NextGov: The IRS has notified states that offered the free, government tax filing service known as Direct File in 2025 that the program won’t be available next filing season. In an email sent from the IRS to 25 states, the tax agency thanked them for collaborating and noted that “no launch date has been set for the future.”
“IRS Direct File will not be available in Filing Season 2026,” says the Monday email, obtained by Nextgov/FCW and confirmed by multiple sources. It follows reports that the program was ending and Trump’s former tax chief, Billy Long, remarking over the summer that the service was “gone.”
The program, which debuted in 2024, was a big shift from the decades-long IRS policy of not competing with the tax prep industry in offering its own free, online tax filing service for Americans. Many Republicans had opposed Direct File, and tax prep companies also lobbied against it.
iPadOS 26 is a huge deal for anyone who wishes Apple would just make a touchscreen MacBook already. The update rolls out a major multitasking redesign that introduces macOS-like windows, a macOS-like menu bar, and a macOS-like file management. The iPad even has the Preview app, for crying out loud—though, to be fair, so does the iPhone.
Apple has toed the line with its tablets over the years, introducing features and functions that make the experience more like using a computer, while never really committing to the bit entirely. To that point, iPadOS 26 probably won’t replace your MacBook, but it comes pretty close. If your major concerns have to do with things like window and file management, this update is likely up your alley. But even as this new iPad era seems all about a more traditional computing affair, Apple is going backwards a bit, but in a very good way: The latest iPadOS update brings back a fan-favorite multitasking feature: Slide Over.
Slide Over makes window management easier
Prior to iPadOS 26, Slide Over had been a cornerstone of multitasking on Apple’s tablets for years. While you could have multiple apps open at once in varying window sizes, Slide Over let you designate an app window that kept more of an iOS shape—specifically something long and vertical. As the name implies, this window could slide over from the ride side of the display whenever it was needed, and could easily slide back when it wasn’t. It was perfect for keeping a social media feed or a messaging app at hand while working on something else: Imagine having two windows open on your iPhone, one for Safari and one for Google Docs, but whenever you needed to send a text, you could pull a Messages window out from the right side of the screen, and swipe it away when it was time to get back to work.
The Mac has no equivalent to this, of course, as it relies on standard window management. Perhaps Apple thought that if iPadOS 26 also had more of a standard window management, it no longer needed Slide Over. As such, the company removed the feature as part of its big iPad update this fall. It’s not clear whether Apple received negative feedback about this omission, or whether the company decided it missed the feature as well, but regardless of the reasoning, Slide Over is back as of iPadOS 26.1.
Slide Over is a little different with iPadOS 26.1
Credit: Lifehacker
That said, t feature doesn’t work exactly the same as it used to. In order to use it, you need to be using your iPad in Stage Manager or windowed mode, which you can choose from Control Center, or from Settings > Multitasking & Gestures.
From here, open an app for which you want to use Slide Over. Long press on the window controls in the top-left corner of the app window, then choose “Enter Slide Over.” The app will squish into an iOS-like window on the right side of the display, and you can dismiss it by swiping it away. You can also resize the window into whatever shape or size you want, while still retaining that Slide Over ability. In the image above, you’ll see that I shrunk my Apple Music window into more of a square, but you can make it as big as you want—though that might defeat the purpose of setting it as a Slide Over window.
How to update to iPadOS 26.1 (and beyond)
If you haven’t yet done so, you can install the 26.1 update right now from Settings > General > Software Update. In addition to Slide Over, you’ll find some other neat features and changes, like the ability to control how Liquid Glass looks on your iPad. If you’re a beta tester, you’ll skip right over iPadOS 26.1, as Apple is currently testing iPadOS 26.2. The public beta is currently available, and lets you add alarms to reminders for the first time.
Meta said on Friday that it’s investing $600 billion in US infrastructure and jobs by 2028. Although the announcement is light on specifics (and heavy on standard Big Tech self-congratulation), it sounds like much of it will go toward AI data centers.
“At Meta, we’re focused on creating the next generation of AI products and building personal superintelligence for everyone,” the company wrote. “Data centers are crucial to reaching these goals and helping America maintain its technological edge.”
If you feel like this isn’t the first you’ve heard of Meta and $600 billion in US spending, you’re right. That’s the figure Mark Zuckerberg gave during a September White House dinner with Big Tech CEOs. But more memorable was the hot-mic moment later captured between Zuckerberg and President Trump. “Sorry, I wasn’t ready,” the Meta CEO said to the president, referring to his $600 billion pledge. “I wasn’t sure what number you wanted to go with.”
Meta’s announcement today includes figures intended to bolster its claim to be a champion of US infrastructure. The company says that, since 2010, its data centers have “supported over 30,000 skilled trade jobs and 5,000 operational jobs.” Meta adds that it’s currently bringing over $20 billion to US subcontractors.
