All the News that Matters

• openSUSE: Kernel Important Patch for 9 Security Issues CVE-2022-50327
  An update that solves nine vulnerabilities can now be installed.

• SUSE: Kernel Important Security Update 2026:0180-1 CVE-2025-38572
  An update that solves nine vulnerabilities can now be installed.

• SUSE: Kernel Important Security Update 2026:0170-1 CVE-2022-50116
  An update that solves 17 vulnerabilities, contains one feature and has one security fix can now be installed.

• SUSE: Kernel Important Security Update 2026:0168-1 Fixes Multiple Issues
  An update that solves 10 vulnerabilities can now be installed.

• openSUSE: Kernel Important Security Update 2026:0168-1 CVE-2022-50233
  An update that solves 10 vulnerabilities can now be installed.

• SUSE: Kernel RT Important Security Update 2026:0169-1 CVE-2023-53676
  An update that solves two vulnerabilities can now be installed.

• Just the Browser claims to tame the bloat without forking
  Strips the slop and snoopery from Chrome, Edge, and FirefoxThe promise of Just the Browser sounds good. Rather than fork one of the big-name browsers, just run a tiny script that turns off all the bits and functions you don't want.…

• MX Linux 25.1 ISOs Are Now Available With Dual Init Support
  MX Linux 25.1 "Infinity" is out now, restoring dual init support with both systemd and sysvinit available on a single ISO.

• ESP32-E22 debuts with tri-band Wi-Fi 6E and dual-mode Bluetooth
  Espressif Systems has announced the ESP32-E22, its first Wi-Fi 6E connectivity co-processor and the starting point of a new product line targeting higher-performance wireless designs. The company positions the device as a radio co-processor that offloads Wi-Fi and Bluetooth networking functions from a host processor, allowing the host to focus on application-level tasks. ESP32-E22 integrates […]

• MX Linux 25.1 Is Out with Dual-Init Support, Debian 13.3 Base, and Linux 6.18 LTS
  The MX Linux team announced today the general availability for download of MX Linux 25.1 as the first update in the MX Linux 25 “Infinity” series of this Debian-based distribution featuring Xfce, KDE Plasma, and Fluxbox flavors.

• MultiCM Flasher enables parallel programming of Raspberry Pi Compute Modules
  Recently featured on Tindie, the MultiCM Flasher is a parallel programming device designed to flash multiple Raspberry Pi Compute Module variants simultaneously. The device supports eMMC-based Compute Modules across several generations, including CM3, CM3+, CM4S, CM4, and CM5. The MultiCM Flasher is designed for programming up to seven Compute Modules in parallel, with support for […]

• X.Org Server May Create A New Selective Git Branch With Hopes Of A New Release This Year
  A proposal has been laid out for a new X.Org Server "main" Git branch to house their development going forward and cleaning up the development lapses over the past few years. Ultimately the hope is for having a new cleaned-up X.Org Server and XWayland Git branch for shipping new releases in 2026...

• It’s Official: Richard Stallman Will Speak at Georgia Tech on January 23
  While RMS has continued to speak at occasional events, he’s largely remained publicly invisible until now. Is this about to change?

• Banana Pi's BPI-CM6 compute module runs on SpacemiT K1 RISC-V processor
  Banana Pi’s BPI-CM6 is a compute module based on the SpacemiT K1 octa-core RISC-V processor. First revealed in April 2025, the module is now available for purchase from multiple sources and is described as a compact compute platform for edge computing, robotics, industrial control, and network storage applications. The BPI-CM6 adopts a 40 × 55 […]

• Nvidia leans on emulation to squeeze more HPC oomph from AI chips in race against AMD
  AMD researchers argue that, while algorithms like the Ozaki scheme merit investigation, they're still not ready for prime time.Double precision floating point computation (aka FP64) is what keeps modern aircraft in the sky, rockets going up, vaccines effective, and, yes, nuclear weapons operational. But rather than building dedicated chips that process this essential data type in hardware, Nvidia is leaning on emulation to increase performance for HPC and scientific computing applications, an area where AMD has had the lead in recent generations.…

• How to Install and Use Scala on Linux
  In this article, you will learn the advantages of using the Scala programming language and how to install it on your preferred Linux system with a practical example.

• KDE Plasma Customization | Cozy Sunset Vibes Desktop
  I’m sharing a KDE Plasma desktop customization inspired by cozy sunset tones.The setup focuses on warm yellow–orange colors, a transparent panel, and a playful chibi astronaut wallpaper, creating a calm and comfortable desktop for daily use.

• How NVIDIA GB10 Performance With the Dell Pro Max GB10 Compares To The GH200
  Earlier this month we looked at the Dell Pro Max GB10 performance up against AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ "Strix Halo" with the superior performance for the green team for performance and power efficiency. For those wondering how the Dell Pro Max GB10 performance comes up for the much talked about NVIDIA GH200, here are some comparison benchmarks.

• Mozilla Now Providing RPM Packages For Firefox Nightly Builds
  In late 2023 Mozilla began providing Debian packages of Firefox Nightly builds complete with an APT repository. Those on Debian/Ubuntu distributions have a much easier path for enjoying Firefox Nightly since then and now Mozilla engineers are providing similar RPM builds of Firefox nightly too...

• Linuxiac Weekly Wrap-Up: Week 3, 2026 (Jan 12 – 18)
  Catch up on the latest Linux news: EndeavourOS Ganymede Neo, Plasma 6.6 Beta, GNOME 49.3, Wine 11, Firefox 147, Debian to remove GTK2, Zorin OS hits 2M downloads, Let’s Encrypt launches IP address certificates, and more.

• Zen 5 x86 Bedrock RAI300 delivers 50 TOPS AI in fanless IPC
  SolidRun has introduced the Bedrock RAI300, a fanless industrial PC built around one of AMD’s latest Ryzen AI 300 series processors. The system is SolidRun’s first industrial platform based on Zen 5, combining high-performance x86 compute, integrated AI acceleration, and modular I/O for long-term industrial deployment. The Bedrock RAI300 is powered by the AMD Ryzen […]

• Linux 6.19-rc6 Released With More Bug Fixes
  Linus Torvalds just tagged the Linux 6.19-rc6 kernel in working toward the stable Linux 6.19 kernel release likely on 8 February...

• Setup Arch Linux KVM Guest via archinstall 3.0.15-2
  Following below is an attempt to deploy Arch Linux KVM Guest via archinstall 3.0.15-2. Load Guest via virt-manager into spice console. Pre-install archinstall 3.0.15-2 seems to be needless. However, straight forward run `python -m archinstall` having git clone done and skipping first upgrade didn't work for me .

• Not hot on bots, project names and shames AI-created open source software
  'OpenSlopware' briefly flowers, fades, falls – but fortunately was forked, fastThe splendidly-named "OpenSlopware" was, for a short time, a list of open source projects using LLM bots. Due to harassment, it's gone, but forks of it live on.…

• ReactOS For "Open-Source Windows" Achieves Massive Networking Performance Boost
  ReactOS as the long-in-development "open-source Windows" project has been on quite a roll recently. Beyond a big Windows NT 6 compatibility improvement and fixing a very annoying usability issue, for this third week of the year there is another big change landing: a significant improvement in networking performance on ReactOS...

• 9to5Linux Weekly Roundup: January 18th, 2026
  The 275th installment of the 9to5Linux Weekly Roundup is here for the week ending on January 18th, 2026, keeping you updated with the most important things happening in the Linux world.

• 56% of Companies Have Seen Zero Financial Return From AI Investments, PwC Survey Says
  More than half of companies haven't seen any financial benefit from their AI investments, according to PwC's latest Global CEO Survey [PDF], and yet the spending shows no signs of slowing down. Some 56% of the 4,454 chief executives surveyed across 95 countries said their companies have realized neither higher revenues nor lower costs from AI over the past year. Only 12% reported getting both benefits -- and those rare winners tend to be the ones who built proper enterprise-wide foundations rather than chasing one-off projects. CEO confidence in near-term growth has taken a notable hit. Just 30% feel strongly optimistic about revenue growth over the next 12 months, down from 38% last year and nowhere near the 56% who felt that way in 2022.
  
  
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• Setapp Mobile To Close in February as Alternative iOS App Store Economics Prove Untenable
  MacPaw, the Ukraine-based developer, has announced that Setapp Mobile -- its alternative iOS app store for European Union users that launched in open beta in September 2024 -- will shut down on February 16, 2026, citing "still-evolving and complex business terms" for alternative marketplaces that don't fit its current business model. Alternative iOS stores became possible under the Digital Markets Act but face challenges including Apple's controversial Core Technology Fee, which Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has called "ruinous for any hopes of a competing store getting a foothold."
  
  
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• Anthropic CEO Says Government Should Help Ensure AI's Economic Upside Is Shared
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei predicted a future in which AI will spur significant economic growth -- but could lead to widespread unemployment and inequality. Amodei is both "excited and worried" about the impact of AI, he said in an interview at Davos Tuesday. "I don't think there's an awareness at all of what is coming here and the magnitude of it." Anthropic is the developer of the popular chatbot Claude. Amodei said the government will need to play a role in navigating the massive displacement in jobs that could result from advances in AI. He said there could be a future with 5% to 10% GDP growth and 10% unemployment. "That's not a combination we've almost ever seen before," he said. "There's gonna need to be some role for government in the displacement that's this macroeconomically large." Amodei painted a potential "nightmare" scenario that AI could bring to society if not properly checked, laying out a future in which 10 million people -- 7 million in Silicon Valley and the rest scattered elsewhere -- could "decouple" from the rest of society, enjoying as much as 50% GPD growth while others were left behind. "I think this is probably a time to worry less about disincentivizing growth and worry more about making sure that everyone gets a part of that growth," Amodei said. He noted that was "the opposite of the prevailing sentiment now," but the reality of technological change will force those ideas to change.
  
  
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• AI Agents 'Perilous' for Secure Apps Such as Signal, Whittaker Says
  Signal Foundation president Meredith Whittaker warned that AI agents that autonomously carry out tasks pose a threat to encrypted messaging apps [non-paywalled source] because they require broad access to data stored across a device and can be hijacked if given root permissions. Speaking at Davos on Tuesday, Whittaker said the deeper integration of AI agents into devices is "pretty perilous" for services like Signal. For an AI agent to act effectively on behalf of a user, it would need unilateral access to apps storing sensitive information such as credit card data and contacts, Whittaker said. The data that the agent stores in its context window is at greater risk of being compromised. Whittaker called this "breaking the blood-brain barrier between the application and the operating system." "Our encryption no longer matters if all you have to do is hijack this context window," she said.
  
  
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• Palantir CEO Says AI To Make Large-Scale Immigration Obsolete
  AI will displace so many jobs that it will eliminate the need for mass immigration, according to Palantir CEO Alex Karp. Bloomberg: "There will be more than enough jobs for the citizens of your nation, especially those with vocational training," said Karp, speaking at a World Economic Forum panel in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday. "I do think these trends really do make it hard to imagine why we should have large-scale immigration unless you have a very specialized skill." Karp, who holds a PhD in philosophy, used himself as an example of the type of "elite" white-collar worker most at risk of disruption. Vocational workers will be more valuable "if not irreplaceable," he said, criticizing the idea that higher education is the ultimate benchmark of a person's talents and employability.
  
  
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• Crypto News Outlet Cointelegraph Loses 80% of Traffic After Google Penalty For Parasitic Blackhat SEO Deal
  Cointelegraph, once one of the most-visited cryptocurrency news sites, has seen its monthly traffic plummet from roughly 8 million visits to 1.4 million -- an 80% drop in three months -- after Google issued a manual penalty in October 2025 for the outlet's partnership with a blackhat SEO firm that used Cointelegraph's domain authority to promote affiliate links to offshore casinos and betting platforms. The CEO, who had no prior media experience, proceeded despite warnings from Google earlier in 2025 and repeated objections from the outlet's three most senior editorial staff members throughout the year. The penalty removed Cointelegraph from Google News, Discover and search results entirely; a search for "Cointelegraph" now returns CoinDesk as the top result. Jon Rice, the former editor-in-chief, resigned on December 31st and described the situation as an "existential threat to business."
  
  
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• He Went To Prison for Gene-Editing Babies. Now He's Planning To Do It Again
  He Jiankui, the Chinese scientist who served three years in prison after creating the world's first gene-edited babies in 2018, is now preparing for another attempt at germline editing -- this time to prevent Alzheimer's disease. In an interview, He said he has established an independent lab in south Beijing and raised $7 million from private donors to fund research into introducing a protective genetic mutation found in Icelandic populations. The three girls born from his original experiment are now in primary school and healthy, according to He. Since germline editing remains banned in China, He said he plans to conduct future human trials in South Africa and has already spoken with contacts there. He estimates he needs two more years to complete mouse and monkey studies before seeking regulatory approval abroad. He said his lab is developing techniques to make 12 simultaneous genetic edits in a single embryo, targeting genes associated with cancer, cardiovascular disease, HIV, and other conditions. He is currently working on human cell lines and has not yet begun embryo experiments.
  
  
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• Europe Must Invest in Open Source AI or Cede To China, Schmidt Says
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Europe must invest in its own open source artificial intelligence labs and address soaring energy prices, or it will quickly find itself dependent on Chinese models, former Google chief executive and tech investor Eric Schmidt said. "In the US, the companies are largely moving to closed source, which means they'll be purchased and licensed and so forth. And it is also the case that China is largely open weight, open source in its approach," Schmidt said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday. "Unless Europe is willing to spend lots of money for European models, Europe will end up using the Chinese models. It's probably not a good outcome for Europe."
  
  
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• Ukraine To Share Wartime Combat Data With Allies To Help Train AI
  An anonymous reader shares a report: Ukraine will establish a system allowing its allies to train their AI models on Kyiv's valuable combat data collected throughout the nearly four-year war with Russia, newly appointed Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has said. Fedorov -- a former digitalisation minister who last week took up the post to drive reforms across Ukraine's vast defence ministry and armed forces -- has described Kyiv's wartime data trove as one of its "cards" in negotiations with other nations. Since Russia's invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has gathered extensive battlefield information, including systematically logged combat statistics and millions of hours of drone footage captured from above. Such data is important for training AI models, which require large volumes of real-world information to identify patterns and predict how people or objects might act in various situations.
  
  
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• Energy Costs Will Decide Which Countries Win the AI Race, Microsoft's Nadella Says
  Energy costs will be key to deciding which country wins the AI race, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said. CNBC: As countries race to build AI infrastructure to capitalize on the technology's promise of huge efficiency gains, Nadella told the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Tuesday that "GDP growth in any place will be directly correlated" to the cost of energy in using AI. He pointed to a new global commodity in "tokens" -- basic units of processing that are bought by users of AI models, allowing them to run tasks. "The job of every economy and every firm in the economy is to translate these tokens into economic growth, then if you have a cheaper commodity, it's better." "I would say we will quickly lose even the social permission to actually take something like energy, which is a scarce resource, and use it to generate these tokens, if these tokens are not improving health outcomes, education outcomes, public sector efficiency, private sector competitiveness across all sectors," Nadella said.
  
  
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• Amazon CEO Jassy Says Tariffs Have Started To 'Creep' Into Prices
  Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs are starting to be reflected in the price of some items, as sellers weigh how to absorb the shock of the added costs. From a report: Amazon and many of its third-party merchants pre-purchased inventory to try to get ahead of the tariffs and keep prices low for customers, but most of that supply ran out last fall, Jassy said in a Tuesday interview with CNBC's Becky Quick at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "So you start to see some of the tariffs creep into some of the prices, some of the items, and you see some sellers are deciding that they're passing on those higher costs to consumers in the form of higher prices, some are deciding that they'll absorb it to drive demand and some are doing something in between," Jassy said. "I think you're starting to see more of that impact." The comments are a notable shift from last year, when Jassy said Amazon hadn't seen "prices appreciably go up" a few months after Trump announced wide-ranging tariffs. Further reading: Americans Are the Ones Paying for Tariffs, Study Finds: Americans, not foreigners, are bearing almost the entire cost of U.S. tariffs, according to new research that contradicts a key claim by President Trump and suggests he might have a weaker hand in a reemerging trade war with Europe. [...] The new research, published Monday by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a well-regarded German think tank, suggests that the impact of tariffs is likely to show up over time in the form of higher U.S. consumer prices. [...] By analyzing $4 trillion of shipments between January 2024 and November 2025, the Kiel Institute researchers found that foreign exporters absorbed only about 4% of the burden of last year's U.S. tariff increases by lowering their prices, while American consumers and importers absorbed 96%.
  
  
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• Sony Is Ceding Control of TV Hardware Business To China's TCL
  Sony plans to spin off its TV hardware business to a new joint venture controlled by Chinese electronics giant TCL, the two said Tuesday, a significant retreat for the Japanese giant whose Bravia line has long occupied the premium end of the television market. TCL would hold a 51% stake in the venture and Sony would retain 49% under a nonbinding agreement the two companies signed. They aim to finalize binding terms by the end of March and begin operations in April 2027, pending regulatory approvals. The new company would retain the Sony and Bravia branding for televisions and home audio equipment but use TCL's display technology. Japanese TV manufacturers have steadily lost ground to Chinese and Korean rivals over the years. Toshiba, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric and Pioneer exited the business entirely. Panasonic and Sharp de-emphasized televisions in their growth strategies. Sony's Bravia line survived by positioning itself at the premium tier where consumers pay more for high-end picture and sound quality.
  
  
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• 'Just Because Linus Torvalds Vibe Codes Doesn't Mean It's a Good Idea'
  In an opinion piece for The Register, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols argues that while "vibe coding" can be fun and occasionally useful for small, throwaway projects, it produces brittle, low-quality code that doesn't scale and ultimately burdens real developers with cleanup and maintenance. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt: Vibe coding got a big boost when everyone's favorite open source programmer, Linux's Linus Torvalds, said he'd been using Google's Antigravity LLM on his toy program AudioNoise, which he uses to create "random digital audio effects" using his "random guitar pedal board design." This is not exactly Linux or even Git, his other famous project, in terms of the level of work. Still, many people reacted to Torvalds' vibe coding as "wow!" It's certainly noteworthy, but has the case for vibe coding really changed? [...] It's fun, and for small projects, it's productive. However, today's programs are complex and call upon numerous frameworks and resources. Even if your vibe code works, how do you maintain it? Do you know what's going on inside the code? Chances are you don't. Besides, the LLM you used two weeks ago has been replaced with a new version. The exact same prompts that worked then yield different results today. Come to think of it, it's an LLM. The same prompts and the same LLM will give you different results every time you run it. This is asking for disaster. Just ask Jason Lemkin. He was the guy who used the vibe coding platform Replit, which went "rogue during a code freeze, shut down, and deleted our entire database." Whoops! Yes, Replit and other dedicated vibe programming AIs, such as Cursor and Windsurf, are improving. I'm not at all sure, though, that they've been able to help with those fundamental problems of being fragile and still cannot scale successfully to the demands of production software. It's much worse than that. Just because a program runs doesn't mean it's good. As Ruth Suehle, President of the Apache Software Foundation, commented recently on LinkedIn, naive vibe coders "only know whether the output works or doesn't and don't have the skills to evaluate it past that. The potential results are horrifying." Why? In another LinkedIn post, Craig McLuckie, co-founder and CEO of Stacklok, wrote: "Today, when we file something as 'good first issue' and in less than 24 hours get absolutely inundated with low-quality vibe-coded slop that takes time away from doing real work. This pattern of 'turning slop into quality code' through the review process hurts productivity and hurts morale." McLuckie continued: "Code volume is going up, but tensions rise as engineers do the fun work with AI, then push responsibilities onto their team to turn slop into production code through structured review."
  
