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American regulators now appear to be clamping down on generative AI in earnest. The Washington Post has learned the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched an investigation into OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT and DALL-E. Officials have requested documents showing how the company tackles risks stemming from its large language AI models. The FTC is concerned the company may be violating consumer protection laws through "unfair or deceptive" practices that could hurt the public's privacy, security or reputation.

The Commission is particularly interested in information linked to a bug that leaked ChatGPT users' sensitive data, including payments and chat histories. While OpenAI said the number of affected users was very small, the FTC is worried this stems from poor security practices. The agency also wants details of any complaints alleging the AI made false or malicious statements about individuals, and info showing how well users understand the accuracy of the products they're using.

We've asked OpenAI for comment. The FTC declined comment and typically doesn't remark on investigations, but has previously warned that generative AI could run afoul of the law by doing more harm than good to consumers. It could be used to perpetrate scams, run misleading marketing campaigns or lead to discriminatory advertising, for instance. If the government body finds a company in violation, it can apply fines or issue consent decrees that force certain practices.

AI-specific laws and rules aren't expected in the near future. Even so, the government has stepped up pressure on the tech industry. OpenAI chief Sam Altman testified before the Senate in May, where he defended his company by outlining privacy and safety measures while touting AI's claimed benefits. He said protections were in place, but that OpenAI would be "increasingly cautious" and continue to upgrade its safeguards.

It's not clear if the FTC will pursue other generative AI developers, such as Google and Anthropic. The OpenAI investigation shows how the Commission might approach other cases, though, and signals that the regulator is serious about scrutinizing AI developers.

Sony has revealed when PlayStation 5 players will be able to snap up its new accessibility-focused controller and just how much the peripheral will cost. The Access controller will be available worldwide on December 6th. It costs $90 and preorders will open on July 21st. Folks in Canada will need to pay $120 CAD for the peripheral. It costs £80 in the UK, €90 in Europe and 12,980 yen in Japan.

The highly customizable controller comes with four 3.5mm aux ports, enabling players to connect external buttons, switches and other accessories. The box includes 19 button caps and three stick caps to help users find a configuration that works best for them. For instance, they might prefer a button cap that takes up two button sockets or a dome-shaped stick cap instead of the standard one. In addition, Sony is including 23 swappable button cap tags to help players identify which input they map to each button.

Players can set up as many as 30 profiles for the Access controller with different button mappings and stick settings for each. There's the option to disable certain buttons to prevent accidental pressing and users will be able to toggle commands on or off.

As Sony previously revealed, folks can pair up to two Access controllers and one DualSense together to create a "single virtual controller." That means two or even three people could control the same character, granting friends and family members the option to lend a helping hand when needed. 

Isabelle Tomatis, Sony Interactive Entertainment's Brand, Hardware and Peripherals vice-president, wrote in a blog post that the company has been working on the controller for five years with the help of accessibility organizations and experts. The aim was to develop a kit that "enables gamers with disabilities to play more comfortably and for longer periods, empowering more players to share in the joy of gaming."

Now that Virgin Galactic has flown its first commercial spaceflight, it's ready to take civilians aboard. The company now expects to launch its first private passenger flight, Galactic 02, as soon as August 10th. Virgin isn't yet revealing the names of everyone involved, but there will be three passengers alongside the usual crew. You can watch a live stream on the company website.

The inaugural commercial flight, Galactic 01, flew in late June. However, all three passengers were Italian government workers (two from the Air Force and one research council member) conducting microgravity studies. While it's not clear what 02's civilian crew will do, they can be tourists this time around.

The firm has been ramping up its operations in recent months after numerous delays from previous years. While Galactic 02 is just Virgin's seventh spaceflight of any kind, it's the third in 2023. The company says it's establishing a "regular cadence" of flights, and you can expect them to become relatively routine if this voyage goes as planned.

The improved frequency is important for the company's finances. Virgin has operated at a loss for years, and lost over $500 million in 2022. The business won't recoup those losses any time soon even at $450,000 per ticket, but paying customers are key to softening the blow and making a case for space tourism.

