Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is heading to the Switch 2 on June 3. The news was dropped at this morning's Nintendo Direct livestream. This is the second part of the FF7 remake-a-palooza. The first installment, Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade, was released for Nintendo's console on January 22. Only a six month wait between chapters? Sony fans had to wait four years.
For the uninitiated, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth remakes the middle portion of the PS1 classic Final Fantasy 7. The graphics are, obviously, quite different, but so is the gameplay. This isn't exactly the JRPG you remember, with a real time action system instead of turn-based mechanics.
This is a full port of the PS5 game, further proving that the Switch 2 is a capable little machine. It's certainly pretty to look at, as proven by the trailer. As an aside, the port is also coming to Xbox Series X/S on the very same day.
Now that all of the major consoles will soon be home to both current FF7 remakes, we can join in solidarity as we wait for the third and final installment. Yeah, that's right. A JRPG from 1997 requires three gigantic remakes. We don't even know when the third one is coming out, but rumors suggest 2027.
Today's Nintendo Direct also revealed that a bunch of Bethesda games are heading to the Switch 2, including Fallout 4: Anniversary Edition on February 24, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on May 12 and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered sometime later in the year.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/final-fantasy-7-rebirth-comes-to-switch-2-on-june-3-163009481.html?src=rssHorizon is one of PlayStation's biggest franchises at this point. Alongside Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West, there are a bunch of spin-off games. Joining them is Horizon Hunters Gathering, a co-op action game that original Horizon developer Guerrilla is making for PlayStation 5 and PC. We've known since 2022 that the studio was working on a Horizon multiplayer game.
Here, you'll be able to team up with a couple of friends to hunt killer machines, Monster Hunter style. Guerrilla says it's designing the hunts to be challenging and replayable. "Combat is tactical, reactive, and deeply skill-based, building on the tactical precision of the Horizon games while embracing the dynamics of team play," game director Arjan Bak wrote on the PlayStation Blog. The game also has a more stylized look compared with the more grounded visuals of the mainline games.
Horizon Hunters Gathering has multiple game modes. In Machine Incursion, you'll battle waves of machines plus a tough boss. Guerrilla is pitching Cauldron Descent as a longer, multi-stage mode with a series of chambers to work through. These will contain things like battles with machines and "hidden doors that promise power and reward for teams prepared to open them."
There's a roster of characters to choose from that will expand over time. Each hunter has their own melee or ranged weapons and playstyles. The game has a roguelite perk system too, through which you'll be able to shape your hunter's build on each run, and you can select a class that alters their abilities. There's a social hub where you can customize your characters, visit shops, upgrade your gear and assemble a team for a mission.
Guerrilla says Hunters Gathering is canonical to the Horizon universe. It has a narrative campaign with "new mysteries, characters and threats." You'll be able to play through the story with bots or with friends in co-op. The studio says it will add more adventures over time.
There'll be support for cross-play and cross-progression between PS5 and PC. Guerrilla says it'll have more to share about the game in the coming months, but you won't necessarily need to wait a long time to try it out. The first closed playtest will take place later this month. You can sign up through the PlayStation Beta Program.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/guerrilla-reveals-horizon-hunters-gathering-a-co-op-action-spin-off-for-ps5-and-pc-162058264.html?src=rss
We've been talking about how the Trump GOP is launching an all out attack on Netflix's proposed merger with Warner Brothers. Not because they care about antitrust or corporate power, but because they really want Trump-allied billionaire Larry Ellison to buy Warner Brothers, CNN, and HBO. It's part of their unsubtle plan to acquire what's left of U.S. media and turn it it to MAGA state television (see: Hungary).
Of course, if you're a corrupt, Trump-bootheel-licking, GOP lawmaker looking to turn U.S. media (or what's left of it) into a Trump-friendly agitprop machine, you can't just openly admit this. So the GOP have had to dress up their attacks on Netflix as some sort of principled stand against media consolidation, "leftist propaganda," child indoctrination, and "wokeism." Real pudding-brained cult shit.
Enter ever-the-opportunist Josh Hawley, who "grilled" Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos this week in Senate hearings, leveraging anti-trans hysteria and fear-mongering to pretend Netflix is somehow radically leftist:
"Why is it that so much of Netflix content for children promotes a transgender ideology?" Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley asked Sarandos on Tuesday. "Almost half of your content for children—I'm talking about minor children now, I'm not talking about teenagers, minor children—promotes a transgender ideology agenda."
If you're a grown adult, you probably realize Netflix's primary interest is in making money by producing whatever gets people's attention. That has ranged from military dramas featuring (gasp) homosexuals (something you'll recall made the Trump Pentagon cry), to hack comedians who like to punch down against trans folks. If Netflix has an ideology, it's opportunism.
Hawley's (false) claim that half of Netflix's children's programming supports a "trans agenda" was simply made up, and originates in a Heartland Institute "study" making the rounds in DC designed to demonize Netflix. Allowing, as we noted above, Larry Ellison to swoop in, dominate U.S. media, and do all of the ideological bullshit the GOP is pretending to be worried about. Just like we saw with the Trump GOP's hijacking of TikTok by weird right wing zealots like Larry Ellison and Marc Andreessen.
As I've noted previously, ideally you'd block all additional media consolidation, since these megadeals are consistently terrible for labor, consumers, and product quality. But that's not happening under a Trump administration that has lobotomized all key regulators. So ideally, while not great, Netflix acquiring Warner Brothers is the best of a bunch of bad options, and probably the route Dem lawmakers and activists should be backing.
Such are the strange days we live in.
The GOP and Heartland attack on Netflix serves two functions: it either scuttles the deal so that Larry Ellison can buy Warner Brothers, and/or it forces Netflix to continually debase itself to please Trump if it wants merger approval. Since Netflix isn't interested in CNN and Warner Brothers' Discovery channels due to sagging ratings, it's likely these are spun off and sold to Ellison anyway even if Netflix's deal succeeds.
Again, look to Orban's Hungary and Putin's Russia if you want to see what the Heartland folks and Josh Hawley are keen on building. Our broken, corporate press is already largely incapable of being factually honest (particularly about corporate power or the GOP), and they're well on the way toward being consolidated into what will ultimately become a 24/7 autocrat ass kissing machine.
You know, to protect the children.
Breach-tracking site Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) claims a cyberattack on Betterment affected roughly 1.4 million users - although the investment company has yet to publicly confirm how many customers were affected by January's intrusion.…
Microsoft says "reliability is the priority" for AI in Visual Studio - a reassurance that may raise eyebrows among developers already living with Copilot's quirks.…
The digital publishing platform Substack has told some of its users that their data was stolen in a security breach. The affected account holders had their email addresses and phone numbers scraped in a hack that occurred in October 2025.
In an email posted on Bluesky, Substack CEO, Christ Best, said the company became aware of the breach on February 3, which involved an "unauthorized third party to access limited user data without permission." While internal metadata was also shared in the hack, Best said that credit card numbers and other financial details were not. No passwords were obtained either.
As well as apologizing to Substack users, the company's CEO also said in the email that the security vulnerabilities have now been addressed. "We are conducting a full investigation, and are taking steps to improve our systems and processes to prevent this type of issue from happening in the future," he said. Best added that there is no evidence that any of the stolen data is being "misused," but advised the affected account holders to be wary of suspicious emails or text messages they may receive.
The newsletter platform has not disclosed how many accounts were hacked, but Bleeping Computer reported that a database allegedly containing 697, 313 stolen data records from Substack was leaked on the hacking forum BreachForums.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/substack-ceo-informs-users-of-a-data-breach-151113809.html?src=rss
Jeremy Corbyn has demanded a focus on the victims of Jeffrey Epstein as the scandal surrounding Peter Mandelson grows. Speaking from the Central Lobby on 5 February, Corbyn called for the US authorities to interview Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
Corbyn makes pleaVictims of Epstein's vile network will be scarred forever by the horrific abuse they suffered. It is them we should be thinking about.
pic.twitter.com/EBgrCCUJnC— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) February 5, 2026
Corbyn rightly emphasised that the political activity around the latest Epstein File releases should not overshadow the woman and girls involved in these sex trafficking rings. Pointing out the tragic case of Virginia Giuffre who sadly died by suicide in April 2025, he continued:
Others are in a desperate situation. They will be scarred forever by the experience of the behaviour of Jeffrey Epstein. It is the victims we should be thinking about.
Corbyn's suggestion that both Mandelson and Mountbatten-Windsor would only be questioned under voluntary circumstances is worrying. These two perverted predators should be in fucking prison, not being politely asked to consider facing justice.
UnaccountableThese remarks are absolutely right. It's the women and girls who have had their lives ruined who should be at the forefront of these investigations.
As Maddison Wheeldon wrote for the Canary:
It is time we empathise and choose to empower women and girls, not continue this toxic cycle of even the reveal of abuse not centring the abused.
Featured image via Sky News
By Antifabot
As we've reported, Donald Trump has been deploying masked goons to terrorise US cities. These anonymous thugs work for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, and yet the Trump regime is using them to intimidate all Americans - not just those who were born outside the states. This recently saw ICE agents murder Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.
Now, Trump has offered the most self-pitying response when asked about their murders:
Pitiful TrumpTrump on ICE: I hate even talking about it. 2 people out of tens of thousands and you get bad publicity.
Llamas: But they were Americans who died.
Trump: They don't talk about that we have small trucks. We have been very tough on the waters.
Llamas: The waters?
Trump: Where… pic.twitter.com/eO8juwpY4v
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) February 5, 2026
To Trump, the great unfairness isn't that his goons shot an American in the back; it's that he's getting bad publicity as a result.
Truly, he's the least self-aware and most self-centred man to have ever existed. As such, it makes sense he'd end up as the US president. Trump is the embodiment of the past 80 years of the American Empire without any of the pretence.
In other news, Trump has defended Bill Clinton:
Trump: It bothers that they're going after Bill Clinton. I like Bill Clinton.
Reporter: What do you like about him?
