IT General

OpenAI has been busy courting creators, and its latest hire suggests it wants to give them more reasons to stick around. The company behind ChatGPT is bringing in Patreon co-founder Sam Yam to lead its Creator Product division, recruiting someone who has spent more than a decade helping creators build businesses around their audiences.

Yam is joining alongside two former Patreon executives: Drew Rowny, who led product, and Shannon Ma, who led engineering, as Yam announced on his X account.

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Together, the three execs bring experience building tools for people whose livelihoods depend on making things and persuading fans to support them. Yam co-founded Patreon with musician Jack Conte in 2013, helping popularize memberships that let creators earn money directly from their communities.

That makes the move interesting beyond the usual executive shuffle. OpenAI is hiring people who understand what creators need to run a business, from developing paid offerings to maintaining relationships with fans. Their arrival raises questions about how those ideas might show up in OpenAI’s products.

SEE ALSO: Why is OpenAI losing so many executives?

We may not have to wait long for a clearer picture of what's in store. Yam pointed to OpenAI’s upcoming DevDay for a preview of its creator products. The event takes place Sept. 29 in San Francisco.

The hire fits into a broader effort to get closer to creators and the audiences they influence. In February, OpenAI hired Charles Porch, Instagram’s longtime global partnerships executive, to lead global creative partnerships. In April, it acquired tech talk show TBPN, a deal I explored in my newsletter, Fan Mail, as an example of the value companies place on access to influential audiences. Then came this summer’s luxury influencer retreat in New York’s Hudson Valley.

As Mashable reported, that trip also showed how quickly creator outreach can become contentious. Attendees faced questions about AI’s environmental footprint, its effect on creative work, and why they had agreed to promote the company. Some defended the opportunity to speak with the people developing the technology; others seemed surprised by the backlash.

SEE ALSO: OpenAI’s first brand trip puts influencers in the hot seat

That’s part of the challenge awaiting Yam and his colleagues. Creators are potential customers for AI tools, but they’re also among the people asking what the technology means for the value of their work. A useful product could make a stronger case than a polished brand trip. We’ll get a better sense of what that looks like next week.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.

One of the tech industry's worst-kept secrets is that smart TVs spy on us. There are countless articles and videos online discussing it, as well as plenty of guides on how to fix it while maintaining the smart functionality of your TV.

SAVE $400.01: As of Sept. 23, the Bluetti Elite 300 Portable Power Station is on sale at Amazon for $1,098.99. That's down 27% from its original $1,499 list price.

Opens in a new window Credit: Bluetti Bluetti Elite 300 Portable Power Station $1,098.99 at Amazon
$1,499 Save $400.01   Get Deal

If you’ve been eyeing a heavy-duty battery generator for storm season or road trips, this is easily one of the best prices we’ve seen on this unit. Amazon just knocked $400 off the Bluetti Elite 300 portable power station, bringing it down from its usual $1,499 list price to a far more palatable $1,098.99.

Most power stations packing over 3,000 watt-hours of capacity look like miniature refrigerators and weigh a ton. The Elite 300 shrinks that footprint by about 59%, fitting 3,014Wh of juice into a frame that’s closer in size to standard 2kWh units. It’s built around long-lasting LiFePO4 battery tech and delivers 2,400 watts of continuous output, with headroom for up to 4,800-watt power surges.

SEE ALSO: Prime Day deals on power stations are already live: Shop the best deals on Jackery, Anker, Bluetti, and more

If you’re taking it on the road, it’s RV-ready right out of the box. Instead of making you mess with clunky adapters, it features a built-in TT-30 RV plug and a heavy-duty 12V/30A DC outlet. That lets you run your camper's 12V fridge, water pump, and diesel heater directly off the generator while you're off-grid.

You don't have to sit around all day waiting for it to charge, either. It plugs into a standard wall outlet, solar panels, or your car, and can charge up to 80% in just 78 minutes. You can also track your battery life, toggle outputs, and change settings right from your phone via the Bluetti app over WiFi or Bluetooth. And if the power grid goes down, it switches over to battery backup in 10 milliseconds. That’s fast enough that your WiFi router, laptop, or CPAP machine won't even reboot when the lights flicker.

