The best deals on MacBooks right now
Apple currently sells MacBooks equipped with its own M-series chips in a wide range of sizes and price points. It recently discontinued the M1 MacBook Air to make room for the M3 Air, but some retailers are still selling the last-gen laptop starting at $649 — a far cry from the $2,499 starting price of the latest 16-inch MacBook Pro. Purchasing a new MacBook can certainly be a pricey endeavor, but thankfully, finding a deal on a current M3-based model is actually not that difficult. Although Macs may not experience perpetual discounts, it’s not uncommon to see various models discounted by as much as $400. Alternatively, purchasing refurbished options directly from Apple is another way to save money without waiting for the changing deal...
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Zens’ new Qi2 charger is about as close as you get to plugging your phone directly into a wall
Qi2 chargers are quite prevalent these days and come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, so why not make one exclusively for Europeans with outlets above their kitchen countertops and a neat assortment of olive oils? Zens may have figured out the key to a truly wire-free wireless charger with its new Wireless Charging Adapter. It’s a lot like most Qi2 / MagSafe chargers, capable of charging an iPhone at up to 15W, but it skips the usual wire between the outlet and magnetic pad to just plug directly into the wall. The €49.99 charger seems a little limiting if you don’t have the ideal outlet placement...
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Watch Adobe rotate a flat drawing of a bread basket as if it were a 3D object
Adobe has been working on some experimental tech that could help speed up concept and planning work for graphic designers and audio engineers. Some of the “sneaks” previewed during Adobe’s MAX event include tools that can turn sketches into a variety of polished designs, and a feature for rotating 2D art as if it were a 3D object. “Project Turntable” is capable of the latter. The tool allows users to click a button and then drag a slider along to automatically view and snap a vector image into a different viewing perspective — something that would typically require an artist to redraw the image entirely from scratch. The examples demonstrated at the event retained their original designs when rotated without warping into a new overall...
Politics Read on The VergeOn Wednesday, social network X (formerly Twitter) updated its Privacy Policy to indicate that it would allow third-party “collaborators” to train their AI models on X data, unless users opt out. While X owner Elon Musk trained xAI’s Grok AI chatbot on X user data, leading to an investigation by the EU’s lead privacy regulator, […]
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Summon All Your Mutant Friends to Help Build Lego’s Marvel X-Men X-Mansion
Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters includes 10 minifigures, a brick-laden Cerebro, an "exploding" cupola, and more.
Entertainment Read on GizmodoBetween 1400 and 1775, a significant upsurge in witch trials swept across early modern Europe, resulting in the execution of an estimated 40,000–60,000 accused witches. Historians and social scientists have long studied this period in hopes of learning more about how large-scale social changes occur. Some have pointed to the invention of the printing press and the publication of witch-hunting manuals—most notably the highly influential Malleus Maleficarum—as a major factor, making it easier for the witch-hunting hysteria to spread across the continent. The abrupt emergence of the craze and its rapid spread, resulting in a pronounced shift in social behaviors—namely, the often brutal persecution of suspected witches—is consistent with a theory of social change dubbed "ideational diffusion," according to a new paper published in the journal Theory and Society. There is the introduction of new ideas, reinforced by social networks, that eventually take root and lead to widespread behavioral changes in a society. The authors had already been thinking about cultural change and the driving forces by which it occurs, including social contagion—especially large cultural shifts like the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, for example. One co-author, Steve Pfaff, a sociologist at Chapman University, was working on a project about witch trials in Scotland and was particularly interested in the role the Malleus Maleficarum might have played. Read full article
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FBI Arrests Man Who Searched ‘How Can I Know for Sure If I Am Being Investigated by the FBI’
Eric Counsel Jr. is accused of helping to hack the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's X account in order to post false information about Bitcoin.
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A new ClickFix campaign is luring users to fraudulent Google Meet conference pages showing fake connectivity errors that deliver info-stealing malware for Windows and macOS operating systems....
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The best Xbox controller to buy right now
From basic and affordable to premium and ultra-customizable, these are the best controllers we’ve tested for Xbox. And they work with PCs, too.
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Score this HP USB-C Docking Station at 50% off for Early Black Friday
Save over $115 on a USB-C and Thunderbolt docking station that can connect to three different displays at once.