Blue Origin and SpaceX have already flown civilians into space, and at altitudes higher than the 50-plus miles Virgin flies. However, they haven't established regular launch schedules for tourists. SpaceX's lunar trips won't happen until the company can finish testing Starship, and Blue Origin is waiting to resume flights following a rocket failure in 2022. In that regard, Virgin may be the closest to achieving its tourism goals — so long as maintains the pace it's setting this summer.

Hyundai has debuted its electric Ionic 5 N at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. The automaker says this high-performance version of the Ioniq 5 can go from zero to 62MPH in as little as 3.4 seconds and that it has a top speed of 161MPH.

The company revamped the entire Ioniq 5 for this model, which is its first performance N-brand production vehicle. The EV has front- and dual-motor variants. Opt for the latter and Hyundai says the Ioniq 5 N will be able to produce 641 horsepower when a boost mode is active. In normal operation, you may get 600 horsepower and 545 pound-feet of torque, though the automaker acknowledged that these numbers aren't final.

Although the Ioniq 5 N has the same battery pack that previously stored 77.4 kWh of usable energy, revised chemistry means the EV can eke out 84.0 kWh, as Car and Driver notes. There's an upgraded thermal management system for the battery, which includes an "increased cooling area, better motor oil cooler and battery chiller," Hyundai says, all of which should help to maximize performance.

Hyundai

There's a new regenerative braking system with 40cm-diameter discs at the front and 36cm ones at the rear. The EV is lower and wider at the bottom than the standard Ioniq 5 to accommodate wider tires on the 21-inch wheels. A more prominent diffuser that should increase downforce extends the length by 80mm as well.

Hyundai hasn't yet announced pricing for the Ioniq 5 N, which is slated to go on sale in early 2024. The company has yet to reveal the EV's range as well, though we should learn both key pieces of information in the coming months.

Meta’s Twitter rival, Threads, has unquestionably had the best first-week imaginable. After immediately racing to the top of app store charts, it became the fastest growing app of all time. In just five days, it grew to more than 100 million users, beating out chatGPT and TikTok which both previously held the record.

That’s even more impressive considering the app isn’t available in the European Union, one of Meta’s most important markets. And while Threads clearly borrowed some moves from Meta’s growth-hacking playbook, like sending would-be users notifications on Instagram and pre-populating their feeds with content and followers, Mark Zuckerberg called most of the early growth “organic.”

“That's mostly organic demand and we haven't even turned on many promotions yet,” he wrote in a celebratory post on Threads. However you spin it, it's clearly bad news for Twitter.

While it’s too soon to know if Threads’ early success will translate in the long term, it has succeeded in utterly dominating Twitter in its first week. Every available metric suggests that Threads is not just a viral hit in its own right, but is doing so at the direct expense of Twitter.

Just days after Threads launched, Matthew Prince, CEO of DNS service Cloudflare, said that Twitter’s traffic was “tanking.” He shared a graph showing that visits to twitter.com had sharply dipped since the end of June, around the time Elon Musk began restricting how many tweets users could view, and a few days later when Threads launched.

Data from analytics firm SimilarWeb suggests the same pattern. According to the company, traffic to twitter.com dipped 5 percent in the two days following Threads' launch, compared with the same period the previous week. The firm notes that this is in addition to an “overall decline” in traffic that predates Threads.

There are other signs that Threads may be succeeding in luring away current Twitter users. A recent poll from Ipsos found that 58% of American Twitter users said they were likely to try, or have already tried, Threads.. And 46% of American Twitter users said they were “likely to move or have already moved the activity they used to do on Twitter to Threads.”

It’s worth noting that these are all very early metrics. Early virality for an app doesn’t necessarily equate to long-term success or sustained growth. Google+ was once praised for “meteoric” growth when it hit 100 million users less than a year after its launch more than a decade ago. In the more recent past, social audio app Clubhouse was heralded as a sensation when it grew to a few million users in its first months of existence. Both eventually fizzled out. 