As for the “superintelligence” mention, it also surfaced when Zuckerberg announced data center investments in July. That term typically refers to a hypothetical point at which AI surpasses human cognitive abilities. (Steve Wozniak, Geoffrey Hinton and others want it banned until it’s proven safe and controllable.) The company views its AI glasses as a central part of that future. Zuckerberg said in July that anyone without them may eventually suffer from a “pretty significant cognitive disadvantage.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/meta-says-it-will-invest-600-billion-in-the-us-with-ai-data-centers-front-and-center-195000377.html?src=rss
Motherboards are definitely getting more sophisticated but this new entrant from Gigabyte may take the cake, at least currently. Gigabyte’s new X870E Aorus Xtreme X3D AI TOP is a refined and revised version of its extant X870E Aorus Xtreme AI TOP motherboard that is targeted specifically at users with AMD’s Ryzen 9000X3D processors that feature
The KDE Project released today KDE Gear 25.08.3 as the third and last planned update for the KDE Gear 25.08 open-source software suite, with more bug fixes for your favorite KDE applications.
Another day, another malware attack on smartphones. Researchers at Unit 42, the threat intelligence arm of Palo Alto Networks, have revealed a sophisticated spyware known as “Landfall” targeting Samsung Galaxy phones. The researchers say this campaign leveraged a zero-day exploit in Samsung Android software to steal a raft of personal data, and it was active for almost a year. Thankfully, the underlying vulnerability has now been patched, and the attacks were most likely targeted at specific groups.
Unit 42 says that Landfall first appeared in July 2024, relying on a software flaw now catalogued as CVE-2025-21042. Samsung issued a patch for its phones in April 2025, but details of the attack have only been revealed now.
Even if you were out there poking around the darker corners of the Internet in 2024 and early 2025 with a Samsung Galaxy device, it’s unlikely you’d be infected. The team believes Landfall was used in the Middle East to target individuals for surveillance. It is currently unclear who was behind the attacks.
There’s a fine line between luxurious and ludicrous. When you’re talking about a pair of $799 headphones, that line begins to blur. Bowers & Wilkins has been on an excellent run of form over the past few years, consistently offering some of the best sound quality you’ll find on any headphones. It doesn’t load its models down with features — sometimes it could use a few more — but there’s always a great blend of design, audio performance and capable active noise cancellation (ANC) that make for well-rounded products.
And then there’s the Px8 S2. At $799, it’s $100 more expensive than its predecessor (the Px8) was at launch, which puts them even further out of reach for most. Bowers & Wilkins did change up its familiar design slightly, and there’s a big improvement to audio performance, the addition of high-res music over USB-C and improved call quality. There’s no doubt the Px8 S2 is beyond premium, but did the company go too far?
What’s new on the Px8 S2?
After several generations of the Px7 and Px8 that had pretty much the same design, Bowers & Wilkins changed things up a bit with the Px8 S2. There isn’t a comprehensive redesign here, but the slimmer ear cup silhouette and the exposed cabling on the headband yokes are notable improvements to the overall look. Once again, the company opted for a mix of soft leather and die-cast aluminum, both of which give the Px8 S2 a decidedly high-end aesthetic.
Inside, new 40mm carbon cone dynamic drivers were updated with a new chassis and motor. Those components are powered by 24-bit DSP (digital signal processing) with a dedicated amplifier and digital-to-analog converter (DAC). There’s also a more robust five-band EQ with True Sound bypass, which allows you to disable any equalizer tweaks to quickly return to Bowers & Wilkins’ stock tuning. The company added aptX Lossless support on top of the existing aptX Adaptive availability, and you can get “true” lossless — 24-bit/96kHz — sound quality over USB-C.
Compared to the previous model, the Px8 S2 has two more microphones, bringing the total to eight. Six of those are used for external monitoring for ANC while two keep tabs on noise inside the headphones. All eight are used during calls, in addition to an upgraded “pure voice” algorithm to improve performance there. You can also hear yourself better in transparency mode, which is the biggest boost to calls.
What’s still good on the Px8 S2?
The Px8 S2 has some subtle, but welcome design changes.
Billy Steele for Engadget
Bowers & Wilkins has excelled at crafting a warm, inviting and immersive sound profile across its headphones for a while now. That’s still the case on the Px8 S2 as the audio quality is rich and detailed, with a wide soundstage that envelops you — almost to the point of bombarding your ears. While I don’t think the bass tuning is well-suited for mellow genres, there’s plenty to like here. On albums like Jason Isbell’s Foxes in the Snow, for example, the amount of texture and subtle nuance where the only instruments are the singer’s voice and a single acoustic guitar is incredible.
