Mashable

TL;DR: As of Jan. 14, you can grab a Costway portable electric space heater for only $42.99 instead of $69.99 — that's a savings of 38%.

Whether you're sitting at your desk or feeling the cold floor of the kitchen in the morning, cranking up the heat for your whole home may not be the answer, especially if you're trying to keep your heating budget low. Instead, you could carry the heat with you using a portable space heater. 

The Costway Portable Space Heater is compact, powerful, and super cozy, not to mention pretty affordable. Normally, this portable heater would cost $69, but the price has dropped even more to $42.99 through January 14.

This 1,500W heater may be small, but you could really feel the heat. Just switch to either of the heating settings (low or high) to pump up the heat from the PTC ceramic heating technology. 

The adjustable thermostat allows you to set a comfortable temperature, and the heater includes safety features like overheating protection and a tip-over safety switch to prevent accidents. The power indicator light informs you when the heater is in operation, and the removable heat dissipation mesh simplifies cleaning and maintenance.

This little heater could be ideal for personal use. Put it on your nightstand for a comfy night in bed or remote workers can stay warm through the workday without heating up the whole house. 

Stay warm through winter, whether you're working from home at your desk or lounging on the couch.

You have until February 14 at 11:59 p.m. PT to get the Costway 1,500W Portable Electric Space Heater on sale for $42.99. No coupon needed. 

StackSocial prices subject to change.

TL;DR: As of Jan. 14, you can grab the Bento Stack Charge 8000 for just $79.99 instead of $99.95 — that's a savings of 19%.

If you're a busy professional, products that help you stay organized can be very welcome. And if those items can also charge up your iPhone, then that's a definite bonus. Many of us made a resolution to get more organized in the new year. And this Bento Stack Charge 8000 can help you make it happen. Plus, through January 14, you can get it for just $79.99 (reg. $99.95).

With a nod to the traditional Japanese bento box, the Bento Stack Charge offers a modular design that allows you to organize your tech essentials. Store your AirPods, Apple Watch, and chargers neatly, with a devoted space for everything.

The cover comes off to pull double duty as a MagSafe-compatible wireless fast charger. Simply put your iPhone on it, and charge it up quickly and without added messy wires. The cover also works as a power station, featuring both USB-C and USB-A ports. 

As seen at CES, this compact and durable plastic charging case is an ideal organizational case to take with you on the go. Easily fit it in your backpack to have all the essentials handy on a long flight and keep everything in order when going to and from the office.

Don't let the anxiety of having a low battery stress you out. Keep your desk orderly and your stuff charged with this handy little box that can help elevate the efficiency of your days.

Grab Bento Stack Charge 8000 for just $79.99 (reg. $99.95) when you order by January 14 at 11:59 p.m. PT.

StackSocial prices subject to change.

TL;DR: As of Jan. 14, you can secure a five-year subscription to AdGuard VPN for just $44.97 instead of $359.40 — that's a savings of 87%.

Unless you're living completely off the grid, we all have an online presence. And with that presence, there comes risk and vulnerability. If you don't already have a virtual private network (VPN), it should shoot to the top of your list. Using a VPN helps keep you safer online and less vulnerable to the shady stuff that we all know happens there. For a limited time, you can get a five-year subscription to AdGuard VPN for just $44.97 (reg. $359.40).

Whether you're browsing, streaming, or working remotely, AdGuard VPN helps ensure that your online activities remain private and secure no matter where you are. AdGuard has over 60 network locations, which means you can travel and still have secure internet access nearly anywhere you want to go.

This data privacy tool uses its own strict security measures to ensure your data stays private — it even has a zero-logging policy. That means AdGuard does not track what you're doing or collect your information or IP address. You will remain totally private while browsing, shopping, creating, or watching.

This offer gets you connected to AdGuard VPN on up to ten devices at the same time but is only available to new users. With updates included, you'll have access to all of its super-fast servers in every location. It also comes with unlimited data for streaming and downloading. Plus, it's compatible with all platforms, including iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and Google Chrome.

Keep yourself and your family safe and protected online while home or away.

Get this 5-year subscription to AdGuard VPN for just $44.97 (reg. $359.40) when you order by January 14 at 11:59 p.m. PT, with no coupon needed.

StackSocial prices subject to change.

Oura recently released a new feature for its popular sleep-tracking Gen3 ring: the ability to see trends in daytime stress.

Not long after, an intriguing thread popped up in a subreddit dedicated to the Oura ring. Some of its 40,000 members were perplexed by what the Oura app reported about their stress levels.

Much to their surprise, the commenters said it seemed that they were always stressed. Some wondered if the new feature was buggy. But others didn't like how the data made them feel, hinting at the unintended mental health implications of tracking.