Trump: He got me. He understood me. pic.twitter.com/wNowPvORka
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 5, 2026
If you're wondering why they're "going after" Clinton, it's because - like Trump himself - he features heavily in the Epstein Files. Once again, it's a case of 'poor me' from Trump, although this time he's extended his definition of 'self' to include the other degenerates who enjoyed Epstein's company.
It's obvious Trump isn't thinking about Epstein's victims at all. Sadly, he isn't alone in this, as Maddison Wheeldon wrote for the Canary:
Yet another lawsuit"flawed redactions" of the Epstein Files have made nearly 100 survivors vulnerable, with the women's lives "turned upside down." However, the mainstream media circus around the release of the files is conveniently diminishing both the horror and scrutiny of these atrocious crimes, as well as the accountability of the powerful figures responsible for them.
In this clip, Trump is defending his decision to sue the US Inland Revenue Service:
Trump: Essentially, the lawsuit has been won. I guess I won a lot of money. I'll give 100% to charity.
Reporter: You're taking it out of the system.
Trump: No, I'm putting it back into the system. I'm giving it to charity.
Reporter: 38 trillion in debt and we're taking 10… pic.twitter.com/ylhbRG4Vg1
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 5, 2026
On this topic, AP reported:
In 2024, former IRS contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn, of Washington, D.C. — who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, a defense and national security tech firm — was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to leaking tax information about Trump and others to two news outlets between 2018 and 2020.
The outlets were not named in the charging documents, but the description and time frame align with stories about Trump's tax returns in The New York Times and reporting about wealthy Americans' taxes in the nonprofit investigative journalism organization ProPublica. The 2020 New York Times report found Trump paid $750 in federal income tax the year he first entered the White House and no income tax at all some years thanks to reported colossal losses.
Regardless of the precise details, it's obviously not sustainable to have a country in which the leader is suing his own governmental departments.
ICEFor readers in the UK, it's worth bearing in mind that both Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch have both spoken about importing ICE-style policing to the UK. These same leaders have also done more than their fair share of sucking up to the US president. As such, we need to ask ourselves: is this pathetic, declining mess of a country really what we want to emulate in the UK?
Featured image via NBC
By Willem Moore
Todd Howard made a surprise appearance at the end of Thursday's Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase to share updates about a few Bethesda Game Studios that are coming to Nintendo Switch 2 this year. The first of those is Fallout 4: Anniversary Edition, which will hit the console on February 24.
This version of Fallout 4 debuted on PC, Xbox and PlayStation in November. It includes the base game and all DLC, as well as Creation Club mods. It'll land on Switch 2 just a few weeks after the second season of the Fallout TV show wrapped up. A Switch 2 version was previously announced, but we didn't have a release date until now.
In a few months — on May 12, to be exact — you'll be able to play the fantastic Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on your Switch 2 (a port of that game for Nintendo's system was also announced last year). And then, later this year, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered will arrive on the console. Let's just hope Bethesda has properly optimized that for Switch 2.
Of course, these aren't the first Bethesda games to land on Nintendo systems. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has long been available for the Switch. A Switch 2 version arrived in December.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/fallout-4-and-indiana-jones-and-the-great-circle-get-switch-2-release-dates-150023624.html?src=rssAspiring Starlink competitor Logos Space Services has secured FCC clearance to launch more than 4,000 broadband satellites into low Earth orbit by 2035, as reported by Space News. Under FCC regulations, the company must deploy half of the approved amount within the next seven years.
The company is headed by its founder, Milo Medin, a former project manager at NASA as well as a former vice president of wireless services at Google. The company has been raising money since it opened its doors in 2023 and reportedly hopes to deploy its first satellite by 2027. Logos' planned low Earth orbit constellation would beam high-speed broadband internet to customers worldwide, including government and enterprise users, much like Starlink.
While the satellite broadband market is growing, Starlink remains the biggest player by far. The European Space Agency estimates there are just over 14,000 functioning satellites currently in orbit and we know that roughly 9,600 of them are a part of the Starlink constellation. The SpaceX subsidiary recently asked the FCC for clearance to launch a million satellites, though in reality, the FCC will likely trend closer to the 7,500 it approved on the last go-around. The ESA says it expects 100,000 satellites to be in orbit by 2030.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/a-potential-starlink-competitor-just-got-fcc-clearance-to-launch-4000-satellites-143905076.html?src=rssThe 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics begin this week, and this year's Opening Ceremony promises to be one for the ages. The three-hour event will feature performances from Mariah Carey and Andrea Bocelli, 3,000 athletes participating in the Parade of Nations, and not one but two Olympic cauldrons being lit. (One at Milan's Arco della Pace, since Milan will serve as the main hub for this year's Games, and the other in the Alpine city of Cortina d'Ampezzo, where events like skiing will take place.) The festivities are all happening this Friday, Feb. 6, and will air on NBC — you can tune in live on Friday afternoon starting at 2 p.m. ET, or wait for the primetime broadcast at 8 p.m. ET.
If you want to tune in to the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics Opening Ceremony, we've got you covered. Here's all the info you need to watch, including what channel it's on, the broadcast schedule, and who will be there.
How to watch the Opening Ceremony at the 2026 Winter Olympics
Date: Friday, Feb. 6
Time: Airs live from 2-5 p.m. ET, primetime re-air from 8-11 p.m. ET
Location: San Siro Stadium, Milan
TV channels: NBC
Streaming: Peacock, DirecTV, NBC.com, and more
Where can I stream the Opening Ceremony at the 2026 Winter Olympics?How to watch the 2026 Opening Ceremony on TV:
There will be two broadcasts of the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony this Friday. You can tune in live from 2 p.m. - 5 p.m. ET on Friday afternoon, or catch the encore broadcast from 8 p.m. - 11 p.m. ET that night. Both broadcasts will air on NBC, which is available with DirecTV, Hulu + Live TV, and more.
With a live TV streaming service subscription or cable package, you can also catch all of NBC and Peacock's Olympics coverage on NBC.com and via NBCOlympics.com or the NBC App, just by logging in with your provider.
How to watch the Opening Ceremony in Milan without cable:
You can watch the Opening Ceremony live or on-demand on Peacock. If you already subscribe to a live TV streaming service or cable package, you should also be able to catch all of Peacock's Olympics coverage on NBC.com, NBCOlympics.com and the NBC app.
Who is hosting the Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony?
Sportscaster Terry Gannon will be hosting coverage of the 2026 Winter Games Opening Ceremony. Also appearing at the Opening Ceremony will be former Olympic snowboarder Shaun White, and NBC Olympics primetime host Mike Tirico will also participate remotely from San Francisco, where he'll be pulling double duty covering the Olympics and prepping to call Super Bowl LX.
Who is performing at the 2026 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony?Mariah Carey will headline the Opening Ceremony, and the event will also include a performance from iconic Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli. Actress Sabrina Impacciatore (The Paper, The White Lotus) and pianist Lang Lang, will also perform. And viewers will also get to see the nearly 3,000 Olympic athletes participating in the Parade of Nations.
Where is the 2026 Olympics Opening Ceremony being held?The 2026 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony will be held at Milan's San Siro Stadium, home to football clubs AC Milan and Inter Milan. The Opening Ceremony will actually be one of the final events held at San Siro Stadium, it's set to be demolished some time after the Games end.
More ways to watch the 2026 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/how-to-watch-the-opening-ceremony-at-the-2026-milan-cortina-winter-olympics-143529451.html?src=rss
The UK government claims it will develop a "world-first" framework to evaluate deepfake detection technologies as AI-generated content proliferates.…
Microsoft has made OneDrive agents generally available, allowing users to query multiple documents simultaneously through Copilot instead of just one at a time.…
The Bundeskartellamt, or the Federal Cartel Office of Germany, has prohibited Amazon from continuing its practice of using mechanisms to control the prices charged by sellers on its platform in the country. Germany's competition regulator explained that the company uses "various price control mechanisms" to review prices set by third-party Markerplace sellers. If the website deems a specific listing's pricing as too high, it allegedly removes the listing altogether or prevents it from being prominently displayed in the Buy Box section that lets you quickly purchase items. If those listings aren't removed completely, they're banished to less prominent sections like in the "See all buying options" and the "Other sellers on Amazon" lists. This reduced visibility could "lead to significant losses in sales" for sellers.
Amazon was found to have engaged in anti-competitive practices, because the company itself runs its own retail business and sells goods on the platform. That makes third-party sellers, which make up for 60 percent of the items sold on the website, direct competitors. Cartel Office president Andreas Mundt said Amazon must only be allowed to influence competitors' pricing "in the most exceptional cases," such as "in the event of excessive pricing." He didn't specify what the agency views as "excessive pricing," but he said allowing the company to continue its current practices will give it the power to "control the price level on the trading platform according to its own ideas." He also said that Amazon could use its mechanisms "to compete with the rest of the online retail sector outside"of its own website. Amazon's interference could lead to third-party sellers "no longer being able to cover their own costs, forcing them out of the Marketplace," he added.
Rocco Bräuniger, Amazon's country manager for Germany, told Bloomberg that the company will appeal the ruling and will continue operating as usual. "Amazon would be the only retailer in Germany forced to highlight non-competitive prices for customers," he said. "This makes no sense for customers, sales partners, or competition." He also asserted that the office's decision will throttle innovation in the European Union.
Amazon has been under scrutiny in Europe for years now. Back in 2022, it pledged not to use private sellers' data to compete with them in the Marketplace in the EU. It also promised to give sellers "equal treatment" when ranking them in the Buy Box section.
"The Bundeskartellamt considers this systematic interference in the Marketplace sellers' freedom to set their own prices to constitute an abuse under the special provisions for large digital companies (Section 19a(2) of the German Competition Act (GWB)) as well as a violation of the general abuse provisions under Section 19 GWB and Article 102 TFEU," the agency wrote. "…In these proceedings, the Bundeskartellamt has worked closely with the European Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the EU Regulation on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector (Digital Markets Act)."
