Mazda, the automaker that for years defended its scroll-wheel infotainment system as a safer alternative to touchscreens, is abandoning the approach entirely in the 2026 CX-5 in favor of a 15.6-inch touchscreen and zero physical buttons.
The current lineup — the CX-50 Hybrid, CX-70 and CX-90 — still relies on a console-mounted scroll wheel and dedicated action buttons to navigate a tablet-like screen perched atop the dashboard. Upper-trim CX-70 and CX-90 models do have 12.3-inch touchscreens, but touch input only works when parked and only inside CarPlay; it disables automatically once the car is in drive.
The new CX-5 goes the other direction entirely, eliminating all hard buttons including the volume knob and physical climate controls that current models still offer. Mazda says the touchscreen is safe because core functions like climate are pinned to a persistent bottom bar — an approach Ford, Rivian, and most of the industry adopted years ago.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Snapchat is taking a page out of Meta’s handbook. The social media platform has announced it will launch creator subscriptions for users. Meta-owned Instagram and Facebook currently offer a similar feature.
On Snapchat, creator subscriptions will give users access to exclusive content across Snaps and Stories. They will also get priority replies and go ad-free on stories. Snapchat pitches the new feature as great way to give creators “freedom to experiment” and “build a recurring income stream” — all good things for keeping people on your platform.
Creators can choose exactly how much they want to charge subscribers per month. They can spread these figures out across Snapchat’s recommended tiers.
Starting February 23, select US-based Snapchat creators will be able to offer subscriptions. In the US, iOS users should then be able to subscribe to their accounts. The feature should expand to Canada, France, and the UK in the coming weeks.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/snapchat-is-rolling-out-creator-subscriptions-152114731.html?src=rss
Wi-Fi
Nintendo’s Virtual Boy app is now available to download on Switch and Switch 2 as part of its Nintendo Classics offering. You’ll need to have a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership to access the launch titles, and unlike Nintendo’s other retro emulators, this one also requires a dedicated accessory.
As a reminder, the Virtual Boy was a portable tabletop system released in 1995, and the first console capable of rendering stereoscopic 3D graphics. It had a facemask with a monochrome red display built onto a bipod, so rather than wearing it like a modern VR headset, you had to awkwardly push your face towards it to play games.
Once you enter the third dimension, there’s no going back…#VirtualBoy – Nintendo Classics is available now on #NintendoSwitch2 and #NintendoSwitch, as part of #NintendoSwitchOnline + Expansion Pack! pic.twitter.com/2uLd8iYorB
— Nintendo UK (@NintendoUK) February 17, 2026
While undeniably innovative for the time, the console never took off (to put it gently), but Nintendo is giving anyone who missed out in the ’90s a chance to experience one of the strangest experiments in its history in 2026. Aesthetically, the $100 Virtual Boy add-on is a near perfect replica of the original console, with the big difference being that rather than a built-in display, it has a slot for sliding in your Switch or Switch 2. And unlike the OG Virtual Boy, this one is also wireless.
If $100 seems a bit steep for something that’ll almost certainly be collecting dust before summer rolls around, Nintendo is also selling a $25 cardboard version (unfortunately your old Labo VR headset won’t work here). Both are available to buy from the My Nintendo Store.
The Virtual Boy app is launching with the following games today: 3d Tetris, Galactic Pinball, Golf, The Mansion of Innsmouth, Red Alarm, Teleroboxer and Virtual Boy Wario Land. More games will be added in the future, including Mario Clash, Mario’s Tennis and Space Invaders Virtual Collection.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/nintendos-virtual-boy-app-is-now-available-to-download-150705800.html?src=rss
During the flurry of CES 2026 news at the start of the year, it might have been easy to overlook Amazon’s announcement that the Fire TV user interface is getting a revamp. But that redesign is rolling out starting today for US viewers. It will be available to users as a free update.
