When it comes to cooking meat, finding that all-important sweet spot between under- and over-cooked can be tricky to get right every single time. That is, unless you’re using one of the ThermoWorks instant-read thermometers that we’ve been big proponents of for a long time. And right now our favorite one is down to a record low of $76 in select colors, as part of the brand’s fall warehouse sale. Usually priced at $109, you’re saving $33 if you pick one up now.

The Thermapen One records accurate temperatures in an instant (specifically one second or less), which can be the difference between a perfectly medium-rare steak and one that requires a bit too much chewing. This model also has a handy auto-rotating backlit display that allows you to easily see the reading regardless of how you’re holding it. It also has useful auto-wake and sleep features, which again, are useful when doneness deals in seconds. An IP67 waterproofing rating means you don’t have to worry about it getting splashed. That said, the thermometer isn’t suitable for dishwashers, so keep that in mind.

The Thermapen One took home our best thermometer award, so this is definitely a deal we’d confidently recommend taking advantage of, but it isn’t the only one available right now. ThermoWorks’ sale also includes offers on its various BBQ alarm thermometers, battery banks, kitchen utensils and more. You can shop all the deals here.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-thermoworks-thermapen-one-is-30-percent-off-right-now-163043164.html?src=rss

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Since the AirPods Pro 3 were released this September, I’ve been anticipating a big price drops for the older 2nd-generation AirPods Pro, and that price drop is now here: Amazon is selling refurbished 2nd Generation AirPods Pros for $139.99, down from the previous price of $209.99 for a refurbished pair and $249 for a new pair. This is the lowest price yet for this model of AirPods Pro, according to price tracking tools.

Apple AirPods Pro (2nd Generation) (Renewed Premium)

$139.99
at Amazon

$209.99
Save $70.00

$139.99
at Amazon

$209.99
Save $70.00

If you don’t mind them being refurbished, these are great earbuds for a great price. This model, which came out in September 2023, is the first to feature charging via USB-C. They also came out with a few features that still older models didn’t have, like adaptive transparency. You can expect solid battery life, with Apple claiming up to 30 hours of listening time on a single charge.

The AirPods Pro offer excellent noise cancellation, plus their silicone tips provide a good seal that will naturally block a lot of background noise without the need to turn the ANC feature on. Transparency Mode lets you have a conversation with someone while your audio is still playing, and Conversation Awareness will automatically lower the volume of your media and boost the voices of the people you’re talking to. The Adaptive Audio feature is also pretty cool: It reduces any loud sounds to a tolerable 85 dB, so sudden loud noises in your media don’t startle or distract you. All of that to say: While they don’t have all the bells and whistles of the AirPods Pro 3, these earbuds still offer many features that make them a great option in 2025—especially at their current discount.

When the bar is set at suggesting that people inject bleach into their veins, it’s hard to reach a new low. But in a deranged press event on autism Monday evening, President Trump seemed to go for it—sharing “rumors” and his “strong feelings” not just on Tylenol but also his bonkers views on childhood vaccines.

Trump was there with his health secretary, anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to link autism to the use of Tylenol (acetaminophen) during pregnancy. While medical experts condemn the claim as unproven and dangerous (which it is), Kennedy’s anti-vaccine followers decried it as a distraction from their favored false and dangerous explanation—that vaccines cause autism (which they don’t).

Pinning the blame on Tylenol instead of vaccines enraged Kennedy’s own anti-vaccine organization, Children’s Health Defense. In the run-up to the event Monday evening, CHD retweeted an all-caps defense of Tylenol, and CHD President Mary Holland called the announcement a “sideshow” in an interview with Steve Bannon.

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On Tuesday, OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank announced plans for five new US AI data center sites for Stargate, their joint AI infrastructure project, bringing the platform to nearly 7 gigawatts of planned capacity and over $400 billion in investment over the next three years.

The massive buildout aims to handle ChatGPT’s 700 million weekly users and train future AI models, although critics question whether the investment structure can sustain itself. The companies said the expansion puts them on track to secure the full $500 billion, 10-gigawatt commitment they announced in January by the end of 2025.

