It looks like the holidays aren’t a bad time to shop for a VPN subscription. ExpressVPN, Engadget’s pick for the best premium provider, currently has a less premium price. This deal gives you two years of the Advanced plan (with a bonus of four free months) for only $101. When it isn’t on sale, the same subscription would cost $392.

Engadget’s VPN guru, Sam Chapman, praised ExpressVPN’s service. He described it as “high-performing” and having “very few flaws.” The service received high marks for its speeds, easy-to-use interface and global network availability. The only significant mark against it was its relatively high standard pricing. But with this holiday sale, that criticism is (temporarily) null and void.

ExpressVPN recently switched to a multi-tier pricing structure. (That previously mentioned Advanced plan is the mid-range one.) There’s a cheaper Basic plan that allows 10 simultaneous devices (compared to the Advanced plan’s 12) and doesn’t include perks like a password manager. You can also choose the highest-priced Pro plan. It allows for 14 simultaneous devices and adds several extras. You can compare plans on ExpressVPN’s website.

When buying a two-year plan, the Basic tier is available for $2.79 per month (78 percent off). The Advanced plan is $3.59 per month (74 percent off). And the Pro plan is $5.99 per month (70 percent off). All three include the bonus of four additional months, giving you 28 total.

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alternative_right writes: Grocery delivery service Instacart will refund $60 million to settle FTC claims that it misled customers with false advertising and unlawfully enrolled them in paid subscriptions. Instacart partners with over 1,800 retailers to provide online shopping, delivery, and pickup services from nearly 100,000 stores across North America. Its platform serves millions of customers and is also used by roughly 600,000 independent shoppers across thousands of cities in Canada and the United States.

In a complaint filed on Thursday, the FTC claimed Instacart engaged in multiple deceptive tactics that raised costs for customers, including failing to provide advertised refunds and falsely advertising “free delivery” while still charging mandatory service fees that added up to 15% to order costs. The FTC said Instacart also advertised a “100% satisfaction guarantee,” but typically offered only small credits toward future orders rather than full refunds to customers experiencing problems with deliveries or service. The company allegedly hid refund options from “self-service” menus, leading customers to believe credits were their only option.

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While I’m a frequent reviewer of laptops and other computer-y type things, the gadgets that I care about the most are the ones I actually use on a regular basis in my day-to-day life. This year, I got big into showing off important memories with a digital picture frame, and into nostalgic handheld gaming with my first Anbernic device. But out of all the upgrades I’ve made to my life this year, the Ninja Creami was my easy favorite.

What is the Ninja Creami?

The Ninja Creami is different from a more traditional ice cream maker, which sits on your counter and constantly churns and freezes your liquid ice cream mixture until it’s ready. Instead, you prep and freeze your liquid ice cream mix overnight, and then process it (in just a few minutes) when you want it. That does mean you’ll need to get your ice cream going at least 24-hours in advance, but if you keep a few pints ready in your freezer at any given moment, I actually think it’s more convenient than the alternative, and makes for great spontaneous snacking.

Plus, you can get a bit more creative with your ingredients than with a traditional ice cream maker, since your mixture doesn’t need to thicken while being churned. In short, it’s a great machine for making custom desserts whenever you get the urge. Read on here for more on how exactly this all works, but for now, let’s get into just how much of a difference it’s made in my life this year. I got it as a gift, but it’s quickly become indispensable in my kitchen.

Pint of processed Ninja Creami ice cream.
Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

Why the Ninja Creami is my tech upgrade of the year

With the explanation out of the way, there are a few specific use cases that really made the Ninja Creami shine for me this year. In no particular order, here’s why it’s my favorite gadget I got in 2025.

It’s easy to use

I’ve already talked about how using the Ninja Creami generally takes less time than making ice cream with a more traditional ice cream maker, assuming you remember to keep your freezer stocked with Creami pints that you’ve frozen for at least 24 hours ahead of time. But let’s walk through the actual process of making ice cream with the Creami, just to really drive it home.

• Get urge for ice cream

• Pull pre-frozen Ninja Creami pint out of freezer

• Place pint into slots on Ninja Creami pitcher, install blade into pitcher lid, and place lid on top of pitcher

• Press button for your preferred ice cream program and wait two to five minutes.

