As a big fan of background music, I was intrigued by iOS 18.4’s Control Center changes. It adds a new tab called Ambient Music to Control Center’s list of customizable controls. You can use this to add one of four pre-selected Apple Music playlists (or your own) to the Control Center, your lock screen, or the Action Button (provided your iPhone has one). Up until now, you could play music via the Now Playing widget in the Control Center, but dedicated controls to launch playlists were missing.

This feature is different from Background Sounds, which lets you play nature sounds on your iPhone in order to help you focus better. Even though Background Sounds is useful for everyone, it was designed as an accessibility feature first, and hence it can be found in your iPhone’s accessibility settings. The new iOS 18.4 Ambient Music feature, meanwhile, is linked to Apple Music. With this feature, you can choose one of four playlists that Apple’s picked out for you, or pick any of your own Apple Music playlists. 

How to add Apple Music playlists to the Control Center

Credit: Pranay Parab

To check out these ambient music playlists, you’re going to have to update to iOS 18.4. At time of writing, that’s in the developer beta stage, which is the buggiest and most unstable of all available Apple OS releases. Be sure to back up your data before you attempt to upgrade, and ensure that you aren’t trying this on your primary iPhone. Crucial apps and services may stop working at any point on beta software, so it’s important to know about the risks.

Once you’ve installed iOS 18.4, you can open the Control Center, tap and hold an empty part of the screen, and hit the Add a Control button near the bottom of the display. Scroll down until you see the Ambient Music tab and select one of the controls. Apple lets you pick one of four moods: Sleep, Chill, Productivity, and Wellbeing. In the Control Center, tap and hold any of these playlists to reveal more options. You can tap From Library to add your own playlists to any of these controls, too.

You can also add these controls to your iPhone’s lock screen. To do that, lock your iPhone and then use Touch ID or Face ID to unlock the device. Tap and hold the lock screen, select Customize, and tap the lock screen on the left. You can now remove either of the two controls in the bottom-left and bottom-right corners, and replace them with your playlists.

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Samsung has been releasing Fan Edition (FE) smartphones, tablets, and earbuds for those looking for a more budget option compared to their flagship product. The Galaxy Tab S9 tablet has been Samsung’s flagship tablet until the Galaxy Tab S10+ succeeded it last year. But now you can get the more budget-friendly FE version for a record-low price. The Galaxy Tab S9 FE is $297.72 (originally $449.99), a great value considering it comes with a stylus.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE

$279.72
at Amazon

$449.99
Save $170.27

Get Deal

Get Deal

$279.72
at Amazon

$449.99
Save $170.27

The Tab S9 FE is a great budget tablet for anyone looking to get a lot for their money. The best part is that it comes with an S Pen, which by itself retails for $94.99. The Tab S9 FE won’t blow your mind with specs: It’s got a 90Hz refresh rate screen with a 1,440 x 2,304 resolution, it has not an IPS LCD screen instead of AMOLED, and comes with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. But it’s water-resistant with an IP68 rating and includes the Android 13 software; it also includes Samsung DeX, which lets you use your tablet like a laptop (you can get the Dexnor Keyboard Case to attach it to the tablet and pair it with Samsung DeX); and it has the advantage of getting software updates, unlike most tablet competitors. Keep in mind that you can’t connect it to a monitor, however, even with a USB-C video cable.

At the front, you have a 12MP ultrawide camera; in the back, an 8MP. Wifi will be strong with Wi-Fi 6, and the battery life is great, offering you up to 18 hours depending on use (and it’s a USB-C charger). If you’re looking for a reliable tablet that will get software updates for years at a budget price and comes with a stylus, you could do worse than the Galaxy Tab S9 FE.

Lift heavy to build muscle: That’s advice you’ve probably seen in a million places, whether you’re aiming to get stronger, get “toned,” or simply reap the health benefits of putting on a little muscle. But how heavy is “heavy,” and how do you know if your workout qualifies?

There’s no specific number of pounds that will constitute “heavy” for everyone. What’s heavy for a teenage girl picking up a dumbbell for the first time will be a lot less than what’s heavy for a pro strongman. (If you do want to compare your lifts to other people’s, sites like Symmetric Strength can show where you stand—but please consider these comps as just for fun.)

In basic terms, training “heavy” is shorthand for resistance training that is in a low-rep range and gets heavier over time. This is the type of training that delivers the biggest gains in terms of strength and muscle size.

Training heavy is not the only way to build muscle, but it’s an effective one. Here are the questions you should ask yourself when trying to figure out whether you’re training heavy enough.

How many reps are you doing?

Training for strength usually has you doing 1-5 reps in each set. Training for hypertrophy (bigger muscles) is often in the 8-12 range.

The truth is, there isn’t much difference in results between the two methods; getting stronger gives you bigger muscles and getting bigger muscles makes you stronger. I’d say that as long as you’re doing 12 reps or fewer, you’re in an appropriate range to say you are training heavy.

Once you’re doing much more than that—15, 20, 50 reps—you’re training your muscular endurance more than strength. You can build some strength this way, but it’s not what you’re going for when you’re trying to train heavy.

How hard does the set feel?

Let’s say you’re doing squats in sets of eight. That could count as heavy training, but only if you’re loading the squats enough that it’s hard to do all eight of them. For some exercises and some goals, you might be aiming to train “to failure”—literally, going until you can’t do another rep. An example would be if you’re doing eight bicep curls and can’t manage a ninth.

But you can also get close to failure without quite going there. For example, if you’re doing squats, a set of eight might be done at a weight that you could manage for 10 or 11 reps if you really pushed yourself. That still counts as heavy training.

What doesn’t count is if you’re doing eight reps of goblet squats with a light dumbbell because it’s the only dumbbell you have, or because you’re intimidated about going up in weight. Heavy lifting is when you’re doing the appropriate rep range with a weight that is challenging within that range.

Are you increasing the weight over time?

The only way to keep the lift challenging as you get stronger is to keep increasing the weight. This doesn’t mean you need to go heavier every time, but it does mean that you pick up a heavier weight once you’ve gotten a bit stronger.

To use that goblet squat example, maybe squatting with a 20-pound dumbbell was challenging the first time you tried it. But a week or two later, you can probably do the same eight reps with a 25-pound dumbbell. Before long, it may make more sense to do front squats with a barbell, to make it easier to add more weight. OK, now you’re lifting heavy.

But if you kept doing the same sets of eight squats with the same 20-pound dumbbell, you’re not efficiently challenging yourself to build muscle or strength—you’re just doing an exercise that keeps getting easier. That’s still good for you, because it’s still exercise, but it no longer fits the description of lifting heavy.

How long are you resting between sets?

This is where a lot of people go wrong, especially if they’re doing home workouts or are focused on calorie burn. You shouldn’t lift heavy for the calorie burn (or heart rate zones) during the workout; you should lift heavy to build muscle, and save the cardio for another day.

If you’re constantly working to keep your heart rate up, with little to no time to rest between exercises, you aren’t going to be able to train heavy. More likely you’re doing a strength/cardio hybrid such as circuit training. Crossfit “metcon” WODs (workouts of the day) often fall into this category, as do many home workout videos that bill themselves as high-intensity interval training (HIIT). They’re usually not really HIIT, but that’s a rant for another time.

If you aren’t resting, that means you aren’t approaching each set of lifts with fresh, rested muscles. Reducing rest times makes the workouts feel harder, but it also means you’ll be working with less weight. That means these exercises are usually too light fit the definition of working heavy. They might still help you build strength or muscle size, but not nearly as efficiently.

If you take a few minutes’ rest between exercises, then you’re lifting heavy. A typical range would be 2-4 minutes between exercises that work smaller or fewer muscles (like curls or presses) and 3-5 minutes or more between sets of big compound lifts (like squats or deadlifts). With an appropriate rest time, you’ll be able to properly lift heavy.

Are you ready to pay for Amazon Alexa? With the addition of AI to the assistant, Amazon thinks you are.

Announced in a closed-doors meeting with press and business partners today, Amazon’s Alexa+ is bringing AI to the familiar digital assistant, plus a new $20/month price tag. The secret? If you have Prime, you’ll get access to it at no extra charge.

Credit: Amazon

As with standard Alexa, the assistant is built around vocal prompts, but is designed to be more conversational and personalized, and will supposedly be able to act on your behalf and integrate with partner apps including Hulu, Uber, and Xbox.

It also enables new features in Amazon’s own apps, like Prime video or Ring, and should make smart home integration simpler.

Amazon didn’t go over every potential use case at its event, seemingly because there are so many, but a few key ones include:

• More complex questions: When asking Alexa+ a question, as with other AI, you’ll be able to keep a conversation going without multiple prompts or repeating yourself in each new prompt. For instance, you could tell Alexa that one of your family members is vegetarian, and any recipe suggestions it makes for them for the rest of the conversation will take that into account.

• Multimodality: Alexa+ is able to use photos as input, or peruse uploaded documents and provide summaries of them.

• Create new routines by voice: Rather than having to set up new smart home automations through a complicated app, you’ll be able to do them verbally. For example, you could tell Alexa once to remember to turn off the lights when you close the garage door, and it’ll do that from that moment onward.

• Jump to a specific Prime Video scene: Alexa+ will be able to use details such as scene descriptions or actor names to take you to a specific moment in a specific piece of content within Prime Video. In a press release, Amazon claims that saying something like “what’s that movie where Bradley Cooper sings a duet? Jump to that scene…” will be enough to start it playing.

