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For parenting kids of all different ages, these are the parent tech devices we can't live without.
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There is one smart ring that shines above the rest when it comes to tracking your sleep, fitness and more.
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Streaming services keep raising prices. At this point, if you subscribe to all the major services out there, you're basically paying the same price as cable — those antiquated local monopolies that streaming was supposed to save us from. But streaming still has one big advantage over the old ways: no contracts. That means you can grab a good streaming deal and then cancel without penalty.
Our advice is to sign up for a service when you see a good streaming deal (or the latest season of, say, Doctor Who, Severance, Andor and/or The Last of Us). Then, when the deal ends or you've binged whatever it is you want to watch, cancel as needed. But streaming deals don't come around all that often and, when they do, i
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 Back in September, Algoriddim's djay apps for Mac and Windows regained Spotify integration, allowing Spotify Premium subscribers to access the service's full music catalog and their own libraries and playlists, and today that support is expanding to iOS, iPadOS, and Android.
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The stretchy fabric satchel for your iPhone, designed by luxury brand Issey Miyake, does make a fashion statement.
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The tug-of-war on font type isn't aesthetic. It's political.
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Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Dec. 11.
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Deepseek reportedly received banned chips, and is allegedly using them to train a new model.
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Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for Dec. 11, No. 1,636.
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Need a gift that'll wow the tech lover on your holiday shopping list? A smart-home gadget could be the perfect present to make their holidays brighter, and we've picked out our favorites.
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 The next-generation low-cost iPad will use Apple's A19 chip, according to a report from Macworld. Macworld claims to have seen an "internal Apple code document" with information about the 2026 ?iPad? lineup.
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 YouTube TV will be updated with more than 10 genre-specific television packages in 2026, YouTube announced today. The upcoming YouTube TV Plans will be more affordable than the current version of YouTube TV, which is priced at $82.99 per month.
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Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for Dec. 11, No. 444.
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Big retail names such as CB2, Anthropologie and Victoria's Secret are among the worst offenders.
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Cheaper, genre-specific streaming plans will drop in early 2026.
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Check every merry flick off your list.
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Visitors entering the US may also need to disclose their previous email addresses and details about their families, under a new federal proposal.
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 Apple today shared a list of the most downloaded U.S. App Store apps and games in 2025, highlighting the top free and paid iPhone and iPad titles.
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Ever since reporting earlier this year on how easy it is to trick an agentic browser, I've been following the intersections between modern AI and old-school scams. Now, there's a new convergence on the horizon: hackers are apparently using AI prompts to seed Google search results with dangerous commands. When executed by unknowing users, these commands prompt computers to give the hackers the access they need to install malware.
The warning comes by way of a recent report from detection-and-response firm Huntress. Here's how it works. First, the threat actor has a conversation with an AI assistant about a common search term, during which they prompt the AI to suggest pasting a certain command into a computer's terminal. They make the chat publicly visible and pay to boost it on Google. From then on, whenever someone searches for the term, the malicious instructions will show up high on the first page of results.
Huntress ran tests on both ChatGPT and Grok after discovering that a Mac-targeting data exfiltration attack called AMOS had originated from a simple Google search. The user of the infected device had searched "clear disk space on Mac," clicked a sponsored ChatGPT link and — lacking the training to see that the advice was hostile — executed the command. This let the attackers install the AMOS malware. The testers discovered that both chatbots replicated the attack vector.
As Huntress points out, the evil genius of this attack is that it bypasses almost all the traditional red flags we've been taught to look for. The victim doesn't have to download a file, install a suspicious executable or even click a shady link. The only things they have to trust are
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OpenAI's chatbot just added new integrations with Photoshop, Express, and Acrobat.
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"Switching to Calibri achieved nothing except the degradation of the department's official correspondence," Rubio's memo said.
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"Prompted Playlists" are currently only available in New Zealand.
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Because dark matter is completely invisible to light, science had to look for clever new methods to spot it.
