A blog about Technology, new invention and ways of looking.
elon musk stares at camera at trump's inauguration

Social platform X is "barely breaking even," owner Elon Musk emailed employees, the Wall Street Journal reported.

"Our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we're barely breaking even," Musk reportedly said. In a story about banks preparing to sell billions of dollars in debt borrowed by X, WSJ printed other parts of the email:

"Over the last few months, we've witnessed the power of X in shaping national conversations and outcomes...We are also seeing other platforms begin to adopt our commitment to free speech and unbiased truth."

The latter sentence refers to Meta, which is removing fact-checks in favor of community notes, which X already has.

Elon Musk has denied writing this to staff, posting on X, "This report is false. I sent no such email. WSJ is lying."

Since his takeover of then-Twitter in 2022, Mashable has reported that X's user base has declined, fleeing for alternatives like Bluesky, especially after the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Advertisers have been no different, with the trend of companies removing ads on X expected to continue this year.

The WSJ article stated that Morgan Stanley bankers have reached out to investors ahead of a $3 billion sale of debt it and other banks lent to X to complete Musk's buyout in 2022. Investors have allegedly expressed interest in buying the debt as they see X's financial position on an "upward trajectory," WSJ reported, likely because of Musk's alliance with President Trump.

Musk has been in the news this week for other reasons, including his attendance at Trump's inauguration on Monday and the "Roman salute" he gave during a speech.



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A blog about Technology, new invention and ways of looking.
Meta and Instagram logos are seen on screens

Meta platforms Instagram and Facebook blocked and hid posts by abortion pill providers, the New York Times reported. The company confirmed to the Times that it blurred some posts and suspended some providers' accounts. The actions have reportedly ramped up this week following Trump's inauguration.

This month, before the inauguration, Meta made several major changes to its platforms, including removing fact-checks and relaxing hate speech policies. A Meta spokesperson told the Times that the post-blocking and account suspensions aren't related to the moderation changes and attributed some of the incidents to the "overenforcement" of rules prohibiting pharmaceutical drug sales without proper certification.

Aid Access, Women Help Women, Just the Pill, and Hey Jane are abortion pill providers impacted by these actions, the Times reported.

In recent weeks, Instagram came under fire for blocking LGBTQ content (Meta claimed it was an "accident") and the #democrat hashtag.

For years, Meta platforms, particularly Instagram, have been accused of blocking and removing posts and accounts sharing sex-educational and LGBTQ content. In 2022, Instagram blocked posts that mentioned abortion following the overturning of Roe v. Wade (apparently due to a "technical glitch"). Mashable has also previously reported that Meta rejected period care ads for being political or adult content.

This week, The Trump administration shut down reproductiverights.gov, a site set up after Roe was overturned. The government site provided information on birth control, emergency contraception, and abortion pills.



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A blog about Technology, new invention and ways of looking.
Instant Pot Duo Plus, Google Pixel 8 Pro, 4-Series Fire TV, Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+, and Roborock QRevo Plus with colorful gradient background
Check out the best Amazon deals of the day as of Jan. 24:

OUR TOP PICK
Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+
$839.19 (save $280.80)
Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+ in silver

BEST TV DEAL
Amazon 55-inch 4-Series Fire TV
$359.99 (save $100)
Amazon 4-Series Fire TV

BEST KITCHEN DEAL
Instant Pot Duo Plus
$69.99 (save $60)
Instant Pot Duo Plus multi-cooker

BEST HOME DEAL
Roborock Qrevo Plus
$579.99 (save $320)
Roborock Qrevo in black with charging self-empty station

BEST PHONE DEAL
Google Pixel 8 Pro in blue

It doesn't need to be a major shopping holiday like Prime Day or Black Friday for prices to drop to new record lows, as we've seen the past few weeks. Today is no different — we're seeing tech gadgets from top brands like Samsung and Google drop to their best prices ever at Amazon on this random Friday. And we're definitely not mad about it.

Here are our top picks for the best Amazon deals of the day on Jan. 24. If none of these catch your eye, be sure to check out our picks from yesterday, Jan. 23. Many of those are still live, including the lowest price ever on the Sonos Arc soundbar.

