Your Floor Cleaner Is Just Spreading Dirty Water. BSTY’s Dual-Tank System Fixes It.

The lines between form and function have never been blurrier, or more beautiful, than they are in today’s best home tech. The BSTY Dual-Action Cordless Floor Washer is a testament to this evolution, offering a singular device that manages to look as sharp as it performs. Its seamless integration of vacuuming, steam mopping, and self-cleaning mechanisms is tailored for those who want their spaces immaculate, but never at the expense of visual serenity. This is not merely another entry in the crowded floor-care market; it’s a thoughtfully considered piece of hardware that addresses the entire life cycle of a chore, from start to finish.

Let’s be honest, the way we clean floors is broken. It’s a clumsy, multi-stage process that often feels like you’re just moving dirt around. You start with the vacuum, wrestling with a cord or racing against a dying battery to suck up the crumbs, the pet hair, and the dust. Then comes the second act: the mop. You’re either sloshing a dirty string-mop around in a bucket of increasingly murky water, or you’re using a fancy hybrid cleaner that often just turns dry debris into a wet, gritty paste. It solves one problem by creating another. The BSTY project seems to have started with a deep, almost obsessive, understanding of this frustration.

Designer: BSTY

Click Here to Buy Now: $399 $599 ($200 off). Hurry, only 15/50 left. Raised over $61,000.

The solution begins with a simple, elegant workflow that is physically built into the machine. As you push the BSTY forward, it’s a dedicated dry vacuum. The front of the cleaning head houses a system that delivers a full 20,000Pa of suction, a figure that puts it in the upper echelon of cordless stick vacuums. That’s enough power to lift embedded dirt from grout lines and grab pet hair without just rolling over it. All that dry debris is whisked away into its own separate container. Then, on the pull-back motion, the mopping system engages. A fresh stream of water, which can be heated up to a steamy 100°C in the tank, wets a microfiber roller that scrubs the floor. The dirty water is immediately lifted off the roller and funneled into a second, completely separate dirty water tank. This clever little feature is a fundamental re-engineering of the hybrid cleaner, ensuring that dirty water never gets a second chance to touch your clean floor.

Beyond just using hot water for mopping, the BSTY integrates a true 180°C steam function. This is a significant leap beyond the boiling point, generating a dry, high-temperature steam that can sanitize surfaces and break down greasy, stuck-on messes without a drop of chemical cleaner. It’s a feature that will appeal to anyone with kids, pets, or just a healthy aversion to chemical residues. This focus on thermal cleaning creates a more effective, hygienic result. And it manages to pack this technology into a cordless body that delivers a solid 40 minutes of runtime, all while operating at a reported 50 decibels in its quiet mode, which is about the level of a calm conversation. The physical design is just as considered. The entire unit can pivot to lay completely flat, a 180-degree articulation that finally allows a machine this powerful to slide all the way under a low-profile sofa or media console.

But the most insightful piece of design might be what happens after the cleaning is done. Anyone who owns a current-generation floor washer knows the secret shame of the post-clean cleanup: rinsing a filthy roller, scrubbing a grimy water tank, and leaving the parts to air-dry, hoping they don’t develop a funky, mildewed smell. The BSTY’s docking station is designed to eliminate this final, frustrating step. When you dock the machine, it automatically begins a self-cleaning cycle, flushing the roller and internal tubing with clean water. But then it initiates the real game-changer: a high-temperature drying cycle. It circulates hot air through the brush head, leaving the roller completely dry, clean, and free of the moisture that breeds bacteria and odor. This isn’t just about convenience; it’s about making the entire ownership experience better. It ensures the machine is genuinely ready for its next use, not waiting for you to reassemble its damp components.

The early-bird pricing is set at $399, which is a considerable discount from the planned $599 retail price, positioning it as an aggressive play for early adopters who are tired of the status quo. For that price, the package appears to be comprehensive. The box includes the main BSTY unit, the crucial self-cleaning and charging dock that completes the automated experience, a power adapter, a spare roller brush for good measure, a small cleaning tool for any manual maintenance, and a 1-year warranty. The campaign is targeting a global shipping window around March of next year, aiming to bring this thoughtful approach to floor care into homes just in time for spring cleaning!

