IT General

Netflix often dominates the water cooler discussion with its TV shows like Stranger Things and Wednesday, but the service also has plenty of great films, both original and licensed, that you shouldn't overlook.

There isn't much to think about when buying a mouse, but one of the most important aspects is one you can't tell by glancing at the box—how it sounds.

Many online services are having reliability issues today, or have fully gone down, due to an outage with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Snapchat, the Alexa voice assistant, Reddit, Asana, IMDb, and many others are affected.

I spent years writing everything in Microsoft Word. But over time, its cluttered interface, messy formatting, and sluggish performance began to distract me from what truly matters—writing. That’s when I tried Markdown. Its clean, distraction-free approach won me over—and I haven’t looked back since.

When your PC is sluggish, adjusting a few settings can help. If you don't know what's under the hood of the Windows 11 OS, I’m sharing some tips that work. These hidden Windows 11 settings give PCs an instant speed boost with minimal effort.

More than a decade after its initial launch, the original Pebble app is now re-listed on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. It's compatible with all models of the Pebble smartwatch, including the new Pebble 2 Duo and Pebble Time 2.

Excited for Stranger Things Season 5, but don't have time for a full rewatch? Don't worry: The Stranger Things cast is here to help.

SEE ALSO: 'Stranger Things 5' teaser: We're in for a traumatic final season, aren't we?

In the lead-up to the release of Season 5, Netflix has released videos of Stranger Things' cast reacting to the biggest moments from prior seasons. This week, it's Season 3's turn, meaning Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, and more are turning back time to the summer of 1985. The Starcourt Mall has opened, Robin (Maya Hawke) has joined the cast, and the Mindflayer is about to rain down carnage on Hawkins.

Check out the full video above to see the cast's full reactions to Stranger Things Season 3. Highlights include Joe Keery reliving the Steve and Robin bathroom scene, and Gaten Matarazzo rewatching Dustin's standout performance of "The NeverEnding Story."

"It feels like it was designed fully to fuck with me," he laughs. And Stranger Things audiences are grateful for it!

Volume 1 of Stranger Things 5 premieres Nov. 26 at 8 p.m. ET on Netflix. Volume 2 premieres Dec. 26, and the series finale premieres Dec. 31.

Hybrid cars are having a serious moment in the U.S. right now. With gas prices showing no signs of easing up, more drivers are realizing hybrids hit the sweet spot between efficiency and practicality.

The developers of Jellyfin announced the full release of Jellyfin server version 10.11.0 on Sunday, October 19. The major update brings several improvements for the self-hosted media streaming platform I'm excited to see, including a system backup and a startup interface for administrators.

DigiKam, KDE's popular open source photo and image manager, just hit version 8.8.0. It brings a fantastic new tool that lets you easily blur the background or subject in a photo. This update, code-named "Eclipse," also packs a ton of other improvements you'll want to check out.

Meta's most futuristic device is here, and critics have some thoughts about it.

The $800 Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, which have a built-in display for the first time in Meta's brief history of making techno-glasses, are now available. As such, plenty of people who review this stuff for a living have had some time with the glasses, giving us a bunch of well-informed reviews to look at.

What are critics saying about the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses? Keep reading to find out.

Meta Ray-Ban Display review roundup

The overall vibes seem positive, but that's not to say there aren't major criticisms to be found here.

Critics like the display, mostly

Obviously, the big reason to buy these glasses over the cheaper Gen 2 Meta Ray-Ban glasses is that the Display has, well, a display built into the right lens. You can use them as a viewfinder for taking photos, a language translation tool, a way to read and respond to text messages, or anything else that the Meta app store (which reviewers didn't really have access to) will enable over time.

The good news is that, per reviewers, this works pretty well. Victoria Song at The Verge spoke highly of the ability to offer live text captions for anything someone says to you. While it doesn't work as well in very noisy environments or when someone is talking to you from out of your line of sight, Song said it's still a strong selling point.

"Even so, it’s a scenario that feels magical when all the pieces fall into place," Song wrote. "When I show the feature to my in-laws, their jaws drop. Immediately, their minds go to relatives who are hard of hearing who might benefit."

Tech Fowler, a tech review channel on YouTube, also spoke highly of the display overall, especially the ability to use it as a camera viewfinder for taking photos. The other Meta glasses simply can't do that, so anyone who works in content creation should highly consider these ones instead, according to Tech Fowler. However, that review did mention one particular issue that could be an annoyance for some users.

"To be honest with you, because it's only in one eye, it does take a little bit of time to get used to," Tech Fowler's review said. "That's because I find that sometimes it feels a bit, I wouldn't say fuzzy, but I do get double vision a little bit. I'm only getting an image in one eye, my brain is kind of interlacing the images from both eyes together, and because of that, there is some shared vision in both eyes."

