Isn’t it about time to ditch your dual-monitor setup and get yourself a proper ultrawide OLED display? Like this 49-inch monster of an OLED monitor that’s only $800 on Amazon. That’s 20% off and down to the best price we’ve ever seen for it. Both ultrawide and curved, this Innocn display will dazzle your eyes while offering strain-free comfort for long sessions. With its 5120×1440 resolution on 49 glorious inches of screen real estate, you’ll be immersed like never before—and with its 1800R curvature, it’ll wrap around your vision so you can effortlessly see all from edge to edge. The cutting-edge OLED panel guarantees vibrant colors and deep contrast for picture-perfect streaming, and the 144Hz refresh rate and 0.03ms response time are ideal for gaming. If all of your entertainment happens on your PC, then this is an upgrade you won’t regret. Connectivity is no issue here, either. You get three full-size HDMI (two 2.1 and one 1.4), a 90W USB-C for charging your laptop, two USB-A for peripherals, a USB-B, an Ethernet, and 3.5mm audio ports. All in all, this massive ultrawide OLED monitor is a steal for $800 compared to similar OLED displays from other brands. Go ahead and save 20% right now while this deal lasts! Note that this is a Prime-exclusive deal, so if you aren’t a subscriber, start a 30-day free trial of Prime to score this special price. And while you’re here, you might as well check out the amazing early deals we found ahead of Amazon’s Big Spring Sale event! $800 for a 49-inch ultrawide 1440p OLED display is a stealBuy now at Amazon Read...

Roku has sunk to a new low in the streaming wars, with an experimental ad format that blocks your home screen behind an auto-playing video ad. Roku players recently started playing a trailer for Moana 2 instead of loading the home screen they were turned on. While Roku says the ad is just a test, and that users could manually dismiss the ad instead of watching the whole thing, it still represents a new obstacle to basic control over your device. (Reddit users initiated the backlash, as spotted by Ars Technica.) Roku isn’t alone in seeing what kinds of advertising annoyances it can get away with, but it’s crossed a line by putting an ad wall in front of its home screen and requiring extra clicks to get rid of it. Test or not, it’s a disappointing sign of what’s to come. Roku’s response Here is Roku’s official statement about the ads: “Roku delivers the best value and experience for our 90M and growing TV streaming households. This has and will always require continuous testing and innovation across design, navigation, content, and our first-rate advertising products. Our recent test is just the latest example, as we explore new ways to showcase brands and programming while still providing a delightful and simple user experience.” And here’s the context behind that statement: Despite being in 90 million homes, Roku still loses money every year. The company is trying to turn a profit by the end of 2026, which means it needs to add more users while also making more money from each one. Roku executives have repeatedly pointed to the home screen as a path to the latter goal. In its latest earning call, CEO Anthony Wood referred to the home screen as “a key asset” for the company, adding that “making better use of the assets is a big part of our strategy to grow platform revenue.” If we view the Roku home screen not primarily as a way to help users navigate their streaming content, but rather as a way to show more ads and sell more subscriptions, this once-sacred ground for Roku will naturally become more annoying over time. Boiling the frog Roku’s left sidebar ad leaves less room for actual menu options.Jared Newman / Foundry Roku has been moving in this direction for a while now. Last year, it brought video to the large banner ad on the right-hand side of the app grid. It also put a new ad in the left-hand sidebar, leaving less room for menu items, and it’s been giving brands such as McDonald’s more space in its default screensaver. A row of content recommendations now appears in the app grid as well, with Wood noting those are intended to “drive more monetization.” Still, other streaming platforms have gotten even more aggressive. Google TV and Amazon Fire TV have used the top carousel of their respective home screens to advertise earbuds and chicken tenders, and Amazon inserts full-screen ads into its screensaver mode. Last year, Amazon took things a step further, with auto-playing video ads that take over the entire Fire TV screen at power-on unless you immediately scroll downwards. Roku can no longer resist mucking up its own home screen in response. As Wood told investors, the Roku home screen is what half of U.S. broadband customers see when they turn on their TVs. “We are making better use of our home screen to drive more engagement and to drive more subscriptions and to drive more ad revenue,” he said. Roku’s app grid ad plays video now.Ben Patterson/Foundry So here we are, with Roku testing full-screen ads that block immediate access to your device unless you proactively dismiss them. This is a failure of imagination on Roku’s part—a way to boost revenue that’s as obvious as it is ham-fisted—and while it shouldn’t have been allowed to happen, that it did is entirely unsurprising. What Roku should have said Instead of making excuses, Roku should have immediately recognized its error and made clear that it will never hinder basic navigation for the sake of ARPU (average revenue per user). Otherwise, there’s not much reason to consider Roku over anything else (including streaming devices with ad-free home screens or even a PC plugged into your TV). With that in mind, I’m going to do my best impression of PR speak and tell you what Roku’s response should have been: “We’re always looking for ways to connect our customers with new and exciting content, including from our advertising partners, but our recent test missed the mark. We recognize that Roku should never stand in the way of what customers want to watch, and our future experiments with new advertising formats will better-reflect that goal.” And here’s what that would look like translated back to plain English: “Look, we need to turn a profit, but hiding the home screen behind an ad wall was a bad idea, and we won’t be doing that anymore. Sorry!” Will such assurances happen? I doubt it. Roku’s primary customers are no longer the ones who pay for its smart TVs or streaming players, but rather the advertisers who pay Roku for the coveted real estate on its platform. There will be no apology or concession, only continued experiments to see what else people will put up with. Are you a Roku user ready to look for an alternative device? Take a look our most-recommended media streamers. And sign up for Jared’s Cord Cutter Weekly newsletter for more streaming TV insights. Read...