Click Here to Buy Now: $399 $599 ($200 off). Hurry, only 15/50 left. Raised over $61,000.

The post Your Floor Cleaner Is Just Spreading Dirty Water. BSTY’s Dual-Tank System Fixes It. first appeared on Yanko Design.

Xbox console revenue fell 30 percent year-over-year this summer

It hasn't been a good year for Xbox so far. Microsoft has released its earnings report for the quarter ending on September 30, and it has revealed that its revenue from the Xbox hardware fell by 30 percent year-over-year. Take note that the revenue decline doesn't reflect any dip in sales caused by the console's $20-to-$70 price hike, since that took effect on October 3. Similarly, Microsoft only raised the price for its Game Pass Ultimate subscription from $20 to $30 in October. 

Meanwhile, revenue from Xbox content and services remained relatively unchanged from the same period last year. Microsoft says it saw growth from Xbox subscriptions and third-party content, but it was "partially offset" by the decline in first-party gaming content. 

The Xbox division was one of the most affected teams when Microsoft started cutting down its global workforce earlier this year, with the company cancelling games that were being developed for the console. Microsoft scrapped the modern reimagining of Perfect Dark, a first-person shooter from the year 2000, and even closed down the Xbox studio working on it. The company also cancelled Everwild, a project that had long been in development by Xbox studio Rare, also in the midst of its mass layoffs. 

Overall, Microsoft's $77.7 billion revenue was 17 percent higher compared to the same period last year, and its operating income was up by 22 percent. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella posted a few highlights about the company's earnings call on X, mostly focusing on its AI efforts. He said that the company will increase its AI capacity by 80 percent this year and will double its data center footprint over the next two. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/xbox-console-revenue-fell-30-percent-year-over-year-this-summer-012245146.html?src=rss

This Massive Robot Wants To Replace An Entire Restaurant

Inside a seven-square-meter glass enclosure, two robotic arms move with startling precision. One retrieves ingredients from climate-controlled silos, another works over a heating element, and within minutes, a perfectly assembled, hot meal is delivered to a collection window. There are no chefs, no line cooks, and no human intervention whatsoever. This is the Circus Autonomy One, a robot designed with a single, ambitious goal: to automate every step of the food production process, from inventory management to cooking and even cleaning. It’s not a kitchen assistant; it is a full-stack replacement, and it represents one of the boldest attempts yet to redefine what a restaurant can be.

The company behind this, Munich-based Circus SE, is pushing the narrative that this solves labor shortages and boosts efficiency. They are not wrong, but that is an incredibly sanitized way of looking at what is essentially a job-elimination machine. The CA-1 is a marvel of industrial design, a self-contained unit powered by a proprietary AI called CircusOS that makes adaptive decisions in real time. With its pilot program already running in German REWE supermarkets, this isn’t some vaporware concept sitting in a lab. It is a commercially deployed system that is actively taking orders and feeding people, and that means we need to talk about what it is actually doing.

Designers: Gustavo Kemmerich and Circus SE Team

Seven square meters is the entire footprint. You could barely fit a decent-sized walk-in closet in that space, yet the CA-1 can pump out 120 dishes an hour from it. That breaks down to a meal every 30 seconds, a rate of production that most human-staffed kitchens would struggle to match without breaking a sweat. The whole operation is a sterile, closed loop of logic. Ingredients are tracked and stored in smart silos, the robotic arms handle the assembly and cooking, and an integrated Winterhalter commercial dishwasher cleans up after. From an engineering perspective, it is a cold, hard box of ruthless efficiency designed to extract maximum value from minimum space.

You do not achieve that level of optimization without a body count, metaphorically speaking. Forget the sanitized PR about “solving labor shortages.” The CA-1 is designed to eliminate labor, period. It replaces the prep cook, the line cook, the expeditor, and the dishwasher in one fell swoop. This is not a collaborative robot, or “cobot,” built to assist a human worker. It is a fully autonomous system engineered from the ground up to make a whole class of kitchen staff obsolete. For every one of these units installed in a supermarket, hospital, or university, a handful of jobs simply evaporate. The efficiency it provides comes at a direct and obvious cost.

