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Who's ready to start their week off with some thrills? It might be a Monday, but the excitement of the weekend does not have to end. One of my favorite categories on Netflix is thrillers, a diverse genre with plenty of options. Whether you want action or horror with your excitement, the streamer's thriller page has it all.

Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI, has spent the last year or so as the AI industry's favorite buzzword. As the sector's leading companies burn through capital at historic rates, racking up energy costs and investor expectations that grow harder to meet by the quarter, the promise of imminent human-level machine intelligence has become a useful thing to have in your back pocket.

Whether we're actually close to that milestone depends almost entirely on how you define it. That definitional flexibility, it turns out, is doing a lot of work.

Take, for example, Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA — a company currently valued at roughly $4 trillion, built largely on the GPU hardware that powers the AI boom — who recently sat down with podcaster Lex Fridman for a wide-ranging conversation covering data centers, geopolitics, and the question of whether AGI has already arrived. Huang thinks it has. The reasoning behind that claim, however, is fairly dubious.

As Fridman points out, Huang has previously said the timeline for AGI depends on what defines it. At the 2023 New York Times DealBook Summit, Huang defined AGI as software capable of passing tests that approximate normal human intelligence at a reasonably competitive level. He expected AI to clear that bar within five years.

For his part, Fridman offered Huang a generous definition to work with: true AGI, in Fridman's framing, would look like an AI capable of starting, growing, and running a technology company worth more than a billion dollars. He asked whether that was achievable in the next five to 20 years, given the recent proliferation of agentic AI tools like OpenClaw.

Huang didn't need five to 20 years. "I think it’s now. I think we’ve achieved AGI," he replied to Fridman.

That, however, is based on a narrow interpretation of what Fridman asked. The way Huang sees it, the AI doesn't need to build anything lasting. It doesn't need to manage people, navigate a board, or sustain a business. It just needs to hit a billion dollars once.

SEE ALSO: Microsoft dumps $1 billion into 'artificial general intelligence' project

"You said a billion," Huang told Fridman, "and you didn't say forever."

The through-line in both cases isn't a consistent theory of machine intelligence. It's a consistent pattern of defining the threshold in whatever way makes "yes, we're there" the easiest possible answer. His illustration of what that might look like is telling.

After his initial answer, Huang lays out his thoughts, describing a scenario in which an AI creates a simple web service — some app that goes viral, gets used by a few billion people at 50 cents a pop, and then quietly folds. He then points to the dot-com era as precedent, arguing that most of those websites were no more sophisticated than what an AI agent could generate today.

Huang was also candid about the ceiling of that vision. "The odds of 100,000 of those agents building NVIDIA," he said plainly, "is zero percent." That's not a small caveat. It's the whole ballgame.

What Huang is actually describing — a viral app that monetizes briefly and dies — is a far cry from the transformative, economy-reshaping AGI that dominates the public conversation. So, by his own admission, the kind of compound institutional intelligence required to build something like NVIDIA is nowhere in the picture yet.

It may officially be spring, and while we do very much encourage you to get outside and breathe the warmer air, us movie diehards still need to unwind during the week with a good movie or two.

Mozilla has started rolling out Firefox 149, one day ahead of schedule. It focuses on smarter multitasking and productivity-focused features. The latest version finally delivers a built-in split-screen mode that’s been in testing for months. There’s also a polished interface with updated visuals. Here’s everything new in Firefox 149.

March is typically a slow month for new movies. It comes after "Dumpuary" and before summer blockbuster season. Credit goes to Netflix, which has used March to its advantage by releasing several anticipated movies on its 2026 slate.

We all know Prime Day, Amazon's flagship sale that has millions of deals for Prime members. Additionally, Amazon has hosts Prime Big Deal Days in October in the lead up to Black Friday. And to tack on one more sale a year, there's Amazon's Big Spring Sale. The March event focuses on seasonal items as you start to prep for warmer weather.

The Big Spring Sale is different from Amazon's other sales, though. During both Prime Day and Prime Big Deal Days, the deals are available only to Prime members. However, the Big Spring Sale is available to shop for non-members, too. Plus, it's Amazon's longest sale. So, how long does the sale actually last, and when does it end? Here's what you need to know about the Big Spring Sale.

How long does Amazon's Big Spring Sale last?