A battle over rebranding a string of high-profile real estate agencies is being played out in court. Read...

So, your data was leaked by hackers. Well, you’re not the only one. We live in an era in which data breaches are a daily occurrence. And that’s both bad and good news. It’s bad for obvious reasons—no one wants to have their personal information exposed. But here’s why it could be good news—it means the digital landscape is saturated with terabytes of data, leaving each individual data point nearly worthless. The rise of data brokers—companies that legally aggregate hundreds or thousands of data points to create a profile on you—is a result of this phenomenon. This means that, while data breaches are indeed bad news, taking down a majority of your exposed data is simple if you know where to look, or which provider to use that can legally remove aggregated profiling information from large databases. Once your data finds its way into one of these datadumps (that is, files containing breached information), there are some things you can do yourself to safeguard your data and some services that can be done for you to remove that data from the largest profiling databases out there. Let’s dive in! How to take back control after a data leak Here’s a quick overview of the steps you should take to protect your data after it’s breached. It’s best to follow them in the order presented. Change passwords: Immediately change the password for the affected account and any others using the same credentials. Freeze your credit: If the breach involves more sensitive data like your SSN, full name, or address, freeze your credit with one of the main credit bureaus. Set up MFA: Enable multi-factor authentication for your important accounts and, ideally, all online accounts. Remove your personal information from data brokers: Having your data breached is one issue, but it being shared is another. Sign up for a data removal service to prevent your information from spreading online. Monitor your accounts for signs of identity theft: The consequences of a data breach aren’t always immediate; identity theft can occur months later. To prevent this, regularly monitor your banking, credit, and Social Security accounts. Now, let’s get into more detail. Change your passwords Statistics indicate that two-thirds of Americans use the same password across multiple accounts.Nearly half prefer easy-to-remember passwords over hard-to-crack passwords. The consequence? If you’re among either of those groups, once your password gets leaked, it exposes your other accounts as well. That’s especially true if you reuse your passwords, but people who use similarly structured passwords aren’t safe either. For your own safety, update your passwords: On the platform where the breach happened On all other accounts that use the same or similar passwords. Come up with unique combinations, preferably 14 characters long. And yeah, we get you—Remembering unique, 14-character-long passwords for each account becomes a titanic act, probably not within reach of us mere mortals. Only, you don’t have to do it yourself. There are tons of password managers you can use to boost your security and organize your passwords. See our top password managers for 2025. Freeze your credit People whose personal information was used by fraudsters to open new accounts suffered over $3K in losses on average. When you combine it with the instances where fraudsters took out loans or breached credit card information, that number grows even further. And it’s easier than you might think. Take credit cards, for example. Some banks ask for only the following information to submit a request for a new credit card: Full name Birth date Social Security number Address Annual income Current employer The Real Estate Wealth Network data breach from 2023 exposed five out of six data points listed above—in just a single incident. Fraudsters could take out lines of credit in your name, without you even knowing. To prevent anyone from taking out lines of credit in your name, freeze your credit reports at all three bureaus. You can do it for free online: Experian credit freeze TransUnion credit freeze Equifax credit freeze Enable multi-factor authentication Passwords aren’t enough. Especially if you don’t have an appetite for unique, 14-character-long ones. The good news is that you can improve your accounts’ security by a wide margin with multi-factor authentication (MFA) methods. The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) states that the “use of MFA on your accounts makes you 99% less likely to be hacked.” The idea behind MFA is simple and you’ve likely come across it before. Here’s how it works: After entering your password, you’re asked to confirm your identity by a different measure—typing in a code received via email, for example. It’s the second factor in the authentication process. It usually stops here, making it two-factor authentication (2FA), but it could go further, adding a third and even fourth layer—making it a truly multi-factor. Learn more about MFA and how to use it. Remove your personal information from data brokers Here’s the thing about data breaches—a data breach is a singular incident, a one-time thing. Hackers get access to databases and expose them. Our attention revolves mostly around that incident. We change our passwords, freeze our credit, and, after a while, forget about the whole affair. But the leaked data is still circulating the web. From one dark web forum to another, it passes through many, often shady, hands, potentially landing among the records of data brokers. Data brokers are companies that buy and sell personal information to make a profit. It’s similar to stock brokers. Only, instead of buying and selling corporate shares, data brokers buy and sell your: Names Birth date Phone numbers Email addresses Current and past addresses Owned properties Current and past employers Pulic records Relatives …and more With each data breach, your profile builds up. As a result, you may be targeted by identity thieves long after the initial data breach took place. Here’s the good news, though—you can sign up for a data removal service, like Incogni, and have your personal information removed from hundreds of data brokers. There are a few good removal services available for US citizens, like Kanary and Optery, but what really sets Incogni apart is that they target both private and public data brokers, while most others only focus on the public ones. The private databases, which are traded behind closed doors, are the ones that really impact your privacy. And Incogni is one of the few services that actually tackles those. But the good news doesn’t stop there. Incogni makes protecting your personal info a walk in a park. Getting started is super easy—it only takes a few clicks to set up your account and send out the first batch of 220+ removal requests. And after that you can sit back and focus on what really matters. Incogni will keep reaching out to all the data brokers in their network on a regular basis to make sure your personal info doesn’t end up back in their databases. Remove your personal information with Incogni Monitor your accounts for signs of identity theft “Identity theft is no joke, Jim!”—teaches us Dwight from The Office. And with nearly a third of Americans already affected by some form of it, it indeed is not a joke. 10% of identity theft victims realize something is wrong only when their money is gone. That’s far too late. Instead, monitor your key accounts—like banking, credit, and Social Security—regularly. Keep a close eye on your: Bank statements for any anomalies. Credit reports for unsolicited activity. Social Security account for unrecognized actions. Mail for suspicious letters, even if not addressed to you. Email for any unintended updates to your accounts, especially new accounts. Read...

