IT General

When an Apple product reaches a certain age, Apple renders it either “vintage” or “obsolete.” For people still toting around a second-gen Apple Watch, your time has come. Apple put the Series 1 models on its obsolete list, which means the company has run out of parts and the watch is no longer serviceable. 

It joins the Series 2, the other half of the second generation of Apple Watches, which was added to the obsolete list last year. 

It can be a bit confusing. The Apple Watch Series 1 and the Apple Watch Series 2 are both considered the same generation. Back in the good old days, the original Apple Watch didn’t have an official Series designation. Thus, when the Series 1 launched in 2016, the original Apple Watch was retroactively referred to as Series 0. The Series 2 was also launched in 2016 alongside the Series 1, so both are considered second-generation products from Apple. 

Apple stopped selling the Series 2 when the Series 3 came out, but left the Apple Watch Series 1 on sale for another year as a low-cost option alongside the Series 3. Thus, the Series 2 went to the vintage and obsolete lists a year before the Series 1. The good news is that the whole second generation is now on the obsolete list, so the confusion ends today. Moving forward, each Series is its own generation, starting with Series 3. 

The way Apple’s product life works is fairly predictable. Apple releases a product, sells it for a while, and then stops when a newer product comes out. After five to seven years (depending on the product), Apple puts the product on the vintage list. This means Apple has ceased making new parts that the company can use to repair broken devices. However, Apple and Apple Authorized Service Providers (AASPs) can still repair the devices as long as they still have the parts to do it.

Once Apple runs out of parts, the product winds up on the obsolete list and can no longer be repaired through Apple. 

Since parts can come and go at varying intervals, that likely explains why the Apple Watch Series 4 is already on the obsolete list, despite being a couple of years younger than the Series 1 or Series 2. 

If you own an Apple Watch Series 1, it simply means that you can no longer get the watch repaired through Apple. Third-party repair shops may be able to repair the watch, but they won’t have access to official Apple parts to do it. In short, it means that it’s probably finally time to upgrade your aging watch. We hear the Apple Watch Series 10 is pretty good. 

Routers are usually set up once or twice and then they sit in a corner somewhere until a setting needs to be changed, or the router gets replaced. However, they're mini computers capable of doing far more than we normally use them for. Here are a few good ones to try.

You may have noticed some webpages you own take 10+ seconds to load—you're not alone. Slow webpages cause higher bounce rates, and that's bad. Modern tooling and conventional techniques are the culprit. Fortunately, with a little knowledge and smart strategy, you can easily overcome this common problem.

It’s hard enough getting into the content creator space without the platform you’re on putting up restrictions. However, Instagram is now the latest social media app to institute such a restriction — forcing people to have at least 1,000 followers before they go live on the site. Previously, Instagram let anyone go live, regardless of account status. 

The news first started circulating after smaller creators posted the notice on other social media channels. 

The notice reads, "Your account is no longer eligible for Live. We changed the requirements to use this feature. Only public accounts with 1,000 followers or more will be able to create live videos."

TechCrunch followed up with Instagram and confirmed that the social network giant made this change intentionally. As expected, small creators aren’t fans of the change, and it’s been mostly maligned across all of social media. Creators with private accounts won’t be able to go live at all, even if the account has over 1,000 followers. Instagram says the change was made to “improve the overall Live consumption experience.”

There are pros and cons to the decision, as TechCrunch notes. On the one hand, small creators will have an even harder time breaking out into the segment than they already do, as accumulating followers without buying them can be a long and painstaking process. By contrast, Instagram likely removed a lot of low-quality streams this way that only have a couple of viewers each, which makes it easier to find better live content while also saving Meta money. 

This change brings Instagram more in line with TikTok’s live streaming rules. However, the number of followers you need on TikTok can vary, with plenty of people getting access long before they reach 1,000 subscribers. As of this writing, Facebook’s Help Center says that going live on Facebook only requires a 60-day-old account and at least 100 followers. YouTube still allows users to go live after just 50 followers, while Twitch remains the easiest to get started with a 0 follower limit. 

Lovense is well-known for its selection of remote-controlled vibrators. It’s slightly less known for a massive security issue that exposed user emails and allowed accounts to be wholly taken over by a hacker without even needing a password. Fortunately, both issues have been fixed, but it didn’t happen without some drama. 

As the story goes, security researcher BobDaHacker (with some help) accidentally found out that you could uncover a user’s email address pretty easily by muting someone in the app. From there, they were able to figure out that you could do this with any user account, effectively exposing every Lovense user’s email without much effort. 