Amazon's Big Spring Sale is the retailer's longest sale. The Big Spring Sale officially runs for seven days from March 25 to 31. However, that doesn't include all the lead-up as Amazon is already running early deals, which basically makes it a two-week event.

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When does the Big Spring Sale end?

The final day of Amazon's Big Spring Sale is March 31. That means once April 1 comes around, the sale is over — no joke. Official deals will end March 31 at 11:59 p.m. PT (or 2:59 a.m. ET), though we might see some linger after the sale's end.

What's on sale during the Big Spring Sale?

As we wait for the sale to officially start on March 25, we're looking out for early deals. Already, we've spotted some early deals worth your attention, including a Kindle at its lowest price ever.

Best early Big Spring Sale deals Best Kindle deal Amazon Kindle Colorsoft $169.99 (Save $80) Get Deal Best Apple deal Apple AirPods Pro 3 $219.99 (Save $29.01) Get Deal Best Robot Vacuum Deal Roborock Q10 S5+ $279.99 (Save $270) Get Deal Best Headphones Deal Sony WH-CH720N $98 (Save $81.99) Get Deal Best TV deal Hisense 75-inch U7 Mini LED QLED 4K TV $897.96 (Save $400.03) Get Deal Best outdoor deal Anker Solix C1000 Gen 2 portable power station $489.99 (Save $309.01) Get Deal

Engine additives are to cars what protein powders are to gym-goers: passionately praised by some as essential for performance, dismissed by others as mere hype or snake oil.

DietPi is a popular operating system for Raspberry Pi boards and other low-power systems, offering improved performance and pre-made configurations for common applications and self-hosted services. DietPi v10.2 has now arrived with Immich as an optional package, along with other changes.

It's been a rough, unsteady console generation for Xbox, but the company has a product showcase for our perusal later this week.

Microsoft's gaming brand announced a new Partner Showcase livestream on this morning, slated to take place on Thursday, March 26 at 1 p.m. ET. You can watch the stream on YouTube or Twitch at that time.

Xbox was very clear to point out that first-party Xbox Game Studios productions will not be the focus here, as it will instead center around upcoming third-party releases. These include RGG Studio's Stranger Than Heaven, The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, and something new for the already-released Stalker 2.

SEE ALSO: Former Xbox President Sarah Bond breaks silence after surprise exit This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

While it's normal for game companies to periodically show us their wares in this fashion, the timing is a big part of why this Xbox partner stream is interesting. Just last month, Xbox CEO Phil Spencer and president Sarah Bond both simultaneously left the company. Spencer's exit wasn't terribly surprising, given the tough position Xbox found itself in under his leadership, but Bond hitting the ejector seat rather than stepping into Spencer's shoes was a big deal. Instead, Microsoft put former AI executive Asha Sharma in charge of Xbox.

Those leadership changes came after a years-long spiral that has resulted in Xbox being in a pretty tough place, financially and in terms of reputation. Big acquisitions of brands like Bethesda and Activision Blizzard have not resulted in a higher output of quality first-party games as some hoped they would, while Xbox Series hardware has lagged behind the competition. There's also the matter of Xbox being a priority target for the BDS movement thanks to Microsoft's work with the Israeli military; speaking anecdotally, many people I know have stopped playing Xbox games because of this. Xbox has unveiled some very vague plans about its next console, but that hasn't stopped the bleeding on its own.

If nothing else, it will be interesting to see if Xbox's marketing changes at all under the new leadership team. We can all find out together on Thursday afternoon.

I'm the last person to tell you that you need to buy new hardware when you clearly don't. While it's easy to get stuck in an upgrade loop and always want the next best thing in PC hardware, it's not a good idea. GPUs are a great example of this: upgrading every generation isn't optimal for most users.

Along with choice and sustainability, privacy is one of the three central pillars of the Open Home Foundation, the non-profit behind the free and open source Home Assistant software. The core of this pillar is the ability to control your devices locally without having to share data with cloud services. If you want to set up an offline smart home, it can be quicker and cheaper than you might think.

Mastering Microsoft Excel's tools is a never-ending process, even for those who have used the program at work or at home for decades. With this in mind, here are some of my favorite Excel hacks I've picked up over the years that you can take away and use to speed up your spreadsheet workflow.