Battery life is a problem

Obviously, adding a display to any device is going to make battery life an even bigger priority. According to early reviews, battery life is not a strength of the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses.

Engadget's Karissa Bell noted that Meta rates the glasses for about six hours of use on a charge, but that's apparently a generous rating, depending on how much you use the display.

"With very limited use, l was able to stretch the battery to about seven hours, but if you're doing display-intensive tasks like video calling or live translation, it will die much, much more quickly," Bell wrote.

Nathie, another YouTube tech reviews channel, offered some slightly more damning specificity. According to that channel, the device ran out of juice after about 3.5 hours of use. It really seems like this is going to vary from person to person depending on how much use they get out of the display, but given that the display is such a major selling point with this device, it's worth pointing out that heavily using the display evidently kills the battery.

The frames are heavy and don't offer enough privacy

One thing that pretty much every review I found pointed out is that the frames, which come in at 69g of weight, are simply too chunky to be used as all-day-every-day glasses. Just listen to what Song had to say in her review.

"At 69g, these are also too heavy for daily all-day wear. My normal glasses with very thick lenses are 31g. I was fine wearing these for a few hours, but discomfort crept in after that," Song wrote. "A few times, I felt the telltale signs of a headache at the back of my head and nose bridge. The bottom of the frames also left indentations on my cheeks. I’m prone to dry eye, so needing to wear contacts with these every day has been deeply uncomfortable. Artificial tears help, but the combination of the weight, eye strain, and dry eye has been tough to navigate."

Tech Fowler also pointed out that the Ray-Ban Display frames weigh about twice as much as his regular glasses. This seems to be a pretty ubiquitous complaint. Song also pointed out that the LED light which is meant to signal to other people that the glasses are recording footage is too subtle to be noticed in some situations. Privacy is a huge concern for a device like this, as it was for Google Glass a decade ago. It doesn't seem like Meta has solved that particular issue yet.

The neural band works well Do you want to wear a wristband all day? Credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Meta's new glasses can be controlled via voice commands using Meta AI (the same as other Meta glasses), but since there's a display now, some finer control is warranted. That's where the wrist-worn neural band comes in. You slap it on your wrist, make sure it's charged up (apparently its battery can last a full day or so), and use hand gestures to navigate the UI. Critics were generally pretty kind to the neural band.

"In more than a week, it almost never missed a gesture, and it never falsely registered a gesture, despite my efforts to confuse it by fidgeting or rubbing my fingers together," Bell wrote at Engadget. "The gestures themselves are also pretty intuitive and don't take long to get used to: double tapping your thumb and middle fingers wakes up or puts the display to sleep, single taps of your index and middle fingers allow you to select an item or go back, and swiping your thumb along the side of your index finger lets you navigate around the display."

Critics also noted that there's a helpful little haptic vibration to let you know when it's registered a gesture, so there's no uncertainty there. Another big bonus is that you don't need to have your hands in view of the camera for these gestures to work, unlike some other XR devices.

These are for early adopters right now

In general, these reviewers came across as fairly positive on the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses. They mostly work as intended, despite poor battery life and the (at the time of reviewing) total lack of an app store, which is not an issue most consumers will have to worry about. However, there's still the matter of value. At $800, these cost as much as a good smartphone, while not offering nearly as much day-to-day usefulness. As such, multiple critics agreed that these glasses are really for early adopters right now.

"Unless you are an early adopter, you need to have the newest tech, or you really love one of the features in particular, I don't think these are worth it," Tech Fowler's review said. "I think $800 is a huge amount of money for something that doesn't do that much."

Nathie, our other featured YouTube reviewer, echoed the sentiment.

"Having used these for a week, it became clear to me that there are still many challenges that have to be tackled to go truly mainstream," Nathie's review said.

It sounds like the biggest steps for Meta going forward are going to be be making sure there's a robust selection of apps, improving battery life, and finding some kind of way to alleviate the privacy issue.

It looks like the rumored Samsung Galaxy S26 Pro is no more. According to a report from SamMobile, Samsung has decided against introducing a "Pro" rebrand for its next smartphone lineup. Instead, the company will stick with the standard S26 naming convention.

SEE ALSO: Everything we know about the Samsung Galaxy S26 (so far)

It’s a fairly unexciting move, but not a surprising one. Per the report, the "Pro" model would have been a marketing play rather than a meaningful hardware upgrade — an attempt to mirror Apple’s naming strategy with its iPhone Pro series. In other words, Samsung’s base model will keep its name, and its specs will stay in familiar territory.

That might be a bit disappointing for fans hoping for something new, especially since other Galaxy news has been underwhelming. Just last week, reports surfaced that Samsung is axing its Edge line after only one release — the S25 Edge, which debuted just five months ago in May. It’ll reportedly be replaced by the S26 Plus, and rumors suggest there won’t be any groundbreaking design changes beyond a refreshed camera bump.