The main visual updates for the streaming device’s UI are a lot of rounded corners. But Amazon is also emphasizing speed in this new look, claiming that the improvements will offer 20 to 30 percent faster interactions. This version of the UI also makes more apps visible on the screen at a time, with up to 20 apps able to be pinned to the homescreen compared with six in the prior design. The update also has access to the Alexa+ AI voice assistant if you want to use it to pull up viewing suggestions or to organize your viewing queue.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/amazons-fire-tv-redesign-is-rolling-out-today-150000988.html?src=rss
There’s little worse than losing an hour or two of hard work, just by clicking on the wrong button or pressing the wrong key in Microsoft Word—a mistake that sees your well-crafted document (or a sizable portion of it) disappear before your eyes.
A slip of the fingers isn’t the only way you can potentially lose work, either. Maybe you just have the misfortune to be busy at your computer when a power outage happens—taking your desktop, Microsoft Word, and your unsaved work along with it.
However, before you begin all over again, there are some tricks you can try to bring your work back.
Sometimes, all you need is the undo command—hit Ctrl+Z (Windows) or Cmd+Z (macOS) to undo your last action in Word. It might be enough to restore that table you accidentally deleted, or bring back that huge block of text you moved to the clipboard and have since lost track of.
This won’t save you from a power outage, and it doesn’t include all actions (it won’t bring back a file you’ve closed, for example). However, it’ll work a lot of the time when you’ve made a mistake, and Word always keeps a record of your last 100 actions in the app, so you can go back a fair way.
There’s also an undo button up in the top left corner of the Word interface: Click on this to undo the last action, or click the arrow next to it to see a list of previous actions and choose where you want to go back to. To the right of the undo button is the redo button, which works the same way but in the opposite direction.
Word also has a file version history feature you can utilize to bring back lost work: It essentially saves past versions of your document at regular intervals, so you can go back in time, and even all the way back to the file’s creation. It’s like a super undo, which works between app restarts as well.
In Word for Windows, you can find these older incarnations of your document by heading to File > Info > Version History. If you’re using Word on macOS, it’s File > Browse Version History. A new sidebar opens on the right, showing all the available previous versions, and the date and time they were saved.
There is a caveat to this, though, which is you have to have your document saved in the cloud (in OneDrive) for this to work. If you’re working with a local file that’s only saved on your computer and you try and access version history, you’ll be prompted to save it to OneDrive instead (which will turn on version history).
Word actually saves files temporarily to your computer every so often, so if the program crashes without warning, you should see an autorecovery dialog pop up the next time you load Word, asking if you want to recover the old file. If not, you can see partially saved files by clicking Click File > Info > Manage Document > Recover Unsaved Documents.
That’s only for Windows, however—if you’re on macOS, you’re relying on the auto-recovery process. Word for both Windows and macOS lets you set how often auto-recovery files are saved: Head to File > Options > Save (Windows) or Word > Preferences > Save (macOS). The default is every 10 minutes, but you can adjust this if needed.
If you’re still not seeing your file, you can try checking the temporary cache folder manually. On Windows, check “C:Users
These days, Microsoft Word will tend to push you to save your work in OneDrive in the cloud. There are multiple benefits for this, including the version history feature mentioned above, and the option to collaborate on documents with other people. It also enables another handy feature: AutoSave.
This is exactly what it sounds like, and means that every time something is changed in your document, it quickly syncs to the cloud. You’ll see the AutoSave button in the top left hand corner enabled when it’s active, and the document name at the top of the app window will indicate when saves are in progress.
Should Word or your PC crash, your work should be safe. AutoSave is enabled by default for files saved to OneDrive, but you can customize this behavior by heading to File > Options > Save on Windows) or Word > Preferences > Save on macOS.
Announced
The software industry’s decades-old habit of charging companies a flat fee for every employee who uses a product is running into a fundamental problem: AI agents don’t sit in chairs, and they don’t need licences.
As autonomous agents take on tasks that human workers once handled, the per-seat pricing model that made SaaS revenue so predictable is giving way to consumption-based and hybrid alternatives. Snowflake and Databricks (valued at $134 billion) already charge based on usage. Salesforce initially priced its Agentforce customer relations bot at $2 per conversation but faced customer pushback and now offers action-based pricing, upfront credits and fixed fees.