One of the most common issues that sometimes pops up in smartphones is overheating. It’s very noticeable when the phone in your hands gets too warm, and manufacturers try their best to avoid this. However, Samsung went too far with precautions in the Galaxy S22 series—now they’re paying for it.

The first thing BTS ask for on Arirang, the group's long-awaited fifth studio album, is simple: "Put your phone down."

It sounds almost cliché in an era of screen fatigue, but coming from BTS, it lands with a strange kind of dissonance. This is, after all, a group that didn't just benefit from social media but helped define how K-pop stars are expected to exist within it.

For over a decade, BTS have lived not just on the internet, but through it, building a global audience by turning screens into something intimate. Their practice room videos and late-night livestreams didn't just document their rise — they changed what proximity between artist and fan could feel like. It didn't matter that BTS were thousands of miles away or spoke Korean; the screen bridged the distance. It made every post, every update, feel immediate, like a digital exchange between friends.

Credit: BIG HIT MUSIC

Their fandom moved with that same fluency. Fans didn't just watch. They organized, amplified, and pushed BTS into spaces that had long felt inaccessible, bringing the group to historic heights on the U.S. music charts.

So what does it mean for BTS to ask listeners to step away from the very device that made them global? That connected them to millions of fans at once?

On its surface, Arirang reads as a reflection, maybe even a correction to the glossy, outward-facing pop of "Dynamite," "Butter," and "Permission to Dance" — a recalibration after years spent scaling themselves for a global audience. In the lead-up to the album, BTS promised a return to their roots. The framing makes that expectation almost inevitable. Arirang takes its name from a defining Korean folk song, a cultural touchstone long associated with longing and return. On paper, it signals a homecoming: a project that re-centers BTS within a specifically Korean tradition after years of global expansion.

SEE ALSO: 'BTS: The Return' review: The world's biggest boy band, without a clear direction

But the return isn't quite that literal. If Arirang moves back toward anything, it's not just heritage but foundation — a renewed emphasis on the hip-hop sensibilities that first defined BTS's sound and sharp lyricism. That grounding shapes the album's early stretch, before it opens into something more overtly pop.

Long before they were filling stadiums, their music and presence were built on forging direct, emotional links with listeners across language, geography, and vastly different lived experiences. BTS offered a version of digital intimacy that felt genuine, even revolutionary. Their early Twitter posts and V Lives didn't carry the polish that now defines idol content. They felt loose. Personal. At times, almost accidental. The internet made that connection scalable. It allowed BTS to collapse distance in a way that felt unprecedented.

But on Arirang, that connection takes a different form. It no longer has to be engineered or maintained. Instead, it's embedded in the music itself, no longer needing to be mediated to feel real.

On the bouncy, frenetic "Body To Body," where RM first delivers that opening line, closeness is framed as something immediate. "Put your phone down, let's get all the fun," he insists, pushing against a concert culture where even live moments are filtered through screens, optimized for capture and circulation. In K-pop, especially, where the clip economy drives visibility, presence is often secondary to documentation. The song resists that instinct. The moment only exists if you're in it.

In K-pop, especially, where the clip economy drives visibility, presence is often secondary to documentation.

But Arirang doesn't romanticize disconnection. It reframes the internet as something sharper, more volatile, a space where connection and harm coexist at the same speed. Suga makes that explicit: "Guns, knives, keyboards, put all that away." The keyboard is not metaphorical. It's a recognition of how language travels now — instantly, globally, and often without care for what it lands on.

That duality defines much of the album. On "Normal," BTS give language to the instability of constant visibility: "Show me hate, show me love, make me bulletproof / Yeah, we call this shit normal." Fame here isn't a fixed state; it's a condition of perpetual exposure, where affirmation and critique arrive simultaneously and with equal force. The song doesn't resolve that tension so much as sit inside it.

Credit: BIGHIT Music / Netflix

Elsewhere, Arirang turns its attention to the systems that produce that visibility. On the frenetic "FYA," the language of the dance floor collapses into the language of the feed: "Club go psycho / Might take you viral." For BTS, virality is no longer an outcome; it's an atmosphere. Every space they move through is already primed for capture, flattened into something that can be looped, shared, and consumed in fragments.

