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Best Buy is giving away $300 gift cards when you buy a Hisense TV - here's how to qualify

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

The best Chromebooks for students in 2025: Expert tested and reviewed

Let's face it: having a laptop for school is a necessity. But toting around a bulky, slow computer from five years ago is not the vibe. Opting for a Chromebook is a solid choice for students: they're lightweight, fast, and typically cost far less than Windows PCs or Apple MacBooks. Chromebooks run on ChromeOS, a streamlined operating system that integrates with Google Drive, making it easy to navigate to apps like Google Docs, Google Drive, and Gmail so you can stay on task and in touch with te

How to uninstall the iOS 26 beta on your iPhone (and why you might want to)

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

As Trump Comes for Your Social Media, It’s Time You Consider What’s Worth Sharing

Agents of the Trump administration are increasingly using social media posts to crack down on immigrants, tourists, and even some U.S. citizens. Last month, a leaked document showed the State Department had crafted a new standard for reviewing the social media accounts of any foreign students planning to attend or even visit Harvard University. Legal immigrants may have benefits denied based on social media activity, and people expressing opinions or acting contrary to Trump are being detained a

Google’s latest experiment brings NotebookLM’s best features to Search

TL;DR Audio Overviews emerged as one of Google’s breakout AI hits, synthesizing virtual podcasts with a pair of hosts. After debuting with NotebookLM and spreading to other Google services, the company is experimenting with Audio Overviews in Search. For this initial test, access is limited to the US and only supports English. Forgive us for sounding like a broken record by this point, but Google’s Audio Overviews have easily emerged as one of the company’s most genuinely impressive and usefu

Apple announces global in-person sessions to dive deeper into WWDC25 updates

Apple is taking WWDC25 on the road. Following the close of its week-long developer conference, the company has scheduled a worldwide series of in-person events and online appointments to give developers, designers, and product managers a closer look at what’s new. Here’s how you can register. Branded as “Explore the biggest updates from WWDC25”, (via MacMagazine) these sessions aim to highlight key technologies unveiled during the conference, including updates to Apple Intelligence, visionOS, d

The best Alexa devices of 2025: Expert tested

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

The best kids tablets of 2025 recommended by parents

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

The best drawing tablets of 2025: Expert tested

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab

Meta said on Thursday that it planned to invest $14.3 billion in Scale AI, a start-up that works with data to train artificial intelligence systems, in a deal that Meta hopes will add needed muscle to its disappointing A.I. division. As a condition of the deal, Alexandr Wang, Scale AI’s 28-year-old chief executive, plans to join Meta in a top leadership role in the new division, which Meta is calling its Superintelligence lab. Mr. Wang, whom people inside Meta have taken to calling a visionary

All Pixel Watch 3s are on sale at Best Buy - save $70 on the LTE model

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

The best lights for streaming in 2025: Expert tested

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

Hasbro’s ‘Star Wars’ SDCC Exclusive Is the Ultimate ‘Revenge of the Sith’ Set

Dark side, light side, it doesn’t matter. This year’s Hasbro Star Wars exclusive at San Diego Comic-Con is certainly the chosen one, and we’re going to take the high ground to acquire it. Celebrating 20 years of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Hasbro just revealed a six-inch Black Series set, exclusively for release at San Diego Comic-Con, of Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi and their epic lightsaber duel over the lava on Mustafar. Retailing for $110, the set will first be availa

Google tests Audio Overviews for Search queries

Google Search is experimenting with Audio Overviews for certain Search queries, the company announced on Friday. The feature was first introduced to NotebookLM, Google’s AI-based note-taking and research assistant. The tech giant says Audio Overviews will use its latest Gemini models to give users another way to absorb and understand information. “An audio overview can help you get a lay of the land, offering a convenient, hands-free way to absorb information whether you’re multitasking or sim

How to install iOS 26 beta on your iPhone (and which models support it)

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

Google’s test turns search results into an AI-generated podcast

is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO. Google is rolling out a test that puts its AI-powered Audio Overviews on the first page of search results on mobile. The experiment, which you can enable in Labs, will let you generate an AI podcast-style discussion for certain queries. If you search for something like, “How do noise cancellation headphones work?”, Google will display a button bene

Beyond Bluesky: These are the apps building social experiences on the AT Protocol

A year ago, Bluesky was opening up to the public and was known as one of the many X competitors that emerged after Elon Musk acquired the network formerly known as Twitter. Today, Bluesky’s social network has grown to over 36.5 million users, while the technology it’s built upon — the AT Protocol (or ATProto for short) — is being used to develop dozens more applications designed to work together as part of an open social web. The developers behind many of these apps attended the first conferenc

Amazon reorganizes health-care business in latest bid to crack multitrillion-dollar market

In this article AMZN Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNT A One Medical clinic location is pictured in Emeryville, California on February 16, 2024. Loren Elliott | The Washington Post | Getty Images For the better part of a decade, Amazon has been trying to carve it's way into the U.S. health-care market, through billions of dollars worth of acquisitions, big-name hires and high-profile partnerships. It's been a slog at times, and the company's long-term strategy hasn't always been