Our top pick: Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+

Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+ in silver
Credit: Samsung
Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+ (512GB, WiFi)
$839.19 at Amazon
$1,119.99 Save $280.80

Just announced in September, Samsung's Galaxy Tab S10+ (512GB, WiFi) is down to its best price ever of $839.19 — a savings of 25%. New features include an improved speaker setup with enhanced AI-powered "Dialogue Boost," heavy Galaxy AI, a lighter build, and a change in processor from Qualcomm Snapdragon to MediaTek Dimensity 9300+. Oddly, MediaTek is known for being packed inside budget devices. Thankfully, though, our friends at PCMag (also owned by Ziff Davis) tested it and found the processor to handle everything from video calls and drawing to gaming and productivity seamlessly. It even earned a spot on their Best of the Year list for 2024.

Amazon 55-inch 4-Series Fire TV

Amazon 55-inch 4-Series Fire TV
$359.99 at Amazon
$459.99 Save $100.00

One of the newest TVs in the Fire lineup, the 2024 4-Series features an ultra-slim bezel that fades into the background, making whatever you're watching more immersive. Otherwise, it's pretty much just a newer rendition of Amazon's most popular smart TV. It supports vivid 4K Ultra HD, HDR10, HLG, and Dolby Digital Plus, includes the Alexa voice Remote Enhanced, and boasts four HDMI inputs so you can connect all your peripherals. We featured it earlier this month when it dropped to $359.99 for Prime members, but as of Jan. 24, everyone can enjoy that low price. Prime member or not, you can save 22% on this 55-inch model ahead of the Big Game.

Instant Pot Duo Plus Multi-cooker

Instant Pot Duo Plus multi-cooker
Credit: Instant Pot
Instant Pot Duo Plus Multi-cooker
$69.99 at Amazon
$129.99 Save $60.00

If you have limited space in your kitchen, we suggest snagging a multi-functional appliance like the Instant Pot. The six-quart Instant Pot Duo Plus is one of our favorites and it is on sale for just $69.99 — that's 46% off its usual cost. It features nine different cooking modes, essentially subbing for nine different appliances, including a pressure cooker, slow cooker, and sous vide. It also packs 15 unique smart programs to help you get cooking quickly and easily and a redesigned control panel that keeps you in the know about your cooking status.

Roborock Qrevo Plus

Roborock Qrevo in black with charging self-empty station
Credit: Roborock
Roborock Qrevo Plus robot vacuum and mop
$579.99 at Amazon
$899.99 Save $320.00

Spring cleaning will be here before you know it. If you need a hand, the Roborock Qrevo Plus (a lite version of our favorite hybrid robot vacuum) can make a pretty solid companion. It can tackle your vacuuming and mopping in one go, thanks to its impressive 7000Pa suction, dual spinning mops, reactive tech obstacle avoidance, smart suggestions and no-go zones, self-washing, drying, emptying, and refilling features, and flexible side arm that mops in corners and walll edges. Its 6-in-1 docking station also packs a 2.7L dustbin for up to seven weeks of hands-free cleaning. It's usually $899.99, but as of Jan. 24, you can save 36% and snag it on sale at Amazon for just $579.99.

Google Pixel 8 Pro

Google Pixel 8 Pro (Unlocked, 128GB)
$599.00 at Amazon
$999.00 Save $400.00

While this deal has been lingering for about a week or so, we still think it's worth mentioning — and grabbing — on Jan. 24. The unlocked Google Pixel 8 Pro with 128GB is only $599 at Amazon instead of $999 — that's 40% in savings. For comparison purposes, the Pixel 9 Pro is about $250 more on sale. If you're not pressed on having the latest and greatest phone on the market, the Pixel 8 Pro still offers an excellent camera, all-day battery life, a 120Hz refresh rate, a swanky chipset, and advanced AI features. For Android fans on a budget, it won't disappoint.

Check out our full review of the Google Pixel 8 Pro.

