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!

You’re invited to play a puzzle created by Beth.
The clue is: “This one has teeth!”
https://www.nytimes.com/games/create/wordle/emnhCsAP5q-f2uhIJ5xJI95SwS7u2Lmf60S7H5-0wfp78bsvf9h-YhkOIryKZDrlwCPV

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

Fitbit is mostly associated with tracking your steps, workouts and sleep, but also among its arsenal of overall health features is the ability to track your food intake. You can use it to see how many calories you’ve consumed versus how many you’ve burned, and even scan the barcode of pre-made food items to add them to your daily log. But the food log feature in the Fitbit app currently appears to be broken, or at least not working as it’s supposed to.

As spotted by 9to5Google, various problems have been reported during the last 24 hours, and while the page still loads as it should, adding items is proving difficult. Attempting to search for a meal or food pulls up a blank page, while the barcode scanner seems to be completely broken, returning a maintenance error message when you try to use it.

A number of Fitbit users are reporting similar issues, with only the custom food creation function working properly. Some have also said that they tried updating the app to fix it, but with no success. One user who deleted and re-installed the Fitbit app said that didn’t work either, while another said they “really rely on the calorie count feature,” which obviously won’t be accurate if you can’t log every meal you eat.

Google, Fitbit’s parent company, has not officially commented on the matter at the time of writing, and we’ll update this article if it responds to our request for one.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/fitbit-appears-to-be-experiencing-a-partial-outage-174249152.html?src=rss

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Creator/writer/star Mae Martin’s Wayward is Netflix’s biggest show right now. It’s a sly mystery involving cult behavior and cycles of trauma at a school for troubled teens, given added relevance by its proximity to real-life stories of abuses at similar facilities.

Wayward does a few different things well: It’s a mystery box show, first of all—meaning that we’re presented with not just one but several intriguing puzzles right off the bat, with resolutions handed out frugally. It’s also a great example of the “small towns are weird” subgenre, one that likes to remind us that there are strange and ominous doings in even the quietest communities. The show shines a dramatic light on the troubled-teen industry, here represented by the Tall Pines Academy, run by Toni Collette’s smirking, sinister head teacher. Last, but hardly least, Netflix‘s biggest, buzziest show tells a story with a trans character at its center, created by and starring non-binary comedian Mae Martin. In 2025, that ain’t nothing. All that’s to say that there are a few different roads to go down it we’re looking for a show to watch next.

Wayward Pines (2015 – 2016)

These shows have a bit more in common than just their similar titles. Based on a trilogy of Blake Crouch novels, this one stars, initially, Matt Dillon as a Secret Service agent investigating the disappearances of two fellow agents in the Idaho town of Wayward Pines (not to be confused with the Tall Pines of Wayward). Things go awry pretty much immediately, and he wakes up from a car accident to find one of the agents (Carla Gugino), who’s also his ex, having settled down in the seemingly idyllic community—and she’s 12 years older than when he last saw her a few weeks ago. Even more dramatically, the local sheriff (Terrence Howard) enforces a strict “no one ever leaves” policy, on pain of having one’s neck slit. The mysteries pile up from there. Stream Wayward Pines on Hulu.

Wayward Pines (2015 – 2016)

at Hulu

at Hulu

Hemlock Grove (2013 – 2015)

One of the first of Netflix’s original series, this supernatural thriller takes us to the title Pennsylvania town, where economic realities have shut down the town’s steel mill and left residents with few options other than the two remaining employers are the Godfrey Institute for Biomedical Technologies and the Hemlock Acres Hospital. Take your pick, but do so knowing that Olivia Godfrey (Famke Janssen), head of the Godfrey Institute, is rumored to be conducting all sorts of weird experiments. When two teenage girls are murdered, a 17-year-old Romani kid, rumored to be a werewolf, is the prime suspect. The fact is, he is a werewolf, but that doesn’t make him a murderer. Stream Hemlock Grove on Shudder and AMC+.

Hemlock Grove (2013 – 2015)

at AMC+

at AMC+

Twin Peaks (1990 – 1991, 2017)

With all due respect to Wayward, I’m not sure there’s ever been a better, more iconic series about a freak small town full of dark secrets. In the initial run of Twin Peaks, teens and adults faced human tragedy accompanied by supernatural threats from outside of normal space and time. Kyle MacLachlan plays FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, who arrives in the title town to investigate the murder of teenager homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). His arrival in town precipitates a (very) long night of the soul as Cooper uncovers secrets and mysteries among the town’s delightfully, and often disturbingly, weird residents. Stream Twin Peaks on Mubi and Paramount+.

