The US Department of Justice (DOJ) is still pushing to break up Google, according to a revised proposal filed Friday with federal Judge Amit Mehta. As in its proposal last year, the DOJ says Google should be forced to sell its web browser, Google Chrome, and potentially Android, as punishment for being a monopolist, as Judge Mehta found last year, reports The New York Times.

In its new filing, the DOJ calls Google “an economic goliath” that it says “has denied users of a basic American value—the ability to choose in the marketplace.” To deal with that, “Google must divest the Chrome browser … to provide an opportunity for a new rival to operate a significant gateway to search the internet.” The department also still recommends that Google must change its Android business practices to enable competition or be ordered to sell the operating system. It dropped a suggestion that the company be allowed to sell Android in lieu of making the changes.

Both spin-offs were part of the proposal the DOJ filed last year. But whether it would hold that line under Trump, whom tech companies have plied with money and praise since his election, has been a mystery. The President has stepped back some Biden-era tech regulations on things like AI safety and cryptocurrency, but has also suggested that the threat of regulation can be useful for getting the results he wants.

The department’s proposal eases up in some ways. The DOJ now supports letting Google pay Apple for services unrelated to search. It also no longer calls for Google to drop its AI investments — the Times writes that, instead, the DOJ reccomennds requiring the company to “notify federal and state officials before proceeding with investments in AI.”

Google filed its own proposal that doesn’t include selling Chrome but instead suggests the court place restrictions on the sorts of deals it can make, such as barring it from requiring that a phone maker that licenses Google Play also preinstall other Google software, like the Google Search app or Chrome. As noted by the Times, a hearing on the proposals is scheduled for April.

If you, like me, still have your DVD collection hanging around, now is a good time to dust off your DVD player and make sure they haven’t succumbed to disc rot. That’s because many of the discs produced by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (WBHE) between 2006 and 2008 are failing prematurely, the company acknowledged in a statement to JoBlo in an article update this week.

The company gave JoBlo this statement on the matter:

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment is aware of potential issues affecting select DVD titles manufactured between 2006 – 2008, and the company has been actively working with consumers to replace defective discs.

Where possible, the defective discs have been replaced with the same title. However, as some of the affected titles are no longer in print or the rights have expired, consumers have been offered an exchange for a title of like-value.

Consumers with affected product can contact the customer support team at [email protected].

Disc rot is not a new phenomenon, but as ArsTechnica notes, properly-cared-for DVDs should be playable for up to 100 years, according to Sony. However, failing WBHE discs have stood out in particular amongst the physical media faithful, who have been posting about the problem for years in forums like DVD Talk and Home Theater Forum.

The above 2021 video from YouTuber Damn Fool Idealistic Crusader that Ars points to suggests disc rot is affecting a broader range of discs, from 2006 to 2009, than WB has acknowledged. As for figuring out which of your discs may have the issue, he says the most reliable way to look for playback problems — DVDs that won’t load at all, freeze while you’re watching the film, or have unplayable special features.

Crusader’s video description links to some Google Docs, one of which is a list he compiled showing what he believes are “known rotted DVD titles” he found reported online, as well as those from his own collection that seem to be affected. The list features discs for popular series like Batman: The Animated Series as well as movies, such as a Stanley Kubrick Director’s Series edition of 2001: A Space Odyssey and all of the Superman films up to Superman Returns.

Another of Crusader’s Google Docs largely pins the faulty DVDs made “roughly from 2006 through 2009” on a Cinram manufacturing plant in Olyphant, Pennsylvania. WB hasn’t substantiated the claim, as Ars notes. Crusader says you can identify discs produced there using codes printed on the inner ring of a disc’s underside.

There are plenty of us who have held onto our physical media as a bulwark against losing access to the films, TV shows, and games we love — something that can happen without notice as platforms are deprecated or distribution licenses dry up. But even maintaining a physical collection isn’t perfect if some manufacturing issue that occurred years earlier can break your discs.

It’s nice to know that even if I hadn’t backed up my DVDs to my home server in the last couple of years, Warner Bros. appears to be doing the right thing and I wouldn’t necessarily lose them. But there’s no guarantee that other companies will do that if their discs start failing in large numbers. It makes a great argument for taking up the digital packrat lifestyle 404 Media wrote about last month, and backing up your physical media early and often.