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True Classic Tees is running holiday "flash deals" with some of the best prices we've seen in months.
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NEW RESOURCES The Standard (Kenya): Government unveils a new era of community driven tourism innovation. "As part of this transformative agenda, the Cabinet Secretary noted that the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC) […]
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The US Department of State is unwinding a 2023 decision to use san-serif Calibri font on all official communications and switching to Times New Roman instead, The New York Times reports. In a memo obtained by NYT titled "Return to Tradition: Times New Roman 14-Point Font Required for All Department Paper," Secretary of State Marco Rubio frames the change as a way to return professionalism to the State Department.
"Switching to Calibri achieved nothing except the degradation of the department's official correspondence," Rubio said in the memo. That's because the font is "informal" and clashes with the State Department's letterhead, according to Rubio, while serif fonts lik
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About a fifth of US teens say they're on TikTok almost constantly, according to a Pew Research survey.
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With a good virtual private network (VPN), you can stream TV shows and events from all over the world, protect your information from hackers and thwart those online trackers that watch you sleep and show you weird personalized ads. Although we strongly recommend using a VPN, you shouldn't jump on just any deal — a bit of comparison shopping goes a long way in this market. The pricing you see on VPN websites is often not an accurate portrayal of what you'll actually pay.
Even so, there are some great bargains on the table. Black Friday and Cyber Monday may be over, but lots of the best VPNs — including our top pick, Proton VPN — have end-of-year deals live that can save you anywhere from 67 to 88 percent on annual subscriptions. Most of these discounts only apply if you sign up for a year or more, but as long as you're sure you like the service, committing actually makes sense. You pay more at the start, but if you divide the cost by the months of service, it's significantly cheaper over time.
Most of the deals below follow that pattern, so make sure you're comfortable with a service before you take the plunge. Read on for the best VPN deals live this week.
Best VPN deals
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NEW RESOURCES National Library of Wales: Explore Your Archive: Newly Catalogued Archives. "As well as the expertise of our staff, who have been exploring a variety of new cataloguing methodologies, we greatly […]
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I tested nearly every setting my fridge has to offer to find out which number on the dial hits the sweet spot.
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 Spotify is attempting to give users more control over the music the streaming service recommends with a new playlist feature called "Prompted Playlist." The beta feature is rolling out in New Zealand starting on December 11, and will let users write a custom prompt that Spotify can use — alongside their listening history — to create a playlist of new music.
By tapping on Prompted Playlist, Spotify subscribers participating in the beta will be presented with a prompt field where they can type exactly what they want to hear and how they want Spotify's algorithm to respond. And while past AI features took users' individual taste into consideration, Spotify claims Prompted Playlist "taps into your entire Spotify listening history, all the way back to day one."
Prompted Playlist will exist alongside Spotify's other playlist features.SpotifyPrompts can be as broad or specific as users want, and Spotify says playlists can also be set to automatically update with new songs on a specific cadence. An "Ideas" tab in the Prompted Playlist setup screen can provide suggestions for users who need inspiration for their prompt. And interestingly, Spotify says each song in the playlist will be presented with a short description explaining why the algorithm chose it, which could help direct future fine-tuning.
If this all sounds familiar, it's because Spotify has
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You better check your music playlist twice if you want to keep your pets from stressing this Christmas season.
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Gift shopping often requires a budget. If you're looking for a gift that's impactful to your loved ones and friend but not to your wallet, check out these gifts under $150.
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YouTube TV, which launched in 2017 as a $35-per-month all-in-one service, will soon introduce YouTube TV Plans. Although the announcement is light on details, we know the initiative will let you sign up for genre-specific packages, such as sports and news. In other words, it's the final step in the legacy-cable-ification of the service.
YouTube hasn't said anything about pricing. But it's probably safe to assume that narrowing your available content will reduce your bill. A year ago, the company raised its monthly cost to $83. That's 137 percent higher than the service's launch price nearly nine years ago.