And that’s it. It’s a good sight faster than going out for ice cream, not to mention cheaper. And the Creami can even do mix-ins like your own live-in Coldstone—just dig a hole in the center of your ice cream after processing, add your mix-ins, and snack on the ice cream you dug out while waiting for the mix-in program to incorporate your goodies into your ice cream. 

As for cleanup, the pints, lid, and blade are dishwasher safe, so fuggedaboutit.

It’s customizable

Maybe the biggest reason to get any home ice cream maker is the ability to make your own ice cream flavors, and the Ninja Creami is no different. While I’ve made the standard vanilla and chocolate, I’ve also experimented with more offbeat flavors in my Ninja Creami. Good examples are Milk Tea flavored ice cream and Chocolate Dulce de Leche ice cream (stay tuned). You can’t find those at Baskin-Robbins!

It’s healthy(er)

The thing that actually made me get a Ninja Creami is protein ice cream, or ice cream where protein powder is the chief contributor to your flavor. This is harder to make in a more traditional ice cream maker, but because of how the Ninja Creami mixes its ice cream together, it’s dead simple to make with it. It’s actually 90% of what I use the Creami for. This allows me to satisfy my sweet tooth while generally keeping calorie counts lower than a full fat ice cream would. You can still make that in the Ninja Creami, but I’ve had satisfying results with just 2% milk, protein power, and my secret ingredient—sugar free Jell-O.

The Jell-O comes with xantham gum that acts as a binder, and when mixed with the milk and protein powder, gives you a nearly indistinguishable texture from full fat ice cream after processing. You can actually buy xantham gum on its own, but Jell-O is a bit easier to find, and can add some additional flavor. Granted, I’ll usually add in some mix-ins and whipped cream, which does counteract the healthiness a little bit, but it’s still not uncommon to get a pint that’s under 400 calories. And a full pint usually serves both me and my husband, and makes a great compliment to a smaller dinner, which means it can help with portion control, too.

It saves milk

I’m not always great at using up milk ahead of its expiration date, but I hate the idea of dumping it down the drain. The Ninja Creami makes for easy recipes to freeze milk that’s about to go bad, as each recipe calls for about 2 cups of the stuff. Granted, I like to use 1 cup of cow milk and 1 cup of almond milk, since almond milk provides some flavor and an extra smooth texture, but you can totally get away with just one or the other. Overall, the Ninja Creami has made me much less wasteful with my milk, even as I’m using it more often.

Boozy milkshakes!

Finally, the Ninja Creami can make easy milkshakes. Yes, I know it’s not that hard to make milkshakes in a blender, but I hate washing my whole blender just for that. With the Ninja Creami, you just dump your ice cream into your pint, or process some custom ice cream and mix it around a bit, then dig a hole in the center of it and add some milk and alcohol. Run it through the milkshake program, and the resulting texture will be perfect pretty much every time, with none of the guesswork of using a blender. My husband and I like to do this before watching a movie, and it’s an easy way to save money on the $15+ boozy milkshakes at our local Alamo Drafthouse.

Plus, there are also programs for making other desserts like sorbets, so while I mostly like to use the Creami for ice cream, there are a lot of other ways to get creative with this thing.

My favorite Ninja Creami recipe

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

I’ve got my iPhone Notes app filled with dozens of recipes at this point, but to give you a brief idea of just want I do with my Ninja Creami, let’s walk through my favorite. You’re not going to find this at Baskin-Robbins, but once you’ve tried Dulce Chocolate, you won’t be able to go back.

Dulce Chocolate

My husband’s a big fan of Häagen-Dazs’ Dulce de Leche ice cream, and using a special kind of Dulce de Leche protein powder that only one company seems to make, we’ve been able to make a pretty convincing but much healthier dupe of it (for that, use vanilla Jell-O instead of what I’m about to suggest). However, we’ve discovered that Dulce de Leche also goes very well with chocolate, and that’s a mixture you’re unlikely to find unless you make it yourself. This is the recipe that really sold me on the Ninja Creami, and once you try it, I think you’ll understand.

• 1 cup 2% milk

• Roughly 1 cup sweetened almond milk (leave enough room for your powders)

• 1 scoop Black Magic Dulce de Leche Protein powder

• 1 tbsp sugar free chocolate fudge Jell-O powder

Use the Lite Ice Cream setting to process. After processing, optionally add mix-ins of your choice. My favorite for Dulce Chocolate ice cream are Kit-Kats and Reese’s Thins. Both are best slightly pre-crushed before being added to your ice cream.

