IT General

You may think of Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, as an autocracy governed by founder Mark Zuckerberg. Given his shares give him a majority (60 percent) of any shareholder vote, that's not far off the mark (pun not intended). Zuckerberg is CEO for life, or at least as long as he wants to be.

But there is at least one entity within Meta, independently financed, that has accumulated enough soft power to keep Zuckerberg in line a majority of the time: The Meta Oversight Board. Zuckerberg once described it as a "Supreme Court" for Facebook, and in its five years of life it has come out against Meta's cross-check program, which the company mostly amended, slammed its content moderation, gave whistleblower Frances Haugen a hearing, and done all this while improving its attention to basic human rights.

"Although Meta is not legally required to implement every recommendation," the Board noted in a report on its first five years, "it has implemented 75% of the more than 300 we have issued." The company is required to respond to all board recommendations, at least, within 60 days.

SEE ALSO: Watch the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses fail in Mark Zuckerberg's painful live demo

All of which explains why the Oversight Board's latest case actually matters, when it comes to Meta accounts and permanent bans — and why it's so keen on your input.

The case, which the Board announced it would take on Tuesday, concerns an unnamed but "widely followed" Instagram account that was permanently banned in 2025, and is appealing the decision. The account's posts included "visual threats of violence and harassment against a female journalist," the board says, as well as "anti-gay slurs against prominent politicians and content depicting a sex act, alleging misconduct against minorities."

This marks the first time that the Oversight Board has looked at an account banned for targeting public figures. (It previously upheld Donald Trump's suspension in Jan. 2021, but that was for supporting violence at the Capitol insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021. In that case, the Board also said Facebook couldn't ban Trump indefinitely — it had to be permanent, or time-limited. Zuckerberg chose the latter.)

Unlike the actual U.S. Supreme Court, the Meta Oversight Board is very clear about why it chose to take on the case: To establish a precedent for other account ban appeals to follow.

The Instagram ban "represents a significant opportunity to provide users with greater transparency on Meta’s account enforcement policies and practices, and make recommendations for improvement," the Board wrote.

What recommendations? Well, that's where you come in. The Meta Oversight Board has already received more than 11,000 public comments in its first five years of cases, and now it's actively soliciting more. Specifically, the board says it would love it if you could "contribute valuable perspectives" on:

• How best to ensure due process and fairness to people whose accounts are penalized or permanently disabled.

• The effectiveness of measures used by social media platforms to protect public figures and journalists from accounts engaged in repeated abuse and threats of violence, in particular against women in the public eye.

• Challenges in identifying and considering off-platform context when assessing threats against public figures and journalists.

• Research into the efficacy of punitive measures to shape online behaviors, and the efficacy of alternative or complementary interventions.

• Good industry practices in transparency reporting on account enforcement decisions and related appeals.

Got ideas? Then you have until Feb. 3 to leave your comment here — anonymously, if you wish. Zuckerberg will be watching closely, given that Meta referred this case to the Board in the first place. For the average Facebook or Instagram user, this may be as close as you get to influencing the supreme autocrat of social media.

The Raspberry Pi is awesome machines for so many reasons—it's low-power, extremely capable, and has a small footprint. I love all those things about my single-board computers, but my favorite feature is one that I don’t hear talked about nearly often enough.

TL;DR: Outsource your note-taking with a lifetime subscription to My Notes AI Pro Plan, on sale now for $27.97 (reg. $299) through Jan. 25.

Opens in a new window Credit: My Notes AI My Notes AI Pro Plan: Lifetime Subscription - AI Note Transcriber & Summarizer $27.97
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Still writing everything down with a paper and pen? It’s time to embrace the power of artificial intelligence and let My Notes AI Pro Plan bring you into this century. This powerful, AI-powered app not only takes your notes but also summarizes them for you. And right now, a lifetime subscription can be yours for only $27.97 (reg. $299) until Jan. 25.

If you want to feel like you’re living in the future, let My Notes AI serve as your personal note-taking assistant. This app captures, organizes, and enhances your notes, transcribing and summarizing everything from Zoom meetings to live lectures to audio files.

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Gone are the days of second-guessing your own handwriting. My Notes AI takes the notes and then summarizes them for you — even providing outlines of actionable next steps to save you time and energy.

The app sorts your notes by topic, date, or project, making it easy to rediscover them later. If you need to share your notes, it’s easy to export any transcriptions and send them to others.

My Notes AI works with Apple devices, so you can use it on your iPhone, iPad, or MacBook. An easy-to-use interface makes it straightforward to work with, and once you’re savvy, you can unlock premium features like unlimited transcriptions, instant AI summaries, and meeting recordings.

Get a lifetime subscription to My Notes AI Pro for just $27.97 (reg. $299) now through Jan. 25.