The agency is slapping Amazon with a fine due to those violations, but the $70 million penalty it's asking for is merely partial payment based on the economic benefits the company enjoyed from its alleged anti-competitive behaviors. According to the Bundeskartellamt, the identified antitrust violations are still ongoing, so Amazon may have to pay more.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/amazon-germany-fined-70-million-for-influencing-third-party-marketplace-pricing-140000588.html?src=rssLast week, a new social network was created and it's already gone very, very viral even though it's not meant for human users. I'm talking, of course, about Moltbook, a Reddit-like platform that's populated entirely by AI agents.
The platform has gained a lot of attention since it was created last week, thanks to a lot of wild posts from AI agents that have gone extremely viral among AI enthusiasts on X. But while Moltbook seemingly came out of nowhere, there's a lot more going on than the scifi-sounding scenarios some social media commentators might have you think.
What is Moltbook and where did it come from?Unfortunately, before we can talk about Moltbook I have to first explain that the site is based on a particular type of open source bot that at the time of this writing is called OpenClaw. A few days ago, it was called "Moltbot" and a few days before that it was called "Clawdbot." The name changes were prompted by Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude, whose lawyers apparently thought the "Clawd" name was a little too close to its own branding and "forced" a name change.
ExpressVPN is launching a new cybersecurity suite consisting of four standalone products: a password manager called ExpressKeys, a masked email relay called ExpressMailGuard, an encrypted AI platform called ExpressAI and an app called Identity Defender that monitors public information for any threats to your identity. All four apps are being rolled into ExpressVPN's existing multi-tiered pricing structure.
ExpressKeys and ExpressMailGuard have officially launched and are now available to subscribers. Identity Defender launches for U.S. customers only on February 26. ExpressAI was originally planned to launch today, but ExpressVPN decided yesterday to hold it back in order to refine the experience. Its new launch date remains to be determined.
ExpressKeys and Identity Defender are based on existing products, but they're being relaunched for the new suite. ExpressKeys replaces ExpressVPN Keys, the password manager formerly controlled from the ExpressVPN app. By separating password management into its own app, ExpressVPN hopes to be able to update it more quickly without needing to ship a whole new version of the VPN. Everyone who currently has an Advanced or Pro subscription with ExpressVPN Keys will see it automatically replaced with ExpressKeys.
Identity Defender is only available in the United States, and so far only to users who created their accounts after October 28, 2024. Available for Advanced and Pro subscribers, Identity Defender consists of a data removal service, an identity theft insurance policy and a set of crawlers that scan for any suspicious activity around your personal information. Like ExpressKeys, it's transitioning from an integrated VPN feature to a standalone app.
ExpressMailGuard is a service for creating burner email addresses. If you're not comfortable handing over your real email address when creating a new account, you can use MailGuard to generate a fake address that forwards all email to your real inbox. If one of your aliases starts getting a lot of spam, you can cut off its access. It's managed through a separate dashboard that will be available to all ExpressVPN subscribers.
ExpressAI is an AI platform that saves all user-inputted data on strictly encrypted servers. It's apparently end-to-end encrypted, doesn't use your prompts to train its model and never saves uploads on persistent memory. It also has guardrails against processing harmful requests.
All these apps are in line with ExpressVPN's usual ethos. They're not innovations; all four can be easily compared to existing products. Instead, like the VPN itself — which rode this model to a spot on my best VPN list — they're focused on performing unsexy tasks well. The ability to bundle them with an ExpressVPN subscription should make them appealing to customers who are already fans of the core VPN product.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/vpn/expressvpn-launches-four-new-standalone-apps-140000686.html?src=rss
PC buyers can expect price hikes as chipmakers continue to prioritize AI production over all else, restricting the supply of key components across the tech industry.…
You will have to wait a bit longer before you can buy a Steam Machine — and you may have to pay more for one, too. Valve had intended to release the console-style SteamOS-powered device in early 2026, and AMD CEO Lisa Su just claimed that the company was on track to start shipping it soon. But in a new post detailing the latest updates for its upcoming Steam products, Valve has revealed that while it's still aiming to start selling the console in the first half of the year, it has yet to decide on concrete pricing and a launch date for it. The release of Valve's upcoming Steam Frame VR headset and controller will be delayed, as well.
Valve was hoping to be able to announce pricing and launch dates by now. The company cited industry-wide memory and storage shortages, which have grown since the Steam devices' announcement, as the culprit for the delay. It explained that it has to rethink their exact shipping schedules and pricing due to the limited availability and the rising prices of those components. "We will keep you updated as much as we can as we finalize those plans as soon as possible," Valve wrote. As The Wall Street Journal recently reported, the artificial intelligence industry has been hoovering up manufacturers' available memory chips and hard drives for its infrastructure developments. That has led to shortages for other industries, like PCs and phones.
The Steam Machine is a compact cube-like PC for gaming powered by a semi-custom AMD CPU and GPU. Valve said during its announcement that it has "roughly six times the horsepower" of the Steam Deck and can support 4K gaming at 60 FPS with FSR. In the new post, Valve said that majority of Steam titles played great at those settings during testing, though some required more upscaling than others and may fare better when played at a lower framerate to maintain a 1080p resolution. It also revealed that you will have easy access to the Machine's SSD and memory if you want to upgrade them. Meanwhile, the Steam Frame is a wireless, standalone VR headset that can play both PC and Android games.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/valve-pushes-back-steam-machine-launch-due-to-storage-and-memory-shortage-133000103.html?src=rssSony has now shipped 92.2 million PlayStation 5 consoles in total around the world, but sales were down sharply over the holiday season compared to last year. In its latest earnings report, the company said it shipped eight million PS5s during its key third quarter, 1.5 million (16 percent) lower than in the same period last year. The gaming division still made more profit, though, thanks to a boost in software sales and a low yen.
Sony's first two quarters this fiscal year saw an increase in PS5s sold, so the holiday decline is a bit surprising. That said, sales during the same period the previous year were an outlier at 9.5 million units sold, far and away its best period since the console went on sale in November 2020.
Software sales, however, were exceptional in Q3 this year. Sony sold 97.2 million games compared to 95.9 million the year before, and boosted digital sales to 76 percent, up 2 percent year-over-year. Sony said it also saw a record 132 million monthly active users on the PlayStation Network. New games on the horizon for PS5 include Resident Evil Requiem (February 27), Avowed (February 17) and Bungie's Marathon (March 5).
With PS5 sales down a bit, it does raise the question of when the company's next console is coming. The PS4 went seven years before being replaced, but given continued strong sales, high RAM prices and recent hardware updates, analysts figure that the PS5 is likely to have a longer life cycle. When the PS6 does arrive, however, it could offer triple the performance of the PS5.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/sonys-holiday-ps5-sales-dropped-16-percent-compared-to-last-year-130000476.html?src=rss
Peace campaigners have held two days of protest to call attention to a controversial arms fair hosted by Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre (NEC).
There were no arrests outside the Specialist Defence and Security Convention (SDSC-UK) on 3-4 February. Although two protesters were carried off the site.
Actions by around 60 protesters included a mock drone attack 'die-in', street theatre from the Red Rebels, a silent vigil led by Quakers, interfaith prayers and drumming.
Arms fair 'not welcome'The Stop SDSC-UK campaign includes Quakers, Campaign Against Arms Trade and others. A spokesperson for the campaign said:
The SDSC-UK isn't just another exhibition, it's a showcase for companies that profit from war, human suffering, and corruption.
Weapons sold here end up being used against civilians in conflicts from Yemen to Gaza. This is not welcome in our city.
The SDSC-UK has faced protests in every community it has visited. Campaigners forced previous events out of the Three Counties Showground in 2023 and the Telford International Centre in 2025.
Notorious exhibitors at the arms fair have included:
- Thales, linked to arms used against civilians in West Papua and breaches of sanctions against Russia.
- BAE Systems, whose fighter-bombers have been used in Yemen and whose deals have been tied to massive bribery scandals.
- Qioptiq / Excelitas, providing military optics to regimes known for human rights abuses.
- L3 Harris, whose bomb racks have seen use in conflicts in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Ethiopia, and Libya.
- Elbit Systems, a key part of Israel's drone fleet involved in attacks condemned as potential genocide in Gaza.
An open letter to Paul Reeve, CEO of the NEC Group, signed by over 400 individuals and 30 organisations including Pax Christi and the Peace Pledge Union. Their Peace Dove mascot delivered it to the NEC on 21 January.
In their letter, the campaigners said hosting the arms fair goes against the NEC's stated commitment to honest, ethical business.
The UK arms industry alone emits over 1.4m tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. And it has links to nearly half of all international trade corruption cases.
The spokesperson added:
The NEC cannot claim to be a responsible, ethical venue while hosting an event that fuels oppression and destruction around the world.
Campaigners are calling on the NEC to refuse to host the next SDSC-UK.
Featured image via Hugh Warwick / Flickr
By The Canary
The 2026 Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks will air on NBC this Sunday, Feb. 8. The game will also stream on Peacock. If you don't have NBC over the air and don't subscribe to Peacock, there are still ways to watch Super Bowl LX — and Bad Bunny's history-making halftime show — for free. Here's how to tune in.
How to watch Super Bowl LX free:
Date: Sunday, Feb. 8
Time: 6:30 p.m. ET
Location: Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.
TV channel: NBC, Telemundo
Streaming: Peacock, DirecTV, NFL+ and more
2026 Super Bowl game channelSuper Bowl LX will air on NBC. A Spanish-language broadcast is available on Telemundo.
How to watch the 2026 Super Bowl for freeYou can stream NBC and Telemundo on platforms like DirecTV and Hulu + Live TV; both offer free trials and are among Engadget's choices for best streaming services for live TV. (Note that Fubo and NBC are currently in the midst of a contract dispute and NBC channels are not available on the platform.)
What time is the 2026 Super Bowl?
The 2026 Super Bowl kicks off at 6:30 p.m. ET/3:30 p.m. PT on Sunday, Feb. 8. Green Day will be performing a pre-game special starting at 6 p.m. ET.