And there are signs that Twitter does have a core group of dedicated, blue-checkmark-buying users. The same Ipsos poll found that more than half of American Twitter users were uninterested in migrating to Threads, at least in the near term. And data recently released by app analytics firm Sensor Tower suggests that Twitter’s engagement held steady in the days following Threads’ launch, while average time spent in Threads actually dipped.

Elon Musk and newly-installed Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino seem eager to bolster this narrative. The two touted their own — somewhat dubious — metric following Threads' launch, claiming that the same week saw the “largest usage day since February” on the platform. “Cumulative user-seconds per day of phone screentime, as reported by iOS & Android, is hardest to game,” Musk wrote. (It’s unclear how he was measuring “cumulative user-seconds” of screen time as neither Apple or Google report screen time metrics to app developers.)

Twitter’s leadership has more than enough reason to be rattled by Threads’ overnight success. While a wave of Twitter alternatives has cropped up in the wake of Musk’s chaotic takeover of Twitter, none have come even close to 100 million. Mastodon, its most entrenched rival, reports 2 million monthly users. Bluesky, the much-hyped invite-only service, has about 300,000 sign-ups. 

Even more importantly, Threads has succeeded in nabbing a key demographic many of its predecessors haven’t: brands. Threads has been an all-out brands bonanza. And as much as that’s made for cringey, milquetoast content on the app, it’s very, very good for Meta. For now, brands are getting the kind of organic engagement most social media managers only dream about. As Website Plant recently pointed out in a report, big brands are attracting significantly more engagement on Threads, compared with Twitter. This is true even for brands that have far more followers on Twitter than on Threads.

According to the report, 87% of brands got more likes on Threads posts than on Twitter. “The vast majority of the posts we went through generated significantly higher engagement on the new platform — no matter if the content itself was the same as on Twitter,” the company wrote.

Again, these are early stats. It’s entirely possible that users on Threads are engaging more with brands simply because that what was shoved into their feeds, not because Meta somehow made the content more appealing. But that kind of early engagement will certainly make brands more willing to give Meta ad dollars whenever they do open advertising on the platform.

Zuckerberg has said the company won’t introduce ads to Threads until there’s a “clear path to 1 billion people” on the app. But that doesn’t mean Threads will be ad-free for long. According to Axios, the company has already begun to work on branded content tools for the service, and “is working to quickly make them available.” It should come as no surprise, then, that Wall Street analysts are also enthused about Threads’ prospects. The week-old platform could add up to $8 billion in revenue for Meta by 2025, according to an estimate from one analyst, reported by Bloomberg.

All this is especially bleak for Musk and Twitter, which is facing a financial outlook so dire the company has stopped paying numerous bills. According to a report from The New York Timeslast month, Twitter’s ad sales — its primary source of revenue — have plummeted 59% compared with last year, with performance “unlikely to improve anytime soon.” And, now, Meta has swooped in, pretty much overnight, with a huge new platform poised to gobble up Twitter’s missing ad dollars and then some.

While this likely brings some satisfaction to Musk and Twitter’s biggest critics, it’s worth noting that there are significant implications to an online ecosystem where yet another Meta-owned platform dominates its closest rivals. Meta, and Instagram specifically, has very different norms and standards about what kind of speech is acceptable on its service. And there are still more questions than answers about Meta’s plans to integrate Threads into the broader Fediverse.

But it’s impossible to ignore just how much momentum Threads has gained in its first week, and how much of it has come at the direct expense of Twitter.

Adobe is now facing tighter scrutiny of its $20 billion Figma acquisition. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has launched an in-depth investigation of the deal after Adobe declined to make concessions that would resolve antitrust concerns. The "phase 2" probe will have a group of independent experts determine whether or not the merger will reduce competition in design software. The CMA has until December 27th to complete the review.

We've asked Adobe for comment. The company rejected the CMA's claims when plans for the new investigation were unveiled in June, and was still confident it would complete the buyout. It previously said it would treat Figma as an independent company and didn't have plans to raise prices.