• AI-powered Ring: People with Ring subscriptions will be able to ask Alexa+ to summarize saved footage and show you highlights, plus use “Smart Video Search” to find specific moments just by describing them to Alexa, i.e. by saying “When did I last take out the trash bins?”

While that’s all set to make Alexa much more powerfuln (assuming it works) it’s also not too different from existing AI solutions. Where Alexa is set to go a step beyond is in taking action, in a way similar to what was promised by the Rabbit R1. Amazon says you could use it to order groceries, find event tickets, set up reservations, or book an Uber, among other things. 

Credit: Amazon

That’s thanks to those partner integrations mentioned earlier. Supposedly, there are dozens of these partnerships set up and ready to go, including various news outlets like Time or The Washington Post, which should help make the assistant’s answers more accurate. As for actions, while it’s said to be hands-free, it seems like Alexa will ask for confirmation before actually making any final purchases or bookings.

Similarly, Alexa+ is also set to integrate with Amazon Kids+, using AI to converse with kids using facts or interactive games and stories. Amazon promises “extra safety guardrails for younger users,” although details are still light at the moment.

Credit: Amazon

As is a lot about Alexa+. Amazon is promising transparency and privacy here, accessible via the Alexa Privacy dashboard, and has been surprisingly open about the technology powering Alexa+—it’s a combination of in-house models and Anthropic. But it’ll be a bit before you get to try out the upgraded assistant, with early access set for sometime next month. 

One surprise is that there are no new devices here, with Alexa+ instead being compatible with “almost every” shipped Echo device, although the company says that early access will come first to the Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21. Supposedly, the web and a new phone app will also get Alexa+, although it’s unclear when.

Personally, I’ve always been a little skeptical of Alexa and its always-on microphones, and I can’t say Alexa+ is doing anything to move the needle for me. But I also haven’t seen much of it yet. I tend to be a bit more practical-minded when it comes to what I’m willing to use AI for, so we’ll see if Alexa+ can change my mind when I finally get my hands on it—its ability to automatically turn emails into calendar events does seem pretty handy, assuming you’re fine handing that data over to Amazon, and that Amazon makes it easy to do so.

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There are all kinds of laws that govern the rights you have when you’re renting your home, but landlords are also pretty well-protected. You might think that anything that goes on in your apartment is their business (for better or worse), but there are actually quite a few things that simply are not their responsibility. While it’s pretty wild that they technically own your home and can make all kinds of rules about it but don’t actually have to fix certain issues, it’s worth knowing what is and is not their job when it comes to your space.

Outdoor spaces are your responsibility

If you are renting a house or are lucky enough to have scored an apartment with a backyard, be warned: Your lease may stipulate that management of those areas is your responsibility. Read it carefully and ask your landlord if you have any questions, but know that you could be the one who has to clear snow, trim the grass, clean the gutters, remove pests, and more.

Small plumbing issues are also for you to handle

Clogs and other little plumbing issues are rarely your landlord’s responsibility. Unless it’s something really major, you’re probably on your own to get whatever is in that pipe out of it, which you should do because if your issue becomes the building’s issue, you’re likely on the hook for that, too.

I recommend the FlexiSnake Drain Weasel for clogs: It extends 18 inches, has a rotating handle that makes using it easy, and it’s less than $20. Regularly use this to avoid major problems down the line and only call your landlord when something is really, really wrong. For instance, my super stopped by a few months ago to fix my leaky shower—there was a problem with some valve seals that I didn’t cause and couldn’t fix on my own—but my stopped-up sink just a foot away? That’s my problem and mine alone. Speaking of…

Damage you cause is damage you fix

In most cases, if you cause damage, you have to fix it. If your wall develops a hole because of a water leak, that’s the landlord’s responsibility. If it develops a hole because you hung something too heavy, it’s yours.

This can get a little confusing, so this is the category it’s best to discuss with your super regardless. This week, I called mine out of exasperation because I couldn’t get some marks off the higher part of my wall. I assumed they were my fault. Wrong! They were caused by a faulty radiator valve (not my fault) and were actually a sign of a deeper problem inside the wall (also not my fault), which meant the management company did have to dispatch someone to not only tear up my wall, but replace my radiator valve. They did that, but other marks caused by scratches or wall hangings were left untouched; those are my responsibility, since I put them there.

This is not to say you’re on your own completely. Depending on the relationship you have with your super, you can ask to borrow their tools and resources and they might even help you out. It is, after all, in their financial interest to keep it in good condition. I rent a small apartment and certainly don’t have room for things like big tools or ladders, but my super lets me use his when I have to correct something that falls under the umbrella of my responsibility. More often than not, they actually come do it for me, preferring not to let me climb around on a ladder they own. Smart!

Cosmetic repairs are your responsibility

In that same vein, your landlord is likely not legally required to make repairs in your place that are purely cosmetic. If a crack in your bathroom tile is merely unsightly, that’s probably your problem. If a crack in the tub is causing a leak or making it unusable, it’s more likely theirs. What they are legally required to do is keep the building livable, which means you have to be warm and have access to the essentials. That’s it. I know from experience that they have little to no interest in how attractive your unit actually is, as long as it’s not driving the value down or visible from the outside. That said, once again, ask nicely and see if they’re willing to help you out or lend you tools. Just because they aren’t legally required to do something doesn’t always mean they won’t, especially if you can make the case that it will keep the value high.

What to do if you’re unsure

You can assume your landlord doesn’t have to provide you with window screens, air conditioners, lightbulbs, and other things of that nature, but you should always reach out to them if you think there’s a chance. My apartment has a vaulted ceiling, for instance, and like I said, I don’t have a gigantic ladder lying around. My landlord comes in and changes my lightbulb when I need it, which is considerate; I just have to provide the bulb. Read your lease carefully to see what repairs are specifically highlighted as their responsibility and yours and, if you do make requests or ask for clarification, be sure to always do it in writing so you have a record of what is said.

This week, after my wall catastrophe, my building manager gently reminded me that I should always err on the side of asking for help instead of assuming I have to take care of something myself. That’s great advice straight from the horse’s mouth. They might be willing to help you out, but you won’t know unless you ask. Just keep in mind they don’t have to do much beyond fix anything that makes the place unsafe or unlivable.

In addition to reading over your lease, being open with your landlord, and just asking for help on the chance they’ll provide it, familiarize yourself with the renter protections and laws in your specific state. The repairs above are generally accepted as the ones you’re in charge of, but that might not be true where you live. Here is a handy state-by-state list that can help you get started. The more you know about your lease and the laws that apply to your personal situation, the better equipped you are to deal with leaks, holes, and other issues.

The Academy Awards ain’t everything. Sometimes the movies that win truly represent the best films of their years; sometimes they reflect a trend or a zeitgeist that winds up looking a little backward after some time has passed; sometimes they’re just completely inexplicable.

But let’s focus on the times the Academy has awarded movies that are actually pretty good, or that at least reflect their eras enough to be interesting. Here are 25 of the best award winners currently streaming on Netflix (keeping in mind that some of the streamer’s buzziest awards contenders—think The Irishman and Maestro—got lots of nominations but no wins).

Barbie (2023)

The pink-drunk optimism of the summer of Barbenheimer feels impossibly distant at this dark point in the. winter of 2025, so why not recapture a little of that magic by revisiting the movie that made feminism palatable to the masses for a little while (at least until it was rudely shoved back under the bed in late 2024). I shouldn’t need to sell you on it: A star-making turn from Margot Robbie as Barbie, a delightfully egoless supporting turn from Ryan Gosling as her Ken, and a message of female empowerment that seemed a little trite until I realized that a lot of people apparently still haven’t absorbed it.

Oscar for: Best Original Song

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023)

Audiences and critics had mixed reactions to Wes Anderson’s other 2023 release, the feature-length Asteroid City, but there was little division over this short film, an adaptation of the Roald Dahl story, and it finally earned Anderson his first Oscar—not that he was there to collect it. Benedict Cumberbatch stars as the pseudonymous Henry Sugar, a man who uses his inherited fortune to fund his gambling habit. When he learns of a secret means of winning by seeing through the eyes of others, he comes to perceive more than he, perhaps, bargained for. It’s a cute and sweet, and among one of Anderson’s most visually inventive works (which saying quite a bit). And, at 40 minutes (39, actually), it never has time to wear out its welcome. Ralph Fiennes, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, and Richard Ayoade also star.

Oscar for: Best Live Action Short Film

Roma (2018)

Stepping back from the cerebral science-fiction of Children of Men and Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón won his second Best Director Oscar for this semi-autobiographical drama inspired by his own childhood in Mexico City of the 1970s, in the middle of Mexico’s long, violent Dirty War. Yalitza Aparicio plays Cleo Gutiérrez, a Mixtec live-in maid for an upper-middle-class couple with four children whose marriage is slowly disintegrating. When husband Antonio leaves with his mistress, wife Sophia and the pregnant Cleo bond over their unexpected situations. Cuarón is wonderfully adept at creating a sense of time and place, and the performances are indelible. Roma won Best Foreign Language Film, but was also nominated for Best Picture, and it’s a far stronger work than the year’s actual winner, Green Book.