If you want a portable generator that can run essential home appliances through a multi-day power outage without taking up your entire trunk, this is a steal. Grab the Bluetti Elite 300 for $1,098.99 on Amazon before this deal disappears.

TL;DR: Get 20TB of end-to-end encrypted Scramble Cloud storage for $349.95, with lifetime access, private sharing, WebDAV, and CLI support.

Opens in a new window Credit: Scramble Cloud Scramble Cloud Storage Lifetime Subscription (20TB) $349.95
$1,440 Save $1,090.05   Get Deal

The best cloud storage might be the kind you barely have to think about. Scramble Cloud gives you 20TB of storage for life for $349.95 (reg. $1,440), so you can give a seriously large collection of photos, videos, backups, and work files a long-term home.

And 20TB is a lot of breathing room. Scramble is designed for people with serious storage needs, whether you’re backing up family memories, keeping a growing video collection, or simply someone who believes deleting files is a problem for Future You. You can use it on desktop or mobile device.

Your files are protected with end-to-end encryption and encrypted before leaving your device. Its zero-knowledge architecture keeps you in control of access, while encrypted private links let you share selected files with other people.

Scramble also gives you several ways to reach all that storage. Use the web app from virtually any device, mount Scramble Drive in your operating system’s file explorer with WebDAV, or manage files using its command-line tool. You can preview files, stream encrypted videos, and view Word and Excel files from your browser.

For collaboration, you can create encrypted groups with permissions or use Team Link to share files with internal or external partners without requiring registration.

There are two limits worth considering before committing 20TB worth of your digital life: individual files can’t exceed 5GB, and uploads are capped at 70GB per day. Those restrictions make this better suited to steadily building a large archive than dumping massive files into the cloud all at once.

Get 20TB of Scramble Cloud without another recurring storage bill to remember for just $349.95 (reg. $1,440).

StackSocial prices subject to change.

TL;DR: Learn new things in your spare time with this five-year subscription to Nibble All-Around Knowledge App, on sale for just $49.99 (reg. $449.95).

Opens in a new window Credit: Nibble Nibble All-Around Knowledge App (5-Year Subscription) $49.99
$449.95 Save $399.96   Get Deal

Your phone doesn’t have to be a black hole of time-wasting. If you’ve got the right apps, you can turn your spare time into something way more productive. The Nibble All-Around Knowledge App serves up bite-sized lessons that help you learn something new during your morning commute, on your lunch break, or in line at the grocery store.

Right now, you can snag a five-year subscription to Nibble All-Around Knowledge App for just $49.99.

Make your phone time more productive

If you think you don’t have time to learn something new, think again. The Nibble All-Around Knowledge app was designed for today’s busy schedules, offering bite-sized lessons that teach you new things in just ten minutes.

Work on your self-improvement on the go with these handy audio episodes you can listen to anytime. The app is filled with lessons on over 20 topics, from art and AI to history and personal finance, so you can pick something you’ve been meaning to dive into.

Nibble’s flexible learning paths let you choose between a guided learning journey or hopping around depending on your mood. After you listen to lessons, explore the topic further with interactive AI experiences, such as chatting with historical figures. There are also learning games to see how much you’ve retained.

Nibble offers app and web access, and your account tracks your progress so you can access it easily across devices. This five-year subscription gives you unlimited library access, and you’ll never run out of lessons thanks to new content being added every month.

Snag a five-year subscription to Nibble All-Around Knowledge App for just $49.99.

StackSocial prices subject to change.

Qualcomm flew us out to Snapdragon Summit 2026 for a hands-on experience with the all-new, cutting-edge Googlebooks and Microsoft Surface laptops. And although the event has been relatively predictable, Wednesday's briefing closed out with a big surprise—Qualcomm is officially working to support Linux on Snapdragon X2 laptops, brands like ASUS have already committed to offer Linux-flavored versions of their X2-powered devices, and a developer preview is available today for those with the hardware to test it.

