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The 15+ best Labor Day deals live now: Save on Apple, Samsung, Google and more

'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

Best Labor Day laptop deals 2025: Up to $700 off Apple, Dell, Lenovo, and more

'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

Lewis and Clark marked their trail with laxatives

Audio version is not yet available By Finn J.D. John January 26, 2025 AS LEWIS AND CLARK’S Corps of Discovery made its way across the continent to Oregon, the men (and woman) of the party probably weren’t thinking much about their place in history. So they weren’t taking any particular pains to document their every movement. There were, however, some particular pains they were experiencing with every movement, so to speak ... as a result of a relentlessly low-fiber diet: Everyone was constip

Now’s a great time for Apple to bring back this long-removed iMac feature

A while ago, Apple used to include a software feature with macOS on older iMac models. It was called Target Display Mode, and it allowed you to turn an iMac into an external display once your iMac was too dated to be a usable computer. The company got rid of it with the introduction of the 5K iMac due to technical limitations at the time – though said limitations no longer pose a challenge. As mentioned, Apple previously got rid of the feature due to technical limitations. After the company int

Escape from Tarkov is finally coming to Steam 'soon,' developer says

Following news that Escape from Tarkov is escaping its perpetual beta, the pioneering extraction shooter is also about to make its debut on Steam. Nikita Buyanov, head of the Battlestate Games studio that developed Escape from Tarkov, confirmed on X that the game's Steam page "will be available soon," only teasing that the full details will come later. Buyanov's confirmation comes less than a day after the developer posted a GIF on X of a man spraying steam from an iron. Earlier this month, Buy

The Last Vestal Virgin and the Fall of Rome

Ask twenty different people what led to the fall of Rome, and you’ll get twenty different answers. Experts will give you an array of opinions, depending on their area of specialization or what thesis paper they’re writing. There is no single right answer. Political squabbling, weakened borders, a diluted army, disease, economic crises... some even say it was because of lead in the pipes. The fall of the Roman Empire—why it happened, and when exactly—it’s a huge subject. Yet there were people li

Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

Fastly’s July 2025 survey of 791 developers found a notable difference in how much AI-generated code is making it into production. About a third of senior developers (10+ years of experience) say over half their shipped code is AI-generated — nearly two and a half times the rate reported by junior developers (0–2 years of experience), at 13%. “AI will bench test code and find errors much faster than a human, repairing them seamlessly. This has been the case many times,” one senior developer sai

People Still Spending on Tech Despite Red Flags in July Report

U.S. consumers continued to open their wallets in July, a new study from the Bureau of Economic Analysis showed on Friday, underscoring the resilience of household demand even as inflation held above the Federal Reserve’s target. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t wince while doing it. The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, the personal-consumption expenditures price index, rose 0.2% on the month and 2.6% from a year earlier. The core measure, which strips out food and energy, advan

FTC chair warns Google about Gmail’s ‘partisan’ spam filters

Andrew Ferguson, the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Trade Commission, recently expressed concern that “Alphabet’s administration of Gmail is designed to have partisan effects.” In a letter addressed to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Ferguson pointed to a recent story in the New York Post describing complaints by Targeted Victory (a consulting and PR firm that’s worked with the Republican National Committee and Elon Musk’s X) claiming that Gmail flags emails linking to the Republican fundrais

A Single Typo in Your Medical Records Can Make Your AI Doctor Go Dangerously Haywire

A single typo, formatting error, or slang word makes an AI more likely to tell a patient they're not sick or don't need to seek medical care. That's what MIT researchers found in a June study currently awaiting peer review, which we covered previously. Even the presence of colorful or emotional language, they discovered, was enough to throw off the AI's medical advice. Now, in a new interview with the Boston Globe, study coauthor Marzyeh Ghassemi is warning about the serious harm this could ca