The CMA's initial inquiry determined that Figma's web collaboration platform had significant market share, and that a competitive "rivalry" would vanish if Adobe bought the relative newcomer. This could lead to higher prices and less innovation, the Authority said at the time. Adobe, meanwhile, has argued that buying Figma would strengthen both companies' products. Creative Cloud apps would get some of Figma's collaborative features, while Figma's platform would receive some of Adobe's functionality. 

Adobe still hopes to close the Figma merger by the end of the year. It still faces a US investigation, however, and the European Union will make its decision by August 7th. There's no guarantee the purchase will wrap on time or at all, in other words. If any one of these agencies blocks the merger or conducts a prolonged review, Adobe will have to rethink its plans.

Passkeys promise a future without passwords, where we access our accounts as easily as we unlock our phones, with a much higher level of security. Pick your big tech poison, like Apple, Google or Microsoft, and you’ve probably seen it announce a passkey takeover. While a full-on passkey revolution may be a bit away, you may be asked to set one up for your accounts soon.

The username and password approach to logins dates back to the 1960s. Ever since then, it's been hackable. Passwords are guessable or phishable, especially if you fail to meet industry standards for a complex, strong password. For a while, the solution seemed to be multi-factor authentication, or a way to verify your identity at login via text message, app, hardware key or other methods. But passkey proponents are saying that solving login security problems means reinventing the first step, not adding on additional processes.

“It's the closest to something that can be scaled to get rid of passwords that we've ever seen,” said Megan Shamas, senior director of marketing at industry association FIDO Alliance. A passkey is a digital authentication credential that is securely stored on your device. Instead of what Shamas called a “shared secret” method of passwords, passkeys are a unique key pair for every online service you use bound to the domain. So, if you create one for your online banking account, and a spoofed website prompts you to sign in, the passkey won’t work.

It also prevents phishing attacks because you can’t give away your passkey like you can with a password or MFA phrase. We can’t call it “unphishable,” said Derek Hanson, vice president of solutions architecture and alliances at security authentication company Yubico, but it certainly thwarts the common attack vectors used today. At the very least, it makes it much more costly and difficult for a hacker to get in, making the hackers likely to move on to weaker targets.

For the user, they’re meant to be easier, too. Instead of trying to keep track of nearly 100 passwords or more, the passkey is stored on your device and connects automatically to the service. Similar to unlocking your phone, you’ll need to enter a pin, fingerprint, face scan or other simple authentication to log in. It seems too good to be true, and it sort of is, because it's still a fragmented space. While the big names have made passkeys trend recently, they could also be holding back widespread use.

Currently, using a passkey locks you into a certain service provider, according to Sayonnha Mandal, Ph.D., lecturer at University of Nebraska Omaha. You can’t, for example, log in to websites on an Android phone with a passkey stored on a MacBook. It’s the kind of lock-in these companies tend to favor because it keeps customers loyal to their brand. So, it’ll take cooperation and “in the absence of a government industrial standard that everybody mandatorily has to adhere to, I don't think by themselves, the companies would.”

But Shamas says that cross-platform accessibility is coming, as companies sign on to FIDO’s industry standards for passkey development. “The deep investment across the industry (including Apple, Google, and Microsoft) to develop and evangelize the passkey technology speaks to the broad belief in its promise,” said a Google spokesperson. At the time of publication, Google Chrome on Mac and Windows only stores passkeys on the local device.

For now, if a website offers you a passkey login option, you should probably sign up. At least for your most sensitive accounts like online banking, make the switch to passkeys as soon as it's offered for an added layer of protection on those accounts, Mandal said. But, if passkeys do take over, it will be a slow transition. Services will likely still offer password options because it’s what consumers are used to, and passkeys still don’t have wide enough support.

In the meantime, it’s a good reminder to stay on top of your security settings. If passkeys aren’t available, make sure MFA is set up and your password is strong instead of just avoiding the security reminder pop-ups at log in.