So what we are really looking at here is a ghost kitchen in a box, a blueprint for the future of automated food service. Its successful deployment in a major European supermarket chain is a powerful proof of concept, and you can bet that fast-food executives and large-scale catering operators are paying very close attention. Circus SE even lists the defense sector as a potential market, which is its own can of worms. This machine is a stark reminder that automation doesn’t ask for permission. The CA-1 is a brilliantly engineered answer to a question that maybe we shouldn’t be so eager to ask.

The post This Massive Robot Wants To Replace An Entire Restaurant first appeared on Yanko Design.

Dodgers vs. Blue Jays, Game 5 tonight: How to watch the 2025 MLB World Series without cable

The 2025 Fall Classic is tied up again after Game 4 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays saw Toronto dominate to win 6-2. The World Series continues with one more game in Los Angeles tonight — Wednesday, Oct. 29 — at 8PM ET/5PM PT. The World Series odds favor the Dodgers ahead of tonight's game. Every 2025 MLB World Series game will air on Fox and Fox Deportes. 

Of course, Fox is a "free" over-the-air channel, so any affordable digital antenna will pull in the game if you live close enough to a local affiliate. But if that's not an option, here's a full rundown of how to watch the Dodgers vs. Blue Jays World Series, even without cable.

You can stream Fox on any live TV streaming service that airs Fox local stations, including DirecTV, Fubo and Hulu + Live TV. MLB World Series games will also be available on Fox's new streaming platform, Fox One.

Game 5 of the Dodgers vs. Blue Jays World Series is tonight, Oct. 29 at 8PM ET/5PM PT. 

Every game in the 2025 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays, will air on Fox and Fox Deportes.

Game 5 of the World Series between the Dodgers and Blue Jays is scheduled for Oct. 29, 2025.

All times Eastern. Series tied-2-2.

  • Game 5: Wednesday, Oct. 29, 8PM ET

  • Game 6: Friday, Oct. 31, 8PM ET

  • Game 7*: Saturday, Nov. 1, 8PM ET

*if necessary

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/dodgers-vs-blue-jays-game-5-tonight-how-to-watch-the-2025-mlb-world-series-without-cable-173501690.html?src=rss

These $300 Bamboo Houses Just Effortlessly Survived A 7.7 Earthquake In Myanmar

When the ground started shaking on that March morning in 2025, residents across central Myanmar braced for the worst. The 7.7-magnitude earthquake that tore through the region left destruction in its wake, toppling buildings and shattering lives. But in Mandalay, something remarkable happened. A cluster of 26 bamboo houses refused to fall, standing defiantly against nature’s fury just 15 kilometers from the epicenter of the earthquake.

These weren’t your typical bamboo huts. They were part of Housing NOW, an ambitious project that began in 2019 when Yangon-based studio Blue Temple set out to tackle Myanmar’s housing crisis. Originally designed for families displaced by conflict, these lightweight structures had become an unexpected testing ground for innovative construction. The earthquake proved what the architects had hoped all along—that bamboo could be transformed into structurally interlocking frames capable of absorbing seismic shocks.

Designer: Blue Temple

Innovation in Construction

Behind this breakthrough stands Raphaël Ascoli, founder of Blue Temple, whose journey into bamboo architecture began in corporate boardrooms in Japan. Leaving that world behind, he moved to Myanmar with a vision of community-centered building that would use local materials in revolutionary ways. When Myanmar’s military coup struck in February 2021, Housing NOW evolved from a housing initiative into something more urgent—a modular bamboo system engineered specifically for emergency and conflict situations.

The magic lies in the details. Ascoli and his team discovered that small-diameter bamboo, abundant and largely overlooked, could be bundled and engineered into something extraordinary. The cost? About the same as a smartphone for an entire house. But this wasn’t just about affordability. Each modular home takes less than a week to assemble, with families working alongside Blue Temple’s technical team in a process that builds both houses and communities.