"I'm stressed eight hours a day since this new feature has rolled out which is making me stressed," wrote one commenter. "How do I shut it off!"

The conversation pointed to a persistent tension undergirding efforts to track, or even surveil, your own health around the clock. Such data can empower the user, but it can also sew doubt and worry — perhaps where there wasn't any before.

Dr. Vaile Wright, a psychologist and senior director of health care innovation for the American Psychological Association, said these different outcomes depend on the person.

"For some, tracking provides a critical ability to recognize and identify triggers," Wright said. "For others, however, it could actually increase stress, distress, and hypervigilance."

The former group might have difficulty pinpointing what stresses them most or how they feel in that state. Cultivating a greater awareness of that can be useful, because it might encourage them to make proactive changes, like implementing meditation or exercise breaks when their stress spikes. But the latter group might constantly think about their stress, even ruminate on it, and inadvertently engage in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When a person thinks they're stressed all the time, they may expect that to be the case and then behave in ways that increase stress, like procrastinating, taking anger or frustration out on others, and staying constantly connected to digital devices, the news, and social media.

The challenge is that you may not know how you'll respond until you're staring at days of charts showing an elevated stress level.

Previously, the Oura app only gave users detailed data about how well they slept and recovered from the previous day's exertion.

Oura's head of science, Shyamal Patel, whose Ph.D. is in computer and electrical engineering, told Mashable the company wanted to launch a daytime stress function as a way to give users a "holistic" picture of their stress and recovery. Oura competitor Whoop released its own tracking feature, Stress Monitor, in spring 2023.

The Oura ring measures daytime stress by continuously tracking temperature, heart rate, and heart rate variability (HRV). More variability in your heart rate can suggest resilience to stress, whereas less variation can indicate that the body's nervous system is struggling.

Certain factors impede reliable data collection. Cold hands or a poorly or loosely fitting ring can lead to gaps in tracking. Oura's algorithm excludes exercise or movement from its stress analysis so as not to confuse the physical demands of a workout, for example, with overall distress.

Importantly, the feature hasn't been independently clinically validated, though Patel said the company recently launched a study with this aim.

He's also aware that drawing attention to stress through tracking may have unintended consequences because the same thing has happened to people who began collecting data about their sleep. Patel points to orthosomnia, the new phenomenon of becoming so preoccupied with sleep tracker data that it leads to sleeplessness.

Patel said this is why the Oura app is meant to have an "empathetic" voice instead of using judgmental language oriented around failure when it's providing insights.

The ring's sensor gathers data continuously, but the daytime stress chart reports back every 15 minutes. (Only members who pay a monthly $5.99 subscription fee can access the data.) You can watch as stress levels peak, crash, and plateau throughout the day.

The short interval can be informative. A screaming child or tense work meeting may coincide exactly with a stress peak, confirming what you already suspected was true. Or you might be stunned to see that the deep breathing you tried at the dentist's office seemed to make it a low-stress experience.

Yet the time frame can also amplify worry. You might wonder why a brief meditation break or leisurely meal — things you did because you hoped they'd reduce stress — didn't show up as restful or restorative but instead appeared as periods of stress or engagement, a state of being Oura places between stress and relaxation.

Again, the different responses come down to personality and circumstance, said Wright. The app's feedback may motivate one person to change their behavior while another person feels "paralysis" as a result.

There are also things people cannot control. Certain medications, like asthma medicines, antibiotics, cold and congestion medicines, and antidepressants, can increase heart rate and potentially affect heart rate variability, which the app currently doesn't make clear to users. Someone searching for an answer to a sudden spike in stress might not realize it's due to starting a new medication.

Different but even more impactful sources of external stress are the invisible forces that influence well-being. The American Psychological Association's recent "Stress in America" survey found, for example, that the nation is still "recovering from collective trauma" following the worst phases of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Though many respondents downplayed their stress, nearly a quarter of adults said their stress rated between eight and 10 on a scale of one to 10, with the upper end being a "great deal of stress." Respondents were feeling the pressure of financial strain and health challenges, but they were also particularly worried about mass shootings, violence and crime, the nation's future, and "social divisiveness."

In this sense, tracking stress has its limits. If a higher-paying job won't materialize because of economic trends, coping skills will only go so far.

"Yes, there are some things that we can do to help us maintain our emotional well-being that actually are in our control," said Wright, "but they're not sufficient to manage all of our stress in the world, because much of [what is] causing us stress we don't have control over, and there are not necessarily easy fixes for them either."

At the outset, Oura didn't offer stress management tools alongside its daytime stress feature. Now, the app suggests relaxation content from the meditation and wellness platform Headspace when Oura detects elevated levels of stress.