ServiceNow’s finance chief Amit Zavery said last month that some customers aren’t ready for purely consumption-based models. Goldman Sachs estimates US software spending will nearly triple to $2.8 trillion by 2037 as automated tasks blur the boundary between IT and wage budgets, but that money will no longer arrive in the neat recurring instalments that investors and private equity firms have come to expect.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
This week we’re taking a look at some hyper-specific cultures within the larger youth culture. They run the gamut from the truly disturbing Looksmaxxing community, to the strange world of hardcore audiophiles, to the nostalgic domain of the bebot girls. What’s a bebot girl? I’m glad you asked!
TikTok is being taken over by Bebot Girls. “Bebot” is Filipino slang from the 2010s that means “babe” or “baddie.” The bebot girl trend is posting videos of the transformation from a regular person to a bebot, that is, a Filipino baddy from the 1990s. This is usually accomplished through period-appropriate makeup like heavy bronzer, frosty inner eyes, and striking metallic eyeshadow. It looks like this:
and this:
The trend started with TikToker @bellepauleen posting this video, which revived the term. The bebot anthem and soundtrack to the these videos is Black Eyed Peas 2005 song “Bebot.” Bebot girls seems like part of the same nostalgia trend that brought us Millennial Optimism and nostalgia for 2016, but with a huge dose of Filipino pride. If you want to watch bedot girl videos all day, check out the hashtag.
This week in people who are famous to your children but not you, we have Clavicular. His real name is Braden Peters, he was born in 2005, and he is the world’s most famous looksmaxxer.
Looksmaxxing (as you can read in my Gen Z and Gen A slang glossary) is maximizing one’s physical attractiveness through personal grooming, working out, and dressing stylishly. That doesn’t sound terrible in theory, but in practice, looksmaxxing is nihilistic vanity. To the Looksmaxxer, there’s a single standard for male attractiveness: basically being a lantern-jawed white dude. And there is nothing more important than looks. Being smart, cool, interesting, good-hearted, talented etc. does not matter; the only quality that is worthwhile is how you look. Looksmaxxers are insanely obsessive about defining what makes a person attractive. They measure their canthal tilt (the angle of the eyes), obsess over their maxilla (upper jaw), and know their exact biacromial width (the span of the clavicle.) Clavicular’s is 19.5 inches, hence the name.
Clavicular’s fame comes from his Kick channel, where he films himself rating other people’s looks, walking around being handsome, giving advice to his followers on how they can “ascend,” (become more attractive) and going on dates. As expected, he does sell an online course. To achieve his look, Clav says he’s been injecting himself with testosterone since he was 14, takes steroids regularly, and smashed his cheekbones with a hammer so they would grow more prominent. There are rumors that he takes meth to keep his weight down too. Although he describes himself as apolitical, Clavicular’s associates include right-wing influencers Nick Fuentes, Sneako, Andrew Tate, and more. He says the n-word all the time.
So all this is very bad, and it’s all growing in popularity among boys of the brainrot generation. So be warned, I guess: Young boys are not OK.
While niche communities like Looksmaxxers are depressing, many young people are into much less dire interest groups, like audiophiles. Within that community, audio equipment is sometimes referred to as “Big John machines,” because people are demonstrating their ridiculously expensive audio set-ups by playing a Geoff Castelucci cover of Jimmy Dean’s 1961 novelty hit “Big Bad John.”
It started with a post on Reddit’s audiophile subreddit, describing the original song as “an interesting example of how good audio systems can bring out more life in a recording.” So people started posting videos of extremely exotic and expensive systems playing the song. Like this system with $2 million speakers:
Then people started posting their own systems playing the song. Or just middle-of-the-road gear. Then people started posting the cheapest gear that can play “Big Bad John,” like this:
and this:
Recently, TikTokers Toni & Austin posted the following 11-second video, dubbed “The Leaf Test.”