Meanwhile, the S26 Ultra also seems poised for only minor updates, primarily a larger camera module. So, unless Samsung has a surprise up its sleeve, expect the 2026 Galaxy lineup to look familiar: a base model, a Plus, and an Ultra — and not much else.

You didn't properly back up your files, and suddenly everything goes poof. Trust me, you don't want to be there. It happened to me once when I decided I'd had enough of Microsoft OneDrive. Here's what you can do to prevent this disaster.

Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are some of the best features in newer cars, but if you've ever wanted to upgrade from a wired system to a wireless one, you were stuck with a few unreliable options. After a soft launch earlier this year, the AAwireless TWO+ is here, and it supports wireless CarPlay.

This month, over a dozen creators took the stage for a fashion show unlike any other. 

At this year's VidSummit, a YouTube and video marketing conference in Dallas, Texas, attendees expected to see panels on marketing, AI, and the all-knowing algorithm. But YouTubers in attendance also encountered a fashion show, complete with the usual: a runway, fingernail knives, and a four-legged Furby robot. 

SEE ALSO: Why is TwitchCon so uniquely unsafe for streamers?

The second Creators in Fashion event took place on October 9, elevating what creator advertising events could be. Influencers from all corners of the web, like the Try Guys, HopeScope, and Safiya Nygaard, strutted their own clothing lines while also engaging in wacky challenges. 

Creating a YouTube fashion show

Started last year by Theorists, a collective of four YouTube channels dissecting games, movies, food, and fashion, Creators in Fashion began as a way for influencers to express themselves and their brands in a way that isn't childish or unprofessional. 

Matthew Patrick (also known as MatPat), who started dissecting video game theories in 2011, is one of the founders behind Creators in Fashion. In 2024, he stepped down as the face of the Theorist channel to take on bigger projects that he expected could change the face of the creator economy — including what became this fashion show. 

"I'm realizing there are all these pain points, problems, or unique opportunities that I'm seeing that other people might not see," Patrick told Mashable in an interview. "Let me figure out those solutions to help the people coming up behind me, or the rest of the industry at large."

Creators are one of the driving forces behind our modern economy, so much so that they've engendered the "creator economy." Influencers are becoming household names, with grinning teeth selling us chocolate bars, energy drinks, caffeinated gum, and energy powder. And business is only expected to grow, with the influencer marketing industry expected to hit $470 billion by 2027, according to a 2023 creator economy report from Goldman Sachs. 

Glam Girl Gabi and MatPat at Creators in Fashion. Credit: Mariya Stangl Photo

Content creators are small businesses that require a steady stream of revenue, just like your average mom-and-pop shop or big box retailer. Relying on one platform or revenue stream is an incredibly risky gamble, and Patrick discovered that the only way to thrive was to find new ways to earn. "You want to diversify your revenue streams, because at the end of the day, a lot of your business is built on someone else's land," Patrick said. 

So, along with teaching Congress about the value of influencers with the Congressional Creators Caucus, Patrick and his team dreamed up new ways to help grow and maintain the creator economy. They built the first Creators in Fashion, a two-hour show that was mostly just a traditional runway, with models and influencers walking down the catwalk in everything from hoodies to chic couture. "The goal of the show has always been to introduce people who might not think style and fashion content is for them to ease that learning curve and make it accessible to a wider variety of people," Patrick said. 

The first year was a "proof of concept" according to Amy Roberts, the host of Style Theory and main founder of Creators in Fashion. "We had a lot of other things we wanted to do that we really couldn't execute on," she told Mashable. Creating a full-blown variety show with multiple sketches just wasn't possible with the amount of time and resources they had. 

The 2025 Creators in Fashion

This year, the Theorists and their parent company Lunar X wanted to go for something grander but more akin to a YouTube video. Segments that allowed creators to show off their skills cut through the fashion, including a four-person, three-minute makeup challenge competition and a cake decorating showdown. 

Though Mary Allyson, a cake decorating YouTuber with 1.8 million subscribers, lost her baking duel for failing to make anything but a cake border in the time limit, she was still thrilled to be included. Allyson told Mashable that she was connected with the event through VidSummit, and "when they told me that it would be kind of like a fashion show mixed with a variety show, I was all in." Allyson herself has not yet launched a line of merchandise, but is working "hard behind the scenes to drop something really fun next year."

For creators promoting their apparel lines, Creators in Fashion collaborated with YouTube to develop a new way for fans to purchase items they see. When a clothing line was shown off IRL, like the Try Guys' Lasagna Island collection, a link appeared directing viewers directly to the store. "YouTube Shopping wasn't really built to do that," Roberts said. "So we worked with YouTube Shopping to figure out how to link all these stores in the background so that we can tag them as if they were our own products." 