The biggest Apple news of the week was the announcement of a sky blue MacBook Air and an M3-powered iPad Air; however, in the deals world, it was all about the Apple Watch Series 10. That’s because, right now, Apple’s flagship smartwatch is on sale at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy in its 42mm base configuration with Wi-Fi starting at $299 ($100 off), its lowest price to date. You can also grab it in the larger 46mm variant at Amazon and Best Buy for $329 (also $100 off).

Apple’s latest mainline watch is a pretty minor update of the Series 9, though that’s not to say the iterative changes aren’t welcome. The bigger, wide-angle OLED display makes text more visible from just about every angle, and at a mere 9.7mm thick, it’s noticeably thinner than the Apple Watch Ultra. The latest Series is also outfitted with a larger charging coil inside, which translates into significantly faster charging. In fact, the Series 10 can go from zero to 80 percent in just 30 minutes, which makes its 18-hour battery far less of a concern. 

That said, the more significant updates arguably come in the form of FDA-cleared sleep apnea detection and support for watchOS 11. The former leverages the watch’s accelerometer while you sleep to detect minor wrist movements linked with breathing disturbances, which Apple can use to alert you of either moderate or severe sleep apnea. Support for the latest version of watchOS, meanwhile, means you’ll be able to make use of several training-focused fitness features, smarter widgets, and — my personal favorite — the ability to pause your Activity Rings. After all, recovery days are essential, too.

Read our full Apple Watch Series 10 review.

More deals and discounts of note

• New and eligible returning subscribers who sign up before March 31st can get four months of Disney Bundle Duo Basic for just $2.99 a month, which equates to about $32 in savings. The twofer of a deal provides access to both Hulu and Disney Plus (with ads), though keep in mind the plan will auto-renew at its usual price of $10.99 a month at the end of the promotion window. Still, even if you decide not to renew your subscription, that’s plenty of time to check out Disney’s new Daredevil series and catch up on Andor before the second season arrives on April 22nd.
• Now through March 16th, you can grab a refurbished Xgimi MoGo 2 Pro on sale at eBay for about $207 when you use promo code STARTFRESH, which knocks nearly $400 off the MSRP. The Android TV projector isn’t as compact as the nifty Aurzen Zip we reviewed last month, though it’s still a reasonable size, with good picture quality and sound. You can also run the all-in-one projector via a USB-C power bank and, unlike the Zip, cast Netflix from your phone thanks to built-in Chromecast support. Read our review.
• Belkin’s 2-in-1 Magnetic Charging Travel Pad — which kind of functions like a Qi2-certified successor to Apple’s ill-fated MagSafe Duo — is currently down to $60.99 ($59 off) at Best Buy, which is easily the lowest price we’ve seen. The fabric-wrapped charger can supply up to 15W of power to any MagSafe-equipped iPhone while simultaneously charging either an Apple Watch or a pair of AirPods; the square pads also conveniently fold into a stack when you need to head out, making it great for travel.

Suikoden is a game that I’ve been meaning to play for years. A highly regarded roleplaying game from the original PlayStation era, it’s renowned for its sprawling storyline and huge cast of playable characters. That also makes it pretty intimidating, and I’ve had a copy sitting on my PS Vita just waiting for when I might have the free time to finally dig in. After all that waiting, I’m now playing a new remastered collection that includes the first two games in the series instead. And it made me realize that, for the past several months, my personal gaming time has been dominated by classic, turn-based RPGs — an experience that has really made clear the genre’s realm of possibilities.

It started with the excellent new version of Dragon Quest 3, which launched last November. That game was the equivalent of video game comfort food: an exceedingly straightforward fantasy adventure that has been spruced up with gorgeous visuals, a lush orchestral soundtrack, and some very welcome quality of life tweaks. Soon after that, Mistwalker released an updated version of Fantasian. It’s technically not an old game — it originally debuted on Apple Arcade in 2021 — but it has t …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Free time is a rare thing — which is all the more reason to make sure you’re downtime isn’t going to waste. To help out, we’ve put together this list of our favorite games, TV shows, and movies from 2025. It’s a space designed to make the process of finding something to play or watch as easy as possible, as we share recommendations for things that are streaming, in theaters, or available on all manner of gaming devices.

It’s also a collection that will grow over time, as we keep adding our favorites throughout the year. (And if that’s not enough, you can also check out our running list of our current favorite indie games.) So keep checking back, and make good use of that precious time.

