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As frustrating as it is that governments and businesses are running roughshod over our online freedoms, at least we have plenty of good VPNs to choose from to keep us protected online. There are so many fast, intelligently designed, full-featured and affordable services on the market that the biggest problem is picking one. For any use case, you can bet at least two providers will be neck-and-neck for first place. On the other hand, the VPN world is still the Wild West in some ways. It's easy en

X seems to be working again after struggling with an outage that took the service offline and made it slow to load for much of the morning. According to Xs developer platform page , there is an ongoing incident related to streaming endpoints thats caused increased errors. The incident started at 7:39AM PT, according to the page. That roughly coincides with a spike in reports at Down Detector . The issues seemed to be somewhat intermittent. At some points, Xs website loaded partially and only sho

Google has filed its appeal to the Department of Justices antitrust case that ended with a federal judge ruling that the company was maintaining a monopoly with its search business. While the company goes through the appeals process, its also asking that implementation of the remedies from the case, which include a requirement that Google share search data with its competitors, also be paused. As we have long said, the Courts August 2024 ruling ignored the reality that people use Google because

If you're looking to up your privacy game on the internet in the new year, you can do so for a little less than usual thanks to ExpressVPN's latest deal. Its two-year plans are up to 78 percent off right now: the Advanced tier is on sale for $101 for two years, plus four additional free months. That works out to $3.59 per month during the promotional period. Weve consistently liked ExpressVPN because its fast, easy to use and widely available across a large global server network. In fact, it's o

CyberGhost is the middle child of the Kape Technologies VPN portfolio, but in quality, it's much closer to ExpressVPN than Private Internet Access. I mainly put it on my best VPN list because it's so cheap, but I wouldn't have done that if it didn't earn its place in other ways affordable crap is still crap, after all. My universal impression of CyberGhost is a VPN that's not perfect but is always genuinely working to make itself better. It makes decisions based on what will help its users, not

Claude Cowork , Anthropic's AI assistant for taking care of simple tasks on your computer, is now available for anyone with a $20 per month Pro subscription to try. Anthropic launched Cowork as an exclusive feature for its Max subscribers , who pay a minimum of $100 per month for more uses of Claude's expensive reasoning models and early access to experimental features. Now Claude Cowork is available at a cheaper price, though Anthropic notes Pro users may hit their usage limits earlier than Max

If you follow Anthropic, you're probably familiar with Claude Code. Since the fall of 2024 , the company has been training its AI models to use and navigate computers like a human would, and the coding agent has been the most practical expression of that work, giving developers a way to automate rote programming tasks. Starting today, Anthropic is giving regular people a way to take advantage of those capabilities, with the release of a new preview feature called Claude Cowork . The company is b

X seems to be working again after struggling with an outage that took the service offline and made it slow to load for much of the morning. According to Xs developer platform page , there is an ongoing incident related to streaming endpoints thats caused increased errors. The incident started at 7:39AM PT, according to the page. That roughly coincides with a spike in reports at Down Detector . The issues seemed to be somewhat intermittent. At some points, Xs website loaded partially and only sho

Although X removed Groks ability to create nonconsensual digitally undressed images on the social platform, the standalone Grok app is another story. It reportedly continues to produce nudified deepfakes of real people. And now, Ashley St. Clair, a conservative political strategist and mother of one of Elon Musks 14 children, has sued xAI for nonconsensual sexualized images of her that Grok allegedly produced. In the court filing , St. Clair accused xAIs Grok chatbot of creating and disseminatin

Last week at CES, Lego introduced its new Smart Play system , with a tech-packed Smart Brick that can recognize and interact with sets and minifigures. It was unexpected and delightful to see Lego come up with a way to modernize its bricks without the need for apps, screens or AI. So I was a little surprised this week when the Lego Education group announced its latest initiative is the Computer Science and AI Learning Solution. After all, generative AI feels like the antithesis of Legos creative