BTS are not rejecting the internet, nor are they fully embracing it. They are negotiating with it, acknowledging both its role in their ascent and its limitations as a space for sustaining something real.

You can hear that negotiation in the album's structure. Since BTS's hiatus, short-form video has reshaped not just how music is promoted, but how it's made. Songs are shorter, hooks arrive faster, moments are engineered for virality. TikTok has become central to the lifecycle of a song, creating an ecosystem that favors loops over progression.

BTS are acutely aware of this change. They've spoken about the "Shorts generation," about songs becoming shorter, more immediate. "People don't listen to long songs anymore," Jimin told Bloomberg in March 2026. In that same interview, RM noted that after returning to Korea from their Los Angeles sessions, tracks were trimmed by "maybe 15, 20 seconds" in final production.

You can hear it in the album's pacing, its sharp transitions, and the way certain sections feel designed to land quickly. Its opening stretch is restless, pulled in multiple directions — hip-hop, club beats, tonal pivots that never quite settle. It mirrors the churn of the feed: constant motion, constant escalation, nothing held in place for long.

Then, abruptly, it stops.

"No. 29" arrives as a single, resonant toll. The Sacred Bell of Great King Seongdeok rings out, unaccompanied, uninterrupted. No build. No transition. Just sound, sustained until the reverberation stills into silence. It refuses optimization. It can't be clipped into a trend or condensed into a loop. It simply exists, asking you to sit with it.

What follows shifts the album's center of gravity. If the first half contends with external forces, the second turns inward. "Swim," the lead single, arrives like the tide, not in crashing waves but in a slow, steady pull. The repetition of “swim” on the hook feels less like motion than suspension, like treading water in a vast, open ocean. "Under here, we don’t chase the time," j-hope sings, as the track settles into something slower, drifting into focus rather than announcing itself.

And yet, time lingers as a quiet pressure. On "Merry-Go-Round," Suga names the feeling directly: "Every day the same routine, merry-go-round or hamster wheel." It's a striking image for a group returning at full scale, one that frames success not as forward motion, but as repetition. Even growth loops back on itself. Even momentum feels cyclical.

The internet that once made BTS feel close is no longer the same one they're returning to.

On "Like Animals," the album's standout track, distance gives way to instinct. The production turns hazy, grunge-leaning, less polished, more atmospheric. Connection is no longer abstract or symbolic. It's physical, carnal. "None of us are tameable," j-hope reminds the listener. The line lands as release, stripping away the layers of performance and translation that define so much of digital interaction. "There's beauty outside control," RM sings.

That kind of freedom feels harder to come by now. The internet that once made BTS feel close is no longer the same one they're returning to.

Intimacy now registers as expectation. The access that fueled BTS's rise has hardened into something more transactional in the years since their last group release. Visibility becomes currency. Presence starts to look like performance. Even authenticity begins to feel orchestrated.

At times, Arirang pushes against the noise, searching for clarity beneath it. But it never fully steps outside the system it's questioning. It moves through the same cycles of virality and discourse that helped elevate BTS in the first place. Asking listeners to "put your phone down" becomes its own paradox, a message designed to spread as widely as possible online.

BTS are not stepping outside the system that made them global. They're trying to understand what it has become.

In the four years since their last release as a group, the digital ecosystem that amplified BTS into a global phenomenon has fractured into something faster, noisier, and harder to hold onto. Songs arrive as snippets before they're heard in full. Moments peak and disappear in the same breath. Fandom disperses across platforms and timelines that rarely overlap. What once felt shared now feels scattered.

There was a time when BTS existed at the center of a kind of digital monoculture, when discourse around the group moved in waves, unified and overwhelming. Praise and criticism alike traveled at scale. To express dissent meant risking being swallowed by it. The internet seemed, if not singular, then at least synchronized.

That coherence has thinned. The slow dissolution of platforms like Twitter (now X under Elon Musk's ownership) as a central "town square" has fractured conversation into smaller, more insulated spaces. What used to play out in public now disperses across group chats, private communities, and algorithmically sorted feeds. You are now more likely to exist in a version of the internet that reflects you back to yourself.