• Mickey 17 is a big middle finger to space-obsessed strongmen
• Split Fiction doesn’t need to be original when the co-op play is this good
• Monster Hunter Wilds thrives on spectacle

• Avowed makes the wait for the next Elder Scrolls much easier
• Citizen Sleeper 2 is the good kind of stressful
• Mythic Quest season 4 switches things up with a new work-life balance
• Castlevania: Nocturne’s second season is another soft-spoken knockout
• Severance season 2 somehow gets even weirder, wilder, and darker

MainFrames is a perfect example of a game with a clever idea that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

In the new indie platformer, you play as an adorable floppy disk that traverses computer desktops. The aesthetic is ridiculously charming: the many characters sprinkled throughout the game are so dang cute, and the levels are filled with application windows and desktop icons that serve as bouncing pads or gears to change things in the levels. Everything is overlaid on pixelated landscape computer backgrounds that differ between worlds. And it’s all backed by a catchy chiptune soundtrack that really sells the vibe.

It’s a great premise, and MainFrames takes the idea one step further by regularly letting you manipulate computer windows by clicking or dragging them like you would with an actual mouse. So, for example, if you can’t reach a far-off ledge, you might be able to hop onto a computer window with a platform and drag that window over to the ledge so you can reach it. You’ll also “select” certain windows to activate functions like flipping gravity.

Over the course of the game, you’ll take on progressively more difficult platforming puzzles that require precisely t …

Read the full story at The Verge.

When the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 arrives, likely this July, it could be a pretty decent upgrade over the Z Flip 5 I own. It’ll reportedly have a slightly bigger battery than the Flip 6, which had a slightly bigger one than the Flip 5, plus a much bigger outer screen.

Unfortunately, I can’t wait a few more months. After a year and a half with a Flip, I’ve reached my breaking point.

To be clear, my phone never cracked. My folding Flip never even sprouted a green line of doom along its crease. The factory screen protector did begin to peel, but $30 and a trip to uBreakiFix made that problem go away. 

No, the end came for my Flip when it stopped lasting the day and started waking me up at night. The battery is constantly dying faster than it should, and ever since the last big software update, the sleep and do-not-disturb modes no longer block notification sounds. I can’t figure out either one, and the Flip’s unique benefits no longer feel good enough for me to deal with them anymore. 

On battery: I’ve seen this phone reach the 80 percent mark by 9 in the morning, and threaten to die by 9PM. I practically don’t even use the phone when I’m at work, and yet now I fee …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Meta may have caved on their content moderation policies for the sake of “free speech”, but there’s a world of other Big Tech companies out there – and more social media platforms for conservatives to de-censor. On Thursday, Rep. Jim Jordan subpoenaed Alphabet, the parent company of Google, demanding documents that show whether YouTube removed content at the request of the Biden-Harris administration – acting, in his words, as “a direct participant in the federal government’s censorship regime.”

Although Republican party hardliners have long argued that Big Tech tilts algorithms and content moderation policies against their social media content, the overall right-wing momentum against Big Tech has further accelerated since 2021 after Donald Trump was removed from Twitter (now X) after January 6th. Jordan, who became chairman of the House Judiciary Committee in 2023, has wielded his platform and subpoena powers to dig into the databanks of Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Apple among others, believing that they singled out conservative social media accounts on the behest of the Biden administration’s Department of Justice and engaged in unlawful suppression of free speech. 

So far, their attempts have notched one notable success: last May, the committee published a report claiming that Biden had repeatedly coerced Meta into removing content from their platforms.   “Following this oversight, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, admitted that it was wrong to bow to the Biden-Harris Administration’s demands, publicly committed to restoring free speech on its platforms, and reformed its policies,” Jordan wrote in the letter accompanying the Alphabet subpoena. “Alphabet, to our knowledge, has not similarly disavowed the Biden-Harris Administration’s attempts to censor speech.”

“We’ll continue to show the committee how we enforce our policies independently, rooted in our commitment to free expression,” Google spokesperson Jose Castañeda told The Verge in response to a request for comment. 

Reddit’s automatic moderation tool is flagging the word “Luigi” as potentially violent — even when the content isn’t.

Earlier this week, a moderator from r/popculture saw Reddit’s AutoModerator system flag a post about the video game Luigi’s Mansion 3 because it included the word “Luigi,” giving them instructions to “check for violence.”