It is 2023 and, sorry, Siri somehow still didn’t catch that. Despite the tsunami of advancements generative AI systems have enjoyed in recent months, the synthetic assistants on our mobile devices remain nearly as hard of hearing as they were in 2011. A newly developed dataset from Meta AI, however, promises to improve the performance of such automatic speech recognition (ASR) tools by clustering speech at the “utterance level.”

Meta has long sought to improve its ASRs’ performance, teaching them to train without the aid of transcripts, recognize more than 4,000 spoken languages and even read lips at a higher proficiency than human experts. However, many of the datasets used to train ASR models are organized by demographic — age group, gender, nationality, English accent — which limit the variation of pronunciations that models are trained on, ultimately hindering their function in understanding a broad cross section of users.

To get around this, Meta AI has developed a dataset that instead relies on an utterance clustering method. “Instead of dividing a dataset based on speakers’ demographic information … our proposed algorithm clusters speech at the utterance level,” the Meta AI team explained in Wednesday’s blog post. “A single cluster will contain similar utterances from a diverse group of speakers. We can then train our model using the various clusters and use fairness datasets to measure how the model impacts outcomes across different demographic groups.”

Meta’s resulting dataset includes just over 27,000 command utterances collected from 595 paid US volunteers. Their utterances revolve around seven main themes — music, capture, utilities, notification control, messaging, calling and dictation — that other researchers can then use to train their own models and digital assistants on. Prompts included asking the speakers how they’d voice search for a song or make plans with friends and deciding where to meet up.

To evaluate this new system, Meta first trained a model on publicly-available, English-language Facebook videos. Researchers then evaluated that model using two other datasets: Casual Conversations v1, which Meta released in 2021, and a “de-identified dataset collected from a data supplier for ASR,” which includes 48,000 spoken utterances from 867 individuals.

The initial results proved promising, with model performance improvements “on all demographic groups in our evaluation datasets, though by far the largest gains are with respect to more inclusivity of accents,” per the blog. Overall, ASR performance increased by 10 percent using the clustering method, with large gains coming from the age 66-85 crowd as well, a traditionally underrepresented demographic in the voice command space.

“Our proposed algorithm is part of Meta’s long-term focus on responsible AI and just one part of our holistic approach to address fairness issues,” the researchers wrote. Looking ahead, the team is exploring adapting the system to other languages.

Calm is making a play for some of your time spent listening to songs and podcasts. The popular meditation app is teaming up with Spotify to offer content via the streaming service. Select Calm meditations will be available alongside existing podcasts on Spotify — no additional app required. The partnership is part of Spotify Open Access, an initiative started in 2021 that allows companies to offer their paid content on Spotify at different subscriber tiers.

In this case, Calm provides a sampling of its different offers, from Sleep Stories that can help you drop off to an entire section tailored to anyone who has never meditated before. The second, Calm for Beginners, offers the company's most popular introductory meditation and gives you a few five-minute or less options to test the waters. You can access Sleep Stories through Calm for Sleep (with narrations by Harry Styles and other celebrities) and try Calm for Stress & Anxiety when you need to decompress during difficult moments. If you want to learn about how singer Camila Cabello got into mindfulness, there's an option for that too.

Spotify is also hosting Calm for Kids, so you can see if your child will focus on a meditation tailored to their age group. It also has a few Sleep Stories for kids narrated by the likes of Jennifer Garner and Wanda Sykes. Existing Calm users can also benefit from the partnership, with additional content available on Spotify.

Calm bills itself as the number one meditation app — in October 2022, it claimed to have over 100 million downloads and more than four million paying subscribers. But, with a range of competitors like Headspace and InsightTimer, partnerships like this one can continue to grow its reach.

Enjoying the available content might not be the only reason Calm sees more subscribers come in. While some of the content is free for Spotify users, others will require you to start a Calm free trial or buy a subscription. Trials last seven days and a Calm Premium membership costs $69.99 annually or $14.99 a month.