Oscars for: Best Director (Alfonso Cuarón), Best Foreign Language Film (Mexico), Best Cinematography (Alfonso Cuarón)

Marriage Story (2020)

Nominated for six Oscars, Noah Baumbach’s sensitive, devastating story of a crumbling marriage feels like a modern American update of Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, and earns the right to be mentioned in the same company. As warring couple Nicole and Charlie Barber, Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver give emotionally raw performances, but the real story is Laura Dern as Nicole’s lawyer Nora Fanshaw; she’s one of our finest actresses, with decades of excellent work, and it was high time she won her first Oscar. Driver and Johansson were also nominated, as was Baumbach for his original screenplay

Oscar for: Best Supporting Actress (Laura Dern)

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)

More Oscar love for Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water). Ho hum. Yet, as in the past, it’s well-deserved. Set in Fascist Italy between the World Wars, this longtime passion project for the director boasts gorgeous stop-motion animation. More importantly, it embraces the darkness inherent in Carlo Collodi’s original fantasy novel—del Toro recognizing that a children’s story need be neither cloying nor condescending, and that kids recognize, as well as anyone, that sometimes the only way to the light is through the dark. The talented, but not distracting voice cast includes Ewan McGregor, Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton, and Cate Blanchett.

Oscar for: Best Animated Feature Film

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

A second adaptation of the 1929 anti-war novel from Erich Maria Remarque, this version didn’t take home Best Picture nor Best Director as the original 1930 version did, but still, All Quiet wound up being the second-most awarded film on Oscar night 2023, behind Best Picture winner Everything Everywhere All at Once. If it doesn’t have quite the impact of the earlier adaptation, it’s still a powerful film about the futility of war, set amid the trenches of World War I.

Oscars for: Best International Feature (Germany), Best Original Score (Volker Bertelmann), Best Production Design (Christian M. Goldbeck and Ernestine Hipper), Best Cinematography (James Friend)

My Octopus Teacher (2020)

Filmmaker Craig Foster spent a year forming a relationship with a wild common octopus in a South African kelp forest, transferring some of the lessons learned to his relationship with his own son. If Foster could form a bond with such an alien intelligence in its own natural (and naturally dangerous) environment, surely there’s hope for humanity? Maybe?

Oscar for: Best Documentary Feature

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020)

One sweaty, blues-filled afternoon in the Chicago of 1927, the great Ma Rainey (Viola Davis) shows up at the studio to make a new album. She’s been contracted by white promoters, and she’s fully aware that their deference to her is entirely dependent on her bankability as a singer. Over the course of the session, tensions rise and conflicts erupt, particularly between Ma Rainey and Chadwick Boseman’s Levee Green. Davis earned a Best Actress nomination, and is so good that she’s practically channeling the take-no-shit blues legend, while Chadwick Boseman was seen as a near-lock for a posthumous Best Actor award. Unfortunately, the Academy’s notorious stinginess when it comes to Black acting seems to have won out—there’s been exactly one Black Best Actress winner in 95 years of awards (Halle Berry), and only five Black acting winners overall.

Oscars for: Best Costume Design (Ann Roth), Best Makeup and Hairstyling (Sergio López-Rivera, Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson)

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

While the long-awaited prequel/followup Furiosa undeservedly bombed at the box office and with Oscar voters, it in no way tarnishes the reputation of this 2015 action masterpiece. In retrospect, director George Miller’s magnum opus would have been a far better Best Picture pick than the actual winner (when is the last time anyone thought about, let alone watched, The Revenant?), and it’s always a good time to revisit the road rage mayhem alongside Max, Immortan Joe, the War Boys, and, of course, the Doof Warrior himself.

Oscars for: Costume Design (Jenny Beavan), Film Editing (Margaret Sixel), Makeup and Hairstyling (Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega, and Damian Martin), Production Design (Colin Gibson, Lisa Thompson), Sound Editing (Mark Mangini and David White), Sound Mixing (Chris Jenkins, Gregg Rudloff, and Ben Osmo)

RRR (2022)

It’s wild that RRR wasn’t nominated in more categories, given its epic scope, sharp commentary, and crowd-pleasing style—but taking home India’s first Original Song Oscar was no small feat either, especially given that the competition included numbers from the likes of Rihanna and Lady Gaga. The movie itself is a blockbuster done right, with brilliantly choreographed action sequences and rousing musical numbers buttressing a strong “f*ck colonialism” message. Hopefully Hollywood was taking notes.

Oscars for: Best Original Song (“Naatu Naatu”)

Erin Brockovich (2000)

Julia Roberts finally took home an Academy Award for her irresistible turn as the title character, a feisty small town paralegal who manages to bring a massive corporation to its knees with a lawsuit over toxic pollution. Given the rapid dissolution of government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and an increasingly corporate-friendly judiciary, it kinda plays like a beautiful fairytale these days, thanks in no small part to lively direction from Steven Soderbergh (who won the Oscar the same year for directing a different movie altogether—and while Traffic is a good too, spending time with Erin Brockovich is a lot more fun.)

Oscars for: Best Actress (Julia Roberts)

The Power of the Dog (2021)

Like Brokeback Mountain, much of the press around Jane Campion’s film had to do with its queer themes (gay cowboys? what’s next!?), but its power lies in its deliberate, unhurried direction from Campion (a rarity these days), and also in its beautiful cinematography. Benedict Cumberbatch stars as one of two very different brothers, whose tenuous peace is shattered by the arrival of newcomers at their Montana ranch circa 1925.

Oscar for: Best Director (Jane Campion)

Period. End of Sentence. (2018)

The short (around 25 minutes) film follows a group of women in the Indian village of Kathikera, about 50 miles from Delhi, who work to overcome centuries of shame associated with menstruation. Learning that sanitary pads can be made with local materials, local women start a factory to manufacture and sell their own pads, starting a quiet but needed revolution in menstrual health.

Oscar for: Best Documentary Short Subject

The Last Days (1998)

In the last year of World War II and the Holocaust, the Nazis in occupied Hungary accelerated their program of deportation and extermination, even at the cost of war strategy. This documentary follows five survivors—and naturalized American citizens—traveling back to the camps they narrowly escaped.

Oscar for: Best Documentary Feature

The White Helmets (2016)

It’s easy to lose sight of documentaries dealing with war and crisis amid the many of that style that have received Oscar nominations and wins, but there are standouts even in that very particular crowd. The White Helmets documents the story of the Syrian Civil Defense, an all-volunteer group of Syrians who perform search and rescue operations in response to bombings. The real draw of this (relatively) short film is in the interludes with volunteers discussing their everyday lives, before and during the war; those moments make clear the cost of the ongoing conflict. Though seven years old, the Syrian Civil War continues, tragically, as does the work of the SCD.

Oscar for: Best Documentary (Short Subject)

American Factory (2019)

The first film from Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company, Higher Ground Productions, goes and wins an Oscar. The film looks at an abandoned GM plant in Ohio purchased by a Chinese billionaire for his company, glass manufacturer Fuyao. The plant came to employ 2,000 American workers, but the complicated dynamic between the Chinese leadership and working-class American employers quickly points to potentially insurmountable problems. The movie takes a fly-on-the-wall approach, without any narrative beyond what we’re seeing and hearing inside the factory itself; there’s no overriding sense that there are heroes or villains here—just a lot of people trying to figure it all out.

Oscar for: Best Documentary Feature

Apollo 13 (1995)

Ron Howard’s all-star astronaut docudrama is not only a better film than the one that won Best Picture in its year (Braveheart), it’s also a better picture than the one the director took home the Oscar for (A Beautiful Mind). Simultaneously heart-stopping and subdued, the true story of the aborted moon mission generates tension without going overboard on the histrionics.

Oscars for: Best Film Editing (Mike Hill and Daniel Hanley), Best Sound (Rick Dior, Steve Pederson, Scott Millan and David MacMillan)

The Sting (1973)

Very much the kind of movie they don’t make anymore, and not merely because it’s a depression-era period piece. George Roy Hill, who had directed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid just a few years earlier, reunited Paul Newman and Robert Redford in a similarly good-natured caper film. The two play a couple of con men with an elaborate scheme to get revenge on the crime boss who murdered their friend. The period details are as meticulously crafted as the movie’s central scheme, and it’s ultimately an all-time great crowd-pleaser.

Oscars for: Best Picture, Best Director (George Roy Hill), Best Original Screenplay (David S. Ward), Best Art Direction (Henry Bumstead and James W. Payne), Best Costume Design (Edith Head), Best Film Editing (William Reynolds) Best Scoring (Marvin Hamlisch)

Dallas Buyers Club (2013)

While it’s not exactly the best example of trans rep—casting a cis actor as a transwoman, and Jared Leto, no less—a more or less well-intentioned queer story with big name stars, including Matthew McConaughey in an Oscar-winning role, feels like…something anyway, given trans folks have become a major target for hate in the decade since. Set amid the AIDS crisis, this story of a struggling community fighting to survive might even remind you that better times are possible, in theory.

Oscars for: Best Actor (Matthew McConaughey), Best Supporting Actor (Jared Leto)

Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Produced on a shoestring budget (at least by blockbuster terms), the thirty-third installment in the venerable Japanese sci-fi franchise (not counting the Hollywood entries) is both a supremely entertaining kaiju romp and a touching story about the impact of war on those “lucky” enough to survive it. And extra kudos for characterizing Godzilla as basically a giant, angry cat.

Oscar for: Best Visual Effects (Takashi Yamazaki, Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi, and Tatsuji Nojima)

Parasite (2019)

The 2020 Oscars were handed out just weeks before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, making the Best Picture win for Parasite—South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s darkly comic story of class warfare and the cruel hand of fate—feel like some kind of demarcation between “Then” (a time when a foreign film speaking truth to power could come out on top in Hollywood) and “Now.”