A 20-Year-Old Algorithm Can Help Us Understand Transformer Embeddings

Suppose we ask an LLM: “Can you tell me about Java?” What “Java” is the model thinking about? The programming language or the Indonesian island? To answer this question, we can try to understand what is going on inside the model. Specifically, we want to represent the model’s internal states in a human-interpretable way by finding the concepts that the model is thinking about. One approach to this problem is to phrase it as a dictionary learning problem, in which we try to decompose complex emb

26 of the Best TV Shows to Stream on Disney Plus

All it took was half a decade for Disney Plus to become a must-watch streaming platform. Sure, having Walt Disney's name on anything pretty much ensures it'll experience some level of success. But considering how crowded the streaming landscape is with all sorts of shows begging for your attention, the Mouse House-owned streamer has earned its spot among heavy hitters like Netflix. In other words, it's one of the best streaming services out there. I mean, where else can you find Andor, Bluey an

I'm a Runner with Over 15 Years of Running Experience. These Are the Best Treadmills of 2025

The first thing I noticed about the NordicTrack Commercial 2450, NordicTrack's newest addition to its commercial treadmill series, is the touchscreen. It has a 22-inch HD touchscreen that resembles a desktop computer screen, so it's huge. It also tilts and pivots so you can adjust it for different uses, like if you want to take workout classes on the floor. The treadmill itself is also on the bigger side since it's a commercial treadmill, but it does fold up using its easylift assist feature, so

I tested smart glasses with built-in hearing aids - and they worked surprisingly well

Nuance Audio Hearing Glasses ZDNET's key takeaways The Nuance Audio hearing glasses are available in two styles and colors for $1,200 at participating retailers. They provide a stylish and discreet way to aid mild to moderate hearing loss. However, they provide six to eight hours of battery life and a three-hour charging period, which might frustrate power users. View now at Nuance Audio Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. Since the US Food and Drug Administration approved

Bitwig Studio 6 details revealed, and editing gets a big boost

We get it. After years of DAWs leapfrogging in similar directions, the new generation of music tools made it easier to start projects, get inspiration, and improvise. But sometimes they played catchup on editing and automation. Bitwig Studio 6’s details are here, and it feels like editing automation, clips, and more are looking as fresh as those other tools, all in an updated UI. The beta is out now. Beta testing is free now if you’re ready to give this a look. You’ll need an active Upgrade Pla

My phone is an ereader now

My phone is an ereader now I got a Kobo in 2016 after borrowing my mom's old one for a year before that. It probably is responsible for getting me reading again after high school. I used to be an avid reader, the sort of kid who would have to be told to put down the book and go to sleep, and who would then creep slowly to the bookshelf to pick it up again without arousing suspicion after the light had been turned out. I think I slowed my reading for fun as the work load of school increased, and

A24's Empire of Auteurs

In November of 2015, the upstart film studio A24 had a problem. Executives had acquired the writer-director Robert Eggers’s stark, unsettling début, “The Witch,” at the Sundance Film Festival and wanted to make it their first release to open on thousands of screens. But both Eggers and Anya Taylor-Joy, who starred as a teen-ager tempted by unholy forces, were then unknown. The story, set in the sixteen-thirties and scripted in Early Modern English, was a tough sell. To generate buzz, the company

Meta is reportedly looking at using competing AI models to improve its apps

Meta may be interested in more than Google and OpenAI's employees when it comes to artificial intelligence. According to The Information, Meta is considering using its competitors' models to improve its own apps' AI features. The report said that leaders at the Meta Superintelligence Lab have looked at integrating Google Gemini into its Meta AI chatbot to help it provide a conversational, text-based solution to its users' search questions. Not only with Google Gemini, Meta has also had discussi

Agent Client Protocol (ACP)

The Agent Client Protocol standardizes communication between code editors (IDEs, text-editors, etc.) and coding agents (programs that use generative AI to autonomously modify code). The protocol is still under development, but it should be complete enough to build interesting user experiences using it. AI coding agents and editors are tightly coupled but interoperability isn’t the default. Each editor must build custom integrations for every agent they want to support, and agents must implemen