  
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• Ocean Damage Nearly Doubles the Cost of Climate Change
  A new study from Scripps Institution of Oceanography finds that factoring ocean damage into climate economics nearly doubles the estimated global cost of climate change, adding close to $2 trillion per year from losses to fisheries, coral reefs, and coastal infrastructure. "It is the first time a social cost of carbon (SCC) assessment -- a key measure of economic harm caused by climate change -- has included damages to the ocean," reports Inside Climate News. From the report: "For decades, we've been estimating the economic cost of climate change while effectively assigning a value of zero to the ocean," said Bernardo Bastien-Olvera, who led the study during his postdoctoral fellowship at Scripps. "Ocean loss is not just an environmental issue, but a central part of the economic story of climate change." The social cost of carbon is an accounting method for working out the monetary cost of each ton of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. "[It] is one of the most efficient tools we have for internalizing climate damages into economic decision-making," said Amy Campbell, a United Nations climate advisor and former British government COP negotiator. Calculations have historically been used by international organizations and state departments like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to assess policy proposals -- though a 2025 White House memo from the Trump administration instructed federal agencies to ignore the data during cost-benefit analyses unless required by law. "It becomes politically contentious when deciding whose damages are counted, which sectors are included and most importantly how future and retrospective harms are valued," Campbell said. Excluding ocean harm, the social cost of carbon is $51 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted. This increases to $97.20 per ton when the ocean, which covers 70 percent of the planet, is included. In 2024, global CO2 emissions were estimated to be 41.6 billion tons, making the 91 percent cost increase significant. Using greenhouse gas emission predictions, the report estimates the annual damages to traditional markets alone will be $1.66 trillion by 2100.
  
  
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• Bank of England 'Must Plan For a Financial Crisis Triggered By Aliens'
  A former Bank of England analyst has urged contingency planning for a potential financial shock if the U.S. government were to confirm the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. The argument is that "ontological shock" alone could destabilize confidence and trigger crisis dynamics. The Independent reports: [Helen McCaw, who served as a senior analyst in financial security at the UK's central bank and worked for the Bank of England for 10 years until 2012] said politicians and bankers can no longer afford to dismiss talk of alien life, and warned a declaration of this nature could trigger bank collapses. She reportedly said: "The United States government appears to be partway through a multi-year process to declassify and disclose information on the existence of a technologically advanced non-human intelligence responsible for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs)." "If the UAP proves to be of non-human origin, we may have to acknowledge the existence of a power or intelligence greater than any government and with potentially unknown intentions." Her warning comes as senior American officials have recently indicated their belief in the possibility of alien life. [...] Ms McCaw said: "UAP disclosure is likely to induce ontological shock and provoke psychological responses with material consequences ... There might be extreme price volatility in financial markets due to catastrophising or euphoria, and a collapse in confidence if market participants feel uncertain on how to price assets using any of the familiar methods." The former Bank of England worker explained there might be a rush towards assets such as gold or other precious metals, and government bonds, which are perceived as "safe." Alternatively, she said precious metals might lose their status as perceived safe assets if people speculate that new space-faring technologies will soon increase the supply of precious metals. The article cites a recent UFO documentary, The Age of Disclosure, where 34 U.S. government insiders, including those from the military and intelligence community officials, share insights about the governments work with UAP. Per the film's description, the documentary "reveals an 80-year global cover-up of non-human intelligent life and a secret war among major nations to reverse-engineer advanced technology of non-human origin."
  
  
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• Build the skills you need for 2026
  Mix, match, and save 35% on learning that scales—now through January 27. *Offer ends Jan 27th SAVE NOW
  
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• Celebrating the Second Year of Linux Man-Pages Maintenance Sponsorship
  Sustaining a Core Part of the Linux Ecosystem The Linux Foundation has announced a second year of sponsorship for the ongoing maintenance of the Linux manual pages (man-pages) project, led by Alejandro (Alex) Colomar. This critical initiative is made possible through the continued support of Google, Hudson River Trading, and Meta, who have renewed their [0]
  
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• Disaggregated Routing with SONiC and VPP: Lab Demo and Performance Insights  Part Two
  In Part One of this series, we examined how the SONiC control plane and the VPP data plane form a cohesive, software-defined routing stack through the Switch Abstraction Interface.` We outlined how SONiC’s Redis-based orchestration and VPP’s user-space packet engine come together to create a high-performance, open router architecture. In this second part, we’ll turn [0]
  
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• Disaggregated Routing with SONiC and VPP: Architecture and Integration  Part One
  The networking industry is undergoing a fundamental architectural transformation, driven by the relentless demands of cloud-scale data centers and the rise of software-defined infrastructure. At the heart of this evolution is the principle of disaggregation: the systematic unbundling of components that were once tightly integrated within proprietary, monolithic systems.` This movement began with the separation [0]
  
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• Kubernetes on Bare Metal for Maximum Performance
  When teams consider deploying Kubernetes, one of the first questions that arises is: where should it run? The default answer is often the public cloud, thanks to its flexibility and ease of use. However, a growing number of organizations are revisiting the advantages of running Kubernetes directly on bare metal servers. For workloads that demand [0]
  
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• How to Deploy Lightweight Language Models on Embedded Linux with LiteLLM
  This article was contributed by Vedrana Vidulin, Head of Responsible AI Unit at Intellias (LinkedIn). As AI becomes central to smart devices, embedded systems, and edge computing, the ability to run language models locally — without relying on the cloud — is essential. Whether its for reducing latency, improving data privacy, or enabling offline functionality, local AI [0]
  
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• Automating Compliance Management with UTMStacks Open Source SIEM 8 XDR
  Achieving and maintaining compliance with regulatory frameworks can be challenging for many organizations. Managing security controls manually often leads to excessive use of time and resources, leaving less available for strategic initiatives and business growth. Standards such as CMMC, HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOC2 and GDPR demand ongoing monitoring, detailed documentation, and rigorous evidence collection. Solutions [0]
  
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• A Simple Way to Install Talos Linux on Any Machine, with Any Provider
  Talos Linux is a specialized operating system designed for running Kubernetes. First and foremost it handles full lifecycle management for Kubernetes control-plane components. On the other hand, Talos Linux focuses on security, minimizing the user’s ability to influence the system. A distinctive feature of this OS is the near-complete absence of executables, including the absence [0]
  
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• Using OpenTelemetry and the OTel Collector for Logs, Metrics, and Traces
  OpenTelemetry (fondly known as OTel) is an open-source project that provides a unified set of APIs, libraries, agents, and instrumentation to capture and export logs, metrics, and traces from applications. The project’s goal is to standardize observability across various services and applications, enabling better monitoring and troubleshooting. Read More at Causely
  
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• Project Tazama, A Project Hosted by LF Charities With Support From the Gates Foundation, Receives Digital Public Good Designation.
  Exciting news! The Tazama project is officially a Digital Public Good having met the criteria to be accepted to the Digital Public Goods Alliance ! Tazama is a groundbreaking open source software solution for real-time fraud prevention, and offers the first-ever open source platform dedicated to enhancing fraud management in digital payments. Historically, the financial [0]
  
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• Akai's MPC XL groovebox is the most powerful device the company has ever made
  Akai just revealed its most powerful standalone groovebox, the MPC XL. For the uninitiated, the MPC has been around since the 1980s and pretty much defined hip hop from that era. The line has continuously iterated to keep up with the times and the XL looks to be the baddest of them all.
  
  First of all, it offers four times the processing power of previous MPCs, which is enough to load up to 32 virtual instruments at the same time. This is assisted by a full 16GB of RAM, which is a whole lot in this era of AI tomfoolery. The XL can handle 16 audio tracks simultaneously. In my experience with previous units, this is more than enough for a full song.
  
  It runs on a proprietary OS and features a 10-inch OLED touchscreen for making adjustments. There are also dozens of knobs and buttons to play with, including 16 knobs that integrate with the display for real-time feedback.
  
  The XL features a step sequencer, but this is an MPC. The real star attraction are those 16 drum pads. These pads can be set to trigger samples and hits, but can also be programmed to initiate effects and do all kinds of other stuff. Each pad has four quadrants, one for each corner, and they are all fully adjustable.
  
  Looking for even more nuanced control? There are two assignable touch-strips and plenty of short-cut keys. It has built-in microphone preamps, phono inputs for sampling, instrument inputs and numerous other connectivity options. This is a true flagship in every sense of the word. It9s also very, very large.
  
  The MPC may have started as a hip hop machine, but newer models are useful for any genre of music. To that end, it comes with an extensive collection of plugins, samples and effects. These even include some plugins made by rival company Native Instruments.
  
  The software can handle stuff like stem separation, time-stretching and more. The workflow has been heavily inspired by modern DAWs, with a full arrangement view available on that OLED.
  
  The MPC XL is a standalone unit, so it doesn9t need a computer or anything like that. The power requirements here, however, don9t allow for batteries. This thing has to be plugged in, much like Native Instruments9 Maschine+. It9s available right now and costs a whopping $2,900. This is a serious machine with a serious price tag, just like Roland9s recently-released TR-1000 drum machine.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/akais-mpc-xl-groovebox-is-the-most-powerful-device-the-company-has-ever-made-183952483.html?src=rss

• Earth is having some issues, so let's enjoy the Webb telescope's new nebula image
  Sometimes, you just need to give your mind a little vacation. And these days, outer space sounds like as good a destination as any. Thankfully, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is here to give us a dazzling new image of the Helix Nebula.
  
  Discovered in the early 19th century, the Helix Nebula resides in the constellation Aquarius. (Cue The 5th Dimension.) At about 655 light-years away, it9s one of Earth9s closest planetary nebulae. When zoomed farther out, it9s easy to see why it9s been nicknamed the Eye of God or Eye of Sauron. This 2004 image from the Hubble telescope illustrates that.
  A wider view of the same nebula from 2004NASA / ESA / C.R. O9Dell (Vanderbilt University) / M. Meixner / P. McCullough / G. Bacon ( STSI)
  What we9re seeing in the nebula is, in a sense, a moment of death that lays the groundwork for a new birth. The dying star (out of frame in the closer new image) sheds its outer layers. As expelled gas and dust cool, they provide raw material that could someday form new stars and perhaps planetary systems.
  
  The new image from Webb9s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) provides a much closer, higher-resolution view.
  Pillar-like reddish knots in the Helix Nebula
  Those pillars you see are called cometary knots, and this image is our best view of those to date. "Here, blistering winds of hot gas from the dying star are crashing into colder shells of dust and gas that were shed earlier in its life, sculpting the nebula9s remarkable structure," the ESA wrote in its press release.
  
  The knots9 colors represent temperature and chemistry. Hints of blue indicate the hottest gas (energized by ultraviolet light). The yellow regions, where hydrogen atoms form molecules, are farther from the nebula9s nucleus (and therefore cooler). On the edges, reddish-orange regions depict the coolest material, where gas thins and dust begins to form.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/earth-is-having-some-issues-so-lets-enjoy-the-webb-telescopes-new-nebula-image-181049901.html?src=rss

• ExpressVPN deal: Two-year plans are up to 78 percent off right now
  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.
  
  We’ve consistently liked ExpressVPN because it’s 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 has always been its high cost, and this deal temporarily solves that issue.
  
  
  
  In our review we were able to get fast download and upload speeds, losing only 7 percent in the former and 2 percent in the latter worldwide. We found that it could unblock Netflix anywhere, and its mobile and desktop apps were simple to operate. We gave ExpressVPN an overall score of 85 out of 100.
  
  The virtual private network service now has three tiers. Basic is cheaper with fewer features, while Pro costs more and adds extra perks like support for 14 simultaneous devices and a password manager. Advanced sits in the middle and includes the password manager but only supports 12 devices.
  
  The Basic plan is $78 right now for 28 months, down from $363, and the Pro plan is $168, down from $560. That's 78 percent and 70 percent off, respectively. All plans carry a 30-day money-back guarantee for new users, so you can try it without committing long term if you’re on the fence.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/expressvpn-deal-two-year-plans-are-up-to-78-percent-off-right-now-180602610.html?src=rss

• Roland's Go:Mixer Studio is an affordable but capable mixer for budding recording engineers
  Roland just unveiled the Go:Mixer Studio, a powerful entry in the company9s line of audio interfaces. This one promises to be a portable and affordable way to create high-quality recordings with a smartphone or PC.
  
  The biggest news here are the 12 input channels and six output channels. This means that users can record multiple instruments at once and even run the signal through outboard gear if so desired. There are two XLR inputs on the back with phantom power, an instrument jack, stereo ¼-inch line-in jacks, an aux input, TRS MIDI ins and outs, two headphones jacks and stereo line outs for connecting monitor speakers.
  
  It records up to 24-bit/192kHz audio, which will certainly get the job done. The device comes with built-in effects for mangling audio on the fly. Each audio input also has a dedicated EQ and compressor directly on the channel.
  
  It connects via an app that9s available for iOS, Windows and MacOS. The iOS app actually lets users capture both video and multitrack audio at the same time, which should be a boon for streamers and content creators of all stripes. The Windows and MacOS apps allow for complete control of the mixer remotely.
  
  As for the unit itself, there are several big knobs to adjust parameters and a color display. It9s also really small and light, making it easy to pack away in case of an unexpected recording session. The device can even be mounted on a mic stand.
  
  The Roland Go: Mixer Studio is available right now and costs $300. The Roland Go line of audio products has been around for years, but this one seems like a major step up.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/rolands-gomixer-studio-is-an-affordable-but-capable-mixer-for-budding-recording-engineers-163927262.html?src=rss

• Rad Power Bikes warehouse catches fire following flammable battery warnings
  In a strange twist of fate, a fire broke out this week at the Rad Power Bikes retail store warehouse in Huntington Beach, California, Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) warned customers to "immediately stop" using and dispose of some of the company9s e-bike batteries due to fire hazard. In December, Rad filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, stating it couldn9t afford to recall the batteries. 
  
  "We’re working with local authorities to review a thermal incident that occurred at our Huntington Beach store Sunday evening," a Rad Power Bikes spokesperson told Engadget. "The incident was contained and happened while the store was closed. The cause of the fire has not been confirmed."
  
  The recent two-alarm fire hit a commercial complex with multiple businesses. Footage from the fire shows e-bikes outside of the warehouse as firemen fought the blaze. Engadget has reached out to Rad for more information on the fire9s impact. 
  
  The CPSC9s November warning told of 31 reports of fire, with 12 of those involving property damage. In some cases, the battery was in storage, not being charged or used, yet still caught fire. The CPSC told customers to get rid of (in a safe, detailed manner) specific models of Rad9s lithium-ion batteries. It claimed that the "hazardous" batteries were at risk of igniting or exploding, even more if wet or interacting with debris. 
  
  Rad told the CPSC it couldn9t recall the batteries as it couldn9t afford to offer replacements and refunds. "Rad offered multiple good-faith solutions to address the agency’s concerns, including offering consumers an opportunity to upgrade to Safe Shield batteries (described below) at a substantial discount. CPSC rejected this opportunity," Rad Power Bikes said in a statement at the time. "The significant cost of the all-or-nothing demand would force Rad to shut its doors immediately, leaving no way to support our riders or our employees."
  
  The company also said it disagreed with the CPSC9s "characterization of certain Rad batteries as defective or unsafe." It also pointed to the incident rate being below one percent and stated that all lithium-ion batteries come with a risk when customers do things — such as improper charging and excessive exposure to moisture — that Rad cautions against. 
  
  Update, January 20 2026, 11:08AM ET: This story has been updated to include a statement from Rad Power Bikes. 
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/rad-power-bikes-warehouse-catches-fire-following-flammable-battery-warnings-133056542.html?src=rss

• Meta's Oversight Board is looking into transparency around disabling accounts
  Meta has a lot of work to do when it comes to limiting hate speech on its platforms. Now, its Oversight Board is looking into the company9s decision to ban an account for, among other things, posting visual violent threats and harassment against a journalist — and it wants the public9s advice. 
  
  In the year prior to the ban, Meta referred five posts due to violations of its hateful conduct, bullying and harassment, violence and incitement and adult nudity and sexual activity community standards. In addition to the posts harassing the woman journalist, the user also shared "anti-gay slurs against prominent politicians and content depicting a sex act, alleging misconduct against minorities." 
  
  Meta9s internal review experts decided to permanently disable the account due to the consistent violations and calls for violence. This action was taken despite the number of strikes not reaching the ban threshold — Meta9s guidance states that even seven strikes only get users a one-day ban. However, its account integrity page lays out examples of when it will disable accounts, including violating its community standards through "risk of imminent harm" to an individual. 
  
  The Board is now looking for insight from the public until 11:59PM PT on Tuesday, February 3. The Board is specifically seeking comments from individuals who can "contribute valuable perspectives" on the following topics: 
  
  How best to ensure due process and fairness to people whose accounts are penalized or permanently disabled.
  
  The effectiveness of measures used by social media platforms to protect public figures and journalists from accounts engaged in repeated abuse and threats of violence, in particular against women in the public eye.
  
  Challenges in identifying and considering off-platform context when assessing threats against public figures and journalists.
  
  Research into the efficacy of punitive measures to shape online behaviors, and the efficacy of alternative or complementary interventions.
  
  Good industry practices in transparency reporting on account enforcement decisions and related appeals.
  
  This instance marks the first time the Board has looked into Meta permanently disabling an account. It stated that this "represents a significant opportunity to provide users with greater transparency on Meta’s account enforcement policies and practices, make recommendations for improvement, and expand the types of cases the Board can review."
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/metas-oversight-board-is-looking-into-transparency-around-disabling-accounts-145757717.html?src=rss

• This Audible deal ends soon: Get three months of access for only $3
  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, it9s easy to plow through a single book in a month. Users also get streaming access to thousands of curated titles. Think of it like Netflix for audiobooks. The catalog is limited, but it gets the job done in a pinch. Subscribers do get access to all Audible original content and they will receive discounts on purchasing audiobooks outright.
  
  In other words, it9s a neat little service and well worth a buck. The regular price is $15, so make sure to cancel at the end of that three months if you aren9t enjoying the platform.
  
  Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/this-audible-deal-ends-soon-get-three-months-of-access-for-only-3-193859839.html?src=rss

• Adobe unveils new AI-powered video editing tools for Premiere
  Adobe has announced updates for Premiere and After Effects, including new AI-powered tools that are meant to speed up your video editing tasks. In Premiere, the company’s video-editing software, it has unveiled a new AI-powered Object Mask feature that lets you easily pick and track persons or objects moving through your video clips. You simply have to hover over that object and click to generate a mask overlay in seconds. While the mask is supposed to be accurate from the start, you can adjust and resize it as needed. Adobe says the feature uses its own AI model for the feature and that the processing happens on-device. It also says that it doesn’t use your activities and data to train its models.
  
  The company has also given its Shape Mask tool an upgrade. You can generate its redesigned Ellipse, Rectangle and Pen masks directly from the toolbar. Further, it updated their controls to make moving or adjusting the masks more precise. The masks can now also track objects on your video clips 20 times faster than their predecessors, which means you won’t have to keep such a close eye on the status bar. Another new Premiere update lets you easily bring media from from Firefly Boards, Adobe’s AI-powered digital canvas, into the program. In addition, Adobe Stock is now fully integrated within Premiere.
  