The five new sites will include three locations developed through an OpenAI and Oracle partnership: Shackelford County, Texas; Doña Ana County, New Mexico; and an unspecified Midwest location. These sites, along with a 600-megawatt expansion near the flagship Stargate site in Abilene, Texas, can deliver over 5.5 gigawatts of capacity, which means the computers on site will be able to draw up to 5.5 billion watts of electricity when running at full load. The companies expect the sites to create over 25,000 onsite jobs.

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Nearly 15 years in, Instagram has passed a new milestone: the app now reaches 3 billion monthly users, Mark Zuckerberg shared in a post on Threads. That’s up from 2 billion monthly users in 2022.

Meta doesn’t regularly share monthly or daily user numbers for its “family” of apps, but Facebook reached 2 billion daily users in 2023; WhatsApp passed 2 billion monthly users in 2020. The company reported 3.48 billion “daily active people” across facebook, WhatsApp and Messenger last quarter.

Meta shared the latest metric as it reportedly plans some significant changes to Instagram. According to Bloomberg, Meta will soon make Reels an even more prominent part of the app. Instagram exec Adam Mosseri told the publication that users will see a redesigned navigation bar that will “highlight private messaging and Reels.” The company will also run a test in South Korea and India that will allow users to set Reels as the default feed for the app. (Instagram’s newly-announced iPad app already makes Reels the default feed in order “to reflect how people use bigger screens today,” the company has said.)

It’s probably no coincidence that these changes come as the United States government edges closer toward an agreement that will put the US version of TikTok largely in the hands of US-based investors. Despite more than a year of uncertainty surrounding the app’s future in the United States, TikTok is still a formidable competitor to Meta more broadly and Instagram specifically.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/instagram-reaches-3-billion-monthly-users-160554420.html?src=rss

Private equity firms are facing systemic challenges after a half-century of meteoric growth as attractive takeover targets become scarce and financing costs remain elevated while exits prove increasingly difficult. US buyout funds currently hold more than 12,000 companies that would take approximately nine years to fully distribute at current rates, according to PitchBook data.

The industry holds $1.2 trillion in dry powder and nearly a quarter of that capital was pledged at least four years ago. More than 18,000 private capital funds seek $3.3 trillion from increasingly reluctant investors, Bain estimates. Quarterly returns for US private equity funds fell from 13.5% in Q2 2021 to 0.8% in Q4 2024. Apollo President Jim Zelter described the situation as a “natural washout” at an investor conference this month. Charles Wilson of Selby Jennings added that “many PE firms are dead already, they just don’t know it” and noted survival depends on how forgiving limited partners — the entities, including pension funds and endowments, that have invested in private equity firms — prove when firms return for new fundraising.

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Jaguar Land Rover has halted production for nearly a month following a major cyberattack, costing an estimated 30,000 vehicles and billions in lost revenue. “The company said on Tuesday that production would be halted for another week until at least October 1, which increased concerns that a full return to production could be months away,” reports The Times. From the report: David Bailey, professor of business economics at Birmingham University, said the JLR statement did not commit to reopening production on October 1 and even if it did “it’s not going to be back to normal, but phased production start with some lines opening before others, as we saw after the Covid closure back in 2020.” He said: “It’s 24 days [shutdown] as of September 24. So that is roughly 1,000 cars a day, 24,000 cars not produced. So by then, that’s about 1.7 billion pounds in lost revenue. By October 1, it will be a hit to revenue of something like 2.2 billion pounds. It’s pretty massive. JLR can get through, but they’re going to be burning through cash this month.”

Bailey also raised concerns that smaller companies further down the supply chain lacked the cash reserves to withstand the shutdown. The company directly employs more than 30,000 people, and it is estimated that approximately 200,000 workers in the supply chain depend on work from JLR. “The union has said that in some cases, staff have been told to go and apply for universal credit. There are firms I know that have applied for bank loans to keep going. But even then, you know they’re approaching the limit of what they do. There’s an added knock-on effect that some of the suppliers also supply other car assemblers, Toyota or Mini. So some of those are concerned that bits of the supply chain may go under and affect them as well, because the industry is so connected. One way or another, the government’s going to take a hit. Either through some sort of emergency support, whether that’s furlough or emergency short-term loans or through unemployment benefit, if this carries on.”

There has been uncertainty over the extent of the cyberattack and exactly how the company has been affected, as well as who is responsible for it. According to one source, some JLR staff were still unable last week to access the Slack messaging system through the company’s “one sign on” system. The JLR statement added: “We have made this decision to give clarity for the coming week as we build the timeline for the phased restart of our operations and continue our investigation.”

