If you’ve watched enough Mission Impossible (or Inspector Gadget, if your parents wouldn’t let you watch Mission Impossible), you’re familiar with the self-destructing message. Now, Meta’s X competitor, Threads, is making them a core feature.

Called “Ghost posts,” the new type of message launches today, and it lets you post to your timeline without the pressure of leaving a permanent trace. Ghost posts will appear on your timeline while active, but after 24 hours, they’ll automatically be archived.

“Here today and gone tomorrow,” as Threads puts it, the idea is to encourage posters to share “spontaneous thoughts” and “fresh takes.”

It’s not the first time a social media platform has experimented with ephemeral content—Snapchat is probably the most famous example—but it makes sense. People change, and the person I was 10 years ago may not look like who I am today. Even if you don’t have anything cancel-able on your timeline, it can be embarrassing to see old posts. And if you still stand by everything you’ve ever posted, it’s still a good idea to clear your timeline before leaving a platform behind.

That’s why sites like X already have a number of third-party programs that will delete your old posts for you, but Threads is the first platform of its type to offer the feature officially. Here’s how it works:

How to use Ghost Posts on Threads

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

Threads’ Ghost posts are already live, so you can try them out right away. The only catch is they don’t yet seem to be available for desktop (at least based on my testing), so you’ll need to use the Threads app to get started, at least for now.

To write a ghost post, open the Threads app and find the “What’s new?” box under your username (it’s usually right up at the top of the page). Hit the icon that looks like a smiley face inside a dotted-line chat bubble to the right of it.

From there, write your post as you normally would. When you send it, it’ll appear in your followers’ feeds in a chat bubble surrounded by dotted-lines, and on your profile in a special Ghost posts subsection.

Aside from being temporary, ghost posts also hide their metrics and replies. Only you will be able to see who’s interacted with your post, and any replies are sent to your messaging inbox, rather than directly below the post. Everyone else will just see smiley faces next to the post’s metrics, indicating that at least one person has interacted with it.

And that’s it. You’ve successfully haunted your friends’ feeds.

What happens to a Ghost Post after 24 hours?

While Ghost Posts are mostly set-it and forget it, you can technically still interact with them after 24 hours. They’ll be archived, which means others won’t be able to see them, but if you ever want to scroll through your old thoughts, it’s easy enough to look at your archived posts. Just go to your profile page, hit the two-lined button in the top right corner, and tap Archive.

Also note that while archived posts no longer show up on Threads, they might continue to be shared on other servers if you’ve turned on sharing to the fediverse in your profile. I’ve reached out to Meta to see how this affects Ghost posts, and will update this post when I hear back (my assumption is that Ghost posts simply won’t be shared to other servers, but I’ll let you know if that’s not the case).

Many modern living rooms are now dominated by a huge television, but researchers say there might be little point in plumping for an ultra-high-definition model. From a report: Scientists at the University of Cambridge and Meta, the company that owns Facebook, have found that for an average-sized living room a 4K or 8K screen offers no noticeable benefit over a similarly sized 2K screen of the sort often used in computer monitors and laptops. In other words, there is no tangible difference when it comes to how sharp an image appears to our eyes.

“At a certain viewing distance, it doesn’t matter how many pixels you add. It’s just, I suppose, wasteful because your eye can’t really detect it,” said Dr Maliha Ashraf, the first author of the study from the University of Cambridge. Ashraf and colleagues, writing in the journal Nature Communications, report how they set about determining the resolution limit of the human eye, noting that while 20/20 vision implies the eye can distinguish 60 pixels per degree (PPD), most people with normal or corrected vision can see better than that. “If you design or judge display resolution based only on 20/20 vision, you’ll underestimate what people can really see,” Ashraf said. “That’s why we directly measured how many pixels people can actually distinguish.”

The team used a 27in, 4K monitor mounted on a mobile cage that enabled it to be moved towards or away from the viewer. At each distance, 18 participants with normal vision, or vision corrected to be normal, were shown two types of image in a random order. One type of image had one-pixel-wide vertical lines in black and white, red and green or yellow and violet, while the other was just a plain grey block. Participants were then asked to indicate which of the two images contained the lines. “When the lines become too fine or the screen resolution too high, the pattern looks no different from a plain grey image,” Ashraf said. “We measured the point where people could just barely tell them apart. That’s what we call the resolution limit.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With the milestone just days away, you are likely to hear this week that there has now been a continuous human presence on the International Space Station (ISS) for the past 25 years. But what does that quarter of a century actually encompass?