Who is playing in the Super Bowl?The AFC champions, the New England Patriots, will play the NFC champions, the Seattle Seahawks.
Where is the 2026 Super Bowl being played?The 2026 Super Bowl will be held at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., home of the San Francisco 49ers.
Who is performing at the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show?Bad Bunny is headlining the 2026 Super Bowl halftime performance. You can expect that show to begin after the second quarter, likely between 8-8:30 p.m. ET. Green Day will perform a pre-game show starting at 6 p.m. ET. If you're tuning in before the game, singer Charlie Puth will perform the National Anthem, Brandi Carlile is scheduled to sing "America the Beautiful," and Grammy winner Coco Jones will perform "Lift Every Voice and Sing."
More ways to watch Super Bowl LX
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/how-to-stream-the-2026-super-bowl-for-free-patriots-vs-seahawks-time-where-to-watch-and-more-124512202.html?src=rss
Surfshark's One plan is heavily discounted right now, with an 87-percent discount on the two-year package, plus three extra months. The promo price comes out to $2.29 per month, or $62 for the first 27 months.
We've generally liked Surfshark as a straightforward, speedy service for everyday use, and it's one of the picks in our guide to the best VPNs. In our Surfshark review, we found it delivered excellent speeds overall and reliably unblocked Netflix across most of our test servers, which makes this long-term deal worth a look if you want a VPN deal that also includes extras like antivirus, breach alerts and private search.
In our Surfshark review, the VPN stood out for its excellent performance and approachable design, especially for people who want strong protection without constantly tweaking settings. During testing, it delivered some of the fastest speeds we've seen from a major VPN, with average download speeds dropping by just over five percent worldwide. Upload speeds also held up well, making it a solid option for streaming, browsing and everyday use. We gave Surfshark an overall score of 87 out of 100 and called it one of the best VPNs for casual users.
This deal focuses on the Surfshark One plan, which bundles the VPN with a suite of extra security tools. In addition to the VPN itself, you get Alternative ID for masking your email and personal details, antivirus protection, breach monitoring through Surfshark Alert and a private search engine. It also supports unlimited simultaneous device connections, so you can protect all of your devices with a single subscription.
Right now, the Surfshark One plan is discounted by 86 percent, bringing the price down to $67 total for two years plus three extra months. That works out to $2.49 per month for the first 27 months, billed upfront, with a 30-day money-back guarantee if you change your mind.
If you want to compare it against other top services before committing, you can also check out our full Surfshark VPN review and our best VPN guide to see how it stacks up. We'll be keeping our best VPN deals roundup updated regularly, too.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/surfshark-vpn-deal-get-up-to-87-percent-off-two-year-plans-123000066.html?src=rssI have a love-hate relationship with Spotify that might just be leaning more towards love today. While I struggle with some of the company's choices about the type of content it allows on its platform, I have always had a soft spot for its Wrapped roundups and the monthly audiobook hours included with my Premium subscription. For those like me, Spotify's news today will likely enhance the appeal of its audiobook offerings. It's announcing a partnership with Bookshop.org — which lets indie bookstores sell their wares online through a unified platform — allowing users to buy physical books from within its app, and launching a new Page Match feature that helps sync your progress across the physical books you read and the audiobooks in Spotify's catalog. Also, the audiobook recap feature that summarizes the plot so far is expanding to Android this spring, following its iOS debut (in beta form) last fall.
Page Match is coming to all places where Spotify's audiobooks are available, starting with the English language titles in its 500,000-strong library. Meanwhile, you can access Bookshop within the Spotify app in the US and the UK, where Bookshop operates.
Though I'm thrilled that this will mean easier and greater support of independent bookstores in those areas, I'm more excited by the prospect of Page Match, which I previewed at a recent launch event in the company's offices in New York. I'm the sort of person who reads the same title in its ebook, physical and audio forms. (I often wish that a purchase of a physical book came with free ebook and audio versions, but that's besides the point.)
While Kindles currently do a decent job of getting you to your latest page read across various devices, switching between, say, Martha Wells' All Systems Red on Spotify and the paperback copy is not quite as easy. With Page Match, though, that should get a lot easier.
How does Spotify Page Match work?When you get access to the feature (which is rolling out today), you'll find the Page Match button under the title of each audiobook. You'll have to first look up the book on Spotify and tap into its full chapter list to find this, which means the book you want to use has to be one of the hundreds of thousands in the company's library. Then, tap the green "Scan to listen" button if you're looking to move over to the audio version or "Scan to read" below it if you're switching over to a hard copy instead.
Whichever you pick, you'll need to enable access to your device's camera and then scan the page of the book you're on. This should work on ereaders as well, and appears to be using some form of optical character recognition to match the part of the book to its audio counterpart.
If you're scanning to listen, the process is fairly straightforward. Once you've placed the page in the viewfinder, the app will quickly jump to that very spot in the chapter track. I'll note that it was hard for me to confirm whether this actually worked during my first demo, since I never felt like I found the words being spoken on the page I was looking at. In this case, it was Lights Out: An Into Darkness novel by Navessa Allen, and I mostly felt like the narration had simply gone past the page I was on, rather than a complete failure. Subsequent attempts with other books, like Stephen King's It, were more effective.
Things get a bit trickier when you're trying to move from audio book to the paper (or ereader). After pressing "Scan to read," you'll need to place a page in front of the camera and wait for it to tell you to move forward or backward. Ideally, you'd already know more or less where you were, so you won't have to flip too many pages.
In my demo, because we were a few chapters too far from where we paused in the early part of It, there was a lot more page-turning required to get to the right spot. What I found helpful was the progress bar at the bottom of the screen, which highlighted the correct location and how far away we were from it. The instructions "Move forward" and "Move back" were clear and came up in a timely manner. When we finally landed on the right page, the screen highlighted the specific lines on the page to start from, too.
I have to caveat this with the observation that there were a few starts and stops during my demo, which were resolved once I established a solid internet connection. And though "Scan to read" did eventually work as promised, there was a bit of flipping around that seemed to be part of the process, which might be tedious and not quite the magical experience some might expect.
The good news is that Spotify seems to already be working on even more features to make it easier to read physical books in tandem with listening to audiobooks. The company said it sees "the future of reading as one that's personalized, flexible, and built to move fluidly across formats and moments. Page Match is an early example of how Spotify is helping shape that future at scale. "
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/spotifys-page-match-seamlessly-swaps-between-real-books-and-audiobooks-120000819.html?src=rss
Rabid media coverage of the Epstein files has breathlessly focused on political gossip at the expense of centring victims and survivors. As such, public discussion of elite sexual abuse often gravitates towards spectacle: powerful men, hidden networks and institutional failure. Of course, coverage from mainstream media is complicit in upholding power structures that decide who counts as a victim - and who doesn't.
Instead, the newly released Epstein files point to an uncomfortable reality. It has been noted from FBI interview records and grand jury testimony that Epstein's "preference was short, little, white girls." Crucially, Epstein's operation did not rely on chance or opportunism. Instead, Epstein paid girls to recruit other minors and enforced his preferences through discipline and reward. When recruiters failed to comply, the system reprimanded them. In practice, race did not sit in the background. Rather, it structured how the trafficking itself operated.
When recruiters violated those expectations, Epstein reprimanded them. In one instance, he refused to allow a Black girl to massage him, telling the recruiter that he "was not interested in black girls." As a result, racial selection operated not as personal taste but as an enforced rule within the trafficking system.
This is not simply evidence of personal bias. It is evidence of racialised trafficking.
Epstein files: trafficking as selection, not chaosA 2019 prosecution memorandum from the Southern District of New York reinforces this pattern. Drawing on multiple victims' accounts, the memo describes how Epstein's operation recruited, paid, recycled, and excluded girls. Epstein "expressed displeasure" when certain girls were brought to him and "did not like dark-skinned girls".
This language confirms that race operated as a selection criterion within the abuse economy. The operation expected recruiters to internalise Epstein's preferences and adjust their behaviour accordingly. When recruiters failed, the system punished them through loss of payment, emotional reprimand, or exclusion from favour. Trafficking here did not operate opportunistically or chaotically. It functioned as a regulated system, with whiteness operating as currency and Blackness marking disposability.
Black women-led anti-trafficking advocates have long warned that sexual exploitation cannot be understood outside race. As survivor-leader Vednita Carter, founder of Breaking Free, has stated:
Prostitution is a racial justice issue..you can't just take race out of it.
The Epstein files bear this out.
Institutions frame misogynoir solely as hypersexualisation, with Black women and girls rendered excessively visible and exposed to violence. The Epstein material reveals a quieter but equally damaging mechanism. Black girls were not hypervisible. Institutions filtered them out. Their exclusion did not signal safety. It signalled erasure.
Exclusion from the pipeline meant exclusion from testimony, from media coverage, and from public memory. It also reinforced a persistent myth: that elite sexual exploitation primarily harms white girls.
Who counts as the "real" victim?This is how racialised sexual violence hides. Black girls are routinely denied access to the category of the "ideal victim": young, innocent, credible and deserving of sympathy. Research on adultification bias shows that Black girls are routinely denied the presumption of innocence and vulnerability afforded to white girls.
That category was never built to include them. When Black girls are missing from abuse narratives, it is not because they were protected, but because institutions are structured to look past them.
This omission is not politically neutral. Silence here is not an oversight. It is an organising strategy. When Black girls are written out of sexual abuse narratives, institutions are spared the obligation to protect them, fund services for them or confront the racialised nature of exploitation.
How institutions fail Black survivorsThe National Black Women's Justice Institute has noted that Black women and girls face "intersecting challenges rooted in racism, sexism and systemic oppression", which not only heighten vulnerability to trafficking but also create barriers to recognition, justice, and healing once harm occurs.
Elite abuse narratives often rely on a narrow feminist crime that centres white girlhood as the default site of innocence. This framing does not merely overlook Black girls. It depends on their absence. It allows institutions to perform concern while leaving intact the racial hierarchies that decide whose suffering is legible.