  For After Effects, Adobe has rolled out an update that lets you import SVG files that are commonly used in Illustrator. You can now also build graphics and photorealistic objects inside images with 3D parametric meshes, consisting of cubes, spheres, cylinders, cones, toris and planes, within the visual effects software.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/adobe-unveils-new-ai-powered-video-editing-tools-for-premiere-140000970.html?src=rss

• One year of access to Monarch Money's budgeting app is down to $50 right now
  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 use the service via apps for iOS, Android, iPadOS or the web, and Monarch also offers a Chrome extension that can sync your Amazon and Target transactions and automatically categorize them. Like other budgeting apps, Monarch Money lets you connect multiple financial accounts and track your money based on where you spend it over time. Monarch offers two different approaches to tracking budgeting (flexible and category budgeting) depending on what fits your life best, and the ability to add a budget widget on your phone so you can know how you9re tracking that month.
  
  
  
  How budgeting apps turn your raw transactions into visuals you can understand at a glance is one of the big things that differentiates one app from another, and Monarch Money offers multiple graphs and charts to look at for things like spending, investments or categories of your choice based on how you9ve labelled your expenses. The app can also monitor the spending of you and your partner all in one place, to make it easier to plan together.
  
  The main drawbacks Engadget found in testing Monarch Money were the app9s learning curve, and the differences in features (and bugginess) between Monarch9s web and mobile versions. Still, for 50 percent off, the Monarch Money is well worth experimenting with if you9re trying to save money in 2026, especially if you want to do it collaboratively with a partner.
  
  Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/one-year-of-access-to-monarch-moneys-budgeting-app-is-down-to-50-right-now-204507836.html?src=rss

• The Disney+ and Hulu bundle is on sale for $10 for one month
  You have the best chance to save on streaming services during the holiday shopping season, but throughout the year, the occasional deal pops up that9s 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. That9s $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 and, separately, Hulu also at $12 per month).
  
  We9d be remiss if we didn9t mention that this isn9t quite as good as the Black Friday deal we saw last year, which offered the same bundle for $5 per month for one year. However, if you missed that offer or just want to try out Disney+ and Hulu for a brief period of time, this is a good way to do so.
  
  
  
  Disney+ and Hulu make one of the most balanced streaming pairs available, blending family-friendly favorites with acclaimed originals and network TV staples. Disney+ brings a vast library of animated classics, blockbuster franchises and exclusive content from Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars and National Geographic. It’s the place to stream nearly every Star Wars film and series, plus the full Marvel Cinematic Universe lineup and Disney’s most recent theatrical releases.
  
  Hulu balances things out with a more adult-oriented lineup of current TV shows, next-day network episodes and a growing roster of award-winning originals. The platform hosts series like The Bear, The Handmaid’s Tale and Only Murders in the Building, alongside comedies, thrillers and documentaries that regularly feature in awards conversations. It’s also the home for next-day streaming of ABC and FX shows, making it especially useful if you’ve already cut the cable cord but still want to keep up with primetime TV.
  
  The Duo Basic bundle ties these two services together under a single subscription, offering a simple way to expand your library without juggling multiple accounts. This tier includes ads on both platforms, but the trade-off is significant savings compared with paying for each service separately. For many households, that’s an acceptable compromise when it means access to such a wide range of content.
  
  Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-disney-and-hulu-bundle-is-on-sale-for-10-for-one-month-192814872.html?src=rss

• The UK is mulling an Australia-like social media ban for users under 16
  The UK government has announced a consultation, asking people for their feedback on whether to introduce a social media ban for children under 16 years old. It would also explore how to enforce that limit, how to limit tech companies from being able to access children’s data and how to limit “infinite scrolling,” as well as access to addictive online tools. In addition to seeking feedback from parents and young people themselves, the country’s ministers are going to visit Australia to see the effects of the country’s social media ban for kids, according to social media ban went into effect on December 10. It’s the first of its kind and covers several social media platforms, including Facebook, X, TikTok, Twitch, Snapchat, YouTube and Reddit. Just recently, Meta shut down nearly 550,00 accounts, most of which were on Instagram, to comply with the new law.
  
  The UK passed the Online Safety Act in 2023 and has been enforcing its rules since. Last year, for instance, it started requiring websites that publish pornography to conduct age checks for users. But British politician Liz Kendall said parents still have serious concerns about the content their children can consume online. As The Guardian notes, the announcement for a consultation comes just before the House of Lords votes on an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. The amendment is seeking a social media ban on children under 16, which will be enacted within a year if and when the bill passes.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/the-uk-is-mulling-an-australia-like-social-media-ban-for-users-under-16-130000446.html?src=rss

• The Morning After: Elon Musk wants a $134 billion payout from OpenAI and Microsoft
  Part of a lawsuit accusing OpenAI of abandoning its non-profit status claims Musk is owed anywhere from $79 billion to $134 billion in damages for the “wrongful gains” of OpenAI and Microsoft.
  
  Musk claims in the filing that he’s entitled to a chunk of the company’s recent $500 billion valuation, after contributing $38 million in “seed funding” during the AI company’s early years. It wasn’t just money — according to the filing, Musk helped advise on key employee recruitment, introductions with business contacts and startup advice.
  
  If this sounds familiar, it’s because the lawsuit dates back to March 2024. It’s still going.
  
  — Mat Smith
  The other big stories (and deals) this morning
  Anthropic opens up Claude Cowork to anyone with a $20 subscriptionAnthropic���s AI assistant can handle simple tasks on your PC for you.Dr. Gladys West, whose mathematical models inspired GPS, dies at 95Her decades-long career finally received wider recognition in 2018.
  Pioneering mathematician Dr. Gladys West has passed away at the age of 95. Her name may not be familiar to you, but her contributions will be. West’s work laid the foundation for the global positioning system, GPS, we all use (sometimes daily). Beyond DoorDash requests and Google Maps navigation, GPS is now an essential component of industries ranging from aviation to emergency response systems.
  
  ASUS will not release any new smartphones this yearWill the company be joining the likes of LG?changes its mind...
  
  Continue reading.
  
  
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-engadget-newsletter-121509123.html?src=rss

• Sony is handing control of its Bravia TV business to China's TCL
  Sony is ceding control of its Bravia TV brand to China's TCL as part of a new "strategic partnership," the companies announced in a joint press release. The Japanese electronics giant plans to sell a majority 51 percent stake in its home entertainment arm to TCL, while retaining a 49 percent share. The joint venture is set to start operations in April 2027, pending regulatory and other approvals. 
  
  The new combined business will sell TVs carrying Sony and Bravia branding while using TCL's display technology. The partnership will also leverage Sony's picture and audio expertise, supply chain management and other areas of expertise. For its part, TCL will contribute its vertical supply chain strength, global market presence and end-to-end cost efficiency. 
  
  "By combining both companies' expertise, we aim to create new customer value in the home entertainment field," Sony CEO Kimio Maki said in a statement. "We expect to elevate our brand value, achieve greater scale and optimize the supply chain in order to deliver superior products and services to our customers," added TCL Electronics chairperson DU Juan. 
  
  The news will come as a shock to some, particularly in Japan, as Sony has been strongly associated with high-quality TVs since the Trinitron days. However, it's currently fighting in a low-margin TV business full of formidable competitors including Samsung, LG, Hisense and TCL. The company has already sold off or closed other electronics operations, including PCs and tablets, and is barely hanging in with its smartphone business.
  
  Sony effectively stopped making its own LCD and OLED panels some time ago, while TCL has increased its own production — having recently purchased LCD Panel patents from Samsung and taken over its plant in China. Other Japanese companies like Toshiba and Hitachi have already exited the TV business, while some including Panasonic have a highly reduced presence. 
  
  The Bravia brand survived mainly thanks to customers willing to pay extra for high-end picture and sound quality, along with Sony's association to filmmaking and high-end camera gear. As I detailed in a recent explainer, Sony was a pioneer in many key flat panel breakthroughs, having developed LED backlighting, quantum dot technology and the first OLED TVs. 
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/home-theater/sony-is-handing-control-of-its-bravia-tv-business-to-chinas-tcl-120957252.html?src=rss

• The best wireless chargers for 2026
  If you’ve upgraded your phone recently, there’s a good chance it supports wireless charging. Battery life can be one of the first things to deteriorate as your phone ages, so you’ll need quick and easy ways to power up wherever you are. You may not always be able to have a cable on your person, but investing in a wireless phone charger (or a few) can make it more convenient to plop your phone down and know it’ll have more juice when you pick it back up again.
  
  While you’re not going to get the same charging speed with a wireless charger that you would with a power cable, the convenience of a power source like this is undeniable. Stick a wireless charger on your bedside, on your desk at work, in your kitchen or wherever you spend a good chunk of your time and you’ll have a reliable way to power up your phone, sans bulky, messy cables. Needless to say, there are a ton of options out there with different charging capabilities and price ranges. Below, we’ve collected the best wireless chargers we’ve tested to make your search a little easier.
  Table of contents
  Best wireless chargers for 2026?
  
  What to look for in a wireless charger?
  
  Where and how will you use your charger??
  
  Wireless charging performance?
  
  Quality and box contents?
  
  Wireless chargers FAQs?
  Best wireless chargers for 2026
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  What to look for in a wireless charger
  While it’s tempting to buy a wireless charging pad optimized for the specific phone you have now, resist that urge. Instead, think about the types of devices (phones included) that you could see yourself using in the near future. If you’re sure you’ll use iPhones for a long time, an Apple MagSafe-compatible magnetic wireless charger will be faster and more convenient. If you use Android phones or think you might switch sides, however, you’ll want a more universal design. If you have other accessories like wireless earbuds or a smartwatch that supports wireless charging, maybe you’d be better off with a 3-in-1 wireless charger or full wireless charging station.
  Where and how will you use your charger?
  Odds are that you have a specific use case in mind for your charger. You may want it by your bedside on your nightstand for a quick charge in the morning, or on your desk for at-a-glance notifications. You might even keep it in your bag for convenient travel charging instead of bulky portable chargers or power banks. Think about where you want to use this accessory and what you want to do with the device(s) it charges while it’s powering up. For example, a wireless charging pad might be better for bedside use if you just want to be able to drop your phone down at the end of a long day and know it’ll be powered up in the morning. However, a stand will be better if you have an iPhone and want to make use of the Standby feature during the nighttime hours.
  
  For a desk wireless charger, a stand lets you more easily glance at phone notifications throughout the day. For traveling, undoubtedly, a puck-style charging pad is best since it will take up much less space in your bag than a stand would. Many power banks also include wireless charging pads built in, so one of those might make even more sense for those who are always on the go. Some foldable chargers are also designed for travel, collapsing flat to take up less space.
  Wireless charging performance
  Although wireless charging is usually slower than its wired equivalent, speed and wattage are still important considerations. A fast charger can supply enough power for a long night out in the time it takes to change outfits. Look for options that promise faster charging and support standards like Qi2 certified charging for the best balance of efficiency and compatibility.
  
  In general, a 15W charger is more than quick enough for most situations, and you’ll need a MagSafe-compatible charger to extract that level of performance from an iPhone. With that said, even the slower 7.5W and 10W chargers are fast enough for an overnight power-up. If anything, you’ll want to worry more about support for cases. While many models can deliver power through a reasonably thick case (typically 3mm to 5mm), you’ll occasionally run into examples that only work with naked phones.
  
  There are some proprietary chargers that smash the 15W barrier if you have the right phone. Apple’s latest MagSafe charging pad can provide up to 25W of wireless power to compatible iPhones when paired with a 30W or 35W adapter — the latter being another component you’ll have to get right to make sure the whole equation works as fast as it possibly can.
  Quality and box contents
  Pay attention to what’s included in the box. Some wireless chargers don’t include power adapters, and others may even ask you to reuse your phone’s USB-C charging cable. What may seem to be a bargain may prove expensive if you have to buy extras just to use it properly. As mentioned above, you’ll want to make sure all of the components needed to use the wireless charger can provide the level of power you need — you’re only as strong (or in this case, fast) as your weakest link.
  
  Fit and finish is also worth considering. You’re likely going to use your wireless charger every day, so even small differences in build quality could make the difference between joy and frustration. If your charger doesn’t use MagSafe-compatible tech, textured surfaces like fabric or rubberized plastic are more likely to keep your phone in place. The base should be grippy or weighty enough that the charger won’t slide around. Also double check that the wireless charger you’re considering can support phones outfitted with cases — the specifications are usually listed in the charger’s description or specs.
  
  You’ll also want to think about the minor conveniences. Status lights are useful for indicating correct phone placement, but an overly bright light can be distracting. Ideally, the light dims or shuts off after a certain period of time. And while we caution against lips and trays that limit compatibility, you may still want some barriers to prevent your device falling off its perch on the charging station.
  Wireless chargers FAQs Do wireless chargers work if you have a phone case?
  Many wireless chargers do work if you leave the case on your phone. Generally, a case up to 3mm thick should be compatible with most wireless chargers. However, you should check the manufacturer’s guide to ensure a case is supported.
  How do I know if my phone supports wireless charging?
  Checking the phone’s specification should tell you if your phone is compatible with wireless charging. You might see words like “Qi wireless charging” or “wireless charging compatible.”
  Do cords charge your phone faster?
  Most often, wired charging will be faster than wireless charging. However, wired charging also depends on what the charging cable’s speed is and how much power it’s designed to carry. A quick-charging cable that can transmit up to 120W of power is going to be faster than a wireless charger.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/accessories/best-wireless-charger-140036359.html?src=rss

• Dr. Gladys West, whose mathematical models inspired GPS, dies at 95
  Pioneering mathematician Dr. Gladys West has passed away at the age of 95. Her name may not be familiar to you, but her contributions certainly are; West9s work laid the foundation for the global positioning system. As you likely know from experience, GPS is now an essential component of industries ranging from aviation and emergency response, as well as ensuring that you get to that dinner date or job interview on time. 
  This morning the world lost a pioneer in Dr Gladys West, she passed peacefully alongside her family and friends and is now in heaven with her loved ones. We thank you in advance for all of the love and prayers you have and will continue to provide pic.twitter.com/FJ3aGfEiHP
  — Dr. Gladys B. West (@DrGladysBWest) January 18, 2026
  West was born in 1930 in Virginia. Despite the oppression of Jim Crow laws in the south, she was able to pursue higher education at Virginia State College (now named Virginia State University), obtaining bachelor9s and master9s degrees in mathematics. In 1956, West was hired at what is now called the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, VA. Her focus during the 1970s and 1980s was creating accurate models of the Earth9s shape based on satellite data, a complex task requiring the type of mathematical gymnastics that would make the average person dizzy. Those models later became the backbone for GPS. West worked at the Dahlgren center for 42 years, retiring in 1998. 
  
  As has been the case with so many of the women, particularly those of color, behind tech and science breakthroughs in the US, West9s work went largely uncelebrated for decades. After submitting a short biography of her accomplishments to a sorority function in 2018, members of Alpha Kappa Alpha helped West to receive belated recognition for her contributions. She was inducted into the US Air Force Space and Missiles Pioneers Hall of Fame and honored as Female Alumna of the Year by the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Awards in that same year. The Guardian published an interview with West in 2020 that shared some insights on her journey, including a note that when West was out and about, she favored paper maps over the technology she indirectly helped create.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/dr-gladys-west-whose-mathematical-models-inspired-gps-dies-at-95-234605023.html?src=rss

• ASUS will not release any new smartphones this year
  ASUS appears to be shifting its business operations away from smartphones. According to translations of recent quotes from Chairman Jonney Shih, the company does not plan to release new phone models in the future. The chairman did not confirm whether smartphones would be completely phased out, but he did acknowledge that possibility. Whatever direction ASUS takes, its existing phones will continue to receive software updates and warranty assistance. Shih suggested that its future plans may include a shift into AI-related projects such as robotics or smartglasses.
  
  Previous reports hinted that ASUS would not introduce any smartphones in 2026, but Shih9s recent comments indicate that the pause may stretch longer than a year. We9ve reached out to ASUS for additional comment and will update if the company shares any further information. 
  
  ASUS had plenty of other updates emerging from CES at the start of the month unrelated to smartphones, such as dual-screen laptops and a pair of gaming smartglasses. So if it does decide to leave that product segment, there will still be other ASUS-branded gear on the market.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/asus-will-not-release-any-new-smartphones-this-year-213043832.html?src=rss

• UK agency questions Meta's policies for illegal gambling site ads
  The UK Gambling Commission has raised concerns that Meta is ignoring advertisements by illegal gambling websites on its platforms. At a conference in Barcelona, the commission9s Executive Director Tim Miller criticized Meta9s behavior towards advertisements for online gambling on its Facebook and Instagram social networks.
  
  "Companies like Meta will tell you that they don’t tolerate the advertising of illegal sites and will remove them if they are notified about them," Miller9s speech transcript reads. "But that approach suggests that they don’t know about those ads unless alerted. That is simply false."
  
  Meta9s internal policy is that gambling sites must be licensed in the markets where their ads run. However, the agency was able to conduct basic searches for advertisers that are not on its GamStop platform, which helps people block themselves from accessing online gambling sites. GamStop integration is required for an operator to receive a UK license. 
  
  "I would be very surprised if Meta, as one of the world’s largest tech companies is incapable of proactively using their own keyword facility to prevent the advertising of illegal gambling," Miller said. "It could leave you with the impression they are quite happy to turn a blind eye and continue taking money from criminals and scammers until someone shouts about it."
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/uk-agency-questions-metas-policies-for-illegal-gambling-site-ads-210500714.html?src=rss

• TurboTax Deluxe is on sale for $45 ahead of tax season
  With the spring approaching, it9s time to start thinking about how you9ll file your taxes. Unfortunately, with the recent demise of Direct File, there isn9t a free, government-provided alternative to TurboTax in 2026, and you9ll need to look to other federal programs, including IRS Free File, to file your paperwork. If you don9t qualify for Free File, chances are you9ll need to dish out cash for Intuit9s software. And while we hate to suggest you give money to a company that has spent decades lobbying to ensure America9s tax system remains a nightmare, we can at least save you some money if TurboTax is your only option.
  
  
  
  Right now, Amazon has discounted the deluxe desktop edition of TurboTax by 44 percent. That gets you $35 off software that normally costs $80, which you can use to file both your individual state and federal taxes. For most Americans, that should cover their needs, though if you9re self-employed, you9ll need to pony up for the more expensive Business version of TurboTax, which is currently 42 percent off, or $54 off. One last thing to note: you9ll need a PC with either Windows 11 or macOS Sonoma to run the software, so an older machine won9t do, unfortunately.
  
  Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/turbotax-deluxe-is-on-sale-for-45-ahead-of-tax-season-204848571.html?src=rss

• Bungie's Marathon arrives on March 5
  Marathon, Bungie9s long-awaited extraction shooter, will arrive on March 5, the studio announced today. Alongside a definitive release date, Bungie shared a new gameplay trailer, in addition to details about the game9s forthcoming deluxe edition, which fans can pre-order today on Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. All versions of the game will support crossplay, meaning you9ll be able to play with your friends, no matter where they decide to buy Marathon.  
  