We don't yet have the full list of available plans, but YouTube mentioned packages for sports, news and "family and entertainment content." As expected, it promised that you can mix and match them. The YouTube TV Sports Plan will include access to all major broadcast channels and several sports networks, like all ESPN networks, FS1, and NBC Sports Network. It sounds similar to offerings from Fubo and DirecTV.
YouTube TV plans will launch in early 2026. The current $83 all-in-one model
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NVIDIA is now allowed to sell its second-best H200 processors to China, rather than just the sanction-approved H20 model that China had previously declined to buy, President Trump wrote on Truth Social. The United States will collect a 25 percent tariff on those sales, the Commerce Department confirmed yesterday.
Trump said that he informed China's President Xi Jinping of the decision and that he "responded positively." The Commerce Department is finalizing details and the administration will take the same approach with AMD, Intel and other US companies. He added that the administration would "protect National Security," so the latest Blackwell and upcoming Rubin chips are not part of the deal. The 25 percent tariff would be higher than the 15 percent the White House suggested in August.
Though the administration won't allow NVIDIA to send its latest high-end chips, it was reportedly concerned that the company would lose business to Huawei if it was completely shut out of China's market, according to Reuters. No details about the number of H200 chips or which companies would be eligible to buy them were released. "Offering H200 to approved commercial customers, vetted by the Department of Commerce, strikes a thoughtful balance that is great for America," NVIDIA said in a statement.
The decision is not without controversy, though. Several Democratic US senators
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 AI chatbots haven't come close to replacing teens' social media habits, but they are playing a significant role in their online habits. Nearly one-third of US teens report using AI chatbots daily or more, according to a new report from Pew Research.
The report is the first from Pew to specifically examine how often teens are using AI overall, and was published alongside its latest research on teens' social media use. It's based on an online survey of 1,458 US teens who were polled between September 25 to October 9, 2025. According to Pew, the survey was "weighted to be representative of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 who live with their parents by age, gender, race and ethnicity, household income, and other categories."
According to Pew, 48 percent of teens use AI chatbots "several times a week" or more often, with 12 percent reporting their use at "several times a day" and 4 percent saying they use the tools "almost constantly." That's far fewer than the 21 percent of teens who report almost constant use of TikTok and the 17 percent who say the same about YouTube. But those numbers are still significant considering how much newer these services are compared with mainstream social media apps.
The report also offers some insight into which AI companies' chatbots are most used among teens. OpenAI's ChatGPT came out ahead by far, with 59 percent of teens saying they had used the service, followed by Google's Gemini at 23 percent and Meta AI at 20 percent. Just 14 percent of teens said they had ever used Microsoft Copilot, and 9 percent and 3 percent reported using Character AI and Anthropic's Claude, respectively.
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Netflix has already committed to reviving Star Search for its streaming service, and now the company is turning its attention to a different type of live show: HQ Trivia. Netflix's Best Guess Live is an attempt to revive the late 2010s app-based show with what the company is calling its first "weekday mobile game show."
Best Guess Live will be hosted by Howie Mandel (Deal or No Deal, America's Got Talent) and Hunter March (Sugar Rush) and will broadcast Monday through Friday at 8PM ET / 5PM PT. The game seems like it will lean on multiple choice questions much like HQ Trivia did, and will reward players who answer the fastest and play multiple times per week. Netflix's announcement doesn't have any specifics as to how much money will be up for grabs, but the company does promise to give away "thousands of dollars in prize money."
HQ Trivia, started by Vine co-founders Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll, was a surprise hit when it debuted in 2017, thanks in part to its host Scott Rogowsky and the appointment-viewing nature of a daily game show you could watch on your phone. The later slow collapse of HQ was rocky enough to warrant a CNN documentary, but clearly the concept of the app fits nicely with Netflix's growing interest in live shows and casual games.
Netflix has experimented with a growing number of live shows, including
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After Netflix announced that it was acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery last week, observers immediatley wondered when or if the deal could obtain regulatory approval. Now, President Trump has made comments indicating that said approval is likely to take awhile if it happens at all, Bloomberg reported.
