Look, don’t tell anyone over at our sister site Macworld, but I have to confess: the iPad is pretty great. And that’s coming from someone who’s been an Android die-hard since the Nexus One! Truth be told, I’ve got a fourth-gen iPad Air on my desk that never turns off. And you know what? Right now, Amazon is offering a fantastic deal on an even newer model: the 2024 iPad Air M2 is $100 off. For just $499, you can get the 11-inch iPad Air, powered by the M2 processor, with 128GB of storage and in four color options. It’s a rare discount on one of Apple’s most popular tablet models — in fact, I’d be surprised to see it go any lower even on Black Friday. The physical design of the iPad Air hasn’t changed a whisker since 2020, back when the iPad lost its physical home button and moved its fingerprint sensor to the power button. But to be fair, it’s not as if it needs any big changes. While you could hope for the OLED screen upgrade seen on the latest iPad Pro, you won’t find any such new OLED tablets in this price range. The upgraded M2 processor is the biggest deal if you’re coming from an older iPad Air. The CPU has the same Arm-based design that goes into some models of the MacBook Air and Pro laptops and the 2023 Mac Mini, but it’s using a newer and more efficient 9-core GPU. That means it should be able to handle just about any game or media app you can find on the App Store without breaking a sweat. Amazon is also offering a similar $100 discount on the 512GB and 1TB models of the 11-inch iPad Air M2, bringing their prices down to $799 and $999, respectively. That’s a lot for a tablet, but it’s still cheaper than the cheapest iPad Pro of the same size and capacity. If your budget is tight, though, you won’t be disappointed by the 128GB for $499. Save $100 on an iPad Air M2 (2024 model)Buy now on Amazon Read...

The wait is over! The highly anticipated Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 officially launches on PC and Xbox Series X/S today, marking the dawn of a new era for the flight sim with many new features and improvements. Itching to jump in and get started? Before you do, here are some crucial details worth knowing about the release of MSFS24. Release time and download size The official release time of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is November 19, 2024 at 11am EST. However, you can start the preload in advance to avoid long waiting times after it releases. You can start the pre-installation if you have either pre-ordered the game or have Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, as this includes Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 from day one. To do this, search for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 in the Xbox app on PC or console and select the pre-installation. (The pre-installation doesn’t download the complete game. Depending on your internet connection, it may still take a lot of time to download the remaining files.) Officially, the installation size of MSFS24 is only 50GB, which is relatively small for such a large game. However, it’s quite possible that we’ll see a large day-one patch that makes final tweaks to the game. Secure your pre-order bonuses now Depending on which version of the game you pre-order, you’ll receive unique bonuses and additional content that come with it. Here’s an overview of them all: Standard Edition: De Havilland Canada CL-415 Firefighting Aircraft Deluxe Edition: All bonuses in Standard Edition plus 25 additional aircrafts and 10 additional international airports Aviator Edition: All bonuses in Deluxe Edition plus 30 additional marketplace aircrafts Incidentally, it’s also possible to play Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 via the cloud if your PC doesn’t meet the minimum requirements. You’ll need a current Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription for this. Further reading: The best cloud gaming service for you Read...

Here’s a fun little deal that snuck its way into the lesser-known Opera web browser: right now, you can snag three months of Spotify Premium for free thanks to a collaboration between Spotify and Opera. Opera recently announced that the new Opera One R2 desktop web browser will include an integrated music player feature that allows users to access Spotify directly within, and it will come with a complementary three months of Spotify Premium. To take advantage of the offer, you first need to download the latest version of Opera One. Install the browser, complete the initial setup, and launch it. The browser’s default music player is Spotify, which you’ll see as a small icon in the browser’s left sidebar. The music player will take you to the Spotify Premium offer and give you the option to upgrade to Spotify Premium with an existing (or newly created) free Spotify account. This offer is only valid for new customers, meaning accounts that have never been Premium before. While the offer is currently only available through the Opera One browser, there are plans to extend it to Android devices in early 2025. Further reading: Opera One users can try AI features for free Read...