My Mini PC hosts several homelab services, including Home Assistant, Jellyfin, Audiobookshelf, Calibre, Uptime Kuma, and more. It also hosts some local LLMs, and in recent weeks, one of these has been hogging so much RAM that it's brought down other services. I decided to set up a fun way to monitor my homelab using a cheap ESP32 board.

Microsoft is giving its compact Surface devices a subtle refresh. Today at Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii, the U.S. tech giant announced the Surface Laptop 13-inch (2nd edition) and Surface Pro 12-inch (2nd edition) with the Snapdragon X2 Plus chip. The latter will support a new AI-powered drawing and annotating tool called Microsoft Ink Canvas.

Externally, both new Surface devices gain 25 percent brighter touchscreen displays and new black color options. They're otherwise identical to their predecessors from spring 2025.

The updated Surface Laptop 13-inch and Surface Pro 12-inch will hit the market on Oct. 13, starting at $1,199.99 and $1,149.99, respectively. (Preorders are now live at Best Buy, B&H Photo, and the Microsoft Store.) They'll be joined by a redesigned Surface Mouse with built-in haptic feedback and a customizable action button, which will start at $79.99.

Microsoft Surface Laptop, 13-inch (Snapdragon X2 Plus, 16GB RAM, 256GB UFS) $1,199.99 at Best Buy
  Pre-order Here at Best Buy Pre-order Here at B&H Photo Video Pre-order Here at Microsoft Store US Microsoft Surface Pro, 12-inch (Snapdragon X2 Plus, 16GB RAM, 256GB UFS) $1,149.99 at Best Buy
  Pre-order Here at Best Buy Pre-order Here at B&H Photo Video Pre-order Here at Microsoft Store US

Notably, both new Surface devices start with 16GB of RAM. This summer, Microsoft downgraded the base configurations of their first-gen counterparts to 8GB of RAM to lower their prices under $1,000 amid the global memory shortage.

SEE ALSO: Memory wars: Microsoft announces big price increases for Surface laptops

When asked by Mashable whether the company will continue to sell those older models as budget options, a Microsoft rep declined to comment on the record. They were no longer available for purchase through the Microsoft Store at the time of writing, but third-party retailers like Amazon and Best Buy still had them in stock.

The Surface Laptop 13-inch and Surface Pro 12-inch are smaller, lighter, and more affordable versions of Microsoft's flagship Surface devices. In June, the company introduced the Surface Laptop 8 and Surface Pro 12 with Snapdragon X2 Plus and X2 Elite chips.

Same look, new chip The Surface Pro 12-inch (2nd edition) will come pre-loaded with Microsoft's new "Ink Canvas" AI feature. Credit: Microsoft

The X2 Plus is a mid-range processor that will give the new compact Surface devices "18 percent more efficient battery performance, over 60 percent faster graphics, and 95 percent faster on-device AI" than their predecessors, said Brett Ostrum, corporate vice president of Surface devices, in a blog post. For reference, last year's inaugural Surface Laptop 13-inch and Surface Pro 12-inch ran on the original Snapdragon X Plus chip from 2024.

The X2 Plus will also power Ink Canvas on the Surface Pro 12-inch. Users will be able to handwrite prompts for Windows 11's Copilot assistant directly on the device's touchscreen with a Surface Slim Pen (sold separately for $129.99). Ostrum described Ink Canvas as "a pen-first experience for sketching, annotating, generating images, and summarizing text."

Ink Canvas will come pre-installed on the new Surface Pro 12-inch and be available for download on other compatible Windows devices starting Oct. 13.