Twin Peaks (1990 – 1991, 2017)

at Paramount+

at Paramount+

Yellowjackets (2021 – )

Purely in terms of plot, I’m not sure that Yellowjackets and Wayward have much in common. Tonally, though, they’re a good match, with secrets and mysteries abounding among characters with complicated pasts (the shows both also include some significant queer rep). This time-jumping survival drama is about a group of teenage girls becoming stranded in the wilderness in 1996 and doing terrible things to survive—the extent of which we only learn about via flashbacks from the present, where the events of those 19 months continue to have an impact. There are teases of the supernatural here, much of it ambiguous, but there’s plenty of horror in a past that we’re still seeing fleshed out. Yellowjackets rather cynically posits that there’s a huge difference between the version of the past we talk about and the one that really happened. Stream Yellowjackets on Paramount+; Netflix currently has the first two seasons.

Yellowjackets (2021 – )

at Paramount+

at Paramount+

The Wilds (2020 – 2022)

Situated between flashbacks and flash-forwards, mystery/thriller The Wilds sees an airplane full of teenage girls crash on the way to an empowerment program in Hawaii. It quickly becomes clear that the accident was engineered, and that the whole thing is some sort of social experiment, forcing the survivors to compete against each other for survival. The show understands the ways in which young women in the real world are exploited and expected to compete against each other, which grounds the elaborate plot twists. Like Wayward, the show turns on the power of manipulative authority figures to manipulate young women. Stream The Wilds on Prime Video.

The Wilds (2020 – 2022)

at Prime Video

at Prime Video

The Institute (2025 – )

This Stephen King adaptation takes us to a rather different school for wayward children, as the titular institute is a place for locking away and manipulating teens with unique abilities; the indifferent staff put the kids through grueling, torturous experiments on the daily. Meanwhile, former cop Tim Jamieson (Ben Barnes) is hoping to put his dodgy past behind him in favor of the quiet life in a nearby town—until, of course, he finds himself drawn into the mystery of the sinister school in the next town over. The show’s been renewed for a second season. Stream The Institute on MGM+.

The Institute (2025 – )

at MGM+

at MGM+

The Frog (2024)

There’s no sinister school here, but it’s otherwise a decent match if the tone you’re looking for is “sinister, twisty mystery in a seemingly quiet town.” Following his wife’s death, Yeong-ha (Kim Yoon-seok) just wants a quiet life in the secluded town where he lives, renting out the house next door as a vacation rental—though he’s not even all that enthusiastic about that. It’s all going fine until a young woman shows up with her son, the same woman abruptly leaving behind blood stains and, even more disturbingly, the kid. Stream The Frog.

The Frog (2024)

at Netflix

at Netflix

Pieces of Her (2022)

Though the mystery/thriller vibes are on point here, we’re mostly here for the Toni Collette of it all, at least in terms of its relationship to Wayward. Bella Heathcote plays Andy Oliver, a young woman who’s moved back to her hometown to take care of her mom, Laura (Collette). Within the first 20 minutes of the show, a shooter attacks the diner where they’re both eating. When the man targets Andy, her mom dispatches the killer with relative ease—which, in Andy’s mind, raises some questions about mom’s backstory. The twisty series takes us around the bend a few times as to whether Collette’s character is a hero or a villain, but she’s clearly someone you don’t want to get on the wrong side of. Stream Pieces of Her on Netflix.

Pieces of Her (2022)

at Netflix

at Netflix

From (2022 – )

A bit more on the nose, perhaps, than Wayward, here we travel to The Town (we never get a name), from which no one can ever leave. The residents and visitors aren’t metaphorically trapped, but literally so, and are beset by creatures come from the woods and kill anyone found outside after dark. The Matthews family learn all about this firsthand when they roll into town in their RV and find themselves trapped alongside the local sheriff (Harold Perrineau)—just as it’s getting dark. The show’s monsters aren’t just mindlessly hungry, they’re cunning and sadistic, and more than capable of killing residents in impressively gory ways. It’s very much a supernatural spin on the “small towns ain’t what they seem” vibe. Stream From on MGM+.