Oscars for: Best Picture, Best Director (Bong Joon-ho), Best Original Screenplay (Bong Joon-ho), Best International Film

Whiplash (2014)

Miles Teller plays Andrew Neiman, an ambitious and talented jazz musician in his first year at the prestigious Shaffer Conservatory in New York City. He’s come to the school with big dreams, and quickly gets noticed by the conductor of the conservatory’s studio band, Terence Fletcher (a terrifying J. K. Simmons). Fletcher is obsessive and cruel, which only feeds Neiman’s overwhelming desire to succeed.

Oscars for: Best Supporting Actor (J. K. Simmons), Best Film Editing (Tom Cross), Best Sound Mixing (Craig Mann, Ben Wilkins, and Thomas Curley)

Schindler’s List (1993)

Steven Spielberg shed his reputation as a maker of popcorn entertainments with this sobering true-life story of a German factory owner (Liam Neeson) who risked his own safety to protect Jewish workers in his employ during the darkest days of the Holocaust. It’s not exactly an “entertaining” choice, but then again, it’s always good to have something to point to when you need a reminder that, yes, fascism is bad. And Nazis? No good.

Oscars for: Best Picture, Best Director (Steven Spielberg), Best Adapted Screenplay (Steve Zaillian), Best Cinematography (Janusz Kaminski), Best Art Direction (Allan Starski, Ewa Braun), Best Film Editing (Michael Kahn), Best Original Score (John Williams)

Mank (2020)

David Fincher’s film about screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) and the development of Citizen Kane is impressively dramatic, and even occasionally harrowing. It also did a bit better at Oscar time than the movie whose making it dramatizes: Kane received nine nominations and one win, while Mank picked up 10 nominations and won two of them.

Oscars for: Best Cinematography (Erik Messerschmidt), Best Production Design (Donald Graham Burt and Jan Pascale)

If Anything Happens I Love You (2020)

The very short (under 15 minutes) film, with a fairly simple animation style, manages to generate more emotion than many films many times its length. The movie follows two parents, grieving the death of their daughter in a school shooting, as they find themselves growing apart in the aftermath.

Oscar for: Best Animated Short Film

Netflix’s March slate has plenty of variety, from reality TV to true crime docs to sci-fi comedy.

John Mulaney is back this month with a new live weekly talk show, Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney, a sequel to his 2024 live event Everybody’s in L.A. The show, which will include on-screen guests and live calls from the audience, will premiere on March 12 at 10 p.m. ET with 12 weekly episodes on consecutive Wednesdays. Netflix also has new comedy hours in March from Andrew Schulz (LIFE, March 4), Bert Kreischer (Lucky, March 18), and Chelsea Handler (The Feeling, March 25).

For reality TV fans, there’s a new installment of Love is Blind: Sweden (March 13) as well as the follow-up to the first season, After the Altar (March 6). Netflix is also taking over Temptation Island (March 12), which originally aired in 2001 and was revived in 2019 for five seasons. The new competition show Million Dollar Secret (March 26) is Netflix’s response to Peacock’s popular series The Traitors, putting strangers through a series of games to figure out the identity of the millionaire.

Netflix has a handful of true-crime documentaries this month, starting with the film Chaos: The Manson Murders (March 7), based on the 2019 titular book by Tom O’Neill and directed by Errol Morris. At the end of the month, Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer (March 31) will look at the Gilgo Beach murders from the perspective of the victims. The series is directed by Emmy winner Liz Garbus.

Finally, The Electric State (March 14) is a new sci-fi comedy film directed by the Russo brothers and starring Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt. The film is adapted from Simon Stålenhag’s graphic novel of the same name and follows an orphaned teen’s quest to find her brother after a robot rebellion.

Here’s everything coming to Netflix in March—including the next installment of Formula 1: Drive to Survive (March 7) and lifestyle show With Love, Meghan (March 4)—and everything that’s leaving.

What’s coming to Netflix in March 2025

Available soon

• Khakee: The Bengal Chapter—Netflix Series

Available March 1

• The Potato Lab—Netflix Series

• SAKAMOTO DAYS—Netflix Anime

• 50 First Dates

• Annie (2014)

• Beginners

• Black Hawk Down

• Blade Runner: The Final Cut

• Blood and Bone

• Cell 211

• Do the Right Thing

• Friday

• High-Rise

• The Holiday

• Ma

• National Security

• Next Friday

• Pride & Prejudice

• Runaway Jury

• See No Evil, Hear No Evil

• Sicario

• Ted

• Vampires

• Wedding Crashers

Available March 3

• Hot Wheels Let’s Race: Season 3—Netflix Family

Available March 4

• Andrew Schulz: LIFE—Netflix Comedy Special

• The Graham Norton Show: Best Bits: Week of February 21, 2025

• With Love, Meghan—Netflix Series

Available March 5

• Just One Look—Netflix Series

• The Leopard—Netflix Series

• Medusa—Netflix Series

Available March 6

• Barbie & Teresa: Recipe For Friendship

• Tyler Perry’s Beauty in Black: Season 1 Part 2—Netflix Series

• Larissa: The Other Side of Anitta—Netflix Documentary

• Love is Blind: Sweden: Season 1: After the Altar—Netflix Series

• Power Rangers

Available March 7

• Chaos: The Manson Murders—Netflix Documentary

• Delicious—Netflix Film

• Formula 1: Drive to Survive: Season 7—Netflix Documentary

• Nadaaniyan—Netflix Film

• Plankton: The Movie—Netflix Family

• When Life Gives You Tangerines—Netflix Series

Available March 8

• SAKAMOTO DAYS—Netflix Anime

Available March 10

• American Manhunt: Osama bin Laden—Netflix Documentary

Available March 12

• Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney—Netflix Live Event

• Temptation Island—Netflix Series

• Welcome to the Family—Netflix Series

Available March 13

• Adolescence—Netflix Series

• Love is Blind: Sweden: Season 2—Netflix Series

Available March 14

• Audrey

• The Electric State—Netflix Film

Available March 15

• SAKAMOTO DAYS—Netflix Anime

Available March 17

• CoComelon Lane: Season 4—Netflix Family

• Inside: Season 2—Netflix Series

• The Walking Dead: Dead City: Season 1

Available March 18

• Bert Kreischer: Lucky—Netflix Comedy Special

• Love & Hip Hop New York: Seasons 3-4

• The Outrun

Available March 19

• Twister: Caught in the Storm—Netflix Documentary

• Woman of the Dead: Season 2—Netflix Series

Available March 20

• Bet Your Life—Netflix Series

• Den of Thieves 2: Pantera

• The Residence—Netflix Series

• Wolf King—Netflix Family

Available March 21

• Go!—Netflix Series

• Little Siberia—Netflix Film

• Revelations—Netflix Film

Available March 22

• SAKAMOTO DAYS—Netflix Anime

Available March 25

• Chelsea Handler: The Feeling—Netflix Comedy Special

Available March 26

• Caught—Netflix Series

• I Survived a Crime: Season 2

• Million Dollar Secret—Netflix Series

Available March 27

• Gold & Greed: The Hunt for Fenn’s Treasure—Netflix Documentary

• Survival of the Thickest: Season 2—Netflix Series

Available March 28

• The Lady’s Companion—Netflix Series

• The Life List—Netflix Film

Available March 31

• Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer—Netflix Documentary

• Promised Hearts—Netflix Film

• Rhythm + Flow Italy: Season 2—Netflix Series

What’s leaving Netflix in March 2025

Leaving March 1

• 21 Bridges

• A Haunted House

• A Haunted House 2

• Aloha

• Blended

• Cinderella Man

• Due Date

• Free State of Jones

• Green Lantern

• In the Heart of the Sea

• Inception

• Legends of the Fall

• Little

• Mr. Peabody & Sherman

• Oblivion

• Scooby-Doo

• Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed

• Seven Years in Tibet

• Sixteen Candles

• Stand by Me

• Still Alice

• The Angry Birds Movie

• The Other Guys

Leaving March 3

• Ravenous

Leaving March 15

• The Autopsy of Jane Doe

Leaving March 16

• A Walk Among the Tombstones

Leaving March 23

• The Machine

Leaving March 24

• Oldboy

Leaving March 25

• No Escape

Leaving March 27

• Happy!: Seasons 1-2

Leaving March 30

• Godzilla vs. Kong

• Mad Max: Fury Road

Leaving March 31

• The Windsors: Seasons 1-3

Oh, you’re here because you captured the image of someone’s Instagram Story and want to know if they’ll get a notification about the screenshot, à la Snapchat? We’ve all been there, but they’re not going to find out if you took a screenshot of their grid post or story, at least not through a notification. There are a few instances where an Instagram user might be made aware that you’re sharing their content, though, or at least filing it away for later. Here’s everything you need to know about taking screenshots, saving, and sharing in Instagram, so you can lurk in relative peace.

Can you screenshot someone’s Instagram Story or grid post?

If you screenshot someone’s grid or Story post, they do not get a notification. Ditto for screen-recording a video post. For better or worse, I am extremely good at creeping around on the app; I do it all the time. If any of the people whose content I was saving got a notification about it, I’d know by now. And I’d tell you. 

Can you screenshot Instagram direct messages?

This is where things get dicey. In a standard Instagram direct message, you can screenshot with no problems. If you toggle on vanish mode, however, you lose that ability. This is a new change to vanish mode that appears to have only gone into effect within the past few weeks. I saw a few people posting about it and tested it myself. It’s true: If someone screenshots your chat thread in vanish mode, you get a notification that says, “@theperson took a screenshot.” If you screenshot the thread, you also see the notification that “you took a screenshot.”