Microsoft Surface Laptop, 13-inch (2nd edition) specs Credit: Microsoft

• CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Plus

• GPU: Qualcomm Adreno

• Battery life: Up to 22.5 hours of video playback

• Memory: 16GB or 24GB RAM

• Storage: 256GB or 512GB UFS

• Screen size and tech: 13-inch touchscreen display with 1,920 x 1,280 resolution, 500 nits of brightness, and 60Hz refresh rate

• Webcam: 1080p

• Ports: Two USB-C ports, one USB-A port, and a headphone jack

• Wireless connectivity: WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4

• Dimensions: 11.25 x 8.43 x 0.61 inches

• Weight: 2.7 pounds

• Chassis material: Aluminum

• Colors: Violet, platinum, and black

• Full-sized backlit keyboard and Precision touchpad

Microsoft Surface Pro, 12-inch (2nd edition) specs Credit: Microsoft

• CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Plus

• GPU: Qualcomm Adreno

• Battery life: Up to 15.5 hours of video playback

• Memory: 16GB or 24GB RAM

• Storage: 256GB or 512GB UFS

• Screen size and tech: 12-inch touchscreen display with 2,196 x 1,464 resolution, 500 nits of brightness, and 90Hz refresh rate

• Cameras: 1080p front camera and 10MP rear camera

• Ports: Two USB-C ports and Surface Pro 12-inch Keyboard connector port

• Wireless connectivity: WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4

• Dimensions: 10.8 x 7.47 x 0.3 inches

• Weight: 1.5 pounds

• Chassis material: Aluminum

• Colors: Violet, platinum, and black

• Stylus and keyboard sold separately; has built-in storage for Surface Slim Pen

Microsoft Surface Mouse specs Credit: Microsoft

• Inputs: Left, right, and middle click support with customizable action button and mechanical scroll wheel

• Wireless connectivity: Bluetooth 6.0; up to three devices

• Wireless range: 32.8 feet in open area and 16.4 feet in office setting

• Sensor: 1,000dpi (400dpi to 2,400dpi adjustable)

• Exterior material: Silicone

• Colors: Platinum and black

UPDATE: Sep. 23, 2026, 5:24 p.m. EDT This story was updated with a response from Microsoft and links to the new Surface devices' preorder listings.

Android phones have come a long way when it comes to privacy. Private Space on Pixels and Secure Folder on Samsung phones are really handy. Android's permission system has also become very granular in recent years, giving you a high level of control over what apps can access on your phone, and the Privacy Dashboard is a solid way to audit what your installed apps have been up to. But there's always room to grow, and some third-party apps offer privacy controls Google doesn't match yet, and in some cases probably never will. The only downside is that you have to sideload them.

Disney+ has rolled out its second price increase in as many months. Its standalone and Hulu bundle subscriptions now cost slightly more, with a notable exception.

If you use Spotify for streaming music, podcasts, and audiobooks, you may have noticed that your phone’s storage gets filled up too quickly. The streaming service quietly eats up gigabytes of storage space in the form of temporary cache. But now, the streaming service appears to be working on a new feature that would limit the cache, allowing better optimization of storage.

Thanks to Snapdragon for covering a trip to Snapdragon Summit. All experiences were hosted, but we received no extra compensation. The company did not influence editorial output.

One of the biggest benefits of Home Assistant is that it offers local control, so your smart home doesn't stop working when the internet is down. If you're away from home when the internet connection dies, however, then you may be unable to reach your Home Assistant server even if it's still working fine. These projects offer some alternative ways to communicate with your smart home without relying on the internet.

The nightlife minutiae of a small town in Massachusetts may not seem like traditional fodder for a 24-hour news cycle. But turn that drama into a more-than-1,500-word Boston Globe article, sprinkled with apéritifs for online discourse? Well, that's a recipe for virality.

That's what happened when the Globe reported on a recent public skirmish between community members and the owners of Last Ditch Bar and Arts Venue, a lesbian bar and event space in Greenfield, a town of just 17,000 people.

SEE ALSO: YouTube's microdrama boom is getting bigger

The Last Ditch is one of just 36 lesbian bars in the U.S., as chronicled by the Lesbian Bar Project. It's a nightlife outlier amid a post-COVID bar and club scene that has had to reckon with a decline in public socialization — let alone one that has addressed the alarming decline of number of lesbian bars across the country long before the global pandemic.

But the bar's reputation as a gathering place for Greenfield's sapphic community is now marred by a dramatic series of events that started with a single Instagram post.

