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I use a stylus with my phone so often that I carry one in my pocket at all times. This stylus used to be an S-Pen, but no more. I've been surprised to see that the Moto Pen Ultra is better than an S Pen in both expected and unexpected ways

Refreshing your Netflix feed and finding new titles to watch is always exciting. But when you're on the lookout for a movie that's a little different from your usual recommendations, it can be surprisingly difficult to know where to start.

As we move further and further away from the heydays of the audio CD, things are getting a little muddled. Perhaps it wouldn't matter so much if physical media like vinyl, CDs, and cassettes were making a niche comeback among certain groups of people.

Mini, pocket-sized e-readers are having a moment. The Xteink e-readers are catching eyes for their truly pocket-sized build that can even attach to the back of your iPhone. Well, they're not the only ones embracing the mini e-reader: Boox just revealed its Picco.

The Boox Picco (cutest name ever?) comes with a 3.97-inch monochrome ePaper display. It's even smaller than Boox's current smallest tablet, the Palma Pro. It will have a front light and TF card support, too. And well, that's about all we know about the mini e-reader at the moment.

While no exact price was provided, in a press release, Boox says the Picco has an "accessible price point." There's no release date available for the Picco at this time, either.

The Boox Picco is a phenomenal development for readers looking to get a mini e-reader. While I do love the concept and size of the Xteink e-reader, the issue is that those e-readers only support DRM-free files. This means if you use Libby or have a bountiful Kindle library, you can't access any of those books on an Xteink e-reader.

However, the Boox ecosystem is far more expansive. As long as the Picco has access to the Google Play store, users will be able to download the Kindle, Kobo, and Libby apps. That means any of the books you read on your Kindle can be accessed and synced on the Picco.

Boox has yet to confirm that the Picco has the same ecosystem as the rest of its e-readers, but if it does, that's massive potential for such a small e-reader.

China's growing influence in the global auto industry has become a major issue in the United States, with lawmakers increasingly scrutinizing foreign ownership of automakers. While much of the focus has been on keeping Chinese brands out of the U.S. market, proposed legislation could also have unintended consequences for long-established manufacturers already operating in the States.

Prime Video released the teaser for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power at San Diego Comic-Con, and things are looking bad for Middle-earth.

SEE ALSO: 'Blade Runner 2099' teaser: Michelle Yeoh and Hunter Schafer team up and hunt rogue replicants

Season 3 picks up five years after the fall of Eregion, with Sauron (Charlie Vickers) now comfortably in control of Middle-earth. His armies have swept across the world, and only a few places remain free from his dark grasp. The dwarves have shut themselves away in Khazad-dûm, while the elves remain ensconced in the realms of Lindon and Rivendell, protected by their three rings of power. Their time of relative safety may be coming to a close, though, because Sauron is hard at work on his greatest piece of statement jewelry yet: a little bauble called the One Ring. Surely that won't cause any problems, right?

The teaser isn't all doom and gloom, though. It offers up our first glimpse of the reunion between Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and her long-lost husband, Celeborn (Jamie Campbell Bower), who share some passionate moments even as the world crumbles around them.

Celeborn isn't the only new character joining this season. The Rings of Power Comic-Con panel also saw the announcement of three major players this season: Thrain (Eddie Marsan), older brother of King Durin IV (Owain Arthur); Anarion (Andrew Richardson), the younger son of Elendil (Lloyd Owen); and Marnûkh (Adam Young), a mysterious Orc. Oh, and for the first time ever, the ferocious Balrog will be speaking, and will be voiced by Simon Pegg. More Balrog can only mean one thing: Khazad-dûm isn't long for this world.

To watch all these characters and more — including the Nazgnagôl, early incarnations of the Nazgûl — in action, check out the full teaser above.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 3 premieres Nov. 11 on Prime Video.

In a sea of bad headlines for PlayStation, a big network outage probably isn't going to help.

PS5 owners logged into their consoles on Friday to find that PlayStation Network, the online infrastructure that makes everything from game purchases to online matches work, was experiencing an outage. Multiple sources, both primary and secondary, confirm this, as DownDetector shows a steady stream of complaints starting on Friday morning and continuing into the afternoon. On top of that, PlayStation's own server status page showed that all services were experiencing issues at the time of publication.