Amazon Prime Day might be over, but there are still some solid deals floating around on the internet today. Unsurprisingly, you won't find any of Amazon's own devices still discounted as things like Echos, Kindles and Fire TV devices are all back to their normal prices. But there are a number of gadgets from the likes of Apple, Samsung, Google, Roku and others that are still on sale at the same prices we saw over the past few days (or very close to them). Of note is the 9th-gen iPad, which you can still pick up for only $250; the Google Pixel 7a smartphone, which remains on sale for $449; and Roku's Streaming Stick 4K, which is still down to only $34. Here are the best Amazon Prime Day deals that are still live today.

Apple AirPods Pro

Apple's second-generation AirPods Pro are on sale for $199 right now. These buds are a huge improvement over their predecessors, offering improved sound quality, ANC and transparency mode. We still consider these to be the best earbuds for iPhone users thanks to their Apple-specific features like quick pairing and switching and hands-free Siri.

Apple AirPods (2nd Generation)

The latest AirPods might have a few extra bells and whistles, but the second-generation Apple AirPods are a good choice for $99. This model mirrors its successor in having an H1 chip, Siri, automatic switching between devices and a lightning charging case. The biggest consideration is battery life, with these AirPods offering five hours of uninterrupted use and over 24 hours with the charging case.

Apple 10.2-inch iPad

Apple's 9th-generation iPad is down to $249, which a record low. It’s the budget pick in our guide to the best iPads, and while it doesn’t have the thin bezels and as much accessory support as our top pick, it's the most affordable way to snag an iPad. It’s a great couch companion that performs well for casual browsing, binge streaming and light gaming.

Apple MacBook Air M1

The M1 MacBook Air released back in 2020, but it remains a worthy option if you want a Mac for light work and web browsing for as little cash as possible. The entry-level configuration is now on sale for $750, which is a new low. This model’s keyboard, trackpad, display and battery life continue to impress, and the quiet M1 chip is still fast enough for the essentials. This configuration is strictly for casual use, though, as it only has 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. You’ll have to live with a more basic 720p webcam, too, and you’ll miss out on the improved speakers and slimmer bezels of the M2 model. We gave the M1 Air a review score of 94 at launch.

Apple MacBook Air (15.3-inch)

The new, larger version of Apple’s MacBook Air M2 is down to $1,399 for a configuration with 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. That’s a modest $50 drop from its usual price on Amazon, but the notebook only just arrived last month, and it's $100 less than buying from Apple directly. The M2 Air is the top pick in our guide to the best laptops, and we gave it a review score of 96 in June. It checks just about all the requisite boxes for a mainstream notebook, with a thin and light design, bright and accurate display, comfortable keyboard, long-lasting battery, and more than enough performance for everyday use. This 15-inch model has all the same benefits of the prior 13-inch model, but adds a more powerful speaker system and slightly upgraded GPU alongside the bigger screen.

Google Pixel Buds Pro

Google's flagship wireless earbuds, the Pixel Buds Pro, are down to $150 at the moment, or $50 off their usual rate. Google took all of the lessons it learned when making previous earbuds and got a lot of things right with the Pixel Buds Pro. These will be great for Android users who want buds with punchy bass, good ANC, reliable touch controls and wireless charging.

JBL Charge 5

JBL's Charge 5 is usually $180 but is down to $120 right now. It also made Engadgets speaker guide, and has a separate tweeter, and dual bass radiators for bigger sound and of course can handle a dunk in water. It's got a long, 20-hour battery life and can even share some of that juice with your phone via the USB-C port.

Samsung Pro Plus microSD

The top pick in our best microSD cards guide, Samsung's Pro Plus in 256GB is on sale for $20 right now. It had some of the best overall speeds of any of the microSD cards we tested, and it has all of the important ratings that a good card should have: U3, V30 and A2. It'll be a great pick for your tablet, smartphone or Nintendo Switch, and it comes with a full-sized adapter in case you need to use it with a camera or connect it to your computer.

Samsung Evo Select microSD

Samsung's Evo Select microSD card has dropped to only $10. It's a step behind the top pick in our microSD card guide, mostly due to its slower sequential write speeds, but it's arguably the best value microSD card you can get right now.