The Aug. 31 alert to customers began as an explanation of the venue's updated mask policy. Where the space used to require KN-95 masks at all times, Last Ditch was moving towards more mask-less events — specifically opening up Saturday nights to maskless customers. The response from commenters online was a no-holds-barred flurry of irate messages, accusations of ableism and racism, and even calls for violence from former customers who said their previously safe space had been compromised.

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From there, the situation spun out of control, chronicled by the Globe as a series of apologies, retractions, public meetings, and online debates that set a group of COVID-conscious collectives against a fractured bar leadership.

The quotes and comments referenced in the article were sure to get attention: Some Last Ditch patrons referred to the Saturday night change as a "mass disabling event" and a "eugenicist" attack. "People like you kill disabled people in the name of your own leisure and convenience," wrote another commenter.

The internet responds to the Last Ditch effort

Like the rabid commenters and enraged community the feature profiles, the internet couldn't be normal about the story's increasingly bizarre anecdotes and comments from the Last Ditch's opposition.

Users called it possibly the best reporting of the year, some of their lives. Screenshots of users' favorite enraged comments — like "one had enrolled in clown school" (a Last Ditch owner is currently enrolled in clown school) and "I hope your venue gets firebombed" — have proliferated online.

Within 24 hours, the story had become 2026's "Cat Person" or "Bad Art Friend."

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But percolating throughout the humor-filled posts is unabashed, homophobic commentary on queer and disabled communities. Quotes of the Globe's reporting included images of staff and customers ripped from the bar's social media pages, posted alongside unwarranted commentary on their appearances. Some took the opportunity to attack liberal and leftist ideologies at large, with one user calling the Last Ditch's initial Instagram post — not the response it engendered — an example of "intergalactic woke batcrapitude."

It's not the first time a lesbian space has been turned into fodder for a bored internet intent on turning LGBTQ people into the butt of the joke or a vessel for a larger social reckoning. In 2024, for example, the saga of a TikTok influencer and New York City's Cubbyhole ignited a widespread debate about the sanctity of queer spaces.

Regardless, the Globe has benefited from its viral tale, allegedly gaining more than 1,000 subscribers after it went live. The Last Ditch may also capture some new customers thanks to its newfound notoriety.

"We started this project as a small group of friends with a burning desire to keep unapologetically queer spaces alive in Western Mass," wrote Last Ditch leadership in an Instagram plea from April 20. "Not to make money, not to garner notoriety. Just to maintain, expand, and serve our queer community."

I’m a Pixel person through and through and have been daily driving one since I bought my Pixel 6a. And, for what it’s worth, I’ve had plenty of time with Samsung phones because I review them, so my preference is an informed choice. However, that’s only when it comes to smartphones. I don’t get many smartwatches sent my way, so I wasn’t very familiar with the hands-on differences until I bought a few with my own money — and boy, was I shocked.

There's nothing worse than a laptop that overheats. I've been there; the last two decades are lined with less-than-stellar laptops for me, actually. One was so bad that it'd turn off within 45 seconds if it didn't have a hair dryer on the cold setting constantly blowing into its vents. Yes, I've tried to fix it. But when you're a broke college student, you make do with what you have.

The legendary comedy institution that is Saturday Night Live returns this weekend, September 26, for its 52nd season with Knicks star Jalen Brunson hosting and Katseye as musical guest. I've never watched a lot of sports in my life, but SNL's storied history of golden eras, seasonal slumps, "The Weird Year," controversies, iconic cast members (many gone too soon), and ever-rotating roster have made it the team I've followed for almost my entire life.

YouTube has unveiled a flurry of updates to both its core video service and YouTube Music that will tangibly affect your day-to-day streaming habits.

For many people, Claude is the AI model of choice. It pioneered a lot of cool features with Claude Code, Cowork, MCPs, Skills, and more. The models also just sound more thoughtful when answering your questions. So naturally, one of the biggest frustrations folks have with Claude is that it doesn’t last as long as they want it to and burns through their token usage very quickly. Fortunately, there’s an easy fix — one that was sitting right under your nose. By changing this one setting, I was able to make my Claude usage last 8x longer.