Credit: Screenshot courtesy of PlayStation SEE ALSO: 'Splatoon Raiders' is a spiffy single-player makeover for Nintendo's coolest series

Mashable has reached out to Sony for comment and will update this article if we receive a response. As of early Friday afternoon, the PlayStation support account on X had not acknowledged the outage at all.

All of this comes amidst a very, very rough time for PlayStation's public relations.

PS5 consoles recently saw price increases nearly six years after the initial launch, and word is that the next PlayStation console might cost north of $1,000 whenever it launches. If that wasn't bad enough, every single PlayStation social media account has been hounded by angry comments from players who are aghast at Sony's recent decision to stop manufacturing games on physical discs in 2028.

Needless to say, this is not the best time for a major, unexplained network outage.

This is a developing story...

Google made nearly $120 billion in earnings last quarter. Somehow, that still was not enough to cover what the company is pouring into AI.

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Alphabet, Google’s parent company, announced Wednesday, July 22, that it recorded negative free cash flow of $5.9 billion for the second quarter of 2026, marking the first time that figure has fallen below zero since the company went public. Google generated $39.1 billion in operating cash flow, but spent $44.9 billion on capital projects, with most of the money going toward the servers, data centers, and networking equipment needed to support its AI products.

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To be clear, Google is still making plenty of money. In the Q2 2026 earnings report, the company disclosed $119.8 billion in quarterly revenue, a 24 percent increase from the same period last year. Its operating income reached $40.8 billion, while its net income climbed to a record $112.1 billion.

There is an important catch to that record profit, however. Much of it came from Alphabet’s investments rather than its main businesses. The company reported approximately $98 billion in other, primarily from unrealized gains in its portfolio of equity investments. Those gains reflect assets that increased in value but were not necessarily sold for cash.

Free cash flow offers a look at the money Google actually had left after covering its operating expenses and investments in assets such as equipment and facilities. The company typically produces billions of dollars in free cash flow each quarter. This time, though, its rapidly growing infrastructure costs consumed more cash than its businesses generated.

And Google does not plan to slow down.

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Also on July 22, the company raised its expected capital spending for 2026 to between $195 billion and $205 billion. Google had previously told investors during its first-quarter earnings report on April 29 that it expected to spend between $180 billion and $190 billion this year. The updated forecast would be more than twice the approximately $91 billion it spent in 2025.

The bill is expected to keep growing next year. During Alphabet’s call on Wednesday, Chief Financial Officer Anat Ashkenazi told investors that capital expenditures would increase "significantly" again in 2027.

"We expect that free cash flow will remain under pressure driven by our investments in technical infrastructure, which enable us to capitalize on the AI opportunity and continue to drive attractive returns," Ashkenazi said.

So, where is all that money going?

According to Ashkenazi, approximately 60 percent of Google’s technical infrastructure spending during the quarter went toward servers. The remaining 40 percent went toward data centers and networking equipment.

Google also said it needs that additional capacity to meet demand from outside cloud customers and support its own products, including Search, Gemini, and Google Workspace. There are already signs that some of the spending is paying off: Google reported that Cloud revenue reached $24.8 billion during the quarter, an 82 percent increase from the previous year, while its operating income more than tripled to $8.8 billion.

Google’s other major businesses continued to grow, too. The company also reported that Search advertising generated $63.3 billion, YouTube advertising brought in $11.1 billion, and revenue from subscriptions, platforms, and devices reached $12.9 billion. Google said demand for AI subscriptions helped boost its Google One business.

They are hardly the only company writing enormous checks for AI. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta are collectively expected to invest more than $700 billion this year, largely in data centers, chips, and electricity required to build and run their AI systems.

Investors, however, did not appear reassured by Google’s growth. Alphabet shares fell nearly 7 percent on Thursday, July 23, the day after the company raised its spending forecast and warned that free cash flow would remain under pressure.

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Google still has a substantial financial cushion, but with the company already warning that infrastructure spending will climb significantly again in 2027, this may not be the last quarter in which Google’s enormous AI bill outpaces the cash coming in.

Most routers will encourage you to use one Wi-Fi name for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. Sure, why not. In theory, your devices should work together to pick the best band automatically.