Reliable battery life has been a strong point for the company in the past, and that remains true on the Px8 S2. The 30-hour battery figure (ANC on) is the same as the previous model, and I was able to easily achieve that longevity during my testing. With a mix of active noise cancellation, high-res tunes and transparency mode for work calls, the headphones easily kept up with Bowers & Wilkins’ promised numbers.
What’s not so good about the Px8 S2?
The Px8 S2’s controls are tiny buttons in awkward locations.
Billy Steele for Engadget
The biggest knock against the Px8 S2 is the price. These headphones are way more expensive than what most companies charge for their top-of-the-line models, which is around $500 these days. Sure, $799 is only $50 more than the tariff-adjusted rate for the Px8 (which was originally $699), and there are several upgrades here, but that price will be prohibitively expensive for many, thus making the S2 harder to recommend despite their strengths.
Even with the upgraded sound, I feel like Bowers & Wilkins may have gone too far with the bass tuning. There is some absolutely booming low-end tone on display here, especially for bass-heavy genres like rock, metal, EDM and hip-hop. On Spiritbox’s “Perfect Soul,” as one example, the kick drum edges dangerously close to drowning out the lead and bass guitars. A bit more restraint here would’ve provided ample thump and depth that isn’t almost exhausting to listen to. At times, the enhanced bass is great, but at others, like on Ruston Kelly’s Pale, Through the Window, it can really be too much for the style of music.
On its recent headphones, Bowers & Wilkins relocated the physical controls from sitting on the edge of their ear cups to a ridge on the outside. In the process, the company also made the buttons much smaller. As I said when I reviewed the Px7 S3, this makes the controls harder to find with your thumbs, and you also have to be more accurate with your presses. That’s especially true for the three-button array on the right side that handles volume changes and playback controls.
Like it did with its previous headphone models, Bowers & Wilkins hasn’t packed the Px8 S2’s spec sheet with advanced features. You do get a couple of basic items — multipoint Bluetooth and wear detection/automatic pausing — but things like speech recognition, hands-free assistants or automatic sound profiles aren’t here. This is an area where the likes of Sony, Bose and Sennheiser surpass Bowers & Wilkins, even though products like the Px8 S2 typically offer superior sound quality.
Wrap-up
The Px8 S2 offers a few notable upgrades over the Px8.
Billy Steele for Engadget
So how well does Bowers & Wilkins straddle that line between luxury and ludicrousness? I’d say the Px8 S2 is a luxurious set of headphones with a ludicrous price. I fully understand that Bowers & Wilkins is a high-end audio brand and that its products typically demand a premium over most of the competition. But like I already said, the price puts these excellent headphones out of reach. When you consider the price tag alongside the lack of advanced features, the Px8 S2 becomes hard to recommend. But for those who can afford them, a tantalizing symphony of sound awaits.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/headphones/bowers–wilkins-px8-s2-review-headphone-extravagance-193000794.html?src=rss
Flight cancellations under the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) government shutdown order have begun, with hundreds of flights and thousands of travelers across 40 U.S. airports affected. This could continue for as long as the shutdown lasts (and potentially impact many more travelers as the busy holiday season approaches).
While flight cancellations are never fun, the cascading effect of due to the government shutdown could make dealing with one even more frustrating. Here are four actions you should take right away if your itinerary is cut.
Enable alerts from your airline
Flight cancellations often happen with little to no notice, sometimes when you’re already en route to your destination, and airlines are certainly scrambling to comply with the FAA’s shutdown order. As they continue to pare down their schedules, there’s a chance your flight may be cut well before you head to the airport.
To keep yourself in the loop, download your airline’s app and turn on push notifications so you receive status updates as soon as they’re available—and keep an eye on your email and text messages for additional alerts.
Check your rebooking options ASAP
Airlines will often automatically rebook passengers whose flights are canceled on the next available alternative—so again, make sure you have your airline’s app on your phone to quickly view your options. If the airline offers this, you can accept the rebooked itinerary, choose a different one, or reject it and get a refund instead. Going through the mobile app is likely to be much faster than queuing at the customer service counter or trying to get through over the phone. (Though if you do need to talk to an actual person at your airline, we’ve got a guide for that.)
Of course, you should check your airline’s guidance specific to shutdown cancellations. Frontier, for example, is waiving change and cancellation fees and allowing passengers to request a rebooked itinerary or refund, but you may not automatically be placed on the next flight. United is offering rebooking options as well as refunds to anyone who chooses not to travel, even if their flight isn’t affected. You’ll find relevant advisories on your airline’s website (for example, Delta, American, JetBlue, and Southwest).
Know what you’re entitled to
If your flight is canceled less than 14 days before departure and you choose not to travel, you are entitled to a refund—even if you booked a nonrefundable or basic economy ticket. Airlines may offer travel credits or vouchers first, but you can try to request cash if that’s your preference.