Which Ninja Creami should you get?

Ninja Creami Dulce de Leche milkshake with caramel sauce.
Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

If I’ve convinced you to get one of your own, you’ve got a few options.

The one I own is the standard Ninja Creami, and it normally costs $200 and does everything I need. Pints are two cups and there are fewer program presets than on other models, but it’s what I’d recommend to most people.

But if you want a few more programs and larger pints, you could also go for the Ninja Creami Deluxe, which normally costs $250. Here, you’ll be able to make three-cup pints, and you can also process just part of your pint at a time, making for easier leftovers.

Finally, if you like soft serve ice cream, there’s the Ninja Creami Swirl. This normally costs $350, and is a lot like the standard Ninja Creami, but also comes with a dispenser for swirling out your ice cream into a cone or bowl like you’re at an ice cream shop. It’s also got a few extra programs that make it easier to make ice cream with a soft serve consistency, but with the right knowhow, you can also do that with every Creami model.

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman estimates that staying competitive in frontier AI development will require “hundreds of billions of dollars” over the next five to ten years, a sum that doesn’t even account for the high salaries companies are paying individual researchers and technical staff. Speaking on a podcast, Suleyman compared Microsoft to a “modern construction company” where hundreds of thousands of workers are building gigawatts of CPUs and AI accelerators. There’s “a structural advantage by being inside a big company,” he said.

When asked whether startups could compete with Big Tech, Suleyman said “it’s hard to say,” adding that “the ambiguity is what’s driving the frothiness of the valuations.” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in September he’d rather risk “misspending a couple of hundred billion” than fall behind in superintelligence.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Behold Mark Zuckerberg: man of principle. Witness the Meta CEO’s dedication to the most high-minded of causes: “currying favor with whoever’s in charge.” In 2013, when Barack Obama was president, Zuckerberg co-founded FWD.us, a pro-immigration advocacy group. For years, he vocally supported providing paths to citizenship for “the most talented and hardest-working people, no matter where they were born.” Now, in 2025, with Donald Trump back in power and pushing draconian immigration policies, Zuckerberg’s philanthropy organization has officially cut ties with the group. Who says Big Tech executives don’t stand for anything?

On Friday, Bloomberg reported on the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) severing its ties with FWD.us. Zuckerberg’s group provided no funding to the advocacy group for the first time this year. Up to that point, over half of the roughly $400 million donated to the nonprofit since 2013 had come from CZI.

In addition, CZI’s chief of staff, Jordan Fox, resigned from the FWD.us board. No one else at CZI will fill the vacant slot, another first for the pro-immigration and justice reform advocacy group.

In late 2024, Zuckerberg met with Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who reacts to brown-skinned humans being sent to foreign gulags the way my dog responds to a juicy steak. Among other topics during the exchange, Miller reportedly questioned Zuckerberg’s ties to FWD.us.

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI via Getty Images

Apparently, his words resonated with Zuckerberg’s principles. In January, before Trump was sworn in for his second term, Meta unleashed an overhaul that reads like a Miller wishlist. The company ended its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. That same month, it ditched third-party fact-checkers, calling them “too politically biased.” It also changed its policies to allow for “insulting language” on topics of immigration and LGBTQ+ issues. The company even added Trump backer Dana White to its board.

It fits a broader pattern of Big Tech bending the knee to Trump.

“We’re in the middle of a pretty rapidly changing policy and regulatory landscape that views any policy that might advantage any one group of people over another as something that is unlawful,” Zuckerberg told the New York Times in January. “Because of that, we and every other institution out there are going to need to adjust.”

“We now have a US administration that is proud of our leading companies, prioritizes American technology winning and that will defend our values and interests abroad,” Zuckerberg said in a January investor call. “I am optimistic about the progress and innovation that this can unlock, so this is going to be a big year.”

What a big year indeed.

Ryan Murphy via Getty Images

Now witness the contrasting words of one of Zuckerberg’s chief rivals in Silicon Valley. “When you meet these [immigrant] children who are really talented, and they’ve grown up in America, and they really don’t know any other country besides that, but they don’t have the opportunities that we all enjoy, it’s really heartbreaking, right?” the tech executive said. “That seems like it’s one of the biggest civil rights issues of our time.”