StackSocial prices subject to change.

True crime might be Netflix's most consistent genre in terms of hit rate. True-crime documentaries, including The Perfect Neighbor and Amy Bradley Is Missing, dominated the Netflix algorithm last year. The sentiment also includes scripted true crime, and Suitcase Killer: The Melanie McGuire Story is the latest hit for the streamer.

The rollout of ChatGPT age prediction is now underway, according to an announcement OpenAI made Tuesday.

Last fall, the company indicated it would introduce age prediction as a safety measure for teens. OpenAI has been sued by parents of teens who died by suicide after ChatGPT allegedly coached them to end their lives or didn't respond appropriately to their discussions of psychological distress. OpenAI has denied the allegations in the first of those lawsuits.

In December, the company introduced an update to its Model Spec, which guides how its AI models should behave. The update focused on principles for responding to under-18 users in high-stakes situations.

SEE ALSO: OpenAI says its mystery AI wearable is on track for 2026 as AI earbuds rumors spread

The details made public on Tuesday explain that age prediction will launch on consumer plans.

ChatGPT's age prediction model estimates a user's age based on behavior and signals from their account, like when the person is active during the day, long-term usage patterns, how long the account has existed, and the user's stated age.

If the user's age is assessed as under-18, their account should not be exposed to graphic violence, depictions of self-harm, and sexual, romantic, or violent role play, among other types of potentially harmful content.

Teens who tell OpenAI they're under 18 upon opening a ChatGPT account are automatically subject to such safeguards. If OpenAI isn't confident about a user's age, their account will default to safer settings.

OpenAI said that adult users whose accounts are mistakenly placed in the under-18 experience can confirm their age by submitting a selfie to Persona, a third-party identity verification service. OpenAI did not provide additional information about how ID documents would be retained. In Oct. 2025, a third-party vendor used by the messaging platform Discord was breached, exposing upwards of 70,000 government IDs.

OpenAI said it planned to improve age-prediction accuracy and make further improvements based on observations from the initial rollout.

A FlexJobs survey in August 2025 found that even though most employees have paid time off, almost one-quarter didn’t take a single vacation day. Meanwhile, our inboxes can often feel like a mess, as the average person receives over 100 e-mails a day.

Only a couple weeks removed from seeing a bunch of weird robots at CES, scientists have unveiled a new innovation in the world of creepy robotics — the detachable crawling robotic hand.

Of course, one person's creepy is another person's awesome, and it's an impressive little bot that invites an instant comparison to Thing, the sentient, crawling hand from The Addams Family.

As published in Nature Communications, a group of scientists, and first author Xiao Gao, recently unveiled the new type of robotic hand. Videos published alongside the paper show how the hand can detach itself from its arm and use its fingers to crawl around like a spider.

The detachable robot isn't constrained by the limitations of the human hand. While its six fingers aren't too far off from the five digits on our own hands, everything else about this little creepy crawler is pretty divergent. For instance, the fingers can bend backwards as well as they bend forwards, so the robot can hold objects against both sides of its base (or palm, if you want to map it to human anatomy) at the same time. It's even capable of carrying small objects on its back (or belly) while it does so, using its free fingers for locomotion.

Obviously, these features would be most useful in industrial settings, but maybe someday robots like this will find their way into regular people's homes, too.

2026's television slate has no shortage of familiar faces returning to our screens. Not only will series such as Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Boys take us back to fantastical realms, but grounded series like The Pitt will return to shine a light on the struggles that the real heroes in our world face.

If you’re after a car that won’t leave you stranded and won’t guzzle gas, this Toyota hybrid has you covered.

Fast charging is an equally complex and fascinating technology that allows phones to draw much higher levels of power for quicker battery top-ups. What many people don’t realize is that it relies on constant communication between the phone and the charger, and when that communication breaks down, charging falls back to much slower speeds.

Audiobooks are a great way to “read” when you’re not able to read for real. However, if you switch between audio and text, you know how annoying it can be to sync your progress—especially across different mediums. Spotify is working on a clever solution.

What started as a compromise eventually led to a new preference for me. I had always thought I needed 18V tools for DIY projects around the house, but I was sorely mistaken. Here’s why my Milwaukee M12 tools are more than enough for DIY projects around the house, and how they became my go-to tools for everything.

A developer has submitted draft code to the KDE team that could turn the Plasma desktop environment into a fully functional 3D VR interface. This is a huge move for Linux desktop users who want to ditch flat screens and jump into immersive computing.

TerraMaster is best known for its network attached storage (NAS) devices, but the company also makes some external storage enclosures. TerraMaster has now revealed the D1 SSD Pro, which turns any NVMe SSD into a super-fast Thunderbolt 5 external drive.

