Tech Boys

Valentine's Day shopping for your wife should be easy. You've known her forever. You hear her talk about her interests on a daily basis. But finding something to showcase how much she means to you is more of an enigma than it seems. How do you nail romance without being too cliché or too vague? We scoured the internet to find gifts with the perfect combination of thoughtful and practical. For even more ideas, check out our guides to the best Valentine's Day gifts for her , Valentine's Day gifts for your girlfriend , and gifts for your wife . from Mashable https://ift.tt/Bj038sp via IFTTT

Reddit has temporarily banned the subreddit r/WhitePeopleTwitter after Elon Musk complained about the community. The subreddit is currently inaccessible with a message from Reddit stating that the community has been banned for 72 hours due to “a prevalence of violent content.” The popular subreddit is known for posting funny tweets and memes from X. On Monday, an X account called “Reddit Lies” posted screenshots from a thread on r/WhitePeopleTwitter in which users were discussing the identities of the individuals with ties to Musk who have reportedly played a key role in the takeover of technical systems within the federal government. A Reddit spokesperson pointed to the message in r/WhitePeopleTwitter notifying users about the ban, but declined to comment further. “This subreddit has been temporarily banned due to a prevalence of violent content. Inciting and glorifying violence or doxing are against Reddit’s platform-wide Rules. It will reopen in 72 hours, during which Reddit wi...

An internet browser with built-in mindfulness and meditation tools? Sounds a little like buzzword fodder to me. However, I'm a tired, jaded journalist who'll try anything to feel more alive, so I tested the early access release, mindfulness-focused Opera Air and found its features straightforward and genuinely beneficial in the short period I played around with it. Built by Norwegian browser maker Opera, Opera Air claims to be "the first browser built around the concept of mindfulness." Opera has released thematic versions of its own browsers in the past, including a gaming-focused browser with a “Panic Button,” and a crypto browser . The latest, Air, is designed as a browser that both functions like Chrome, Firefox, and Safari but also "helps its users manage stress, enhance their focus, and maintain emotional clarity throughout their day." SEE ALSO: How to choose a meditation app that's right for you Tech platforms , apps , and wearables ...

SAVE $50: The Sonos Era 100 smart speaker is on sale at Amazon for $199, down from the typical price of $249. That's a 20% discount. Opens in a new window Credit: Sonos Sonos Era 100 $199.00 at Amazon $249.00 Save $50.00 Get Deal Your movies, TV shows, and playlists deserve something better than your TVs built-in speakers . Those are notoriously not so great (for starters, most face backward) and we have a new White Lotus theme song to look forward to in just a few weeks. Before the new episodes drop, make sure your TVs sound system is ready thanks to today's deal at Amazon. As of Feb. 3, the Sonos Era 100 smart speaker is on sale at Amazon for $199, marked down from the standard price of $249. That's a 20% discount that'll save you $50. You're free to snag the white or black colorway options to score this sale price. The Bluetooth enabled Sonos Era 100 is ready to play your favorite tunes with a dual-tweeter acoustic architecture and 25% big...

Nuance Audio, new "hearing glasses" from EssilorLuxottica, have received FDA clearance and "a CE marking under the Medical Devices regulation in the EU," making them officially ready to sell in the US and Europe. The smart glasses are essentially prescription frames with an over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aid built-in. Using open-ear speakers and a beamforming microphone array, Nuance Audio can raise the volume of whoever you're speaking to, while attempting to cancel out whatever noise is going on around you. You can control the glasses with a companion app or a dedicated remote. The glasses come in only two shapes, two colors and three sizes, far fewer options than EssilorLuxottica's traditional glasses brands, or the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses , but the tech seems like it could be ported to new frames down the road. Engadget deputy editor Cherlynn Low was able to try on Nuance Audio during CES 2025 and found them to be very comfortable and lightweight...

Uber rolled out a new set of features on Monday that could remove some friction for people with service animals. The company now lets handlers automatically notify drivers that they ride with a service animal. In a blog post , Chris Yoon, an Uber Product Manager, wrote that he “joined Uber with a singular mission: to help expand accessibility in rideshare, including for those who rely on service animals.” He says he and other blind travelers often message drivers in advance to let them know about their service animals. Today’s new features can automate that for them if they choose. Uber Drivers who consider refusing rides will have to think twice — and then some. If the driver requests a cancelation after learning about the service animal, Uber will automatically send an in-app reminder that doing so is against not only company policy but also the law. Uber says drivers refusing rides with service animals “may permanently lose access to the platform.” Passengers who opt into th...