A "reflections" feature in beta testing lets users jot down notes about their daily experiences. Ideally, the tool will help users make connections between highs and lows in their daytime stress, shedding light on drivers of triggering, restful, and restorative moments.

Later this year, Oura plans to launch a "stress resilience" measure, which will assess users' ability to withstand physiological stress by tracking daytime stress and recovery, as well as recovery during sleep.

Patel notes that gleaning insight from wearable data is a relatively new practice. Until the recent past, a person's main source of health data was generated at their annual physical, he said. Now, they can collect continuous data about themselves, including their sleep, stress, heart rate, and menstrual cycle.

Patel said it's important to help people understand what's shaping their health trends, now that they have data about them in hand: "We need to close that gap."

Some Oura users, in a separate, more recent Reddit thread, wondered if their near-constant high-stress days meant they had anxiety. The reflection could be particularly useful when followed by a conversation with a health care or mental health provider.

But Wright urges consumers to be cautious with their health data, too. While Oura doesn't sell member data of any kind (even anonymized) to third parties, no company is immune from a security breach. Oura does partner with researchers who can access de-identified user data to conduct clinical studies but collects "relevant consent" from research participants in advance.

Wright said that, in general, wearables aren't required to be compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a federal law that protects a wide range of health data. They also typically aren't subject to federal regulation, unless they're considered a medical device.

"Research technology moves faster than regulation and ethics," Wright said, adding that she's more worried about data privacy, security, and storage than whether wearables actually work.

Still, Wright knows that many people are eager to track their health metrics, including stress. She encourages them to take digital breaks periodically to see how it makes them feel and then reassess how much they want to engage with their device.

Keeping digital tabs on measurements of well-being may be a mood booster if things are going well, but Wright reiterated that such awareness might be potentially damaging when it leads to anxious thinking.

After all, sometimes the best way to stay even-keeled is to not know exactly how stressed you are.

Flying was never the most stress-free way to travel, but thanks to never-ending airline delays, unruly passengers, and the incredible shrinking airline seat, it's become a nightmare. If you've decided it's finally time to invest in a quality pair of noise-canceling headphones for flying, we've got you covered.

The good news is that plenty of headphones, from over-ear headphones to wireless earbuds, offer active noise cancellation. And in 2024, it's not too hard to find ANC headphones cost under $100.

Even so, if you want to find the best noise-canceling headphones for airplanes, you should be prepared to pay closer $200 to $500 (exempting our budget pick from Anker Soundcore). Premium headphones offer improved active noise cancellation and transparency modes that allow you to hear those all-important gate announcements.

Let's not forget that ANC on its own won't save the day — otherwise, we'd just direct you to our review of the best noise-canceling headphones. For long flights, comfort is also key. It won't matter if your headphones block sound if you only want to wear them for two out of five hours of your flight. A few extra features — like balanced sound and spatial audio — can't hurt either.

With all that in mind, we've rounded up the best headphones for flying based on our extensive research and hands-on testing.

Because shopping for headphones shouldn't be as stressful as heading to the airport, we've answered every question you need to know before purchasing. Read on for essential info as well as the very best noise-canceling headphones for flying in 2024.

Generally, yes. Many cheap headphones claim to offer "noise-canceling" features, but a $50 pair of over-ear headphones will never compare to Sony noise-canceling headphones. Typically, the more you pay and the better known and regarded the brand is, the better the noise cancellation. Brands like Bose and Sony offer multiple levels of noise cancellation so you can choose to be completely blocked off from the world or opt to allow some environmental noises to come in while flying. 

Paying more can also get you some nice features to supplement your ANC, like voice assistant support, expansive battery life, advanced codec support for better-sounding music, or better call quality. If you're a frequent flyer, the cost is almost certainly worth it.

Noise-canceling headphones are at their most useful on airplanes. While flying, it's difficult to find a moment's peace when so much is going on around you. Frequent flyers may prefer to rest or work, and the best way to do this is by using the best noise-cancellation methods to block out the chaos. 

With that in mind, some headphones' ANC works best on blocking out people talking more than ambient engine sounds, and vice versa, and people will have different preference levels for how much ANC they actually like. In addition, for long-haul flights, you may also be interested in the best noise-canceling headphones for sleeping

With all that in mind, we've included the best ANC headphones for every traveler. So, read on to find the best noise-canceling headphones for airplanes in 2024 — all based on Mashable's in-depth research and hands-on headphones reviews.

TL;DR: The 2023 Premium Python Programming Mega Certification Bundle is on sale for £36.11, saving you 76% on list price.