Eighty bucks is pretty cheap for a monitor, but not unheard of if you’re limiting yourself to a budget 24-inch 1080p panel. But with extra features thrown in, it becomes a great value. I’m talking a speedy 180Hz refresh rate that makes for a pretty good gaming display and an IPS panel for superior color accuracy. You can get such a deal on Amazon today: this Aopen by Acer monitor is on sale for $79.99. (That’s 38% off!) First, that brand name. “Aopen” isn’t a household name for PC gear, but it is in fact a subsidiary of Acer that’s mostly focused on B2B sales, and the “Fire Legend” label is Aopen’s attempt to break into affordable gaming monitors. So yes, this is an Acer design—at least nominally—and it should offer better support than most of the white-label gear on Amazon. Aopen has a three-year parts and labor warranty for all of its monitors, according to this US support page. This monitor earns a 4.3 star rating out of 5 from over 700 Amazon buyers, for whatever that’s worth. For just $80, I can’t overstate how great a deal this is. It’s a very basic design, sure, with only single DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 1.4 connections according to the specs. Zooming in on the rear shots, it looks like this thing has a VGA port (wow, been a while, huh?) and a headphone port. You don’t get any USB extras or fancy lighting, and at 24 inches and 1080p, it’s about as small as desktop monitors get in 2025. But a 180Hz IPS panel—not VA like most budget gaming displays—is nothing to sneeze at. I also appreciate that it has a VESA mount for using a monitor arm. (Again, not a given at this price point.) This is also a fantastic deal if you want to add one (or two, or more) displays to a multi-monitor setup for more screen real estate. In addition to Amazon, a poster at SlickDeals spotted the same discount for this Aopen 24KG3Y model at Walmart and Newegg. Keep your options open if this one sells out on Amazon. Wow! Get a 180Hz IPS gaming monitor for just $80Buy now at Amazon Read...