From (2022 – )

at MGM+

at MGM+

The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping (2024)

A true crime docuseries that dives into one of the primary thematic drives of Wayward: what’s often referred to as the “troubled teen industry,” representing a broad array of residential centers for struggling teenagers. Though scandal and documented abuses abound, it’s nevertheless a multi-billion-dollar industry in the United States, offering behavioral correction and rehabilitation to parents and caregivers who feel that their kids have become problems. This series focuses on the rather horrific experiences of the “students” (inmates, more precisely) at the former Academy at Ivy Ridge in upstate New York. That facility has shut down, but others much like it carry on and, with the return of conversion therapy as a legal option, it’s the industry is likely to enter a new boom. Stream The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping on Netflix.

The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping (2024)

at Netflix

at Netflix

U.S. corporate profits have risen to record levels this year as companies eliminated nearly 1 million jobs. Chen Zhao of Alpine Macro calls the disconnect a “jobless boom.” Companies typically cut workers when profits decline. Amazon laid off 30,000 employees despite strong earnings. Zhao attributes the pattern to AI adoption boosting productivity across industries while reducing demand for workers. Labor demand has fallen to zero growth or mild contraction.

The Federal Reserve lowered interest rates in September and October after Jerome Powell noted concerns about layoff announcements from large employers. The Department of Labor suspended monthly employment reports when the government shutdown began October 1. ADP reported private employers added 42,000 workers in October. The unemployment rate stood at 4.3% in August. The rate has remained stable because the labor pool is contracting due to baby boomer retirements and reduced immigration under Trump administration policies. Art Papas of Bullhorn disputes the AI explanation and argues companies are recalibrating after pandemic overhiring.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The government of Denmark said on Friday that lawmakers from its political right, left and center have reached an agreement to ban social media for anyone under 15, as reported by The Associated Press. If enacted, the move would be one of the most ambitious attempts globally to keep children off social media. Momentum has been building in recent years around concerns that social media is harming its younger users.

The country’s Digitalization Ministry would set the minimum age at 15 for certain social media platforms but has not clarified which ones would be affected. The government also did not share specifics on how enforcement would work.

A statement from the Digitalization Ministry reads, in part, “Children and young people have their sleep disrupted, lose their peace and concentration, and experience increasing pressure from digital relationships where adults are not always present,” as reported by The Associated Press. Digitalization Minister Caroline Stage said Danish authorities are “finally drawing a line in the sand and setting a clear direction.”

In December, the world’s first country-wide social media ban for children will go into effect in Australia, banning children under 16 from major social media platforms. Platforms that want to operate in the country must employ age-verification technology and would face fines if they fail to enforce the nation’s age limits.

Some age-verification methods, particularly facial recognition and showing of ID, have faced heavy skepticism as they have been implemented around the world. In the UK and Italy anyone wanting to watch porn online must now upload a selfie or provide ID to verify they are above age limits. If the same methods are employed to verify teenagers’ ages, questions will undoubtedly arise about data safety and privacy involving minors’ data.

Texas recently came close to enacting a similar ban, though it ultimately didn’t pass. Utah passed laws in 2023 that require parental consent before teens can create social media accounts. Florida passed a social media ban for children that is currently held up in court.

This move will undoubtedly spark more conversation around the potential harms of social media on adolescents, as well as whether social media access will be perceived as personal parenting decisions that should remain free from government intervention.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/denmark-set-to-ban-social-media-for-users-under-15-years-of-age-171602408.html?src=rss

Poshmark has been implementing a lot of changes lately, like lower shipping fees (that come with a downgrade from USPS Priority mail to standard ground mailing) and Smart Sell features. It’s most recent change, though—the removal of the bulk-share option—has many users (including myself) frustrated.

The removal of bulk sharing

Poshmark has long functioned in a more social way than other resale platforms like Depop or Mercari. You can follow sellers the same way you can on Instagram or X, for instance. Notably, users have always been encouraged to “share” their own listings and others’ listings, which would then appear in the homepage feeds of anyone who followed them. A few weeks ago, Poshmark got rid of that feed and replaced it with a more algorithmic “For You” section.

The developers claim this has “significantly” increased shopper engagement, and I can attest my “For You” section is pretty accurate and my sales did not decline after the Following feed was removed, though I saw dozens of posts from sellers who said their sales plummeted.

Beyond appearing in that Following tab, there were always other reasons to share: First, sharing a certain amount of times could help qualify you for Posh Ambassador I or II status, which earns you a badge on your page that signals you are a quality seller. (You also have to meet other requirements, like have a low average shipping time and a high feedback rating. I earned Posh Ambassador II a few weeks ago after months of work.) Second, sharing a listing pops it up to the top of your storefront page, known as your “closet.” You want to do this often so sold listings move to the bottom and available items are immediately visible to interested shoppers. It also categorizes a listing as “recently shared,” so when a shopper searches for an item and sorts by Just In or Just Shared, it appears high in the results.

