Memory and storage shortages and price hikes that started hitting PC components late last year have steadily rippled outward across all kinds of consumer tech—some products have disappeared, gone out of stock, or been delayed, and others have undergone multiple rounds of price hikes. Today’s bad news comes from Sony, which is raising prices for PlayStation 5 consoles in the US just eight months after their last price hike. The drive-less Digital Edition will…

Netflix isn’t preparing for a multibillion acquisition anymore, but it’s still raising prices. As first spotted by Android Authority today, Netflix now lists its ad-supported plan as costing $9 per month, up from $8/month. The Standard, ad-free plan went up from $18/month to $20/month, and the Premium ad-free plan (which supports viewing from four, instead of two, devices simultaneously, 4K, and spatial audio) went from $25/month to $27/month. For comparison,…

Many of our graphics card reviews early last year and in the early 2020s focused on the difficulties of reviewing and recommending graphics cards when the manufacturer-suggested price points effectively didn’t exist. Now, reviews of any new PC component have to contend with the much more broadly awful market for consumer PC parts as AI data center-fueled demand for RAM and flash memory chips drives up prices for DDR5 kits, SSDs,…

Drone startup BRINC announced Tuesday a significant upgrade for its law enforcement drones. BRINC’s newest model, Guardian, will have Starlink connectivity on every unit—a first for commercially available drones. This new model, which will enter production later this year, has a flight time of over an hour and can reach a top speed of over 60 miles per hour. BRINC calls it the “first drone that can pursue vehicles.” Additionally,…

Reddit will require accounts that exhibit “automated or otherwise fishy behavior” to verify that a human runs them, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said in a Reddit post today. The verification process aims to combat unwanted bots from flooding Reddit at a time when AI bots are poised to take over the Internet. “As AI becomes a bigger part of the Internet, we want to make sure that when you’re on…

Google is dramatically shortening its readiness deadline for the arrival of Q Day, the point at which existing quantum computers can break public-key cryptography algorithms that secure decades’ worth of secrets belonging to militaries, banks, governments, and nearly every individual on earth. In a post published on Wednesday, Google said it is giving itself until 2029 to prepare for this event. The post went on to warn that the rest…

Prospective Vizio TV buyers should know there’s a good chance the set won’t work properly without a Walmart account. In an attempt to better serve advertisers, Walmart, which bought Vizio in December 2024, announced this week that select newly purchased Vizio TVs now require a Walmart account for setup and accessing smart TV features. Since 2024, Vizio TVs have required a Vizio account, which a Vizio OS website says is…

Apple has released the 26.4 updates to all of its major software platforms today, including iOS, iPadOS, macOS Tahoe, watchOS, tvOS, visionOS, and the HomePod. The most important reason to install each update is the big pile of included security fixes—you can see the ones Apple is disclosing for iOS/iPadOS and macOS on its security website—but the updates also include a few significant new features, a change from the mostly…

A new hacking group has been rampaging the Internet in a persistent campaign that spreads a self-propagating and never-before-seen backdoor—and curiously a data wiper that targets Iranian machines. The group, tracked under the name TeamPCP, first gained visibility in December, when researchers from security firm Flare observed it unleashing a worm that targeted cloud-hosted platforms that weren’t properly secured. The objective was to build a distributed proxy and scanning infrastructure…

LG Display is mass-producing laptop screens that automatically change their refresh rate from 1 Hz to up to 120 Hz, based on what’s on-screen, it announced this week. The display supplier said that it’s the first company to mass-produce these 1–120 Hz screens, which are supposed to boost battery life. According to LG’s announcement, the LCD screens, which it’s calling Oxide 1Hz, will automatically use a 1 Hz refresh rate…