A Reddit spokesperson, who requested that The Verge not use their name due to the sensitive subject matter, said there is no “sitewide filter for the word ‘Luigi’ or expectation that users stop talking about Luigi Mangione,” the person who prosecutors accuse of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December.

But Reddit does appear to be flagging comments that mention “Luigi” in some cases, even those unrelated to Mangione — just not in the way that it first appeared to be. The Reddit spokesperson said that because r/popculture had recently fallen down to a single moderator, automod features kicked in, including a way to filter for “keywords that could — but don’t necessarily — indicate violating content.” The remaining moderator of r/popculture told The Verge that the mod team didn’t add “Luigi” to the list of keywords, Reddit did.

The r/popculture moderator posted about the Luigi issue to the r/FreeLuigi subreddit, a grassroots community where people discuss the Mangione case. The subreddit has strict rules in place to avoid violating Reddit’s moderation rules, like referring to Mangione’s by his initials and a blanket ban on content that calls for or endorses violence. But the moderators still fear that Reddit will decide to shut it down — even if they don’t run afoul of the platform’s rules.

Meanwhile, r/popculture — which has over 125,000 members — is closing down due to issues that the remaining moderator pins on Reddit. The moderator who posted about the “Luigi” issue announced last night they were shutting down the entire community “due to Reddit admins being complete fucking morons.” In the post, the moderator says that another member of the team was suspended and that Reddit has been unhelpful in trying to resolve the suspension.

The Reddit spokesperson said that the r/popculture moderator was suspended for approving content containing direct calls for violence, “including images celebrating [the Donald Trump rally shooter] and content calling to assassinate the president.” An r/popculture moderator denied this happened, and said the content in question was a photo of the shooter that did not celebrate him. The Reddit spokesperson notes that the automod features are temporary for r/popculture and that moderators can still approve the content for posting.

The “Luigi” issue comes the same week as Reddit’s new crackdown on banned content. Earlier this week, the company announced it would warn users who upvote content that is banned on the platform. The policy applies to users who upvote such content several times in “a certain timeframe,” Reddit says in a post, and the company will begin with enforcing the rule on violent content. The spokesperson says that at this time nobody has been suspended under the new rule.

The biggest YouTuber in the world is looking beyond videos to build a multibillion-dollar empire. 

For the last several months, Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast, has been talking with investors about raising $200 million in a funding round that would value his holding company, Beast Industries, at more than $5 billion. An investor pitch deck I’ve obtained gives an unprecedented look at the fast-growing, money-losing business of MrBeast and his future plans. (Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw first reported that MrBeast is raising money last week.)

To justify that eye-popping valuation of at least $5 billion, investors are betting that the future of MrBeast’s business will be selling physical products, not making videos. Beast Industries and its roughly 500 employees see future revenue growth coming from a series of consumer packaged goods (CPG). Revenue from the company’s chocolate brand, Feastables, matched the core video business in 2024 and is expected to exceed it this year. 

Meanwhile, Beast Industries has never been profitable and doesn’t expect to be anytime soon. The company lost roughly $200 million over the last few years alone. Investors are planning to buy tens of millio …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The well-deserved hat trick that director Bong Joon Ho pulled off at the Oscars in 2020 with Parasite all but ensured that studios would fight tooth and nail to back his next cinematic project. It was always going to be difficult for Bong to top what he accomplished with Parasite — a shapeshifting masterpiece of storytelling that spoke to the the meticulousness of his creative process — but it was hard not to look forward to his follow-up after such a powerful tale.

Though Mickey 17 bears many of the narrative and stylistic hallmarks Bong has become known for, the film is shakier than much of his previous work. There is an intentional (but not always effective) sweatiness to some of the dark comedy’s lead performances that takes some of the bite out of its social commentary. But considering the cartoonishly unhinged political climate we’re all living through right now, Mickey 17 also feels like a film that’s meeting the moment and articulating what’s on many of our minds.

Adapted from Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey 7, Mickey 17 tells the story of Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson), a kind simpleton of a man whose iffy business dealings force him to run for his lif …

Read the full story at The Verge.

AliveCor has suffered another setback in its long-running patent case against Apple. Today, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has upheld a decision that the medical device maker’s EKG patents are not actually patentable. As a result, the Apple Watch won’t face a second import ban from the International Trade Commission (ITC).

