Starting next year, a lot more Netflix viewers will reportedly be able to watch its originals before they become available for streaming. According to The Wall Street Journal, the streaming service is expanding its pool of preview viewers early next year to include as many as tens of thousands of subscribers around the world from its current group of around 2,000 people. 

When Variety reported about the company's focus group earlier this year, the publication said that Netflix has been asking subscribers if they want to join "a community of members to view and give feedback on upcoming movies and series" since at least May 2021. "It's simple, but an incredibly important part of creating best-in-class content for you and Netflix members all around the world," the email reportedly said. Apparently, Netflix asks members of the group to watch several unreleased shows and movies over the course of six months. They then have to fill out a survey form to tell the company what they liked and what they didn't. 

In The Journal's newer report, it said the streaming service calls the group the "Netflix Preview Club" and that the Leonardo DiCaprio/Jennifer Lawrence starrer Don't Look Up was one of the movies that benefited from its feedback. The movie was initially too serious, the preview group's members reportedly told Netflix, and the film's creators chose to listen to them and ratcheted up its comedic elements. 

As The Journal notes, Netflix is known for giving creators a lot of creative freedom — even if it doesn't always lead to great content — so running a preview group has been tricky. The company has apparently been careful when it comes to sharing feedback with creators and has not been forcing changes. It's still the creators' decision whether to incorporate changes based on the previewers' response. 

If you weren't able to grab Apple's 2022 iPad on Black Friday, don't worry: It's on sale right now for an even cheaper price. You can get the blue and the silver variants of the 64GB WiFi-only iPad right now for only $419 on Amazon, which is $30 less than retail. The yellow version of the tablet isn't quite that cheap, but you can still get it for the device's Black Friday price of $426. Those aren't quite all-time lows for the 10th-gen iPad, but you're not constricted by a time limit or by the need for a Prime subscription this time. 

Apple gave the 2022 iPad a redesign to set it apart from its previous base tablets and bring its looks closer to the iPad Air and the iPad Pro. The tech giant removed the Home button and moved its Touch ID to the lock button. Its bezels are thinner, its display is bigger and its front-facing camera has been moved to the landscape border. Another big change is that the device now comes with a USB-C charging port instead of a Lightning port like previous models. 

The tablet is powered by an A14 Bionic chip, and while it's a modest upgrade from last year's A13, it does improve the device's performance. When we reviewed the device, we also found that its battery life met or exceeded the 10-hour estimate Apple provides for every iPad: It lasted 11 hours and 45 minutes when we used it to play movies purchased from the iTunes Store. 

It's unclear when the tablet's price will go back to retail, but this is a great chance to purchase one for the coming holiday season either for yourself or as a gift. 

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You have quite a few streaming choices for this year's upcoming Game Awards, but Valve is making its Steam TV coverage more enticing than most by giving away a ton of Steam Deck consoles. The video game developer and distributor has announced that it's giving away one 512GB Steam Deck every minute during the live airing of the awards show on December 8th. To be eligible, you'll have to be watching the event on Steam TV, which starts at 7:30PM ET, and you'll have to register on the giveaway's official page beforehand to enter the drawing. 

One factor that could potentially prevent you from joining the draw is your location: You can only register and win if you're in the US, Canada, UK or the EU, where the console is currently available for sale. In addition, you must have made a Steam purchase between November 14th, 2021 and November 14th, 2022 to verify your country and prove that your account is not limited and is in good standing. Valve will draw a random name from the pool of registrants every minute during the event and will be announcing winners in chat as each drawing takes place. To note, the show is expected to run for around two-and-a-half hours, so that's over a hundred Steam Decks to be won. 

The 2022 Game Awards will not only stream online but will also offer a live "IMAX Experience" in select cities in the US, Canada and other regions. This year's event also introduces a new category for best adaptation featuring projects that translate games to movies, TV shows, podcasts and books.

LastPass CEO Karim Toubba has revealed that the password manager has been breached again. Toubba said the company detected an unusual activity within a third-party cloud storage service that it shares with its parent company GoTo, which was formerly known as LogMeIn. To investigate the incident, LastPass has teamed up with security firm Mandiant. Together, they've determined that the unauthorized party got into LastPass' cloud service by using information obtained from the security breach it suffered in August this year. Further, they've discovered that the bad actor was able to access "certain elements" of its customers' information.

