Technology

The average battery capacity of an Android phone has increased from around 3000 mAh in 2015 to 5291 mAh in January 2026, with certain Chinese OEMs now reaching up to 10,000 mAh in mainstream smartphones. While battery capacity and tech are growing at a rapid pace, so is the power consumption of Android apps. In fact, I charge my device about as often as I did in the old days.

Amazon's Kindle ecosystem offers a lot of convenience. You can browse, purchase, borrow, and download books directly from your Kindle eReader, and sync progress across your devices. This convenience relies on Amazon's cloud services, and when Amazon stopped providing them to my Kindle, I decided to replace them with self-hosted services running on my own hardware.

The end of the month is the streaming equivalent of the day before grocery day. September's new arrivals have been picked clean, October's movie refresh is still days away, and you're rummaging through the back of the pantry. And like a golden bag of unopened Oreos, Paramount+ stashes some great thrillers back there, and below are three of the best for U.S. movie lovers.

NVIDIA has built a phenomenal software ecosystem around its consumer graphics cards, with DLSS often at the heart of the argument for buying a GeForce GPU.

Excel has been around for quite some time, from its original debut as Microsoft Multiplan in 1985 for Macintosh to becoming Excel in 1987 for Windows. Since then, it has continued to improve functionality, capabilities, and even the GUI. The number of formulas, VBA scripting, and macros you can customize to your needs make the software worth going back to. I love its huge library of functions, including formulas and references to information from cells, workbooks, and worksheet tabs.

I always thought Android Auto was about to make driving easier. I spend enough time in my car driving around town, picking up my grandparents, running errands, or waiting for my mom to finish her music class that anything promising to make those moments smoother gets my attention. So when I started testing some of Android Auto's most useful features, I expected small wins. Instead, I started missing the '90s method: just doing it myself.

TL;DR: Improve your cybersecurity with just a few taps with this threre-year subscription to Surfshark VPN Starter Plan, on sale now for just $67.19 (reg. $430) with code SAVE20 until Sept. 30.

Opens in a new window Credit: Surfshark Surfshark VPN Starter Plan: 3-Year Subscription $67.19
$430 Save $362.81   Get Deal

The office isn’t always an actual office these days. From taking meetings at a coffee shop to tackling things at a coworking space or signing on from an airport lounge, work happens wherever life takes you. But if you’re signing on to public WiFi, you probably don’t realize how important it is for your connection to be secure.

SurfShark VPN makes it easy to keep your data secure and your activities private. And right now, you can lock in a three-year subscription for just $67.19 with code SAVE20 until Sept. 30.

The scary thing about cybercrime is that you don’t have any warning. So when you sign on to public WiFi, you have no idea if your data is compromised or if you’re being tracked. Surfshark VPN serves as a great first line of defense, keeping you safer online wherever you go.

Surfshark VPN provides military-grade AES-256 encryption that protects your data and your online location to help prevent you from being tracked. A no-logging privacy policy takes things one step further, as the company itself doesn’t keep any tabs on your activity.

Not only does the VPN keep you safe from hackers, but it also lets you bypass geographical restrictions and watch content freely. Choose from over 3,200 servers worldwide across 100 countries. Need to share your real location on a certain app? A bypass feature makes that easy when needed.

This VPN gives you an added perk of access to Surfshark Search, a search engine that keeps your searches private and provides unbiased, organic search results. There’s also a kill switch that disables your internet connection at the system level if your VPN drops.

Secure this three-year subscription to Surfshark VPN Starter Plan for just $67.19 with code SAVE20 now through Sept. 30.

StackSocial prices subject to change.

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

Typically, your default file manager on Linux depends on whichever desktop environment you’re using. If you’re using anything GNOME-based like Ubuntu, you get Nautilus. If you’re using anything KDE Plasma-based like Kubuntu, you’re looking at Dolphin. They’re all fine, but I wouldn’t call them “perfect.” For instance, Nautilus looks clean, minimal, and extremely polished, but lacks a lot of useful functions you’ll find in Dolphin, which, in turn, looks somewhat raw and unrefined.

Comfort shows have a unique appeal. Sometimes you don't want to start something new, keep up with a complicated plot, or spend half an hour deciding what to watch. You just want to put on something familiar, settle in, and let a few episodes play in the background. Unfortunately, finding those shows isn't always as easy as it should be.

Having a smart home shouldn’t mean staring at sensors and flashing lights in every room. Some of the best things you can put in a smart home are inconspicuous and sometimes invisible. Best of all, you can go a long way towards hiding them with a few clever tricks.

These days, streaming is the king of movies. But a few of us still enjoy owning a physical Blu-ray disc. You used to need a Blu-ray player for them, but now gaming consoles like the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 can do that. Even so, it might be worth it to own a dedicated Blu-ray player.

My new NAS does not stream movies, serve files to every device, run containers, or sit there waiting for the next request. Most of the time, it consumes no power at all.

Kalshi lost another round Friday in its fight over whether states can treat prediction markets as gambling. A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled that Ohio and Tennessee can apply their gambling laws to Kalshi's event contracts, Reuters reported.

Kalshi's central argument is that its sports contracts are "swaps," financial products that fall under the CFTC's exclusive oversight rather than state gambling rules. The court rejected that.

SEE ALSO: Polymarket and Kalshi face possible regulation as Supreme Court 'monitors the situation'

Writing for the panel, Circuit Judge Julia Smith Gibbons said swaps generally refer to financial instruments used to hedge risk, not gaming-related contracts. She added that regulating gambling is a core part of a state's police power, and that the federal Commodity Exchange Act does not override Ohio's or Tennessee's gambling laws, according to Reuters.