If only there was a way to see, hear, and experience each of those 9,131 days.

Fortunately, the astronauts and cosmonauts on the space station have devoted some of their work time and a lot of their free time to taking photos, filming videos, and calling down to Earth. Much of that data has been made available to the public, but in separate repositories, with no real way to correlate or connect it with the timeline on which it was all created.

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The LG Gram line has built a reputation for being thin, light, and travel-friendly, and this 2022 14-inch model is currently on sale for just $389.99 on StackSocial. It’s an 11th Gen Intel Core i3 laptop with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB NVMe SSD. On paper, that’s a respectable setup for browsing, multitasking, or office apps, and the 14-inch WUXGA display adds extra vertical space compared to standard 1080p panels. What makes this version different is that it ships without a traditional operating system. It’s designed as a “thin client,” ready to run Cloud OS platforms like IGEL or Windows 10 IoT Enterprise, making it more appealing to business users who rely on virtual desktops than someone looking for a plug-and-play Windows laptop.

The laptop weighs just 2.2 pounds and measures 0.66 inches thick, so tossing it into a backpack for commuting or travel won’t feel like a burden. Additionally, its battery life is rated for up to 12 hours, which means a full day of work can be completed before needing to recharge. As for connectivity, Thunderbolt 4 support opens the door to high-speed connections and external displays, while HDMI, USB-A, and a microSD slot cover most everyday accessories. Rounding it out are the backlit keyboard and fingerprint sensor on the power button, which add a touch of convenience.

That said, there are some important trade-offs to weigh. Because it doesn’t include Windows or macOS, setting it up requires some technical expertise and a clear understanding of the environment you plan to use. The Core i3 processor is suitable for everyday tasks, but it’s not intended for heavy creative work or gaming. And while the unit is brand new in original packaging, it doesn’t come with a product warranty. Still, if you’re in the market for a lightweight, cloud-ready laptop built for business use, the LG Gram 14 delivers solid specs, a sharp 16:10 display, and excellent portability at a reasonable price.

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It’s so-called spooky season, and there’s nothing more frightening than realizing how out of touch you’ve become, so allow me to throw you a lifeline with an explainer on the week’s trending topics with the youths. This week, everyone is talking about their membership in a completely arbitrary online group, planning Halloween costumes that few people over 30 will understand, and trying on “historically accurate” clothing from 2005.

What is “Group 7” on TikTok?

Everyone on TikTok this week is posting about “Group 7.” Here’s what’s up: On October 17, 26-year-old singer Sophia James did a little social experiment to promote her new single, “So Unfair.” She posted seven videos featuring the song to see which would gain the most traction and reach. The seventh went viral, to the tune of over 75 million plays. And then it took on a life of its own, with over 600,000 videos ultimately being posted under the Group 7 tag.

In the original G7 video, James says, “I don’t know what that says about you. But, you’re in Group 7.” People started defining what membership in Group 7 means to them—even though it’s random—and listing the qualities that Group 7 members supposedly possess. According to this video, members of Group 7 are loving, “we laugh, we share, we watch videos all the way through.”

While many TikTokers are taking their membership in Group 7 as a joke, a growing (and sort of sad) part of Group 7 seems convinced that it’s important. That they’ve been chosen. The longing for a sense of belonging is palpable. There’s also the idea that if all the members of the group follow each other, it would mean “never having to get a normal job.”

But it won’t. “Follow-chains” are not new on the internet, and they don’t work. What’s really going to happen is that the algorithm will eventually decide people are sick of their feeds being full of Group 7 videos and curb their spread. In a few weeks, everyone will say, “Remember that weird ‘Group 7’ thing?” This is the inevitable life-cycle of internet memes.

HBO Max adds “six seven” category

Speaking of arbitrary number-based memes, brain-rot slang word of the year “6-7” continues to grow and spread in unexpected ways, including on streaming platform HBO Max, which has added a “Six Seveeeeen” movie category on its service.