If you'll recall, LastPass was hacked back in August, and Toubba admitted after an investigation that the unauthorized party had internal access to its systems for four days. The hacker was able to steal some of the password manager's source code and technical information, but LastPass said customers' data and encrypted password vaults remained untouched. Apparently, the hacker's access was limited to the service's development environment. While the unauthorized party was able to access some user information this time, LastPass said customers' passwords remain safely encrypted. 

In an announcement of its own, remote work and collaboration tools provider GoTo has admitted that bad actors gained entry into its development environment. Like LastPass, the company has assured customers that its products and services are fully functional despite the breach. The password manager and its parent company are still investigating the incident to understand its scope, so we'll likely hear more details in the coming months. 

We may get to see Samsung's next flagship phones in just a couple of months. Samsung will unveil its Galaxy S23 devices in the US in the first week of February 2023, according to news outlet Korea JoongAng Daily, which cites an anonymous company executive. As The Verge notes, it echoes a previous report by Chosun, stating that the company will reveal the lineup by February next year. The executive reportedly told JoongAng Daily that the flagship phones will be launched at an Unpacked event in the US, which is expected to take place in San Francisco. 

While Samsung has yet to formally announce an Unpacked event for the Galaxy S23, the timeline reported by the publications is consistent with the previous flagships' launch dates. Samsung revealed its Galaxy S22 phones on February 9th earlier this year and introduced a new addition to the lineup: The Galaxy S22 Ultra, which merges the Galaxy S and the Galaxy Note lines and comes with a built-in S Pen slot. 

According to previous reports, next S series flagship might ditch the Exynos SoCs that the company typically uses for its European and Asian variants. Instead, Samsung might go all in on Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips. Some unofficial renders that floated online also suggest that Samsung is getting rid of the camera bump on the Galaxy S23 and S23 Plus, which may simply have three camera lenses protruding from their bodies. 

JoongAng Daily said that Qualcomm CFO Akash Palkhiwala mentioned earlier this month that the S23 phones will be powered by Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipsets. The publication also warned that the upcoming lineup is expected to be more expensive than its predecessors due to inflation, among other factors. 

A week ago, the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) petitioned the Board of Supervisors for permission to deploy robots that can kill suspects under specific circumstances. Now, the board has approved the petition with a vote of 8 vs. 3 despite strong opposition from civil liberties groups. Under the new policy, robots can be used "as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers are imminent and outweigh any other force option available to the SFPD."

The city's police force has over a dozen robots at the moment, which are equipped with the capability to provide video reconnaissance and to diffuse bombs. None of them have weapons and live ammunition, the SFPD says, and there are no plans to fit them with any. However, they can now be deployed with explosives attached "to contact, incapacitate, or disorient violent, armed, or dangerous suspect," an SFPD spokesperson said. "Robots equipped in this manner would only be used in extreme circumstances to save or prevent further loss of innocent lives," they added.

As NPR notes, SF officials have to define the authorized uses of its robots and other military-grade equipment due to a California law that went into effect this year. Aaron Peskin, a Board of Supervisor member, added a line to the SFPD's original draft policy that said: "Robots shall not be used as a Use of Force against any person." But the SFPD amended the proposal to allow the use of robots as "a deadly force option." The board approved that version of the policy with additional amendments, stating that officials can only use robots with explosive charges after they had exhausted all alternative force or de-escalation tactics. Also, only a limited number of high-ranking officials will be able authorize the use of robots as a deadly force option. 

Among all of San Francisco's supervisors, only Shamann Walton, Dean Preston and Hillary Ronen voted "no" on approving the policy. Preston called allowing the SFPD to use robots to kill people "deeply disturbing" and a "sad moment" for the city. In his full statement, he said that giving the police the power to arm remote-controlled robots will "place Black and brown people in disproportionate danger of harm or death." Meanwhile, Rafael Mandelman, who supported the use of robots as a deadly force from the beginning, defended his vote and said that the final version of the policy "lays out reasonable restrictions on the use of robots" despite "the hyperbole expressed by many who oppose" it.