Samsung T7 Shield

The Samsung T7 Shield SSD is still on sale for $75 at the moment. The T7 series as a whole includes some of our favorite SSDs, and the Shield is the most durable of the bunch. The portable drive has an IP65 rating for water and dust resistance, and it can withstand drops from up to 10 feet high. On top of that, its 1,050/1,000 MB/s read/write speeds should be enough for most people's needs.

Samsung 980 Pro

Samsung's 980 Pro SSD has dropped to $50, which is a new record low. It's another good option for the PS5, especially since you can spring for a model with an included heatsink if you want. The 980 Pro has read speeds up to 7,000 MB/s and reliable thermal controls.

Crucial MX500

Crucial's MX500 internal drive has been discounted to only $48 on Amazon. It has sequential read speeds of 560MB/s and a standard 2.5-inch design that should make it easy to swap in for your desktop's or laptop's used-up drive.

Samsung S95B

The 65-inch Samsung S95B is on sale for $1,598, matching its all-time low. Typically, this highly-rated set has cost an extra $100 to $200 in recent months. The S95B’s QD-OLED panel combines OLED tech with a quantum dot layer, allowing it to deliver high contrast and wide viewing angles without sacrificing as much as typical OLED TVs in terms of brightness and color saturation. This means it should provide a rich image even in brighter rooms. It can also play up to 4K 120Hz, which is handy for the PS5 or Xbox Series X, but like all Samsung TVs, it doesn’t support Dolby Vision HDR.

Roku Streaming Stick 4K

Roku's Streaming Stick 4K is down to $34 right now, or $16 off its usual price. It's our favorite streaming device at the moment because it packs a ton of features into an affordable package. It streams 4K, HDR content with Dolby Vision, and it supports AirPlay 2 and private listening with headphones.

Google Pixel 7a

The Google Pixel 7a is on sale for $449 right now, or $50 off its usual rate and an all-time low. This is the best midrange phone you can get right now thanks to its speedy Tensor G2 chip, smooth 90Hz display and support for wireless charging. The 7a also has solid cameras and an IP67 water-resistant design.

Nest WiFi Pro - 3 Pack

The Google Nest WiFi Pro three-pack gives you all the same technology as the pair but with a wider range. With three routers, you can access WiFi across 6,600 square feet. At 25 percent off, the trio is $300, making each Nest WiFi Pro only $100 — it's a steal considering they typically retail for $200 each. As for color, get them all in Snow or get a mix of Snow, Fog and Linen.

Razer Huntsman Mini

The compact Razer Huntsman Mini is down to $68, or 43 percent off its usual rate. Neither deal is quite an all-time low, but the two models have usually retailed in the $80 to $100 range over the last few months. The Huntsman Mini is the top pick in our guide to the best 60 percent keyboards, as its keys are pleasant and consistently responsive for gaming. The whole thing feels well-built, with quality PBT keycaps and RGB lighting on a per-key basis. Each key can be programmed through macros as well. The switches here aren’t ideal for those who like a springy and more tactile, though, and the ultracompact design won’t be for everyone.

Logitech Litra Glow

Live-streamers or anyone who wants to look better on camera should snag Logitech's Litra Glow LED light while it's on sale. We recommend it in our guides because the USB-powered device delivers a diffuse, soft glow without harsh shadows and comes with an extendable monitor mount.

Razer Blade 15

A configuration of the Razer Blade 15 with a Core i7-12800H processor, GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU, 240Hz QHD display, 16GB of RAM and 1TB SSD is down to $1,923 at the moment. That’s about $375 off its usual street price in recent months. We gave the Blade 15 a review score of 86 last year, and we currently recommend it as a premium pick in our guide to the best gaming laptops. This config is a 2022 model – the latest version is largely a spec bump – but it’ll still be powerful enough to play most modern games at high settings and frame rates, particularly with DLSS. The main reason to pay the premium for any Blade laptop, though, is because it packs that power in a slim and premium-feeling aluminum design. Just note that it can run hot, and that its battery life is fairly short.

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