So, no, there’s no value in sharing to hit the Following feed anymore since that was nuked, but there’s still plenty of value in sharing for all those other reasons. Sellers have always had and continue to have the option to manually share listings one by one, but for anyone with more than a handful of things available to buy, that’s exhausting, and bulk-sharing, which was easy to do through the Seller Tools tab, was the way to go. I currently have about 260 available listings. When I lost my bulk-share ability yesterday, I gave it a good try and, begrudgingly, manually shared all my listings. It took ages. Worst of all, the bulk-share tool also enabled sellers to share all relevant listings to Posh Parties, or specialty landing pages that run for an hour or two throughout the day. If there’s a “Best of Swim” Posh Party going on, you can share all your swimsuits to it, for example, and people seeking out bathing suits will be able to browse them. With bulk-sharing gone, that’s something that just became a lot more tedious.

People are pretty annoyed, as it is unclear what the new direction of Poshmark’s whole plan is. For years, it has functioned socially, differentiating it from other competitors, and the lack of bulk-sharing will take a lot of adjustment.

What I’m doing instead

I reached out to a Poshmark rep about what this means, why it happened, and what associated changes might be on the way. I will update if I hear back.

Loads of sellers have reached out to customer service already, though, and are sharing the responses they’ve received on social media. It seems this is just the new normal, despite the fact it’s hampering us all. I had resigned myself last night to the facts that I may be stuck manually sharing over 200 listings per day or moving all my listings over to a different platform (which I do not want to do because Poshmark still remains my favorite for a variety of reasons), but then I remembered something: Before I started using the bulk-sharing options in Seller Tools, I subscribed to a third-party automation app called PrimeLister. It’s $25 a month (and more if you manage multiple closets with it), but it automatically shares your available listings, shares to Posh Parties, sends discount offers to people who like a listing, and more.

This morning, I resubscribed, just to see what would happen. It started sharing my available listings right away. I am annoyed to have to pay for this, as I already subscribe to Poshmark’s paid “Promoted Closet,” which pushes my listings to possible buyers in the form of ads that appear in search results, but you do have to spend money to make money, I suppose. (Never mind that Posh also gets a 20% cut of all sales.) For now, it’s worth it, as this will keep my sold listings low on my page and keep my available listings more visible in my closet and in search results, plus keep my goods in Posh Parties.

If you have a lot of listings on Posh and are mourning the loss of bulk-sharing, you may have to pony up the $25 for PrimeLister until the new system starts to make sense or yields any demonstrable results. I had fewer likes on my listings yesterday, my first day of not bulk-sharing every few hours, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. If PrimeLister is too steep, you can always manually share each listing by pressing the arrow icon underneath it. But be advised that in another inexplicable change, Poshmark recently made that button a lot smaller and harder to tap on mobile, so it’s going to take you awhile.

For months, extremely personal and sensitive ChatGPT conversations have been leaking into an unexpected destination: Google Search Console (GSC), a tool that developers typically use to monitor search traffic, not lurk private chats.

Normally, when site managers access GSC performance reports, they see queries based on keywords or short phrases that Internet users type into Google to find relevant content. But starting this September, odd queries, sometimes more than 300 characters long, could also be found in GSC. Showing only user inputs, the chats appeared to be from unwitting people prompting a chatbot to help solve relationship or business problems, who likely expected those conversations would remain private.

Jason Packer, owner of an analytics consulting firm called Quantable, was among the first to flag the issue in a detailed blog last month.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon on Friday expanded the reach of its low-cost ecommerce service to 14 additional markets and will call it Amazon Bazaar, as part of a push to compete with Chinese rivals including Shein and PDD Holding’s Temu. The expansion of the service comes at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping import tariffs are denting consumer sentiment, especially of lower-income groups, who are on a constant hunt for cheaper deals.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Tuesday, Apple dropped the first developer betas for iOS 26.2 and macOS 26.2. While these updates aren’t as massive as iOS 26 or macOS 26 were, 26.2 includes a number of new features and changes, including the ability to add alarms to reminders, and changes to how Apple calculates the Apple Watch’s new Sleep Score. Despite these fun adjustments, I couldn’t recommend that users install the new updates on their personal devices. Three days later, I still don’t recommend it, but I won’t necessarily dissuade you from it either, as the public betas for both updates are now available.