You can look up your airline’s standard commitments in the event of “controllable” cancellations on the Department of Transportation’s Airline Cancellation and Delay Dashboard, but you should also check the policies specific to the FAA flight reduction as outlined above.
Consider booking a backup
If your trip is an absolute must, you may want to book a back-up option at a different time, on a different airline, or through an alternative airport. While there’s no guarantee that this flight won’t also be canceled, it does at least increase your odds of getting to your destination with a confirmed seat while other affected travelers are being rebooked on itineraries hours or days later.
You can buy a refundable ticket—knowing you’ll either get to where you need to go or get the extra money back if your original itinerary works out—or use points and miles, which are often easily deposited back into your account if you cancel your ticket. Be sure to check the terms and conditions of your rewards program. You can also look into travel insurance, which will usually fully refund your purchase, albeit for a fee
Web-based video games are experiencing an unexpected revival as the broader $189 billion industry stagnates. Sales for browser-based titles like GeoGuessr and chess were expected to triple from 2021 to 2028, reaching $3.09 billion, according to Google and Kantar. Playgama hosted more than 15,000 new web games in the first half of 2025, exceeding the combined total from 2021 through 2023.
Websites provide fast and easy access without console boot-ups or app downloads. Game creators sidestep the 30% revenue cuts imposed by Steam and Apple. Poki has doubled its employee count to 70 since 2020 and now serves 100 million monthly active users. A top-ten developer on the platform earns about $1 million in yearly revenue, up from $50,000 in 2020. Consoles cost more than $450, and smartphone gamers are downloading fewer apps. Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins predicted web games will be “one of the next waves.”
The federal government shutdown, now in its 38th day, prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to issue a temporary emergency order Thursday prohibiting commercial rocket launches from occurring during “peak hours” of air traffic.
The FAA also directed commercial airlines to reduce domestic flights from 40 “high impact airports” across the country in a phased approach beginning Friday. The agency said the order from the FAA’s administrator, Bryan Bedford, is aimed at addressing “safety risks and delays presented by air traffic controller staffing constraints caused by the continued lapse in appropriations.”
The government considers air traffic controllers essential workers, so they remain on the job without pay until Congress passes a federal budget and President Donald Trump signs it into law. The shutdown’s effects, which affected federal workers most severely at first, are now rippling across the broader economy.
Zwift Camp: Build begins this Monday, November 10. This is a 5-stage route-based workout series, with each stage lasting one week and focusing on developing power over a specific time interval.
My plan is to do each of the five workouts before their weeks begin, so I can write a post unpacking the workout and delivering some tips along the way. This post covers Stage 1’s workout on Glasgow Crit Six, but before we get there, let’s talk a bit about what Zwift Camp: Build is… and isn’t.
Setting Expectations
Zwift Camp: Build is the second in a series of three Camps planned for the 2025/26 season. We began with Zwift Camp: Baseline, which featured four workouts that pushed us to set maximal power numbers for 5 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, and 20 minutes.
Now we have Zwift Camp: Build, which features workouts where we repeatedly go hard across approximately the same intervals as Baseline used, to build fitness in those systems. (Important note: “approximately” is the keyword here, because the workouts aren’t precisely targeting 5-second, 1-minute, 5-minute, and 20-minute power intervals. Route-based workouts use distance instead of time-based efforts, so Zwift has chosen segments that come close to the target intervals.)
Lastly, in the spring of 2026, we’ll have Zwift Camp: Breakthrough. This Camp will feature some competition and analysis of our power performances.
Who Is It For?
These Zwift Camps are designed as an accessible entry into structured training and analysis. The workouts are fairly short, so the vast majority of riders will be able to complete them. And you only need to do one workout per week to complete the program, meaning most riders can fit Zwift Camp into their current training load.
If you’re a newer cyclist who hasn’t done much structured training, or if you’re a more experienced rider looking to bring a bit of focus and specificity to your training, Zwift Camps may be helpful.
But this isn’t a full-blown periodized training program like you get from a coach, TrainerRoad, or even Zwift’s own training program library. If you’re an intermediate to experienced rider who already trains with even a medium level of structure and specificity, you’ll probably find Zwift Camps don’t offer what you need. Yes, you can do the same Zwift Camp workout more than once to further train a particular system. But experienced riders will probably need to focus much more than one week and a couple of sessions on a particular energy system to see results.
With that said, let’s get into Stage 1’s workout!
Stage 1 Walkthrough: Neuromuscular (~5 Seconds)
The first stage of Zwift Camp: Build focuses on short-term sprint power. To do so, it puts you on the new Glasgow Crit Six route, which takes you on six laps of the Glasgow Crit Circuit for a total distance of 18.3km and 199m of elevation gain.
