Technology

I loved my first Walkman to the point where I used it until it fell apart, but my favorite music player was still my iPod. There was nothing quite like flipping through the albums in the Cover Flow view by spinning my thumb around the click wheel. When I found an old remote that had its own wheel-style input, I wondered if I could bring those days back.

The HTC Dream (T-Mobile G1) was the world's first commercially available Android smartphone, released back in October 2008 with a modest 1,150 mAh battery. If you used it moderately for calls, emails, and occasional web browsing, you were lucky enough to get through the day. Fast-forward to today: my daily Android phone packs a massive 5000 mAh battery, almost five times bigger than the HTC Dream, and has an efficient 3nm processor.

For me, a cheap or budget power tool is one that runs between $30 and $100. Sometimes, I'll manage to get a deep discount on a tool, but I usually go for the less pricey ones. Most of the time, I'll pick up a tool to use temporarily, until I can afford a better-quality one or my wife lets me splurge. But surprisingly enough, there are a few inexpensive tools I bought for a temporary solution to a problem but have found them to be so useful I've hung onto them rather than finding a replacement.

HBO Max is always producing quality content. I recently enjoyed Lanterns, the DC Universe show that played like a season of True Detective. The streamer also has some riveting documentaries, including A Killer Story, one of the best docs released in September.

I've been building PCs for over 20 years, so naturally, I get why people do it: it's fun, and you get a great computer at the end. But beyond the fun, is there any reason to spend the time and money anymore when a plug-and-play mini PC can absolutely replace your daily driver for almost anything but gaming?

AI agents have moved well beyond answering questions. They can now open folders, write code, and click through websites on your behalf. Here are three of the wildest things I’ve handed over to them, and what each one taught me about where this technology actually helps.

SAVE OVER $20: As of Oct. 22, the Anker Solix C200 DC portable power station is marked down to $129.98 at Amazon. That's $20.01 off its full price of $149.99.

Opens in a new window Credit: Anker Anker SOLIX C200 DC Portable Power Station $129.98 at Amazon
$149.99 Save $20.01   Get Deal at Amazon

Anker isn't waiting until November to hop on the Black Friday bandwagon. The company has already dropped plenty of early deals for shoppers to check out, including portable power stations.

Over at Amazon, the Anker Solix C200 DC is marked down to $129.98. Compared to paying its full price of $149.99, this offer saves you just over $20. It's currently marked as a limited-time deal, so the clock is ticking to save.

SEE ALSO: The 65+ absolute best stocking stuffers for 2026

The Anker Solix C200 DC may be small, but it's still packed with power to keep your devices charged up while you're on the go. It comes with a 192Wh battery that delivers a 200W output, plus five charging ports to handle your tech: a 100W USB-C, a 140W USB-C, a 15W USB-C, and two 12W USB-A ports.

And speaking of taking it on the go, it's 39% smaller than similar power stations, so bringing it along on a camping trip won't feel like a hassle. This power station is also easy to recharge, with three options: a 140W USB-C PD 3.1 port, 100W solar panels, or a car socket.

Don't let a low battery get you down. Act fast to save on the Anker Solix C200 DC while it's on sale at Amazon.

TL;DR: Get Microsoft Office 2024 Home for Mac or PC for a one-time $114.97 (reg. $149.99) through Oct. 25 — includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

Opens in a new window Credit: Microsoft Microsoft Office 2024 Home for Mac or PC: One-Time Purchase $112.97
$149.99 Save $37.02   Get Deal

Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations aren’t going anywhere. Neither are the monthly fees that often come with productivity software. Microsoft Office 2024 Home for Mac or PC is just $114.97 (reg. $149.99) through Oct. 25, and it’s a one-time purchase for lifetime access.

This edition includes the 2024 desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, which means it is a practical toolkit for students, families, and anyone who regularly works with documents.

Word handles everything from school essays to personal correspondence, with advanced formatting controls and collaboration features that let multiple people work on the same document.

Excel offers Dynamic Arrays and functions such as FILTER, SORT, and UNIQUE, which help organize information and automatically update results when data changes.

PowerPoint includes presentation recording with voice, video, and closed captions, while OneNote gives you a convenient place to organize notes and ideas.

One major advantage of the desktop apps is offline access. You can write, edit spreadsheets, and create presentations without an active internet connection, then sync supported files when you’re back online.

The software also supports real-time collaboration, making it easier to work on group assignments or shared family projects when connected.

Unlike Microsoft 365, this version doesn’t require monthly or annual subscription payments.

A couple of important details: Office 2024 Home doesn’t include Outlook, and each license covers one Mac or Windows PC. The one-use activation code is linked to your Microsoft account rather than the device itself.

For anyone who prefers familiar productivity software without recurring fees, this is a straightforward way to get the essential Office apps.

Get Microsoft Office 2024 Home for Mac or PC for just $114.97 (reg. $149.99) through Oct. 25.

StackSocial prices subject to change.

Community developers have ported Samsung Galaxy Watch apps and watch faces to other Wear OS watches, including the Pixel Watch. Here are some of the most useful ported apps.