Mandelman also told Fox KTVU that it would be irresponsible not to make plans to use robots in life-threatening situations. Matthew Guariglia of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told the news organization, however, that by equipping robots, "[w]e are going to lessen the burden of using deadly force from having to pull a gun and pull the trigger to a button on a remote control."

Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, has signed an executive order prohibiting government employees, agencies and contractors from downloading and using TikTok on state-owned devices. In her office's announcement, Noem said she issued the order due to growing security concerns that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been using the social media app to gather information from American users and leveraging it to manipulate them. The order is already in effect and also prohibits government personnel from visiting the TikTok website on browsers.

"South Dakota will have no part in the intelligence gathering operations of nations who hate us," Noem said. "The Chinese Communist Party uses information that it gathers on TikTok to manipulate the American people, and they gather data off the devices that access the platform."

US officials have been raising security concerns about TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, over the past few years over the belief that the Chinese government is using it to gather data. In 2020, then-President Trump attempted to block TikTok and WeChat in the US. While that didn't quite go anywhere, nearly the entire US military had banned the app on government-issued devices, calling TikTok a "cybersecurity threat." A couple of Republican Senators also introduced a bill in the same year that would ban all government employees from using TikTok on work-issued smartphones. 

More recently, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr asked Apple and Google to remove the app from their stores after a BuzzFeed News report came out that China-based ByteDance employees repeatedly accessed US users' private information. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew assured Republican Senators in a letter after the report came out that the company is working with Oracle to protect the data of its users in the US "with robust, independent oversight." He also said that TikTok is working towards fully pivoting to Oracle cloud servers in the US to be able to delete US users' data from its own systems.

But Chew's assurances weren't enough to assuage officials' fears: FBI Director Chris Wray warned US lawmakers earlier this month that the Chinese government could use TikTok to launch "influence operations" through its recommendation algorithm or to "technically compromise" millions of devices. A TikTok spokesperson told Reuters that the "FBI's input is being considered as part of [the company's] ongoing negotiations with the US government." They added that TikTok is confident that it is "on a path to fully satisfy all reasonable US national security concerns" after working with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States over the past few months. 

BeReal, the new social media app that exploded in popularity over the past few months, is one of the biggest winners for this year's Apple's App Store Awards. It won iPhone App of the Year for giving people an authentic glimpse into their friend's and family's every day lives, the tech giant said in its announcement. In all, Apple highlighted 16 apps and games for 2022 that delivered "exceptional experiences and [made] a profound cultural impact."

In BeReal's case, the fact that other social media apps had introduced or are testing features similar to what it does is a clear testament to the "impact" it's had on the space. BeReal users can share a selfie of themselves with a photo of their environment during a two-minute window that the app randomly selects for them every day. A reverse engineer found an experimental feature that's basically identical to that within Instagram back in August, while TikTok unveiled its own take on the format in September. 

Another big winner is GoodNotes 5, which was named the iPad App of the Year for taking digital notes "to the next level with best-in-class Apple Pencil support." Users can treat their iPads like any book or notebook with the app, since it allows them to jot down notes on the margin and highlight important text, among other things. 

MacFamilyTree 10 won Mac App of the year for its ability to create virtually stunning family trees and giving users the capability to collaborate with relatives around the world, while ViX, the Spanish-language streaming service by TelevisaUnivision, won Apple TV App of the Year. Yet another winner is fitness tracker Gentler Streak, which took home the Apple Watch App of the Year award.  

For games, Apex Legends Mobile bested all the other titles for the iPhone, while puzzle game Moncage and card battler Inscryption won best games for the iPad and the Mac, respectively. The Wild West stealth game El Hijo won best game for Apple TV for looking exceptional on a big screen. Wylde Flowers, a life sim that combines farming with magic, was named as the best Apple Arcade game. Finally, esports simulator League of Legends Esports Manager won the first China Game of the Year award.