Developer vs. public betas

Before Apple releases any major software update to the general public, it first tests that software with smaller pools of users. This is known as beta testing. The company will first release a beta specifically designed for developers, which these devs can install on their devices to see how their apps perform with the upcoming update. They can then report any and all issues they encounter to Apple, who will fix those bugs with future beta updates.

After a short period of developer-only testing, Apple then releases the public beta. This beta is meant for any Apple user who feels a bit daring and wants to try new features early. The trade-off is that the software is not yet finished, so those users may still run into problems, which they can then report to Apple. Based on that feedback, Apple continues to fine-tune the update, and once it appears to be stable, it releases it to the general public.

In the past, Apple locked the developer beta behind its paid developer program, which costs $99. If you didn’t pay, you couldn’t access the developer beta, so you were either stuck waiting for the slightly more stable public beta, or finding the dev beta file somewhere on the internet. That latter option opens users up to malware, which could be why Apple dropped the paid requirement for the dev beta. Now, anyone who registers their Apple Account as a developer—regardless of whether or not they’ve paid to be in the developer program—can download and install the developer beta.

You’ve technically been able to run the 26.2 betas since Tuesday, if you wanted to go down that route. However, due to the nature of beta testing, the developer beta (and the first one at that) is the riskiest beta to install. It’s Apple’s first attempt at the beta, which means it’s largely untested. You might run into device-breaking problems, and without a proper backup, you could lose valuable information. While all betas carry risk, the public beta is at least tested enough to root out any of those critical flaws.

While I don’t recommend you run any betas on your personal devices, most of us don’t have spare iPhones and Mac lying around to run tests on. As such, if you’re going to install a beta, now’s the time to do it.

How to install iOS and macOS 26.2

Before you install a beta on your iPhone or Mac, make sure you’ve first properly backed up your important information. That means making a full backup of your iPhone on your Mac or PC, or a backup of your Mac information on a separate hard drive. If something goes wrong during beta testing, you’ll need to downgrade back to iOS 26.1 or macOS 26.1—and if you don’t have a proper backup, you’ll need to restore your device to factory settings to do it. Again, there are real risks here.

If you’re okay with those risks, and you made the proper backups, enroll your Apple Account in the public beta program. Once you do, you should be able to access the betas from any connected Apple Accounts. From here, head to Settings > General > Software Update (iOS) or System Settings > General > Software Update (macOS) and choose “Beta Updates.” Choose “iOS 26 Public Beta” or “macOS Tahoe 26 Public Beta,” then go back one page. Allow the page to load, then download and install the beta like any other update.

If you’ve played any number of RPGs, you probably know the skill tree as a break from the game’s core action. It’s a place to pause, take a breather, and scroll through a massive visual menu of upgrade options, considering which path of stat and ability tweaks best fits your character and your play style.

With Skigill, indie developer Achromi has taken that break-time menu and transformed it into the playing field for an intriguing Vampire Survivors-style roguelike. And while the Early Access game currently lacks the kind of deep content that will keep players coming back for a long time, it’s still a clever and engaging take on the genre that I haven’t been able to put down for long.

Clear the way, I need +5 armor!

Like Vampire Survivors and its many imitators, Skigill is all about navigating through waves of enemies that converge somewhat mindlessly on your position. The game automatically aims and deploys weapons to carve some safe space through what can be screens full of hazardous enemies, which leave behind coins as they explode in puffs of yellow smoke.

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A Costco membership usually pays for itself, but this deal makes it even easier to justify: You can get a one-year Costco Gold Star Membership, plus a $40 Digital Costco Shop Card, on sale for just $65 on StackSocial right now. That effectively drops the cost of membership to just $25 for the year, and it’s sent straight to your inbox within two weeks of redemption. If you were planning to shop there anyway, it’s a no-brainer, but this offer is only available to new members or those whose membership has expired for at least 18 months.

The Gold Star Membership offers access to all Costco warehouses (over 600 locations in the U.S. and more than 800 worldwide), as well as online shopping, plus one free household card, allowing another person in your home to use the membership as well. You can also shop at Costco’s gas stations, pharmacy, optical, and hearing aid centers, which are known for better-than-average pricing. If you’re the type who likes stocking up on bulk items or prefers doing all your shopping in one stop, Costco can easily justify the annual fee. Add in Costco Travel, its lesser-known perk for discounted vacation packages, and the membership stretches beyond groceries.

