IT General

When you read about Linux, you probably see a lot of talk about commands to use in the terminal. The command line can seem intimidating if you aren't used to it, which is understandable. But what if we told you you don't have to worry about that?

If you're shopping for some new headphones and need something that can block out noise, you'll encounter two styles: noise-canceling and noise-isolating headphones. While both aim to block out noise, they go about it in different ways. So, what sets the two apart, and which style should you get?

Modern 3D graphics on Linux usually work out of the box, but how can you ensure your drivers and hardware are working before your next gaming session? glxgears is a graphics demo that can help you test your graphics adapter.

Google is taking on part of the United States government in court.

Specifically, Google is suing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, per Reuters. The search engine company decided to take the federal consumer watchdog to court after the agency ordered supervision of Google Payment, the part of the company that handles, well, user payments. According to the CFPB, Google's payment services carry risks for consumers, such as possible fraud and mistaken transactions.

SEE ALSO: Google Pixel brings back popular camera features in new update

One angle worth noting is that Google actually shut down Google Pay earlier this year. That's seemingly central to Google's defense of its conduct here. According to the company's complaint, "a product that no longer exists is incapable of posing such risk." As such, Google doesn't feel supervision (which would be similar to what is performed for major banks and other financial institutions) is needed.

Despite this, the CFPB feels that Google's payment services could still pose a risk to customers, per TechCrunch. The CFPB is operating off of almost 300 customer complaints. Google may not have done anything wrong, but the CFPB clearly feels Google has done enough to warrant supervision, and Google isn't a fan of that.

It's also worth noting that all of this could go away as soon as Donald Trump takes office again in January, given his administration's public friendliness with major tech figures.

The Meta Quest 3 is an impressive package out of the box, but this powerhouse standalone mixed reality headset can be so much more if you pair it with the right accessories. Let's look at how you can upgrade your virtual experience.

Bluesky has been around for over a year now, with a massive influx of users in late 2024. But one notable feature that's missing is the ability to have a private account. As such, everyone's account is publicly accessible by anyone on Bluesky.

Reddit's controversial API changes in 2023 dealt a deadly blow to most third-party Reddit apps. While many beloved clients shut down, some survived by introducing paid subscriptions. But in this new era, are any worth your money?

The default settings in Microsoft Edge aren’t optimized for performance, privacy, or overall user experience. While some features are helpful, they can track your activity, consume system resources, and clutter the interface. For these reasons, here are some settings I always keep disabled in Microsoft Edge.

Twitter is considered the granddaddy of microblogging. But if you're looking for an alternative after recent changes at X, Instagram Threads might be a good alternative. While it might seem like a clone, it does a lot to differentiate itself.

After a week of absolutely insane headlines, Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update hosts Colin Jost and Michael Che had no shortage of material to dig into.

Leading the charge was the massive social media frenzy over the shooting of UHC CEO Brian Thomas — and, more specifically, how some factions of the internet can’t stop thirsting over the alleged shooter, who many are calling "kinda hot."

Other topics tackled by the duo included President Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter, Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth’s plea for confirmation (and his promise to quit drinking if approved), and how Sprint users should count their blessings as hacker group saltTyphoon targets every other cell carrier but them.

As a long-time Redditor, I've tried and tested various ways to experience the "front page of the internet." Desktop, mobile site, official mobile app, third-party apps, desktop version on mobile–you name it. So, when it comes to the best mobile experience, which one takes the cake?

Spotify Wrapped might have been a bit of a letdown this year — and maybe even a cry for help for some — but for Saturday Night Live host Paul Mescal, it served as the perfect musical backdrop.

SEE ALSO: 'SNL' re-imagines 'Gladiator II' as a musical

The Gladiator II star takes on the role of Myron, a guy who can’t wait to share his Spotify Wrapped with friends, convinced it’s a flawless reflection of his impeccable taste. His top artists? Kendrick Lamar, Sabrina Carpenter, and reigning supreme at number one: Satoshi Gutman (played by Bowen Yang).

Don’t know who that is? Well, you’re clearly uncultured and in need of an immediate music intervention. But if you must know, Gutman is an anti-instrumentalist sound guru hailing from Dundalk, Maryland. He even has a podcast, which Myron happens to be a top listener to, complete with a clip of Gutman interviewing none other than Trisha Paytas.

