Technology

Hard drives became expensive very quickly—over the last year or so, hard drive prices have jumped about 50%, and prices show no sign of coming back down.

I am a long-time Roku user, going all the way back to when it was a little square box that plugged into my TV with RCA jacks. I have several Roku TVs and a few streaming sticks as well. While there's plenty of competition out there, I've always stuck with Roku because it was simple and straightforward. I would turn on the TV, choose a streaming service, pick a show and start watching. I never wanted Roku to recommend shows to me or make decisions for me. I just liked the fact that it was an easy way to access my streaming services. In fact, simplicity was the biggest selling point in my opinion.

I used to use Google Calendar almost passively, mainly to keep track of bookings and recurring bills. Even though it's not a particularly clunky app, I didn't manage to make it work for anything else.

David S. Pumpkins returned to Saturday Night Live for Halloween, but another familiar orange figure quickly took over.

Tom Hanks reprised his pumpkin-suited character during the Oct. 31 cold open, alongside Mikey Day and Bobby Moynihan as his dancing skeleton sidekicks. What looked like a Halloween reunion soon became a platform for James Austin Johnson's Donald Trump to discuss the midterm elections — and Hanks' backside.

The episode, hosted by Obsession star Inde Navarrette with musical guest Gracie Abrams, opened with a couple boarding a haunted attraction guided by Kenan Thompson. When Hanks appeared, the riders wanted to know why David S. Pumpkins belonged on the ride. Before he could explain, Johnson's Trump interrupted with one word: "Midterms."

"Aw, are you sad you don’t get to see your third David Pumpkins scene?" he asked. "I’ll save you four minutes: he keeps popping up and confusing people on the ride. The end."

With the performers frozen behind him, Trump compared himself to Pumpkins. "We both appeared in 2016, we’re both very loud, very orange, and very, frankly, annoying!" he said.

He then praised Hanks' acting before adding, "Great ass! A great ass on Hanks." The joke nodded to Trump's recent campaign speeches, in which he has repeatedly admired Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted's physique, describing his backside as "a pile of muscle." On SNL, that fixation extended to Hanks and Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, making men’s backsides the butt of the joke (pun intended).

Holding up a bruised hand, Trump also compared its color to Texas turning purple, declaring that if the state went blue, he would abandon it.

Thompson, meanwhile, walked offstage. When Trump thanked him for a supposed donation, he replied, "Yeah, you wish, bitch."

Saidah Belo-Osagie appeared as Nicki Minaj, whom Trump introduced as a prospective press secretary. "I’m out here killing it," she said. "And by it, I mean my career."

Veronika Slowikowska followed as Katie Zacharia, who bungled the show’s opening line, leaving Hanks and his skeletons to deliver "Live from New York, it’s Saturday night!"

Want more of the best of late night? Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletter.

If you own a Pixel phone running Android 14 or newer, there’s a neat feature that allows you to turn it into a webcam for your computer anytime you need one, using only a USB-C cable. The setup is seamless; you can do it in seconds, and the feature works on all three major desktop platforms — Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Celebrity Halloween has become a holiday within a holiday. There are the costume reveals, the elaborate photo shoots, and the inevitable moment of trying to figure out what, exactly, someone is supposed to be. Half the fun is recognizing the reference before reading the caption.

This year's best looks gave pop culture obsessives plenty to work with. Music videos, cartoons, and an awkward talk show interview all made the cut, alongside a few transformations that deserve a closer look. Some were genuinely creepy. Others were funny enough to make a case for keeping Halloween very, very unserious.

Here are 11 of our favorite celebrity Halloween costumes of 2026.

SEE ALSO: Here are some the internet's best Halloween costumes Heidi Klum as a giant severed hand This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Heidi Klum, the Queen of Halloween, turned up to her annual party as an enormous, bloody version of her own left hand, complete with red nails and rings. Getting into the costume reportedly took five to six hours. An impressive amount of effort to make everyone a little uncomfortable.

Lily Allen as a Ticketmaster seating chart This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Lily Allen dressed as a Ticketmaster seating chart. A strong contender for the scariest costume here, especially for anyone who has recently tried to buy concert tickets.