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Kamala Harris Might Keep Lina Khan at the FTC, After All
If she wins in November, there are indicators that Harris will keep the controversial FTC head, a new report claims.
Crime and Courts Read on GizmodoMeasles, whooping cough, polio, tetanus—devastating and sometimes deadly diseases await comebacks in the US as more and more parents are declining routine childhood vaccines that have proved safe and effective. The vaccination rates among kindergartners have fallen once again, dipping into the range of 92 percent in the 2023–2024 school year, down from about 93 percent the previous school year and 95 percent in 2019–2020. That's according to an analysis of the latest vaccination data published today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The analysis also found that vaccination exemptions rose to an all-time high of 3.3 percent, up from 3 percent in the previous school year. The rise in exemptions is nearly entirely driven by non-medical exemptions—in other words, religious or philosophical exemptions. Only 0.2 percent of all vaccination exemptions are medically justified. Read full article
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Netflix says subscribers spend two hours a day on the platform
Netflix says subscribers spend an average of two hours each day using the platform, while household viewership increased compared to last year, according to the company’s third-quarter earnings report released today. The streamer has had a massive past few months, reporting $9.83 billion in revenue and $2.91 billion in operating income. It also added around 5 million subscribers for a total of 282.7 million globally. Around half of subscribers who signed up for Netflix in the third quarter of 2024 chose the ad-supported plan. Netflix says it currently makes up just under 10 percent of total TV usage in its biggest countries. However, it believes “there’s a huge opportunity to grow that share” by consistently pushing more quality TV shows...
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YouTube is testing its cheaper Premium Lite subscription again, but it now has limited ads
Last year, YouTube axed Premium Lite, its cheaper version of YouTube Premium, but the company has been testing a new version of the subscription in Australia, Germany, and Thailand, YouTube confirmed to Android Authority. The company confirmed the tests to The Verge as well, with spokesperson Jessica Gibby saying that it has been testing a “different version” of the subscription with “some users in Australia, Germany and Thailand for several months (with the most recent one beginning in Australia at the start of this year).” Gibby adds that “we don’t have anything else to share in terms of a broader rollout at this time.” According to a screenshot shared by singer-songwriter Jonah Manzano on Threads, the Premium Lite subscription in...
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Solar Maximum Is Officially Here: Brace for More Stormy Space Weather and Epic Auroras
After months of intense solar flares, NASA confirms that the Sun has reached the most active period of its cycle.
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Oct. 19 Is Almost Here. Could Nvidia's AI PC Day Be a Game-Changer for Investors?
Business
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The best robot vacuums
Floor-sweeping robots are only getting better, with new mopping skills, better navigation chops, and more automation, meaning less work for you. We picked the best bots you can buy right now.
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On Agatha All Along, Teen Is Exactly Who You Think He Is
The identity of Joe Locke's character is now officially confirmed—in an episode dedicated to the reveal.
Entertainment Read on GizmodoUS officials charged a man with compromising the official Twitter/X account of the Securities and Exchange Commission for purposes of posting false information that caused the price of bitcoin to spike. The January attack, federal prosecutors said, started with a SIM swap, a form of fraud that takes control of a cell phone number by assuming the identity of the person the number belongs to. The attacker then uses the false identity to induce an employee of the cellular carrier to move the phone number off the current Subscriber Identity Module card, a small chip that connects a device to a specific carrier account. Then, the attacker has the number transferred to a new SIM card, usually under the pretense that the fraudulent account holder has just obtained a new device. The number at issue in the SIM swap, an indictment unsealed on Thursday said, was used to provide two-factor authentication for the SEC X account, which authorized commission personnel to post official communications. One of the people connected to the conspiracy then used the 2FA code to compromise the X account to tweet false information that caused the price of a single bitcoin to increase by $1,000. Read full article
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Billionaire Investor Dan Loeb Could See Green If the Country Votes Red Next Month
Economy
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Worldcoin, the Sam Altman co-founded “proof of personhood” crypto project that scans people’s eyeballs, announced on Thursday that it dropped the “coin” from its name and is now just “World.” The startup behind the World project, Tools for Humanity, also unveiled its next generation of iris-scanning “Orbs” and other tools at a live event in […]
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