In it, Toni says, “I found a leaf,” and Austin responds “It’s beautiful, just like you.” She sighs. He panics, presumably having said the wrong thing. It’s mildly funny, but it went viral in a huge way—over 18 million views— for maybe the wrong reasons.
Despite it being very, very clear that the clip is a joke, the video’s comment section is full of anger, with people saying things like, “Dump her ungrateful ass,” “He deserves someone better,” and “Can we normalize not doing test on our boyfriends he gave a perfect and valid answer and how are we still gonna get upset??”
People started making response videos:
It spread off TikTok. Reddit got extra mad about the leaf test.
I don’t know if there’s any way to measure this, but the internet has made people way less able to understand when someone is being ironic or sarcastic, whether it’s misinterpreted written posts on Threads or joke videos on TikTok. The internet seems to have made people less likely to moderate their responses; people are fast on the trigger.
Up to a third of people worldwide have shoulder pain; it’s one of the most common musculoskeletal complaints. But medical imaging might not reveal the problem—in fact, it could even cloud it.
In a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine this week, 99 percent of adults over 40 were found to have at least one abnormality in a rotator cuff on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The rotator cuff is the group of muscles and tendons in a shoulder joint that keeps the upper arm bone securely in the shoulder socket—and is often blamed for pain and other symptoms. The trouble is, the vast majority of the people in the study had no problems with their shoulders.
The finding calls into question the growing use of MRIs to try to diagnose shoulder pain—and, in turn, the growing problem of overtreatment of rotator cuff (RC) abnormalities, which includes partial- and full-thickness tears as well as signs of tendinopathy (tendon swelling and thickening).
Valve has updated the Steam Deck website to say that the Steam Deck OLED may be out of stock “intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages.” From a report: The PC gaming handheld has been out of stock in the US and other parts of the world for a few days, and thanks to this update, we now know why. The update comes shortly after Valve delayed the Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller from a planned shipping window of early 2026 because of the memory and storage crunch.
“We have work to do to land on concrete pricing and launch dates that we can confidently announce, being mindful of how quickly the circumstances around both of those things can change,” Valve said in a post about that announcement from earlier this month. Its goal is to launch that new hardware sometime in the first half of 2026, and the company is working to finalize its plans “as soon as possible.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Anthropic’s Claude is an AI bot that keeps up a steady pace when it comes to pushing out new features, and the latest upgrade of note sees three useful features make their way down to free users, having previously been exclusive to the paid-for plans.
If you’re choosing between AIs and comparing the features available on the free plans, then there’s now more of a case to be made for choosing Claude over a competitor like ChatGPT or Gemini for your next batch of AI tasks.
The three new features now available to free users on Claude are file creation, external plug-ins called Connectors, and bundles of instructions called Skills. Here’s how you can make use of them.
Claude’s file creation capabilities let you create Word documents, PowerPoint slideshows, Excel spreadsheets, and PDFs from right inside a conversation. You can either supply the bot with all text, data, and other information you want included, get Claude to invent everything itself, or something in between.
For example, if you’ve got a long list of names and scores, Claude can put them into a spreadsheet for you. If you’ve got a series of images, Claude can combine them into a PDF and describe them. You can get it to analyze and visualize data, produce presentations based on reports, and create summary documents.
To enable file creation for your account, click your profile icon (bottom left) in Claude on the web, then select Settings > Capabilities and enable Code execution and file creation. With that done, you just have to prompt Claude with the type of file you want to make and what you want included, supplying any information as needed (or telling the AI where to find it online).
As usual with these AI bots, the more detail and specificity you can provide, the better—the end result is then more likely to be closer to what you were aiming for. I got it to quickly come up with the results of a fictional sports day race, and produce a spreadsheet from it. While it’s not the most demanding of tasks, Claude completed it correctly.
Connectors can hook Claude up to a variety of other apps, sites, and services: So if you want to get it to design something for you in Canva, or manage your messages in Slack, or find some travel deals on Trivago, then Claude can do that for you. The full list of current Connectors gives you some idea of what’s possible.