Zendaya as Halle Berry This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Zendaya recreated Halle Berry's look from the 2000 X-Men premiere, with styling by Law Roach. A red carpet reference specific enough to reward the people who immediately recognized it.

Alex Consani as a Thumb-Thumb from Spy Kids This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Alex Consani became a Thumb-Thumb, reviving one of Spy Kids’ most unsettling creations. Somewhere, an adult who watched that movie as a child just remembered an old fear.

Mary Beth Barone and Benito Skinner as Dakota Johnson and Ellen DeGeneres This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

The Ride hosts revisited Dakota Johnson’s famously awkward 2019 appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, with Mary Beth Barone as Johnson and Benito Skinner as DeGeneres. During the interview, DeGeneres claimed she hadn’t been invited to Johnson's birthday party, prompting the actress to respond, "Actually, no, that’s not the truth, Ellen." The uncomfortable exchange became an enduring internet reference — and, apparently, an excellent two-person Halloween costume.

Lisa Rinna as Kylie Jenner This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Lisa Rinna recreated Kylie Jenner’s orange Chrome Hearts look from the Marty Supreme premiere, complete with a long dark wig and a chunky silver cross necklace. The resemblance even got Jenner’s attention. "Thought this was me," she commented on Rinna’s Instagram post.

Keke Palmer and Leodis as Janet and Michael Jackson This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Keke Palmer and her son, Leodis, channeled Janet and Michael Jackson’s 1995 "Scream" music video, complete with matching hairstyles and a black-and-white shoot. Palmer also recreated the choreography in a video, while Leo appeared perfectly content sitting nearby with his iPad. "That iPad is a life saver omg," she wrote in the caption. "I haven’t stopped laughing." Same, Keke.

Lizzo as Seiko Ayase from Dan Da Dan This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Lizzo chose Seiko Ayase, the grandmother from the anime and manga series Dan Da Dan, for her Halloween fit. If the reference required a quick Google search, consider this an introduction to the next show on the watchlist.

Paris Hilton as Britney Spears This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Paris Hilton revisited Britney Spears’s 2001 MTV Video Music Awards look, channeling her friend's iconic "I'm a Slave 4 U" performance. A reminder that the early 2000s will always be a reliable source of Halloween inspiration.

Kim Kardashian as North West This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Kim Kardashian dressed as her daughter North West, recreating her blue hair, faux facial piercings, black grill, and long pointed nails. The resemblance was uncanny: "Girl, I thought this was North," one commenter wrote.

Alix Earle as a Sorayama sculpture This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Alix Earle turned herself into a Sorayama sculpture for Halloween, wearing a futuristic metallic costume that she said took an hour and a half just to get into. She documented the transformation on TikTok, captioning one update “An hour 1/2 later.” Getting dressed was apparently an event of its own.

Windows is still, by a large margin, the most dominant operating system. Microsoft has enjoyed decades of being the default OS provider for the vast majority of computer users, and its market position hasn't changed much—yet!

The Raspberry Pi Zero and Zero 2 W are both still very affordable despite price hikes across the rest of the lineup.

As we first reported in early August, Anthropic has bowed to demands from EU legislators that AI-generated text carry a hidden watermark, to help eventually distinguish between human- and AI-generated content. 

The initial watermark rollout only applied to the latest and greatest versions of Claude, but on Friday Anthropic alerted its users that an expansion of the watermark would soon roll out to Claude Mythos 5, Claude Opus 4.7, Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude Sonnet 4.6, starting on November 3. 

According to the AI giant, it will be the same watermarking technology already in use in Opus 5.5, based on "an imperceptible pattern in word choice" that won't change the accuracy or readability of its output, or contain any identifying information about the user or organization working with Claude. 

But it's one thing to worry about the function of artificial intelligence and another to worry about the human element. Lawyers have been caught using AI-generated citations, novelists have been caught relying on AI to write entire books, and scientific researchers have been caught using AI in the peer review process. 

For all the problems solved by AI use, and the mundane busywork it so ably processes in seconds rather than hours, it also creates a powerful incentive for humans to cut corners and lie about it, so it will be interesting to see if widespread watermarking helps keep the human element honest.