The key part of this route-based workout is the five maximal sprints on the Champion’s Sprint segment, which comes up at the end of each lap and takes most riders 12-15 seconds to complete. The route actually takes you through the Champion’s Sprint seven times, but if you follow the simple instructions on screen, you won’t sprint the first or last time through the segment.
I went into the workout with semi-tired legs, so I planned to just push hard for the final ~5 seconds of each sprint. (The on-screen instructions have you pushing hard throughout the sprint, but this is your workout, and you can do with it what you will.) I did do a longer sprint on the final effort, just to say I’d followed the rules somewhat!
You’ll notice some HUD changes in these route-based workouts. First, if you’re using virtual shifting, your current gear is shown top-center at all times.
Additionally, after your first sprint, the Splits and Ride Stats HUD elements automatically pop up. Ride Stats goes away after a few seconds, but Splits remains throughout the ride, automatically creating a new lap split at the start of each lap. (This auto-lapping is a handy feature some ride organizers might like to use!)
I actually found the Ride Stats HUD more useful for this particular workout, as I wasn’t chasing lap times. (The Splits HUD will be handy, though, in other workouts, including Stage 3, where we ride Volcano Circuit laps as a VO2 workout.) I liked the Ride Stats block because it showed my 5-second power best for the ride, giving me a target to beat.
The on-screen prompts make it clear that you are supposed to rest in between sprints. Even up the Clyde Kicker, your goal is to spin easy so the legs can recharge for another full-gas sprint effort.
I was riding this as a solo test event, so there was nobody else on screen for me to chase. That made it easy to go easy. Fair warning: if you execute this workout in a group event, it may be harder to dial it down and spin between sprints. (Because, as they say, if two cyclists show up, it’s a race…)
At the end of the workout, you’ll earn the Glasgow Crit Six achievement badge, along with a 360 XP bonus.
HoloReplay Tips
Zwift’s HoloReplay may be a very helpful feature in these route-based workouts, giving you a target to beat on each segment effort. Admittedly, I spent more time confused and slightly annoyed at HoloReplay during my workout than I did chasing the ghosts, but for future workouts I’ll try to be more intentional about chasing my previous self!
You’ll want to set up HoloReplay in a specific way so it enhances your experience without detracting from it. Here are the settings to use:
Note: if you set “HoloReplay Privacy” to “Public” instead of “Private”, you’ll get a second HoloReplay of yourself at each segment, which corresponds to your best effort currently listed on that segment’s leaderboard. This is the mistake I made when doing the Stage 1 workout, but really, it seems more like a bug, based on the description of what the setting does, and the fact I had “Leaderboard HoloReplay” set to “Hide”…
It powers maximal efforts lasting up to ~15 seconds
It’s like a high-powered battery in that it produces a lot of power quickly, depletes quickly, but can also recharge if you rest for a few minutes
It’s the least adaptable of your three energy systems
Sprint Training Tips
While this workout won’t lead to significant neuromuscular energy system adaptations – it is the least adaptable energy system, after all – it can help you improve your sprinting form and efficiency. And you can make big sprint gains by improving form and efficiency!
Whoever put together the script for this route-based workout seemed to know this, as there are several prompts which focus on form and efficiency, such as, “Think about your gear choice. Maybe try a quicker wind-up this time. Keep your body relaxed and ride efficiently.”
I would have liked to see more prompts like this, though, because many riders could use a bit of coaching to maximize their sprints! I hosted a ride called Sprintapalooza for years, where we rode short circuit routes with sprint segments, going all-in to set segment PRs and compete for the green jersey while working on our sprint form. Through that, I learned a lot about sprinting.
Here are a few tips to maximize your sprint power:
Proper gearing is very important. Too easy a gear and you’ll spin out without enough resistance to push against. Too hard and you’ll be mashing and unable to maximize your power either. Experiment with different gearing in your maximal sprints, and you’ll come to learn which one or two gears work for you in most situations.
Check your form: I’m a big fan of rocker plates, partly because they let me rock the bike back and forth naturally when sprinting on Zwift. If you have one, make sure you aren’t riding it backwards, and be sure to take advantage of its movement. (If you don’t have a rocker plate, your form will differ greatly from good outdoor form.)
Work on cadence: power on the bike is computed using two values: torque (how hard you’re pushing the pedals) and cadence (how fast the pedals are moving). Increase either of these, and your power goes up. Work on high-cadence drills and you may just find you’ve unlocked more sprint power!
Suggestion Box
Overall, I’d say this first workout of Zwift Camp: Build went well. The script was on point, and the course was a good one for sprint repeats. That said, here are a few ways Zwift could improve the experience:
Average segment power history: As mentioned above, I would love to see a HUD element that shows my power average across the target segment every lap, so I can see how those numbers are changing as the workout unfolds.