  Sony, Bungie9s parent company, had previously committed to a March release for Marathon, but stopped short of sharing an exact date. News of that date leaked early Monday after Microsoft published the pre-order trailer you see above early.  Sony had originally planned to delayed the game indefinitely in June of last year after a mixed reception to its alpha and an admission Bungie had partially plagiarized��some visual assets. It9s safe to say Marathon could decide the future of the studio. In November, Sony said Destiny 2 had not lived up to its expectations and wrote down the value of the studio’s assets by $204 million. This came after the company said it would take more direct control of Bungie.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/bungies-marathon-arrives-on-march-5-193808588.html?src=rss

• Musk claims Tesla will restart work on its Dojo supercomputer
  Elon Musk posted on X that Tesla will be restarting work on Dojo3, the third generation of its in-house supercomputer project. The Dojo team had been disbanded last year as the company prioritized the AI chips that run on board Tesla vehicles. Musk said the company is returning to the project "now that the AI5 chip design is in good shape."
  
  The purpose of the Dojo project is to process video recordings and other data from Tesla vehicles and use that to train the "neural net" behind the company9s Full Self-Driving software. Last year, however, Musk posted on X that "It doesn’t make sense for Tesla to divide its resources and scale two quite different AI chip designs. The Tesla AI5, AI6 and subsequent chips will be excellent for inference and at least pretty good for training. All effort is focused on that."
  
  The AI chips Musk is referring to are ones developed for running FSD onboard Tesla vehicles and are not optimized for training. The AI6 chips will be made by Samsung in the company9s Texas factory, after it struck a $16 billion agreement with Tesla.
  
  Musk has also claimed a lot of things over the years, and many of those assertions either were misrepresentations or simply didn9t pan out. Working against this chip project: Musk said that Dojo3 will be "space-based AI compute," as he and others believe that data centers in orbit are a superior alternative to the land-based behemoths currently being built. The idea is that space provides easier access to the sun9s energy, and the cold temperatures there might greatly reduce the power needed, among other benefits. While it9s an increasingly popular if entirely speculative idea, experts have their doubts.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/musk-claims-tesla-will-restart-work-on-its-dojo-supercomputer-173127863.html?src=rss

• NBA League Pass deal: Get access for the rest of the season for up to 55 percent off
  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 we9re 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 support for only one device at a time, while the Premium tier offers no commercials, in-arena streams during breaks in the game, offline viewing of full games and concurrent streams on up to three devices at once.
  
  
  
  Last year, League Pass added multiview, which allows you to view up to four games at once on a single screen. This is included across both subscription tiers. The service also added a smart rewind tool that automatically selects key highlights and plays from each game.
  
  Outside the US and Canada, League Pass carries every single NBA game live, but within these countries a bevy of restrictions apply. In the US, any games being shown on your regional sports network will be blacked out as the service is meant for out-of-market games only. Also, any nationally broadcast games will not be available live, but instead will be available for on-demand viewing at 6AM ET the following day. The service is only for regular-season games.
  
  If you9re an avid NBA fan that follows multiple teams then the League Pass almost certainly carries dozens of games you can watch even with the restrictions in the US. Subscribers can get a list of applicable blackouts by entering their ZIP code before signing up.
  
  Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/nba-league-pass-deal-get-access-for-the-rest-of-the-season-for-up-to-55-percent-off-163421656.html?src=rss

• AirTag deal: Get four of the Bluetooth trackers for $65
  Apple keeps most of its product pricing on a tight leash, but we do see the company9s AirTags go on sale pretty frequently. Another cost cut has come around for this item just in time for the holidays. Amazon is currently selling a four-pack of AirTags for $65. At a third off the regular cost, that price is pretty close to the record low discount of $63 we9ve seen for these Bluetooth trackers.
  
  
  
  AirTags can be useful for people who travel frequently, helping you to keep track of essentials like your passport as well as a way to keep tabs on luggage while you9re on the go. If you do purchase some AirTags, we have some recommendations for useful accessories to go along with them, such as different styles of cases to best attach the trackers to different types of items. These are worth looking over and adding to your shopping cart in order to make the most of the product. 
  
  AirTags have an IP67 rating for water and dust resistance and their replaceable batteries should last for about a year. They can also support Precision Finding, which gives more exact directions to a lost item, when paired with most models after the iPhone 11. Up to five people can share an AirTag9s location, which is helpful for families or large travel groups. 
  
  Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/airtag-deal-get-four-of-the-bluetooth-trackers-for-65-202333107.html?src=rss

• Threads has more global daily users than X on mobile for the first time
  Meta’s Threads is pulling further ahead of Elon Musk’s X on mobile, based on recent estimates from analytics firm Similarweb, Forbes reports. In the first stretch of January, Threads averaged roughly 143 million daily active users worldwide on mobile devices, compared with about 126 million for X.
  
  Similarweb’s year-over-year snapshot shows Threads growing sharply, up 37.8 percent year-over-year, while X’s daily mobile audience fell 11.9 percent across the same period. The picture is more mixed in the US, where X still holds a narrow edge on mobile. Similarweb data puts X at about 21.2 million daily active US mobile users in early January versus roughly 19.5 million for Threads.
  
  However, Threads’ US mobile usage has risen substantially faster over the past year, surging almost 42 percent to X9s 18 percent. X remains far larger on desktop, where it draws around 150 million daily users or visits worldwide, while Threads’ web presence sits at just 9 million.
  
  Forbes also reported on Similarweb data for Bluesky, another competing text-based platform started by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. Dorsey left the board in the summer of 2024, later telling Pirate Wires he believed Bluesky was "literally repeating all the mistakes we made as a company," in reference to Twitter. The social network opened registrations in 2024, and sits now with a daily mobile user base of 3.6 million, which Similarweb says is down 44.4 percent year-over-year.
  
  X has found itself in hot water yet again over xAI9s Grok chatbot, which was altering pictures of women on the platform to create lewd images at the request of users without the consent of those pictured. In some cases, the chatbot also altered the images of underage girls. The uproar in response led the company to shut off image generation for nonsubscribers and place firmer guardrails on what types of images can be generated. The delayed action came after weeks of Grok creating tens of thousands of these images, and after the Attorney General of California launched an investigation.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/threads-has-more-global-daily-users-than-x-on-mobile-for-the-first-time-144936831.html?src=rss

• The best instant cameras for 2026
  Instantcameras have become a popular category for one simple reason: they’re fun. You can whip one out at a party or event and take a snap, then a couple of minutes later you have a real, physical, instant photo that everyone can touch, feel and enjoy instead of staring at a screen. It’s also a lot cooler than a smartphone shot thanks to the retro, nostalgic vibes of analog photography.
  
  Given the large number of camera brands on the market, choosing one can be tricky. That’s why we’ve put together this buying guide that will help you choose the best instant camera for you based on factors like price, instant film size, photo quality and more.
  Best instant cameras for 2026
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  What to consider before buying an instant camera
  The main factor for most people is the size of the film. When most people think of retro instant cameras, they think of a square image size. That’s why Instagram, which used to have a Polaroid-like app icon, only supported square images for years. If that’s what you want, then Fuji’s Square or either of Polaroid’s formats are best.
  
  However, if you want as large an image as possible, Fujifilm’s Instax wide is the way to go. For those who prefer a smaller size to pin on their fridge or slip in an envelope (or the cheaper film), Fujifilim’s Instax Mini or Polaroid’s Go format are best.
  
  With that in mind, here are the choices. Fujifilm’s Instax alone offers three formats: Mini, Square and Wide, with film sizes of 3.4 x 2.1 inches, 3.4 x 2.8 inches and 3.4 x 4.3 inches. The corresponding image sizes are 2.44 x 1.81 inches, 2.44 x 2.44 inches and 2.44 x 3.9 inches.
  
  Leica’s Sofort 2 and Lomography models also uses Fujifilm’s Mini format, while Polaroid’s smaller Go format is 2.64 x 2.13 inches (1.81 x 1.83-inch image) and its i-Type size is 3.46 x 4.21 inches, with a square image size of 3.11 x 3.11 inches.
  
  As for prices, Fujifilm’s Instax films are generally around $1 - $1.20 per shot for square or wide color film and $.60 - $.75 for mini color film. Those prices go up a bit if you choose custom models with colorful or patterned borders, and down if you buy in bulk. Polaroid’s i-Type film is a bit more at about $2.00 per shot or $1.00 - $1.35 per shot for Go color film.
  
  Image quality isn’t really the point with instant cameras of course, as they’re always going to be fuzzy compared to digital photos. However, some models (notably Fujifilm and Polaroid models) are a bit better than others.
  
  And in terms of pricing for the cameras themselves, models with larger film are generally more expensive. It also increases if you add hybrid features like USB-C connectivity, smartphone sharing, the ability to print out photos and more, along with niceties like a selfie mirror. The best, most feature-laden cameras can cost upwards of $200 and basic versions can be well under $100.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cameras/best-instant-camera-120034778.html?src=rss

• Microsoft issues emergency fix after a security update left some Windows 11 devices unable to shut down
  If you weren9t 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 the inability to shut down or hibernate affected Windows 11 devices using Secure Launch, a security feature that protects a computer from firmware-level attacks during startup. As for the remote connection issue, Microsoft explained in its Known issues page that credential prompt failures were responsible when users tried to log in remotely to affected Windows 10 and 11 devices.
  
  According to Windows Recovery Environment. For those still hesitant to upgrade to Windows 11, Microsoft is allowing you to squeeze some more life out of Windows 10 by enrolling in Extended Security Updates.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/microsoft-issues-emergency-fix-afer-a-security-update-left-some-windows-11-devices-unable-to-shut-down-192216734.html?src=rss

• This UGreen 3-in-1 wireless charger is 32 percent off right now
  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, it9s on sale right now for $95; that9s 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 a permanent fixture in your home or act as a portable charging station. It boasts a foldable design and has smart little design details to keep it feeling like a premium product.
  
  The Qi2 25W charging works across a range of iPhone models and accessories, such as AirPods. There9s also a dedicated part of the pad9s design for an Apple Watch, which uses a proprietary charging standard, to power up too. Just note that you9ll need a newer model of phone and the latest iOS 26 in order to take full advantage of the 25W charging capability. The wireless pad also comes with both a charging plug and a cable. We felt this UGREEN model was a great value at $140, so being able to snag one for a third of the usual price is an even better deal.
  
  Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/this-ugreen-3-in-1-wireless-charger-is-32-percent-off-right-now-214707378.html?src=rss

• Washington is the latest state pursuing an age verification law for porn sites
  Washington state residents may soon be forced to produce IDs before getting onto websites with pornographic content. Within the state9s 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 digital identification or demanding the user go through an age verification system that requests a government-issued ID. If a website that has more than one-third of its content being "sexual material harmful to minors" is found not following these rules, the state9s attorney general can pursue steep civil penalties.
  
  If those restrictions sound familiar, it9s because many other states have also passed similar constraints. Washington state9s proposed bill is very similar to Texas9 age verification law that went into effect in September 2023 and was recently upheld by the US Supreme Court. Like the Texas law, several groups expressed disapproval of the bill during the public hearing at the House committee level. As reported by The Seattle Times, groups including the ACLU, Lavender Rights Project and the Northwest Progressive Institute warned of privacy risks related to potential data breaches and the loose definition of "sexual material harmful to minors" in the bill9s language.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/washington-is-the-latest-state-pursuing-an-age-verification-law-for-porn-sites-174423529.html?src=rss

• Apple's latest 25W MagSafe charger is on sale for $30
  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 it9s connected to a 30W power adapter on the other end. While you9ll need a more recent iPhone to get the fastest MagSafe charging speeds, the charger can wirelessly top up the battery of any iPhone from the last eight years (iPhone 8 and later). With older iPhones, the charging speed tops out at 15W. The cable works with AirPods wireless charging cases too — it9s certified for Qi2.2 and Qi charging.
  
  The MagSafe charger is one of our favorite iPhone accessories, and would pair quite nicely with your new iPhone if you9re picking up one of the latest models. If you9re on the fence about that, be sure to check out our reviews of the iPhone 17, iPhone Pro/Pro Max and iPhone Air.
  
  Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/apples-latest-25w-magsafe-charger-is-on-sale-for-30-141707297.html?src=rss

• The plan for a gaming-themed Atari hotel in Las Vegas has reportedly been scrapped
  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 "didn9t 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 Jose and Seattle. But Las Vegas is now apparently off the table, and there haven9t been any signs of life around the other planned locations. The FAQ on the Atari Hotels website notes, "Additional sites, including Denver, are being explored under separate development and licensing agreements." The Atari Hotel project was announced in 2020 just before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and consequently experienced development delays. Construction on the Phoenix hotel, which was supposed to break ground in 2020, is expected to begin late this year, with its opening now planned for 2028. 
  
  But maybe don9t hold your breath. According to a December press release, the company is still trying to raise $35 million to $40 million to fund the "playable destination" for gamers in Phoenix.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-plan-for-a-gaming-themed-atari-hotel-in-las-vegas-has-reportedly-been-scrapped-214212269.html?src=rss

• Amazon's live-action God of War adaptation adds Teresa Palmer
  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 Ryan Hurst, but it could hint at the direction the TV show may take.
  two seasons.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/amazons-live-action-god-of-war-adaptation-adds-teresa-palmer-201604602.html?src=rss

• TikTok's latest spinoff app feels a lot like Quibi, but with shorter and cornier content
  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 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. Don9t expect any nominations for Best Original Screenplay with series like The Officer Fell For Me or Married to my past life9s nemesis, since they typically offer soap opera vibes with cliffhangers that keep users scrolling to the next episode. The app is designed to keep people on it with a Discover tab, a place to save favorites and the ability to react in real time alongside other viewers.
  
  Right now, the micro dramas on PineDrama are all free to watch and don9t have any ads. It9s unclear if TikTok will introduce any costs or ads to the app, since other micro drama options like DramaBox or ReelShort have a paid structure. Late last year, TikTok also introduced a way to watch micro dramas within its own app, with a section called Minis. It9s not the first time we9re seeing shorter TV show formats, since Quibi made waves with a format of episodes that were less than 10 minutes long. However, maybe even 10 minutes was too long since the startup eventually called it quits after eight months.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/tiktoks-latest-spinoff-app-feels-a-lot-like-quibi-but-with-shorter-and-cornier-content-185702010.html?src=rss

• It's the last day to get up to $90 off reMarkable E Ink tablet bundles
  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 a real pencil, but that will cost you an extra $50. If you’ve been eyeing a dedicated writing tablet for work, school or just jotting down notes without the distraction of endless apps, this bundle deal is an ideal opportunity to pick one up.
  
  
  
  The reMarkable 2 earned our top pick for best e-ink tablet. In our review, we said the tablet was prettier than ever with a 10.3-inch display and a handsome aluminum frame. The tablet is only 4.7mm thick and weighs less than a pound, helping it feel lean and portable.
  
  The display can detect over 4,000 different levels of pressure with the Marker stylus, allowing for precise shading when sketching and the latency between the stylus and the screen is just 21ms. reMarkable fitted the display with a resin layer on top of the glass to make writing on it feel more realistic. We didn9t think this passed muster, but we found writing on it was a joy nonetheless.
  
  The tablet supports PDFs and ePUBs, which can be added via the companion mobile app or a desktop computer. You can also pair the reMarkable 2 with Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive or Dropbox to access files. The battery is rated for an impressive two weeks between charges.
  
  The reMarkable Paper Pro, a higher-end model with a richer feature set like a full color display and a built-in reading light, is our pick for best premium e-ink tablet. The pricier tablet also has bundle deals right now with savings up to $80 depending on configuration.
  
  Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/tablets/its-the-last-day-to-get-up-to-90-off-remarkable-e-ink-tablet-bundles-150242090.html?src=rss

• Elon Musk is looking for a $134 billion payout from OpenAI and Microsoft
  We now have some idea of what9s at stake in the longstanding feud between Elon Musk and OpenAI. As first reported by $500 billion, after contributing $38 million in "seed funding" during the AI company9s startup years. Along with providing "roughly 60 percent of the nonprofit9s seed funding," Musk offered recruiting of key employees, introductions with business contacts and startup advice, according to the filing. The monetary estimate comes from C. Paul Wazzan, a financial economist who9s serving as Musk9s expert in the case. According to Wazzan9s calculations, OpenAI earned between $65.5 billion and $109.43 billion in wrongful gains, while Microsoft saw between $13.3 billion and $25.06 billion.
  
  The lawsuit between Elon Musk and OpenAI dates back to March 2024, when the xAI CEO first filed a legal action claiming that OpenAI violated its non-profit status. Musk later added Microsoft as another defendant and even tried to get an injunction when OpenAI announced efforts to reorganize its corporate structure. Besides this suit, Musk has named OpenAI in another legal battle, accusing the company, along with Apple, of monopolistic practices that prevent xAI from getting a fair shot in the App Store.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/elon-musk-is-looking-for-a-134-billion-payout-from-openai-and-microsoft-171824945.html?src=rss

• California AG sends cease and desist to xAI over Grok's explicit deepfakes
  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 you’ll 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.
  
  Bonta’s office demands that xAI immediately cease and desist from creating “digitized sexually explicit material” when the depicted individual didn’t consent to it or if the individual is a minor. It also demanded that xAI stop “facilitating or aiding and abetting the creation… or publication of digitized sexually explicit material” of nonconsenting individuals and persons under 18 years of age.
  
  X changed its policies after the issue broke out and prevented the Grok account from being able to edit images of real people into revealing clothing. xAI also moved Grok’s image-generating features behind a paywall and geoblocked paying users’ ability to edit images of real people into bikinis, but only in regions where it’s illegal.
  
  In his announcement, Bonta said xAI developed a “spicy mode” for Grok to generate explicit content and used it as a marketing point. The California AG also said that Grok-generated sexual images are being used to harass both public figures and ordinary users. “Most alarmingly, news reports have described the use of Grok to alter images of children to depict them in minimal clothing and sexual situations,” Bonta’s announcement reads.
  
  “The actions above violate California law, including California Civil Code section 1708.86, California Penal Code sections 311 et seq. and 647(j)(4), and California Business & Professions Code section 17200,” it said. The state’s Department of Justice now expects to hear from xAI on the steps it’s taking to address these issues within the next five days.
  xAI has been producing deepfake nonconsensual intimate images used to harass women & girls across the internet.
  
  This is unacceptable. We’re demanding immediate answers on their plan to stop the creation & spread of this content.
  
  We’ll use all tools at our disposal to keep… pic.twitter.com/2elGTV0wRq
  — Rob Bonta (@AGRobBonta) January 16, 2026
  
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/california-ag-sends-cease-and-desist-to-xai-over-groks-explicit-deepfakes-140000574.html?src=rss

• How to pair AirPods with any device
  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 to connect them to non-Apple devices.
  How to pair AirPods with Apple devices
  Apple builds AirPods to pair almost instantly with devices in its own ecosystem. Opening the charging case near an unlocked iPhone or iPad usually brings up an on-screen prompt. Tapping Connect links the earbuds to the device and to every other Apple product signed into the same iCloud account. After that, switching between devices is automatic. Audio output follows the active device as long as each product is using updated software and is signed in with the same Apple ID.
  
  If the pairing prompt does not appear, there are a few simple checks that help things move along. Opening the Control Center and selecting the audio output menu confirms whether the AirPods already appear as an available device. If they are listed there, choosing them establishes the connection. If they do not appear, opening the Settings app and checking Bluetooth usually reveals whether the AirPods are in range or already recognized. Opening the case while viewing the Bluetooth menu often triggers the pairing card once more.
  