Gibbons also questioned how betting on the number of corner kicks in a soccer match, or on a long-shot parlay, serves the federal law's goal of helping people manage financial risk.

The ruling overturned a preliminary injunction that had barred Tennessee from enforcing its gambling laws against Kalshi. It also upheld a lower court's refusal to grant Kalshi a similar injunction in Ohio. Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti called the decision a "great win" for the state. Kalshi said it expects the ruling to be overturned.

The unanimous decision deepens a split among federal appeals courts over who gets to regulate the fast-growing industry: individual states or the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). A split among appeals courts often makes Supreme Court review more likely, but there's no guarantee.

SCOTUS receives thousands of petitions a year and agrees to hear very few. Similar cases are pending in Connecticut, New York, Arizona, Minnesota, and other states.

You're showered, shaved, and dressed to impress. The Uber is two minutes out when your group chat starts pinging like Christmas bells—"Not feeling great, have to bail. Sry." "Something came up. Rain check?" Ugh, there goes your night.

Gemini Spark, which is part of the Google AI Pro and Ultra subscription, is still relatively unexplored by many users. Spark is Google's take on 'Personal AI Agents for Everyone,' letting you create tasks and workflows using simple prompts. No need to worry about data connectors, skill setup, instruction set, etc. The fact that most of us rely on Google products every day, Gemini Spark relies on them — Gmail, Docs, and Drive — to execute complex multistep processes all by itself 24 x 7 on your behalf.

For better or worse, Google Messages has become the de facto text messaging app for Android. I happen to think it's pretty good, but there are a couple of big missing features. Thankfully, there's a third-party app that can fix one of them.

I miss the Windows of the '90s. Microsoft seemed to have a utility for everything, whether you needed to tweak Windows, troubleshoot a problem, automate a task, or simply do something Windows itself didn't make particularly easy. Plenty of those little tools have disappeared over the years, but some survived—and I'm still surprised by how useful they are.

I still believe in pilot episodes. Though the streaming model has changed the importance of pilot episodes, the first episode is still one of the biggest factors in determining whether a viewer will continue watching the show or abandon it. A common theme with the greatest shows of all time is that they have signature pilot episodes.

What do you want for Christmas? If your answer sounded anything like, "to get spooked by a new Robert Eggers film," you're in luck! The director's new film Werwulf hits theaters this December, and based on the latest trailer, it's going to be an unnerving ride.

Co-written by Eggers (Nosferatu) and his The Northman collaborator Sjón, Werwulf transports viewers to a village in 13th-century England that's been weathering mysterious attacks from a great beast.

Little do the villagers know that the beast may lurk among them, disguised in human form. That beast is none other than a local farmer (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) who's been cursed with a horrifying case of lycanthropy. In the trailer above, a disembodied voice commands the farmer to "feed upon the flesh of mankind, and I will give thee back thy soul," suggesting that the werewolf's attacks are a twist form of self-preservation.

The farmer's time may soon be up, as a skilled hunter (Willem Dafoe) soon turns up in the village to exterminate the wolf. While the farmer's wife (Lily-Rose Depp) insists that her husband is a good man, will that be enough to save him?

Check out the full trailer above to get a frightening preview of what's to come, and feast your eyes on Eggers' trademark attention to period details. Just don't expect any footage of Taylor-Johnson in his wolf form. Some things might just have to wait until release.

Werwulf hits theaters Dec. 25.

September's Full Moon is almost here, and it's a special one. Known as the Harvest Moon, it's the Full Moon closest to the September equinox, which marks the start of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. This year, the equinox fell on September 22, with the Harvest Moon following just a few days later.

Want to know more about September's Full Moon? Keep reading to find out when to see it and why it has this name.

When is the September full moon?

The Full Moon will occur on Saturday, Sept. 26 Time and Date estimates it will peak at 12:49 p.m. ET.

What is the September full moon called?

Every Full Moon has a name, and sometimes it has more than one. September's Full Moon is known as the Harvest Moon, a name that's tied to the timing of the Full Moon rather than a particular plant or animal.

The Harvest Moon is the Full Moon closest to the September equinox, which falls around the start of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. This year, September's Full Moon comes just a few days after the equinox. September's Full Moon is also known as the Corn Moon, a name linked to the time of year when crops are gathered, according to Royal Museums Greenwich.

When is the next full moon?

The next Full Moon will take place on Oct. 25 or 26, depending on where you are in the world.

What are the lunar phases?

The Moon's appearance changes throughout its orbit around Earth as different amounts of its sunlit side become visible to us. This repeating cycle takes about 29.5 days and is divided into eight distinct phases. Although the same side of the Moon always faces Earth, its illuminated portion appears to grow and shrink as the Moon moves around our planet. The eight phases are:

• New Moon — The moon is between Earth and the sun, so the side we see is dark (so, we don't see anything).

• Waxing Crescent — A small sliver of light appears on the right side

• First Quarter — Half of the moon is lit on the right side. It looks like a half-moon.

• Waxing Gibbous — More than half is lit up, but it’s not quite full yet.

• Full Moon — The whole face of the moon is illuminated and fully visible.

• Waning Gibbous — The moon starts losing light on the right side

• Third Quarter (or Last Quarter) — Another half-moon, but now the left side is lit.

• Waning Crescent — A thin sliver of light remains on the left side before going dark again.

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