The end of Yellowstone left a gaping hole in the hearts of viewers everywhere. As that hole has grown, so, too, has the search for the perfect series to fill the void. Luckily, I’ve got that answer—and no, it’s not Longmire. Instead, we're going completely unorthodox and trading horses for Harleys and cowboys for outlaw bikers.

TL;DR: Live stream Tottenham vs. Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League for free on Virgin Media Player. Access this free streaming platform from anywhere in the world with ExpressVPN.

The Champions League knockout rounds are fast approaching. Tottenham face off against Borussia Dortmund in the seventh round of group stage games, with both teams still very much in the qualification picture. Both sides are sat on 11 points after six games, and could jump into the top eight with three points. The prospect of avoiding an extra two games in the playoffs should be plenty of motivation here.

Dortmund face Inter in their final group stage game. Tottenham take on Eintracht Frankfurt. Neither final group stage game is going to be easy, so this matchup takes on greater significance in the race to avoid the playoffs.

If you want to watch Tottenham vs. Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League from anywhere in the world, we have all the information you need.

When is Tottenham vs. Borussia Dortmund?

Tottenham vs. Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League kicks off at 8 p.m. GMT on Jan. 20. This fixture takes place at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

How to watch Tottenham vs. Borussia Dortmund for free

Tottenham vs. Borussia Dortmund is available to live stream for free on Virgin Media Player.

Virgin Media Player is geo-restricted to Ireland, but anyone can access this free streaming platform with a VPN. These tools can hide your real IP address (digital location) and connect you to a secure server in Ireland, meaning you can unblock Virgin Media Player to stream the Champions League for free from anywhere in the world.

Live stream Tottenham vs. Borussia Dortmund for free by following these simple steps:

1. Subscribe to a streaming-friendly VPN (like ExpressVPN)

2. Download the app to your device of choice (the best VPNs have apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, and more)

3. Open up the app and connect to a server in Ireland

4. Visit Virgin Media Player

5. Watch Tottenham vs. Borussia Dortmund for free from anywhere in the world

Opens in a new window Credit: ExpressVPN ExpressVPN (1-Month Plan) $12.95 only at ExpressVPN (with money-back guarantee) Get Deal

The best VPNs for streaming are not free, but most do offer free-trials or money-back guarantees. By leveraging these offers, you can access free live streams of the Champions League without actually spending anything. This obviously isn't a long-term solution, but it does give you enough time to stream Tottenham vs. Borussia Dortmund (plus more Champions League fixtures) before recovering your investment.

What is the best VPN for Virgin Media Player?

ExpressVPN is the best choice for bypassing geo-restrictions to stream live sport on Virgin Media Player, for a number of reasons:

• Servers in 105 countries including Ireland

• Easy-to-use app available on all major devices including iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, and more

• Strict no-logging policy so your data is secure

• Fast connection speeds free from throttling

• Up to 10 simultaneous connections

• 30-day money-back guarantee

A one-year subscription to ExpressVPN is on sale for $99.95 and includes an extra three months for free — 49% off for a limited time. This plan includes a year of free unlimited cloud backup and a generous 30-day money-back guarantee. Alternatively, you can get a one-month plan for just $12.95 (with money-back guarantee).

Live stream Tottenham vs. Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League for free with ExpressVPN.

TL;DR: Live stream Inter Milan vs. Arsenal in the Champions League for free with a 30-day trial of Amazon Prime. Access this free live stream from anywhere in the world with ExpressVPN.

The Champions League is back with another batch of huge fixtures involving Europe's elite. Inter Milan take on Arsenal in one of the best games of the round. Arsenal have won every group stage game so far and sit on top of the standings. Inter aren't too far back, and will be looking to safeguard their place in the top eight with a victory at home.

Inter will take on Dortmund in their final group stage game next week. That's considerably tougher than Arsenal's final game against Kairat. Will Arsenal rest players in this matchup? With a stacked schedule over the next few weeks, it's a strong possibility.

If you want to watch Inter Milan vs. Arsenal in the Champions League for free from anywhere in the world, we have all the information you need.

When is Inter Milan vs. Arsenal?

Inter Milan vs. Arsenal in the Champions League kicks off at 8 p.m. GMT on Jan. 20. This fixture takes place at the San Siro.

How to watch Inter Milan vs. Arsenal for free

Inter Milan vs. Arsenal in the Champions League is available to live stream on Prime Video in the UK, but you don't need to be subscribed to Amazon Prime to watch this fixture. Instead, you can watch Inter Milan vs. Arsenal for free with a 30-day trial of Amazon Prime.