If you’re up for a little mystery this weekend, we’ve got you covered with some unsettling storytelling that is less about action and more about getting inside the characters’ minds, often in disturbing ways that require you to think. They all revolve around uncovering the truth in a distinctive setting that not only helps shape the story at hand but also amplifies the tension.

Prime Video revealed the first teaser for Blade Runner 2099 at San Diego Comic-Con, and the sneak peek is as rainy and neon-lit as you'd expect.

SEE ALSO: 'Percy Jackson and the Olympians' Season 3 teaser gives us our first look at the Titan's Curse

The sequel series, executive produced by Blade Runner director Ridley Scott, takes place 50 years after the events of Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049. In those 50 years, Los Angeles has been transformed by a replicant uprising. Now, these synthetic humans are running the show, but that doesn't mean blade runners aren't still around to hunt down any replicants who step out of line.

One of those blade runners is Olwen (Michelle Yeoh), a replicant who's tracking down a group of missing replicants who have gone rogue. With only days left to live, she'll stop at nothing to complete her mission.

She'll team up with Cora (Hunter Schafer), a human fugitive who becomes a blade runner in an attempt to finally stop running. The teaser shows her fleeing through Los Angeles and getting captured by Olwen, so it looks like their partnership will get off to a contentious start. Can this unlikely duo find the runaways and save their fragile city from total collapse?

Watch the full teaser above to see Olwen and Cora in action, plus the return of the iconic Voight-Kampff test.

Blade Runner 2049 also stars Dimitri Abold, Lewis Gribben, Katelyn Rose Downey, Daniel Rigby, Johnny Harris, Amy Lennox, Sheila Atim, Matthew Needham, Tom Burke, and Maurizio Lombardi.

Blade Runner 2049 premieres Nov. 20 on Prime Video.

Any time you look into switching to Linux, you'll come across the same advice: install Linux Mint. It looks just like Windows and you won't have any problems adjusting.

Jimothy has crossed Seattle streets and climbed neighborhood staircases, and now he's wandered into the gaming world.

The unusually shaped raccoon became an internet celebrity after Seattle resident Kiana Hall spotted him in the city’s Ballard neighborhood on July 13, 2026. Since then, his compact torso, rounded back, and long legs have inspired memes, murals, tattoos, merchandise, and an expanding collection of digital recreations.

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Players and developers have already begun recreating Jimothy across video games and tabletop worlds. And now, one of gaming’s biggest studios is preparing to make room for him.

“You asked, Jimothy answered,” the official World of Warcraft X account wrote on July 24. “Coming soon to Azeroth.”

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It is the latest step in Jimothy’s rapid transformation from neighborhood raccoon to cross-platform gaming character.

How Jimothy scurried his way into gaming

Before Jimothy became a prospective Azeroth resident, he was simply an unusual-looking raccoon walking beneath a parked car in Seattle.

Hall initially mistook the animal for a cat, then began recording when he emerged with the masked face of a raccoon and a noticeably shortened torso and neck. She named him Jimothy because, as she later explained to Today.com, he simply looked like one.

The brief video accumulated millions of views. Experts believe Jimothy’s appearance may be caused by a congenital spinal deformity resembling short spine syndrome. Despite his compressed build, videos show him walking, climbing, finding food, and independently navigating the neighborhood.

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Those same physical features also made him immediately recognizable when artists began translating him into different virtual worlds. Some redrew Jimothy in their games’ established art styles, while others creatively repurposed existing character models to reproduce his distinctive silhouette.

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In an Old School RuneScape tribute, Jimothy becomes a low-poly raccoon who looks as though he has always been wandering through Gielinor. Mouse: P.I. For Hire transported him to Mouseburg, redrawing him in the black-and-white rubber-hose animation style of its 1930s-inspired world.

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Dead by Daylight gave him a horror makeover complete with glowing features and bloody tentacles. The official Sims account attempted to build him using a human Sim, producing a character who resembled someone wearing a slightly unsettling raccoon costume.

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Halo’s interpretation required another inventive workaround. Rather than creating a new animal model, senior community manager John Junyszek bent a Spartan onto all fours and extended its neck and feet to imitate Jimothy’s proportions.