Building for the Future

The numbers tell their own story. Seventy-nine units now dot conflict-affected regions across Myanmar, while 500 DIY Bamboo Manuals have found their way into communities, empowering people to build their own safe homes. The international community has taken notice, too—MIT Solve recognized the project in their Ecosystems and Housing category, and UNICEF Innovation30 named Ascoli one of their Young Innovators Shaping the Future.

What started as a local solution is becoming something bigger. Blue Temple is planning a 550 square meter bamboo workshop in Bago city that could prefabricate hundreds of houses annually, while the technology itself is crossing borders—engineers are already applying lessons learned in Myanmar to construct larger buildings in Madagascar. That March earthquake wasn’t just a test of structural integrity; it was validation that innovative approaches to ancient materials can provide modern solutions for the world’s most pressing housing challenges.

The post These $300 Bamboo Houses Just Effortlessly Survived A 7.7 Earthquake In Myanmar first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Japanese Architect Just Designed Dubai’s Most Poetic Museum

Dubai has never been shy about big statements. We’ve seen the tallest building, the largest mall, and artificial islands shaped like palm trees. But something different just emerged on the waters of Dubai Creek, and honestly, it’s making me think about museums in a completely new way.

Japanese architect Tadao Ando has unveiled the design for an art museum in Dubai, which will be housed in a rounded, twisting building overlooking the emirate’s natural saltwater creek. If you’re not familiar with Ando, imagine someone who speaks through concrete and light the way poets speak through words. He received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1995, which is basically the Nobel Prize for architects, and his work has this incredible ability to make you feel something before you even understand what you’re looking at.

Designer: Tadao Ando

The Dubai Museum of Art, affectionately called DUMA, does something I find completely captivating. Its distinctive silhouette draws on the sea and pearls and will be raised on a circular platform that extends over Dubai Creek. There’s something romantic about a museum that literally floats above water, especially in a city that was built on pearl diving long before it became synonymous with skyscrapers and luxury.

What strikes me most about Ando’s design is how it refuses to scream for attention. Renders of the five-storey Dubai Museum of Art reveal a curving building finished with white walls, punctuated by triangular windows as they swoop and twist upwards. It’s like watching fabric caught in a gentle wind, frozen mid-movement. The white exterior isn’t trying to compete with Dubai’s glittering towers. Instead, it seems to whisper while everything else shouts.

The interior is where Ando’s signature magic happens. Gallery spaces will be located on the first and second floors, illuminated by a central circular skylight designed to cast light with a pearl-like shimmer. Can you imagine walking through an art gallery where the light itself feels like part of the collection? That shimmer effect, mimicking the pearl that inspired the building’s shell, creates this dreamy atmosphere where contemporary art and natural light dance together.

What I love about this project is how deeply it connects to Dubai’s actual history, not just its futuristic ambitions. The museum’s distinctive, curved shell represents the pearl, a symbol of Dubai’s heritage and its historic relationship with the sea. Before oil, before the towers, Dubai’s wealth came from pearl diving in these very waters. Ando didn’t just design a building. He designed a memory.

Designed by Pritzker Prize-winner Ando for Dubai-based conglomerate Al-Futtaim Group, Dubai Museum of Art, also known as DUMA, is hoped to become a cultural landmark for artists and art enthusiasts. And it’s not just for looking at pretty things. The museum will feature artist talks, panel discussions, educational programs, and even art fairs. There’s also a library and study rooms specifically designed to nurture the next generation of creative minds. Omar Al Futtaim, CEO of the group behind this project, spoke beautifully about choosing Ando for this vision. He expressed pride in working with the renowned architect, noting how Ando’s work captures something intangible through light, silence, and emotional depth. For Dubai, this museum represents a peaceful conversation between the natural world, water, and human creativity.

There’s this gorgeous tension in Ando’s work where massive concrete structures somehow feel delicate and contemplative. At sunset, the building’s surface absorbs the shifting amber tones of the sky, softening its engineered geometry into something quietly atmospheric. I can already picture collectors and art lovers sitting in that third-floor restaurant, watching the creek turn golden, surrounded by walls that change color with the light.