Nvidia's RTX Spark and DGX Spark share—more or less—a chip, but that is where the similarities end. The DGX Spark is positioned as a personal AI supercomputer, while the RTX Spark is a Windows laptop or desktop optimized for AI and everyday use.

Serial numbers are unique identifiers that manufacturers use to track warranty coverage, register hardware, and prevent fraud. Because they function as personally identifiable information, you should never post them publicly or share them with unverified support channels.

It's the last stretch of the year, and Hulu is readying to release some of its final new shows and movies of the year. First, several shows that premiered last month are still airing, including Reasonable Doubt season 4 and FX's The Lowdown season 2. Stream all of the episodes you might have missed on Hulu.

Georgia Tech aerospace engineering student Tomas Salvo rocked the internet by sharing video footage of his custom-made Reaper RC drone launching to an astonishing 491 mph (790 kmh) while carrying a payload of 2.6 pounds (1.2 kilograms). According to reporting from Tom's Hardware, it held that incredible speed for a full four minutes, climbing to a maximum height of 6,500 feet, with a total range of 31 miles at full speed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

His original tweet has now been viewed more than two million times, making it one of Friday's most viral internet posts, but you have to go through his post history to understand the genesis of this project and his greater ambitions. 

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

All of that engineering and space-grade technology doesn't come cheap, though. Salvo is estimating his total costs for the project will be roughly $70,000, including $40,000 just on the engines and testing expenses; $6,000 for fuel and fuel systems; and a further $20,000 in contingency expenses to replace damaged parts or redesign and remake underperforming parts. 

His GoFundMe page is seeking to raise $50,000, with more than $16,000 already pledged. If you contribute $500 or more, you can get yourself added to a private email list for future updates, while if you pledge $5,000 or more, you can attend a test flight in person. 

In the immediate future, Salvo wants to compete for the inaugural Boom Prize, announced by Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl, for "the first amateur-built radio controlled airplane to break the sound barrier." The total payout of that prize currently sits at $800,000 ($750,000 in cash and $50,000 in Boom stock), but even at 491 mph, Reaper will need to gain an additional 276 mph in speed to reach Mach 1 and break the sound barrier.

The next test flight of the prototype Reaper M1 is targeted for a late-November, early-December window, but if you want to keep up with Salvo's progress you should follow him on X.

I don't know about you, but over the years, I've accumulated hundreds, if not thousands, of images on my PC. Some of them are photos I took with my Canon Rebel, and others came from photo dumps when my wife or I replaced our phones. As you can imagine, this got pretty messy. I had many different folders filled with images. My biggest frustration is that the filenames are generic, like IMG_1543.jpg. This tells me virtually nothing about what’s in the image, which leaves me scrolling through folders with thumbnails when I'm trying to find a particular image.

You don’t need the internet or cellular reception in order to send and receive messages. With LoRa and a protocol like Meshtastic, you can send messages directly between devices even when none of the conventional networks are working properly.

The first time I gave money to a Linux project felt weird. I'd been playing with one distro or another for a while, never quite figuring it out. Then Ubuntu Linux launched just as I started college, and because we all had bad internet, they sent me an installation disc for free.

I am a fan of both the Anker SOLIX F3800 and its refined follow-up, the F3800 Plus. There’s a row of them in the pantry of my home. So I’m happy to say Anker has released a spiritual successor: the Anker SOLIX S5000. While it’s not better in every way, it improves in the ways that matter most. I'm not a fan of some changes Anker has made to its newer portable power stations, but it has knocked this one out of the park.

If your default browser homepage and search engine keep mysteriously changing to Yahoo!, your computer is probably infected with a browser hijacker. While resetting the browser might seem to fix the problem, here's how to do the job properly.

Ryobi has long been the go-to for weekend DIYers or hardcore hobbyists, but they're hardly the only option in town. I love my Ryobi tools, but you can get similar performance at a wallet-friendly price from several other brands these days. Here are the affordable tools giving Ryobi a run for its money.

Linux Mint was my daily driver for years. It’s stable, friendly, and refreshingly free of drama. But the longer I used it, the more its cautious pace felt like a ceiling. Fedora Workstation is what finally convinced me to leave.