The Netflix machine keeps on pumping out shows. One of the streamer's notable advantages over its competition is its ability to turn licensed shows into hits. Look at what happened with Suits, a show that soared to new popularity in 2023 on Netflix despite having concluded its run on the USA Network in 2019.

Once, putting Windows on the Internet without installing antivirus was practically inviting disaster.

If you're a true audiophile who does the majority of their listening from home, paying for wireless or Bluetooth features and noise cancellation may matter way less than ensuring you get the most out of your favorite music and albums. Sennheiser's HD 660S2s put the focus back on sound and comfort, with their wired and open-back design that's built for settling in and listening in its purest form. Generally a steep investment, but right now, you can score these legendary-sounding headphones on Woot with a $300 savings—while supplies still last.

Do you have a truck or garage full of Milwaukee tools that you've been using for years, or even decades? Milwaukee makes excellent tools loved by DIYers and professionals everywhere, but not all of them are perfect. Product recalls are rare for the brand, but a recall or safety notice is surprisingly easy to miss, even though they're pretty important.

Battery life on my Pixel Watch had slowly slipped from comfortable to disappointing, and I blamed the hardware. Three everyday apps were the real culprits. Once I understood how each one worked behind the scenes, though, the fixes were relatively straightforward.

Growing up in Pittsburgh, my childhood Halloween hauls were 70 percent Clark Bars. Emptying my bag onto the living room floor, I’d channel my inner Ralphie from A Christmas Story, muttering a disappointed "Ohhhhh fuuudge!" at all that local chocolate.

Because Clark Bars were manufactured in Pittsburgh, customers at the local G.C. Murphy or Thrift Drug could scoop up giant bags at markdown prices. Clark had Halloween cornered in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Times have changed. Those stores are gone, Clark Bars are rare, and I’m old enough that I don't have to say "fudge" when I'm angry. But one thing hasn't changed: kids still treat trick-or-treating like a game of neighborhood Rolo roulette. Back then, anything besides a Clark Bar was a coveted confection.

After I reluctantly grew up, I went into retail, leading media relations for Kmart and Sears. Our Kmart stores would load up on cheap candy before Halloween, and sales always topped costumes or decorations. Corporate buyers spent months planning exactly what to sell, how much to order, and where to ship it across 1,000 stores. Then, like clockwork on Nov. 1, the leftovers went on clearance. Apparently, peanut butter cups don’t age well on store shelves.

SEE ALSO: Hello Nancy put over $248 worth of sex toys in a $79 Halloween mystery box — and I'm here for it

That human-driven process seems so stale now. Nowadays, people snicker at the butterfingers of humans, proverbial pez heads who can let things slip be-twix their fingers. But don’t be too quick to kiss humans goodbye.

Today, childhood nostalgia is being systematically optimized away by advanced predictive analytics and logistical AI. The invisible hand of the candy aisle knows your neighborhood’s demographic profile better than you do, and it has already decided if your zip code deserves the "good stuff." Where I grew up, we wouldn’t be getting Toblerone, that’s for sure.

Global candy manufacturers and big-box retailers openly deploy AI-driven "demand sensing" models. Retailers now feed past transactions, social media trends, and hyper-local product inventory into machine learning networks. By analyzing this data, algorithms can forecast exactly how a specific neighborhood will shop.

The system cross-references local census records and homeownership rates to shift delivery pallets before the first plastic pumpkin hits shelves. Quite frankly, that is a helluva lot of data.

The result is a hyper-focused predictive allocation engine. If a well-to-do suburb experiences a millennial baby boom, something like Walmart’s demand-forecasting algorithms catch the trend early. By analyzing local sales history and foot traffic, the system uses machine learning to automatically trigger massive shipments of premium, multi-brand chocolate variety packs to those specific high-demand stores weeks in advance.

Conversely, if you live in a high-density urban apartment block of young professionals or an aging retirement community, the AI predicts low trick-or-treater turnout. Premium inventory is rerouted elsewhere, leaving your local store shelves bare of anything but low-tier hard candies.

In other words, your neighbors couldn't buy the good candy even if they wanted to; the algorithm decided they weren't worth the shipping cost. What a snobby algorithm.

Then I got to thinking, what happens when these algorithms collide with regional history, creating an inevitable feedback loop? Take my childhood Pittsburgh data. Today's predictive AI won't see a city of disappointed children. Nope, it will only see a massive, recurring seasonal spike for Clark Bars.

Blind to our melt-away misery, the algorithm would flag this as a "regional preference," boost bulk buying, slash the price, and flood local shelves. By automating past behavior, the machine ensures future generations face the exact same crisis I did. A lot of kids like me venting an "Ohhhhh fuuudge!"

The algorithm isn't just looking backward, either. It also parses unstructured data like live weather forecasts. If the machine catches even a whiff of rain on Oct. 31, it can instantly reduce shipments of trick-or-treating candy to your entire region, prioritizing indoor alternatives like party kits or ghoulish plastic backdrops.