The online response to Arirang reflects that change. BTS releases have typically been met with near-total consensus — whether celebratory or defensive — in which dissent was often drowned out or met with swift, overwhelming pushback from fans. The conversation around this album feels more varied, more open, and even more critical. Not quieter, but less unified. The intensity hasn't disappeared; it's just been redistributed.

And crucially, BTS no longer seem to need that consensus.

They return not as artists trying to be seen, but as the biggest band in the world. Attention is already guaranteed. The question now is what that attention means and how they choose to move forward under its glare.

They return not as artists trying to be seen, but as the biggest band in the world.

The tension never fully resolves. Instead, Arirang begins to imagine a different relationship to it — one less defined by acceleration, more by duration. Not connection as something broadcast outwardly, but something held in place.

That instinct traces back to the album's title. "Arirang," a beloved Korean folk song, endures not because it spread quickly, but because it has been carried across generations, borders, and time.

BTS have long been positioned as a bridge between Korea and the global pop landscape, between tradition and reinvention. But that role has historically required a constant expansion toward new audiences. Arirang feels like a re-evaluation of that impulse. Not a retreat from the world, but a shift in how they move through it. What once felt like expansion now feels like proximity.

Credit: BIGHIT Music / Netflix

That becomes most tangible on stage, where BTS have long described concerts as the center of what they do. After years apart, performance becomes the place where connection is shared in real-time, carried between bodies, and not just transmitted through screens. Their live comeback concert was broadcast on Netflix, but its meaning was rooted in the physical. In central Seoul, BTS shut down streets and performed in front of Gwanghwamun Gate, turning a historic public square into a site of shared experience for tens of thousands of fans. Not just something to watch, but something to be inside, together.

In that context, Arirang reads less like a resolution and more like preparation. A way of reorienting, not away from the internet, but beyond its limits. It turns toward a form of connection built to be felt rather than consumed.

Or, as j-hope puts it on "Body To Body," drawing a line between experience and mediation: "You could see about it, or you read about it." For BTS, that distinction feels newly urgent.

In an internet that flattens everything into moments, Arirang reaches for something else. Not what travels across timelines, but what lingers. Not what's seen, but what's actually there.

Best Buy spring deals 2026: Best TV deal 65-inch Samsung Class S84F OLED 4K UHD Vision AI Smart Tizen TV $899.99 (save $1,100) Get Deal Best laptop deal 15.6-inch Acer Chromebook 315 (Intel Celeron N4500, 4GB LPDDR4X, 64GB eMMC) + Protective Sleeve $149 (save $150) Get Deal Best Apple Watch deal Apple Watch Series 11 (GPS, 42mm) $299 (save $100) Get Deal

The Amazon Big Spring Sale is all anyone can talk about right now (which, fair, it's basically a pre-game for July's Prime Day event). But Amazon isn't the only retailer dropping prices this week.

In a completely unsurprising move to steal some of that spotlight, Best Buy threw its own Tech Fest sale over the weekend. The official event technically wrapped up on Sunday, but a ton of those discounts are still live on the site today, including markdowns on big-ticket items like OLED TVs, noise-canceling headphones, and Apple products.

SEE ALSO: Amazon's Big Spring Sale is back: The best deals already live on Apple, robot vacuums, headphones, and more

So before you blow your entire shopping budget at Amazon, here are the best leftover Best Buy deals you can add to your cart right now.

Best deal overall Opens in a new window Credit: Samsung 65-inch Samsung Class S84F OLED 4K UHD Vision AI Smart Tizen TV $899.99 at Best Buy
$1,999.99 Save $1,100   Get Deal Why we like it

There are literally hundreds of leftover deals still floating around Best Buy's site right now, and we'll be updating this piece as we dig through more of them. But if we had to single out a discount to jump on right this second, it's this one. Scoring a 65-inch Samsung OLED for under $900 is basically unheard of outside of Black Friday. If you've been waiting for an excuse to finally upgrade your living room setup, saving over a grand on a premium display beats paying full price for whatever shiny new model drops next month.