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NASA aims to launch its first crewed lunar mission in over 50 years, as early as February. The 10-day Artemis II mission will send four astronauts on a lunar flyby to test systems, paving the way for future Moon landings under the Artemis program. The BBC reports: Lakiesha Hawkins, Nasa’s acting deputy associate administrator said it would be an important moment in the human exploration of space. “We together have a front row seat to history,” she told a news conference this afternoon. “The launch window could open as early as the fifth of February, but we want to emphasize that safety is our top priority.” Artemis Launch Director, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson explained that the powerful rocket system built to take the astronauts to the Moon, the Space Launch System (SLS) was “pretty much stacked and ready to go.” All that remained was to complete the crew capsule, called Orion, connected to SLS and to complete ground tests.

The Artemis II launch will see four astronauts go on a ten-day round trip to the Moon and back to the Earth. The astronauts, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, of Nasa and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency, will not land on the Moon, though they will be the first crew to travel beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. The lead Artemis II flight director, Jeff Radigan explained that the crew would be flying further into space than anyone had been before. “They’re going at least 5,000 nautical miles (9,200Km) past the Moon, which is much higher than previous missions have gone,” he told reporters. Further reading: NASA Introduces 10 New Astronaut Candidates

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: If an Iranian taxi driver waves away your payment, saying, “Be my guest this time,” accepting their offer would be a cultural disaster. They expect you to insist on paying — probably three times — before they’ll take your money. This dance of refusal and counter-refusal, called taarof, governs countless daily interactions in Persian culture. And AI models are terrible at it.

New research released earlier this month titled “We Politely Insist: Your LLM Must Learn the Persian Art of Taarof” shows that mainstream AI language models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta fail to absorb these Persian social rituals, correctly navigating taarof situations only 34 to 42 percent of the time. Native Persian speakers, by contrast, get it right 82 percent of the time. This performance gap persists across large language models such as GPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Haiku, Llama 3, DeepSeek V3, and Dorna, a Persian-tuned variant of Llama 3.

A study led by Nikta Gohari Sadr of Brock University, along with researchers from Emory University and other institutions, introduces “TAAROFBENCH,” the first benchmark for measuring how well AI systems reproduce this intricate cultural practice. The researchers’ findings show how recent AI models default to Western-style directness, completely missing the cultural cues that govern everyday interactions for millions of Persian speakers worldwide. “Cultural missteps in high-consequence settings can derail negotiations, damage relationships, and reinforce stereotypes,” the researchers write.

“Taarof, a core element of Persian etiquette, is a system of ritual politeness where what is said often differs from what is meant,” the researchers write. “It takes the form of ritualized exchanges: offering repeatedly despite initial refusals, declining gifts while the giver insists, and deflecting compliments while the other party reaffirms them. This ‘polite verbal wrestling’ (Rafiee, 1991) involves a delicate dance of offer and refusal, insistence and resistance, which shapes everyday interactions in Iranian culture, creating implicit rules for how generosity, gratitude, and requests are expressed.”

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Netflix’s October lineup has a little something for everyone. There are new seasons of familiar favorites, including the ninth installments of both Love Is Blind (Oct. 1), this time set in Denver, and real estate reality show Selling Sunset (Oct. 29). Nobody Wants This (Oct. 23), the rom-com series starring Adam Brody and Kristen Bell, is returning for another season, along with other Netflix originals The Diplomat (Oct. 16) and The Witcher (Oct. 30).

The documentary slate this month is long: Those who liked the Emmy Award-winning Beckham may also enjoy Victoria Beckham (Oct. 9), a three-part series from the same creators. The Perfect Neighbor (Oct. 17)—a Sundance Film Festival award winner—examines the violent consequences of Florida’s stand-your-ground laws.

On the film side, Keira Knightley stars in The Woman in Cabin 10 (Oct. 10), a psychological thriller based on Ruth Ware’s 2016 novel. Knightley plays a journalist on assignment on a luxury cruise, where she believes she witnesses a passenger being thrown overboard. A House of Dynamite (Oct. 24) is a political thriller about the U.S. government response to an unidentified nuclear missile attack. The ensemble cast includes Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, and Anthony Ramos, among others.