What makes this museum feel important isn’t just its design or its floating platform. It’s what it represents for Dubai. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai’s ruler, emphasized how this cultural addition strengthens the city’s ambition to become a global center for creativity and culture while establishing its significance in the contemporary art world. The city is evolving from a place you visit for shopping and spectacle into somewhere you go for culture and contemplation.

The Dubai Museum of Art proves that the most powerful architecture doesn’t need to be the tallest or the flashiest. Sometimes it just needs to tell a story, capture light beautifully, and create a space where art and humanity can have a meaningful conversation. Ando has done exactly that, and I can’t wait to see this pearl shimmer above the creek.

The post This Japanese Architect Just Designed Dubai’s Most Poetic Museum first appeared on Yanko Design.

Google and Amazon’s Israeli cloud contracts reportedly require them to sidestep legal orders

Chalk this one up under "The most clever (alleged) legal sidesteps this side of Tony Soprano." On Wednesday, The Guardian published a report about a so-called "winking mechanism" regarding Israeli cloud computing contracts with Amazon and Google. The stipulation from 2021's Project Nimbus is said to require the US companies to send coded messages to Israel. According to the report, whenever Google or Amazon secretly complies with an overseas legal request for Israeli data, they're required to send money to Israel. The dollar amount indicates which country issued the request.

The coding system reportedly involves country dialing prefixes. For example, if Google or Amazon hand over Israeli data to the US (dialing code +1), they would send Israel 1,000 shekels. For Italy (code +39), they would send 3,900 shekels. (Out of morbid curiosity, I discovered that the highest dialing code is Uzbekistan's +998.) There's reportedly even a failsafe: If a gag order prevents the companies from using the standard signal, they can notify Israel by sending 100,000 shekels.

The Guardian says Microsoft, which bid for the Nimbus contract, lost out in part because it refused to accept some of Israel's terms.

In a statement to Engadget, an Amazon spokesperson highlighted customer privacy. "We respect the privacy of our customers, and we do not discuss our relationship without their consent, or have visibility into their workloads," they wrote.

The Amazon spokesperson denied that the company has any underhanded workarounds in place. "We have a rigorous global process for responding to lawful and binding orders for requests related to customer data," they said. "[Amazon Web Services] carefully reviews each request to assess any non-disclosure obligations, and we maintain confidentiality in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. While AWS does not disclose customer information in response to government demands unless we're absolutely required to do so, we recognize the legitimate needs of law enforcement agencies to investigate serious crimes. We do not have any processes in place to circumvent our confidentiality obligations on lawfully binding orders."

Google also denied any wrongdoing. "The accusations in this reporting are false, and imply that we somehow were involved in illegal activity, which is absurd," a company spokesperson said. "As is common in public sector agreements, an RFP does not reflect a final contract. The idea that we would evade our legal obligations to the US government as a US company, or in any other country, is categorically wrong."

"We've been very clear about the Nimbus contract, what it's directed to, and the Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy that govern it," the Google spokesperson continued. "Nothing has changed. This appears to be yet another attempt to falsely imply otherwise."

We also reached out to the Israeli government for a statement, and we'll update this story if we hear back. The Guardian's full report has much more detail on the alleged leak.

Update, October 29, 2025, 6:29 PM ET: This story has been updated to add a statement from a Google spokesperson.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-and-amazons-israeli-cloud-contracts-reportedly-require-them-to-sidestep-legal-orders-164635805.html?src=rss

The best VPN deals: 88 percent discounts on ProtonVPN, ExpressVPN, Surfshark and more

A virtual private network (VPN) is useful in several ways — a good one can stream foreign TV shows and events, save you from giving up information to hackers and keep you anonymous to protect against online tracking. Although we strongly recommend using a VPN, a bit of comparison shopping goes a long way in this market. VPN pricing can be opaque, and providers don't always portray their best deals accurately.