Best TV deals

• 55-inch Insignia Class F50 Series LED 4K UHD Smart Fire TV — $179.98 $349.99 (save $170.01)

• 55-inch Insignia Class QF Series QLED 4K UHD Smart Fire TV — $199.99 $399.99 (save $200)

• 48-inch LG Class B5 Series OLED AI 4K UHD Smart webOS TV — $599.99 $1,299.99 (save $700)

• 65-inch Samsung Class S84F OLED 4K UHD Vision AI Smart Tizen TV — $899.99 $1,999.99 (save $1,100)

• 85-inch TCL Class QM6K Series 4K UHD HDR QD Mini LED Smart TV with Google TV — $999.99 $1,999.99 (save $1,000)

Best laptop deals

• 15.6-inch Acer Chromebook 315 (Intel Celeron N4500, 4GB LPDDR4X, 64GB eMMC) — $149 $299 (save $150)

• 14-inch HP Laptop (Intel Processor N150, 4GB RAM, 128GB UFS) — $204 $219.99 (save $15.99)

• 15.6-inch Lenovo IdeaPad 1 (AMD Ryzen 5 7520U, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) — $379 $529.99 (save $150.99)

• 15.6-inch HP Full HD Touch-Screen Laptop (Intel Core i7 1355U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $599.99 $799.99 (save $200)

Best Apple deals

• Apple AirTag (1st Gen, 4-Pack) — $59.99 $99 (save $39.01)

• Apple AirPods 4 — $116.90 $129.99 (save $13.09)

• Apple AirPods 4 (ANC) — $158.80 $179.99 (save $21.19)

• Apple Watch Series 11 (GPS, 42mm) — $299 $399 (save $100)

• Apple Watch Series 11 (GPS, 46mm) — $329 $429 (save $100)

• Apple AirPods Max (USB-C) — $499.99 $549.99 (save $50)

So you just bought a new drive, and you're planning on moving all of your files over from your older, slower drive to your newer drive. It can be a daunting task, especially if you're not experienced. It doesn't have to be, though.

Best beauty deals ahead of Amazon's Big Spring Sale Best hair care deal Shark FlexStyle $299.99 (save $100) Get Deal Best skincare tech deal Therabody TheraFace Depuffing Wand $129.99 (save $40) Get Deal

Amazon's Big Spring Sale is just two days away, but the mega-retailer isn't waiting to share its beauty deals.

Already, deals on the Shark FlexStyle, Therabody's TheraFace line, and one of the best Dyson Supersonic dupes, the Laifen Swift, are live ahead of the weeklong sale's kick off on March 25.

As Mashable's beauty expert, I combed the available markdowns to choose nine of the best deals live so far — but I'm anticipating we'll see more deals on beauty tech, skincare, and haircare as we head into the sale, so to be sure to check back.

Best beauty deal Shark FlexStyle $299.99 at Amazon
$399.99 Save $100   Get Deal at Amazon Why we like it

It's not that I'm a Dyson Airwrap hater, it's just that I know you can get essentially the same experience for less than half the price with the Shark FlexStyle. Though options for multi-stylers and Airwrap alternatives have expanded over the past few years, Shark remains one of the best, offering a great selection of attachments, versatility (especially with the twistable base), and innovation. This Black Cherry model is still $50 away from its record low pricing of $249.99, but it doesn't go on sale often, making this still a great price to nab it at.

More beauty deals

Skincare tech

• Therabody TheraFace Depuffing Wand — $129.99 $169.99 (save $40)

• TheraFace Therabody Mask Glo — $299.99 $379.99 (save $80)

Hair tech

• BaByliss Pro Nano Titanium flat iron — $76.99 $109.99 (save $33)

• BaByliss Pro Porcelain Ceramic Carrera hair dryer — $80.49 $114.99 (save $34.50)

• BaByliss Pro Nano Titanium hair dryer — $99.99 $199.99 (save $100)

• Laifen Swift hair dryer — $110 $139.99 (save $29.99)

• BaByliss Pro StyleSwitch — $124.99 $249.99 (save $125)

• Shark Glossi — $129 $179 (save $50)

Reddit has a real bot problem on its hands.

And, in order to deal with this problem, Reddit is considering turning to the latest go-to solution for the tech industry: ID verification.

On the tech show TBPN, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman spoke about how AI has caused issues for the platform and discussed potential solutions.

Hoffman explained how the solutions would look to answer the question "Is there actually a human using Reddit right now?"

"Reddit is for humans," Hoffman said, before discussing various verification processes that the company is looking at. 