It makes sense because vanish mode is supposed to be more private. When you toggle it on (by holding the bottom of your screen and dragging up within the thread), all the messages you send and receive in that chat disappear when you back out of the screen. The other person you’re chatting with is supposed to have a reasonable expectation that their messages won’t stick around for long, so it stands to reason they deserve to know if you took a recording.

This does not apply to messages that are sent in chat threads without vanish mode turned on. It looks like this:

The new way Instagram narcs on you.
Credit: @ellefs0n/Instagram

Has Instagram ever alerted users to other screenshots of their content?

That said, there used to be one other way people could see if you’d taken a screenshot of something on Instagram. It was minor, but that’s what made it insidious: Up until very recently, if someone sent a photo directly to you via Instagram direct messaging, using the in-DM camera feature, and you took a screenshot of it, they would get a notification. It looked like this: 

The old way Instagram used to narc on you.
Credit: @ellefs0n/Instagram

To demonstrate how that looked, I asked my recipient to screenshot the first picture I sent and to open and view, but not screenshot, the second. The photos were sent in real time, using the camera icon in the bottom left, next to the typing box. As you can see, a little circle icon (it looks like a camera shutter) appeared next to the first one, which meant a screenshot was taken of it. A photo taken with the regular camera and sent from the camera roll did not produce a screenshot notification.

Why am I telling you this? Instagram only recently changed this, but it did so in phases. The last time I checked, three months ago, if you screenshot a photo taken with the in-app camera, there was no longer a notification. Now, Instagram prevents it with a pop-up message that says, “You can’t screenshot or record this. It’s only meant to be replayed once.” If the sender toggles on the “replay” option for the photo taken with the in-app camera and the receiver screenshots that, there is still no notification. That’s a major change from just a year ago, when a notification would pop up, so this is clearly something always in flux. If and when it changes again, I’ll let you know.

Other ways to see if people are sharing your Instagram content

Taking screenshots on Instagram is safe, as we’ve discovered, but there are other ways a person might be able to figure out if you’re disseminating their content or saving it for future review. Technically, you’ll still be anonymous, but it could be traced back to you with a little bad luck.

If you have a business account, not a personal one, you have access to some additional features that can come in handy if you want to know whether people are sharing your content among themselves. Under your grid posts, you’ll see a button that says “View insights.” Tapping this will bring you to a page that shows how many accounts were reached, how many were engaged, how many people tapped through to see your profile, how many were following you already, and all kinds of other interesting data. You’ll also see, right at the top, a string of four numbers: How many accounts liked it, how many comments it got, how many shares it got, and how many saves it got.

Credit: @ellefs0n/Instagram

The shares and saves are important here. The rightward facing arrow that looks like a paper plane is your shares. The rectangle with a triangular cutout that looks like a bookmark is your saves. If you check this, you can’t see who is sharing or saving it, but you can get a sense of how many opps (or fans!) you have. Above, see that nine people shared my post and six saved it. What were their intentions? These are the questions that keep me up at night, but alas, I may never uncover the culprits.

Bear in mind that if you save or share a post—meaning you send it to someone else via DM, share it to your own Story, or copy the link to send it to someone off-app—if the person has a business profile, they’ll at least know someone did. Depending on the content of the post and how many followers they have, they could narrow it down to you. (To check if someone has a business account, tap their profile. If there’s a descriptor under their name, like Journalist, Blogger, or Public figure, or buttons like “Contact,” they have a business profile.)

If you’re the one worried someone has shared your post with ill intentions, don’t get ahead of yourself. Ask yourself first if you shared your own post to your Story, which would count as a share and increase the number next to that paper plane icon.

Speaking of Stories, anyone with a business profile can also see the data related to their Story posts, both when the posts are active in the 24 hours after they are shared and in the Story archive. Next to the eye-shaped icon that indicates viewers, there will be an icon with three rectangles that looks like a bar graph. It reveals how many accounts were reached, how many engaged with the post, how many replies it got, etc. It also reveals shares. Below is an example of a time one of my Stories got 11 shares. I was able to figure out who shared it by looking through the views and taking note of the viewers who were not my followers. Sensing nasty intentions, I blocked the original sharer. If you share someone’s Story in-app, the accounts with whom you share it will appear on the story’s viewership list, which could easily implicate you. 

Credit: @ellefs0n/Instagram

Does any of this matter? No, we should all launch our phones into the nearest trash can Sabrina van der Woodsen-style and go touch grass. But there are ways people can sniff out whether you’re sharing or saving their Instagram posts, even though they won’t get a notification if you screenshot. 

If you get an email from PayPal, proceed with caution: Scammers are using a legitimate PayPal address to send fraudulent purchase notifications to users in an attempt to gain remote access to your computer by convincing you to download malware.

The phishing emails are being sent from service@paypal.com, which makes them seem real—but as Bleeping Computer reports, scammers have managed to exploit PayPal settings in order to trick recipients.

How to spot the PayPal scam

Users targeted for this scam are receiving emails from PayPal notifying them that they’ve added a new mailing address to their account. According to Bleeping Computer, users who received this message did not actually add new addresses to PayPal, and in some cases, these notices are being sent to email addresses that aren’t even linked to a PayPal account at all.

The phishing email also includes variations of the following message:

“Confirmation: Your shipping address for the MacBook M4 Max 1 TB ($1098.95) has been changed. If you did not authorize this update, please reach out to PayPal at +1-888-668-2508′”

Scammers are hoping users will call the number to reach PayPal support about a suspected fraudulent MacBook purchase. But if you do, you’ll speak with someone who will scare you into believing your account has been hacked and direct you to download and run software to fix it. Instead, though, scams like this intend to take over your system in order to run malware and steal money and/or personal information.

Obviously, a phishing email received from a legitimate PayPal address is worrisome—plus, it can get past security and spam filters. As Bleeping Computer’s reporting found, the scammers are first utilizing the platform’s “gift address” feature (which is just an additional shipping address you can add to your account) and then automatically forwarding the confirmation with the fraudulent message through a mailing list so it looks like it came from PayPal.

How to avoid falling victim to the PayPal scam

One way to identify phishing scams is to check the address that the message is sent from, which may seem legit on the surface but clearly not when you look closer. In this case, that may not help much, but you should always be wary of messages that provoke an emotional response (like fear).

If you get this email, you can ignore and delete it, though you can log into your PayPal account by going directly to the website or app and make sure nothing has been added to your account. Do not click links or call phone numbers listed in suspicious emails—instead, go directly to the website to access your account and locate official customer service channels if needed. Finally, never download anything from a suspicious email to your device.

You’ve no doubt explored the app that came along with your smart lights, and found several handy tricks within—from getting your lights to turn on at scheduled times, to cycling between different colors and brightness settings over the course of the day. There’s plenty more you can do, however, with the help of IFTTT.

IFTTT (If This Then That) is a long-established web and mobile app for plugging different services into each other. It can, for example, automatically share Instagram photos to X (but only when a specific hashtag is used); forward SMS messages to your email; export Fitbit stats to Google Sheets; and plenty more—there are a wealth of options to explore.

The tool plugs into several smart-light platforms, too, including Philips Hue, Lifx, TP-Link, Nanoleaf, and Govee. That means you’re able to link certain triggers from all kinds of apps and services to automated actions on your smart lights.

You can sign up for and use IFTTT free of charge. There are also Pro accounts available, which start at $3 a month: These give you access to more automations (known as applets), a greater selection of triggers and actions to choose from, access to AI enhancements, and a few additional features.

How to set up an IFTTT applet

It won’t take you long to set up your first applet.
Credit: Lifehacker

Once you’ve registered an account with IFTTT and got yourself into the web interface, you can start building applets. Click Create, then choose Add next to If This. This is the trigger that will kick the automation into action. It could be anything from a new message in Google Chat to a new track from your favorite band on SoundCloud. You can also use times and dates as triggers.

As you build your applet, you’ll need to sign in to all the various services you’re making use of, and give IFTTT access to your account credentials (which you can revoke at any time). If there’s an app or service not available in IFTTT, it’s most likely because there isn’t an option for third-party plug-ins to attach themselves to it.

You’ll often be given options for your trigger—if you’re connecting Dropbox, for example, you can specify a particular folder that IFTTT monitors for activity. These options give you more fine-grained control over when triggers are launched, which can be useful in terms of controlling your smart lights.

With your trigger selected, you can choose your action: Click Add next to Then That. (For the purposes of this article, you’ll want to connect your smart lights of choice, but there are plenty of other options for building applets—you can have emails sent to your inbox, or notifications sent to your phone.) The selection is slightly different for actions compared to triggers, and again, there are usually some customization options available.

You’ll need to log in and connect any new apps or services you connect to, and then you’re almost done. Click Continue for an overview of the new applet, then click Done to confirm. You can manage your active applets through the My Applets section of IFTTT. They can be temporarily paused or fully deleted whenever you like.

IFTTT applets to try with your smart lights

Now that you know how to build applets, you can turn your attention to your smart lights—ways to use your lights as an alternative notification system for something, rather than checking your phone or email. For these examples I’ll use Philips Hue lights, as those are the ones I’ve got, but various smart platforms are supported.

You can, for example, get your smart lights to tell you about a new episode of your favorite podcast on Spotify. Choose Spotify and New followed show as the trigger, then set Philips Hue and Blink lights as the action. You don’t have to blink the lights across your whole house—you can choose one individual light for this or any other action.