Canada has agreed to drastically reduce its tariffs on imported Chinese EVs from 100 percent to 6.1 percent as part of a new deal between the two countries. In return, China will be reducing tariffs on Canadian canola seeds from 84 percent to about 15 percent. The move is a break from the United States, which maintains a 100 percent tariff on EVs from China, effectively banning them in the country. Mexico currently tariffs the vehicles at 50 percent after increasing its rate last year. Under the

We already knew something Ocarina of Time -related was coming from Nintendo and Lego in 2026, and now we know exactly what that set will look like. Weighing in at a surprisingly modest 1,003 pieces, the typically word salad-y Lego The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - The Final Battle is the second Lego Zelda set, following the 2,500-piece Great Deku Tree set in 2024. While the latter lets you choose between building either a Breath of the Wild or OoT -themed replica of the wise old guardian of

X is still struggling with an outage that has intermittently taken the service offline and made it slow to load for much of the morning. According to Xs developer platform page, there is an ongoing incident related to streaming endpoints thats caused increased errors. The incident started at 7:39AM PT, according to the page. That roughly coincides with a spike in reports at Down Detector . The issues seems to be somewhat intermittent. At some points, Xs website has loaded partially and only show

You know things are messed up when a Big Tech company fights accusations of union-busting by insisting it was only AI layoffs. That's where things stand after a group of fired TikTok moderators in the UK filed a legal claim with an employment tribunal. The Guardian reported on Friday that around 400 TikTok content moderators who were unionizing were laid off before Christmas. The workers were sacked a week before a vote was scheduled to establish a collective bargaining unit. The moderators said

One way to read more in the new year is to incorporate audiobooks as part of your reading habit. Audible is having a sale right now that makes that easier and cheaper to do: you can get three months of access for only $1 per month, or a total of $3. The promotion runs through January 21. An Audible subscription grants one audiobook per month to keep. This can be selected from a massive catalog of new releases and bestsellers. The collection here has just about everything. However, it's easy to p

Apple's next-gen Siri is still far off, but this week the company announced that it'll be using Google's Gemini AI for its new foundation models. In this episode, Devindra and Engadget's Igor Bonifacic discuss why Apple teamed up with Google again, instead of OpenAI or Anthropic. Also, they chat about Meta's Reality Lab layoffs , which is refocusing the company on AI hardware like its smart glasses. Subscribe! iTunes Spotify Pocket Casts Stitcher Google Podcasts Topics Meta announces 1000+ layof

The holiday season is fully in the rear view mirror and real life is here to stay. But that doesn't mean the time for gifts is over especially ones for yourself. You can still take advantage of great January sales on some awesome tech products . Take the Apple Mac mini M4 , which is down to $500 from $599. The 17 percent discount gives you 16GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD for only about $20 more than the computer's Black Friday sale . Its beefier models are also on sale: opting for 512GB of SSD wil

Now that the winter holidays are well and truly past, now's the perfect time to take stock of your tech setup. If you were gifted (or gifted yourself) some new gear in December, make sure that you've got the proper accessories to keep that gear performing at its best. If a new way to power all those batteries would be a benefit, Amazon's currently running a discount on an excellent wireless charging pad. The UGREEN MagFlow Qi2 3-in-1 Charger Station 25W is on sale for $95. That's only a little b

The fate of Warner Bros. Discovery remains the biggest story in Hollywood, with Paramount Skydance refusing to back down from its rival bid to the proposed Netflix acquisition of the company. If the Netflix deal does go through, the companys co-chief executive, Ted Sarandos, has attempted to ease concerns around what that could mean for theaters. In an interview with The New York Times , Sarandos responded to a question about his companys commitment to the theatrical business by insisting that h

Meta is killing the standalone Workrooms app on February 16, 2026. The company presented Workrooms as a virtual reality space where teams can meet and collaborate in an immersive environment when it launched the product. Now Meta says its Horizon platform has evolved enough to support a wide range of productivity apps and tools, so it made the decision to discontinue Workrooms as a standalone app. The company recently slashed its spending on the metaverse and started the process to lay off more

The Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) has opened two investigations into Microsoft-owned game studio Activision Blizzard, centered around the mobile games Diablo Immortal and Call of Duty: Mobile . The AGCM alleges the free-to-play games use misleading and aggressive practices to encourage in-game purchases. Regulators say the games rely on a deceptive user interface design meant to encourage longer and more frequent play sessions while bombarding players with reminders and opportunities to s

One way you can reduce the number of cables you have to deal with on the regular is by investing in a few wireless chargers. Those with iPhones should consider Apple's own MagSafe charger not only because of its sleek and effective design, but also because it's on sale right now at Amazon. The Qi2.2-rated MagSafe charger is down to $30 for the one-meter version, or $40 for the two-meter version. If you have an iPhone 16, iPhone 17 or iPhone Air, this cable can charge your device at 25W as long a

San Francisco-founded Smart glasses maker Viture has been sued in a US court by rival XREAL over claims it infringed on its patents, XREAL announced in a press release . The complaint, lodged in a federal Texas court, accuses Viture of illegally incorporating XREAL's patented tech into its products including the Luma Pro, Luma Ultra and Beast models. The lawsuit is not merely about enforcing a single patent, the company wrote. It is about stopping a pattern of intellectual property infringement

You have the best chance to save on streaming services during the holiday shopping season, but throughout the year, the occasional deal pops up that's worth considering. Case in point: this new Disney+ deal. New and eligible returning subscribers can sign up for the Disney+ Hulu bundle (with ads) for $10 for one month of access. That's $3 off the usual price of the bundle for one month, and more than 58 percent off if you consider the cost of each service individually (Disney+ at $12 per month a

The start of the new year is a great time to get your finances in order, and a good budgeting app can help with that. Instead of laboring over a spreadsheet, you can try one of our favorite budgeting apps for less than usual. Monarch Money is running a sale that gives new users 50 percent off one year of the service, bringing the final cost down to just $50. Just use the code NEWYEAR2026 at checkout to get the discount. Monarch Money makes for a capable and detailed budgeting companion. You can

After telling the YouTube channel Hardware Unboxed that it was putting its RTX 5060 Ti 16GB and 5070 Ti into end-of-life status, ASUS has backtracked on those comments and now says the GPUs will remain on sale. Certain media may have received incomplete information from an ASUS PR representative regarding these products, the company said in a dedicated press release . The GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB have not been discontinued or designated as end-of-life (EOL). ASUS has no

TikTok is bolstering its age-verification measures across Europe. In the coming weeks, the platform will roll out upgraded age-detection tech in the European Economic Area, as well as in the UK and Switzerland. The systems will assess the likely age of a user based on their profile information and activity. When the tech flags an account that may belong to a user aged under 13 (the minimum age to use TikTok), a specialist moderator will assess whether it should be banned. TikTok will send users

If you thought we were exaggerating , the hunger for memory and GPUs is making many companies reassess their priorities. YouTube channel Hardware Unboxed discovered ASUS has stopped producing the RTX 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB due to the ongoing memory crunch. Both GPUs are 16GB models, making them more expensive to manufacture in the current climate. Demand for GeForce RTX GPUs is strong, and memory supply is constrained. We continue to ship all GeForce SKUs and are working closely with our suppl

Gone are the days in which you needed to spend a fortune to get a good smartphone. In 2026, features once exclusive to high-end smartphones big batteries, multi-camera arrays, high refresh rate OLED displays and more have made their way down to more affordable models. Yes, youll still need to buy a flagship smartphone to get the best camera or fastest processor, but you don't have to make nearly as many compromises as you once did if you have a strict budget to adhere to when you go shopping f