Iconic stuff.

X is going in even more on AI.

A new AI image generator called Aurora started rolling out for X users this weekend, per TechCrunch. Aurora is part of the Grok AI tab along the bottom of the X app, and can generate realistic images from written prompts. The weirdest part is that Aurora appears to have no guardrails around creating photo-realistic images of real people. I was able to create an image of the upcoming president-to-be covered in cheese, for example.

SEE ALSO: Apple's iOS 18.2 arrives soon: Here's 4 new features to be excited about

It won't do anything nude, but it'll do more than the average AI image generator because most mainstream ones will prevent users from including copyrighted works or real people in their prompts. X's Grok AI has had image creation capabilities for a while now, but Aurora appears to be a new creation engine from the previous one. It's also not clear where exactly it came from, who exactly made it, and what exactly it's been trained on. It's been reported in the past that the Grok chatbot trains off of user data, so it's possible Aurora does, too.

Try it if you want, or don't. The world is your oyster.

Paul Mescal hosting Saturday Night Live this week? You just knew they were going to take a stab at Gladiator II.

SEE ALSO: Paul Mescal valiantly battles the spice on 'Hot Ones'

Cue the faux trailer for Gladiator II: The Musical. Eager to cash in on the massive success of Wicked, the reimagining is a frantically reshot Gladiator II as a full-blown musical. Don’t worry, though, as the narrator reassures us: it’s still the same "violent, historical epic" you’ve been waiting for — just with an extra "50 minutes of songs."

The real MVP here? SNL’s Bowen Yang, who gets to flex the fact that he’s involved in both Wicked and this satirical mash-up. Go get that coin, king.

The Mini is a bite-sized version of The New York Times' revered daily crossword. While the crossword is a lengthier experience that requires both knowledge and patience to complete, The Mini is an entirely different vibe.

With only a handful of clues to answer, the daily puzzle doubles as a speed-running test for many who play it.

So, when a tricky clue disrupts a player's flow, it can be frustrating! If you find yourself stumped playing The Mini — much like with Wordle and Connections — we have you covered.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable

Here are the clues and answers to NYT's The Mini for Sunday, December 8, 2024:

AcrossWatering can feature

• The answer is Spout.

"A Bar Song (___)" (2024 #1 hit by Shaboozey)

• The answer is Tipsy.

Deplete, as a resource

• The answer is Use up.

Handrail in a ballet studio

• The answer is Barre

Fasteners that click

• The answer is Snap.

SEE ALSO: NYT Connections Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for December 8 DownIncomplete Wikipedia entries

• The answer is Stubs.

Italian resident near the Leaning Tower

• The answer is Pisan.

Mozart's "The Magic Flute," for one

• The answer is Opera.

Seize by force

• The answer is Usurp.

Uses a keyboard

• The answer is Types.

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Featured Video For You The Wordle Strategy used by the New York Times' Head of Games

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today's Strands.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to today's Mini Crossword.

The Hubble Space Telescope captured some weird, unidentified stuff in the most detailed photos ever taken of the immediate space surrounding a quasar. 

Quasars, a shortening of the term "quasi-stellar objects," are blindingly bright galaxy cores in the early universe. Though these extremely distant objects look like stars in the sky, they're the resulting light from feasting supermassive black holes. 

The telescope, a partnership between NASA and the European Space Agency, zoomed in on quasar 3C 273, about 2.5 billion light-years from Earth. What it saw in the quasar's midst was astounding and will prompt more research in the years to come.

"My colleagues are excited because they've never seen this much detail before," said Bin Ren, an astronomer at the Université Côte d'Azur in France, in a statement. 

SEE ALSO: NASA leader doubts Elon Musk will push Trump to axe moon rocket The Hubble Space Telescope took closeup images of quasar 3C 273. Credit: NASA / ESA / Bin Ren / Joseph DePasquale

Though "blobs" may not sound very scientific, that is exactly how Ren and the research team described what they observed in their paper, published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics earlier this year. Along with a variety of blobs, they spotted a mysterious L-shaped thing. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which runs Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope, announced the findings this week. 

So what could these things be? 

Scientists have suggested at least some of the objects could be small orbiting galaxies on the precipice of falling into the central black hole, which is what's powering the quasar. All of the objects were found within 16,000 light-years of the black hole. 