Finally, Netflix is streaming the Six Kings Slam (Oct. 15), an exhibition tennis tournament held in Saudi Arabia featuring top players like Carlos Alcaraz, Janik Sinner, and Novak Djokovic.

Here’s everything coming to Netflix in October, and everything that’s leaving.

What’s coming to Netflix in October 2025

Available soon

• Physical: Asia—Netflix Series

Available October 1

• Love Is Blind: Season 9—Netflix Series

• RIV4LRIES—Netflix Series

• About My Father

• Austin Powers in Goldmember

• Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

• Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me

• Beverly Hills Cop

• Beverly Hills Cop II

• Beverly Hills Cop III

• Blue Crush

• The Book Club Murders

• Casper

• The Christmas Contract

• Coach Carter

• Coming to America

• Daddy Day Care

• Death Becomes Her

• Dirty Dancing

• Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax

• Dracula

• Eddie Murphy: Raw

• Elysium

• Fifty Shades Darker

• Fifty Shades Freed

• Fifty Shades of Grey

• Friends with Benefits

• The Goonies

• Hacksaw Ridge

• Halo: Seasons 1-2

• The Hurt Locker

• I Still Know What You Did Last Summer

• Law Abiding Citizen

• The Lincoln Lawyer

• The Mask

• Meet Joe Black

• Molly’s Game

• Mr. & Mrs. Smith

• NCIS: Seasons 18-19

• Pineapple Express

• Point Break

• Red Dragon

• Scarface

• Sinister 2

• Sister Act

• Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit

• Slender Man

• The Strangers

• Taxi Driver

• Training Day

• The Way Home: Seasons 1-2

• When a Stranger Calls

• The Wrath of Becky

Available October 2

• Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story

• Dudes—Netflix Series

• The Game: You Never Play Alone—Netflix Series

• The Martian

• Rockstar: DUKI from the End of the World—Netflix Documentary

Available October 3

• Genie, Make a Wish—Netflix Series

• Monster: The Ed Gein Story—Netflix Series

• The New Force—Netflix Series

• Old Dog, New Tricks—Netflix Series

• Rhythm + Flow France: After the Beat—Netflix Documentary

• Steve—Netflix Film

Available October 4

• Angel Has Fallen

• Night of the Living Dead

• Ranma1/2: Season 2—Netflix Series

Available October 5

• Despicable Me 3

• Ip Man

• Ip Man 2

• Ip Man 3

• Ip Man 4: The Finale

Available October 6

• Dr. Seuss’s Horton!—Netflix Family

Available October 7

• Nurse Jackie: Seasons 1-7

• True Haunting—Netflix Documentary

• We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Available October 8

• Caramelo—Netflix Film

• Is It Cake? Halloween—Netflix Series

• Néro the Assassin—Netflix Series

Available October 9

• Boots—Netflix Series

• The Maze Runner

• Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials

• Maze Runner: Death Cure

• The Resurrected—Netflix Series

• Victoria Beckham—Netflix Documentary

Available October 10

• Kurukshetra: The War of Mahabharata—Netflix Series

• My Father, the BTK Killer—Netflix Documentary

• Old Money—Netflix Series

• Swim to Me—Netflix Film

• The Woman in Cabin 10—Netflix Film

Available October 11

• Typhoon Family—Netflix Series

Available October 14

• Everybody Loves Me When I’m Dead—Netflix Film

• Splinter Cell: Deathwatch—Netflix Series

Available October 15

• Held Hostage in My House

• Inside Furioza—Netflix Film

• No One Saw Us Leave—Netflix Series

• Six Kings Slam 2025—Netflix Live Event

• Taken in Plain Sight

Available October 16

• The A Team

• Confessions of a Shopaholic

• The Diplomat: Season 3—Netflix Series

• Romantics Anonymous—Netflix Series

• Starting 5: Season 2—Netflix Sports Series

• The Time That Remains—Netflix Film

Available October 17

• 27 Nights—Netflix Film

• Good News—Netflix Film

• The Perfect Neighbor—Netflix Documentary

• She Walks in Darkness—Netflix Film

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

• Turn of the Tide: Season 2—Netflix Series

• Turn of the Tide: The Surreal Story of Rabo de Peixe—Netflix Documentary

• The Twits—Netflix Family

Available October 18

Don’t Say a Word

Available October 21

• Michelle Wolf: The Well—Netflix Comedy Special

• The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon: Season 2

• Who Killed the Montreal Expos?—Netflix Documentary

Available October 22

• Mob War: Philadelphia vs. The Mafia—Netflix Documentary Series