"Well, that's got to go through a process, and we'll see what happens," Trump told reporters in a recent Q&A scrum. "But it is a big market share. It could be a problem." The President added that he will be personally involved in the approval process.
As we pointed out last week, Netflix and HBO Max combined would account for around 33 percent of the US streaming video market, ahead of Prime Video's 21 percent share and likely enough to attract the antitrust division of the US Justice Department. For its part, Netflix has said that it will "maintain Warner Bros. current businesses," which includes HBO Max and HBO, theatrical releases for films as well as movie and TV studio operations.
Headwinds were likely with any deal, so in November Netflix's co-CEO Ted Sarandos reportedly met with Trump at the White House, arguing that the acquisition wouldn't create a monopoly. Trump said that Warner Bros. Discovery should sell to the highest bidder, and Sarandos left the meeting feeli
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NEW RESOURCES University of California San Francisco: UCSF Print News Preserved and Digitized Through California Revealed . "Thanks to generous support from California Revealed, a state-wide initiative to digitize, preserve, and provide […]
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NEW RESOURCES United Nations University: Regulated Plants Database: UNU's New Open-Access Tool to Help Prevent the Spread of Harmful Plants . "…the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), […]
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NEW RESOURCES Ghost Blog: Explore the independent web. "Google search is making it harder than ever before to find anything. Social media algorithms reward the loud rather than the nuanced. Closed publishing […]
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Parents trying to raise their kids in a tech-saturated world are getting overwhelmed with the amount of work and fighting it takes to protect kids, which can be a full-time job.
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POP Smart Button owners began sharing the end-of-line emails from Logitech late last month, which noted that the buttons would cease working on October 15, giving them only slightly more than two weeks' notice.
"For close to a decade, we have maintained the POP ecosystem, but as technology evolves, we have made the decision to end support for the device," Logitech's email reads. "As of October 15, your POP button(s) and the connected hub will no longer be supported and will lose all functionality."
Logitech added that it would give POP button owners a promo code giving them a 15-percent discount on Logitech and Ultimate Ears products (Logitech owns the Ultimate Ears audio brand).
Annoyed POP button owners on Reddit didn't hold back about the prospect of their devices being turned into paperweights.
"This is why, ‘local first'" wrote one user, while another complained, "12 buttons and 3 hubs in my home are going to become beautiful useless [pieces] of tech. Why?"
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The past 14 years have seen a sharp increase in mental illness, self-harm, and suicide among young people in the United States. Some have looked to an obvious culprit - technology - as a cause. As both policymakers and parents consider this debate, we outline some opposing views, critically evaluate their arguments and suggest some paths forward.
The post Social Media and Youth Mental Health — It's Nuanced appeared first on ConnectSafely.
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Microsoft is sitting on top of the world right now, thanks to its lead in AI. It's the most valuable company on the planet, with a valuation of more than $3.2 trillion. Its rise was rocket-fueled by its investor relationship with OpenAI, the company that makes the wildly popular generative AI (genAI) chatbot ChatGPT. OpenAI's GPT large language model is also the basis for Microsoft Copilot, the genAI tool that Microsoft is building into just about every one of its products, from GitHub to Windows to Microsoft 365 and beyond.
Microsoft's AI dominance appears insurmountable. But things can change quickly in tech. Google and Apple are in talks to embed Google's genAI tool Gemini into iPhones — a deal that, if it reaches fruition, could unseat Microsoft sooner than you think.
To read this article in full, please click here
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The European Commission on Monday slammed Apple with a huge $1.95 billion fine for anti-competitive conduct in the music streaming market. In response to the decision, Apple fired back at the EU and Spotify, saying the move "just cements the dominant position of a successful European company that is the digital music market's runaway leader."
Apple will appeal.
The company also says it intends to comply with the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) within days.
To read this article in full, please click here
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