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

"The most lightweight way is something like face ID or touch ID or broadly the family of technology that's called passkeys," Hoffman continued. "Every platform wants to know 'is this is a person?' Now Reddit's version is 'is this a person but we don't want to know which person this is.'"

That's a pretty important distinction for Reddit, which has based its platform on users' ability to maintain anonymity. Hoffman explained that there are "heavier versions" of ID verification, like "ID checking services," which the company already complies with where required by government regulations. However, it doesn't sound like they are looking to implement something like this more broadly to fight the platform's bot problem.

Alexis Ohanian, a co-founder of Reddit who resigned from the company's board in 2020, posted a message of support for trying to solve the bot problem, but also pointed out how tricky it will be to do so without alienating Reddit users.

"RDDT requiring Face ID was not something I had on my bingo card but something has got to be done about all the fake / botted content — I just don't know how to sell face-scanning to redditors or even lurkers," Ohanian said.

In his TBPN interview, Hoffman expressed support for real AI use cases on the site, such as auto-translation bots. However, Hoffman said that even with good AI bots on the platform, the company needs to be sure a real human is behind the bot.

Reddit has long had issues with automated accounts and content farms submitting posts and gaming the upvote system. However, with the rise in AI, Reddit has become inundated with AI bots attempting to mimic real users and replying to real user posts and comments with spam.

Since 2024, Google has drastically increased Reddit's visibility in search results. As a result, spammers have flocked to Reddit as a search engine optimization (SEO) technique.

It'll be interesting to see which ID verification method is chosen by Reddit. Regardless of what it is, it'll very likely receive blowback from the platform's very opinionated and privacy-oriented user base. 

There is nothing more frustrating than trying to get to work or an appointment on time and being slowed down by things out of your control—or are they? By making a few small changes in Google Maps, you can help make your morning commute less of a headache.

The long-awaited foldable iPhone — rumored to be called the iPhone Fold — should arrive in 2026. So far, Apple has kept a very tight lid on its first-ever foldable phone, but all signs point to a fall or winter 2026 release.

Early adopters already love foldables — and they have plenty of options — but Apple's been notably absent from the genre. However, don't count Apple out. The company has a history of showing up late to the party and then absolutely cornering the market, as the AirPods and iPhone did with MP3 players and smartphones.

So, as we await official details, here's everything we know about the future addition to the iPhone lineup, including the latest rumors, possible specifications, release date, and pricing information.

When will the iPhone Fold be released?

We initially thought that the iPhone Fold would be coming in fall 2026 alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max. Numerous rumors pointed to this over the last year. However, while Apple traditionally releases all of its new iPhones in September, the Fold might not be ready by then.

A tech analyst named Tim Long recently claimed that shipments of the iPhone Fold will begin in December of this year, not September, so it might be a winter device instead of a fall one. Of course, Apple could still announce it in September, but it may not be available right away like the iPhone 18 lineup.

For now, Long is the only one reporting that the iPhone Fold (or is it the iFold?) will come after September, so it could still be on store shelves sooner. Given the global memory shortage, last-minute delays are also possible, so we'll have to wait and see.

SEE ALSO: Apple's iPhone Fold is on track, but it might be pricier than we thought How much will the iPhone Fold cost, and will people buy it? A hypothetical rendering of the rumored iPhone Fold. Credit: Zain bin Awais / Mashable

The iPhone Fold is likely to be expensive. An early estimate from research analyst Arthur Liao suggested the price tag for the Fold — gulp — could come in around $2,399. That's in line with expectations in a new report from International Data Corporation (IDC). Last year, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said the iPhone Fold is likely to retail between $2,000 and $2,500.

Despite the sizable cost (the flagship Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 is priced at $1,999.99), sales expectations remain high. The IDC report estimated Apple would siphon one-third of the spending in the foldable market in 2026.

"But the real game-changer for the category comes at year-end when Apple enters the foldable space, projected to capture over 22% unit share and a staggering 34% of the foldables market value in its first year, thanks to an expected average price point of $2,400,” read the report.

In March, Mark Gurman claimed that Apple could classify the iPhone Fold as an "Ultra" product, putting it in a higher price tier than other devices in its portfolio alongside other high-end machines like the Apple Watch Ultra. If the phone ends up costing at least $2,000 as expected, this would make sense.