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Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down as president of Lucasfilm. Although she will continue as a producer for several Star Wars projects, including upcoming movie The Mandalorian and Grogu , the company will now be helmed by a duo in Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan. It's a big changing of the guard for Star Wars fans, and marks the start of a fresh chapter for the sci-fi universe. Before taking over at Lucasfilm, Kennedy had seen great success as a producer with a couple little films you may have hea

After a tumultuous 2025 that saw it lose around 4,000 employees , NASA finally has an operating budget for 2026, and one that largely preserves its scientific capabilities. On Thursday, the Senate passed an appropriations bill funding NASA, alongside the National Science Foundation and a handful of other federal agencies. Going into the appropriations process, the president called for a 24 percent year over year reduction to NASA's total operating budget. As part of that plan, the White House wa

The US and Taiwan have signed an agreement that will see a multi-billion dollar investment into domestic development of semiconductors and related infrastructure. The US Department of Commerce announced that Taiwanese businesses will make an upfront investment of at least $250 billion into their US production capacity, while Taiwan's government will provide credit guarantees of at least another $250 billion in support of the semiconductor industry and supply chain in the US. In exchange, Taiwan

After testing the feature in a limited beta , Bluesky is making its Live Now badge for streamers available for everyone on the social network to try. Live Now is included as part of Bluesky's v1.114 update, alongside cashtags, a separate type of hashtag for collecting conversations about publicly-traded companies. Bluesky first started testing its Live Now badge in May 2025 with a limited group of accounts, including the official NBA account. The feature lets Twitch streamers with Bluesky profil

Today, Amazon shared more details about the final chapter of its game New World: Aeternum . The company announced in October that it would wind down support for the MMO, with the Nighthaven season to be its last. New World will be delisted and no longer available for purchase starting today, but the game's servers will not be taken offline until January 31, 2027. People who own the game will be able to continue playing until that date. Nighthaven season will continue through to that end date. Pl

As part of a new agreement, films from Sony Pictures Entertainment will stream on Netflix first, the companies announced via a joint statement . The new deal expands on the exclusive rights Netflix had to Sony films in the US, and means the service will be the first place people will be able to stream upcoming projects like the live-action adaptation of The Legend of Zelda , and a quartet of biopics about The Beatles . Sony's films will stream worldwide on Netflix in what's called Pay-1, the fir

Now would be a good time to update all your Bluetooth audio devices. On Thursday, Wired reported on a security flaw in 17 headphone and speaker models that could allow hackers to access your devices, including their microphones. The vulnerability stems from a faulty implementation of Google's one-tap (Fast Pair) protocol . Security researchers at Belgium's KU Leuven University Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography group, who discovered the security hole, named the flaw WhisperPair. They

YouTube channel Hardware Unboxed is reporting that NVIDIA has effectively discontinued the RTX 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB due to the ongoing memory crunch. In its most recent video , the channel states ASUS explicitly told it the RTX 5070 Ti is currently facing a supply shortage. As a result, the company has placed the model into end of life status, and no longer plans to produce it. Hardware Unboxed also spoke to retailers in Australia, who told the channel the 5070 Ti is no longer available to p

The second season of Amazon's excellent Fallout show is currently airing , but the company is already looking to expand its programming around the popular franchise. Prime Video has greenlit a unscripted reality show titled Fallout Shelter . It will be a ten-episode run with Studio Lambert, the team behind reality projects including Squid Game: The Challenge and The Traitors , as its primary producer.Bethesda Game Studios head honcho Todd Howard is attached as an executive producer. Amazon's des

The intriguing Africanfuturist heist game, Relooted , is out on February 10. Developed by independent South African studio Nyamakop, the game focuses on a ragtag crew from Johannesburg that liberates real-life African artifacts from a series of fictionalized Western museums. Relooted is best described as a 2.5d side-scrolling action platformer with stealth and puzzle elements. You have to carefully plan each heist with your fellow teammates, knowing where to place each crew member and how youre