Eugenics as context, not spectacleIt is within this framework that Epstein's documented interests in eugenics becomes relevant. As the Canary has previously reported, Epstein repeatedly expressed "Nazi-like" eugenic obsessions around intelligence, breeding, and hierarchy. These views are disturbing, but they are not the story on their own.
What matters is how this ideology aligns with the trafficking practices documented in the files.
Eugenics did not create Epstein's abuse, but it helped rationalise the sorting, ranking, and exclusion that defined it. Belief systems rooted in hierarchy sustain racialised trafficking by framing inequality as natural and exclusion as reasonable.
In that sense, Epstein's eugenic thinking functions as context rather than cause. It helps explain how institutions normalised racial selection, enforced it through practice, and largely refused to interrogate it.
Misogynoir as subtractionUnderstanding misogynoir only through sexualisation misses how it operates in elite abuse systems. Here, misogynoir functions through subtraction. Black girls disappear twice: first from protection, then memory -trafficking organisations working with Black survivors have warned that this has material consequences. This leads to gaps in accountability, long-term support, and prevention. Absence from the record becomes absence from remedy.
When abuse narratives centre those only deemed recognisable victims, accountability remains partial. Power survives by narrowing the field of concern.
The Epstein files show how institutions produce that acknowledgement: through recruitment rules, racialised preferences, reprimand, reward, and silence.
Why this matters nowPublic outrage around sexual exploitation often peaks around individual villains, then dissipates. Structural analysis demands more and offers less comfort. Without it, the same hierarchies persist.
Institutions continue to under-identify Black girls as victims of sexual violence, under-protect them, and write them out of high-profile cases. When commentators read that absence as evidence of safety rather than exclusion, misogynoir does its quiet work.
The Epstein files do not simply expose an individual abuser. They show how systems of power decide whose suffering they record in the first place. As long as racialised trafficking remains peripheral to how institutions understand sexual exploitation, they will continue to frame abuse as exceptional rather than structural.
This is not a failure of evidence. It is a failure of political will.
Featured image via the Canary
Academic Shaiel Ben-Ephraim describes himself as a "Jew from occupied Palestine". He has posted what he describes as "probably the most important Hebrew tweet I've ever seen". Ben-Ephraim introduces and translates the Hebrew words of Israeli general Moshe 'Bogie' Ya'alon, one of Israel's most senior military and establishment figures.
Ben-Ephraim's words - and the explosive words of Ya'alon - need little elaboration, except to flag to readers that Ya'alon describes Israel as ethno-supremacist "Judeo-Nazis" for their crimes against Palestinian people. And he mocks the common Zionist tactic of complaining that we must never compare Israel to the Nazis. Read in full below - emphases added:
This is probably the most important Hebrew Tweet I've ever seen. Moshe Ya'alon is a former chief of staff and defense minister. The absolute cream of the Israeli defense establishment. In this text he admits that the Israeli government and settlers have become Judeo-Nazis and their policy is based on Jewish supremacy. Here is a full translation:
"On the last Tuesday evening, I attended an event marking the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. When I got home, I received a message about Jewish pogromists attacking Palestinians in the south of Hebron, stealing their livestock, and burning their property. "We can't compare!…"
After ambulances, which tried to reach the scene, were delayed by the Jewish terrorists, three Palestinians were evacuated to the hospital, one of them with skull fractures. "No event can ever compare to the Holocaust, which we endured!" …
I turned, of course, immediately to the security authorities in the area, and I was assured that the incident was being handled by the IDF. To this day not a single Jewish terrorist has been stopped (as in many other cases), because … the Israel Police is controlled by a convicted criminal, a fascist racist Nazi, the Shin Bet is controlled by a representative of "Jewish supremacy" from the schools of the rabbis Tao, Lior, Ginzburg, and Zini (Dodo), the defense minister prevents administrative detentions of Jewish terrorists, and the other minister in the Ministry of Defense encourages illegal outposts and equips them with off-road vehicles, to torment the lives of Palestinians, to evict them from their land, and to settle the land with Jews (you'll ask again why I blamed the government for "ethnic cleansing"!?). The ideology of "Jewish supremacy," which has become dominant in the Israeli government, resembles Nazi racial theory, "but we must not compare!" …
When I commanded the Jerusalem and Samaria Division, the Central Command, and the IDF, I was acquainted with the warnings of Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, regarding the process of dehumanization to the point of turning us into "Judeo-Nazis" (as he put it), under our control of another people. I did my best, even as defense minister, "so that we may know how to defeat terrorism and remain human."
I never deceived myself into thinking that only through concessions would we achieve "peace now," and I also understood the danger of "Jewish supremacy" over our future and our existence. Therefore I advocated separation according to the proto-programmatic speech of Yitzhak Rabin of October 5, 1995, and therefore I named my book is "A Long Short Way." As of now, Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz was right and I was wrong.
The task of the next Israeli government is to prove that Professor Leibowitz was wrong, and not to bring ruin upon our state. The government of "Jewish Supremacy" — the government of lies and betrayal — the government of messianism, the traitors and the corrupt — must be replaced before ruin."
Israelis of conscience see that it is adopting the policies of Judeo-Nazism and Jewish supremacy. They have known it for a long time. But most do not have the courage to say so. This is an earthquake.
Unsurprisingly, the silence of 'mainstream' media and pro-Israel groups on Ya'alon's words is deafening.
Featured image via the Canary
By Skwawkbox
Keir Starmer is perhaps the most unpopular prime minister we've ever had, and he's embroiled himself in what may be the most disgusting scandal. Can this loathed public figure survive this self-inflicted catastrophe?
Almost certainly not.
And one person who's ahead of the curve on this is Zack Polanski:
Time to goImportant discussion this evening on Palantir.
Keir Starmer having meetings in Washington - and then the US spy tech company receive £260m.
The largest defence contract in British history - through Peter Mandelsons lobbying company. https://t.co/i9lDjfEx22
— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) February 4, 2026
As we've reported, Starmer appointed Peter Mandelson to be ambassador to the US despite knowing he maintained a friendship with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein after his conviction. The media presented it as some great revelation when Starmer admitted to this in parliament yesterday, but it was never a secret; the media just failed to interrogate Starmer when he returned Mandelson to public office.
We reported on Mandelson maintaining his ties with Epstein way back in 2023.
It wasn't a secret.
Starmer knew.
The media knew.
This is all just a grim pantomime.
In the clip above, Polanski describes hiring Mandelson as "the most catastrophic lapse in judgement you can imagine". In our opinion, the "lapse of judgement" is that Starmer thought the media would ignore this obvious scandal forever. It's not that he hired a notorious sleazeball, because he clearly doesn't care about that; after all, he's part of a movement which is entirely comprised of such people:
Peter Mandelson is not some random outlier.
He was one of the founders and central pillars of the New Labour project.
He was a central player in the Starmer project - including as mentor to the chief of staff.
He is the very core of the Labour Right! https://t.co/lypJOfU8hz
— Owen Jones (@owenjonesjourno) February 4, 2026
Polanski also said:
Step downI think it's clear the Prime Minister should do the right thing and step down, because actually the rut runs right throughout the Labour government.
This is a man in Keir Starmer who knew that Peter Mandelson was friends with one of the most known paedophiles in the world, was still staying in his apartment, and he brought him into the heart of government solely because, I imagine, he thought he could whisper in Trump's ear.
Polanski is absolutely correct that the "right thing" for Starmer to do would be to "step down". Given that this is the guy who hired Mandelson, however, there's no reason to expect him to do the right thing.
Featured image via Zack Polanski
By Willem Moore
In a 3 February debate, nationalist and unaligned Northern Ireland Assembly members (MLAs) pilloried the selective education system used on 11 year olds in the region. MLAs described their own experiences of feeling "like a failure" after not passing the test, which determines whether pupils will go on to a selective grammar school via success in the test. Those who get a lower one of the six bands in the Schools' Entrance Assessment Group (SEAG) exam will typically attend a non-selective school.
Cara Hunter, Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) MLA for East Derry, described the stress young children are subjected to. She recalled from her childhood:
…breathing exercises in a circle [and] relaxing music before going to sit the exam.
If schools are deploying on 11 year olds techniques more common to a trauma counselling session, it's fair to say you've failed to produce a humane education system. Danny Baker of Sinn Féin recalled speaking to parents of a child who didn't leave his room for three days after failing the test.
The politicians made their points during a debate on a motion that called on:
Northern Ireland unusually focused on tormenting 11 year olds with academic selection…the Minister of Education to produce a time-bound plan to end academic selection and transfer tests in post-primary admissions and to develop and implement a fair, inclusive and non-selective system of primary education that ensures equality of opportunity for all children…
The non-binding motion passed by a margin of 48-30. Voting was split between nationalist and unionist camps, with all 'no' votes coming from the latter bloc. No unionist MLA voted for the motion. Nowhere in Britain maintains a system where academic selection features to such an extent. In England, only around 5% of state secondary are grammars. In the North of Ireland, that figure is over 40%. Scotland and Wales have entirely comprehensive (i.e. non-selective) systems.
Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MLA David Brooks was the most staunch defender of the current approach. He declared that he "absolutely believes in academic selection". Describing his own upwards trajectory as a working class pupil who passed the old '11 plus' test and went to a grammar school he said:
…a generation of children from working class families - many without an academic tradition at home - have used grammar school as a ladder of opportunity.
This is a little like the fobbing-off exercise deployed by private schools when they grant scholarships to a handful of less affluent students. 'Ignore all those people drowning,' they effectively say. 'Just keep focusing on the few we've granted a lifeboat.'
The man at the centre of the debate, education minister and rabid Zionist Paul Givan, said MLAs were failing children by labelling them failures for children not passing the selection process. This dishonestly misrepresented what was actually being said - that children were made to feel like failures by a system that pressured and graded them at such an early stage in life.
Nick Mathison from Alliance criticised the test itself, saying it doesn't offer any "objective measures of ability". The current format focuses on evaluating ability in English and Maths, which is indeed a limited spectrum of human capacities. It ignores social, musical, physical and empathic qualities, along with many others, in favour of a narrow definition of what we ought to value.