The system is also secretly scrolling social media. The second a viral TikTok video of an influencer with a trending marshmallow ghost Peep with bug eyes catches fire, the algorithm intercepts the digital signal. It immediately diverts entire shipping containers of Peeps to the hip, urban zip codes driving the clicks, leaving the surrounding suburbs out of the loop.

To the TikTok victor go the Peep spoils.

We spend a lot of time fretting about generative AI replacing human artists or stealing digital identities. Yet, the most immediate way AI alters our culture is deceptively invisible; quietly sucking the random, chaotic joy out of a community holiday and dressing it in the costume of an optimization spreadsheet.

So, when the kids dump their plastic pumpkins onto the living room rug this year, look closely at the haul. Don’t curse the house down the street for handing out generic chocolate or cheap hard candy. They weren't being stingy.

They were just the unfortunate casualties of a cold, unfeeling algorithm. The machine unwrapped their zip code, crunched the numbers, and chewed on the fact that their neighborhood simply didn't possess the premium metrics required for a Reese's Cup.

By trying to optimize our choices, the algorithm inadvertently condemns them to a bleak, automated future of pure, inescapable Clark Bars. “Ohhhhh fuuudge!”

This article represents the opinions of its writer.

John Casey is a columnist at Raw Story, the Advocate, Daily Beast, and Outsports. He's also the author of Love: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality.

Got a spare M.2 slot in your PC? Instead of waiting for SSD prices to drop to finally be able to populate it, which could take a few years, you can use it for something else. As long as it’s an NVMe slot, which means it has PCIe connectivity, and not a SATA-only slot, you can use it for all kinds of purposes, such as hooking up an eGPU, equipping your PC with a local AI accelerator.

One of the major Chrome alternatives is close to going away. The Browser Company has confirmed that the Arc browser will shut down on December 22, 2026 as its successor Dia nears.

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You have an older smart TV that's no longer compatible with your favorite streaming apps like Netflix, Prime Video, and others. It's actually fairly common because nothing lasts forever, and software updates eventually stop. That's especially true with electronics, and that's exactly why your Google TV has an expiration date.

Skullcandy's products will no longer just feature Sound by Bose — they'll be an official part of the Bose brand, too.

Following the collaboration between the two brands that brought Bose-engineered audio and tech to the budget brand's products, Bose announced an acquisition of Skullcandy on Oct. 21.

What this means for Skullcandy and Bose

This comes just over a year and a half after the release of the Skullcandy Method 360 ANC earbuds, the first pair of Skullcandy buds to come with the Sound by Bose designation. In my testing of those earbuds, priced at $99, I found they featured an impressive soundscape for the price point that felt worthy of the Bose name. While not exactly like a pair of Bose earbuds, they did feel like an elevation over what I expected sonically from Skullcandy.

Though not twins, the Bose-powered Skullcandy earbuds and Bose earbuds do bear a resemblance. Credit: Skullcandy Credit: Bose

The Skullcandy brand will remain its own distinct brand under Bose, with the headquarters remaining in Park City, Utah. The press release announcing the acquisition detailed that Bose wanted to retain "Skullcandy’s design, understanding of its consumers, and authentic community connections," as it helped create new products and growth for the brand, providing "new ways for Bose to meaningfully connect with consumers where it has less presence today."

SEE ALSO: The 10 best cheap wireless earbuds, tested by audio experts

In other words, the success of the collaboration between the two brands seems to have offered Bose the opportunity to go more aggressively after the budget consumer market, a corner that Skullcandy has been firmly situated in for years. For comparison, Skullcandy's cheapest earbuds, a pair of wired earbuds, go for $14.99. Bose's cheapest earbuds, the new wired ANC buds, go for $99.99. Wireless- and ANC-wise, Skullcandy's buds start at $104.99 while Bose's most affordable pair clocks in at $179.99.

The path to acquisition tracks for Bose

The writing was on the wall with Bose acquiring Skullcandy, especially considering their latest Skullcandy collab, the Crusher 1080 headphones. Released just this past July, the press release called these headphones the "most advanced headphone in Skullcandy's history," powered with Sound by Bose, Bose QuietControl 6-mic adaptive noise cancellation, Bose TrueSpatial with head tracking, and the Bose WaveForm Audio Engine.

SEE ALSO: We tested every pair of Bose headphones and earbuds. We found 5 we love, and 1 to buy on sale.

The president of Bose Audio Technology and Chief Strategy Officer Nick Smith said the collab was "an exciting example of how Bose innovation can reach more listeners through distinctive new products and experiences," which sounds like a line that could've easily fit in the acquisition press release.

This purchase of Skullcandy is Bose's third acquisition of the year, though the first of a consumer audio brand. On Oct. 1, Bose acquired Firelight Technologies, the maker of an interactive audio software program. Earlier this year, Bose bought StreamUnlimited Engineering GmbH, a connected audio platform.

Nothing beats unwinding with your favorite songs after a long day, and high-quality headphones like Sony's WH-CH720N can elevate the experience with their outstanding audio quality.