None of these deals catching your eye? Check out Amazon's daily deals for even more savings.



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Naoe hiding from enemies in Assassin's Creed Shadows

It turns out the way to get me interested in a new Assassin's Creed (well, more interested than I already was) is to include features from the AC games I played 10 to 15 years ago.

To be a little more specific, Ubisoft's latest open-world stabbing simulator Assassin's Creed Shadows builds on the recent RPG-ish entries like Valhalla by incorporating mechanics and design philosophies from older entries like Brotherhood and Syndicate. From Valhalla, it borrows the idea of training and deploying subordinate assassins on helpless, unsuspecting doofus guards in your time of need. From the older games, it takes and (from what I can tell) heavily improves on the two-protagonist setup, with one representing stealth and the other combat.

Crucially, it's also got the goods from the newer games, like a very pretty and naturalistic feudal Japan setting, and consequential dialogue choices. After playing Shadows for about three hours at a preview event, I came away fairly impressed not only at how Shadows assimilates abandoned ideas from older AC games, but also by how fun it is on its own merits thanks to greater depth in its stealth mechanics and a slightly harsher and less forgiving level of challenge than its predecessors.

Yasuke just seems really cool

Yasuke and Odu Nobunaga in Assassin's Creed Shadows
Yasuke is a big dude with big appeal. Credit: Ubisoft

I'm not really at liberty to discuss the the overall narrative of Shadows because I haven't seen that much of it, but I'm very into one of the two protagonists.

That would be Yasuke, who is a bit of an oddity among AC protagonists in that he was a real person. Usually in these games, you play as a fictional assassin who has the good fortune to Forrest Gump their way through whatever historical period they live in, but Yasuke was an actual Black man from Africa who went from slave to bonafide samurai under the tutelage of Odu Nobunaga in the 16th century. He's a self-evidently fascinating figure and a fantastic choice for a protagonist.

I'm a little less sold on Naoe, the fictional female protagonist who will be the character of choice for players who want to be sneaky. However, that probably has more to with the nature of the demo I played than anything; I didn't get a great sense for her personality or motives, aside from a generic desire for revenge. I'm sure that will change as I play through the final game (after all, I prefer to play stealthily), but for now, I just don't know how to feel about her. It doesn't help that she's working alongside an exceedingly cool dude in Yasuke.

A squad of assassins await your command

The portion of the demo I'm allowed to talk about had all the trappings one would expect from a modern Assassin's Creed game: A big open zone full of main story quests, side activities, and gorgeous vistas to discover. I'll get into the finer details of how the moment-to-moment action feels a little later, but generally speaking, this is totally an Assassin's Creed game. They didn't set out to reinvent the wheel here, even though it's been more than four years since Valhalla came out.

However, where Shadows did surprise me a bit was in its deployment of awesome mechanics from older games in the series that have since been abandoned for one reason or another. Namely, Shadows brings back the thing from Brotherhood (and a few other games after that) where you have a cadre of NPC assassins at your disposal who you can recruit, train, upgrade, and then deploy how you see fit. This mostly manifests as aiming at an enemy guard and pressing a button to have your underling take them out, but I should note the demo also provided me with a summonable NPC who was built more for fighting than stealth kills, so there is seemingly some versatility to this system.

This is not only an inherently fun thing to do, but it also gives the player more solutions to the game's fairly challenging stealth sequences. Speaking of which...

Quiet is more fun, but going loud is more viable than ever

Naoe sneaking around in Assassin's Creed Shadows
You know you want to do it. Credit: Ubisoft/Steam

The dual-protagonist idea is borrowed from 2015's Assassin's Creed Syndicate, which similarly had a male assassin who was built for fights and a female assassin who was built for sneaking. The problem with that (other than the mild gender essentialism of it all) was that approximately 75 percent of Syndicate's main story forced you into playing as the dude, who wore a stupid top hat all the time and just wasn't as fun to play as the other character.

Shadows makes it a point to not repeat that mistake. All missions seem to be playable as both characters. In fact, the big finale to the main story thread I followed in the demo gave me three different opportunities to choose a character during the mission. It's nice that you don't have to commit to one character for an entire mission if you don't want to.