Back in August a U.S. federal court found Google guilty of violating anti-trust laws, and the fallout could be the biggest antitrust action since the breakup of AT&T/Bell way back in the 1980s. But exactly what the enforcement action will look like is still very much in the air. Recent reports indicate that the U.S. Department of Justice is going to suggest that Google be forced to sell the Chrome browser. That’s according to Bloomberg, which has been rock-solid on this case for years. Previously the DoJ was said to be considering some kind of breakup of Google’s big three corporate assets: Search, Chrome, and Android. Some or all of them were on the table, but the DoJ has apparently settled on Chrome as the piece of the monopoly puzzle that has to go. The federal team will also suggest that Google be forced to refrain from making the kind of exclusivity contracts that have become a staple of its OEM partnerships for Android and Chrome devices, according to the report. The DoJ also wants Google to give websites more tools to effectively opt-out of being used in the company’s extensive data scraping for AI training. Note that this doesn’t mean it’s a done deal. Assuming that Bloomberg is accurate, that means that DoJ attorneys will suggest Google be forced to divest itself of Chrome to District Judge Amit P. Mehta. The judge will have fairly broad authority on whether to proceed with that action, or suggest some other way of enacting the ruling that Google is operating an illegal monopoly. Whatever happens, Google’s legal team will inevitably appeal for a lighter punishment, if not throwing out the ruling entirely. A Google vice president accused the Department of Justice of “push[ing] a radical agenda that goes far beyond the legal issues in this case.” Google’s appeal is a surprise to no one. But if you’ll follow me along on a little tech pundit speculation, it’s not hard to guess what the company is hoping for on the other end. With Trump’s election win and a second presidential term looming in less than two months, Google is hoping that the wheels of justice will turn slowly enough for a new administration with total control of the federal government to take power. Given the pace of the case thus far — the antitrust case began just over four years ago — that seems like a safe bet. With Republicans in general and Trump in particular, a stripping of federal power to regulate and prosecute corporations is a given. So the obvious hope is that a second Trump DoJ would essentially forget about any kind of corporate oversight. Given Trump’s history of legal issues with real estate and dozens of other businesses, not to mention his early pick of Florida libertarian congressman Matt Gaetz as attorney general, Google might be hoping to get out of this with less than a slap on the wrist. But there’s another wrinkle to this particular story. While American conservatives generally position themselves as anti-regulation at every opportunity, there are a few notable exceptions, and one of them is tech and social media. Republicans have long accused any and all technology companies of enabling bias against them. And Trump is no exception — indeed, he’s the ur-example for the current climate. “Google’s got a lot of power. They’re very bad to me. Very, very bad to me,” said Trump in an October interview, echoing previous statement’s against the search company. “…I’m getting a lot of good stories lately, but you don’t find them in Google.” I think it’s a whole rigged deal. I think Google’s rigged just like our government’s rigged all over the place.” JD Vance, the vice president-elect, has said that Google should be broken up entirely, calling it “one of the most dangerous companies in the world.” So Google is in the sights of the current Department of Justice for abusing monopoly power, and it’s being targeted by the incoming administration for perceived slights against specific individuals. Predicting Trump’s mood at any given moment is a fool’s errand, to say nothing of his actions. But however the case shakes out, Google is between a rock and a hard place. Read...

Windows 11 24H2 has been struggling with numerous problems since it released back in October, including network connectivity failures, broken keyboard shortcuts, and crashing Office apps. For many, the only fix so far has been to revert to a previous version of Windows 11. Last week, Microsoft released cumulative update KB5046617 that was supposed to improve stability and fix bugs in 24H2. Unfortunately, the rescue update itself is now causing frustrations because users are having trouble getting it to install at all. They’re running into various error messages with no clear causes. If you’re one of these users, here’s some good news: there’s a workaround you can use to solve the problem yourself. The problem with patch KB5046617 You may encounter problems at various points when trying to install cumulative update KB5046617. According to Windows Latest, you might receive error codes 0x800f0991 or 0x800f0922 after the installation reaches somewhere between 35 and 40 percent. For others, the update might appear to install successfully, only for the Windows Update section of Settings to say that the update actually failed. This is particularly frustrating because it doesn’t explain why the installation failed, making troubleshooting near impossible. To add insult to injury, Windows 11 will keep trying to install the update after failure, which can result in a continuous loop. What you can do if you’re affected Apparently, it’s possible to successfully install the KB5046617 patch if you do it manually instead of through Windows Update. To do this, you need to open the Microsoft Update Catalog and search for KB5046617. Then, next to the appropriate one for your system, click the Download button. When the pop-up appears, click the appropriate link to download the installer file. Double-click the file to install the update — it should succeed without any error messages. If you still run into problems installing the update, the only solution is to wait for Microsoft to fix the error. Unfortunately, there’s no information as to when that might happen as of this writing. Further reading: My favorite improvements in Windows 11 24H2 Read...