The phrase doesn’t mean anything, making a “6-7” film difficult to define, so Max decided to take the easy route by including movies with “six” or “seven” in their titles. Films in the collection include expected entries like The Sixth Sense, Seven, and the sixth and seventh Harry Potter movies (Six Days Seven Nights unfortunately isn’t available on HBO Max, and also, you probably forgot it existed anyway). Low-hanging fruit aside, there are also some inspired choices, like Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai and Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. Like all “how do you do, fellow kids” attempts at co-opting youth slang, HBO’s stunt is annoying and tone-deaf, and maybe a signal that the whole six-seven thing is ending at last, but I do love the idea that some brain-rotted kid out there is going to watch The Seventh Seal and really relate to the soldier’s chess match against Death.

Meme-based costumes to watch for on Halloween

Even before the internet, Halloween was a meme holiday, with costumes of pop culture figures topping the sales charts at Spencer’s Gifts every year. But it’s gotten ridiculous in 2025. Look for every other kid ringing your doorbell this year to be wearing an outfit inspired by a popular online trend and for ghosts and Draculas to be as rare as Loch Ness monster sightings.

Here are some of costumes-based-on-memes that are likely to be popular this Halloween:

Labubu

Dressing up as one of these trendy toys is a no-brainer, although the effort involved in doing it right is considerable. Luckily, there are tons of tutorials online like the one linked above.

Lorax girl

If you’re wondering why so many young women are dressing up as the main character from 2012 movie The Lorax, it’s a whole thing. The costume has grown so popular over the last few years that there’s a legit backlash against it.

KPop Demon Hunters

The flashy outfits from Netflix’s amazingly successful animated movie are a perfect fit for Halloween, but are likely to result in the most “what are you supposed to be” responses from older people.

Chicken Jockey

Like the game that inspired it, The Minecraft Movie remains very popular with young people, so look for representations of the iconic “Chicken Jockey!” scene in costume form on Oct. 31. If you want to do it right, you have to make it yourself, but you can buy a Minecraft Chicken Jockey outfit from Walmart if you want to save time.

Inflatable protest frog

Portland’s Ice protests have given rise to an underground, viral hero: protest frog, so look for imitators rocking the iconic costume on Halloween. It’s a good choice for the lazy in that it makes a statement without any effort. You can just buy an inflatable frog costume on Amazon.

Viral video of the week: “trying on low rise jeans”

Warning: this week’s viral video will probably make you feel ancient. In it, young TikTok user @vintageprincessxoxo tries on “historically accurate low-rise jeans.” She’s clearly surprised by how low low-rise jeans actually are, but as many older folks have pointed out in the comments, the “historically accurate” pair she’s trying on aren’t even all that low. “Darling those are high rise with the double buttons,” a user points out. The comment section is filled with similar cross-generational educational outreach, with millennial mentors cluing the youngster in about whale-tails and the importance of wearing a belt. (“Historically accurate,” though? Ouch.)

Amazon is planning to cut as many as 30,000 corporate jobs beginning Tuesday, as the company works to pare expenses and compensate for overhiring during the peak demand of the pandemic, Reuters reported Monday, citing sources familiar with the matter. From the report: The figure represents a small percentage of Amazon’s 1.55 million total employees, but nearly 10% of the company’s roughly 350,000 corporate employees. This would represent the largest job cut at Amazon since around 27,000 jobs were eliminated starting in late 2022.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Apple MacBook Air M4 laptop is back on sale for just $799, which is one heck of a deal. This sale is for the model with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage. It’s available in multiple colorways, but the silver one inexplicably costs $899.

We ranked this as our favorite Apple laptop in our list of the best MacBook computers. Heck, it’s even our very favorite laptop. Full stop. The performance is exceptionally snappy, thanks to the M4 chip. We appreciated the upgraded battery life, which now lasts for around 18 hours per charge. That’s well beyond a full day of work.

The design is lightweight, but sturdy. This has become a hallmark for modern MacBook Air computers. The screen is both gorgeous and roomy, even though it’s technically just a 13-inch panel. There’s support for the P3 wide color gamut and it can reach up to 500 nits of brightness.

This is a near-perfect laptop, but there are a couple of nitpicks. There’s no USB-C port on the right side, limiting how users can arrange accessories on a desk. Also, the screen is capped with a 60Hz refresh rate. Another potential complication is the looming specter of the M5 chip. The company has already released the MacBook Pro M5, so a new MacBook Air is likely coming in the nearish future.