Let's talk about Naoe. I actually spent most of the demo playing as her because I'm a stealthy guy, and I came away pretty satisfied with the additions to sneaky gameplay Ubisoft has made this time around. For starters, enemies seem to have better eyesight than before, as they regularly spotted me from pretty far away when I wasn't careful. Beyond that, you have to use light to your advantage; lanterns can (and should) be destroyed with throwing knives, and shadows provide enough cover for nearby guards to not notice you right away.

Character selection screen in Assassin's Creed Shadows
Expect to see this a lot. Credit: Ubisoft/Steam

The biggest change, though, is the ability to go prone and crawl around on the ground. It's the only way to get through certain grassy areas unnoticed, and genuinely saved my ass about half a dozen times during the demo. If an enemy spots you, you can quickly go prone and hope to God whatever is around you provides enough cover to get them off your trail. Anyone who has ever played a Metal Gear game will agree that crawling around on your stomach is a fun way to sneak around, not only because you feel super stealthy, but also because you're incredibly vulnerable in that state. When you do it right, you feel awesome. When you do it wrong, you die. That tension should add a lot to Shadows.

Naoe also has a grappling hook that she can use pretty freely to scale vertical structures, and the areas I snuck through were definitely built with that in mind. Trying to quickly climb a rope up to a roof before a nearby guard turns around and sees you is the exact kind of juice I want from a stealth game.

While both characters are clearly geared for a specific style of play, you can technically fight dudes one-on-one with Naoe, or sneak around as Yasuke. Both seem fairly inadvisable, though. Naoe is lithe and nimble, but she can die in just a couple of hits. Yasuke, meanwhile, is a burly, lumbering samurai who climbs slower and doesn't have all of Naoe's stealth tools (like the grappling hook) at his disposal.

Yasuke fighting in Assassin's Creed Shadows
Most of your time spent with Yasuke will probably look like this. Credit: Ubisoft/Steam

What he does have, however, are a katana and the willingness to use it. With Yasuke, I played the final mission like an action game, totally unconcerned with being stealthy. This was admittedly less compelling to me than the Naoe approach. Even basic enemies feel a bit like damage sponges who take a few too many hits to kill. I'll give Shadows the benefit of the doubt here and assume Yasuke will feel more powerful after dozens of hours of gameplay, but the demo didn't really give me the satisfaction of cutting through guys in one precise blow, like you see in so much other samurai fiction. Still, it wasn't bad by any means, and I did have some fun after figuring out how Yasuke's various abilities work.

Even with my gripe about enemy health, it's probably for the best that Shadows is a more challenging game than the ones that came before it. More broadly, it's great that people who don't like stealth (but find other aspects of these games appealing) can seemingly play the entire game as a big old tank.

I was always going to check out Assassin's Creed Shadows just because I've played almost all of these games since 2007 and it would be ridiculous to stop now. But I came away from this demo pretty pleased with what Ubisoft has put together. Between bringing back NPC assassins from Brotherhood and doing the whole two-character thing in a substantially more freeform way than Syndicate, Shadows has something to like for almost any AC fan.

We'll see if that's enough to make it fun for 50+ hours, though.

Assassin's Creed Shadows launches on March 20 for PS5, Xbox Series consoles, and PC.



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A person holds a new Samsung Galaxy S25 in the palm of their hand.

Android users who use assistive devices can anticipate in a new era of connection and control, right on their phone.

New to the Samsung Galaxy S25 and harnessing its wireless audio LE Audio tech, Android will be adding next generation Bluetooth connectivity compatible with GN Hearing and Oticon Intent hearing aid devices. According to the company, this enables users of such devices to more efficiently access controls like hands-free calling, settings presets, and lower latency Bluetooth connections.

Bluetooth LE Audio technology is a relatively new standard in hearing aid tech, with lower latency connection significantly reducing the delay between sources of audio and the hearing aid itself.