I’m a smart home expert. Writing about smart home technology, smart devices, and voice assistants is my job. Yet, I don’t remember the last time I actually spoke with Alexa.  Just to be clear, I don’t mean to pick on Alexa per se. I rarely speak to Google Assistant or Apple’s Siri, either. The reason? It’s way easier to haul out my phone and use an app than it is to get a supposedly “smart” voice assistant to do what I want.  As it stands, there’s a Google Nest Hub Max sitting in our kitchen that acts as a glorified photo frame, and it occasionally interrupts with a random answer to a question nobody asked. A few HomePod minis are scattered around our home, but they’re really just for playing music (which I mainly control on my iPhone). And a lone Alexa speaker in our daughter’s room is merely an alarm clock.  Now Amazon is promising a grand rebirth for Alexa. Slated to roll out as a public preview later this month, Alexa+ will harness the power of generative AI to hold flowing conversations, understand our intentions, take actions on our behalf, and—hopefully—be so helpful that we’ll keep our phones in our pockets.  Alexa+ will be free during its preview period, and it will remain free for Amazon Prime members; non-Prime folks will need to cough up $19.99 a month for Alexa+ access, equivalent to the entry-level subscription tiers for ChatGPT, Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude (the latter of which is among Alexa+’s under-the-hood LLM models).  But cost was never the issue with Alexa (the “classic” Alexa will remain free for everyone, by the way). Instead, it was that Alexa became more annoying than useful.   Here’s what the new AI Alexa needs to do to get us back on speaking terms.  Make it easy to control my smart home devices  Getting the old Alexa to reliably control anything in my smart home is a royal pain. Unless I know the exact name of the device, the name of the room it’s in, and the precise command for making it do what I want it to do, Alexa will frequently come back with “Sorry, I don’t understand” or the equivalent. (Again, Google Assistant and Siri are guilty of this, too.)  As a result, I don’t ask Alexa or any of my other smart speakers to adjust my lights, turn fans on, or switch the TV to the correct input. Instead, I use my phone. What I want from the new Alexa is simple: to get what I mean when I say, “turn the lights up in here” or “turn on the TV,” and not just because I’ve hard-coded those phrases in an Alexa routine. I want Alexa+ to intuit my intentions—and if it can’t, to ask clear follow-up questions that don’t require me to fall back into “Alexa-speak.” Amazon is promising this exact type of smart home performance with Alexa+, and if it delivers, I might start using Alexa to control my smart gadgets again.  Make playing tunes a breeze  We use our HomePod mini speakers for music on a daily basis, teeing up tracks by Steely Dan, Miles Davis, and (more often than not) Taylor Swift. But my family struggles to get Siri to play the right tunes (“No, play the album called Lover, not the song”), so I generally queue playlists using my phone. It’s just easier than arguing with a voice assistant.  The same goes for Alexa, which is partly why there’s only one Echo speaker left in our house (the others are in a cardboard box somewhere.) But what if Alexa+ could make it easier to ask for music rather than searching for it on an app? What if we could just say, “Alexa, play that song from The Hills” and it would know we meant “Unwritten” by Natasha Bendingfield? (That’s an actual question that came up the other night—and naturally, Siri played “The Hills” by the Weeknd instead.)  If Alexa+ could really make it easier to play the music we want, and where we want (don’t get me started about trying to get Alexa or Siri to move tunes from one room to another), then our exiled Echo speakers might come out of hiding to replace our HomePods.  Be truly helpful in the kitchen  Yes, Alexa can display recipes on an Echo Show display (Google Assistant can do something similar on a Nest Hub screen), but more often than not, I just print out the recipe for whatever I’m cooking and bring it to the kitchen. It’s just easier. Put another way, Alexa has never played a meaningful role as a cook’s companion, or at least not for me.  Now, I have had success using ChatGPT to help in the kitchen (“What can I substitute for sesame oil?”). but that requires pulling out a phone when I have sticky or raw-meat hands. I would really love the ability to say “Hey Alexa, I need a quick recipe for a vinaigrette dressing, can you whip one up for me? Give me the steps one at a time, and I don’t have red wine vinegar, but I do have mustard, olive oil, and balsamic,” and Alexa would just talk me through it.  Again, Amazon demonstrated this very capability during its Alexa+ presentation last month, even going further to show how Alexa could order groceries with a partnered retailer like Whole Foods. But to just have a conversation with Alexa about general cooking questions (“what’s the safe internal temperature for pork?”) without it saying “I don’t know the answer, but I can show you search results from the web” would be a major win. Heck, I might even leave my printer alone the next time I’m about to cook.  Answer my random questions  We’re a family with lots of questions about, well, everything (it’s the byproduct of having a 13-year-old daughter), but I always groan when someone asks, for example, “Alexa, what’s something cool to do in Baltimore?” Why? Because Alexa won’t know, or it will come up with a random answer, and then someone will inevitably tell Alexa to “shut up,” and it won’t, and then things get ugly.  A more conversational Alexa+ could help keep such random questions from devolving into shouting matches, with the ability to go back and forth, ask follow-ups for clarity, and deliver organized responses that are actually relevant and interesting. The advanced voice modes for the ChatGPT and Google Gemini apps can already do this, and summoning Alexa+ on an Echo speaker for such general questions would be even easier.  Of course, if Alexa+ could go ahead and do something based on our conversation—say, book one of those interesting activities it found in Baltimore—we’d really have something. And that leads me to my next point… Take action on my behalf  One of the big points Amazon made during its big Alexa+ reveal is that unlike ChatGPT and Gemini, the new Alexa won’t just be stuck in a chatbox. Instead, it will actually be able to do things for you.  An example demonstrated during Amazon’s event was how Alexa+ could help find a nearby carpet cleaner who uses organic materials, book an appointment, and put it in your calendar. Done and done. Here’s another example from real life: I’m using ChatGPT to help me find affordable real estate in New York City. (Cue the laughter.) But while ChatGPT has been reasonably effective at zeroing in on listings that fit our criteria, it’s useless when it comes to proactively scouting for and notifying me about new properties on the market, and it can’t do squat about booking viewings.  But if I could have a daily chat with Alexa+ about my real estate ambitions, or if it could chime in when it learns of an enticing open house and put it on my calendar, or even fill in a real estate agent’s web form, that would be cool.  Amazon has been touting Alexa+’s skills as an AI agent, and it can supposedly fill in web forms on its own, so the kind of functionality I’m talking about here is theoretically possible. I’m eager to see it in practice.  Stop interrupting me How many times has Alexa, or Google Assistant, or Siri just started talking out of nowhere? Sometimes I’ll just be sitting in the kitchen and I’ll hear Alexa nattering away in my daughter’s empty bedroom, or Siri will jump in with an “mmm hmm?” because it thought it heard someone say “Siri.”  Part of the reason we tucked away most of our Alexa speakers (and I’m tempted to mute the microphones on our remaining Google Assistant and Siri devices) is that they’re constantly talking out of turn, butting in on conversations, and replying to phantom queries.   What I’m hoping is that the new AI Alexa is smart enough not to jump in every time it thinks it hears the “Alexa” wake word—or if it does accidentally speak up, that it gracefully cedes the floor when we say, “Not talking to you, Alexa.” Read...