With the email in hand, it was then possible to generate a valid gtoken without a password, giving a hacker total access to a person’s Lovense account with no password necessary. The researchers told Lovense of the issue in late March and were told that fixes were incoming. 

In June 2025, Lovense told the researchers that the fix would take 14 months to implement because it did not want to force legacy users to upgrade the app. Partial fixes were implemented over time, only partially fixing the problems. On July 28, the researchers posted an update showing that Lovense was still leaking emails and had exposed over 11 million user accounts. 

"We could have easily harvested emails from any public username list," BobDaHacker said in a blog post. "This is especially bad for cam models who share their usernames publicly but obviously don't want their personal emails exposed."

It was around then that the news started making its way around the news cycle. Other researchers began reaching out to show that the exploit had actually been known as far back as 2022, and Lovense had closed the issue without issuing a fix. After two more days in the news cycle, the sex toy company finally rolled out fixes for both exploits on July 30. 

It’s not Lovense’s first roll in the mud. In 2017, the company was caught with its proverbial pants down after its app was shown to be recording users while they were using the app and toy. Lovense fixed that issue as well, stating that the audio data was never sent to their servers.

Since computers became accessible to regular people, building custom versions that live up to your expectations has been a hobby. It's a lot like customizing your own car. But if it's your first time doing this, there are a few things you need to watch out for.

Hybrids have been flying off the lots for the past five years, especially as gas prices kept climbing, and EV sales hit some bumps. Drivers and automakers quickly saw that adding a hybrid option to a popular model made it even more appealing—hybrid sales took off.

As new programmers, we've all made mistakes. But some mistakes are bound to happen due to not knowing the nature of a programming language. So I've compiled some of the most common mistakes you might make while programming in Python.

The Windows desktop is iconic. Some of the backgrounds, the green rolling hills featured in Windows XP, have even become a bit of a meme. However, I do one thing very differently: I have completely removed all desktop icons from my desktop.

Sony and Marvel have revealed a fresh look for Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, and it’s a return to basics. In a very short 22-second teaser, fans got a decent look at Spidey’s new suit, which leans heavily into the classic comic design.

Gone is the ultra-slick Stark Suit, the high-tech armor gifted by Tony Stark, which Holland’s Peter Parker wore in three solo films and multiple Avengers crossovers.

Spoilers for 2021’s No Way Home:

By the film’s end, Peter’s high-tech suit is wrecked — and so is everything else. It's a brutal reset that leaves Peter truly alone and stripped of all the Stark tech that powered his previous adventures. This mirrors the more grounded, scrappy origins many fans felt had been missing from the MCU’s version of the character.

The closing shot in No Way Home is of a homemade suit — vibrant, hand-sewn, and all Peter — and signaled a fresh start. Now, with Brand New Day on the horizon, we’re finally seeing that suit in action. And yeah — it looks great. Here’s hoping the movie lives up to it.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day swings into theaters July 31, 2026, with Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton at the helm.

Reddit, like nearly every major tech company right now, is going all-in on AI, and its next big bet is transforming itself into a full-blown search engine.

That’s straight from Reddit CEO Steve Huffman. According to TechCrunch, Huffman told investors during the company’s latest earnings call on Thursday: "Reddit is one of the few platforms positioned to become a true search destination. We offer something special — a breadth of conversations and knowledge you can’t find anywhere else."

He’s not wrong. For years, internet users have added "reddit" to the end of their Google searches to filter past SEO sludge and find real human answers. The habit became so widespread that Google eventually baked Reddit content directly into its search results.

But Reddit doesn’t want to be drowned out by Google’s AI search push — it wants to be the answer. Like Meta, OpenAI, and Microsoft, the company is focusing on "its own" AI-driven search experience. That effort centers around the website's search function and Reddit Answers, an AI-assisted tool that is powered by Gemini AI, according to Google.

Reddit Answers, which now serves 6 million users and is being tested in a dozen countries, functions much like ChatGPT, offering conversational, in-depth responses to user queries by pulling from the platform’s massive archive of discussions. Instead of simply returning links or posts, it aims to synthesize answers in a more natural, AI-driven format.

The company plans to combine Reddit Answers with its core search function and redesign the app so the search bar takes center stage. According to Huffman, global expansion is on the way.

"We’re unifying those [Reddit Search and Reddit Answers] into a single search experience, and we’re gonna bring that front and center in the app," Huffman said in the call.

It’s all part of Reddit’s broader push to consolidate its user base and keep people on the platform, while also turning a solid profit. In Q2, the company reported a massive 78 percent revenue jump year-over-year, pulling in $500 million.