Improve the event description: Zwift likes to set up these massive event series with a pile of identical text dumped into each and every event’s description. It appears that’s what they’re doing with Zwift Camp: Baseline, too. Why not customize the text for each stage, and make it more useful? Share specifics about what we’re trying to accomplish in that session, and why it matters. And get rid of every word that isn’t needed.
More technique tips: especially when it comes to maximal sprints, form and efficiency are huge factors. Talk about that more during the session. Zwift could even link to further resources in the event description.
Questions or Comments?
Have you done this workout yet? Share your thoughts below, or any questions you may have heading into the workout.
Thanksgiving should be one of the least stressful holidays—the sole achievement you’re trying to unlock is to eat yourself into a coma, which many of us can do any time, with zero prep. But there are some sneaky sources of stress, from the expense of pulling it all together to the travel arrangements needed to make sure everyone arrives in time for appetizers—not to mention the stress of cooking Thanksgiving dinner. The unlucky host has the responsibility of not only feeding a large group of people, but making sure everything comes out more or less on time—and then cleaning up the spectacular mess afterward.
Luckily, modern science and engineering have occasionally turned their genius toward the kitchen, and the result is a list of tools and gadgets you might not immediately think of, but that can make cooking, serving, and cleaning up after Thanksgiving dinner a lot easier.
Automatic pan stirrer
Do you have an automatic stirrer? Probably not. Do you need one? Probably yes. One of the key stress points of Thanksgiving dinner (or any large dinner party) is the balancing act of cooking multiple dishes so they’re all ready at the right time. Plenty of dishes require constant stirring to ensure they thicken correctly, don’t lump up, and don’t burn, but it’s one of the easiest things to forget when you’re juggling a dozen other things. Having one of these on hand means you’ll never burn the gravy ever again.
Electric turkey fryer
If you’re a purist, you think of a Thanksgiving turkey as something that gets pulled from the oven with much fanfare. If you’re a little adventurous, you might try to deep-fry your turkey, which results in injuries and property damage every year (because turkeys tend to explode when deep-fried), including about five deaths each year. But if you want a faster, crispier turkey than your oven can give you, invest in an electric turkey fryer. You’ll get a crispy, tender bird in much less time without the danger of your turkey transforming into a bomb. Plus, using this will leave your oven free for other things, giving you a little more capacity.
Don’t have a stuffing cage? That’s okay, no one has a stuffing cage. But you should get a stuffing cage, because it makes getting all that stuffing out of the turkey much easier. You form your stuffing into the cage and insert it into the bird, and when the cooking’s done you just pull it out and you have all your stuffing ready to go—no annoying scraping and much less mess.
Fat separator
You will be judged on many aspects of your Thanksgiving meal, but people get judgier about gravy than anything else. If you want smooth, silky, delicious gravy, you want a fat separator. Just pour your drippings in and let it filter out the solids. The fat will rise to the top, and then you can pour those delicious, filtered drippings into a bowl for gravy preparation. It’s a simple tool, but its impact on your gravy game will be striking.
Electric buffet
Here’s the secret: No one gets the timing right. Your sides will be ready before you’re ready. Something will delay the main course, and you’ll have bowls of mashed potatoes or stuffing sitting around. Or dinner will be generally delayed, or your guests will be delayed, and your hot appetizers will glaze over and go cold. Enter the compact buffet: Keep several dishes nice and warm for as long as you need. Whether you need to buy time with side dishes so you can finish a recalcitrant turkey or your guests are delayed by traffic jams, this is the difference between a microwaved Thanksgiving and having piping hot food ready to go.
Measuring stuff can be maddening. You pour, weigh, then scoop and hope you don’t spill any. At some point every year, I just give up measuring things accurately and start winging it, eyeballing everything. By the time guests start arriving, I’m usually just tossing stuff into bowls and pots with something that could be described as “wild abandon.” A digital measuring spoon cuts out the middle step of using a scale or measuring cup. Just scoop what you need and pour off the excess until you have the right amount. Then dash it into your dish and move on to the next ingredient you need to measure. Over time, those saved seconds will add up.
Mini pie-maker
Are you making some pies for Thanksgiving? Does everyone on your guest list agree on the pie they want? Or will you make four full-sized pies that will be half leftover when everyone’s gone? Leftover pie isn’t exactly a crisis, but if you’re not going to dedicate your life to eating pie, it can be a huge waste. A mini pie-maker means you can a) make a variety of pies for your guests that b) won’t be left over. Plus, it can bake up pies quickly, so if you miscalculate how much pie you need you can whip up a few more at the last minute.