If you're reading this, you're looking for a little help playing Strands , the New York Times ' elevated word-search game. Strands requires the player to perform a twist on the classic word search. Words can be made from linked letters — up, down, left, right, or diagonal, but words can also change direction, resulting in quirky shapes and patterns. Every single letter in the grid will be part of an answer. There's always a theme linking every solution, along with the "spangram," a special, word or phrase that sums up that day's theme, and spans the entire grid horizontally or vertically. SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable By providing an opaque hint and not providing the word list, Strands creates a brain-teasing game that takes a little longer to play than its other games, like Wordle and Connections . If you're feeling stuck or just don't have 10 or more minutes to figure out today's puzzle,...

A new WIRED report has pulled back the curtain on the inner workings of the Elon Musk -led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) , and the picture it paints is… troubling. According to the report, the department is being staffed by a crew of fresh-out-of-college hires — many with zero prior government experience. In fact, at least one of them is still in college. These Musk loyalists, including newly appointed Office of Personnel Management Chief of Staff Amanda Scales, have played a key role in his ongoing efforts to expand influence across multiple federal agencies. The investigation also found a common thread linking a few of these young recruits: billionaire Peter Thiel . Some of them have connections to the tech mogul's fellowship program, with his influence in the libertarian-leaning tech and political world having grown in recent years. SEE ALSO: Elon Musk's DOGE team attempt takeover of USAID While the DOGE executive order signed by Donald Trump techni...

There’s no two ways about it, there’s a newfound sense of urgency at OpenAI. Two days after releasing o3-mini to the world, the company made a surprise announcement on Sunday evening, r evealing Deep Research . The new feature allows ChatGPT to find, analyze and synthesize hundreds of websites and online sources to create reports “at the level of a research analyst.” On top of the usual text questions, users can upload files, including PDFs and spreadsheets, when prompting ChatGPT in this way. The chatbot will then take “anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes” to compile an answer, a side panel documenting the agent’s progress and citations as it works. “It accomplishes in tens of minutes what would take a human many hours,” OpenAI says of the new feature. “Our ultimate aspiration is a model that can uncover and discover new knowledge for itself,” said Mark Chen, chief research officer at OpenAI, during the company’s reveal livestream. “It’s core to our [artificial general intelligence] roa...

OpenAI announced on X that it’s hosting a livestream from Tokyo tonight, offering no more context beyond, “Deep Research.” (Didn't Google already take that name for Gemini?) There’s no link yet, just a note to stay tuned. The stream is scheduled for 7PM ET (4PM PT/ 9AM JST). Deep Research Live from Tokyo 4pm PT / 9am JST Stay tuned for link to livestream. — OpenAI (@OpenAI) February 2, 2025 Just a few days ago, OpenAI released its new reasoning model, o3-mini . The company says it produces “more accurate and clearer answers, with stronger reasoning abilities” than its predecessor, and “works with search to find up-to-date answers with links to relevant web sources.” CEO Sam Altman and other members of the OpenAI team just held an AMA on Reddit on Friday to discuss the new model. And a week before that, OpenAI introduced its new Operator tool , a “Computer-Using Agent” that it said “can go to the web to perform tasks for you.”  At the same time, we've seen the s...

If you're reading this, you're looking for a little help playing Strands , the New York Times ' elevated word-search game. Strands requires the player to perform a twist on the classic word search. Words can be made from linked letters — up, down, left, right, or diagonal, but words can also change direction, resulting in quirky shapes and patterns. Every single letter in the grid will be part of an answer. There's always a theme linking every solution, along with the "spangram," a special, word or phrase that sums up that day's theme, and spans the entire grid horizontally or vertically. SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable By providing an opaque hint and not providing the word list, Strands creates a brain-teasing game that takes a little longer to play than its other games, like Wordle and Connections . If you're feeling stuck or just don't have 10 or more minutes to figure out today's puzzle,...

Microsoft is getting rid of the VPN offered through Microsoft Defender. As spotted by Windows Latest , the company updated its support pages for privacy protection, its built-in VPN, to notify users that the service will end on February 28. The VPN was bundled with Microsoft Defender, which is available to anyone with a personal or family Microsoft 365 subscription, and it offered private browsing by “routing your internet traffic through Microsoft servers,” up to the monthly data limit of 50GB. In a statement about the decision posted on the support page, Microsoft said, “Our goal is to ensure you, and your family remain safer online. We routinely evaluate the usage and effectiveness of our features. As such, we are removing the privacy protection feature and will invest in new areas that will better align to customer needs.” Android users might still see the Microsoft Defender VPN profile in their settings after the expiration date, which they’ll need to remove manually if they wan...