Get an alert every time there’s a new podcast on Spotify.
Credit: Lifehacker

Getting weather alerts is a fun one, because you can make use of the colors on your smart lights. Choose Weather Underground then Current condition changes to as the trigger, and select Rain as the condition (your location should be detected automatically). The trigger for Philips Hue lights then needs to be Change color—set it to “blue” to get rain warnings, or tweak the settings for any different conditions.

What about if your Android phone is in another room or in a desk and you want to know when it needs charging? Pick Android Battery then Low battery as the trigger, then Philips Hue and Set a scene in a room—you can specify a light change to warn you a recharge is needed. For this to work, you need the IFTTT Android app installed on your phone to monitor battery levels.

Another potentially useful way of using your lights is with your schedule. IFTTT lets you select Google Calendar and Any event starts as a trigger—you can then set a blink or a color change in the Philips Hue action to signify that an event is starting within a specified number of minutes. You can set this for a specific calendar in your account (like your meetings calendar), so you’re not overwhelmed with notifications.

You can also connect IFTTT to your Google Calendar.
Credit: Lifehacker

Or what about connecting your smart lights to your video doorbell? If you pick Ring and New Ring Detected as your trigger, the resulting action could then be a color or scene change on your Philips Hue lights, or a quick blink of some or all of them. If you don’t have a doorbell you can hear easily, or instant access to your phone, this can be truly handy.

These are just a few options you can explore across the IFTTT platform, and there’s a lot more that’s possible. IFTTT plugs into iOS Shortcuts too, for example, giving you even more ways to mix and match your automated connections.

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The Google Pixel 7 (5G, Unlocked) is down to $279.99 on Woot for the next three days, or until it sells out. That’s more than 50% off its original $599 price, making this a steal for anyone in need of a flagship phone at a mid-range cost.

Google Pixel 7 (5G, Unlocked)

$279.99
at Woot

$599.00
Save $319.01

Get Deal

Get Deal

$279.99
at Woot

$599.00
Save $319.01

The deal is available in the Snow color, and Prime members get free standard shipping—everyone else pays $6. Woot won’t ship to Alaska, Hawaii, PO boxes, or APO addresses. Also, this is backed by a 90-day Woot Limited Warranty, not Google’s standard coverage. But considering this phone was PCMag’s Best Android Phone of 2022, it still holds up well in 2024, especially at this price.

The Pixel 7 is built for those who want a smooth, no-nonsense Android experience. It has a 6.3-inch OLED display (2,400 x 1,080 pixels) with a 90Hz refresh rate—not the 120Hz you’ll see on pricier models, but still much smoother than a standard 60Hz screen. The build is recycled aluminum, which is nice for the eco-conscious, and it’s covered in Gorilla Glass Victus on both sides, giving it solid durability. It also meets an IP68 rating, meaning it can handle dust and water without worry. Internally, the Tensor G2 chip and 8GB RAM make everyday tasks feel incredibly fluid. The 256GB storage is generous, though there’s no microSD slot, so what you see is what you get. Battery life isn’t top-tier, but its 4,355mAh battery should last about 12 hours with moderate to high usage. It supports 30W wired charging, Qi wireless charging, and even wireless battery sharing for accessories, notes this PCMag review.

Where the Pixel 7 really shines is its camera setup. The 50MP main camera and 12MP ultra-wide lens deliver some of the best photos you’ll get on a phone at this price. It has optical and electrical image stabilization, making shots sharper even in low light. Google’s software tricks—Magic Eraser, Night Sight, Motion Mode, and Face Unblur (among others)—make a noticeable difference, giving your photos a professional touch with minimal effort. The 10.8MP front camera is great for selfies and video calls. On the connectivity side, it’s packed with 5G connectivity, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2, NFC, and GPS, ensuring you’re covered for fast speeds and seamless connections.

There are times when eggs are non-negotiable in a recipe—like egg drop soup or quiche—but when eggs play a minor role, then why not use a replacement? Egg wash is a prime example. Using it adds color and shine to finished baked goods like dinner rolls and pies, but when eggs are selling at a premium price, it’s hard to justify using an egg wash at all.

Finding a good egg wash alternative isn’t only useful for saving a buck, but it can be a handy back-up even when eggs are plentiful. There’s always the occasion where you just ran out, or you have folks coming over that are on egg-free diets. After some browsing on the internet, butter, mayo, milk, heavy cream, maple syrup, and sour cream seem to be the common substitutes.

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

I whipped up a batch of my favorite biscuits and painted them with different finishes so I could compare them after baking. You can see in the picture above that there are eight biscuits. In addition to the six alternatives I mentioned, I did one with actual egg wash so we can track what we’re striving for, and one with absolutely nothing on it as a control.

25 minutes later, the results were in and I was actually pretty surprised. Each topping produced a different result; some more obvious than others. When egg wash is used as a topping (as opposed to a binder), its primary function is to impart color, shine, and leave no trace of flavor, so that’s what I was looking for.

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Here are the results from top left to right, and bottom left to right.

• Egg wash: Goal browning and shine

• Sour cream: Best browning, high gloss (outshined the egg)

• Heavy cream: Light browning, a slight shine

• Whole milk: Well-browned, slight shine

• No wash: Light browning, matte

• Maple syrup: Well-browned, no shine

• Mayonnaise: Medium browning, medium shine

• Butter: Light browning, no shine

Hands-down, the winner was sour cream. Dare I say it performed even better than the actual egg wash. (I tried to capture the blinding shine in the picture below.) The color of the baked sour cream coated biscuit was a beautiful dark brown, and the shine surpassed even the egg wash standard. 

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Runners-up were mayonnaise and whole milk for their middle-of-the-road performance in both categories. For a vegan option, maple syrup imparted gorgeous brown coloring, but it had a decidedly un-shiny finish and it leaves behind a subtle sweet flavor (which might be good or bad depending on your preferences). 

Butter turned out the worst performance. I would be sad, but I’ve been fooled by butter before so I was expecting the disappointment. On both counts, the finish paled in comparison to its competitors. Butter aside, at least you have some options for the next time you make a batch of biscuits, rolls, pastries, or pies. Save the eggs for when they matter most.

If you’ve been waiting in earnest for interest rates to drop, I have some bad news: The Federal Reserve has effectively put rate cuts on hold until President Donald Trump and Congress establish a clear policy direction that won’t make inflation even worse. According to the Federal Reserve’s January meeting minutes, released this week, this cautious stance is a result of the Fed simply not knowing how the “economic effects of potential government policies” might play out.

While the federal funds rate is designed to set what banks charge each other, it trickles down to everything from mortgages to student loans. If you’re planning on applying for a credit card, a home, or a car loan any time soon, here’s how the Fed’s waiting game will impact you.

Higher inflation is still a thing

Assuming there isn’t a sudden spike in the unemployment rate, Fed officials said they would “want to see further progress on inflation before making additional adjustments to the target range for the federal funds rate.” In the meantime, inflation has proved to be more resilient than hoped, with the numbers from January coming in hotter than expected.

While no rate movement in either direction is the most likely outcome for the time being, there’s a chance that if inflation worsens again, the Fed’s next move would be not a rate cute, but a rate hike.

Market expectations for interest rate cuts have already declined significantly. The latest CNBC Fed Survey showed 65% of respondents predict two rate cuts in 2025, down from 78% in the prior survey. And if the Fed does cut rates this year, the first cut may not come until June or July, according to the CME FedWatch tool. In other words, the Fed has adopted a “wait and see” approach—it is unwilling to lower rates amid uncertainty about the new administration’s economic policies.

Trump’s tariff plans could raise prices even more

The biggest contributor to said economic uncertainty is President Trump’s stated plans for tariffs on imports. While earlier announced tariffs on Canada and Mexico are on hold (at least for now), China is facing new 10% tariffs, and additional tariffs on those and other countries aren’t out of the realm of possibility.

The Peterson Institute estimates that tariffs on just China, Mexico, and Canada could cost the average American family approximately $1,200 annually—and this estimate doesn’t account for Trump’s broader reciprocal tariff plans. This is because when tariffs drive up the cost of a product being imported, those costs get passed on to the customer.

Large purchases like automobiles, appliances, and electronics are likely to see some of the most noticeable price increases, according to Johnston. These items often rely heavily on global supply chains and imported components. Even products assembled in the United States frequently depend on imported parts, meaning tariffs could affect prices even for “American-made” goods.

The bottom line

If you were hopeful interest rates might drop in the next few months, don’t hold your breath. We’ve been battling persistent inflation for years now, and with inflationary pressures from tariffs on the horizon, the Fed appears committed to maintaining higher rates until there’s compelling evidence that inflation is firmly under control.

But hey, while higher interest rates raise costs for borrowers, they can also mean higher yields for savers—so here’s how you can take advantage of that.

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While it can be fulfilling to put in the work and make your home spotless, we simply don’t always have the time.

You might already have a robot vacuum zooming around to collect dust and dirt on your behalf, but there are a surprising number of lesser-known—and equally convenient—cleaning gadgets that could also be pitching in. From window cleaners to toilet scrubbers, here are some tech tools you can buy to outsource whatever chore you most despise.

Automatically clean your glass

Let’s start off with windows, which can be tedious to clean and still end up infuriatingly streaky when all is said and done. The Hobot-298 window cleaning robot is certainly a splurge at $299 on Amazon (though price-tracking tool Camelcamelcamel says that’s lower than its average price of $435), but it’s effective: Fill it with water, attach it to a window, and let it mist and polish away. It’s particularly useful if your home has large, tall windows that are hard to reach. There is a cheaper option, too: The FMART T9Pro Window Cleaning Robot for $134.79.