This year's show ended with a pure encapsulation of the magic that creators can produce with their own creativity and vigor. Evan and Katelyn showed off a dress made entirely of resin, Jessica Crafternoon slayed with hand-knitted dresses, and Estefannie literally shocked with a taser bracelet and nails made out of knives (the latter took 89 hours to make). 

Estefannie was one of the smaller creators on the show, sitting at around 90,000 subscribers on YouTube, but her feminist-first-focused tech was just as mesmerizing as anything else on that stage. "I met Amy at an event and we both bonded over wearing [activewear brand] POPFLEX," she said. "She asked what I did, and later that night stalked my content. That's how I got invited." 

When putting together Creators in Fashion, it was important for Patrick and the Theorists to include creators of all shapes and sizes, diversifying their stage beyond the 50 largest creators that are already selling at Target. Growing these days becomes difficult when platform discoverability is hindered with each new iteration of AI slop, and formulaic content ruins the magic of originality.  

"I think it's important to make sure it's balanced with up-and-coming creators who are doing good work, but don't necessarily have a mega-size platform or a huge megaphone to celebrate their work," Patrick said. "A platform like this is a huge opportunity for them, a great spotlight to shine, and it allows large creators to use their platform to kind of celebrate and curate the next generation of creators who are doing awesome stuff."

Creators in Fashion is a welcome passion project in an age where creators are dominating our economy but still not given the proper respect they deserve. Here's hoping that it gets the chance to strut again next year. 

UPDATE: Oct. 21, 2025, 1:39 p.m. EDT This article has been updated to correct Estefannie's name and Amy Roberts' position in founding Creators in Fashion.

Servo started as a project under Mozilla to create a next-generation browser engine, but now it's an independent project. Today marks the release of Servo 0.0.1, and you can try it out on your computer.

Data validation in Excel lets you restrict what can be entered into a cell, whether whole numbers, decimals, dates, or a certain number of characters. However, one of the most powerful capabilities of this tool is custom data validation, which lets you create a more specific rule using a formula.

Google and “privacy” don’t necessarily go hand in hand, but for a while, it seemed the company was attempting to be better about it. After years of delays and backtracking, the company is finally pulling the plug on its big advertising privacy project.

If you're looking for a new monitor but only use your computer for work, you’ll likely be overwhelmed by the many gaming monitor options. Your first instinct might be to avoid them, but I think you should do the opposite and actively consider one. Hear me out.

SAVE $40: The DJI Mic Mini (2 transmitters + 1 receiver) is on sale for just $79 at Amazon, down from the list price of $119. That's a 34% discount and the best discount we've ever spotted at Amazon.

Opens in a new window Credit: DJI DJI Mic Mini (2 transmitters + 1 receiver) $79 at Amazon
$119 Save $40   Get Deal

If you've always wondered what it would be like to dip a toe into the content creator pool, you probably know you'd want a few gadgets to get started. One of the essentials is a great mic so your viewers can hear you easily and you won't go nuts while editing. If you could use a creator-approved mic, check out this Amazon deal.

As of Oct. 20, the DJI Mic Mini with two transmitters and one receiver is on sale for only $79 at Amazon, marked down from the list price of $119. That shaves $40 off the normal price from a solid 34% discount. It's also the lowest price we've ever spotted at Amazon.

DJI is consistently a favorite brand among the creator scene and the brand's mics have become the go-to choice. Scroll through TikTok, YouTube, or Instagram reels and you'll see the tiny mics all over. Bethany Allard, Lead Shopping Reporter at Mashable, tested out the DJI Mic Mini and said, "If you need any degree of portability with your mic setup, the DJI Mic Mini offers a lot of versatility, and for a great value," she wrote in the review. "That makes it a solid option for making vlogs and TikToks, and for anyone who feels less than confident with their tech skills — once I plugged the receiver into my phone, the mics connected easily and started working with the camera app automatically."

Allard tested the model that comes with a charging case, which could be ideal for longer content creating sessions. That model is also on sale today, coming in at $99 instead of the list price of $169 which also make it a great discount.

SEE ALSO: Beat the ban: Get the DJI Mini 4K drone for its lowest-ever price at Amazon

The $79 sale version comes with plenty of great accessories, too, like a USB-C mobile phone adapter, two transmitter charging docks, two magnetic clips for the transmitters, and windscreens.

It's worth mentioning this deal is sold from a third-party at Amazon, and not Amazon itself. Mashable typically discourages buying from third-party sellers, but DJI is having a heck of a time selling products in the U.S. these day, so buying from a third-party tends to be the best option lately.

Before this deal expires, snag the creator-approve DJI Mic Mini and be on your way to joining the pros. It's sitting at the most affordable price we've ever seen at Amazon and this sale price is set to expire today.