For a number of very obvious reasons, we dont want to roll back the clock to early 2020. No thank you. But if there was a feel-good lockdown story, it was the perfectly timed arrival of Animal Crossing: New Horizons , which allowed friends who could no longer meet up IRL to do so virtually on their carefully pruned islands. The game will almost certainly never be as popular as it was back then again, but Nintendo is hoping a good chunk of lapsed islanders will return for its latest DLC drop, whi

Verizon is offering a very small mea culpa after Wednesday's massive outage , which drew more than 1.5 million reports on Downdetector and lasted hours. The carrier posted on X that it will offer a $20 credit, but customers must redeem it in the myVerizon app. This credit isnt meant to make up for what happened. No credit really can, the company wrote. But its a way of acknowledging your time and showing that this matters to us. Incensed customers have largely replied with incredulity, both at t

As part of Wikipedia's 25th anniversary , parent company Wikimedia announced a slew of partnerships with AI-focused companies like Amazon, Meta, Perplexity, Microsoft and others. The deals are meant to alleviate some of the cost associated with AI chatbots accessing Wikipedia content in enormous volumes by giving the tech companies streamlined access. As noted by The Verge , the timeline on these deals is a little squirrely. The Wikipedia foundation says that several companies became enterprise

The indie RPG Sea of Stars is being released for mobile platforms on April 7. The iOS and Android versions are priced at just $10, which is a steal considering it cost $35 when it was first released for PC and consoles. Heck, it still costs that much on many platforms. This is a mobile release, so it's not an exact port. The interface has been revamped to allow for complete touch control. It's also compatible with controllers, which is always a good thing with smartphone ports. The Android versi

YouTube channel Hardware Unboxed is reporting that NVIDIA has effectively discontinued the RTX 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB due to the ongoing memory crunch. In its most recent video , the channel states ASUS explicitly told it the RTX 5070 Ti is currently facing a supply shortage. As a result, the company has placed the model into end of life status, and no longer plans to produce it. Hardware Unboxed also spoke to retailers in Australia, who told the channel the 5070 Ti is no longer available to p

If youre looking for something to entertain your kids for the next several months (and potentially longer), YouTube would like you to know that more than 100 classic episodes of Sesame Street are now streaming on the platform. The partnership between Sesame Street creator Sesame Workshop and YouTube was first announced last year and encompasses both old episodes as well as new content. Some of the themed compilations that have also been added to YouTube and YouTube Kids focus on specific educat

Mentra will soon start shipping its first smart glasses , the Mentra Live. At first glance, theres nothing obvious setting Mentras glasses apart from its more well-known competitors , but they come with their own dedicated app store, and employ an open-source OS with an SDK that developers have had access to since early 2025. Mentra says the MiniApp Store is the first app store of its nature for smart glasses, and it will be available to iOS and Android users through the Mentra app. It might be

During CES 2026, Samsung unveiled plenty of new TVs, monitors and other hardware. However, the company is also looking to expand further into video games and has announced a significant refresh to its Gaming Hub on smartphones. Engadget spoke with Samsungs Jong Woo, VP of Game Services, who explained that the update will offer more personalized, faster ways to play and place greater emphasis on up-and-coming titles. Now available on Galaxy devices, with further updates planned, the new hub wants

IO Interactive raised a few eyebrows last week when it announced the minimum and recommended PC specs for 007 First Light . To run the James Bond adventure at in 1080p at 60 fps, IOI initially said you'd need to have a rig with at least 32GB of RAM and a GPU with 12GB of VRAM. The studio has now revised those numbers and other elements of the specs after the community flagged some inconsistencies in an earlier version of the listing. The developer blamed an internal miscommunication which led to

Basketball fans can save on NBA League Pass right now, which lets you catch a bunch of out-of-market NBA games via streaming. The League Pass Premium subscription is on sale for $75, down from the usual $160, and League Pass Standard is marked down to $50 from $110. Considering we're almost halfway though the season, the discount makes sense and is a good deal for anyone who wants to keep a close eye on the rest of the games to be played this year. The Standard plan includes commercials and supp