This back and forth between AliveCor and Apple began in 2021. AliveCor went to the ITC claiming Apple had infringed on its EKG patents. The ITC ruled in AliveCor’s favor, recommending an import ban that would’ve prevented the sale of Apple Watches with the EKG feature in the US. However, it didn’t immediately go into effect because the Patent Trial and Appeal Board also ruled that the three patents in question weren’t valid. For the import ban to go forward, AliveCor would’ve had to win its appeal of the PTAB decision — which it didn’t.

“We are deeply disappointed by the Court’s decisions this morning and that the Court did not review the available secondary considerations, which the ITC found to be persuasive in their finding of validity,” says Sanjay Voleti, AliveCor’s chief business officer. “We will continue to explore all available legal options, including potential appeals, to defend our position that our patents are valid and that Apple infringed our intellectual property rights.”

“We thank the Federal Circuit for its careful consideration in this case. Apple’s teams have worked tirelessly over many years to develop industry-leading health, wellness and safety features that meaningfully impact users’ lives, and we intend to stay on this path,” Apple spokesperson Fred Sainz tells The Verge.

AliveCor used the same legal strategy as Masimo, another medical device maker. However, Masimo was successful in its bid to get an ITC import ban against the Apple Watch. The main difference is Masimo’s patents were over the Apple Watch’s blood oxygen sensor, not its EKG tech. To get around the ITC import ban, Apple now disables the blood oxygen sensor in Apple Watches newly sold in the US.

Volkswagen is planning a return to physical buttons in its future vehicles over haptic sliders and touchscreen toggles for vital functions such as climate controls. The automaker’s design head Andreas Mindt told Autocar that the company “will never, ever make this mistake again” and promises to bring together physical controls for volume, heating controls, fan speed, and hazard light activation below the touchscreen for all cars starting with next year’s ID 2all.

Mindt also says the decision to bring back physical buttons was based on customer feedback. “Honestly, it’s a car. It’s not a phone: it’s a car,” said Mindt. “We understood this.”

Volkswagen isn’t the only automaker to have a physical-over-digital epiphany as of late. Last year, Hyundai said focus groups were “stressed, annoyed, and steamed” when they couldn’t control something in a pinch. Hyundai and Kia took a touchscreen-heavy approach in their EVs, such as the Hyundai Ioniq 6 and Kia EV6. Meanwhile in China, Xiaomi has accessory options for customers to add their own physical controls.

The trend toward digital interfaces was kicked off more than a decade ago by the Tesla Model S with its impressively big central touchscreen. Slowly, the company removed other physical controls, including transmission and turn signal stalks. The latter was resurrected in the new Model Y and may return to the Model 3.

Volkswagen’s change comes at an interesting time as the EU’s New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) is set to introduce new rules next year that require cars to have certain physical controls to achieve a full five-star safety rating. 

And it conflicts with the sentiment of some auto executives, including Rivian software chief Wassy Bensaid, who called in-car buttons “an anomaly” and predicted that soon everything will be controlled digitally through voice.

President Donald Trump’s tariff threats could raise the price of uranium used to fuel US nuclear reactors, which could have ripple effects on a tenuous nuclear renaissance spurred by the growth of energy-hungry data centers. 

The US gets more than a quarter of its uranium from Canada, more than from any other country. The Trump administration imposed new tariffs on uranium and other goods on Canada this week, which he soon paused after a stock market drop and sell-off.

It’s too soon to know what the exact impact would be on the US’s nuclear energy industry if tariffs move forward. It could play into efforts to build up a domestic uranium supply, which has gotten bipartisan support and interest from major tech companies. But in the near term, the US still relies on its northern neighbor to keep reactors running.

Trump proposed a 10 percent tariff on energy products from Canada, but he announced yesterday that it would be paused until at least April 2nd. Canada-based Cameco, one of the world’s biggest uranium producers, warned that the tariffs would inevitably lead to higher prices. 

“It’s kind of Ec …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Netflix plans to spend around $18 billion on content this year – and chief financial officer Spencer Neumann thinks that number could increase down the line. “We are not anywhere near a ceiling,” Neumann said during the Morgan Stanley Tech, Media, and Telecom Conference this week, as reported by Variety. “I think we are still just getting started.”