  The process is similar across Apple Watch and Mac. When the AirPods are already linked to an iPhone, they tend to show up automatically on a paired Apple Watch. On Mac, opening System Settings and viewing the Bluetooth section reveals the same device list seen on an iPhone. Selecting the AirPods from that list completes the connection and also syncs the pairing status back to every other Apple device using the same account.
  Enhanced pairing with newer iPhones
  Some newer iPhones support features enabled by the H2 chip used in newer AirPods models. With compatible AirPods, models such as iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max and the iPhone 16 lineup tend to deliver a faster and more responsive setup experience. When an AirPods case is opened near one of these phones, the device quickly detects the earbuds and displays the pairing card with little delay. This also tends to speed up transitions between devices and improves reliability when switching audio sources.
  
  If the fast pairing prompt does not appear on a newer iPhone, reopening the case while the phone is unlocked is usually enough to reinitiate the process. It also helps to confirm that Bluetooth is turned on. Placing the AirPods back in the case for a few seconds and trying again will often reset the pairing state if the earbuds were connected elsewhere.
  AirPods Pro 3EngadgetHow to put AirPods into pairing mode
  Every AirPods model supports a manual pairing mode. This is essential when linking the earbuds to devices outside the Apple ecosystem, or when the automatic prompt fails to appear on an iPhone or Mac. On older AirPods models, pairing mode is activated by opening the lid and pressing and holding the setup button on the back of the case until the LED light flashes white. Newer models, including AirPods 4 and AirPods Pro 3, use a touch-based method instead. With the lid open, tapping the area near the LED light places the earbuds into pairing mode. Leaving the lid open keeps the AirPods discoverable for nearby devices. Closing the case ends the process and requires it to be repeated if the device fails to detect them.
  
  Pairing mode does not remove any previous connections. It simply makes the AirPods available to new devices, which is helpful when switching between ecosystems. However, connecting to a new device usually takes priority. If the AirPods are already linked to something else that is nearby, turning off Bluetooth on the previously connected device prevents interference and helps the new device detect them more easily.
  How to pair AirPods with Android devices
  Although AirPods are designed for Apple hardware, they function like any other Bluetooth earbuds on Android. Opening the case and placing the AirPods in pairing mode allows Android phones to detect them through the standard Bluetooth menu. The earbuds appear in the list of available devices and selecting them initiates the connection. Once paired, AirPods work for calls and media playback. Some features, such as automatic ear detection and battery status indicators, may require a third-party app on Android and are not supported at a system level. Features such as spatial audio and device switching remain exclusive to Apple’s ecosystem but day-to-day performance is consistent on Android.
  
  If the AirPods fail to appear, refreshing the Bluetooth device list on the Android phone usually helps. Making sure the earbuds are still in pairing mode is essential since the white LED indicator stops flashing after a short period. Reopening the case and holding the button again, or tapping on the front for newer models, restores discoverability.
  How to pair AirPods with Windows laptops
  Windows 11 handles AirPods as a regular audio device. Opening the Bluetooth and Devices menu in System Settings displays a list of nearby accessories. With the AirPods in pairing mode, the laptop should detect them and display them as an audio device. Selecting them completes the process and adds the earbuds to the device’s known accessories. Windows generally reconnects to AirPods automatically on future sessions as long as Bluetooth remains enabled.
  
  If the earbuds do not appear in the list, toggling Bluetooth off and back on helps the system refresh the device scan. Checking whether the AirPods are already linked to a different device is another useful step. Windows sometimes struggles to take over a connection when the earbuds remain in range of a previously paired phone so disabling Bluetooth on the other device often resolves the issue.
  Troubleshooting common pairing issues
  Most pairing problems come down to the AirPods not being in discoverable mode or being connected to another device nearby. Resetting the earbuds solves many problems. On AirPods models with a setup button, placing the AirPods in the case, leaving the lid open and holding the button until the LED turns amber then white restores the factory pairing state. On newer models without a physical button, place the AirPods in the case, close the lid for about 30 seconds, then open it and quickly tap the front of the case three times. The status light should then flash amber and then white, to indicate that the reset is complete. This clears previous connections and makes the AirPods behave as if they are new out of the box. 
  
  Low battery levels can also interrupt pairing. Ensuring both the earbuds and the case have enough charge prevents unexpected disconnections during setup. Interference from other wireless accessories affects pairing on crowded networks. Moving to a quieter spot or turning off surrounding Bluetooth devices helps the AirPods stand out when scanning.
  
  AirPods are built to pair quickly with Apple devices but they also integrate smoothly with other platforms. Keeping the earbuds in pairing mode and confirming that Bluetooth is enabled on the device in use ensures a smooth setup every time. Once connected, the AirPods tend to remember the device and reconnect whenever they are nearby which keeps day-to-day use simple regardless of the platform.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/headphones/how-to-pair-airpods-with-any-device-140000234.html?src=rss

• How to cancel CyberGhost and get a refund
  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 there9s a chance CyberGhost will not work for you. If that’s the case, here9s how to cancel your subscription.
  How to stop your CyberGhost subscription renewing
  Cancelling your CyberGhost subscription won9t end it right away, unless you delete your account or get the refund (I9ll explain how to do both of those later). Instead, the way to cancel CyberGhost is to stop your subscription from renewing at the end of each billing period. Once you9ve done that, you can keep using CyberGhost until your current period ends.
  
  The following steps will cancel auto-renewal if you got CyberGhost through its website. If you bought it through an app store instead, see the next section.
  
  Open your browser and go to through this link or open a live chat conversation by clicking the Live Chat button at the bottom-right of any page on the benefits of masking your IP address and changing your virtual location don9t go anywhere. You can check out my best list (linked at the top) or best free VPN roundup for ideas, or check out the review for my favorite service, Proton VPN.
  
  Proton VPN is my top choice because of its focus on user freedoms and attention to quality in everything it does. If you9re willing to pay a bit more for extreme simplicity and total reliability, ExpressVPN is ideal for beginners. If you9re a speed demon and just want to keep your downloads fast, go with Surfshark.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/vpn/how-to-cancel-cyberghost-and-get-a-refund-130000311.html?src=rss

• Papers Please but with zombies, a farming-based shoot-'em-up and other new indie games worth checking out
  Welcome to our latest roundup of what9s going on in the indie game space. Several neat-looking games arrived this week, we got release dates for several others that I9m 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 Valentine9s Day-themed Steam festival. It9ll 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 ET on the Sunny Demeanor Games YouTube channel too.
  
  Organizers say the festival includes a wide variety of games about love, including RPGs, puzzle games and (naturally) visual novels. You might play as a cat or someone trying to fish an engagement ring out of a claw machine, as a secret agent or a couple that9s run off to another planet. I9m intrigued! There will be some NSFW games involved, for what it9s worth.
  New releases
  Quarantine Zone: The Last Check seems like a 3D version of Papers Please but with zombies. At a checkpoint amid a zombie outbreak, your mission is to screen survivors for signs of infection. If you9re unsure of their status, you can send an individual to quarantine for further observation or a lab for additional screening. Otherwise, you can let them in or send them to "liquidation." Get things wrong and it could spell disaster, but at least you have a sidearm (and a weaponized drone) to help you deal with sticky situations.
  
  It looks like there9s a lot going on in Quarantine Zone: The Last Check, which is from Brigada Games and publisher Devolver Digital. There are base and resource management aspects as well. It9s out now on Steam (usually $20, but there9s a 10 percent discount until January 26) and PC Game Pass.
  
  Air Hares seems to draw inspiration from classic top-down shoot-9em-ups. But instead of simply blowing up countless ships, your mission is to restore farmland. You9ll fire seeds and water to turn barren land into fertile carrot fields. There are still enemies to contend with — you (and perhaps a co-op partner) can dodge and ram them as you try to protect the land. Expect boss battles, too.
  
  I really like the aesthetic here. It has a 990s-style cartoon look (I suddenly really want a modern Bucky O9Hare game). Also, the song from the trailer is going to live in my head for weeks.
  
  Husband-and-wife team Tim and Megan Bungeroth created Air Hares over six years with the help of several contributors. According to a press release, the game is "inspired by the creators’ personal journey with infertility and the idea of creating life rather than destroying it." 
  
  Air Hares is out now on Steam. It typically costs $9, but there9s a 20 percent discount until January 28.
  
  Luckshot Games9 Big Hops looks like my kind of 3D platformer: joyous and playful. As a young frog who has been kidnapped, you9ll try to find airship parts for a raccoon who has promised to help get you home.
  
  There are tons of movement mechanics here, and Hop9s tongue plays a major role in those. You can use it to swing across gaps, hookshot your way to higher platforms and solve puzzles. 
  
  Big Hops is out now on Steam, Nintendo Switch and PS5 for $20. The Switch and Steam versions have a 10 percent launch discount until January 19.
  
  Cassette Boy is a pixel-art game that might appear to be a 2D exploration puzzler, but there9s more going on here. You can rotate the world to discover new secrets and hide enemies and hazards from view so you can move past them. If you can9t see something on your screen, it doesn9t exist. There9s a bit of a Fez influence here, it would appear.
  
  Wonderland Kazakiri and publisher Pocketpair are behind this one, which I9m looking forward to checking out when I have a chance. Cassette Boy is available on Steam, Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S for $13.
  Upcoming 
  I really enjoyed the demo for Aerial_Knight’s DropShot (as well as Aerial_Knight’s previous games). I9m for sure going to be playing the full game when it hits PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Steam and Epic Games Store on February 17.
  
  This is a single-player first-person shooter in which you9re skydiving with finger guns. You compete with four enemies to grab the only available parachute as you9re falling through the air. Rounds are fast-paced too, generally lasting under a minute.
  
  Point-and-click adventure Earth Must Die has been on my radar for a while and we9ll all get a chance to try it soon. It9s designed to be a playable cartoon (with a runtime of about eight hours) and it has an art style to match. 
  
  The cast is pretty stellar, with Ben Starr (Final Fantasy XVI, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Hades II), Joel Fry (Our Flag Means Death) and a whole load of British comedy figures on board. There9s a demo available on Steam now and the full game — from Size Five Games and publisher No More Robots — will land on January 27.
  
  Let9s wrap things up for this week something very silly-looking from Monster Shop Games. Pie in the Sky is a Tony Hawk9s Pro Skater-inspired action arcade game in which you play as a magpie that terrorizes bystanders. You can knock people off the Sydney Harbour Bridge, ram kids off of scooters, actually go skateboarding and, uh, cause havoc from above. In classic THPS-style, there are hidden areas too. 
  
  This looks like a fun distraction from [gestures at everything]. Pie is the Sky will swoop onto Steam on February 2.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/papers-please-but-with-zombies-a-farming-based-shoot-em-up-and-other-new-indie-games-worth-checking-out-123000437.html?src=rss

• The best VPN service for 2026
  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. It9s easy enough to slap a cheap VPN together that the market is flooded with low-quality apps that put more money into advertising than infrastructure. They may look good, but it9s all styrofoam under the hood.
  
  I built this list of the best VPNs after intensive testing to help you reorient your focus on the providers that actually deserve your time and money. Which one truly fits your needs is dependent on who you are and what you do online, but if you pick any of my seven recommendations, you can9t go too far wrong. If you9re interested in a service you can use without paying, head over to my list of the best free VPNs — and if you9re willing to pay but want to save money, I keep a list of the best VPN deals updated weekly.
  
  For each VPN on this list, I9ve shared which platforms it works on, how much it cuts into your download speed, where it offers servers, what other features are included and how much the best available deal costs. At the end, I9ll list some honorable and dishonorable mentions, then answer some of the most common questions I hear about VPNs.
  
  Editor9s note: This list is up-to-date as of January 2026. We intend to revisit this list every three months at a minimum, at which time our picks may be adjusted based on changes in pricing, features, testing results and other factors.
  Table of contents
  Best VPNs for 2026?
  
  Other VPNs we tested?
  
  What to look for in a VPN?
  
  VPN FAQs?
  Best VPNs for 2026
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Other VPNs we tested
  The VPNs in this section didn9t crack our top list above, but we9re summarizing them here so you can see their positives and negatives as of the time of our evaluation. 
  Windscribe
  Windscribe is another well-known free VPN supported by paid subscriptions. In many ways, it takes the best from both Mullvad and Proton VPN, with the former9s no-nonsense privacy and the latter9s healthy free plan. Without paying, you can connect to 10 of Windscribe9s server locations on an unlimited number of devices at once.
  
  Unfortunately, Windscribe didn9t copy the most important part of Proton VPN9s free plan — the unlimited data. You9re only allowed to use 10GB per month, which isn9t enough for regular streaming. It9s also committed to a cramped and headache-inducing user interface that stands out from the crowd in all the worst ways.
  Private Internet Access
  Private Internet Access (PIA VPN) has a deeply annoying name — I assume whoever invented it also likes to hop in their Toyota Forward Motion to grab a gallon of Sustaining Cow Extract from the grocery store — but it9s a worthwhile VPN whose pricing provides incredible value. Its monthly and yearly plans are good enough, but its three-year plan is the clincher. Not only is it longer than average, but you can continue to renew at the three-year level, so you won9t see an unpleasant price jump the first time you re-up.
  
  PIA9s apps have a dark UI reminiscent of Proton VPN, which is always a good thing. It also supports port forwarding, custom DNS and the use of a SOCKS5 or Shadowsocks proxy as a second step in the VPN connection. You can even set the maximum data packet size to help out a struggling connection, as I cover in my full PIA VPN review.
  
  The downside is that your connection will struggle a lot. While well-designed, PIA9s apps have a tendency to lag. In my most recent battery of tests, it dragged oddly on my internet in ways that weren9t directly reflected in the speed tests. It9s also not always capable of unblocking streaming services in other countries, and while its server network offers 152 IP address options in 84 countries, it9s heavily bulked out by virtual locations.
  TunnelBear
  TunnelBear has a decent interface, which its target audience of VPN beginners will find very easy to use. Its speeds are perfectly good too, and I appreciate the depth and breadth of its transparency reports. But it9s far too limited overall, with few extra features, less than 50 server locations and a free plan that caps data at 2GB per month.
  VyprVPN
  VyprVPN often flies under the radar, but it has some of the best apps in the business and a very good security record (there was a breach in 2023, but it didn9t crack the VPN encryption itself). It9s also got a verified privacy policy, a solid jurisdiction and runs every connection through an in-house DNS to prevent leaks.
  
  Despite all that, it didn9t make the top seven because its connection speeds aren9t up to scratch — you9ll likely notice a bigger slowdown than average. It also has a troubling history of wild, seemingly experimental swings in its pricing and simultaneous connection limits.
  Norton VPN
  Norton VPN is part of the Norton 360 package that includes the well-known antivirus software and other security apps. It9s a nice bonus if you use Norton already, but as a standalone VPN, it falls short. My tests repeatedly showed it dropping encryption and revealing my IP address whenever I switched servers, and not all of its locations managed to unblock Netflix.
  
  This isn9t to say Norton VPN is terrible. It has a fairly large server network, user-friendly apps and some cool features like an IP rotator. It also recently revamped its OpenVPN infrastructure to improve speeds on Windows. But you probably won9t find those things sufficient to balance out significant speed drops on other platforms or poorly written FAQs. I especially advise against Norton VPN for Apple users, as its Mac and iPhone apps are much more limited than their Windows and Android counterparts.
  What to look for in a VPN
  Choosing a VPN can quickly get you mired in analysis paralysis. We9re here to help, but since only you know your particular needs, you should know the major red and green flags so you can make the final call yourself. Every reputable VPN provider offers a free trial or refund guarantee you can use to run the tests below.
  
  Compatibility: First, make sure your VPN works on all the platforms you plan to use it on. Most VPNs have apps for Windows, Mac, Android and iOS, but those apps aren9t always created equal — check that the app for your chosen OS is user-friendly and has all the features you need.
  
  Speed: Use a speed testing app to see how fast your internet is before and after connecting to the VPN (I use Ookla9s speedtest.net). To check security, look up your IP address while connected to a VPN server and see if it9s actually changed your virtual location. Be sure it9s using expert-vetted protocols like OpenVPN, WireGuard and IKEv2. Try connecting to streaming services and seeing whether the VPN changes the available content.
  
  Background: Do some outside research into the VPN9s origins, especially its parent company, privacy policy and any past incidents. It9s a dealbreaker if you can9t figure out where the VPN is headquartered (which indicates a lax approach to transparency) or if it seems to have never passed a real third-party audit.
  
  Server network: Look at the server network to make sure the VPN has locations near you and in any countries where you9ll want an IP address — e.g. if you need a VPN to unblock Canadian Netflix, look for multiple server locations in Canada.
  
  Customer Service: I also advise testing the customer support options by looking for the answer to a straightforward question. If phone support (versus email and chat) is important to you, make sure to prioritize that — and make sure it9s available at convenient times in your timezone.
  
  Pricing: Finally, check prices. See if the VPN is affordable and decide whether you9re comfortable taking a long-term subscription for better savings. If you do get a multi-year plan, check what price it will renew at, since many of the cheapest subscriptions are only introductory deals.
  VPN FAQs
  To wrap up, let9s answer some of the most common questions we get about VPNs. Feel free to get in touch if you have a query I don9t cover here.
  What is a VPN?
  VPN stands for virtual private network. There are a few different types of VPNs, but for this list, we9re talking about commercial services that let individual users access the internet with an assumed identity.
  
  Whenever you get online, you9re assigned an IP address — a digital nametag that tells websites where to send the information you request. For an IP address to work, it needs to be unique, which means it9s possible to create a record of what an individual does online.
  
  When you use a VPN, all the data you send to the internet goes through one of the VPN9s servers before heading to its final destination. The VPN encrypts the connection between your computer and its server so the data won9t trace back to you. Any website, ISP or third party that cares to look will only see the VPN9s IP address, not yours. If you9re interested in more detail, I9ve written a whole article on how a VPN works.
  What are some things VPNs are used for?
  The three main use cases for a commercial VPN are security, privacy and entertainment. Using a VPN conceals your real IP address from anyone who might want to use it for nefarious purposes like cyberstalking, DDoS attacks or deducing your real location. It also keeps your ISP from profiling you for ads based on where you live or what you do online.
  
  One side effect of borrowing a VPN9s IP address is that you can make it appear as though your connection is coming from another country. You can use this to access streaming content and platforms that are only available in certain regions due to copyright. Changing your location can even get you better prices when shopping online.
  
  Location spoofing can also be used to get online in countries that censor internet access, like China and Russia, as well as certain US states or countries — like the UK — that are adding barriers like age-gating to previously unfettered online access. All you have to do is connect to a neighboring country (or locality) where the internet isn9t blocked. If you plan to do this while traveling, make sure you have the VPN downloaded before you go, as some nations prevent you from even loading a VPN9s homepage. Make sure you check with local laws regarding the legality of VPN use as well — just because your VPN traffic is encrypted doesn9t mean that authorities can9t detect that it9s being used in a given location.
  Are VPNs worth it?
  Whether a VPN is worth the price depends on how much you value those three use cases above. It9s no secret that your personal information is profitable for a lot of people, from illicit hackers to corporations to law enforcement. A VPN will not make you completely anonymous, nor is it a license to commit crimes (see the next question) but it will give you a lot more control over what you transmit to the world.
  