Check out our coverage of the best Apple deals for more discounts, and follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/apples-macbook-air-m4-is-back-on-sale-for-799-183808431.html?src=rss

There was once a time where first-party apps and experiences on Apple devices were exempt from advertisements. Other app marketplaces might happily show you ads, but not the App Store. Most news sites place ads in between every other paragraph, but Apple News was an ad-free experience. Say what you wanted about Apple and its products, but you certainly dealt with far fewer ads than on other platforms. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case.

Apple has slowly made ads a part of its business model in order to boost revenue. You might have noticed them already while scrolling through stories in News, or when looking for a new game on the App Store. Even the Wallet app has blasted users with notifications when Apple TV has a new movie out. It’s an odd dichotomy: At a time when Apple’s MacBooks have never been an better overall value, the company’s software is beginning to feel less user-first than ever.

Those ads are only expanding, too. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple might be bringing more ads to its platforms “as early as next year.” If so, it seems the company will start with Apple Maps. Gurman says Apple will let restaurants and businesses pay a premium to float their results to the top of search. If you’ve searched for an app in Apple’s App Store lately, you should be familiar with this experience: When I open the search tab, for example, I see Instagram at the top of the page, with an “Ad” label beneath it, on top of two other non-advertised apps. Then, when I search for an app like Reddit, it appears second, beneath an ad placement for DuckDuckGo.

Gurman says Apple’s plan here is to make the experience better than other navigation apps that offer similar ads (I immediately think of Waze, which will show ads for restaurants and businesses whenever you stop the car) and will use AI to deliver more relevant ads to the user—though Apple’s AI tech leaves something to be desired.

I’m not sure this move will do much to push Apple Maps users towards other options. If the ads experience in Apple Maps really is on a similar level to the App Store, I imagine most users won’t pay much attention to it. They’ll either ignore any results that appear with that “Ad” label, or they’ll tap on the results that seem more relevant to their search. Plus, the most obvious alternatives have ads as well, so it’s not like someone sick of seeing ads in Apple Maps would necessarily find Google Maps or Waze more appealing.

Still, the principle of Apple adding more ads onto an inherently expensive experience leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. I personally prefer other navigation apps to Apple Maps, but Apple’s app has seemed like a solid choice in recent years, especially in terms of privacy. Adding ads to the mix changes that, and not only cheapens the experience, but makes me question what Apple plans on doing with my navigation and location data here. I would hope the company that makes one of the only somewhat private streaming boxes on the market would find a way to keep Maps private while serving ads, but only time will tell.

Mathematicians have identified the first shape that cannot pass through itself. Jakob Steininger and Sergey Yurkevich described the Noperthedron in a paper posted online in August. The shape has 90 vertices and 152 faces. The discovery resolves a question that began in the late 1600s when Prince Rupert of the Rhine won a bet by proving one cube could slide through a tunnel bored through another. Mathematician John Wallis confirmed this mathematically in 1693.

The property became known as the Rupert property. In 1968, Christoph Scriba proved the tetrahedron and octahedron also possess this quality. Over the past decade, researchers found Rupert tunnels through many symmetric polyhedra, including the dodecahedron and icosahedron. Mathematicians had conjectured every convex polyhedron would have the Rupert property. Steininger and Yurkevich divided the space of possible orientations into approximately 18 million blocks and tested each. None produced a passage. The Noperthedron consists of 150 triangles and two regular 15-sided polygons.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Walmart joins Best Buy in announcing its Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale early. This year, Walmart seems to take a page out of Best Buy’s strategy and split the sale into smaller ones. Here’s everything we know so far about Walmart’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale for 2025.

What is Walmart doing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

Walmart will hold three sales, all called “Walmart Deals Events,” from November to December, according to their press release. The sales will be a combination of online and in-store for members and non-members.

When are Walmart Deals Events in 2025?

The events will take place on three different dates:

Walmart Black Friday Deals Event 1: November 14–16

• Available online and in stores for the entire event

• Walmart+ members get five hours early access online beginning Nov. 13 at 7 p.m. ET

Walmart Black Friday Deals Event 2: November 25–30

• Online only: November 25–27

• Online and in stores: November 28–30

• Walmart+ members get five hours early access online beginning Nov. 24 at 7 p.m. ET

Cyber Monday: December 1

• Online only

• Walmart+ members get five hours early access online beginning Nov. 30 at 7 p.m. ET

What deals can I expect for Walmart Deals Events?