CarPlay in iOS 26 adds new ‘Smart Display Zoom’ feature [Gallery]

iOS 26 is crammed full of upgrades for CarPlay users, including a refreshed Liquid Glass design, support for widgets, and more. There’s even support for a new “AirPlay video in the car” feature that developers and automakers can adopt if they so choose. CarPlay in iOS 26 One change that is flying under the radar, however, is a new Smart Display Zoom feature. Apple says that this new Smart Display Zoom option is designed to help CarPlay better adapt to the various shapes and sizes of in-car scr

Wikipedia cancels plan to test AI summaries after editors skewer the idea

Wikipedia is backing off a plan to test AI article summaries. Earlier this month, the platform announced plans to trial the feature for about 10 percent of mobile web visitors. To say they weren't well-received by editors would be an understatement. The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) then changed plans and cancelled the test. The AI summaries would have appeared at the top of articles for 10 percent of mobile users. Readers would have had to opt in to see them. The AI-generated summaries only appea

Discord flaw lets hackers reuse expired invites in malware campaign

Hackers are hijacking expired or deleted Discord invite links to redirect users to malicious sites that deliver remote access trojans and information-stealing malware. The campaign relies on a flaw in the Discord invitation system to leverage multi-stage infections that evade multiple antivirus engines. "Reviving" expired Discord invites Discord invite links are URLs that allow someone to join a specific Discord server. They contain an invite code, which is a unique identifier that grants acc

When random people give money to random other people (2017)

A post on Decision Science about a problem of Uri Wilensky‘s has been making the rounds: Imagine a room full of 100 people with 100 dollars each. With every tick of the clock, every person with money gives a dollar to one randomly chosen other person. After some time progresses, how will the money be distributed? People often expect the distribution to be close to uniform. But this isn’t right; the simulations in the post show clearly that inequality of wealth rapidly appears and then persists

The best Sonos speakers to buy in 2025

is a former senior reviewer who worked at The Verge from 2011 until May 2025. His coverage areas included audio (Sonos, Apple, Bose, Sony, etc.), home theater, smartphones, photography, and more. After the year of self-induced tumult that Sonos has been through, I can understand why some people are reluctant to spend money on the company’s products. But interim CEO Tom Conrad has shown that he’s determined to get back on track and revitalize Sonos as the leading whole-home audio brand. The cont

You can win a free Samsung tablet when you buy these new smart monitors for $100 off

Samsung has announced its latest lineup of AI-assisted smart monitors with 4K resolution, active voice amplifier technology for cleaner audio, and a new QD-OLED option for high-end workstations. Right now, when you reserve a new AI smart monitor at Samsung, you'll get an exclusive $100 discount as well as the chance to win a Samsung Galaxy AI Ecosystem bundle that includes a Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra, Galaxy Watch Ultra, and Galaxy Ring. Also: The Samsung Galaxy Ring comes with a free $100 gift card

Nvidia to exclude China from its revenue and profit forecasts

In Brief Nvidia doesn’t think the U.S. will backpedal its chip export restrictions to China anytime soon. The chipmaker is so convinced of that fact that it’s not going to include the Chinese market in its revenue and profit forecasts, CEO Jensen Huang told CNN on Thursday. Huang said he’s not counting on the Trump administration reversing its chip export controls and that it would be a nice “bonus” if they did. The Trump administration introduced licensing requirements for Nvidia’s H20 chip

I found a Linux distro that combines the best parts of other operating systems (and it works)

Jack Wallen/ZDNET There are so many Linux distributions on the market, and they range from the command line only all the way to functioning works of art. The majority of distros fall somewhere in the middle, of course, and that's perfectly fine because most users prefer a blend of aesthetics and functionality. That's why the likes of Linux Mint, ZorinOS, elementaryOS, and Ubuntu are so popular. But every once in a while, a team releases an update to its distribution that reminds you that Linux

Ask HN: How do I give back to people helped me when I was young and had nothing?

Throughout my career, I've received incredible kindness and inspiration from experienced people - professors, and strangers who invested time in me when I feel like I had little to offer in return. While I always express gratitude and try to pay it forward, I often feel there's still an imbalance. I feel like I owe something more direct to the specific people who shaped my life. How do you meaningfully give back to people who helped you early on (when you literally have nothing...haha)? What fo

Don't Have Vision Insurance? This Is Where You Can Get Low-Cost Eye Exams, Glasses and Contacts

Even though 93 million American adults are at high risk for serious vision loss, only half of them have visited an eye doctor's office in the last 12 months, according to the CDC. This makes more sense once you consider a 2022 study that found 63% of Americans don't have vision insurance, as an eye exam, glasses and contact lenses can add up without it. Fortunately, there are companies and programs out there that can help you get more affordable or free eye care without vision insurance. Where

Pixar is heading back to Italy for its next big film

is a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years. Though Disney and Pixar are about to start getting everyone hyped for Toy Story 5, the studios are already working hard on another feature. While Disney and Pixar opened their Annecy presentation with more details about their next movie, Elio, and gave updates about Toy Story 5, the studio surprised festival goers by announcing that

HP Dimension offers sci-fi-style 3D video calls, built on Google Beam

Recap: The dream of a truly sci-fi-style communication device is finally here. Two years after Google revealed its Project Starline video booth, the company announced its rebranding as Google Beam last month. Now, HP has announced the technology will form the basis of the HP Dimension. Before anyone gets excited about the prospect of taking these 3D video calls at home, note that the HP Dimension is an enterprise product with a price to match: $24,999. The device, which HP says is designed to