• The Monster of Florence—Netflix Series

Available October 23

• The Elixir—Netflix Film

• Nobody Wants This: Season 2—Netflix Series

Available October 24

• A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE—Netflix Film

• Parish: Season 1

Available October 25

• The Dream Life of Mr. Kim—Netflix Series

Available October 27

• The Asset—Netflix Series

• Dark Winds: Season 3

• Sliding Doors

Available October 28

• Babo: The Haftbefehl Story—Netflix Documentary

• Mo Amer: Wild World—Netflix Comedy Special

• Nightmares of Nature: Lost in the Jungle—Netflix Documentary

Available October 29

• Ballad of a Small Player—Netflix Film

• NOS4A2: Seasons 1-2

• Rulers of Fortune—Netflix Series

• Selling Sunset: Season 9—Netflix Series

Available October 30

• Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers—Netflix Documentary

• Amsterdam Empire—Netflix Series

• Juan Gabriel: I Must, I Can, I Will—Netflix Documentary

• Son of a Donkey—Netflix Series

• The Witcher: Season 4—Netflix Series

Available October 31

• Bad Influencer—Netflix Series

• Breathless: Season 2—Netflix Series

• Rhythm + Flow France: Season 4—Netflix Series

What’s leaving Netflix in October 2025

Leaving October 1

• A Million Ways to Die in the West

• A Night at the Roxbury

• American Graffiti

• American Pie

• American Pie 2

• Antz

• Big Daddy

• Blades of Glory

• Born on the Fourth of July

• Dazed and Confused

• Dune

• Focus

• Friday Night Lights

• Good Burger

• Grown Ups

• Grown Ups 2

• Krampus

• Mission: Impossible

• Mission: Impossible II

• Mission: Impossible III

• Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

• Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

• Neighbors

• Now You See Me

• Now You See Me 2

• Old School

• Road Trip

• Rudy

• Rush Hour

• Rush Hour 2

• Rush Hour 3

• Talk to Me

• The Blues Brothers

• The Departed

• Wayne’s World

• Wayne’s World 2

• White Collar: Seasons 1-6

• Zoolander

Leaving October 5

• Clueless

Leaving October 7

• The Hunger Games

• The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

• The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1

• The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2

Leaving October 9

• Insidious

• Insidious: Chapter 2

• Insidious: Chapter 3

Leaving October 16

• Circle

• Sinister

• Sinister 2

Leaving October 20

• Anyone But You

Leaving October 21

• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Leaving October 23

• Empire Records

• Scream 2

• Scream 3

• Scream 4

Leaving October 24

• The Family Business: Seasons 1-4

Leaving October 25

• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Leaving October 27

• The Bourne Identity

• The Bourne Supremacy

• The Bourne Ultimatum

• The Bourne Legacy

Taiwan has begun evolving its trade strategy to start wielding its dominant position as a leading supplier of cutting-edge chips as a weapon, Bloomberg reported.

The move comes amid Donald Trump’s heightening global trade war and after years of Taiwan’s use of its chip dominance as a shield against Chinese aggression, with Taiwan allying with the US to stave off China’s threats of invasion. Under the so-called “one-China principle,” China has rejected Taiwan’s independence, requiring allies to sever ties with Taiwan.

On Tuesday, Taiwan announced that it would be limiting shipments of semiconductors into South Africa—among 47 restricted products—due to national security concerns. The rare export curbs could hit South Africa’s “electronics, telecom, and auto parts sectors” hard, MSN reported, if South Africa doesn’t meet with Taiwan to discuss better terms within the next 60 days.

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CNBC: Instagram now has 3 billion monthly active users, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday on his Instagram account. “What an incredible community we’ve built here,” Zuckerberg posted on his Instagram channel.

The figure is a major milestone for the photo-sharing app, which the social media company acquired in 2012 for $1 billion. Meta last disclosed Instagram’s user figures in October 2022 when Zuckerberg said during an earnings call that the app had crossed 2 billion monthly users.

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