That “rival,” of course, was Obama-era Mark Zuckerberg in 2013.

Despite the funding setback, thanks to our principled hero, FWD.us will press forward. “We’re thankful to our donors, past and present, and so grateful to the many new donors who have stepped up in the past few years — and particularly the influx of new supporters we have seen this year,” FWD.us President Todd Schulte said in a statement. “This allows us to fight for immigrants under attack today and to build a better approach to immigration and criminal justice reform for many, many years to come.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/mark-zuckerbergs-nonprofit-cuts-ties-with-the-immigration-advocacy-group-he-co-founded-183447900.html?src=rss

SEATTLE—The last coal-fired power plant in Washington state was set to go cold at the end of the year. It would then switch to natural gas, cutting carbon emissions in half.

The shutdown had been in the works for 15 years and was mandated by state law. It required the Canadian energy company that owns the power plant, TransAlta, to retrain workers and ease the local community’s economic transition.

But the farewell to coal was canceled this week by the Trump administration. In furtherance of the president’s crusade to keep America’s coal plants burning, the Department of Energy announced Tuesday that an “emergency exists” in the Pacific Northwest “due to a shortage of electricity.” To keep the lights on, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that the Centralia electric generating facility in southwest Washington must continue to burn coal for at least 90 more days.

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The television industry’s brightness war may have hit its inflection point in 2025, the year TCL and Hisense released the first consumer TVs capable of 5,000 nits under specific settings — a figure that would have seemed absurd not long ago when manufacturers struggled to reach 2,000 nits. LG introduced Primary RGB Tandem OLED technology, moving from a three-stack panel design to a four-stack red-blue-green-blue configuration that the company claims can achieve 4,000 nits. The technology appears in the LG G5, Panasonic Z95B and Philips OLED950 and OLED910.

RGB mini-LED also emerged as a new category. The technology uses individual small red, green and blue LED backlights instead of white or blue LEDs paired with quantum dots. Hisense demonstrated it at CES 2025, TCL announced its Q10M for China, and Samsung unveiled its own version called micro-RGB. These sets range from $12,000 to $30,000. Sony has confirmed it will debut RGB TV technology in spring 2026. HDR content is currently mastered at a maximum of 4,000 nits. The situation echoes the audio industry’s loudness war, The Verge points out, which peaked with Metallica’s heavily compressed Death Magnetic in 2008.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Instacart has agreed to pay out $60 million in subscriber refunds, the Federal Trade Commission announced on Thursday.

The refunds will help settle a lawsuit the FTC raised, accusing the grocery delivery app of engaging in “numerous unlawful tactics that harmed shoppers and raised the cost of grocery shopping for Americans.”

Under the settlement—which expires after 10 years—Instacart agreed to stop marketing its app with allegedly deceptive claims. That includes supposedly offering “free delivery,” when customers actually paid up to 15 percent in “service fees” not charged for pickup orders. Those service fees, the FTC alleged, were “just delivery fees by another name.”

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Whether you want them to or not, appliances are getting smarter. It’s increasingly challenging to find even basic models without some kind of “smart” feature or embedded artificial intelligence. If you don’t believe me, just try to find a “dumb” television at your local Best Buy. You will be disappointed.

While it’s true that many of the “smart” features offered by these nifty new appliances are quite useful. The ability to pre-heat your oven or adjust your thermostat by pressing a button on your phone is great, and getting alerts when the fridge door is left open or when you forget to move your laundry from the washer to the dryer is undeniably a boon.

But sometimes, the convenience these features offer is an illusion, as many supposedly smart features in modern appliances aren’t very smart at all—and they can actively make your life harder instead of easier. If you’re shopping for a new appliance, considering avoiding these not-so-smart features.

Dryer with moisture sensors that leave your clothes damp

Modern clothes dryers offer a lot of great capabilities. Some can even talk to your washer, pre-setting themselves for the laundry coming its way, and many can remind you to collect your laundry, sparing you wrinkled clothes, and to clean out the lint filter. But modern dryers often come with moisture sensors that shut off the dryer when it detects that your clothes are dry. In theory, sensor drying saves you money and time over a fixed time dry. But the sensors in these dryers are notorious for being inaccurate shutting the dryer down when your clothes are still a bit damp. And you still have to make a guess as to how much drying you need and set the sensor to the proper level. At best, this can mean running another drying cycle. At worst, your clothes will sit there getting mildewy until you remember to check the machine.