But that's just an educated guess. Astronomers may be able to better identify those weird things with follow-up observations by the Webb telescope, the leading space observatory that senses light at infrared wavelengths. 

Astronomers used a coronograph, an instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope, to blot out the blindingly bright light of the quasar so they could study its surroundings. Credit: NASA / ESA

Black holes are some of the most inscrutable phenomena in space. They don't have surfaces, like a planet or star. Instead, they have a boundary called an "event horizon," or a point of no return. If anything swoops too close, it will eventually fall in, never to escape the hole's gravitational clutch.

How supermassive black holes form is even more elusive. Astrophysicists believe these invisible giants lurk at the center of virtually all galaxies. Recent Hubble observations have bolstered the theory that they begin in the dusty cores of starburst galaxies, where new stars are rapidly assembled, but scientists are still teasing that out. 

Quasar 3C 273, which was the first of its kind discovered, is as luminous as 4 trillion suns or 100 times brighter than the entire Milky Way.

"For Hubble, staring into the quasar 3C 273 is like looking directly into a blinding car headlight and trying to see an ant crawling on the rim around it," according to the Space Telescope Science Institute. 

When astronomer Maarten Schmidt found it in 1963, it looked like a star but it was much too far away for a single star to have been the source. Scientists have since learned that quasars are relics of a much earlier time in the universe.  

The nearest quasars to Earth are still several hundred million light-years away, meaning they are observed now as they were hundreds of millions of years ago. That quasars aren't found closer to home is a clue they existed when the universe was much younger. 

Since Schmidt's discovery, many other quasars have been found. Scientists continue to study them because they provide insight into the evolution of the universe. 

A jet emerging from the quasar's supermassive black hole seems to be speeding up the farther it travels from the source. Credit: NASA / ESA / J. Olmsted illustration

In order to see the proverbial ant on a headlight, the research team used a Hubble instrument that blots out a light source, much like how a solar eclipse blocks the face of the sun with the moon, to reveal the quasar's surrounding environment. The so-called coronagraph allowed the scientists to look eight times closer around the black hole than ever before.

In addition to seeing mysterious blobs, the researchers got a better look at the 300,000 light-year-long jet of material emerging from the quasar. Their findings revealed something perhaps counterintuitive: The farther the jet got from the black hole, the faster it went. 

Connections is a game from the New York Times that challenges you to find the association between words. It sounds easy, but it isn't—Connections categories can be almost anything, and they're usually quite specific. If you need a hand getting the answers, we've got you covered.

TL;DR: Downsize with the NanoPhone, a dual-SIM smartphone about the size of a credit card, now $89.97 (reg. $199). Sale ends Dec. 8. 

Opens in a new window Credit: Mutant Design Lab NanoPhone $89.97
$199.99 Save $110.02 A Miniaturized Smartphone Packed with Mega Features Get Deal

Do you use every feature on your phone? All those advanced integrations and apps might seem neat at first, but they might not actually factor into how you use your phone. If you mostly use your phone to browse socials, keep in contact, take a few pictures, and stream, you might not need the latest and greatest and most expensive new phone. Maybe it's time to downsize, literally. 

The NanoPhone is a mini smartphone. It looks like an iPhone, runs Android, and it's about the size of a credit card. Don't worry, the price is also a whole lot smaller than some big-name phones. You can get a NanoPhone for $89.97 (reg. $199), but that price won't be around much longer. 

What can the NanoPhone do?

All the core functions of a smartphone are there, just miniaturized. You can download apps, browse, stream, and take pictures. There are even front and rear-facing cameras, but the phone itself is still absolutely tiny. If pocket space is at a premium, this is the way to go.

With Dual SIM card support, 4G connectivity, and WiFi capabilities, the NanoPhone makes sure you’re always connected, whether you’re on a road trip or navigating the urban jungle. Popular apps like WhatsApp and YouTube are preloaded, giving you a lightweight option for staying in touch or entertained without the bulk of a traditional smartphone.

The device is powered by Android 10, providing a familiar and user-friendly interface for those accustomed to modern tech. Its durable construction and impressive battery life make it a reliable companion for outdoor adventures, emergency situations, or simply cutting back on distractions in your daily life. 

Shipping is free

Don't miss your chance to get a NanoPhone on sale for $89.97. Sale ends December 8 at 11:59 p.m. PT. 