He also decried the missed opportunity for "deep learning", saying:
Only ending inequality can fix education gapFrom P5 [around age 9], certainly from P6-7, almost all focus is on exclusively teaching to the SEAG test, an exclusive focus on numeracy and literacy.
Baker denounced the pressure the transfer test puts on the "same schools doing all the heavy lifting". These schools take on a disproportionate number of children with additional support needs and those from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds, leaving fewer resources to dedicate to teaching. Qualifying for free school meals is a strong indicator of poverty. Around 16% of children at selective schools have this entitlement, against roughly 39% in non-selective ones.
In what was a largely intelligent and civilised debate, only leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), the insufferable Jon Burrows, sought to inject inanity into proceedings. He made a nonsensical point about selection providing choice, and followed up with a smear on how this preference would be "ideologically inconsistent" for Sinn Féin MLAs to back, given their apparent support for Marxism.
A) A society drawing on the best of Marx's thought would likely be considerably more democratic and choice-rich than our current system of fake free markets; and B) It'll be a fine day when the targets of his ire are even one quarter as Marxist as his fevered imaginings.
His unionist fellows Brooks and Givan did make one valid point - the observation that no school system, be it selective or otherwise, can ever be truly free from existing inequalities. Affluent parents will always have the option of buying tuition for their children, or moving house to within the catchment area of the best schools.
Like so many societal ills, the underlying cause is an economic system - capitalism - that distributes resources so unequally and gives some children unfair advantages from the moment of birth. The true solution is to fix this shoddy foundation which everything else is built upon.
Featured image via the Canary
Zarah Sultana has thrown her support behind the Green Party's Gorton and Denton candidate, Hannah Spencer. In doing so, she's demonstrated exactly how solidarity on the left should work. In a statement, Sultana said:
The candidate list is now published and it is clear that Hannah Spencer, a local plumber and trade unionist, is the strongest challenger to Labour and Reform. I am, therefore, giving my personal critical support to her and the Green Party in this by-election, and I urge others to do the same.
I have always been clear that the left is strongest when it is united. Our real opponents are not one another. They are Reform and the far-right.
However, Sultana's comments are unfortunately at odds with a statement from the Grassroots Left slate for Your Party - who she backs.
Zarah Sultana at odds with the Grassroots LeftYour Party (YP) had already issued a statement outlining that after deliberation with local members, it had decided that a YP candidacy would not serve their 'collective goals' of defeating Reform. But, the Grassroots Left (GL) slate subsequently stated that:
Grassroots Left will not lend unconditional support to the Green Party candidate, because the Greens are a pro-capitalist, pro-Nato party and have been enforcing cuts in councils all over the country.
Many people from across the leftist spectrum have, rightly, been pointing out this is an immature and short-sighted approach in the face of rising fascism.
Zarah Sultana's statement came after the GL left one, and is interesting for outlining exactly why, on that statement, GL got it wrong:
My statement on the Gorton & Denton by-election: pic.twitter.com/HSrgDf70h2
— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) February 3, 2026
In particular, it's worth looking at one passage from Sultana:
As a young Muslim woman, I understand viscerally what it would mean for the far-right to gain power in this country. This is not an abstract debate for me, nor the millions of people across the country whose safety would be directly affected.
Ultimately, this is what the Gorton and Denton by-election has turned into: a testing ground that is an opportunity for the Green party to show that people are coming together to reject the fascism of Reform. And, Sultana's comments show exactly what happens when a socialist who has lived experience of racism can do when understanding the very real cost of parties like Reform. This isn't an abstract political debate for many people in this country.
It is a reality that has material consequences. In choosing to focus on other policy issues, rather than the much more immediate threat of Reform, GL have shown naive judgement that is disappointing to see.
No more 'whip': Pluralism strengthens movements - it doesn't weaken themHowever, this rather public disagreement is not a dramatic sign of a 'rift.' Instead, it is another sign that Sultana is well practiced at productive disagreements that make the movement stronger. Unity does not require uniformity. Leftists are not required to agree on every single point. Instead, we must be able to unite when necessary to resist racism and fascism.
In what many onlookers will probably view with understandable frustration, a heated battle of the factions will soon be underway with the Central Executive Elections (CEC) of Your Party due to take place on the 26th February. Apparent differences in mission have driven a divergence among members, signaling an existential moment for the movement. Namely, Jeremy Corbyn has endorsed the For the Many slate, while Sultana has endorsed the Grassroots Left slate.
Unity does not mean complianceIt is worth noting, the GL statement has faced pushback from within the group itself, with some members expressing dissatisfaction with the tone it adopted.
Chloe Walker, CEC Northwest candidate standing on the Grassroots Left slate shared her views on the difference in views amongst members in the community-grounded movement. She told the Canary:
Personally as I've stated previously, I think that the most prevalent sentiment amongst local members is correct - it would have been nice to back a candidate, Tony Wilson, but the party's not in a place to be able to fight a campaign like this at present, because of how slow and disempowering the founding process has been. I don't think we should be going out of our way to criticise the Greens or their candidate in this instance - she's a strong candidate in any case and I'd obviously rather see them than Labour or Reform win here. But we don't have to come out and back the Greens to the hilt, either. Individual YP members might choose to help out with their campaign, and that's their prerogative. But we shouldn't use party infrastructure to support them; we have to retain some independence while we try to carve out a political identity that is visibly distinct from that of GPEW. Our intervention should be limited to criticising the Labour and Reform candidates, if we feel inclined to make any statement on an election we're not involved with.
Walker added:
specific views towards this by-election do vary amongst GL candidates, reflecting our commitment to a pluralistic and open party where members have the autonomy and mutual respect to disagree while still remaining committed to broader shared political goals.
Ashley Walker, a Grassroots Left member from Stockport also stated:
No more top-down control: Left unity in actionDespite what some people think the Grassroots Left does not belong to any one person alone, it belongs to every member of every group who is a part of it. And if we win this election the CEC we form, and the party it will help build, will belong not to us but to every member of this party. Because without true democracy there will never be socialism.
We published a piece on Monday on Palestinian journalist Ahmed Alnaouq's plea to factions on the left to unite against the billionaire-funded fascist threats facing all of us. Alnaouq pleaded:
My friends, fascism is not at the doorsteps in the UK. It is here. And unless we join forces with each other, unless we hold hands, we will not be able to defeat it. And we don't have the luxury for trial and waiting. We do not have time. We have to act. My friends, we have the numbers. We have the resources. We have the support of the people. What we don't have is organisation. We need to learn how to work with each other in order to defeat fascism, in order to defeat far-right, in order to defeat Zionism. And we must never shy away from calling ourselves anti-Zionists because we are anti-Zionists.
Sultana has shown that unity does not require spoon-feeding members the statements they are permitted to make. Grassroots Left has demonstrated that it will not submit to control by powerful figures and will instead maintain autonomy over its messaging. They have also worked collaboratively and supportively with independent candidates to advance a shared mission for a transparent, democratic, and accountable political party.
While work remains to build robust democratic processes that ensure such statements genuinely reflect the will of its membership, a powerful movement is clearly emerging: one that challenges the dominance of privileged public figures and meaningfully empowers its members.
Featured image via the Canary
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Some of the largest banks in the nation for years have eschewed the business of private prison giants like GEO Group and CoreCivic, the two firms that operate more than half the private carceral facilities in the country, including many U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers.
The moves to "debank" the companies, which have been dogged by reports of rights abuses, came after the banks' reviews of their environmental, social, and governance policies, which included site visits and meeting with civil rights leaders. According to a nonprofit report, the moves by banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, cost the prison companies billions in potential financing.
"Private prisons profit purely from locking people up, but the market is not immune to public accountability."
Now, the private prison firms are fighting back, spending millions on lobbying Congress to pass a law to require that the banks can't deny their business.
The two prison giants spent millions lobbying for legislation known as the Fair Access to Banking Act, a pending bill that seeks to prevent banks from denying access to institutions or people including those involved in "politically unpopular businesses but that are lawful under Federal law." A press release marking the bill's introduction last year said, "The legislation requires that lending and services decisions must be based on impartial, risk-based analysis, not political or reputational favoritism."
Civil liberties advocates have criticized the legislation.
"Private prisons profit purely from locking people up, but the market is not immune to public accountability," said Eunice H. Cho, a senior counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project who has represented immigration detainees housed in privately operated ICE facilities. "Consumer advocacy is a very important part of the democratic process, including economic boycott and protest against corporations. Banks are sensitive to understanding the risks of doing business with harmful industries."
"We value the relationships we have with our financial partners," Ryan Gustin, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, said in a statement. "We also believe all lawful businesses should be treated fairly under the banking system."
GEO Group did not respond to a request for comment.
Millions in LobbyingLast year, GEO Group spent $3.3 million in lobbying various departments and agencies of the federal government, of which $1.37 million was spent in lobbying the House and the Senate on issues that included the Fair Access to Banking Act, according to federal lobbying disclosures.
Meanwhile, in 2025, CoreCivic spent $3.5 million total on lobbying, of which $2 million went toward pushing for the legislation, according to the disclosures.
Despite hiring high-profile D.C. firms for their lobbying activities, both prison companies utilized their in-house government relations experts when it came to advocating for the banking legislation, which is moving through the Senate and the House.
In its fourth-quarter lobbying report, GEO Group mentions "S. 401 and H.R. 987, Fair Access to Banking Act; Issues related to the availability of banking services for federal contractors" as one of its lobbying issues. CoreCivic's lobbying issues in the same quarter also mentioned "Issues pertaining to financial industry practices; H.R. 987/S. 401 - Fair Access to Banking Act."
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GEO Group and CoreCivic have long faced criticisms and lawsuits from rights groups for poor prison conditions, undermining medical needs of detainees, and not doing enough to prevent deaths in their facilities.