FMART T9Pro Window Cleaning Robot

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You can also consider this cordless window vacuum from Sharper Image. It sprays down the glass and removes the water, sorting it into a separate reservoir so the clean and dirty water never mix. It’s just $63.99.

Automatically clean hard floors

Yes, you likely know all about robot vacuums, but what about robot mops? The iRobot Braava Jet, $309 on Amazon, uses a precise jet spray to make your floors gleam, and it connects to your phone or smart home devices, learns the layout of your house, and can work in concert with Roomba robot vacuums to, per the company, “team up to vacuum to mop automatically in perfect sequence.”

Then again, try a robot that does it all for the ultimate automatic experience. There are some great robot vacuum/mop combos on the market, though they can be pretty expensive, so it might be worth it to start small and see how you like a cheaper version. Consider one from ROPVACNIC for just $139.98.

EyeVac Home touchless vacuum automatic dustpan

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Finally, if you sweep a lot (I’m looking at you, people with long hair or fluffy pets) it might be worth it to upgrade to a stationary dust pan. It’s kind of like a big vacuum that sits in the corner and you use your broom to direct dirt to it. From there, it just sucks it up. It’s not fully automatic, since you still have to sweep, but it’s more convenient than what you’re doing now, isn’t it? It’s $149 on Amazon.

Automatically clean the toilet

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Consider the beautifully named Fluidmaster 8300 Flush ‘n Sparkle toilet cleaning system. You stick it in your tank and it disperses a little bleach whenever you flush. It can last up to three months, which is a long time to go without having to scrub your bowl, and it’s only $10.59.

Automatically take care of the trash

The future is now, baby, because you can even have a robot take care of the trash for you. The Airdeer automatic trash can ($219) packs your trash, seals the bag, and adds a new bag to the container with the touch of a button—basically, it does everything besides actually taking out the trash. It comes with six refill rings, each of which holds 20 trash bags. 

Automatically clean up after the cat

For the most part, cats are the most self-cleaning pet you can get, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t annoying and nasty to deal with their litter boxes. Some self-cleaning litter boxes are on the spendy side, but you can find quality alternatives on Amazon. For instance, the Autoscooper 11 not only has a fantastic name, but is just $179.99. It is open on the top to not only reduce odors, but help your cat with the transition from regular litter box to fancier model, as other litter robots on the market fully enclose your kitty and might be a little too stressful.

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Automatically clean your dishwasher

Again, you can do this yourself, but you shouldn’t have to (or that’s what I think, anyway). Clean your dishwasher by stuffing a cleaning pod into the space you’d normally put a detergent pod, then let it rip. It’s just $8.99 for six tablets on Amazon.

However you watch your Fire TV Stick, you probably have the same assortment of apps as most people: Netflix, YouTube, Prime Video, Disney+, the list goes on. But there are some useful apps beyond the mainstream you should definitely consider using. And, because Amazon Fire TV Stick is ultimately an Android device, you can even run specialized Android apps on it to truly unlock the power of this small little streaming device.

Downloader

Credit: Amazon

Underneath Fire TV OS lies Android, which means your Fire TV Stick is capable of running any verified Android APK. But to get there, you’ll need to do two things. First, enable developer access (I have a guide on that here), then download Downloader.

Downloader can help you download any app using its built-in browser. You can navigate to any trusted APK site, like APK Mirror or apps hosted on Github, to directly download APKs to your Fire TV Stick.

Kodi

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Kodi is an all-in-one media center, and it’s immensely customizable. It’s free, open source, and its library of plugins enable features like live TV and cloud syncing. You can use Kodi to stream movies and TV shows from your own home server, or use the integrated plugins to stream free content online.

Kodi isn’t officially available on the Amazon Appstore, but it’s quite easy to install the Kodi app using the APK. I have a detailed guide on how you can use Downloader to install and setup Kodi.

If Kodi seems like a lot, I recommend you look into Plex and Jellyfin. Plex is a mainstream media center. It’s really well designed, but a lot of its cross-device features are behind a paywall. Jellyfin, on the other hand, is completely free and open source, and while the interface is basic, it’s fast and feature rich.

VLC

Credit: Amazon

Even though I prefer to use IINA on the Mac, VLC is an undeniable classic. VLC is a video app that will play anything you throw at it, and that’s true even for VLC for Fire TV Stick. The app will stream content online, or play locally hosted media. VLC will even download subtitles, and sync them up for you.

SmartTube

Credit: SmartTube

SmartTube is one of the few ad-free third-party YouTube clients available on Fire TV Stick. (NewPipe is a great option for Android smartphones). Like Kodi, SmartTube is not in the Amazon Appstore, so you’ll have to download it using Downloader. That said, it is hosted on Github, and the app is open source, so it can be checked for security issues.

SmartTube is 100% ad-free, and even integrates SponsorBlock to automatically skip over sponsored sections of videos. It supports 4K and HDR content, customizable buttons, and live chat, but the app doesn’t support voice search.

AirScreen

Credit: Amazon

AirScreen adds AirPlay to your TV, without the need to buy an expensive Apple TV. The AirScreen app can turn the Fire TV Stick into a wireless display receiver for many platforms like AirPlay, Miracast, and even Chromecast, so you can share your screen from your iPhone, Mac, or Android phone.

ProtonVPN

If you’re looking for a private and secure VPN app, I recommend Mullvad VPN for it’s simple pricing (and the fact you don’t need an account to use it). Mullvad VPN isn’t on the Amazon Appstore (though you can always use Download to install the Android version). If you want a VPN designed for Fire TV Stick, I recommend Proton VPN. It has a generous free plan (no data cap, but limited to three servers, and one connection per account), and a paid upgrade if you need more, like streaming content from other countries in 4K.

Tubi

Credit: Amazon

Tubi offers a little of everything, including movies, TV shows, and live TV. There’s a huge catalog of content, with over 50,000 movies and TV shows. The upside is the app is completely free to use. The only downside is, of course, ads.

If you don’t mind sitting through the ads, though, it’s a great way to access some free entertainment. Lifehacker sibling site PCMag loved Tubi in its full review of the service.

The Roku Channel

Credit: Amazon

You don’t need a Roku device to enjoy The Roku Channel. The Fire TV Stick version offers a vast library of free to watch movies and TV shows, even if it’s not all the latest and the greatest content on the market. You also have access to live TV, live sports, kids shows, news, and more. Plus, it’s actually quite easy to use as well—given it’s a Roku app.

Airy TV

Credit: Amazon

Airy TV is yet another free TV channels app, especially useful if you don’t want to spend money on services like YouTube TV. It’s completely free, and doesn’t even require you to sign up for an account. Boot up the app, and you’re streaming live TV. Of course, you have to sit through ads, but that’s standard for apps like this. Airy TV has a good collection of channels for streaming movies, TV shows, and even live sports—including MMA.

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We’ve all been there: You find the perfect product, the chair or skin cream that will solve all your problems through the liberal application of capitalism—but it doesn’t fit into your budget. You have three choices: You can spend the next few months (years?) saving diligently toward the glorious day when you can afford to pull the trigger; you can put that purchase on a credit card and deal with the interest charges—or you can find a dupe.

Dupes—short for “duplicates”—are having their moment. While knockoffs are nothing new, as anyone who has ever bought a “designer” handbag on the streets of New York City can attest, dupes are a little different. Knockoffs are trying to fool people that they’re the name-brand product, but dupes are their own thing—they’re not pretending to be the expensive item, they just replicate its look and function at a lower price point.

Finding dupes can be as easy as a Google image search or a quick trip to Target or Lidl—but it can sometimes be a challenge. Thankfully, there are a variety of apps you can use that make locating dupes a lot easier, and companies that make their own dupes for specific items.

How to scour the web for dupes

If you’re looking for duplicate furniture and housewares, you could spend hours digging through subreddits and Facebook pages, but luckily there tools and sites that make it a lot easier. Some of the most useful include:

• TikTok. The social media behemoth is kind of dupe central these days. You can type the name of what you’re looking for with hashtags like #dupe or #dupefinder to see what’s out there. What’s good about using TikTok is that most of the results will show people actually using and discussing the dupes, which can help you figure out if they’re truly worth buying.

• Dupe.com has been getting a lot of press of late thanks to the love it gets from social media. Its interface is pretty simple: You paste in the URL of an item (furniture, housewares, or clothing) or drag an image into the search bar, and Dupe searches the internet for lookalikes. For example, if you want an Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman from Herman Miller—which sells for anywhere from $6,000 to $8,000 new—Dupe.com quickly leads you to Walmart, where you can buy this leather lounge chair with a very similar look and vibe. (There’s also an app.)

• Spoken.io works very similarly: Paste in a URL or drag/upload a photo, and it will scan the web and point you to a list of discounted dupes. For example, it turned up this $1,899 Eames-like chair—not quite as cheap as the Walmart version, but still a significant savings over the original.

• Dupeshop focuses on skincare and makeup products, and it doesn’t just point you at purchase links—it pulls together detailed comparisons, reviews, videos, and other information so you can feel confident that the dupe product will perform as expected.

• SkinSkool distinguishes itself by offering a list of potential dupes organized by a similarity score and labeled with a dollar sign icon indicating how expensive the dupe is. This makes it easy to cross-reference your budget with the available options. The site explicitly states that it bases its choices solely on the publicly available ingredient lists of the products, so it doesn’t offer any kind of hands-on review.