StackSocial prices subject to change. 

TL;DR: This Cyber Week price drop ends December 8 at 11:59 p.m. PT, and that's your last chance to get Windows 11 Pro for only $19.97 (reg. $199).

Let’s face it: keeping your computer’s operating system up to date is a must if you want it to run like a dream. An outdated OS? That’s just asking for trouble, especially when Microsoft is closing up shop on Windows 10 next year. But no worries, because Windows 11 Pro is here to save the day, bringing a fresh look and a ton of new features to the table, all at the Cyber Week low price of $19.97 (reg. $199) until the end of today.

Windows 10 is going out of style

Windows 11 Pro is all about making life easier, whether you’re working, gaming, or just browsing. The sleek new interface isn’t just nice to look at—it’s designed to be super intuitive. Take snap layouts, for example. They let you effortlessly organize your open windows so you can juggle multiple tasks without getting lost in the clutter. 

Security is a big deal, and Windows 11 Pro doesn’t skimp on it. It comes packed with advanced features like biometrics login, which uses your face or fingerprint to keep your system secure, and TPM 2.0, a hardware-based security feature that adds an extra layer of protection for your data. You can feel confident that your personal info and sensitive files are safe from prying eyes.

For the pros out there, Windows 11 Pro offers some pretty powerful tools. Azure AD makes managing devices and user accounts across a network a breeze, especially for businesses or IT professionals. Hyper-V is a game-changer if you need to run virtual machines, allowing you to test out software or run different operating systems without affecting your main setup. And then there’s BitLocker, which keeps your data locked up tight with full disk encryption—perfect for anyone who needs to ensure their information stays private.

Gamers aren’t left out, either. With DirectX 12 Ultimate, Windows 11 Pro delivers top-notch graphics and performance, making your games look stunning and run smoothly.

And since this OS comes with a lifetime license, it’s a one-time purchase that keeps on giving, with no need to worry about subscriptions or renewals. 

Upgrade your OS while it's cheap

Don't miss your last chance to upgrade for a super low price. 

Cyber Week ends tonight, December 8, at 11:59 p.m. PT, so get this lifetime license for Windows 11 Pro for just $19.97 while supplies last. No coupon needed. 

Microsoft Windows 11 Pro

Only $19.97 at Mashable

StackSocial prices subject to change. 

Opens in a new window Credit: Retail King Microsoft Windows 11 Pro $19.97
$199.00 Save $179.03 Get Deal

TL;DR: Replace your Microsoft 365 subscription with a Microsoft Office 2019 lifetime license for Mac for just $39.99 (reg. $229). Sale ends Dec. 8 at 11:59 p.m. PT. 

Opens in a new window Credit: Retail King Microsoft Office Home & Business 2019 for Mac $39.99
$229.00 Save $189.01 Get Deal

The cost of a Microsoft 365 subscription may seem small, but it gets a whole lot bigger when you realize you're never actually done paying for it. Monthly or yearly renewals add up, and it can feel like you’re paying more for convenience than necessity. 

If you want an alternative that lasts for life and doesn't require you to convert all your files to a new format, check out this lifetime license for Microsoft Office for Macs. Instead of paying monthly, you can pay $39.99 just once, but hurry up if you're interested. That price changes after Dec. 8. 

What's included?

This version of Microsoft Office includes essential apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, redesigned to take advantage of Mac's Retina display and full-screen view support. Whether drafting a document, analyzing data, or managing emails, the suite is ready to keep work moving. 

Need to use Teams at work? This version has Teams Classic, and now you don't have to pay every month to check your professional group chat. 

So why is it so cheap? This is a license for Microsoft Office 2019. It's not as flashy as the recent versions, but these apps still work great for work or school. There are actually a few benefits to getting an older license. Older machines don't have to struggle with software that needs modern hardware, and you don't have to deal with all the unnecessary integrations and distractions of more recent software. 

Really important detail: once you download, make sure to turn off the auto-update. If you don't, Microsoft will try to update you to Office 2021, which will invalidate your license. 

Pricing

Don't miss your window. Dec. 8 at 11:59 p.m. PT is the deadline to get a Microsoft Office Home and Business 2019 lifetime license for Macs for $39.99 (reg. $229). 

StackSocial prices subject to change.