In addition to the main winners, Apple also highlighted five apps for impacting people's lives and influencing culture. Those apps include How We Feel, which encourages users to record their emotional well-being to help them better vocalize it, and Dot's Home, a time-traveling story that puts a spotlight on systemic housing injustices. Locket Widget can help forge connections between people by letting users send live photos to their friend's and family's home screen, while Waterllama makes keeping hydrated fun. There's also Inua - A Story in Ice and Time, which takes users on an adventure rich in Inuit folklore and traditions. 

Anker has put a quite a lengthy list of products on sale at Amazon for Black Friday, and if you have a lot of devices, here's your chance to grab a bunch of charging accessories at discounted prices. The Anker 735 65W GaNPrime charger, for instance, is currently selling for $42 or 30 percent off its retail price of $60. It has two USB-C and one USB-A port, and being a GaN charger means it's more powerful and can charge faster than its traditional counterparts despite being smaller in size. The Anker 735 works with mobile devices, such as the latest iPhones and the Samsung Galaxy phones, as well as laptops like the 2020 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models. 

The Anker 521 Nano Pro charger is also on sale for $28.79 or 20 percent less than its regular price. It's a 40W charger that comes with two USB-C ports and can be used with mobile devices, tablets and laptops like the MacBook Air. If you're looking for a portable charger for your iPhone, though, you'll probably want to spend your money on the Anker 622 Magnetic Battery. The 5,000 mAh wireless power bank is a collaboration between Anker and PopSockets, which means it comes with a collapsible grip that can double as a stand. It's currently on sale for $40 or 43 percent less than retail. 

Need a lot more power than what the 622 Magnetic Battery can provide? The Anker PowerCore 24K is currently available for $100, as well, which is $50 less than its typical price. It has a 24,000 mAh capacity, a 140W output and has one USB-A and two USB-C ports for your phones, tablets and laptops. 

In case what you need is a power strip for travel or to keep your home office cables organized, you can also get Anker's 727 Charging Station. It has two AC outlets, two USB-A ports and two USB-C ports, so you can keep six devices plugged in simultaneously. The power strip has a maximum output of 100W and is only about the size of an iPhone Pro Max model. 

For your wireless charging needs, there's the Anker PowerWave Go 3-in-1 charging station, which is currently selling for $126 or $54 less than its retail price. The package comes with a wireless charging base for your phone, an Apple Watch charging module and a 10,000 mAh detachable wireless charger that you can carry around with you. It also includes a 45W Anker Nano II power adapter and a 5-foot USB-C to USB-C cable. 

Anker's Power Strip Surge Protector with 12 outlets, two USB-A and one USB-C port is also on sale if you're looking for something simpler and straightforward. You can get it for $26 or $10 less than retail. And if you're just looking to stock up on cables, the Anker Powerline+ II Lightning Cables are also selling for $33.59 for a three-pack bundle. Each pack comes with a three-foot, a six-foot and a 10-foot cable for all Apple devices that have a lightning port. 

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Over the past years, Russian search and tech giant Yandex made an effort not to fall behind its Western counterparts and had developed its own smart devices, self-driving cars, as well as its own food delivery and ride-sharing services, among other products. According to The New York Times, though, the West's sanctions against its home country after the invasion of Ukraine has made it impossible to continue developing and improving its projects. That's why Yandex's parent firm, which is registered in Amsterdam, is reportedly looking to sell and sever ties with Russia. 

Apparently, Yandex is planning to sell the emerging technologies it's working on to markets outside the country, since they require Western technologies and experts to reach their full potential. It's also looking to sell its established businesses, such as its internet browser, its food delivery and its ride-hailing apps. Yandex is planning to continue offering those products under its Russian subsidiary, which likely means it has to find buyers within the country. 

Whether Yandex can actually break free from Russia is another matter altogether. The Times' sources said the company must secure the Kremlin's approval first to be able to transfer Russian-registered technologies outside the country. Also, it must get its shareholders onboard its restructuring plan before it could proceed. That said, the company does have a powerful supporter advocating for it: Alexei Kudrin, the country's former finance minister, whom it has tapped in an informal capacity to get Vladimir Putin's blessing. A Financial Times report says Kudrin is meeting with Putin this week to discuss Yandex's plan. If the Russian president approves, Kudrin is expected to leave his post as the chairman of Russia's Audit Chamber to take on a managerial role with the new Yandex.