To get to the Connectors from the Claude prompt box, click the small + (plus) icon in the lower left corner, then choose Add connectors. You can search through Connectors by name, and filter them by type and category. When you select one you like, you’ll need to supply your account credentials and give Claude permission to access your account.
Your Connectors of choice are then available from the same sub-menu in the prompt box: You can add more plug-ins and remove existing ones from there. You can either select an app, or specify the name of it in your prompt and Claude should understand what you mean. You can ask for outputs, run searches, and communicate through your connected services.
Connectors can give Claude some handy extra talents. With the Canvas Connector, for example, I was able to create a basic bit of artwork for a birthday party flyer—something that the AI wouldn’t have been able to do on its own. I find that access was spotty, however, perhaps a sign of a lot of free users now making use of these tools.
With Skills, you can “teach Claude how to complete specific tasks in a repeatable way” (in the words of the official support document). In old-school computer talk, they might be referred to as macros: batches of set instructions that Claude can repeat whenever you need something doing in a particular way.
Templates are a good example, whether they’re for emails or documents. Rather than just getting Claude to write an email for you, you can set down some basic parameters for the job that include guidelines on tone, length, and style, as well as crucial bits of information (such as your contact details) that always need to be included.
Click your account profile icon (bottom left) in Claude on the web, then choose Settings > Capabilities and click Add under Skills to get started. You can create a Skill through a Claude conversation, by writing out the instructions, or by uploading a Skills file (which is handy for including extra items such as code snippets, as described here).
I took the Create with Claude route to put together a basic way of summarizing PDF reports, with specific guidelines on how many paragraphs and headings to use, and the tone of voice to apply. In the future, rather than typing out those instructions every time I need something summarized, I can just invoke the Skill.
Apple released its new 14-inch MacBook Pro M5 in October with little fanfare. But, despite the underselling, we found the device to be a great upgrade to its predecessor and the best MacBook for creatives. Now, you can find out for yourself with less of a strain on your wallet, thanks to a big sale.
Currently, B&H has discounts available for a variety of configurations. The cheapest option is the MacBook Pro M5 with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD. It’s available in Space Black and Silver for $1,499, down from $1,599 — the lowest price we’ve seen for it. There’s also a deal on the 24GB of RAM option, but the best savings are $300 off the model with 32GB of RAM and either 512GB ($1,699) or 1TB ($1,899).
We gave the 14-inch Apple MacBook Pro M5 a 92 in our October review. We were impressed with how much faster — up to 60 percent — the GPU is than with the M4. It has a 10-core GPU, 10-core CPU and 16 Neural Engine cores. Beyond that, it has an extensive battery life, lasting 34 hours and 30 minutes while playing a looping HD video. It also has an excellent design, great keyboard and an extensive port selection.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/apples-14-inch-macbook-pro-m5-is-up-to-300-off-131743149.html?src=rss
The European Commission (EC) has opened an investigation into low-cost fast fashion retailer Shein. EC officials are concerned about the sale of illegal products, including child sexual abuse material, as well as the potentially addictive design of its shopping experience. The Commission found fellow low-cost retailer Temu in violation of the Digital Services Act after a similar investigation last year.
The probe is being opened under the Digital Services Act, a set of EU rules governing online services. The Commission will examine how Shein drives engagement with shoppers, including using a points and rewards system, and whether the company is properly mitigating the risk of addiction via these and other features.
Algorithmic recommendation systems are another point of contention, and the Commission will ask Shein to disclose how it suggests products to users. It also says that the company must offer users a system that is not based on profiling.
The Singapore-based company has faced a great deal of scrutiny in past years on a number of fronts, including its labor practices, materials sourcing, data practices and IP infringement. Last year the Texas Attorney General opened a probe into the company’s safety and labor practices amid allegations that Shein uses forced labor as well as toxic or hazardous materials.
Addictive design has been a recent priority for European regulators, with the Commission demanding that TikTok make changes to its platform after a similar probe concluded earlier this month. Algorithms have also been in focus, with the Commission recently launching a probe into how exactly X’s recommendation algorithm works.