The First ‘Tron’ Movies are Finally Getting Modern Releases

If Tron: Ares has you wanting to watch the first two movies again, you’re in luck: they’re getting new and improved versions on September 16. During its Destination 23 showcase, Disney announced full remasters of the original Tron and its 2010 sequel Legacy are coming to Ultra 4K HD and digital. (It’s been a long time since either had physical versions, the last edition was a two-movie Blu-Ray bundle back in 2014.) Physical versions of the two films will come with fancy new steelbook editions s

Disney Gives New Looks at ‘Toy Story 5,’ ‘Zootopia 2,’ and More

Originality is still alive at Disney, and it’s taking the form of 2026’s Hexed. Unveiled during the studio’s Destination 23 event, the Walt Disney Animation Studios film from Zootopia and Raya and the Last Dragon artist Josie Trinidad and Moana 2 co-director Jason Hand centers on “an awkward teenage boy and his Type – A mom,” per the logline. When they discover his oddness is actually magic powers manifesting, they learn of a secret world of magic that’ll forever transform their lives. (A premi

Nvidia says two mystery customers accounted for 39% of Q2 revenue

Nearly 40% of Nvidia’s second quarter revenue came from just two customers, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. On Wednesday, the chipmaker reported record revenue of $46.7 billion during the quarter that ended on July 27 — a 56% year-over-year increase largely driven by the AI data center boom. However, subsequent reporting highlighted how much of that growth seems to be coming from just a handful of customers. Specifically, Nvidia said that a single customer

This iPhone trick hides my apps in a secret folder only I can access - here's why I love 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

The 13+ best Walmart Labor Day deals 2025: Sales on Apple, Samsung, LG, and more

'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

My Failures Onboarding at Splunk

In the fall of 2021, I found myself burnt out both professionally and personally. I was ready for a change. At NCR I was proud of what our team had accomplished - we built a group of over seventy people across four timezones, leading the journey to the cloud, and adopting better incident response and observability. The pandemic, however, had taken a great toll on me and my family. I spent much of it working long hours making sure restaurants could continue to conduct business and survive, at the

Agent Client Protocol

The Agent Client Protocol standardizes communication between code editors (IDEs, text-editors, etc.) and coding agents (programs that use generative AI to autonomously modify code). The protocol is still under development, but it should be complete enough to build interesting user experiences using it. AI coding agents and editors are tightly coupled but interoperability isn’t the default. Each editor must build custom integrations for every agent they want to support, and agents must implemen

Crypto Mining Stock Is Up 400% This Year As It Inks Nvidia Deal

Shares of Iren (IREN), an AI, cloud, and data center company, jumped nearly 15% on August 29 after announcing it had achieved “preferred partner” status with Nvidia. The designation is seen as a significant endorsement, positioning Iren as a key collaborator in Nvidia’s expanding ecosystem for AI and data center solutions. In addition to the partnership news, Iren confirmed it has secured the purchase of up to $168 million worth of Nvidia GPUs, further fueling the company’s stock rally on the

No Amount of Money Can Make People Want to Work for Zuck

How much would you have to get paid to spend any amount of time with Mark Zuckerberg? For some of the folks who have joined Meta’s AI team, millions of dollars simply is not enough. According to a new report from the Financial Times, the Meta AI lab is such a mess (and presumably, Zuck is such a bad hang) that recent hires have threatened to quit within days of joining, and promotions have been handed out just to keep people from leaving. FT points to Shengjia Zhao, Meta’s “chief AI scientist,”

Discounty adds some bite to cozy life sims

There’s a pleasing rhythm to cozy life sims. The virtual days pass, filled with chores of tending crops or running a business, punctuated by strange mysteries or evolving relationships. At their best, these games merge busywork with exploration and storytelling, in a way that makes them hard to step away from. Discounty, from developer Crinkle Cut Games, applies this idea to running a small-town supermarket. And while in many ways it can still be considered “cozy” like its contemporaries, it als