The latest iPhone Fold leaks The most recent leaks point to two rear cameras, not three. Credit: Zain bin Awais / Mashable

In December 2025, we saw lots of alleged iPhone Fold renders circulating on social media, which all share a similar design. We'd take these with a grain of salt, of course.

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In February, a leaker known as Instant Digital posted some alleged renders of the iPhone to the Chinese social media site Weibo. Like most leaks, especially the ones pertaining to Apple, we can't confirm their authenticity. However, they line up with earlier reports of the overall look of the phone.

More recently, Apple leaker Sonny Dickson shared another potential iPhone Fold render in March 2026.

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Instant Digital makes some interesting claims. Most notably, the report says the iPhone Fold will have the largest-ever iPhone battery. (For reference, the iPhone 17 Pro Max is estimated to have a roughly 5,088 mAh battery.)

"The volume buttons are not on the left side," reads a translation of the post. "Instead, they are placed directly on the top of the right-side frame (similar to the volume button layout on the top of the iPad mini). This may take some getting used to for users’ typical phone habits."

The post also stated, "The rear dual camera + right-side microphone + flash are arranged horizontally. The camera module appears to be fully black and does not match the body color. Currently, the only confirmed color is white, but it is expected that Apple will launch two color options."

Beyond physical design, another recent report suggested you'll be able to run multiple apps side-by-side when the phone is unfolded, sort of like multitasking on iPadOS 26. However, by all accounts, this device will run iOS, not iPadOS, so you won't exactly get a full iPad experience from the iPhone Fold. (Apps that are designed to run natively in iPadOS, for example, would not be compatible.)

What will the iPhone Fold specs look like? What would you want to see in a foldable iPhone design? Let us know in the comments. Credit: Zain bin Awais / Mashable

The iPhone Fold remains a mystery to some extent, of course, but we do have a very rough idea of what it could offer. Based on all the rumors, the iPhone Fold could look something like this:

• Displays: 7.8-inch inner OLED display, 5.5-inch outer OLED display

• Thickness: 9.5mm unfolded, 4.5mm when folded

• Security: Touch ID

• Processor: A20 processor

• Cameras: Dual rear cameras (48MP), dual inner/outer front cameras

• Price: $2,399

• Battery: At least 5,088 mAh

A report from Chinese news outlet United Daily News noted the iPhone Fold could be creaseless, which means you wouldn't see that awkward line when it's folded open.

Since then, we've seen several reports claiming that Apple is committed to making the iPhone Fold's display the best it can possibly be. It should be very durable, super thin, and yes, without a visible crease. Samsung Display is reportedly producing the OLED displays for the iPhone Fold, as Samsung's got the best flexible display tech in the game. There's a reason Samsung released the Galaxy TriFold while the world is still waiting on the first foldable iPhone.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman also posted several reports on the iPhone Fold recently, including laying out the basic specs for the device. He said that the foldable iPhone would be a book-style foldable with four cameras — two on the back, one on the inside, and one front selfie camera. Gurman also predicted it would use Touch ID like the iPad Air and Pro, even though iPhones typically use Face ID.

Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported earlier this year that the iPhone Fold would have a 7.8-inch inner display, a 5.5-inch outer display, and measure in at just 9 to 9.5mm of thickness. We heard another rumor in September 2025, which claimed the iPhone Fold would look like two iPhone Airs put together, with a similar thickness of 5.6mm. Why the discrepancy between the two reports? It could be the difference between the device's thickness when folded and unfolded.

SEE ALSO: Samsung Galaxy Z Trifold vs Apple foldable iPhone: Specs and rumors

There's also talk about Apple using innovative tech to make the iPhone Fold lighter and more durable than most foldables. These rumors include a report that the company is using liquid metal for the phone's hinge, which should improve durability.

Mashable's Alex Perry also compared the potential specs of the iPhone Fold with the Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold, which we know a lot more about. Obviously, the Samsung trifold will be larger and thicker than the iPhone Fold. Otherwise, we're still waiting on official details. But if recent rumors prove true, the wait shouldn't be too much longer.

Finally, even though the iPhone Fold is still in the realm of fantasy, there are already rumors about a follow-up, clamshell-style foldable from Apple, potentially called the iPhone Flip. That one probably isn't coming until next year, though.

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