The update was announced as part of Samsung's annual Unpacked event, and will also be available to Google Pixel 9 users who opt-in to the Android 16 beta. It will be added to the Galaxy S24 with Android 15 in the coming weeks, according to the company.

A screenshot of a Samsung Galaxy homescreen showing a hearing aid setting controls menu.
Credit: Google / Samsung

Android will also introduce new updates to TalkBack, its on-device screen reader for users who are blind or low vision. Samsung Galaxy S25 users will have first access to new HID connection options for external braille displays, for example, which will come to all Android 15 devices in coming months. In addition to connectivity updates, Android will also incorporate Google's Gemini models to enhance accessible image descriptions on Galaxy S25 devices.



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openai logo on a phone with neon blue background

OpenAI could release its agentic AI tool that could, in theory, autonomously do tasks for you by taking control of your device.

Reports have suggested the tool is getting close to being released. Techcrunch wrote, for instance, that the tool dubbed Operator looks to be "nearing release," citing, in part, Tibor Blaho, a software engineer who often leaks or uncovers AI news. Blaho wrote on X that he noticed "ChatGPT macOS desktop app has hidden options to define shortcuts for the desktop launcher to 'Toggle Operator' and 'Force Quit Operator.'"

The Information has reported that OpenAI targeted January as a release date for Operator. It would reportedly first release a research preview and developer tool. The exact release date remains unknown. 

The idea behind the tool is that it can act autonomously to make your life easier — in other words, it could take over your computer and do tasks on your behalf. That means it could things like book flights or write code. Of course, it could also make mistakes on your behalf, which is a bit worrying.

Still, for better or worse, it may be here soon.



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Book covers

SAVE UP TO 89%: This week, shop the best deals on Kindle books. Save up to 89% on bestsellers including Beartown by Fredrik Backman, or Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, both of which are down to $1.99.


Best Kindle book deals

Best fiction deal
'Beartown' by Fredrik Backman
$1.99 at Amazon (Save $15.01)
The cover of the book Beartown by Fredrik Backman

Best non-fiction deal
'Into Thin Air' by Jon Krakauer
$1.99 at Amazon (Save $16.01)
The cover of 'Into Thin Air' by Jon Krakauer

Best fantasy deal
'Six of Crows' by Leigh Bardugo
$2.99 at Amazon (Save $9)
The cover of the book 'Six of Crows'

Best romance deal
'Getaway Girl' by Tessa Bailey
$1.99 at Amazon (Save $11)
The cover of the book 'Getaway Girl'

In the thick of winter, the farthest we're looking to travel is from the bed to the couch. With the frigid temperatures outside, we're focusing on indoor-only activities, whether that be bingeing all the best TV shows or catching up on the awards season movies that just hit streaming.

However, if one of your 2025 resolutions is to keep your screen time down, then it's time to curl up with a good book. If you're racing through your stack of TBR books and looking for your next read, do it on a budget. For Kindle users, there are deals to be had on ebooks to stock your library.

Shop all the best ebook deals for as low as $1.99.

Best fiction book deal

'Beartown' by Fredrik Backman
$1.99 at Amazon
$17.00 Save $15.01

Why we like it

In Fredrik Backman's Beartown, a shock is sent through the small town and all who inhabit it. The heart of the town lies in the ice rink, where the junior ice hockey team is preparing for the semi-final game. But when a violent act is committed, the whole town finds itself in turmoil, dealing with accusations that test friendships and loyalties.

Right now, you can find this compelling drama for just $1.99 in the Kindle shop. That's down $15.01 from its print price for 88% savings.

More fiction deals

Best non-fiction book deal

'Into Thin Air' by Jon Krakauer
$1.99 at Amazon
$18.00 Save $16.01

Why we like it

The prolific writer Jon Krakauer is best known for is harrowing account of his climb on Mount Everest that resulted in five lives loss and many more altered. Into Thin Air explores Krakauer's deadly climb as he hopes to make sense of the tragedy and his role in it.

Right now, you can find Krakauer's memoir for just $1.99 at Amazon, saving you $16.01 for 89% off.

More non-fiction deals



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