He had already lost his licence on four separate occasions, but says his girlfriend did not want to be late for work so he drove her despite being forbidden just four days prior. Read...

As a fully remote worker, I love being able to take my work laptop to the coffee shop, the beach, or even my own backyard. The one thing I hate, though, is relying on a single screen when working. It frustrates my productivity because I generally bounce between multiple apps. That’s why I love portable monitors! It’s the solution to every on-the-go worker who needs more screen real estate. And right now, this 15.6-inch MNN portable monitor is on sale for $60. That’s a hefty 33% discount off its original $90 price and the lowest we’ve ever seen it. This thing has a beautiful 15.6-inch IPS display with 1080p resolution, able to deliver vibrant colors, great contrast, and excellent color accuracy. It’s widely compatible, too, with two USB-C video ports and a Mini HDMI port. Whether you hook it up to your laptop, smartphone, tablet, or handheld gaming console, it’ll perform beautifully. Trust me, you’ll appreciate how nice it is to have an extra screen with you everywhere you take your laptop. It’s not even heavy, weighing 1.5 pounds and measuring 0.3 inches thick. You can slip it into your bag right next to your laptop and not notice it at all. It also comes with a smart cover that both protects the screen and serves as a kickstand. You need a portable monitor, don’t you? It’s one of those things that you may hesitate on for a while — until you finally get one and wonder how you ever lived without it. Jump on this chance to get this MNN portable monitor for the cheapest it’s been on Amazon. This portable laptop monitor is an absolute bargain for $60Buy now at Amazon Read...

It is the second time inside for the colourful former real estate agent and one-time `Voice of Speedway`. Read...

The number of Americans checking out homes for sale in New Zealand has surged since US President Donald Trump returned to office. Read...