.

According to Ars Technica, Vinge, a professor and computer scientist who was well-known for his hard science fiction novels such as A Fire Upon the Deep and Rainbow’s End, passed away yesterday. A truly excellent author, he postulated that AI will one day surpass the understanding of its human creators; he described this singularity theory in a 1993 essay. But it is probably for his far-reaching and absorbing fiction that Vinge will be best known.


Image: Tor Science Fiction
B
External Link
Today I learned there’s an app that tells me when I can run to the bathroom during a movie.

As Jimmy Kimmel said in his opening monologue for the Oscars, “When I went to see Killers of the Flower Moon, I had my mail forwarded to the theater.” If you’re sitting through a three-hour movie, nature may call at an inconvenient moment.

An app called RunPee can help: it alerts you to scenes that are not vital, lets you know how long you have, and summarizes what happened (so you don’t have to irritate your partner with “What did I miss?”). It also tells you if there are any end credit scenes so you can join the bathroom queue as soon as the film ends.