  With entertainment, the value is even clearer. You can use a VPN to fight back against streaming balkanization by getting more shows and movies out of a single platform — for example, a lot of shows that have been kicked off American Netflix are still on Netflix in other countries.
  What information does a VPN hide?
  A VPN does not make it impossible for you to be unmasked or taken advantage of online. It prevents you from passively leaking information, keeps your IP address undiscoverable on public wi-fi networks and gets you around online censorship.
  
  However, if you share personal information of your own volition, there9s nothing the VPN can do. If you reveal your password in a social media post or click a link in a phishing email, that information bypasses the VPN. Likewise, if you do anything sensitive while logged into an account, the account holder will have that information even if you9re using a VPN.
  
  A VPN is a critical part of your online security, but it can9t do the whole job by itself. Healthy passwords, malware scanners, private search engines and common sense all have roles to play. Never forget, too, that using a VPN means trusting the VPN provider with access to information that9s concealed from everyone else — make sure you trust the privacy policy before signing up.
  Are VPNs safe?
  As far as we can determine, all the VPNs recommended in this story are safe to use. As with anything you subscribe to online, due diligence is important, but there9s very little inherent risk; generally, the worst thing a bad VPN will do is fail to work, leaving you no worse off than before.
  
  All that said, there are some VPNs (usually offered for free) that transmit malware, and others that pretend to be independent services while all secretly working off the same backend. Always make sure to look up any complaints or warnings about a service before you download it.
  Can you get a VPN on your phone?
  Absolutely — almost every VPN has apps for both desktop and mobile devices. A good VPN will redesign its app to be mobile-friendly without dropping too many features. Both iOS and Android natively support VPN connections, so you9re free to choose whichever provider you like.
  What about Google9s One VPN?
  Google One VPN was, as you might expect, a VPN provided by Google. It was launched in 2020 for Google One subscribers and discontinued in 2024 due to lack of use. If you really want a Google VPN, you can still get one if you have certain Pixel models or if you9re a Google Fi subscriber.
  
  That said, I don9t recommend using a VPN from Google even if you do still have access to one. Google is one of the worst big tech companies at protecting user privacy. While its VPN might not leak, I wouldn9t trust it to guard your sensitive information.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/vpn/best-vpn-130004396.html?src=rss

• X is fully online after going down for most of the morning
  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 X’s developer platform page, there is an ongoing incident related to streaming endpoints that’s 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, X’s website loaded partially and only showed older posts. At other times, the app and website failed to load at all.
  
  As of 9:30AM PT, X’s Explore and trending pages were loading, but the “following” tab wasn’t showing posts and instead suggested users “find some people and topic to follow” (as shown in the screenshot below).
  Posts aren9t loading.X
  As of 11:15AM PT, X’s developer site was still indicating ongoing issues, so there may still be some lingering problems even though the website seems to be functioning normally again. Reports on Down Detector have also dropped off considerably.
  
  X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the outage. As TechCrunch notes, this is the second time this week that X has experienced significant issues. The service also went down for many users around the world on Tuesday.
  Bluesky changed its profile photo earlier in the week.X
  But while the latest issues were widespread, some posts are were still managing to go through. Rival Bluesky, which earlier in the week changed its profile picture on X to its butterfly logo in a bikini, took the opportunity to throw some shade.
  
  At 1PM PT, X updated its status page to indicate the issue had been resolved after nearly six hours. It didn’t elaborate on the underlying cause.
  
  Update, January 16, 2026, 2:09PM PT: Updated with the latest information from X’s status page.
  
  
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/x-is-fully-online-after-going-down-for-most-of-the-morning-171843711.html?src=rss

• Google is appealing the ruling from its search antitrust case to avoid sharing data with rivals
  Google has filed its appeal to the Department of Justice’s 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, it’s 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 Court’s August 2024 ruling ignored the reality that people use Google because they want to, not because they’re forced to,” Google said in a statement. “The decision failed to account for the rapid pace of innovation and intense competition we face from established players and well-funded start-ups. And it discounted compelling testimony from browser makers like Apple and Mozilla who said they choose to feature Google because it provides the highest quality search experience for their consumers.”
  
  The company says that the requirement that it “provide syndication services to rivals” and share search data is a privacy risk and could “discourage competitors from building their own products.” Both remedies where compromises based on what the Justice Department originally proposed, which included forcing Google to sell its Chrome web browser.
  
  After a 10-week trial held in 2023, Google was found to have a search monopoly in 2024 because of the placement it maintained as the default search engine on multiple platforms, and the control it exerted over the ads that appear in search results. Both arguments were key points in the DOJ’s original 2020 lawsuit.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-is-appealing-the-ruling-from-its-search-antitrust-case-to-avoid-sharing-data-with-rivals-215107905.html?src=rss

• CyberGhost VPN review: Despite its flaws, the value is hard to beat
  CyberGhost is the middle child of the Kape Technologies VPN portfolio, but in quality, it9s much closer to ExpressVPN than Private Internet Access. I mainly put it on my best VPN list because it9s so cheap, but I wouldn9t have done that if it didn9t earn its place in other ways — affordable crap is still crap, after all.
  
  My universal impression of CyberGhost is a VPN that9s not perfect but is always genuinely working to make itself better. It makes decisions based on what will help its users, not to set itself apart in a crowded market. This makes it similar to a lot of other VPNs, but that9s not a bad thing — especially at such a low price.
  
  Other than its price, the best things about CyberGhost are its intuitive app design, its frictionless user experience and the super-low latencies that make it an ideal pick for gamers. Download speeds are great up close but middling far away. While I love how many servers it9s got in Africa and South America, a few too many of them are virtual locations. I9ll get into all this and more in the review; feel free to read straight through or use the contents table to find the area that interests you most.
  
  Editor9s note (1/16/26): We9ve overhauled our VPN coverage to provide more detailed, actionable buying advice. Going forward, we9ll continue to update both our how a VPN works. The extension library pages for the CyberGhost proxies are vague about this, but they9re no substitute for a full VPN. They9re free and may be convenient for occasional streaming if they don9t get caught, but they aren9t secure.
  CyberGhost speed test
  I conducted all these tests on a wireless connection using the WireGuard protocol. For each, I selected either a physical server or a virtual location close to its physical source. Here9s what each metric means in the table below:
  
  Ping, measured in milliseconds (ms), is a measure of latency — how long it takes to send a signal from your device to its destination via the VPN server. Lower pings are better. Since signals can only move so quickly, latency tends to increase with distance.
  
  Download speed, measured in megabits per second (Mbps), is what you probably think of as "internet speed" — how fast websites load and how much video you can stream without any pause to load.
  
  Upload speed, also measured in Mbps, determines the rate at which data travels from your device to its destination. It9s useful for posting content, saving files to the cloud, torrenting and two-way video calls.
  
  Server location
  
  Ping (ms)
  
  Increase factor
  
  Download speed (Mbps)
  
  Percentage drop
  
  Upload speed (Mbps)
  
  Percentage drop
  
  Portland, USA (unprotected)
  
  16
  
  —
  
  58.70
  
  —
  
  5.80
  
  —
  
  Seattle, USA (fastest location)
  
  22
  
  1.4x
  
  55.88
  
  4.8
  
  5.60
  
  3.4
  
  New York, USA
  
  155
  
  9.7x
  
  45.43
  
  22.6
  
  5.43
  
  6.4
  
  Montevideo, Uruguay
  
  111
  
  6.9x
  
  46.25
  
  21.2
  
  5.55
  
  4.3
  
  Lisbon, Portugal
  
  328
  
  20.5x
  
  45.60
  
  22.3
  
  4.36
  
  24.8
  
  Johannesburg, South Africa
  
  632
  
  39.5x
  
  34.12
  
  41.9
  
  3.68
  
  36.6
  
  Vientiane, Laos
  
  350
  
  21.9x
  
  38.04
  
  35.2
  
  4.78
  
  17.6
  
  Average
  
  266
  
  16.6x
  
  44.22
  
  24.7
  
  4.90
  
  15.5
  
  CyberGhost9s speed test gave me mixed results — mostly good, but with some reasons for caution. To start on the positive side, latency results were excellent. No matter where I went in the world, the numbers only jumped above 400 milliseconds in one place, and that was the Johannesburg server that had problems across the board. CyberGhost9s 266 average is significantly better than I got when testing Surfshark, currently the fastest VPN overall.
  A speed test using the fastest location chosen by the CyberGhost app. Sam Chapman for Engadget
  Download and upload speeds looked good in my fastest location, Seattle. Using CyberGhost only slowed my browsing by 4.8 percent and dropped my upload rates by 3.4 percent, comparable to most of its leading competitors. At a distance, though, speeds started to falter. Things in New York remained reasonably fast, but with a lot of fluctuation between tests; unlike Seattle, numbers swung between the 30s and 50s.
  
  As I virtually traveled the world, I saw more and more swings, plus sharp declines in South Africa (which is always the problem child of VPN servers, for some reason). To put this in perspective, CyberGhost never dragged that much on my browsing speed, and the internet remained usable no matter where I went. It9s just slightly more sluggish than my favorite VPNs in every area — except latency, where it soars ahead.
  CyberGhost security test
  VPNs need to secure your internet activity against two things: intentional attacks and leaks due to negligence. A VPN should be watertight enough that it never lets your information slip by accident, while also defending your data against outside interference.
  
  It9s not hard to test whether a provider is meeting these two criteria. First, make sure it9s using safe VPN protocols with modern encryption. Second, use an IP address checker to test for DNS, WebRTC and IPv6 leaks. Third, test encryption itself to ensure it9s being applied equally to all data packets. Let9s get started.
  VPN protocols
  CyberGhost supports three different VPN protocols, all of them up-to-date and secure. OpenVPN, available on Windows, Android, Linux and Fire TV, is my typical recommendation, balanced and secured through a multi-decade history of refinement. WireGuard, supported on every platform, is the new hotshot on the block, fast and stable but not quite as rigorously tested as OpenVPN. IKEv2, which works on macOS, iOS and Windows, connects more quickly than the others but isn9t open-source.
  
  I have some quibbles about how available these protocols are. OpenVPN should always be an option for everybody; leaving it off Apple devices doesn9t make sense. I’ve asked CyberGhost about this and will update here when I get a reply. In the meantime, I can9t complain about the protocols themselves, which use uncracked encryption ciphers and present no obvious weak points.
  Leak test
  I used here if you9d like to follow along. It starts with the usual promise of "uncompromising protection": CyberGhost swears that "we are NOT storing connection logs, meaning that we DON9T have any logs tied to your IP address, connection timestamp or session duration" (all emphasis theirs).
  
  That9s the standard I9ll be checking against: a total lack of any way for CyberGhost to read or share information on its own users. Let9s see how it holds up.
  These may just be words, but they have legal force, at least in civil court. Sam Chapman for Engadget
  The privacy policy wins early points by clarifying all the data it collects. You can see the whole quote in the screenshot above, but to summarize, any PII (like your email or IP address) will never be connected with anything you do online. Since absolute anonymity is impossible, this is the best we can hope for from a VPN.
  
  Later on, the policy clarifies everything CyberGhost might do with personal data, none of which involves turning it over to authorities or selling it to advertisers. The most suspicious reasons given are "fraud detection/prevention" and "To enforce the terms of service," but these both relate to kicking users off CyberGhost itself, not tattling on them to the government.
  
  The only potential problem comes in the section titled "Sharing Your Personal Data." Here, CyberGhost states that "we may communicate your personal data to a member of our group of companies," meaning all subsidiaries of Kape Technologies. I won9t rehash the case against Kape in full — my ExpressVPN review covers it in detail.
  
  Suffice to say the only real risk here is that CyberGhost might share PII with another Kape company located in a region with worse privacy laws than Romania or the EU. To me, this isn9t a serious concern. First of all, Kape doesn9t own any companies based in truly anti-privacy nations like China, India or Russia.
  
  Moreover, the privacy policy states that CyberGhost won9t share information with any entity not "located in the EU or another jurisdiction offering equivalent data protection standards." Every bit of data gets the same protections. This may mean PII enters a country in the Five/Nine/14 Eyes alliance, but the Eyes only matter if a VPN is already logging data it shouldn9t have. It9s not that abuse of intelligence-sharing agreements isn9t a problem; it9s just that the risk it poses starts with the VPN itself, not where it9s located.
  
  To sum up, I didn9t see any red flags or loopholes in the CyberGhost privacy policy. Some clauses could be tightened up, and it always pays to be suspicious, but I9m confident that using this VPN doesn9t risk your personal privacy.
  Independent corroboration
  CyberGhost has been audited twice by Deloitte Romania, once in 2022 and again in 2024. Following that pattern, I9ll be looking out for another one this year. You need an account to read the full audit report, but it9s only 10 pages and easy to summarize: the auditors found nothing in CyberGhost9s systems that conflicted with its privacy policy.
  
  The audit notes CyberGhost9s server infrastructure as evidence. All servers are run on RAM with full-disk encryption, making any information they store completely ephemeral. Even if CyberGhost staff wanted to spy on you, they wouldn9t see anything. The same goes for third-party hackers.
  
  CyberGhost also posts a regular transparency report that lists how often law enforcement has asked it for information. As far as I could find, after hundreds of requests, there9s never been a case where CyberGhost provided any information to cops.
  Can CyberGhost change your virtual location?
  For this section, I used Netflix to test whether CyberGhost9s virtual location changes are detectable by other websites. Ideally, every time I change location with CyberGhost, Netflix would accept it as real and show me the content library from that country. If either of those things doesn9t happen within three tests, the VPN has a problem.
  
  Since CyberGhost has servers built for streaming, I used those for each of the five locations. You can see my results below.
  
  Server location
  
  Unblocked Netflix?
  
  Changed content?
  
  United Kingdom
  
  3/3
  
  3/3
  
  Japan
  
  3/3
  
  3/3
  
  Germany
  
  3/3
  
  3/3
  
  Australia
  
  3/3
  
  3/3
  
  Brazil
  
  3/3
  
  3/3
  
  This test was a smashing success for CyberGhost. Every time, it showed me the proper video library for the location I chose and never once got caught by Netflix9s firewalls. It9s the best result I9ve seen in this section since I tested Proton VPN, and that9s high praise if you know me.
  CyberGhost unblocks Netflix Japan, revealing exclusive titles. Sam Chapman for Engadget Investigating CyberGhost9s server network
  CyberGhost has 125 server locations in 100 countries. Of those locations, 75 are real and 50 are virtual, which makes the math easy: CyberGhost9s VPN server network is 60 percent bare-metal and 40 percent virtual. That9s good, since physical servers let you calculate how much performance will deteriorate over distance — virtual servers are just as safe, but speeds might fluctuate depending on where they really are.
  
  Region
  
  Countries with servers
  
  Total server locations
  
  Virtual server locations
  
  North America
  
  9
  
  21
  
  5
  
  South America
  
  9
  
  9
  
  9
  
  Europe
  
  45
  
  56
  
  13
  
  Africa
  
  6
  
  6
  
  3
  
  Middle East
  
  6
  
  6
  
  4
  
  Asia
  
  23
  
  23
  
  16
  
  Oceania
  
  2
  
  4
  
  0
  
  Total
  
  100
  
  125
  
  50
  
  Looking at the distribution of servers, we get good news and bad news. The good news is that there really are 100 different countries and territories to choose from, encompassing nearly all the virtual globetrotting you9re likely to need. There are also lots of servers in the southern hemisphere, which is often the last place VPNs grow into. There9s a wealth of choices in South America, plus several options in Africa and Central Asia.
  CyberGhost9s selection of VPN servers. Sam Chapman for Engadget
  The bad news is that the distribution of real servers is skewed toward Europe and the United States. None of the nine South American servers are actually located in South America; worse, a large number of them are physically located in Miami. If you9re using CyberGhost in Argentina, don9t expect top speeds from the Buenos Aires server, since it9s actually over 4,000 miles away. CyberGhost9s support center does include a list of where the virtual servers are relayed through, but it9s not up to date.
  Extra features of CyberGhost
  CyberGhost has a few features beyond the VPN itself, though not as many as you might think. Compared to a provider like NordVPN, which goes all in on extra features, CyberGhost9s offerings look pretty lean. But that doesn9t matter as much if the features work well. Let9s see how they do.
  Kill switch
  CyberGhost takes an unusual approach to its kill switch. In case you aren9t familiar with the term, a kill switch cuts off your internet connection if your link to the VPN ever drops, protecting your anonymity in case of unexpected incidents. Most VPNs let you toggle the kill switch on and off, but on CyberGhost, it9s fully engaged 100 percent of the time — except on Windows, where you can turn it on and off as desired.
  
  Turning on the kill switch is almost always a good idea, but it9s still annoying that Cyberghost gives many of its users no way to turn it off. In rare cases, kill switches can get overzealous, preventing you from getting online even when conditions are safe. It9s an odd choice to remove a potential troubleshooting step from the user9s control.
  Split tunneling
  Split tunneling lets you name some apps or websites that will run unprotected even while the VPN is active. This can help with certain services that refuse to work if they detect a VPN, or alternatively, can protect only one sensitive app or site while the others enjoy faster unprotected speeds.
  
  CyberGhost only has full split tunneling on Android. It also offers a slightly different feature called Exceptions on Windows. Android split tunneling works by app, while Exceptions works by URL. In both cases, you choose individual apps or websites to leave out of the VPN. It9s limited, but works as advertised.
  Optimized servers
  As I mentioned in the Netflix testing section, CyberGhost includes specialized servers designed for specific tasks. Other than the add-on dedicated IP servers, these come in four forms: "For gaming," "For torrenting," "For streaming" and "NoSpy." Gaming servers are apparently built to keep latency low, but I couldn9t see much difference between them and the normal servers.
  
  "For torrenting" is called "For downloading" on Mac, but it9s all the same torrent-optimized servers. These are built to meet the download and upload speed requirements for effectively using P2P filesharing clients. CyberGhost has P2P servers in 86 countries, which makes it a good VPN for torrenting; only the lack of port forwarding keeps it from being truly great.
  A few of CyberGhost9s specialty servers on a MacBook. Sam Chapman for Engadget
  Each streaming server is built to unblock a specific streaming site in a particular country, occasionally for a single type of device. For example, United States streaming servers are aimed at Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime Video and more, many in their Android or Smart TV forms. UK servers work for Netflix UK, BBC iPlayer, ITV and more. In total, there are 106 streaming servers in 22 countries — not quite as extensive as the overall list, but it9s important to remember that non-optimized servers still work fine for streaming.
  
  Finally, the NoSpy options connect to a set of servers in Romania that CyberGhost claims to manage entirely in-house, with nobody able to access them except CyberGhost9s own team. This is good, but it leaves me suspicious about who9s running the rest of the servers. Are they all run by third parties except the NoSpy locations? That9s relatively common, but it creates vulnerabilities if the VPN provider doesn9t insist on high standards from collaborators.
  Content blocker
  CyberGhost9s content blocker is underwhelming. All you can do is turn it on and off. There9s no customization like you get with Windscribe9s R.O.B.E.R.T. and no clear statement of where it9s getting its list of domains to block. In practice, it does block in-page ads, but without specifics I couldn9t test it in more detail.
  There9s no customization on CyberGhost9s blocker -- just turn it on or off. Sam Chapman for Engadget Smart Rules
  The Smart Rules automation suite is the crown jewel of CyberGhost9s features and the most common reason I recommend it. Using Smart Rules, you can automate CyberGhost9s behavior to a degree inconceivable on most other VPNs.
  You can program CyberGhost to take different actions on each of your usual networks. Sam Chapman for Engadget
  Smart Rules come in two forms: actions performed automatically when CyberGhost launches or connects and actions that respond to new Wi-Fi networks. In the former category, you can set CyberGhost to connect when you open the app, determine which location it connects to and even set an app to automatically open after it connects.
  