There are a few key details to be aware of. You’ll need to redeem your membership by January 21, 2026, though it’s better to do it within 30 days. The $40 shop card can’t be exchanged for cash but can be used online or in-store, just not at the food court (so the $1.50 hot dog combo isn’t part of the deal). Still, for most people, this offer is a simple, practical way to save on everyday essentials. If you’ve been on the fence about joining, this StackSocial deal is one of the easiest ways to test the Costco life without paying full price.

Singaporean super-app company Grab has dumped 200 cloudy Mac Minis and replaced them with physical machines, a move it expects will save $2.4 million over three years. From a report: Grab is Southeast Asia’s leading rideshare and food delivery outfit and therefore needs to build apps for iOS to connect with customers. In a Thursday post, the company explains it builds those apps using Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery/Deployment (CI/CD) infrastructure that runs on Apple Mac computers.

The company started with a single on-prem Mac Pro — its post shows 2013’s cylindrical model based around an Intel Xeon processor — but eventually reached over 200 Macs, running in the cloud at an unnamed US cloud provider. “At the beginning, it was a no-brainer to rent when our demand for macOS hardware increased from 1 Mac Pro to 20 times that size,” Grab’s post explains. “However, when that grew to over 200 machines, the total cost became significant.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lego sets are probably at the top of your kid’s wish list, and maybe they’re at the top of your personal list, too. With so many to choose from, you’ll be able to find one that makes a great gift for anyone who you know loves these little building bricks. Black Friday Lego deals are what to look for this time of year, because you can typically save at least 20 percent on a good number of sets. Yes, that often includes the most popular ones from the Star Wars, Super Mario, Harry Potter and other collections. In general, we always recommend using a price tracker when determining if a Lego deal is in fact a good one. Below, we’ve collected the best Lego Black Friday deals we could find right now.

You’ll find Lego deals across the board this holiday season at retailers like Amazon and Walmart, but don’t overlook Lego’s own site. If you join the free Lego Insiders program, you’ll build up points with each purchase that you can redeem in the future, get special discounts and sometimes get exclusive gifts when you buy.

While not a deal, arguably the hottest Lego for Black Friday will be the brand new Star Trek USS Enterprise set, which was announced recently. It has a whopping 3,600 pieces and will be a must-have for any Star Trek fans. The set will be available starting November 28 for $400.

Best Lego Black Friday deals

LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar 2025 75418 for $27 (40 percent off)

LEGO Disney Frozen Advent Calendar 2025 43273 for $31 (32 percent off)

Lego Harry Potter Advent Calendar 2025 76456 for $39 (13 percent off)

LEGO Star Wars Brick-Built Star Wars Logo 75407 for $48 (20 percent off)

LEGO Star Wars Grogu with Hover Pram Building Toy Set 75403 for $65 (36 percent off)

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/lego-black-friday-deals-early-sales-include-up-to-40-percent-off-star-wars-and-disney-sets-155007870.html?src=rss

When Ford electrified its best-selling pickup truck, it pulled out the stops. The F-150 Lightning may look virtually identical to other versions of the pickup, but it’s smoother, faster, and obviously far, far more efficient than the ones that run on gas, diesel, or hybrid power. But the future of the country’s best-selling electric truck may be in doubt.

That’s according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, which claims that Ford’s management is “in active discussions about scrapping” the Lightning. Production had already been suspended a few weeks ago as a result of an aluminum shortage following a destructive fire at a supplier’s factory in New York, which Ford estimates may result in as much as $2 billion of losses to the company.

While Ford told Ars it doesn’t comment on speculation on its future product plans, the automaker said that “F-150 Lightning is the best-selling electric pickup truck in the US—despite new competition from CyberTruck, Chevy, GMC, Hummer and Rivian—and delivered record sales in Q3.”

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The volume of activity on Polymarket, one of the most popular prediction markets, has been significantly inflated by so-called wash trading in which users rapidly buy and sell the same contracts, according to a new study by Columbia University researchers. The “artificial trading,” as the authors call it, varied over time but accounted for an average of 25% of all buying and selling on Polymarket over the past three years, the researchers concluded.

The paper, which has not undergone peer review, was posted Thursday on the open-access research platform SSRN. The authors do not suggest that Polymarket itself was responsible for the wash trading, but they point to elements of the exchange’s crypto-based structure that make it possible.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.