Food-warming mats
Keeping food warm is a challenge for most Thanksgiving cooks. Dishes come off the stove and then sit for a while while you figure out the rest of the meal, herd the crowd from the television into the dining room, and go through the ceremony of toasts and carving. By the time the gravy gets passed around, it’s lukewarm, the temperature of disappointment. A warming mat is the solution. While an electric buffet can keep side dishes warm, a warming mat can keep everything else ready to eat, and all you have to do is set plates and bowls on it until they’re needed.
A 5-in-1 tool
If you’re me, you know that you lose significant minutes searching for tools when you’re cooking a big meal. First, you can’t find what you need. Then, you find what you need, but after you use it, it needs to be cleaned for its next use. Then it gets buried under the pot holders or kitchen towels, and you spend a frantic two minutes searching for it while trying to affect a cool, calm demeanor to your guests. Make life easier with this 5-in-1 tool or something similar. It combines a cutting tool, a spoon, a spatula, a slotted spoon, and a turner into one silicone wonder. Use, wipe clean, use again—and eliminate the need to have all those extra implements crowding your counter space.
Whisk wiper
If you’re going to be using a hand mixer to make some of your Thanksgiving dishes, like mashed potatoes or desserts, the whisk wiper is a must. Instead of having to scrub your whisks and bowls in the sink to prep them for the next dish on the menu, you can wipe them clean in seconds and jump right back into the fray. Plus, it lets you scrape every last bit of your food into the serving, so you’re not dumping a big glob of it down the sink.
Splatter guard
If you fry stuff, you know that a splatter guard is a necessity. But traditional screens make it tough to stir and flip food while you’re cooking, because you have to keep lifting the guard away. This splatter guard works differently, protecting your surroundings from, well, splatter while giving you full access to the cooking surface and your food so you can flip, stir, baste, or season as needed without risking a splatter disaster. This won’t necessarily speed up cooking, but it will make the eventual cleanup a lot easier and faster, since you won’t need to scrub down the walls.
Turkey lifter
If you’ve cooked a turkey (or a roast), you know that there’s a “last mile” problem: Getting it from the pan to the serving dish or carving station. If you’ve done your job, your turkey will be tender and easy to pull apart, which can make transferring it a comedy of messy errors. A Turkey Lifter is the dumb solution you didn’t know you needed. Place the lifter under the turkey when you put it in the oven, and when it’s finished, you can just lift the whole thing out easily.
Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) has a ‘for sale’ sign up. And that could mean big changes for subscribers to the company’s most popular streaming service, HBO Max.
After receiving unsolicited acquisition offers, WBD recently declared itself open to “strategic alternatives to maximize shareholder value.” WBD drew new attention by being open to selling its streaming business (WBD is also still open to moving forward with previously shared plans to split into a cable company and a streaming and movie studios company next year).
Naturally, mergers and acquisitions talk has heated up since then, with Paramount as one of the most eager suitors. Paramount, which merged with Skydance in August, is reportedly planning to keep “much of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. intact” if a deal happens, per a Bloomberg report that cited unnamed people familiar with the plans of David Ellison, Paramount’s CEO.
An anonymous reader shares a report: On the new MacOS 26 (Tahoe), Apple has mandated that all application icons fit into their prescribed squircle. No longer can icons have distinct shapes, nor even any fun frame-breaking accessories. Should an icon be so foolish as to try to have a bit of personality, it will find itself stuffed into a dingy gray icon jail.
[…] While Apple had previously urged developers to use squircle icons on our apps, they’ve now taken things much further to ensure compliance. It’s a shame. Apple updated their own app icons on Tahoe, for both the squircle shape as well as the new “Liquid Glass” interface. Mostly, these icons seem dumbed-down, with a loss of detail.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is trying to unmask the operator of Archive.is, also known as Archive.today, a website that saves snapshots of webpages and is commonly used to bypass news paywalls.
The FBI sent a subpoena to domain registrar Tucows, seeking “subscriber information on [the] customer behind archive.today” in connection with “a federal criminal investigation being conducted by the FBI.” The subpoena tells Tucows that “your company is required to furnish this information.”
The subpoena is supposed to be secret, but the Archive.today X account posted the document on October 30, the same day the subpoena was issued. The X post contained a link to the PDF and the word “canary.”
At a White House event Thursday, President Trump announced deals with drug makers Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly to offer their popular GLP-1 obesity and diabetes drugs at lower prices for some Americans, namely some on Medicare and Medicaid plans. But questions linger about the significance of the deal.
According to the announcement, Medicare and state Medicaid programs will be able to purchase a month’s supply of Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound at $245 each for eligible patients. Eligible people on Medicare will have a $50 co-pay for them.
The negotiated price is a significant cut from the drugs’ list prices: The list price for Ozempic is $997; Wegovy is $1,350; Mounjaro is $1,080; and Zepbound is $1,086. But, of course, purchasers rarely pay drug list prices. It’s unclear how much Medicare and Medicaid would have paid for the drugs without this deal and what the savings will be.