Even so, there are genuinely great bargains on the table. VPN providers give out deep discounts to customers who sign up for a year or more at a time. This lets them boost their subscriber numbers, but it's a win for you as well — while you pay out more upfront, if you divide the cost by the months of service, it's significantly cheaper over time.

Most of the deals we highlight below follow that pattern, so make sure you're comfortable with a longer commitment before you take the plunge. If you've been thinking about subscribing to a VPN service, read on for the best VPN deals we could find right now.

NordVPN Basic — $80.73 for a two-year subscription with three months free (74 percent off): NordVPN gets the most important parts of a VPN right. It's fast, it doesn't leak any of your data and it's great at changing your virtual location. I noted in my NordVPN review that it always connects quickly and includes a support page that makes it easy to get live help. Although I'm sad to see it shutting down Meshnet, NordVPN still includes a lot of cool features, like servers that instantly connect you to Tor. This early Black Friday deal gives you 74 percent off the two-year plan, which also comes with three extra months.

NordVPN Plus — $105.03 for a two-year subscription with three months free (74 percent off): In another early Black Friday discount, NordVPN has also taken 74 percent off its Plus subscription. For only a little more, you get a powerful ad and tracker blocker that can also catch malware downloads, plus access to the NordPass password manager. A Plus plan also adds a data breach scanner that checks the dark web for your sensitive information.

ExpressVPN Basic — $97.72 for a two-year subscription with four months free (73 percent off): This is one of the best VPNs, especially for new users, who will find its apps and website headache-free on all platforms. In tests for my ExpressVPN review, it dropped my download speeds by less than 7 percent and successfully changed my virtual location 14 out of 15 times. In short, it's an all-around excellent service that only suffers from being a little overpriced — which is why I'm so excited whenever I find it offering a decent deal. This deal, which gets you 28 months of ExpressVPN service, represents a 73 percent savings.

ExpressVPN Advanced — $125.72 for a two-year subscription with four months free (67 percent off): ExpressVPN recently split its pricing into multiple tiers, but they all still come with similar discounts for going long. In addition to top-tier VPN service, advanced users get two additional simultaneous connections (for a total of 12), the ExpressVPN Keys password manager, advanced ad and tracker blocking, ID protection features and a 50 percent discount on an AirCove router.

Surfshark Starter — $53.73 for a two-year subscription with three months free (87 percent off): This is the "basic" level of Surfshark, but it includes the entire VPN; everything on Surfshark One is an extra perk. With this subscription, you'll get some of the most envelope-pushing features in the VPN world right now. Surfshark has a more closely connected server network than most VPNs, so it can rotate your IP constantly to help you evade detection — it even lets you choose your own entry and exit nodes for a double-hop connection. That all comes with a near-invisible impact on download speeds. With this year-round deal, you can save 87 percent on 27 months of Surfshark.

Surfshark One — $59.13 for a two-year subscription with three months free (88 percent off): A VPN is great, but it's not enough to protect your data all on its own. Surfshark One adds several apps that boost your security beyond just VPN service, including Surfshark Antivirus (scans devices and downloads for malware) and Surfshark Alert (alerts you whenever your sensitive information shows up in a data breach), plus Surfshark Search and Alternative ID from the previous tier. This extra-low deal gives you 88 percent off all those features. If you bump up to Surfshark One+, you'll also get data removal through Incogni, but the price jumps enough that it's not quite worthwhile in my eyes.

CyberGhost — $56.94 for a two-year subscription with two months free (83 percent off): CyberGhost has some of the best automation you'll see on any VPN. With its Smart Rules system, you can determine how its apps respond to different types of Wi-Fi networks, with exceptions for specific networks you know by name. Typically, you can set it to auto-connect, disconnect or send you a message asking what to do. CyberGhost's other best feature is its streaming servers — while it's not totally clear what it does to optimize them, I've found both better video quality and more consistent unblocking when I use them on streaming sites. Currently, you can get 26 months of CyberGhost for 83 percent off the usual price.