In December and January alone, for instance, five of the 11 people who died in ICE custody were housed in detention centers owned and operated by one of the firms, ICE's press statements show. At least four people died while detained in a GEO Group facility, and one other individual died while detained in a CoreCivic center.
In 2019, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, SunTrust, BNP Paribas, Fifth Third Bancorp, PNC Bank, and Bank of America said that they would no longer provide any new financing to the private prison industry. At the time, the banks reportedly constituted more than 70 percent of the total financing available to the two companies, with many of them having loaned money to either one or both firms.
Many of these Wall Street banks took similar action against gun manufacturers, oil and gas companies, and porn sites, among other industries, in what came to be known as debanking.
The impact was considerable. CoreCivic reportedly had to scramble for finances abroad.
If the new legislation passes, however, the two companies will have access to fresh lines of credit that could help them build new facilities at a faster pace and cash in on a higher demand for ICE detention facilities.
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Last July, the federal government approved funding of $45 billion to build new immigration detention centers as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
In its third-quarter earnings report, GEO Group said it had secured four ICE contracts for four new ICE detention facilities totaling about 6,000 beds. CoreCivic also reported receiving contracts for four facilities with over 7,000 beds. Financial statements suggest that the new contracts have boosted the revenue figures of both the companies, who rely heavily on federal contracts to support their bottom lines.
An Ally in TrumpThe concerted effort put into lobbying by GEO and CoreCivic has already reaped some success.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order last August that empowered federal banking regulators, such as the Small Business Administration, to monitor financial institutions that denied services to clients based on "politicized or unlawful debanking action." Last month, Trump announced he would sue JPMorgan Chase for debanking him over the January 6 riots.
In December, the Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency published a report that scrutinized nine banks and listed private prisons as being among the sectors affected by debanking. The bureau said that it intends to "hold these banks accountable for any unlawful debanking activities, including by making referrals to the Attorney General."
In June, even before Trump's order, Bank of America, which had cut ties with private prisons, reinstated CoreCivic as its client, according to Semafor. A JPMorgan Chase spokesperson said the bank hasn't changed its policy of freezing out private prisons. Meanwhile, most other banks have been quiet about whether they will change course on financing private prisons. (None of the banks responded to The Intercept's requests for comment.)
If the Fair Access to Banking Act passes Congress, the banks may not have a choice.
"It has been the worst year for immigration detainees in decades," said Cho, the ACLU lawyer. "Private prisons have an astronomical amount of funds available to them, and it's unsurprising they are also looking to protect ways to expand those funds with extra lines of credits available. But for detainees, this can have serious implications."
The post ICE's Private Prison Contractors Spent Millions Lobbying to Force Banks to Give Them Loans appeared first on The Intercept.
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QT Sense, a deep-tech biotech startup building tools to study living cells, announced it has secured €4 million in funding to accelerate its Quantum Nuova platform, a technology that lets scientists observe cellular processes in real time and reveal biochemical activity linked to disease. The funding includes a €3 million seed investment led by Cottonwood Technology Fund, with follow-on backing from existing investor QDNL Participations and an angel investor. In addition, the company received €600,000 from the ONCO-Q programme to support cancer research and €400,000 through the Quantum Forward Challenge for collaborative deployments with research partners. Most traditional lab methods…
This story continues at The Next Web
Europe's largest dedicated deep tech growth fund has taken a major step forward after closing the first tranche of its fundraising effort at €750 million. The fund, known as Kembara Fund I and managed by Spain-based Mundi Ventures, is aiming for a €1 billion target. It will invest in European companies developing breakthrough technologies in areas such as clean energy, AI, quantum computing, advanced materials, robotics, and space tech. A cornerstone of the fundraising so far is a €350 million commitment from the European Investment Fund, part of the EU's attempt to strengthen local growth capital. Additional backing comes from…
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Fast chargers are no longer a nice-to-have item. With phones, tablets, laptops and wearables all competing for outlets, the right charger can make a difference in how quickly you get back to full power without worrying about overheating or long-term battery wear. Since many devices now ship without a power brick, choosing a charger with the right compatibility, ports and charging technology is just as important as raw speed.
Today's best fast chargers are designed to handle multiple devices at once, whether that's a phone, laptop, AirPods or even an Apple Watch. Many models combine Type-C ports with a USB-A charger option to support older cables like a Lightning cable, while newer designs focus on multi-port chargers that can intelligently distribute power across everything you plug in. Brands like Anker continue to refine their designs, with compact options such as an Anker charger that's easy to toss in a bag but powerful enough for everyday use.
With so many wattages, port layouts and standards to consider, finding the best fast charger depends on how and where you charge. Whether you want a simple wall adapter, a travel-friendly option or a desktop hub built to power everything at once, this guide breaks down our top picks for 2026.
What to consider before buying a fast charger
Before you start looking at specific chargers, it's critical to determine three things: how many devices do you need to charge, how much power do they require and whether or not you're planning on traveling with any of them. This is especially true if you're charging a mix of devices that still rely on a Lightning cable alongside newer USB-C gear.
The reason for the first question is simple. If you only need to charge a single device, like an iPhone or Android phone, it's cheaper and usually more space-efficient to get a lower-wattage phone charger with one port instead of two or three. Next, it's critical to figure out how much electricity your gadgets need because it doesn't make sense to buy a power brick that pushes out more juice than your device can actually use. This may sound a bit tricky, but most major manufacturers will list a product's max charging speeds in its tech specs, which is typically denoted by a specific wattage (15W, for example) or a quick-charge rating.
Unfortunately, very powerful or large laptops like gaming notebooks can suck a ton of juice (more than 140 watts), which means they may rely on more traditional power adapters with barrel plugs. This may result in them not being compatible with universal chargers. Some of these PCs may also support charging over USB-C, so even if a specific adapter can't deliver its full power draw, it can still send over some energy — but it will do so at a slower rate compared to the laptop's included charger. To get the best performance, using a fast charging cable, such as a USB-C cable, can make a big difference in maintaining consistent power delivery.
For frequent travelers, size and weight are often important considerations, because the bigger and heavier a charger is, the more annoying it will be to lug around. You'll also want to think about other factors like support for international plugs, which can be a big help to anyone who regularly visits other countries. If you're already traveling with power banks or a charging station, choosing a compact GaN charger can help streamline your gear.
Finally, you'll want to figure out if your smartphone uses a proprietary charging standard or if it's compatible with the USB Power Delivery spec (USB PD). For example, the OnePlus 13's included SuperVOOC power adapter can send up to 100 watts to the phone. However, if you use a generic USB-PD charger, speeds top out at 45 watts. That's still pretty quick, but not nearly as fast as OnePlus' brick — and the same applies to devices with super fast charging support. Also, make sure your charging cable and connector are up to spec, as lower-quality accessories can bottleneck speeds or contribute to overheating during fast charging.
Fast charger FAQs What is GaN?When looking for chargers, you may notice that some are marked as GaN, which stands for gallium nitride. This is an important distinction because, when compared to older adapters that use silicon switches, GaN-based devices support increased power efficiency and output, allowing manufacturers to create more compact bricks that run cooler and support higher wattages.
Depending on the specific power output, GaN adapters can be 30 to 50 percent smaller and lighter than silicon-based alternatives. That might not sound like much, but when they're sitting in a bag alongside a laptop and a half dozen other accessories you might have, cutting down on excess bulk and weight goes a long way.
Do fast chargers affect battery life?Technically yes, because the process of sending a ton of watts into a gadget and potentially generating additional heat while doing so can decrease battery health over time. That said, modern devices and chargers use various protocols to ensure temperatures and power levels stay within preset limits — in large part to avoid damaging the product or creating a safety risk. At a base level, simply charging a gadget regardless of speed will cause degradation over time (nothing stays perfect forever, you know?). So as long as you use compatible chargers and cables, the impact of fast charging is generally quite negligible.
What's the difference between a fast charger and a regular charger?There isn't a single generally accepted definition of fast charging. However, with power adapters capable of sending as little as five watts or less, it's important to know how much juice your device is getting, especially if you need to recharge something quickly. So depending on who you ask (particularly when it comes to smartphones), any charger that can push out more than 15 to 18 watts is generally considered to be "fast." That said, with some phones capable of receiving more than 100 watts and up to 240 watts for some laptops, it's more important than ever to consider what devices you own before buying a new fast charger.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/accessories/best-fast-chargers-140011033.html?src=rss
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Cameras had an interesting year in 2025, with the launch of some long-delayed models like Sony's 61MP RX1III, wholly original cameras (the Fujifilm X Half and Sigma BF) and much anticipated updates like the Sony A7 V and Canon R6 III. All told, there were 27 new cameras launched last year that joined the 20 new models on the market from 2024.
Those ranged from compacts to mirrorless to very high-end models, with every price range included. The question is, which one is right for the type of videography or photography you do? Whether you're an aspiring action or wildlife photographer, an extreme sports junkie or a content creator, we'll help you find the perfect camera to match your budget and requirements.
Mirrorless is the largest camera category in terms of models available, so it's the best way to go if you're looking for something with the most advanced features. Canon and Nikon recently announced they're discontinuing development of new DSLRs, simply because most of the advantages of that category are gone, as I detailed in a video. The biggest selling feature of a mirrorless camera is the ability to change lenses depending on the type of shooting you want to do.
Best action camera or gimbal camera
The most important features to look for in an action cam are image quality, stabilization and battery life. GoPro has easily been beating all rivals recently in all those areas, but DJI has taken a lot of its business with the Osmo Pocket 3 gimbal camera.
Best compact camera
This category has fewer cameras than it did even a few years ago and many models are older, as manufacturers focus instead on mirrorless models. However, I'm still a big believer in compact cameras. They're a noticeable step up from smartphones quality-wise, and a lot of people will take a compact traveling or to events when they'd never bother with the hassle of a DSLR or mirrorless camera.
Compacts largely have type 1-inch sensors, but a few offer larger options, particularly Fujifilm's XF-100V. Another popular model, Sony's XV-1, is primarily aimed at content creators looking to step up. In any case, desirable qualities include image quality, a fast lens, relatively long zoom, flip-out display, good battery life, a high quality EVF, decent video and good pocketability.