Dishwashers with “eco modes” that leave dishes dirty

New dishwashers often come with efficient or “eco” modes that use less water and less energy to clean your dishes. That’s a great idea—in theory. But these modes achieve those efficiencies the only way they can: By running at lower temperatures and literally using less water in their cleaning cycles. This can often leave your dishes visibly dirty after running a load, forcing you to cancel out the benefit by running them a second time. Worse, these modes don’t get hot enough to kill dangerous bacteria like E. coli, so even if your dishes come out looking clean, they may not be sanitary.

Smart fridges that misidentify your groceries

Smart fridges are often at the top of people’s complaints list for two main reasons: One, they are often abandoned by their manufacturers soon after they arrive on the market, with updates and support vanishing in as quickly as two years. That transforms your pricey smart fridge into a pricey dumb fridge. More frustratingly, smart fridges that supposedly use artificial intelligence to identify your groceries as you place them inside (in order to help you track your shopping needs and expiration dates) often get things wrong. For example, this woman complained that her smart fridge often mistook her husband’s head for an avocado, among other problems, which rendered the feature worse than useless.

Sensor-cooking microwaves that don’t cook

While the modern microwave remains the steadfastly boxy, unsexy beast it’s always been, there have been attempts to make it smarter—and sometimes these attempts backfire on you. Some microwaves offer “sensor cooking,” the ability to sense the weight and moisture level of the food in order to adjust cooking time and power levels to cook your food perfectly. Except when it senses incorrectly and leaves you with a half-cooked mess, or if you’re trying to cook something that simply doesn’t work well with sensor cooking, like dry foods that don’t produce enough steam for the sensor to detect.

Smart kitchen scales that are just making guesses

A smart kitchen scale might seem like a nifty idea; you weigh your food and use an app to get nutritional information, like the amount of calories in what you’re about to eat. That’s fine, but it really just adds an unnecessary step to your cooking routine, because most “smart” scales are just regular, standard kitchen scales and an app that Googles on your behalf. You’ll get the same general experience—and likely better accuracy—by weighing something and using your phone to search for nutritional information yourself.

Smart garage doors that are less secure

Smart garage doors are a great example of a piece of technology that isn’t improved much by being smart. And the core technology that makes the garage door smart—a WiFi connection to a cloud server—can also make it worse than useless. Aside from the fact that any disruption in the door’s connection can cause it to remain locked in the open position, leaving your home vulnerable, there’s also the fact that the manufacturer can make changes any time they like that could potentially alter the way your door functions or brick it entirely.

Amazon is selling Apple’s USB-C Magic Mouse for $68, which is a discount of 14 percent. This isn’t a record-low price, but it’s darned close. The mouse typically sells for $79, though today’s sale only applies to the white model.

It’s rare for official Apple accessories to go on sale, and the USB-C Magic Mouse is pretty much a must-have for those working on desktop computers. It’s also fairly handy when combined with a laptop, letting folks avoid the trackpad.

As the name suggests, this mouse charges via USB-C. Apple stuck with replaceable AA batteries for way too long, so this change was much appreciated. A charge should power the mouse for around a month, a metric I find to be more-or-less accurate depending on usage.

This is a good mouse, and a great option for Apple devotees, but it’s not without its flaws. The biggest one is port placement. The USB-C port is underneath the mouse, rendering it unusable while charging. Bloomberg recently reported that a major redesign is coming for Apple’s wireless mouse that should address that issue.

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/apples-usb-c-magic-mouse-is-back-on-sale-for-68-175424709.html?src=rss

Earlier this month, Strava, the popular fitness-tracking app, released its annual “Year in Sport” wrap-up—a cutesy, animated series of graphics summarizing each user’s athletic achievements.

But this year, for the first time, Strava made this feature available only to users with subscriptions ($80 per year), rather than making it free to everyone, as it had been historically since the review’s debut in 2016.

This decision has roiled numerous Strava users, particularly those who have relished the app’s social encouragement features. One Strava user in India, Shobhit Srivastava, “begged” Strava to “let the plebs see their Year in Sport too, please.” He later explained to Ars that having this little animated video is more than just a collection of raw numbers.

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