Walmart says that you can expect up to 60% off top brands and thousands of deals under $20. The sale will include toys, electronics, home products, fashion, and beauty from brands like Delonghi, Apple, LEGO, Dyson, La Roche Posay, Levi’s, and Barbie. Here is a list Walmart dropped on their press release:

• 98” TCL QLED 4K Google TV – Was $1,798.00, Event Price $998.00

• Barbie Malibu Travel Playset – Was $21.88, Event Price $12.00

• Calvin Klein Obsession 3 Perfume – Was $97.00, Event Price $31.50

• Cate & Chloe Lauren 18k White Gold Plated 22mm Hoop Earrings with Swarovski Crystals – Was $130.00, Event Price $15.99

• Cozy Haven Faux Fur Throw Blanket – Special Buy, Event Price $13.00

• Cricut Explore 3 Bundle – Was $410.00, Event Price $197.99

• Dreo 1500W Portable Space Heater – Was $99.99, Event Price $38.99

• Dyson V12 Detect Slim Cordless Vacuum Cleaner – Was $729.00, Event Price $399.99

• Ford 24V Ride-on – Was $599.99, Event Price $299.99

• Goodyear Reliant All-Season Tire (entire line) – Event offer $30 off per tire

• Govee 65” LED Lights – Was $99.00, Event Price $69.99

• Keurig Iced Essentials – Was $79.00, Event Price $44.97

• KONG Classic Stuffable Dog Chew Toy, Medium – Was $13.99, Event Price $11.96

• L’ange Hair Styler – Was $119.00, Event Price $48.30

• LEGO Speed Champions 2-pack – Was $44.98, Event Price $25.00

• Melissa & Doug Chunky Puzzles – Was $13.99, Event Price $7.00

• Men’s & Women’s Levi’s Signature Denim – Was $24.98, Event Price $15.00

• My Texas House Glitter Trees (set of 3) – Was $159.66, Event Price $78.00

• Philips Norelco 7200 Electric Razor – Was $99.96, Event Price $79.96

• Reebok Women’s Sport 2-piece set – Was $40.00; Event Price $25.00

• Scoop Women’s Knee-High Kitten Heel Boots – Was $52.00, Event Price $30.00

• Sportspower Bounce Pro 14′ Round Trampoline with Safety Enclosure – Was $229.00, Event Price $149.00

What other retailers are doing Black Friday sales?

At the moment, only Best Buy has officially announced its Black Friday sale, but you can expect Target and Amazon to have competing sales as well.

Google has teamed up with the United Service Organizations (USO) to help deployed service members stay in touch with their families in a different way. As part of a pilot program, the company is bringing Google Beam, its 3D video communication tech, to USO service centers in the US and other countries starting in 2026.

Google suggests that Beam can help military families who are separated by many miles feel like they are in the same room. While family members can keep in touch with deployed loved ones through group chats and video calls, chatting via Beam could help them feel closer together, if the tech works as well as promised.

We got our first look at Beam — then known as Project Starline — in 2021. The holographic teleconferencing system uses 3D imaging, spatial audio and adaptive lighting to make video chats more immersive. Beam is primarily intended for enterprise clients (the first such device costs $25,000), but it’s interesting to see Google exploring other applications for the tech.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/google-is-bringing-beam-its-3d-video-conferencing-tech-to-deployed-service-members-174500517.html?src=rss

Battlefield 6 is getting a free battle royale mode on October 28. This follows numerous leaks that have been popping up ever since the mainline game hit store shelves on October 10.

It’s called Battlefield: RedSec, though we don’t have too many gameplay details. It’s free for everyone and you don’t need the full-priced game to play. That much we do know. This puts it in direct competition with Call of Duty’s own free-to-play battle royale, Warzone.

We can assume some gameplay elements, as it’s a battle royale. It’ll likely feature players heading to a large map and battling one another until the last person is left standing. You know the drill. EA dropped a short teaser that seems to show four different classes of soldier to choose from.

We don’t know how or if this battle royale will interact with the main game. Warzone typically includes a story that ties into whatever’s going on with Call of Duty’s seasonal content drops. To that end, Season 1 of Battlefield 6 also releases on October 28. This update includes new maps, modes, vehicles, guns, attachments and cosmetic items.

Battlefield: RedSec will be available for download on various gaming platforms at 11AM ET. This could end up being a pretty big hit for EA, as the main game managed to sell 7 million copies in three days.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/battlefield-6s-free-battle-royale-mode-arrives-on-october-28-174419086.html?src=rss