What to consider before choosing a camera
Smartphones might get better for video and photos every year, full cameras still have an edge in many ways. The larger sensors in mirrorless cameras let more light in, and you have a wide choice of lenses with far superior optics. Dedicated cameras are also faster for shooting things like sports or wildlife, offer superior video for content creators and create more professional results.
Sensor sizeThere are a few key things to consider to get the most out of a camera. The first is sensor size: in general, the larger the sensor, the better (and usually more expensive) the camera.
Full frame is the largest sensor size for mainstream cameras, and it's available on models like the new Panasonic S9, the Nikon Z III and Canon EOS R5 II. At a size equivalent to 35mm film (36 x 24mm), it offers the best performance in terms of image quality, low-light capability and depth of field. But it's also very expensive and finicky. While bokeh looks incredible at an aperture of f/1.4, the depth of field is so razor thin that your subject's eyebrow might be in focus but not their eye. This can also make shooting video difficult.
The next size category is APS-C (around 23.5 x 15.6mm for most models and 22.2 x 14.8mm for Canon), offered on Fujifilm's X Series lineup, the Canon R10, the Sony ZV-E10 II and the Nikon Z50. It's cheaper than full frame, both for the camera body and lenses, but still brings most of the advantages like decent bokeh, high ISOs for low-light shooting and relatively high resolution. With a sensor size the same as movie cameras, it's ideal for shooting video, and it's easier to hold focus than with full-frame cameras.
Micro Four Thirds (17.3 x 13mm), a format shared by Panasonic and Olympus, is the next step down in sensor size. It offers less bokeh and light-gathering capability than APS-C and full frame, but allows for smaller and lighter cameras and lenses. For video, you can still get reasonably tight depth of field with good prime lenses, but focus is easier to control.
The other common sensor size is Type 1 (1 inch), which is actually smaller than one inch at 12.7 x 9.5mm. That's used mostly by compact models like Sony's ZV-1 vlogging camera. Finally, action cameras like the GoPro Hero 11 and DJI's Osmo 3 have even smaller sensors (1/1.9 and 1/1.7 inches, respectively).
AutofocusFor photographers, another key factor is autofocus (AF) speed and accuracy. Most modern mirrorless cameras have hybrid phase-detect AF systems that allow for rapid focus and fast burst speeds. The majority also offer AI features like eye-detect AF for people and animals, which locks in on the subject's eyes, face or body to keep them in focus. However, some models are faster and more reactive than others.
DisplaysThe electronic viewfinder (EVF) and rear display are also crucial. The best models have the sharpest and brightest EVFs that help you judge a shot before taking it. For things like street photography, it's best to have as bright and sharp a rear display as possible, so it's easy to see your subject and check focus in all manner of lighting conditions. You may also want a screen that flips out rather than just tilting, too.
LensesDSLRs and mirrorless cameras let you change lenses, but you're stuck with what's built into a compact camera. While that's great for portability, a single lens means you're going to sacrifice something along the way. The Fujifilm X100V, for instance, has a fast but fixed 35mm-equivalent f/2.0 lens and no zoom. The Sony RX100 V has a 24-70mm zoom, but it's slower at the telephoto end (f/2.8) and less sharp than a fixed focal (prime) lens.
When choosing a lens for a mirrorless camera, you'll need to consider the focal or zoom length, along with the minimum aperture. Smaller numbers like f/1.4 for a prime lens or f/2.8 for a zoom are best, as they let you work in darker environments and maximize background blur to isolate your subject. However, those lenses are more complex and thus more expensive.
Video recordingWhen it comes to video, there are other factors to consider. Some cameras combine or skip over pixels (line skipping or pixel binning) for video recording, which is not ideal because it can reduce sharpness. Better cameras tend to read out the entire sensor and then "downsample" to improve video sharpness (camera manufacturers don't often say if video is pixel binned, but will say if it's downsampled). Another important factor is sensor speed, as slower sensors tend to have more rolling shutter that can create a "jello" effect that skews video.
In addition, how's the battery life? How do you like the handling and feel? How long can you shoot before the camera heats up or stops? Does it support 10-bit HDR video? Is there a microphone and/or a headphone jack? (If you record a lot of interviews, it's preferable to have both.) How's the video autofocus? All of these things play a part in your decision.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cameras/best-cameras-151524327.html?src=rss
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It's darkly funny, in a way, to recall a racist trope that gets trotted out about immigration all the time: immigrants bring disease into the country. That in itself isn't funny, obviously. The funny part is that it seems like we're proving the opposite to be true under the Trump administration. As the measles outbreak in America continues to rage, immigration detention camps are starting to feel the effects.
Earlier this week reports indicated the Dilley detention center in Texas was going on a sort of soft lockdown due to confirmed cases of measles among those detained.
"ICE Health Services Corps immediately took steps to quarantine and control further spread and infection, ceasing all movement within the facility and quarantining all individuals suspected of making contact with the infected," McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin said medical officials were monitoring detainees and taking "appropriate and active steps to prevent further infection."
"All detainees are being provided with proper medical care," she added.
We are definitely in "prove it" territory when it comes to this administration and immigration questions. That's all the more so if the government, as they've done via other excuses in the past, limits or restrains entry to these facilities from other lawmakers who want to check DHS' homework and uses the measles outbreak as the reason for it.
Neha Desai, a lawyer for the California-based National Center of Youth Law, which represents children in U.S. immigration custody, said she hopes the measles infections at Dilley are not used to "unnecessarily" prevent lawmakers and attorneys from inspecting the detention center in the near future, citing broader concerns about the facility.
"In the meantime, we are deeply concerned for the physical and the mental health of every family detained at Dilley," Desai said. "It is important to remember that no family needs to be detained — this is a choice that the administration is making."
It's also worth remembering that the spread of disease is a recurring feature in the concentration camp industry. Deaths from disease as well. And, unlike the trope mentioned above, these are infections immigrants are getting from America, not bringing to her soil.
And it's not just one detention camp, either. The Florence Detention Center in Arizona is also dealing with measles infections.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reports one ICE detainee in the Florence Detention Center in Pinal County tested positive for measles on Jan. 21.
Two more measles cases have recently been confirmed among people who are also in federal custody in the county, according to a spokesperson for the Pinal County Public Health Services District. But the spokesperson did not provide details about which facility the other two infected individuals are in, or whether any of the three cases in the county are linked.
As Desai said in the quote above, this is a choice. Or, rather, a series of choices. It's a choice made by Trump and his minions to carry out this inhumane, disorganized, haphazard campaign of brutality on illegal immigrants. This could have gone many ways, but Trump chose cruelty on purpose. It's a choice to put RFK Jr. in charge of America's health and then watch idly, leaning back with folded arms, as the country experiences the worst measles outbreak in decades over the past 13 months. It's a choice to not pivot on any of the above.
And it's a choice to leave South Carolina swinging in the wind as the measles outbreak there will no doubt continue to spread to the rest of the country.
State health officials are reporting 29 new cases of measles in the state since Friday, bringing the total number of cases in South Carolina related to the Upstate outbreak to 876. The South Carolina Department of Public Health (DPH) said there are currently 354 people in quarantine and 22 in isolation. The latest end of quarantine for these cases is Feb. 24.
Those numbers will continue to rise, but they are already breathtaking. 2025 saw a measles infection count nationwide of 2,267. South Carolina has generated nearly 40% of that total in one month in one state. 18 states have already had measles infections within their borders this year. The 2026 totals are going to make 2025 look like peanuts.
And it could potentially be hardest on the human beings who are shoved like sardines into these immigrant detention camps. Diseases like the measles will spread incredibly fast there. And, despite DHS' claims to the contrary, I just can't find it in me to believe that this administration is going to put a priority on detainee's health.
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Canon released its first PowerShot camera back in 1996 with a 0.5-megapixel sensor, helping kickstart the digital photo revolution. To celebrate that 30-year anniversary, the company has unveiled a Limited Edition version of its still-popular PowerShot G7 X III compact camera. It has a few unique touches but is otherwise the same as the original model released nearly seven years ago.
The limited edition model has a new "graphite" color with a knurled front ring designed to exude "luxury and quality," Canon wrote. It also carries 30 year anniversary logo printed on the body "to create a special feeling suitable for limited edition models," the company added in the most Canon-y way possible.
Canon's Limited Edition PowerShot G7 X III compact cameraCanonAs a reminder, the G7 X III was one of the first cameras announced specifically as a model for vloggers, thanks to its ability to shoot vertical video for Instagram. It features a 20.1MP sensor, flip-up 3-inch touchscreen, 24-100mm f/1.8-2.8 zoom lens and a microphone input. It supports 4K 30 fps video with no cropping and can shoot 1080p at 120 fps. The piece de resistance is direct streaming to YouTube directly over Wi-Fi, then a new thing but now a common feature. It originally retailed for $749.
The G7 X III had been in short supply until recently, but used models became popular with influencers several years ago and started selling way above list price. Possibly because of that viral fame, Canon announced in August 2025 that it was increasing production and the G7 X III started returning to stock a few months later priced at $880.
Canon's Limited Edition PowerShot G7 X III compact cameraCanonThe Limited Edition G7 X III is selling for a lot more than that at $1,299, though it does come with a limited edition Peak Design cuff wrist strap and 32GB SD card. If you want to one-up the influencers and grab one, shipping will start in April 2026.
Along with the camera, Canon announced a pair of interesting new RF-mount full-frame lenses. The first is the ultra wide angle RF 14mm f/1.4 L VCM prime model priced at $2,599, promising bright, high quality optics. The other is a very interesting $1,899 RF7-14mm f/2.8-3.5 L Fisheye STM zoom lens with up to a 190 degree perspective at the widest setting.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cameras/canon-unveils-a-limited-edition-version-of-its-popular-g7-x-iii-compact-camera-040000700.html?src=rss