  Wi-Fi rules depend on whether the network CyberGhost detects is secured or not. For each type of network, you can set the VPN to connect, disconnect, ask you what to do or ignore it entirely. Once it recognizes a Wi-Fi network, you can set specific rules for that network. It9s at once very easy to use and capable of surprising depth.
  CyberGhost customer support options
  CyberGhost primarily offers customer assistance through its online portal, which can be reached at a Zendesk portal. This gives you all the time you need to frame your question and add supporting materials, at the cost of waiting longer for a reply.
  
  Your other option is to access live chat, which you can do from anywhere on Private Internet Access, plus two websites that review VPNs) is bad enough without having to look for additional conspiracies. It9s up to you to decide whether or not CyberGhost9s parent company presents a hard line you won9t cross.
  Final verdict
  At the end of my journey with CyberGhost, I may not be blown away, but I9m definitely pleased. After my poor experience with PIA, I was afraid the only budget VPN I could wholeheartedly recommend was a two-year subscription to Surfshark. CyberGhost is a meat-and-potatoes VPN — it9s not pushing any envelopes, but it9s cheap and it does the job.
  
  All that said, I recommend it more to casual users than to people who really need secrecy. There are just enough reddish flags that I wouldn9t necessarily trust it with life-and-death information: the (possible) use of third-party managers for all servers outside Romania, the freedom to share information with any Kape subsidiary, the loss of encryption when switching servers. It9ll keep you anonymous and let you stream foreign TV for cheap, but you should still choose Proton VPN if you need serious privacy.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/vpn/cyberghost-vpn-review-despite-its-flaws-the-value-is-hard-to-beat-200000250.html?src=rss

• Anthropic opens up its Claude Cowork feature to anyone with a $20 subscription
  Claude Cowork, Anthropic9s 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 Claude9s 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 users do.
  
  Like other AI agents, the novelty of Claude Cowork is its ability to work on its own. If you have the macOS Claude app and a Pro subscription, you can prompt Claude Cowork to work on tasks on your local computer, like creating documents based on files you have saved or organizing your folders. The feature is an evolution of Claude Code, Anthropic9s AI coding agent, and can similarly use connectors and the Claude Chrome plugin to work with other apps and the web.
  
  As part of this expanded rollout, Anthropic has included a few fixes inspired by early user feedback. You9ll now be able to rename sessions with Claude Cowork ("Tasks" in the parlance of the Claude app) and the company says the AI assistant will offer better file format previews, more reliable use of connectors to other apps and confirmation messages before it deletes files.
  
  Coding agents top the list of applications of AI that have gained real traction in the last year, so Anthropic applying what it learned with Claude Code to a more general collection of computer tasks makes sense. Claude Cowork is still limited to macOS and Anthropic9s paid subscribers, but assuming the AI agent continues to be popular, it wouldn9t be surprising if the company brought it to other platforms.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/anthropic-opens-up-its-claude-cowork-feature-to-anyone-with-a-20-subscription-194000021.html?src=rss

• Anthropic launches Claude Cowork, a version of its coding AI for regular people
  If you follow Anthropic, you9re 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 billing Cowork as "a simpler way for anyone — not just developers — to work with Claude." After you give the system access to a folder on your computer, it can read, edit or create new files in that folder on your behalf.
  
  Anthropic gives a few different example use cases for Cowork. For instance, you could ask Claude to organize your downloads folder, telling it to rename the files contained within to something that9s easier to parse at a glance. Another example: you could use Claude to turn screenshots of receipts and invoices into a spreadsheet for tracking expenses. Cowork can also navigate websites — provided you install Claude’s Chrome plugin — and make can use Anthropic9s Connectors framework to access third-party apps like Canva.
  
  "Cowork is designed to make using Claude for new work as simple as possible. You don’t need to keep manually providing context or converting Claude’s outputs into the right format," the company said. "Nor do you have to wait for Claude to finish before offering further ideas or feedback: you can queue up tasks and let Claude work through them in parallel."         
  
  If the idea of granting Claude access to your computer sounds ill-advised, Anthropic says Claude "can’t read or edit anything you don’t give it explicit access to." However, the company does note the system can "take potentially destructive actions," such as deleting a file that is important to you or misinterpreting your instructions. For that reason, Anthropic suggests it9s best to give "very clear" guidance to Claude.   
  
  Anthropic isn’t the first to offer a computer agent. Microsoft, for example, has been pushing Copilot hard for nearly three years, despite seemingly limited adoption. For Anthropic, the challenge will be convincing people these tools are useful where others have failed. The fact Claude Code has been universally loved by programmers may make that task easier.
  
  Anthropic briefly made Cowork preview only available to users of its pricey Claude Max subscription. That changed on Friday when the company expanded access to include customers of its $20 per month Pro plan. If you want to try Cowork for yourself, you9ll need a Mac with the Claude macOS app installed.
  
  Update 01/16/26 2:30PM ET: Updated to reflect Claude Cowork is now also available to Claude Pro customers.
  
  
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/anthropic-launches-claude-cowork-a-version-of-its-coding-ai-for-regular-people-193000849.html?src=rss

• OpenAI is bringing ads to ChatGPT
  OpenAI plans to start testing ads inside of ChatGPT "in the coming weeks." In a blog post published Friday, the company said adult users in the US of its free and Go tiers (more on the latter in a moment) would start seeing sponsored products and services appear below their conversations with its chatbot. "Ads will be clearly labeled and separated from the organic answer," OpenAI said, adding any sponsored spots would not influence the answers ChatGPT generates. "Answers are optimized based on what9s most helpful to you." 
  
  OpenAI says people won9t see ads appear when they9re talking to ChatGPT about sensitive subjects like their health, mental state of mind or current politics. The company also won9t show ads to teens under the age of 18. As for privacy, OpenAI states it won9t share or sell your data with advertisers. The company will also give users the option to disable ad personalization and clear the data it uses to generate sponsored responses. "We’ll always offer a way to not see ads in ChatGPT, including a paid tier that’s ad-free," OpenAI adds. Users can dismiss ads, at which point they9ll be asked to explain why they didn9t engage with it.   
  Users will be able to ask follow-up questions about sponsored content. OpenAI
  "Given what AI can do, we9re excited to develop new experiences over time that people find more helpful and relevant than any other ads. Conversational interfaces create possibilities for people to go beyond static messages and links," OpenAI said. However, the company was also quick to note its "long-term focus remains on building products that millions of people and businesses find valuable enough to pay for."
  
  To that point, OpenAI said it would also make its ChatGPT Go subscription available to users in the US. The company first launched the tier in India last August, marketing it as a low-cost alternative to its more expensive Plus and Pro offerings. In the US, Go will cost $8 per month — or $12 less than the monthly price of the Plus plan — and offer 10 times higher rate limits for messages, file uploads and image creation than the free tier. The subscription also extends ChatGPT9s memory and context window, meaning the chatbot will be better at remembering details from past conversations. That said, you9ll see ads at this tier. To go ad-free, you9ll need to subscribe to one of OpenAI9s more expensive plans. For consumers, that means either the Plus or Pro plans.       
  
  According to reports, OpenAI had been testing ads inside of ChatGPT since at least the end of last year. As companies continue to pay a high cost for model training and inference, all chatbots are likely to feature ads in some form.
  
  
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-is-bringing-ads-to-chatgpt-192831449.html?src=rss

• The mother of one of Elon Musk's children is suing xAI over nonconsensual deepfake images
  Although X removed Grok’s 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 Musk’s 14 children, has sued xAI for nonconsensual sexualized images of her that Grok allegedly produced.
  
  In the court filing, St. Clair accused xAI’s Grok chatbot of creating and disseminating deepfakes of her “as a child stripped down to a string bikini, and as an adult in sexually explicit poses, covered in semen, or wearing only bikini floss.” In some cases, the chatbot allegedly produced bikini-clad deepfakes of St. Clair based on a photo of her as a 14-year-old. “People took pictures of me as a child and undressed me. There’s one where they undressed me and bent me over, and in the background is my child’s backpack that he’s wearing right now,” she said.
  
  “I am also seeing images where they add bruises to women, beat them up, tie them up, mutilated,” St. Clair told an open letter from 28 advocacy groups — neither company has removed the X or Grok apps from their app stores. Both the App Store and Play Store have policies that explicitly prohibit apps that generate such content.
  
  Neither Apple nor Google has responded to multiple requests for comment from Engadget. That includes a follow-up email sent on Friday, regarding the Grok app continuing to “nudify” photos of real women and other people.
  
  While Apple and Google fail to act, many governments have done the opposite. On Monday, Malaysia and Indonesia banned Grok. The same day, UK regulator Ofcom opened a formal investigation into X. California opened one on Wednesday. The US Senate even passed the Defiance Act for a second time in the wake of the blowback.
  
  “If you are a woman, you can’t post a picture, and you can’t speak, or you risk this abuse,” St. Clair told The Guardian. “It’s dangerous, and I believe this is by design. You are supposed to feed AI humanity and thoughts, and when you are doing things that particularly impact women, and they don’t want to participate in it because they are being targeted, it means the AI is inherently going to be biased.”
  
  Speaking about Musk and his team, she added that “these people believe they are above the law, because they are. They don’t think they are going to get in trouble, they think they have no consequences.”
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/the-mother-of-one-of-elon-musks-children-is-suing-xai-over-nonconsensual-deepfake-images-191451979.html?src=rss

• Lego's latest educational kit seeks to teach AI as part of computer science, not to build a chatbot
  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 Lego’s creative values. But Andrew Silwinski, Lego Education’s head of product experience, was quick to defend Lego’s approach, noting that being fluent in the tools behind AI is not about generating sloppy images or music and more about expanding what it means by teaching computer science.
  
  “I think most people should probably know that we started working on this before ChatGPT [got big],” Silwinski told Engadget earlier this week. “Some of the ideas that underline AI are really powerful foundational ideas, regardless of the current frontier model that9s out this week. Helping children understand probability and statistics, data quality, algorithmic bias, sensors, machine perception. These are really foundational core ideas that go back to the 1970s.” 
  
  To that end, Lego Education designed courses for grades K-2, 3-5 and 6-8 that incorporate Lego bricks, additional hardware and lessons tailored to introducing the fundamentals of AI as an extension of existing computer science education. The kits are designed for four students to work together, with teacher oversight. Much of this all comes from learnings Lego found in a study it commissioned showing that teachers often find they don’t have the right resources to teach these subjects. The study showed that half of teachers globally say “current resources leave students bored” while nearly half say “computer science isn’t relatable and doesn’t connect to students’ interests or day to day.” Given kids’ familiarity with Lego and the multiple decades of experience Lego Education has in putting courses like this together, it seems like a logical step to push in this direction. 
  
  In Lego’s materials about the new courses, AI is far from the only subject covered. Coding, looping code, triggering events and sequences, if/then conditionals and more are all on display through the combination of Lego-built models and other hardware to motorize it. It feels more like a computer science course that also introduces concepts of AI rather than something with an end goal of having kids build a chatbot.
  
  In fact, Lego set up a number of “red lines” in terms of how it would introduce AI. “No data can ever go across the internet to us or any other third party,” Silwinski said. “And that9s a really hard bar if you know anything about AI.” So instead of going to the cloud, everything had to be able to do local inference on, as Silwinski said, “the 10-year-old Chromebooks you’ll see in classrooms.” He added that “kids can train their own machine learning models, and all of that is happening locally in the classroom, and none of that data ever leaves the student9s device.”
  
  Lego also says that its lessons never anthropomorphize AI, one of the things that is so common in consumer-facing AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and many more. “One of the things we9re seeing a lot of with generative AI tools is children have a tendency to see them as somehow human or almost magical. A lot of it9s because of the conversational interface, it abstracts all the mechanics away from the child.” 
  
  Lego also recognized that it had to build a course that’ll work regardless of a teacher’s fluency in such subjects. So a big part of developing the course was making sure that teachers had the tools they needed to be on top of whatever lessons they’re working on. “When we design and we test the products, we9re not the ones testing in the classroom,” Silwinski said. “We give it to a teacher and we provide all of the lesson materials, all of the training, all of the notes, all the presentation materials, everything that they need to be able to teach the lesson.” Lego also took into account the fact that some schools might introduce its students to these things starting in Kindergarten, whereas others might skip to the grade 3-5 or 6-8 sets. To alleviate any bumps in the courses for students or teachers, Lego Education works with school districts and individual schools to make sure there’s an on-ramp for those starting from different places in their fluency.
  
  While the idea of “teaching AI” seemed out of character for Lego initially, the approach it’s taking here actually reminds me a bit of Smart Play. With Smart Play, the technology is essentially invisible — kids can just open up a set, start building, and get all the benefits of the new system without having to hook up to an app or a screen. In the same vein, Silwinski said that a lot of the work you can do with the Computer Science and AI kit doesn’t need a screen, particularly the lessons designed for younger kids. And the sets themselves have a mode that acts similar to a mesh, where you connect numerous motors and sensors together to build “incredibly complex interactions and behaviors” without even needing a computer.
  
  For educators interested in checking out this latest course, Lego has single kits up for pre-order starting at $339.95; they’ll start shipping in April. That’s the pricing for the K-2 sets, the 3-5 and 6-8 sets are $429.95 and $529.95, respectively. A single kit covers four students. Lego is also selling bundles with six kits, and school districts can also request a quote for bigger orders. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/legos-latest-educational-kit-seeks-to-teach-ai-as-part-of-computer-science-not-to-build-a-chatbot-184636741.html?src=rss

• Canada cuts tariffs on Chinese EVs as part of new deal
  Canada has agreed to drastically reduce its tariffs on imported Chinese EVs from 100 percent to 6.1 percent as part of a
  
  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
  
  last year.
  
  Under the agreement, which Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney
  
  "preliminary," Canada will allow up to 49,000 Chinese EVs into the country, with that number rising to 70,000 after five years. Until now the three major North American trading partners had been aligned in trying to protect their domestic electric vehicle manufacturing. Chinese EV companies benefit from
  
  , and as such can often be priced at a far better value than domestic alternatives.
  
  “Our relationship has progressed in recent months with China. It is more predictable and you see results coming from that,” Carney
  
  . A warmer relationship may be forming in response to the Trump administration9s
  
  , with China hoping that alienated nations may
  
  with the Eastern power.
  
  As to concerns that cheaper electric vehicles from China could hurt the Canadian auto market, the prime minister was unconcerned, saying "it’s still in low, single-digit proportion of the size of the Canadian auto sector," Carney added, “Canadians buy about 1.8 million autos a year.” China remains Canada’s second-largest trading partner after the United States.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/canada-cuts-tariffs-on-chinese-evs-as-part-of-new-deal-174241990.html?src=rss

• The latest Legend of Zelda Lego set pays tribute to Ocarina of Time's final battle
  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 the forest, the upcoming set is aimed squarely at fans of the series’ debut 3D outing. As you can probably guess from the name, it’s a brick-built tribute to Link and Princess Zelda’s climactic battle with Ganondorf in the seminal Nintendo 64 game, in what remains of the castle. Inside the rubble are three recovery hearts.
  
  It’s hard to see how this works without a video, but Lego says you can release Link’s nemesis by pressing a button that raises him from the debris. As well as the minifigures for Zelda and Link — complete with his Master Sword and Hylian Shield — you also get a suitably transparent Navi to display. And then there’s the large poseable Ganon (the pig demon version of Ganondorf), which is probably the highlight of the whole set.
  
  Interestingly, the new Ocarina of Time set is the first high-profile Lego announcement since unveiling its new Smart Brick at CES, but it looks like we’ll be playing with regular dumb Lego only here. You’ll just have to do the final Hyrule-saving "Hyah!" yourself, I guess.
  
  Lego The Legend of Zelda : Ocarina of Time - The Final Battle is available to pre-order from today and will be available from March 1, priced at $130.
  
  
  
  
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/the-latest-legend-of-zelda-lego-set-pays-tribute-to-ocarina-of-times-final-battle-172212137.html?src=rss

• TikTok sued by former workers over alleged union-busting
  You know things are messed up when a Big Tech company fights accusations of union-busting by insisting it was only AI layoffs. That9s 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 they wanted better protection against the personal toll of processing traumatic content at a high speed. They accused TikTok of unfair dismissal and violating UK trade union laws.
  
  "Content moderators have the most dangerous job on the internet," John Chadfield, the national officer for tech workers at the Communication Workers Union (CWU), said in a statement to The Guardian. "They are exposed to the child sex abuse material, executions, war and drug use. Their job is to make sure this content doesn9t reach TikTok9s 30 million monthly users. It is high pressure and low paid. They wanted input into their workflows and more say over how they kept the platform safe. They said they were being asked to do too much with too few resources."
  
  TikTok denied that the firings were union-busting, calling the accusations "baseless." Instead, the company claimed the layoffs were part of a restructuring plan amid its adoption of AI for content moderation. The company said 91 percent of transgressive content is now removed automatically.
  
  The company first announced a restructuring exercise in August, just as hundreds of moderators in TikTok9s London offices were organizing for union recognition. At the time, John Chadfield, CWU9s National Officer for Tech, said the workers had long been "sounding the alarm over the real-world costs of cutting human moderation teams in favour of hastily developed, immature AI alternatives."
  
  "That TikTok management have announced these cuts just as the company9s workers are about to vote on having their union recognised stinks of union-busting and putting corporate greed over the safety of workers and the public,” Chadfield said.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/tiktok-sued-by-former-workers-over-alleged-union-busting-170446921.html?src=rss

• How to claim Verizon's $20 credit for Wednesday's service outage
  Verizon is offering a very small mea culpa after Wednesday9s massive outage, which drew more than 1.5 million reports on Downdetector and lasted hours. Initially, the carrier posted on X that it will offer a $20 credit, but customers must redeem it in the myVerizon app. The company then said the credit could be claimed though customer service (via phone or chat), but our editors’ attempts to do so via chat were met with a message to wait for a text with further instructions.
  
  Engadget editors began receiving the texts this morning (Jan 16) with a link to redeem. From there, you need to log into your account and visit the Account Overview section. Up top, there should be a Take Action or Mobile Actions button with a red notification circle. Click that and you’ll see a pop-up about the credit and a Redeem Now button. After you click that, you’re done, and Verizon says you should see the credit in one or two billing cycles. Of course, you’ll want to keep an eye out that it actually happens and contact the company if it doesn’t show up.
  
  "This credit isn’t meant to make up for what happened. No credit really can," the company wrote. "But it’s a way of acknowledging your time and showing that this matters to us." Incensed customers have largely replied with incredulity, both at the miniscule amount, and that it isn9t being applied automatically. The entire redemption process takes a few clicks and about a minute to complete, which makes it even more frustrating that it can’t be automatically applied to every customer’s bill.
  
  Update, January 15 2026, 11:57 PM ET: Verizon says the credit can be claimed through customer service via phone, chat and online in addition to the myVerizon app. 
  