A few companies that make their own dupes

Some companies have made a name for themselves because they make and sell their own high-quality dupes, so you don’t have to search the entire internet trying to find them. A few examples include:

• Brandefy was founded to exploit the fact that name-brand beauty and skincare products at every price point are largely manufactured in the same facilities using the same ingredients. It creates “inspired by” products that are often indistinguishable from the pricier versions. Brandefy is more oriented toward its app than the website, however, so it’s a good choice if you want to check something on your phone while you’re out shopping.

• The Essence Vault and Dossier both offer up perfume dupes. Perfumes are expensive to develop, to manufacture, and to package—but you can’t actually copyright a fragrance, so dupe perfumes tend to be uncannily like the expensive brand they’re copying. That being said, you may notice a quality difference between the good stuff and the dupes. But if your budget is dupe-sized, both The Essence Vault and Dossier offer scents explicitly inspired by designer fragrances (Dossier also sells their own original scents).

• Element Brooklyn offers soaps, lotions, and other products that dupe brands like Aesop or Le Labo with an environmentally friendly twist: Its products are refillable, so you aren’t dumping plastic bottles into landfills all the time.

• Quince takes the same approach as Brandefy, but for clothing, claiming to use the same factories and manufacturers as the high-end luxury brands it’s replicating.

• Italic is a Los Angeles-based company that sells clothing, jewelry, and accessories that closely resemble luxury brands. Its prices aren’t as low as literal dupes, but you can still find fashion that looks just like the top-tier brands at a much lower cost.

Some caveats to keep in mind

Keep in mind that it can be difficult to judge whether a dupe is going to be worth buying even at a drastically lower price point. It can be very difficult to tell from a photo whether a piece of furniture or clothing is going to be anywhere near the quality of the real thing, for example. That’s where apps like TikTok that offer endorsements from folks who have actually used the dupes can be super valuable.

Another option for doing your dupe due diligence on beauty and skincare products is SkinSort, which has a useful comparison tool. You can compare a dupe to the brand it’s replicating and SkinSort will show you a list of ingredients in each (along with explanations for what each does) and reviews from people who have actually used the dupe.

Finally, if you want to save some money without risking a downgraded experience, you can also look for name-brand items at secondhand places like Poshmark, which sells clothes, skincare, perfume, and beauty products. A lot of sellers on these platforms have access to name-brand stuff (some work for retailers where they get deep discounts, giving them room for resell profits, for example—look for folks who have a lot of a specific product on hand and you’re probably looking at a hustling sales associate) and you can find some real bargains that way. This gives you the main benefit of a dupe (lower prices) without compromising in any way.

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The Pixel 9 Pro is the latest, most premium model in the Pixel lineup. It was released in August 2024, and already the unlocked 128GB Google Pixel 9 Pro XL is discounted to $799 (down from $1,099). That’s the lowest price it has yet reached on Amazon, according to price-tracking tools.

Google Pixel 9 Pro XL

Operating System: Android 14, Ram Memory: 16 GB, Memory Storage: 128 GB, Screen Size: 6.8 Inches.

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This Pixel 9 Pro XL comes with 16GB of RAM, 128GB of memory storage, a 120 HZ refresh rate, and the Android 14 operating system. As Michelle Ehrhardt explained in Lifehacker’s review of the Pixel 9 Pro, the phone’s hardware is the best Google has produced, but its AI features aren’t quite there yet. The XL version is bigger than the regular Pro size, but smaller than previous XL versions at 6.4 by 3.0 by 0.3 inches.

If you have the Pixel 8 Pro, you might not notice a huge difference. However, if you’re upgrading from an older phone or switching from a non-Pixel phone, the 9 Pro XL has a lot to love, especially if you prioritize good cameras.

One of the best aspects of Pixel phones is their future-proofing: They tend to receive ongoing support for many years. My Pixel 6A still gets all of the updates and tons of AI features that make the phone feel fresh many years later. With the Pixel 9 Pro XL, you’ll be getting a quality phone that will receive software updates for some time (as long as seven years).

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As tech reviewers get their hands on the latest TVs and write their reviews, a picture starts to take shape on which are the best TVs for every category. For those looking for the best bang-for-your-buck a tier above “budget TVs,” the jury is still out between TCL’s QM7 and Hisense’s U7N. Really, it comes down to preference or a good deal—and right now, Hisense’s U7N lineup is seeing great discounts. The best one is the 75-inch U7N currently going for $859.99 (originally $1,499.98) after a 43% discount, its lowest price ever, according to price-tracking tools.

Panel Type: QLED, Screen Size: 55 inches, Resolution: 3,840 by 2,160, Refresh Rate: 144Hz.

55-inch Hisense U7N

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Panel Type: QLED, Screen Size: 65 inches, Resolution: 3,840 by 2,160, Refresh Rate: 144Hz.

65-inch Hisense U7N

$698.00
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Panel Type: QLED, Screen Size: 75 inches, Resolution: 3,840 by 2,160, Refresh Rate: 144Hz.

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Panel Type: QLED, Screen Size: 85 inches, Resolution: 3,840 by 2,160, Refresh Rate: 144Hz.

85-inch Hisense U7N

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The U7N came out last summer and has been head-to-head with the QM7. The U7N is a QLED TV, which is the best technology for a TV before crossing over to OLED. The U7N is bright for a midrange QLED, reaching levels of over 1,500 nits, and the colors are accurate, according to PCMag’s “excellent” review. I like Google TV’s interface, since I get to cast my phone directly onto the screen, and all the free channels never hurt. Of course that also means you can use Google Assistant and Apple AirPlay to control your TV.

If you’re a gamer, you’ll enjoy the U7N’s 6.2 millisecond input lag when you switch to Game mode. The 144Hz variable refresh rate (VRR) with AMD FreeSync Premium Pro will make games look smooth (as well as sports). For those who like to know if you’re getting what you’re paying for in specs, the Google TV has a Game Bar feature that shows you specs like frame rate and resolution, as well as quick access to other settings gamers use.

The main complaint on the U7N is that details on shadows can look a bit washed out, but this isn’t something most people will notice. At the current price, this U7N is a better deal than the QM7 and the value QLED TV you can buy right now.

One of the annoying things about using PowerShell in Windows, if you’re used to Linux, is having to run it as an admin in order to make system changes. The simplest way to do this is right-clicking the application in the start menu and clicking “Run as administrator,” which isn’t exactly elegant.

It’s particularly frustrating because most Linux distributions fixed this a long time ago: the sudo command. Basically, on Linux, if you need to run a single command as an administrator you can just put “sudo” at the beginning and run it—you’re asked for an administrator password and the process runs. It’s such a useful feature that it even inspired one of the most famous XKCD comics.

Someone at Microsoft apparently noticed: sudo is now included in Windows. Sort of. A feature that allows you to run single commands as an administrator, called sudo, is now included in Windows, but this feature is not technically related to the sudo included on Linux systems (Microsoft, as always, is using a confusing name).

Anyway: this pseudo-sudo feature is included with Windows 11 version 24H2, released in October 2024 and still rolling out to Windows users as of February 2025. You can check whether you have access to the feature by opening System Settings and heading to System > For developers. Scroll down and you’ll see the option to enable sudo (if you don’t see the option, you’re not using 24H2).

Credit: Justin Pot

There are three options here regarding how sudo runs. By default, command will run in a new window. There are two more options: Inline, which will run the command in the same window; and Input closed, which runs the command in the same window but without input from other commands in the window. The official documentation heavily recommends leaving the default setting for security reasons, though Inline is much closer to the Linux-style sudo command.

Using the feature is straightforward: when running a command that requires administrator privileges, start with sudo. You will see a pop-up asking to confirm.

Credit: Justin Pot

Click Yes and the command will run as administrator. That’s really it: just put sudo at the beginning of your commands to run as administrator.

Credit: Justin Pot

Try it with your usual commands and see how you like it. If the answer is that you don’t, that’s fine: go back to opening Powershell as administrator.

There are reasons Microsoft’s sudo may not work for you. Maybe you’re not yet using the 24H2 version of Windows. Maybe you can’t get sudo working with the applications you’re trying. Or maybe you just want to quickly change your current session into an elevated session. If so, gsudo might work better for you. This open source tool is recommended in Microsoft’s documentation as offering features more similar to the Linux version of sudo and can quickly be installed using the winget package manager.

It’s not surprising at this point to find out that a company you entrusted your data to turned around and sold it without your knowledge or consent—as antivirus provider Avast did for years through its software and browser extensions. And while monetary compensation doesn’t undo the potential damage, nearly 3.7 million Avast customers are eligible for a refund for the trouble.

Last year, Avast reached a $16.5 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, which includes compensation for users who bought Avast software between August 2014 and January 2020. The FTC found that the company collected information on religious beliefs, health concerns, political leanings, financial status, and location without user consent and sold it through a subsidiary (also without consent).

Now, customers can start to claim refunds from the settlement. According to the FTC, customers eligible for a refund from Avast will be notified via email between Feb. 24 and March 7. The notice will include a claim ID—you’ll need this to complete the Avast settlement claim form online. If you want more information about the process or need help filling out the application, you can call the refund administrator at 866-290-0165.

Your claim must be filed by June 5, 2025 to be eligible for a payment. The FTC expects to mail payments in 2026, and the amount will depend on how many people apply for refunds.