Last year Brazil saw its biggest drop in emissions since 2009, new data show. The decline comes in the wake of a crackdown on deforestation. From a report: Since returning to power in 2022, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has moved to stem illicit clearing of forest by miners, loggers, and farmers, stepping up enforcement that had been weakened under his predecessor, far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon is now at its lowest level in more than a decade.
In Brazil, forests are largely destroyed to create new cropland and pasture, and together, the loss of forest and raising of cattle are its biggest sources of emissions. Lula’s crackdown on illegal deforesters has put those emissions in check. According to the Climate Observatory, a green group, Brazilian emissions fell by 16.7 percent last year. “The new data shows the impact of the federal government retaking control over deforestation after a deliberate lack of control between 2019 and 2022,” when Bolsonaro held office, the group said in a statement.
Lula aims to end illegal deforestation entirely by the end of this decade, but as he makes progress on this goal, Brazil is still facing worsening droughts and fires fueled by warming. Last year, fires accounted for two-thirds of the primary tropical forest lost in Brazil, according to the World Resources Institute. Often small fires used to clear land get out of control, burning through larger, drought-ridden areas.
The New York Times has announced a new feature that allows you to make your own Wordle puzzle to share with friends. You need to be a Games or All-Access subscriber to create puzzles, but no subscription is needed to solve them.
You aren’t roped to regular Wordle’s five-letter structure, either: Allowable puzzles can be anywhere from four to seven letters long. They must be on an allowable word list; as with regular Wordle, this means no proper nouns, for the most part. Profanity is not allowed, nor are gibberish entries like “ASDFGJ” (I tried).
Here’s a link to a Wordle-style puzzle with four letters that I created for you—because I consider all of you my friends. (This is not the puzzle I’ve used to create the screenshots in this article, so no worries about spoilers.) Good luck!
How to create your own Wordle on the NYT Games site
Here is the link to the puzzle creator. You need to be a Games (or NYT All-Access) subscriber to use it. When creating a puzzle, you’ll enter your solution word, your name, and an optional clue. After creating the puzzle, you can share it with a message like the one above. Anybody can click the included link and play the puzzle, no subscription required.
When you solve somebody’s puzzle, you can share your results in much the same way as a regular Wordle solution, but there’s also an option to include spoilers. This could be a fun way to show your guesses to the person who created the puzzle.
Yes, I was mean. Credit: Beth Skwarecki
Custom Wordles can be surprisingly challenging
When playing around with this tool, I discovered that Wordle-style puzzles that aren’t five letters are harder than you’d think. I found myself struggling to think of any good seven-letter words at all. The puzzle still gives you six guesses, same as with a standard five-letter Wordle, no matter how many letters are in the solution. Good luck with the longer ones!
Data can paint a much starker contrast than words alone, and US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) appears to get that. On Friday, her office published numbers on Big Tech’s tax breaks in Republicans’ “Big Beautiful Bill.” When compared with the benefits those sums could have provided for working families, it helps to fortify what some might otherwise dismiss as run-of-the-mill rhetoric.
According to Sen. Warren, the bill’s tax breaks for Microsoft alone will total $12.5 billion in 2026. When compared with the average cost of SNAP benefits, that sum could have provided food assistance to 5.2 million people. Or, it could have covered Medicaid for 1.6 million adults (or 3.8 million children), or lowered Affordable Care Act (ACA) premiums for 1.9 million Americans.
Meanwhile, Warren says Amazon is set to score a $16 billion tax break this year. That’s the equivalent of Medicaid for 2 million adults (or 5.4 million children), lower ACA payments for 2.4 million Americans or SNAP benefits for 6.6 million people.
What about the tax breaks Alphabet gets? Warren says Google’s parent company is looking at a $17.9 billion tax cut this year. That could pay for Medicaid for 2.3 million adults (or 5.4 million kids), lower ACA premiums for 2.8 million people or food assistance for 7.5 million people.
If you’re confused about why Big Tech is helping to pay for a lavish White House ballroom, look no further. Regardless, Warren’s analysis goes on to break down the $137 billion in tax breaks for all corporations in 2026, the $132 billion routed to the wealthiest one percent in 2027 and more. You can read the senator’s full report for more details.
“Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are knocking millions of Americans off their health insurance and ripping away food assistance from families — all so they can fund giant tax cuts for billionaires and giant corporations,” Warren said in a statement. “This is a matter of priorities: Trump and Republicans are fighting for their billionaire buddies, while Democrats are fighting for American families.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/sen-warren-big-techs-tax-breaks-could-have-covered-benefits-for-millions-of-americans-174831791.html?src=rss