If you're abroad for this fixture, you might need to use a VPN to watch the Champions League for free on Prime Video. This process is straightforward:

1. Sign up for a 30-day Amazon Prime trial (if you're not already a member)

2. Subscribe to a streaming-friendly VPN (like ExpressVPN)

3. Download the app to your device of choice (the best VPNs have apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, and more)

4. Open up the app and connect to a server in the UK

5. Live stream Inter Milan vs. Arsenal for free on Prime Video

Opens in a new window Credit: ExpressVPN ExpressVPN (1-Month Plan) $12.95 only at ExpressVPN (with money-back guarantee) Get Deal

The best VPNs for streaming are not free, but most do offer free-trials or money-back guarantees. By leveraging these offers, you can watch Inter Milan vs. Arsenal on Prime Video without committing with your cash. This isn't a long-term solution, but it does give you enough time to stream select Champions League fixtures before recovering your investment.

What is the best VPN for Prime Video?

ExpressVPN is the best choice for bypassing geo-restrictions to stream live sport on Prime Video, for a number of reasons:

• Servers in 105 countries including the UK

• Easy-to-use app available on all major devices including iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, and more

• Strict no-logging policy so your data is secure

• Fast connection speeds free from throttling

• Up to 10 simultaneous connections

• 30-day money-back guarantee

A one-year subscription to ExpressVPN is on sale for $99.95 and includes an extra three months for free — 49% off for a limited time. This plan also includes a year of free unlimited cloud backup and a generous 30-day money-back guarantee. Alternatively, you can get a one-month plan for $12.95 (with money-back guarantee).

Stream Inter Milan vs. Arsenal in the Champions League for free with ExpressVPN.

SAVE $1,500: The 55-inch Samsung Odyssey Ark 4K curved gaming monitor is on sale at Woot for $1,199.99, down from the list price of $2,699.99. That's a 56% discount and better sale price than we've ever seen at Amazon.

Opens in a new window Credit: Samsung 55-inch Samsung Odyssey Ark 4K curved gaming monitor $1,199.99 at Woot
$2,699.99 Save $1,500.00   Get Deal

Anyone who spends a decent amount of time gaming understands the importance of a solid gaming monitor. Some models can actually be the death of you, both in terms of frustration from a poor display and lag that causes your character to die in-game. If you're in the mood for a major "treat yourself" moment and you want a first-class gaming monitor, check out this limited-time deal.

As of Jan. 20, the 55-inch Samsung Odyssey Ark 4K curved gaming monitor is on sale for $1,199.99 at Woot, marked down from the list price of $2,699.99. That's a major 56% discount that takes $1,500 off the normal price. This sale beats the lowest we've ever seen at Amazon. Prime members get free shipping at Woot.

If you're looking for a mega sized gaming monitor with premium stats, this is your deal. Samsung consistently makes some of the best curved gaming monitors and today's deal on the giant 55-inch Ark 2nd Gen is a steal. The 1000R curve will bring a new experience to every game you play or show you stream on the monitor. With this size, you might not even want to use your TV anymore.

SEE ALSO: The giant 49-inch Samsung Odyssey OLED G9 curved gaming monitor is within $2 of a record-low price at Amazon

Of course, you're in line for ideal gaming stats like a 165Hz refresh rate and 1ms response time. Adjust into cockpit mode to take off on epic gaming adventures this winter. Samsung also equipped this monitor with four corner speakers and two central woofers.

Keep in mind Woot deals tend to sell out in an instant, so hop on this one if you're in the mood for a major treat. Amazon is selling this model at its full price of $2,699.99, so snagging this Woot deal is the way to go. Plus, you'll get free shipping if you sign into your Amazon Prime account at Woot.

Finding a performance sedan that’s thrilling on the road and dependable enough to handle hundreds of thousands of miles is rare, but one model manages both with surprising ease. While many sporty four-doors sacrifice reliability for speed or focus on short-term thrills, this performance-oriented sedan combines engaging driving dynamics with real-world durability you can count on year after year. For drivers who want the best of both worlds, excitement and long-term usability, it stands out in a crowded segment.

You should perhaps double-check the apps you use — especially if you're into AI.

A new project called Firehound from security firm CovertLabs tracks the apps that leak the most data, and the Top 10 was rife with AI apps. Here's a screenshot of the data from Firehound's website.

Lots of AI. Credit: Screenshot: Firehound

As you can see, the Top 10 list from Firehound has lots of AI apps. The project claims all kinds of data, from email addresses, to chat history, to names were left accessible by apps. One would hope that apps would work to fix such vulnerabilities moving forward, should they exist.

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Moving forward, it's probably best for users to tread carefully when downloading an app. It's worth stopping to think if it's a trustworthy product. And, of course, it's probably worth being cautious when sharing personal or professional information with an AI chatbot. You never know if it'll become public.