Netflix’s spending has increased from $16.2 billion last year as the company continues to expand its lineup of live content with the addition of WWE’s Monday Night Raw, John Mulaney’s late-night talk show, and this summer’s live boxing match between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano.

“We see the opportunity to grow everywhere,” Neumann said, according to Variety. “We want to stay in growth mode versus maintenance mode as long as possible.” He added that Netflix aims to deliver “more and more entertainment value per dollar.”

Earlier this year, Netflix announced yet another price hike, while its subscriber count increased to 300 million. The service still has big competition with YouTube, which has dominated Nielsen’s list of the most-watched streaming services for the past two years. Neumann said Netflix wants to tackle the part of the streaming market that “neither of us are capturing,” such as traditional TV, Variety reports.

Vice President JD Vance is a busy man. Over the past three weeks, he’s traveled to France and Germany, addressed the crowd at a massive conservative conference, berated the Ukrainian president, and visited the US-Mexico border. Despite his busy schedule, Vance seemingly always finds time to engage in one of his favorite hobbies: posting.

During this period, Vance has gotten into online spats with enemies of the MAGA movement from across the ideological spectrum. He’s sparred with conservative historian Niall Ferguson, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), a columnist for the right-leaning publications UnHerd and Compact, and the seemingly left-leaning X user @allahliker, who called Vance “soft.” Vance has written lengthy replies to posts about his speech at the Munich Security Conference and the tensions between his own “tech-bro libertarian” and “rightwing religious populist” leanings, and rebutted reports that his family had to move to an “undisclosed location” after protesters interrupted their Vermont ski trip.

Vance is also pushing the limits of microblogging on X, the social media platform owned by his administration’s employee (or possibly boss) Elon Musk. Taking advan …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The Artcool AI Air doesn’t look as artsy as LG’s previous Artcool air conditioners, but it does offer improved energy efficiency by detecting the room’s layout and the position of its occupants so it can direct airflow right to them.

The company hasn’t announced pricing or availability, nor does it detail what technology the Artcool AI Air is using. Ideally it’s relying on mmWave radar sensing — similar to what Samsung may rely on to bring ambient sensing to its Smart Things devices — which is sensitive enough to even detect a person’s rate of breathing. That technology could potentially allow the Artcool AI Air to differentiate between an actual person in a room, and a plant swaying back and forth in the airflow that it can ignore.

Previous additions to LG’s Artcool air conditioner line featured a 27-inch LCD screen on the front that can be used to display artwork or family photos in order to camouflage the wall-mounted unit as a piece of art. The new Artcool AI Air instead features a black mirror finish with a ”multi-line grille structure” on its front outlet designed to spread out and soften its airflow.

The air conditioner’s temperature sensors can detect when a window has been opened, LG says, automatically activating an energy-saving mode so that it stops producing cold air that’s possibly escaping outside. Through the LG ThinQ app, users can also monitor the unit’s power usage and set a limit, allowing them to balance their comfort level versus how high they’re willing to see their power bill rise.

Apple might have just updated the Mac Studio with M4 Max and M3 Ultra chips, but if all you need is a good daily driver, they’re completely overkill. The M4-powered Mac Mini is probably the better option in most instances, especially since the desktop is currently matching its all-time low of $529 ($70 off) at Amazon with 256GB of storage. You can also pick up the 512GB configuration for $699 ($100 off), which remains the best price we’ve seen on the step-up model.

Even at its full price of $599, the latest Mac Mini offers exceptional value. The tiny desktop machine is less than half the size of the 2023 Mac Mini, yet it manages to rival the M4 iMac and MacBook Pro in terms of power thanks to its 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU. The base-model Mini also now comes with 16GB of RAM by default, rendering it more than capable of powering through everyday tasks. 

In addition, the new Mini boasts can run up to three displays at once, up from two on the previous model. It also has an excellent port selection that includes three Thunderbolt 4 (USB 4) ports, a gigabit ethernet jack, and an HDMI port. It sports a pair of 10Gbps USB-C ports (USB 3) and a 3.5mm audio jack on the front as well, providing easy access when you need it. That, combined with its futureproof support for Wi-Fi 6E, makes it an all-around great investment if you don’t mind supplying your own monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

Read our full M4 Mac Mini review.