  Update, January 16 2026, 10:29 AM ET: This story has been updated with detailed info about the redemption process which Verizon now says is completed with a link that will be texted to customers.
  This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/how-to-claim-verizons-20-credit-for-wednesdays-service-outage-171909695.html?src=rss

• EU OS: A Bold Step Toward Digital Sovereignty for Europe
  Image
  A new initiative, called "EU OS," has been launched to develop a Linux-based operating system tailored specifically for the public sector organizations of the European Union (EU). This community-driven project aims to address the EU's unique needs and challenges, focusing on fostering digital sovereignty, reducing dependency on external vendors, and building a secure, self-sufficient digital ecosystem.
  What Is EU OS?
  EU OS is not an entirely novel operating system. Instead, it builds upon a Linux foundation derived from Fedora, with the KDE Plasma desktop environment. It draws inspiration from previous efforts such as France's GendBuntu and Munich's LiMux, which aimed to provide Linux-based systems for public sector use. The goal remains the same: to create a standardized Linux distribution that can be adapted to different regional, national, and sector-specific needs within the EU.
  
  Rather than reinventing the wheel, EU OS focuses on standardization, offering a solid Linux foundation that can be customized according to the unique requirements of various organizations. This approach makes EU OS a practical choice for the public sector, ensuring broad compatibility and ease of implementation across diverse environments.
  The Vision Behind EU OS
  The guiding principle of EU OS is the concept of "public money – public code," ensuring that taxpayer money is used transparently and effectively. By adopting an open-source model, EU OS eliminates licensing fees, which not only lowers costs but also reduces the dependency on a select group of software vendors. This provides the EU’s public sector organizations with greater flexibility and control over their IT infrastructure, free from the constraints of vendor lock-in.
  
  Additionally, EU OS offers flexibility in terms of software migration and hardware upgrades. Organizations can adapt to new technologies and manage their IT evolution at a manageable cost, both in terms of finances and time.
  
  However, there are some concerns about the choice of Fedora as the base for EU OS. While Fedora is a solid and reliable distribution, it is backed by the United States-based Red Hat. Some argue that using European-backed projects such as openSUSE or KDE's upcoming distribution might have aligned better with the EU's goal of strengthening digital sovereignty.
  Conclusion
  EU OS marks a significant step towards Europe's digital independence by providing a robust, standardized Linux distribution for the public sector. By reducing reliance on proprietary software and vendors, it paves the way for a more flexible, cost-effective, and secure digital ecosystem. While the choice of Fedora as the base for the project has raised some questions, the overall vision of EU OS offers a promising future for Europe's public sector in the digital age.
  
  Source: It's FOSS
  European Union

• Linus Torvalds Acknowledges Missed Release of Linux 6.14 Due to Oversight
  
  Linus Torvalds Acknowledges Missed Release of Linux 6.14 Due to Oversight
  
  Linux kernel lead developer Linus Torvalds has admitted to forgetting to release version 6.14, attributing the oversight to his own lapse in memory. Torvalds is known for releasing new Linux kernel candidates and final versions on Sunday afternoons, typically accompanied by a post detailing the release. If he is unavailable due to travel or other commitments, he usually informs the community ahead of time, so users don’t worry if there’s a delay.
  
  In his post on March 16, Torvalds gave no indication that the release might be delayed, instead stating, “I expect to release the final 6.14 next weekend unless something very surprising happens.” However, Sunday, March 23rd passed without any announcement.
  
  On March 24th, Torvalds wrote in a follow-up message, “I’d love to have some good excuse for why I didn’t do the 6.14 release yesterday on my regular Sunday afternoon schedule,” adding, “But no. It’s just pure incompetence.” He further explained that while he had been clearing up unrelated tasks, he simply forgot to finalize the release. “D'oh,” he joked.
  
  Despite this minor delay, Torvalds’ track record of successfully managing the Linux kernel’s development process over the years remains strong. A single day’s delay is not critical, especially since most Linux users don't urgently need the very latest version.
  
  The new 6.14 release introduces several important features, including enhanced support for writing drivers in Rust—an ongoing topic of discussion among developers—support for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile chip, a fix for the GhostWrite vulnerability in certain RISC-V processors from Alibaba’s T-Head Semiconductor, and a completed NTSYNC driver update that improves the WINE emulator’s ability to run Windows applications, particularly games, on Linux.
  
  Although the 6.14 release went smoothly aside from the delay, Torvalds expressed that version 6.15 may present more challenges due to the volume of pending pull requests. “Judging by my pending pile of pull requests, 6.15 will be much busier,” he noted.
  
  You can download the latest kernel here.
  Linus Torvalds kernel

• AerynOS 2025.03 Alpha Released with GNOME 48, Mesa 25, and Linux Kernel 6.13.8
  Image
  AerynOS 2025.03 has officially been released, introducing a variety of exciting features for Linux users. The release includes the highly anticipated GNOME 48 desktop environment, which comes with significant improvements like HDR support, dynamic triple buffering, and a Wayland color management protocol. Other updates include a battery charge limiting feature and a Wellbeing option aimed at improving user experience.
  
  This release, while still in alpha, incorporates Linux kernel 6.13.8 and the updated Mesa 25.0.2 graphics stack, alongside tools like LLVM 19.1.7 and Vulkan SDK 1.4.309.0. Additionally, the Moss package manager now integrates os-info to generate more detailed OS metadata via a JSON file.
  
  Future plans for AerynOS include automated package updates, easier rollback management, improved disk handling with Rust, and fractional scaling enabled by default. The installer has also been revamped to support full disk wipes and dynamic partitioning.
  
  Although still considered an alpha release, AerynOS 2025.03 can be downloaded and tested right now from its official website.
  
  Source: 9to5Linux
  AerynOS

• Xojo 2025r1: Big Updates for Developers with Linux ARM Support, Web Drag and Drop, and Direct App Store Publishing
  Image
  Xojo has just rolled out its latest release, Xojo 2025 Release 1, and it’s packed with features that developers have been eagerly waiting for. This major update introduces support for running Xojo on Linux ARM, including Raspberry Pi, brings drag-and-drop functionality to the Web framework, and simplifies app deployment with the ability to directly submit apps to the macOS and iOS App Stores.
  
  Here’s a quick overview of what’s new in Xojo 2025r1:
  1. Linux ARM IDE Support
  Xojo 2025r1 now allows developers to run the Xojo IDE on Linux ARM devices, including popular platforms like Raspberry Pi. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities for developers who want to create apps for ARM-based devices without the usual complexity. Whether you’re building for a Raspberry Pi or other ARM devices, this update makes it easier than ever to get started.
  2. Web Drag and Drop
  One of the standout features in this release is the addition of drag-and-drop support for web applications. Now, developers can easily drag and drop visual controls in their web projects, making it simpler to create interactive, user-friendly web applications. Plus, the WebListBox has been enhanced with support for editable cells, checkboxes, and row reordering via dragging. No JavaScript required!
  3. Direct App Store Publishing
  Xojo has also streamlined the process of publishing apps. With this update, developers can now directly submit macOS and iOS apps to App Store Connect right from the Xojo IDE. This eliminates the need for multiple steps and makes it much easier to get apps into the App Store, saving valuable time during the development process.
  4. New Desktop and Mobile Features
  This release isn’t just about web and Linux updates. Xojo 2025r1 brings some great improvements for desktop and mobile apps as well. On the desktop side, all projects now include a default window menu for macOS apps. On the mobile side, Xojo has introduced new features for Android and iOS, including support for ColorGroup and Dark Mode on Android, and a new MobileColorPicker for iOS to simplify color selection.
  5. Performance and IDE Enhancements
  Xojo’s IDE has also been improved in several key areas. There’s now an option to hide toolbar captions, and the toolbar has been made smaller on Windows. The IDE on Windows and Linux now features modern Bootstrap icons, and the Documentation window toolbar is more compact. In the code editor, developers can now quickly navigate to variable declarations with a simple Cmd/Ctrl + Double-click. Plus, performance for complex container layouts in the Layout Editor has been enhanced.
  What Does This Mean for Developers?
  Xojo 2025r1 brings significant improvements across all the platforms that Xojo supports, from desktop and mobile to web and Linux. The added Linux ARM support opens up new opportunities for Raspberry Pi and ARM-based device development, while the drag-and-drop functionality for web projects will make it easier to create modern, interactive web apps. The ability to publish directly to the App Store is a game-changer for macOS and iOS developers, reducing the friction of app distribution.
  How to Get Started
  Xojo is free for learning and development, as well as for building apps for Linux and Raspberry Pi. If you’re ready to dive into cross-platform development, paid licenses start at $99 for a single-platform desktop license, and $399 for cross-platform desktop, mobile, or web development. For professional developers who need additional resources and support, Xojo Pro and Pro Plus licenses start at $799. You can also find special pricing for educators and students.
  
  Download Xojo 2025r1 today at xojo.com.
  Final Thoughts
  With each new release, Xojo continues to make cross-platform development more accessible and efficient. The 2025r1 release is no exception, delivering key updates that simplify the development process and open up new possibilities for developers working on a variety of platforms. Whether you’re a Raspberry Pi enthusiast or a mobile app developer, Xojo 2025r1 has something for you.
  Xojo ARM

• New 'Mirrored' Network Mode Introduced in Windows Subsystem for Linux
  
  Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) continues to evolve with the release of WSL 2 version 0.0.2. This update introduces a set of opt-in preview features designed to enhance performance and compatibility.
  
  Key additions include "Automatic memory reclaim" which dynamically optimizes WSL's memory footprint, and "Sparse VHD" to shrink the size of the virtual hard disk file. These improvements aim to streamline resource usage.
  
  Additionally, a new "mirrored networking mode" brings expanded networking capabilities like IPv6 and multicast support. Microsoft claims this will improve VPN and LAN connectivity from both the Windows host and Linux guest. 
  
  Complementing this is a new "DNS Tunneling" feature that changes how DNS queries are resolved to avoid compatibility issues with certain network setups. According to Microsoft, this should reduce problems connecting to the internet or local network resources within WSL.
  
  Advanced firewall configuration options are also now available through Hyper-V integration. The new "autoProxy" feature ensures WSL seamlessly utilizes the Windows system proxy configuration.
  
  Microsoft states these features are currently rolling out to Windows Insiders running Windows 11 22H2 Build 22621.2359 or later. They remain opt-in previews to allow testing before final integration into WSL.
  
  By expanding WSL 2 with compelling new capabilities in areas like resource efficiency, networking, and security, Microsoft aims to make Linux on Windows more performant and compatible. This evolutionary approach based on user feedback highlights Microsoft's commitment to WSL as a key part of the Windows ecosystem.
  Windows

• Linux Threat Report: Earth Lusca Deploys Novel SprySOCKS Backdoor in Attacks on Government Entities
  
  The threat actor Earth Lusca, linked to Chinese state-sponsored hacking groups, has been observed utilizing a new Linux backdoor dubbed SprySOCKS to target government organizations globally. 
  
  As initially reported in January 2022 by Trend Micro, Earth Lusca has been active since at least 2021 conducting cyber espionage campaigns against public and private sector targets in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. Their tactics include spear-phishing and watering hole attacks to gain initial access. Some of Earth Lusca's activities overlap with another Chinese threat cluster known as RedHotel.
  
  In new research, Trend Micro reveals Earth Lusca remains highly active, even expanding operations in the first half of 2023. Primary victims are government departments focused on foreign affairs, technology, and telecommunications. Attacks concentrate in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and the Balkans regions. 
  
  After breaching internet-facing systems by exploiting flaws in Fortinet, GitLab, Microsoft Exchange, Telerik UI, and Zimbra software, Earth Lusca uses web shells and Cobalt Strike to move laterally. Their goal is exfiltrating documents and credentials, while also installing additional backdoors like ShadowPad and Winnti for long-term spying.
  
  The Command and Control server delivering Cobalt Strike was also found hosting SprySOCKS - an advanced backdoor not previously publicly reported. With roots in the Windows malware Trochilus, SprySOCKS contains reconnaissance, remote shell, proxy, and file operation capabilities. It communicates over TCP mimicking patterns used by a Windows trojan called RedLeaves, itself built on Trochilus.
  
  At least two SprySOCKS versions have been identified, indicating ongoing development. This novel Linux backdoor deployed by Earth Lusca highlights the increasing sophistication of Chinese state-sponsored threats. Robust patching, access controls, monitoring for unusual activities, and other proactive defenses remain essential to counter this advanced malware.
  
  The Trend Micro researchers emphasize that organizations must minimize attack surfaces, regularly update systems, and ensure robust security hygiene to interrupt the tactics, techniques, and procedures of relentless threat groups like Earth Lusca.
  Security

• Linux Kernel Faces Reduction in Long-Term Support Due to Maintenance Challenges
  
  The Linux kernel is undergoing major changes that will shape its future development and adoption, according to Jonathan Corbet, Linux kernel developer and executive editor of Linux Weekly News. Speaking at the Open Source Summit Europe, Corbet provided an update on the latest Linux kernel developments and a glimpse of what's to come.
  
  A major change on the horizon is a reduction in long-term support (LTS) for kernel versions from six years to just two years. Corbet explained that maintaining old kernel branches indefinitely is unsustainable and most users have migrated to newer versions, so there's little point in continuing six years of support. While some may grumble about shortened support lifecycles, the reality is that constantly backporting fixes to ancient kernels strains maintainers.
  
  This maintainer burnout poses a serious threat, as Corbet highlighted. Maintaining Linux is largely a volunteer effort, with only about 200 of the 2,000+ developers paid for their contributions. The endless demands on maintainers' time from fuzz testing, fixing minor bugs, and reviewing contributions takes a toll. Prominent maintainers have warned they need help to avoid collapse. Companies relying on Linux must realize giving back financially is in their interest to sustain this vital ecosystem. 
  
  The Linux kernel is also wading into waters new with the introduction of Rust code. While Rust solves many problems, it also introduces new complexities around language integration, evolving standards, and maintainer expertise. Corbet believes Rust will pass the point of no return when core features depend on it, which may occur soon with additions like Apple M1 GPU drivers. Despite skepticism in some corners, Rust's benefits likely outweigh any transition costs.
  
  On the distro front, Red Hat's decision to restrict RHEL cloning sparked community backlash. While business considerations were at play, Corbet noted technical factors too. Using older kernels with backported fixes, as RHEL does, risks creating divergent, vendor-specific branches. The Android model of tracking mainline kernel dev more closely has shown security benefits. Ultimately, Linux works best when aligned with the broader community.
  
  In closing, Corbet recalled the saying "Linux is free like a puppy is free." Using open source seems easy at first, but sustaining it long-term requires significant care and feeding. As Linux is incorporated into more critical systems, that maintenance becomes ever more crucial. The kernel changes ahead are aimed at keeping Linux healthy and vibrant for the next generation of users, businesses, and developers.
  kernel

• Linux Celebrates 32 Years with the Release of 6.6-rc2 Version
  
  Today marks the 32nd anniversary of Linus Torvalds introducing the inaugural Linux 0.01 kernel version, and celebrating this milestone, Torvalds has launched the Linux 6.6-rc2. Among the noteworthy updates are the inclusion of a feature catering to the ASUS ROG Flow X16 tablet's mode handling and the renaming of the new GenPD subsystem to pmdomain.
  
  The Linux 6.6 edition is progressing well, brimming with exciting new features that promise to enhance user experience. Early benchmarks are indicating promising results, especially on high-core-count servers, pointing to a potentially robust and efficient update in the Linux series.
  
  Here is what Linus Torvalds had to say in today's announcement:
  Another week, another -rc.I think the most notable thing about 6.6-rc2 is simply that it'sexactly 32 years to the day since the 0.01 release. And that's a roundnumber if you are a computer person.Because other than the random date, I don't see anything that reallystands out here. We've got random fixes all over, and none of it looksparticularly strange. The genpd -> pmdomain rename shows up in thediffstat, but there's no actual code changes involved (make sure touse "git diff -M" to see them as zero-line renames).And other than that, things look very normal. Sure, the architecturefixes happen to be mostly parisc this week, which isn't exactly theusual pattern, but it's also not exactly a huge amount of changes.Most of the (small) changes here are in drivers, with some tracingfixes and just random things. The shortlog below is short enough toscroll through and get a taste of what's been going on. Linus Torvalds

• Introducing Bavarder: A User-Friendly Linux Desktop App for Quick ChatGPT Interaction
  
  Want to interact with ChatGPT from your Linux desktop without using a web browser?
  
  Bavarder, a new app, allows you to do just that.
  
  Developed with Python and GTK4/libadwaita, Bavarder offers a simple concept: pose a question to ChatGPT, receive a response, and promptly copy the answer (or your inquiry) to the clipboard for pasting elsewhere.
  
  With an incredibly user-friendly interface, you won't require AI expertise (or a novice blogger) to comprehend it. Type your question in the top box, click the blue send button, and wait for a generated response to appear at the bottom. You can edit or modify your message and repeat the process as needed.
  
  During our evaluation, Bavarder employed BAI Chat, a GPT-3.5/ChatGPT API-based chatbot that's free and doesn't require signups or API keys. Future app versions will incorporate support for alternative backends, such as ChatGPT 4 and Hugging Chat, and allow users to input an API key to utilize ChatGPT3.
  
  At present, there's no option to regenerate a response (though you can resend the same question for a potentially different answer). Due to the lack of a "conversation" view, tracking a dialogue or following up on answers can be challenging — but Bavarder excels for rapid-fire questions.
  
  As with any AI, standard disclaimers apply. Responses might seem plausible but could contain inaccurate or false information. Additionally, it's relatively easy to lead these models into irrational loops, like convincing them that 2 + 2 equals 106 — so stay alert!
  
  Overall, Bavarder is an attractive app with a well-defined purpose. If you enjoy ChatGPT and similar technologies, it's worth exploring.
  ChatGPT AI

• LibreOffice 7.5.3 Released: Third Maintenance Update Brings 119 Bug Fixes to Popular Open-Source Office Suite
  
  Today, The Document Foundation unveiled the release and widespread availability of LibreOffice 7.5.3, which serves as the third maintenance update to the current LibreOffice 7.5 open-source and complimentary office suite series.
  
  Approximately five weeks after the launch of LibreOffice 7.5.2, LibreOffice 7.5.3 arrives with a new set of bug fixes for those who have successfully updated their GNU/Linux system to the LibreOffice 7.5 series.
  
  LibreOffice 7.5.3 addresses a total of 119 bugs identified by users or uncovered by LibreOffice developers. For a more comprehensive understanding of these bug fixes, consult the RC1 and RC2 changelogs.
  
  You can download LibreOffice 7.5.3 directly from the LibreOffice website��or from SourceForge as binary installers for DEB or RPM-based GNU/Linux distributions. A source tarball is also accessible for individuals who prefer to compile the software from sources or for system integrators.
  
  All users operating the LibreOffice 7.5 office suite series should promptly update their installations to the new point release, which will soon appear in the stable software repositories of your GNU/Linux distributions.
  
  In early February 2023, LibreOffice 7.5 debuted as a substantial upgrade to the widely-used open-source office suite, introducing numerous features and improvements. These enhancements encompass major upgrades to dark mode support, new application and MIME-type icons, a refined Single Toolbar UI, enhanced PDF Export, and more.
  
  Seven maintenance updates will support LibreOffice 7.5 until November 30th, 2023. The next point release, LibreOffice 7.5.4, is scheduled for early June and will include additional bug fixes.
  
  The Document Foundation once again emphasizes that the LibreOffice office suite's "Community" edition is maintained by volunteers and members of the Open Source community. For enterprise implementations, they suggest using the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners.
  LibreOffice