Private Internet Access — $79 for a three-year subscription with three months free (83 percent off): It's a bit hard to find (the link at the start of this paragraph includes the coupon), but Private Internet Access (PIA) is giving out the best available price right now on a VPN I'd recommend using. With this deal, you can get 39 months of PIA for a little bit over $2 per month — an 83 percent discount on its monthly price. Despite being so cheap, PIA has plenty of features, coming with its own DNS servers, a built-in ad blocker and automation powers to rival CyberGhost. However, internet speeds can fluctuate while you're connected.

hide.me — $69.95 for a two-year subscription with two months free (73 percent off): Hide.me is an excellent free VPN — in fact, it's my favorite on the market, even with EventVPN and the free version of Proton VPN as competition. However, if you do want to upgrade to its paid plan, the two-year subscription offers great savings. Hide.me works well as a no-frills beginner VPN, with apps and a server network it should frankly be charging more for.

Like I said in the intro, practically every VPN heavily discounts its long-term subscriptions the whole year round. The only noteworthy exception is Mullvad, the Costco hot dog of VPNs (that's a compliment, to be clear). When there's constantly a huge discount going on, it can be hard to tell when you're actually getting a good deal. The best way to squeeze out more savings is to look for seasonal deals, student discounts or exclusive sales like Proton VPN's coupon for Engadget readers.

One trick VPNs often use is to add extra months onto an introductory deal, pushing the average monthly price even lower. When it comes time to renew, you usually can't get these extra months again. You often can't even renew for the same basic period of time — for example, you may only be able to renew a two-year subscription for one year. If you're planning to hold onto a VPN indefinitely, check the fine print to see how much it will cost per month after the first renewal, and ensure that fits into your budget.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-best-vpn-deals-88-percent-discounts-on-protonvpn-expressvpn-surfshark-and-more-120056432.html?src=rss

Threads reaches 150 million daily users and is ramping up ads

Threads has grown to 150 million daily active users. Mark Zuckerberg shared the latest milestone for the company's text-based app during Meta's third-quarter earnings call. The company previously reported in August that Threads had reached more than 400 million monthly users.

Zuckerberg, who has mused that Threads could become Meta's next billion-person app, said that it was "on track to become the leader in its category." He also said that time spent in the app had increased by 10 percent, which he credited to improvements to the company's AI recommendation systems. 

On Wednesday, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said that Meta was also "exploring" algorithm personalization controls for Threads. The company is currently testing the ability to "tune" Instagram's algorithmic recommendations. 

As Threads has grown, Meta also confirmed that ads are ramping up on the platform. During the call with analysts, Meta CFO Susan Li said that "ads are now running globally" in the Threads feed. The company had previously brought ads to Threads users in 30 countries following a small test earlier this year. This week, the company also announced that it would expand the type of ad formats on Threads, including video ads. "We're following our typical monetization playbook of optimizing the ads formats and performance," Li said. 


This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/threads-reaches-150-million-daily-users-and-is-ramping-up-ads-214259945.html?src=rss

13 years after it was announced, sci-fi horror game Routine has a release date of December 4

Sometimes, game development is a labor of love. Other times, it's an agonizing experience akin to pulling teeth. More than a decade after first announcing the project, Lunar Software and Raw Fury appear to be in the home stretch with their project Routine. The sci-fi horror game has been given a December 4, 2025 release date. For their sakes, I hope it comes to pass.

The duo first announced Routine all the way back at Gamescom in 2012 and gave it a 2013 release date. After that window came and went, the project went dark until Summer Game Fest 2022, with promises that the game a) still existed and b) had been fully remade for the new generation of gaming hardware. If the current schedule holds, Routine will be on Steam and Xbox, including day one availability on Game Pass, by the end of this year. 

The Aliens vibes are strong in the brief release date teaser. Think film grain effects, janky gadgets and of course the looming threat of death around every corner. The player will explore an abandoned lunar base to try and figure out how everything went horribly wrong before your arrival. The answer seems to involve murderous robots that would make Weyland-Yutani proud.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/13-years-after-it-was-announced-sci-fi-horror-game-routine-has-a-release-date-of-december-4-205604793.html?src=rss