You probably know that you shouldn’t trust everything you see on Facebook, perhaps doubly so now that the platform seems to be about 80 percent AI-generated slop. But remember that this advice extends to advertising as well. Facebook ads have been used by hackers — as recently as this month — to spread fake Bitwarden password manager extensions for Chrome, which are infected with dangerous phishing tools. That’s according to Bitdefender, which details its investigation in a new blog post (spotted by BleepingComputer). According to the researchers, ads on Facebook pretended to offer Bitwarden, one of the most popular password managers on the market. The advertising indicates, falsely, that the viewer is “using an outdated version of Bitwarden” and that they must update it now to stay protected from “cyber threats.” I wonder if the people who make these ads are aware of the irony, or just don’t give a hoot. The campaign was detected as active as recently as November 3, 2024, specifically targeting users in Europe. Once users click on the ad, they’re redirected to a phony page that imitates the Chrome Web Store and the legitimate Bitwarden extension download page. But instead of the rather smooth process for installing officially supported Chrome extensions, they’re sent to a Google Drive page with a ZIP file to download. The page then guides the user through installing the fake Bitwarden in Chrome’s Developer Mode, an elevated privilege state that’s analogous to an admin account in Windows. The user is then instructed to load up the fake extension manually. From there, the fake Bitwarden spies on the user’s activity and gathers their cookies, IP address, and pretty much everything associated with their Facebook account, including user ID and password, personal info, and payment info. It’s everything the hackers need for identity theft — and depending on how much activity the user has on Facebook, a possible avenue to more direct attacks on financial accounts. Using a legitimate ad network to spread malware is nothing new, nor is imitating security software to prey on internet users’ fears. For the sake of completeness, I’ll point out that Bitdefender is technically a competitor to Bitwarden as both companies offer password manager apps. But Bitdefender’s research has never been less than reliable, even if the company has a vested interest in selling digital protection. Bitwarden (the real one) is pretty great, too. You can read my review of it here, and just in case you’re wondering, here’s the link to the real Chrome extension. Further reading: Why I pay for Bitwarden Premium even though the free version rocks Read...

Its reset feature would cleanse a user`s feed of personalised content suggested by algorithm. Read...

