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ExpressVPN is back on sale again, and its two-year plans are up to 78 percent off right now. You can get the Advanced tier for $101 for 28 months. This is marked down from the $392 that this time frame normally costs. On a per-month basis, it works out to roughly $3.59 for the promo period. Weve consistently liked ExpressVPN because its fast, easy to use and widely available across a large global server network. In fact, it's our current pick for best premium VPN . One of the biggest drawbacks h

If you weren't able to shut down your Windows 11 device recently, Microsoft has rolled out an emergency fix addressing a couple of critical bugs that popped up with its latest January 2026 Windows security update. The latest out-of-band update repairs an issue for some Windows 11 devices that would only restart when users tried to shut down or hibernate. The same update restores the ability for Windows 10 and Windows 11 users to log into their devices via remote connection apps. Microsoft said t

Have a hankering for some audiobooks? Audible is holding one heck of a sale right now, giving users three months of access for $3 . That's a dollar per month. This is something of a winter tradition for the Amazon-owned platform and the promotion ends on 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 plow through a single b

You can easily spruce up your nightstand or desk by decluttering a bit, replacing some of those annoying charging cables with a good wireless charging setup. One of our favorites that can handle three devices at once is the UGREEN MagFlow Qi2 3-in-1 Charger Station 25W . Normally $140, it's on sale right now for $95; that's 32 percent off and only about $5 more than its record-low price. This is our top pick for a 3-in-1 charging pad thanks to its versatility. The UGREEN can work equally well as

Washington state residents may soon be forced to produce IDs before getting onto websites with pornographic content. Within the state's House of Representatives, Rep. Mari Leavitt introduced House Bill 2112 , which is informally known as the Keep Our Children Safe Act. Similar to the initiatives seen in other states , the bill proposes to restrict access to online sexual material harmful to anyone under 18. In practical terms, those living in Washington state could see websites asking for digita

A new year is the perfect time to get your spending in order, and if you're not trying to build your own spreadsheet, budgeting apps are one of the best ways to do it. To save yourself some money in the process, you can pick up a year-long subscription to Monarch Money , one of Engadget's favorite budgeting apps , for just $50 if you use code NEWYEAR2026 at checkout and you're a new subscriber. That's a 50 percent discount on the service's normal $100 price. Monarch Money makes for a capable and

If you want a wireless charger for your iPhone and prefer to stick with Apple, Amazon has a sale that may pique your interest. The retailer is selling the one meter Apple Magsafe charger for $30 , saving you $10 off the regular price, while also selling the two meter model for $40 ($10 off). If you have an iPhone 16, iPhone 17 or iPhone Air, this cable can charge your device at 25W as long as it's connected to a 30W power adapter on the other end. While you'll need a more recent iPhone to get th

The peak time for deals on streaming services the holiday shopping season has come and gone, but Disney is back with a fresh offer for the new year. New and eligible returning subscribers can get one month of the ad-supported Disney+ Hulu bundle for just $10. That's $3 off the usual monthly rate for the bundle, and more than 58 percent off if you consider the prices for each service individually (Disney+ at $12 per month and, separately, Hulu also at $12 per month). We'd be remiss if we didn't

Six years after the announcement of plans to build Atari Hotels in eight cities across the US, including Las Vegas, only one now seems to be moving forward, in Phoenix, Arizona. The Las Vegas deal ultimately didn't come to fruition, spokesperson Sara Collins told Las Vegas Sun this week, and Atari Hotels is putting its focus into the Phoenix site for the time being. Phoenix was always meant to be the first site, followed by other hotels in Austin, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, San Francisco, San J

Amazon is reportedly adding Teresa Palmer ( The Fall Guy, Warm Bodies, Hacksaw Ridge ) to its pantheon of Norse gods for its God of War TV show adaptation. As first reported by Deadline , Palmer will play Sif, Thor's wife and eventual leader of the Aesir, in the live-action adaptation. It may not carry as much weight as the casting of the video game's protagonist that was revealed earlier this week to be Ryan Hurst , but it could hint at the direction the TV show may take. View this post on Inst

In another attempt to reduce our attention spans to mush, TikTok has released the PineDrama app, which offers serialized drama series that are roughly a minute per episode. As first spotted by Business Insider , the app is designed exactly like TikTok , but instead of trendy dance videos, you can scroll through and watch micro dramas. For those new to the category, micro dramas are bite-sized TV shows shot in vertical video and available in minute-long episodes. Don't expect any nominations for

E Ink tablet maker reMarkable is running a bundle deal right now that can save you between $80 and $90 when buying a reMarkable 2 along with a Marker stylus and a folio case. The savings vary depending on the bundle you configure, but this can bring your out-the-door cost down to $449 from $529 for the tablet, Marker stylus and polymer weave book folio. The offer runs through January 17. The company also sells a newer stylus called Marker Plus that lets you erase by flipping it around just like

NBA League Pass, the streaming service that lets you catch hundreds of out-of-market NBA games, is on sale right now for up to 55 percent off. The League Pass Premium subscription is on sale for $75, down from $160, while League Pass Standard is marked down to $50 from $110. We're almost halfway through the season at this point, so it makes sense for a service like League Pass to start offering some discounts. The Standard plan includes commercials and support for only one device at a time, whil

We now have some idea of what's at stake in the longstanding feud between Elon Musk and OpenAI. As first reported by Bloomberg , the latest filing, as part of a lawsuit that accuses the AI giant of abandoning its non-profit status, claims that Musk is owed anywhere between $79 billion and $134 billion in damages from the wrongful gains of OpenAI and Microsoft. Musk claimed in the filing that he's entitled to a portion of OpenAI's recent valuation at $500 billion , after contributing $38 million

Most Apple products are pretty expensive, but some of the most affordable (and useful) ones are AirTags . The Bluetooth trackers are priced pretty reasonably even when not on sale, but they can be a steal if you can get them on a discount like right now. A four pack of AirTags is on sale for $65 at Amazon, which is only a few dollars more than the record-low price we saw during Black Friday this year. AirTags can be useful for people who travel frequently, helping you to keep track of essential

AirPods work most smoothly with Apple hardware, but they also connect reliably to Android phones, Windows laptops and other Bluetooth devices. The pairing process depends on the platform in use although the basics remain the same. Once the AirPods are placed in pairing mode, most devices detect them quickly and handle the remaining steps in the background. The guide below explains how to pair AirPods with Apple products, how the process differs on newer iPhones that support H2 features and how t

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has sent a cease and desist letter to xAI, days after his office launched an official investigation into the company over reports that Grok was generating nonconsensual If youll recall, xAI and Grok have been under fire for taking images of real individuals and putting them in revealing clothing like bikinis upon random users requests. Bontas office demands that xAI immediately cease and desist from creating digitized sexually explicit material when the depi

I came out of my CyberGhost review with a positive opinion, feeling it had earned its spot in my best VPN roundup. However, even an expert review is subjective, and there's a chance CyberGhost will not work for you. If thats the case, here's how to cancel your subscription. How to stop your CyberGhost subscription renewing Cancelling your CyberGhost subscription won't end it right away, unless you delete your account or get the refund (I'll explain how to do both of those later). Instead, the wa

Welcome to our latest roundup of what's going on in the indie game space. Several neat-looking games arrived this week, we got release dates for several others that I'm really looking forward to and a brand-new Steam festival was announced. The Love, Romance, and Heartbreak Debutante Ball is said to be the first Valentine's Day-themed Steam festival. It'll run from February 13 to 20 and feature more than 100 games, including discounts and demos. A showcase will take place on February 13 at 1PM E

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