Have you noticed how cluttered and obnoxious the web is at times? For example, cookie banners and blinding white themes are a constant barrage of annoyance and distraction. Thankfully, modern web extensions solve many of those problems, but there are a few essentials that I can't live without.

UPDATE: Aug. 3, 2025, 8:28 a.m. This article has been updated to correct inaccuracies about the total amount Tesla was ordered to pay in the court ruling.

A Florida jury has found Tesla partially liable in a fatal crash involving its Autopilot system, ordering the Elon Musk-owned company to pay over $240 million in damages. The verdict marks a major legal blow for Tesla and a significant moment in the broader debate over the safety of autonomous driving technology.

A federal judge in Miami has ordered Tesla to pay $42.5 million — roughly 33 percent of the $129 million in compensatory damages — along with an additional $200 million in punitive damages to the estate of Naibel Benavides Leon and her former partner, Dillon Angulo. In a statement emailed to Mashable, Tesla said it plans to appeal the ruling.

“Today’s verdict is wrong,” the company said. “It only serves to set back automotive safety and jeopardizes not just Tesla’s efforts, but the entire industry’s work to develop life-saving technology. We plan to appeal due to substantial legal errors and irregularities during the trial.”

Tesla also argued that, under Florida law governing product liability cases, punitive damages should be capped at three times the compensatory award (In this case, Tesla would pay 127.5 million instead of $200 million). That would reduce Tesla’s maximum payout to $170 million, not the $243 million currently on the table. The company said it’s confident “the punitive damage award at a minimum, and likely this whole verdict, will be overturned by the appellate court.”

According to the Associated Press, the plaintiffs argue that the punitive damages were calculated based on a multiple of the total compensatory damages, not just Tesla’s share. As a result, they maintain that the full amount awarded by the jury is valid and enforceable.

This is the first case in which Tesla has been held responsible for a wrongful death as a result of its Autopilot technology, according to a Reuters expert. That said, Tesla’s driver-assist software has been linked to hundreds of crashes, enough to warrant its own Wikipedia page.

The lawsuit stemmed from a 2019 incident in which a Tesla Model S driver, reportedly not paying attention while Autopilot was engaged, blew through a stop sign and red light before slamming into a parked Chevrolet Tahoe. Naibel Benavides Leon was standing next to the SUV at the time and was killed. Her former boyfriend, Dillon Angulo, survived with injuries.

"Today’s verdict represents justice for Naibel’s tragic death and Dillon’s lifelong injuries," Brett Schreiber, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in a statement to the Wall Street Journal. "Tesla designed Autopilot only for controlled-access highways yet deliberately chose not to restrict drivers from using it elsewhere, alongside Elon Musk telling the world Autopilot drove better than humans."

The ruling is a significant blow to Musk and Tesla, coming at a time when the billionaire is aggressively pushing to expand the company’s robotaxi initiative. As Musk works to convince investors and the public that Tesla can lead the future of autonomous driving, a $329 million verdict tied to its Autopilot system raises serious questions about the safety and legal risk of that vision and could open the company up to more Autopilot-related lawsuits in the future.

When Valve released the Steam Deck gaming handheld, the comparisons to the Nintendo Switch were unavoidable, and the release of the Nintendo Switch 2 has reignited those discussions. I’m here to tell you that the Steam Deck is not a better Switch or Switch 2, because they aren’t really doing the same thing.

In a segment dominated by European and Japanese brands, one American luxury SUV quietly delivers style, comfort, and technology that rivals the best. Often overlooked, it’s a hidden gem for buyers seeking upscale refinement without the usual luxury price tag.

Another week in the Android world is behind us, and this one was just as eventful as any other. Both Chrome and Firefox for Android received some privacy-focused updates, it's looking like the Pixel 10 is finally going to get a highly-requested feature, and One UI 8 continues to roll out.

We navigate most modern phones entirely by swiping our fingers across their displays—but in Android’s early days, all phones came with buttons under the screen. One of these once prominent keys has utterly disappeared, its role no longer a core part of how we navigate our phones.

Before streaming, entertainment was all about finding the right thing to watch on TV. And nothing brought the entire family together like a sitcom with great characters and lighthearted humor.

Looking forward to the second season of a particularly famous Netflix show, or craving something new and fresh? Netflix will have you spoiled with its new and upcoming releases for August. Whether you're a thriller fan or a laid-back sitcom lover, there's something for everyone this month.

Are you confused by the hundreds of Linux distributions out there? Do you want to know how they compare to and differ from one another so you can make a better decision? Well, I just tested 10 of the most popular Linux distros, and here's my personal ranking of all of them!