If you’re someone who enjoys all things tech-related and wants a deeper understanding of how we make the smart devices in our lives work, you may want to try your hand at computer coding. Fortunately for you, you don’t need to get an expensive degree to start your journey. Not when you can have lifetime access to this Python programming certification bundle, which gives you over 100 hours of instruction. And you can grab this online learning bundle for just £36.11.

Whether you have some computer programming experience already or you’re just starting out, this bundle is a good place to gain some new skills. Aspiring coders can learn the foundations in just three hours with the course, Python Programming for Beginners and Python Bootcamp In A Day, taught by instructor Paul Ashun, a leader in mobile, Internet TV, and web software projects and CEO of Pashun Consulting.

This bundle gives you some of the easiest Python for beginners courses with lifetime access to 14 different courses taught by experts in Python programming language. You'll learn how to use problem-solving and critical-thinking skills to solve technical and mathematical problems. And if you're looking for something with a unique spin, you can even build your own text-based escape room to explore core techniques within a game.

Python is one of the top three most used programming languages in the world. It can be used for everything from accounting to game design, and this bundle teaches you how to implement these skills in both fields. Learn to create data visualisation web apps or even build a medical diagnosis bot with Python. 

Learn to code with Python 3 and go from beginner to advanced programmer at your own pace. Grab this Python programming certification bundle on sale for £36.11.

Oh hey there! If you're here, it must be time for Wordle. As always, we're serving up our daily hints and tips to help you figure out today's answer.

If you just want to be told today's word, you can jump to the bottom of this article for Jan. 14's Wordle solution revealed. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

Originally created by engineer Josh Wardle as a gift for his partner, Wordle rapidly spread to become an international phenomenon, with thousands of people around the globe playing every day. Alternate Wordle versions created by fans also sprang up, including battle royale Squabble, music identification game Heardle, and variations like Dordle and Quordle that make you guess multiple words at once. 

Wordle eventually became so popular that it was purchased by the New York Times, and TikTok creators even livestream themselves playing.

Not the day you're after? Here's the Wordle answer for Jan. 12.

The best Wordle starting word is the one that speaks to you. But if you prefer to be strategic in your approach, we have a few ideas to help you pick a word that might help you find the solution faster. One tip is to select a word that includes at least two different vowels, plus some common consonants like S, T, R, or N.

The entire archive of past Wordle puzzles used to be available for anyone to enjoy whenever they felt like it. Unfortunately, it has since been taken down, with the website's creator stating it was done at the request of the New York Times.

It might feel like Wordle is getting harder, but it actually isn't any more difficult than when it first began. You can turn on Wordle's Hard Mode if you're after more of a challenge, though.

We're getting jacked.

There are no letters that appear twice.

Today's Wordle starts with the letter B.

Get your last guesses in now, because it's your final chance to solve today's Wordle before we reveal the solution.

Drumroll please!

The solution to Wordle #939 is...

BULKY.

Don't feel down if you didn't manage to guess it this time. There will be a new Wordle for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we'll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

Reporting by Caitlin Welsh, Sam Haysom, Amanda Yeo, Shannon Connellan, Cecily Mauran, Mike Pearl, and Adam Rosenberg contributed to this article.

Connections is the latest New York Times word game that's captured the public's attention. The game is all about finding the "common threads between words." And just like Wordle, Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier—so we've served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle.

If you just want to be told today's puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for January 14's Connections solution. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

The NYT's latest daily word game has become a social media hit. The Times credits associate puzzle editor Wyna Liu with helping to create the new word game and bringing it to the publications' Games section. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.

Each puzzle features 16 words and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise of anything from book titles, software, country names, etc. Even though multiple words will seem like they fit together, there's only one correct answer. If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. Guess wrong and it counts as a mistake—players get up to four mistakes until the game ends.

Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make spotting connections easier. Additionally, each group is color-coded with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, you can share the results with your friends on social media.

Want a hit about the categories without being told the categories? Then give these a try:

• Yellow: Stressful finances

• Green: Swiper the Fox activities

• Blue: Animal nicknames

• Purple: Lower body clothing

Need a little extra help? Today's connections fall into the following categories:

• Yellow: Things to Pay

• Green: Thieve

• Blue: Male Animals

• Purple: Legwear, In the Singular

Ready for the answers? This is your last chance to turn back and solve today's puzzle before we reveal the solutions.

Drumroll, please!

The solution to Connections #217 is...

• Things to Pay: BILL, CHECK, INVOICE, TAB

• Thieve: PINCH, ROB, STEAL, SWIPE

• Male Animals: BUCK, BULL, JACK, TOM

• Legwear, In the Singular: JEAN, PANT, SHORT, TIGHT

Don't feel down if you didn't manage to guess it this time. There will be new Connections for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we'll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

Is this not the Connections game you were looking for? Here are the hints and answers to yesterday's Connections.