Other ways to save today

• As our friends over at Polygon recently pointed out, Barnes & Noble is offering hundreds of films from Paramount Pictures for 50 percent off through April 6th, allowing you to save on DVDs and Blu-ray discs. There are a lot of great films on sale, but some standouts include The Godfather Trilogy ($25.99), the Indiana Jones: 4-Movie Collection ($29.99), and 4K steelbook versions of all seven Mission: Impossible films. There are also discounted theme collections, like the horror-centric Paramount Scares: Volume 1 ($39.49), which includes Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Pet Sematary (1989), Sweeney Todd (2007), Crawl (2019), and Smile (2022).
• Now through 1AM ET on March 9th, Woot is slashing prices on a slew of Nintendo Switch titles — including The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Super Mario Bros. Wonder, both of which are discounted to $44.99 ($25 off). The so-called Spring Video Game Sale also features deals on a number of excellent peripherals, including 8BitDo’s Ultimate Wired Controller for Xbox (now $24,99), which just dethroned the PowerA Advantage Wired to become our favorite budget controller thanks to its inclusion of Hall effect sticks and programmable rear buttons.
• Apple’s 11th-gen iPad is set to arrive on March 12th, but unless you’re really excited about an upgraded A16 chip, it’s a pretty minor spec bump over the previous model. Thankfully, the 10th-gen iPad is on sale at Amazon and Walmart in select colors for $259.99 (about $90 off), which remains its second-best price to date. The last-gen model has a modern design with USB-C and an A14 Bionic chip, which, frankly, is more than enough power for browsing, streaming Netflix, and doing most tablet things. There’s a reason we consider it the best iPad for most people. Read our review.

Brandon Widder also contributed to this post.

Apple’s more personalized Siri features need a little more time in the oven. Company spokesperson Jacqueline Roy gave this statement to Daring Fireball today announcing the delay:

Siri helps our users find what they need and get things done quickly, and in just the past six months, we’ve made Siri more conversational, introduced new features like type to Siri and product knowledge, and added an integration with ChatGPT. We’ve also been working on a more personalized Siri, giving it more awareness of your personal context, as well as the ability to take action for you within and across your apps. It’s going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features and we anticipate rolling them out in the coming year.

We’ve asked Apple to clarify exactly what “coming year” means.

When Apple introduced Apple Intelligence at WWDC last year, it showed off advanced features like Siri understanding your personal context and being able to take action based on what’s shown on your screen. Apple said at the time that those features would roll out “over the course of the next year,” and the general expectation was that they’d arrive this spring.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Apple executives, including software boss Craig Federighi, “voiced strong concerns internally that the features didn’t work properly — or as advertised — in their personal testing.” Gurman also says that people in Apple’s AI division “believe that work on the features could be scrapped altogether” and that the features may have to be rebuilt “from scratch.”

This weekend, Gurman reported that a ”true modernized, conversational version of Siri” might not arrive until iOS 20 “at best.”

Update: Added details from Bloomberg.

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to establish a Bitcoin reserve held by the US government. The reserve, which crypto czar David Sacks has likened to a “digital Fort Knox,” will include the assets the government collected as part of criminal or civil forfeitures – currently estimated at around 200,000 Bitcoin.

Along with Bitcoin, the executive order requires the Secretary of the Treasury to establish a stockpile for other digital assets. It will also allow the government to explore ways to acquire more Bitcoin as long as it doesn’t “impose incremental costs on United States taxpayers,” presumably meaning the US shouldn’t use taxpayer dollars to buy up Bitcoin.

In a statement posted to X, Sacks said the US won’t sell any of the Bitcoin in the reserve. “It will be kept as a store of value,” Sacks wrote. “Premature sales of bitcoin have already cost U.S. taxpayers over $17 billion in lost value. Now the federal government will have a strategy to maximize the value of its holdings.”

As is the case with other cryptocurrencies and investments, Bitcoin is volatile. Its price has fluctuated greatly over the years, with the currency dipping below $25,000 in June 2022 amidst a broader crypto collapse. Bitcoin sits at $86,000 at this time of writing.  

However, a large chunk of the US government’s reserve includes Bitcoin seized from Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein and his wife Heather Morgan (aka Razzlekkan) who stole a total of 120,000 Bitcoin from the Bitfinex exchange in 2016.

During an interview on CNBC, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said seized assets would go into the reserve “after the victims are paid.” But we still don’t know whether the government will compensate victims with the actual Bitcoin they owned at the time of theft, or the cash equivalent of the assets at that time, the value of which would be much lower.