One of the things that may hold you back from using an old monitor for gaming, photography, graphics editing, or some other visual purpose is that it’s not displaying the kind of vibrant color you want or will find in a new monitor. There are different reasons that may be the case, ranging from your software settings to the hardware you are using. The good news is that most old monitors whose colors look washed out or inaccurate can be corrected to look a whole lot more colorful and vibrant. Here are the steps to follow to make that happen. Related: Best monitors 2024: Gaming, 4K, HDR, and more Ensure you have the right color profiles installed Windows 11 should automatically detect your monitor’s correct color profile and apply it, but if colors still don’t look right, there’s a chance the profile could still be wrong. You can update to the right color profile in Color Management in Windows 11. However, first you may need to download the correct color profile drivers from your monitor manufacturer’s website. You can follow this guide to do both of these things. Dominic Bayley / IDG Calibrate your monitor in Windows 11 By calibrating your display using Window’s 11’s Display Color Calibration, colors will appear more accurate. Calibrating is kind of a lengthy process, so once again you’ll want to follow a step-by-step guide to safely see you through. Dominic Bayley / IDG Adjust the color setting on the monitor itself To adjust colors on your monitor itself, locate the menu button and click it to bring up a list of options you can tweak. The ones to look out for here are “Color,” “Contrast,” and “Brightness.” Adjust these settings until the colors look as strong and vibrant as possible. Pexels: Mateusz Dach Check your cables If the cables between your video card and your PC, or your PC and monitor are cheaply made or defective your color problems may be due to signal loss from those cables. If you suspect you’re experiencing signal loss, simply swapping out the cables for better ones may fix your monitor’s color issues. Pexels: Stratha Nualsate Set your monitor’s native refresh rate A monitor not set to its native refresh rate can be a little-known culprit behind a monitor displaying washed-out color. One YouTuber only managed to identify the problem after trying a bunch of other fixes that didn’t work. To change the refresh rate on your monitor in Windows 11, open Settings and click on System. Now click on Display then Advanced Display. Select your monitor’s native refresh rate from the drop-down menu next to Choose a refresh rate, to set it as so. Dominic Bayley / IDG An extra step if you have a video card… If you have an Nvidia graphics card: Follow the steps above and then apply this extra tweak. Open up Nvidia Control Panel and select Adjust Desktop Color Settings. Now raise the slider for Digital Vibrance from what it was up to about 65. The colors on your display should look richer, brighter, and cleaner. If you have an AMD graphics card: Owners of PCs with AMD Radeon RX Series graphics cards or AMD desktop processors with Radeon graphics running Windows 10 or later, can improve their monitor’s color with Display Color Enhancement and Color Deficiency Correction in AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition. Any color changes can be made globally or applied specifically to individual games. If you’ve made these changes, you should now have an old monitor that looks colorful enough for just about anything you need it for. Now the only thing left to do is decide how best to use it. Read...

We love laptop deals, especially in the lead up to Black Friday. There are some truly great price drops going on, like this one we’re highlighting today that slashes hundreds of dollars off. Right now, you can get this MSI Katana 15 gaming laptop for $400 off at Best Buy, a significant discount off its original $1,500 price. This laptop is a top-notch beast that runs on an AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS processor and 16GB of DDR5 RAM. The beauty of the Katana 15 is that if you feel like you need more oomph, you can easily replace the memory sticks and upgrade up to 64GB in total. It also has a 1TB SSD, plenty enough to hold all your videos, games, and apps. But the big winner here is the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card, which is beyond what you can normally get in a laptop in this price range. Massive discounts like this are the only way to snag an RTX 4070 laptop for anywhere close to $1K. Rare as it is, that’s reason to rejoice and jump on this deal for this powerful machine. And that graphics card is going to look good on this laptop’s 15.6-inch 1080p display with 144Hz refresh rate, edging it closer to being the perfect machine for smooth, lag-free gaming. If you’ve been waiting for the chance to score an RTX 4070 gaming laptop for a truly affordable price, don’t miss this sale — grab the MSI Katana 15 for $1,100 at Best Buy! You rarely see RTX 4070 gaming laptops going for this priceBuy now at Best Buy Read...

Your email address is a liability when yet another of your accounts get hacked. After your login credentials are leaked, attackers can use those same credentials to try logging into different services across the web to see what else they might unlock. But there’s a better way — and Google seems poised to bring it to the masses. As spotted by Android Authority, a new “Shielded Email” feature in the Gmail app for Android devices is seemingly on the way. It would let you create disposable email addresses, or temporary burner email addresses that forward email to your real account. My colleague Michael Crider covered how Shielded Email could serve as a defense against spam, but there’s another payoff to this privacy protection: stronger online security. Using a random, unique email address for every account you have would make it harder for hackers to use data leaks to break into other accounts of yours. This is the same principle as masked email, but with one big advantage: you don’t need to sign up for a separate service. With almost 2 billion users already signed up for Gmail, the new Shielded Email feature would level up standard privacy, big time. If offered for free, it would also eclipse Apple’s equivalent feature, Hide My Email, which is only available to paying iCloud+ subscribers. I’m rooting for this feature to make it out the starting gate. Google’s been strengthening its security and privacy features, like dark web monitoring and improved passkey support in its password manager, without gating it behind a Google One subscription. With how bad data leaks and breaches have gotten lately, the smart way to avoid hackers who are exploiting current conventions is to change them altogether. Read...