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Other images placed the resulting raccoon-like soldier near Master Chief’s crashed escape pod in scenes based on Halo: Combat Evolved and its Campaign Evolved remake.

Jimothy also reached several other established gaming worlds. Warner Bros. Games imagined that he had arrived in Gotham City, while the teams behind Among Us and Cult of the Lamb redesigned him to fit their respective visual styles.

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Most of these official tributes exist only as images. Fans and modders, however, have gone further by turning Jimothy into a character people can actually play with.

Fans make Jimothy playable

Artist and entrepreneur Chris Pirillo built an entire browser game around Jimothy. The four-level, NES-style game borrows elements from classic arcade titles including Frogger and the original Donkey Kong, transforming parts of the raccoon’s real and imagined adventures into short challenges.

One level asks players to help Jimothy cross traffic, while others involve raiding garbage cans, escaping paparazzi, and climbing ladders.

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Fans have also inserted Jimothy into several popular games through mods. In Skyrim, one fan-made addition turns him into a character players can approach and speak with. Stardew Valley modders have created multiple versions, including options that let players keep Jimothy as livestock or purchase him from Marnie as a companion.

In Minecraft, a creator modified the raccoon from the Naturalist add-on to match Jimothy’s proportions, translating his shortened body and long legs into the game’s blocky visual style.

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Dungeons & Dragons has produced one of the most elaborate interpretations so far. Its official Jimothy stat block identifies him as a "Beloved Cryptid" and gives him abilities based on both his physical appearance and the increasingly elaborate stories surrounding him.

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"Compact Frame" allows Jimothy to squeeze through gaps measuring less than four inches wide. "Hurl Garbage" lets him attack enemies with trash, dealing both bludgeoning and poison damage. The stat block contains everything players need to add him to a tabletop campaign, where he can search for food, befriend adventurers, or become an unexpectedly dangerous opponent.

Together, these official tributes and fan-made creations have allowed Jimothy to enter gaming in nearly every possible form: artwork, character models, mods, browser games, and tabletop campaigns.

The real Jimothy remains a wild animal roaming Seattle, where wildlife officials have advised people to observe him from a distance. His digital counterparts, however, are proving much easier to approach — and collect.

For more than five decades, HBO/HBO Max has mastered the serious business of fire-breathing dragons, drug warfare, and gangsters sleeping with the fishes. But when you scroll past all that brooding, though, you'll find the service is also quietly stacked with all kinds of comedies, and right now, U.S. subscribers have four of them right at their fingertips for a weekend full of laughs.

Bluetooth is a fantastic feature on mobile phones, but if you use it to listen to your favorite tunes regularly, you might notice it sometimes sounds dead, tinny, or just plain bad. The culprit might actually be the default codec your phone is using for Bluetooth.

Honda built the Ridgeline to compete in the same segment as the Toyota Tacoma and Chevrolet Colorado, but with a different approach. When the truck launched for the 2006 model year, Honda skipped the body-on-frame design that defined the segment and used a unibody platform shared with the Pilot instead.

Subscription fatigue is real. It feels like every useful app now locks its best features behind a monthly fee, whether you're streaming music, organizing your media library, or automating repetitive tasks. But this weekend, instead of signing up for another recurring payment, replace those subscriptions with these free, open-source alternatives (FOSS) and save some money in the process.

I love the Galaxy Z Fold 8, I really do. The wide form factor makes it a true pocket tablet while reviving the glory days of phablets. It'll be fast, likely last longer on battery than the Z Fold 7, and take quality (if zoom-free) photos. I'll be ecstatic if it fares well, in part because the mobile space is in desperate need of excitement.

It's hard to believe, but we've hit the tail end of July, when Netflix's new releases run dry until the calendar flips into August, when a new season of Alone: Australia lands alongside Big Chicken: A Fast Food Conspiracy, in which comedian Mo Gilligan eats nothing but fried chicken for a month.

It's hard to believe, but we've hit the tail end of July, when Netflix's new releases run dry until the calendar flips into August, when a new season of Alone: Australia lands alongside Big Chicken: A Fast Food Conspiracy, in which comedian Mo Gilligan eats nothing but fried chicken for a month.