The regulatory body will now continue collecting evidence in the matter, and holds the authority within the EU to levy fines and demand changes should the platform wish to continue operations in the region.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/europe-probes-sheins-addictive-app-design-and-illegal-product-sales-125322191.html?src=rss
Sony Group has developed a technology that can identify the underlying music used in tunes generated by AI, making it possible for songwriters to seek compensation from AI developers if their music was used. From a report: Sony Group’s technology analyzes which musicians’ songs were used in learning and generating music. It can quantify the contribution of each original work, such as “30% of the music used by the Beatles and 10% by Queen,” for example.
If the AI developer agrees to cooperate for the analysis, Sony Group will obtain data by connecting to the developer’s base model system. When cooperation is not attainable, the technology estimates the original work by comparing AI-generated music with existing music. The AI boom has sparked numerous cases in which AI developers are accused of using copyrighted music, video and writing without permission to train machines. In the music industry, AI-generated songs using the voices of well-known singers have been distributed online. The Japanese company thinks the technology will help create a system that distributes revenue generated by AI music to original songwriters based on their contribution.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
X is facing yet another investigation into Grok’s reported creation of nonconsensual sexual images on the platform. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) has announced an inquiry into X regarding the harmful, intimate images and processing of EU and EEA individuals’ personal data — including children.
In an 11-day period, X generated about three million sexualized images, an estimated 23,000 of which were of children. British nonprofit, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) announced the results of its December 29 to January 9 review last month.
Critically, the investigation will determine whether X has broken GDPR laws. “The DPC has been engaging with XIUC since media reports first emerged a number of weeks ago concerning the alleged ability of X users to prompt the @Grok account on X to generate sexualised images of real people, including children,” DPC deputy commissioner Graham Doyle said, referring to X using the full title X Internet Unlimited Company (XIUC).
Doyle continued: “As the Lead Supervisory Authority for XIUC across the EU/EEA, the DPC has commenced a large-scale inquiry which will examine XIUC’s compliance with some of their fundamental obligations under the GDPR in relation to the matters at hand.”
The DPC’s probe could have repercussions for X across the EU, while also building on similar probes in the bloc. In January, the European Commission launched an investigation into whether X has violated the Digital Services Act. It’s looking into if X has properly “assessed and mitigated” Grok’s risks on X, including the spread of illegal content such as the AI-generation nonconsensual sexually explicit images. Once again this includes those of children — this disturbing point can’t be emphasized too much.
X claimed in mid-January that it was preventing Grok from editing photos of real people to give them revealing clothing. However, this seems far from the truth. Earlier this month, a male reporter found Grok would still put him in revealing clothing and even added visible genitalia.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/eu-launches-second-investigation-into-groks-nonconsensual-image-generation-113239967.html?src=rss
Don’t expect the Steam Deck to be easier to get anytime soon. Valve has posted a notice on the Steam Deck page with a warning that the handheld gaming console “may be out of stock intermittently” in certain regions “due to memory and storage shortages.” The company also reiterated that the more affordable Steam Deck LCD is no longer in production and will no longer be available once stocks run out. Valve started phasing out the LCD console back in December, which means the OLED handhelds are now the only choice for gamers who want to get a Steam Deck. The company’s notice comes after it completely ran out of Steam Deck units a few days ago.
RAM and storage shortages are plaguing tech manufacturers due to massive demand for those components from the artificial intelligence industry. AI companies have been snapping up available memory chips and hard drives for their rapid infrastructure buildouts, leaving everyone else short. In fact, we couldn’t find any deals for RAM last Black Friday, and Samsung global marketing leader Wonjin Lee warned at CES 2026 that memory price hikes are on the horizon.
Valve also had to delay the release of the Steam Machine and the Steam Frame VR headset due to industry-wide memory and storage shortages. It had intended to start shipping those devices in early 2026, but it admitted in its announcement that it has to rethink their launch date and pricing, insinuating that they could be priced higher than the company had planned,
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/valve-admits-steam-deck-availability-is-affected-by-memory-and-storage-shortages-102913993.html?src=rss