At CNET, we’ve been testing smart thermostats for years, so it’s always a little surprising to hear, “What’s a smart thermostat?” But only a fraction of American households, around 17%, actually use smart thermostats. That’s too bad, because they’re one of my favorite smart home innovations, and offer handy... Read more

Yet it’s only $699 (or $599 for students). The XPS 13 makes similar trade-offs as the MacBook Neo. First, it starts with only 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. It also starts with a slower Intel Core 5 processor (note: not Intel Core Ultra). I’ll be... Read more

If you’ve had your sights set on sliding on a pair of Apple’s smart glasses, you’re going to have to wait a little longer than previously thought. Apple is now aiming to release the much-rumored AI glasses in “late 2027,” according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The glasses were previously... Read more

The astounding growth of the hair-transplant industry in Turkey is not just a medical tourism success story; it’s also a tale of “hacked” medical equipment and algorithmic craftsmanship. From a biological and evolutionary perspective, human hair is often viewed as an unremarkable mass of keratin that still plays some... Read more

In 2024, researchers from the University of Illinois found that GPT-4, when provided with a common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVE) description, could autonomously exploit 87% of a curated 15-vulnerability one-day dataset. Without the description, it could only exploit 7%. This provided a “margin of safety” for the industry because... Read more

There’s a hard cutoff coming for Samsung Messages, and it’s closer than most people realize. The app stops functioning for US users in July 2026, and unlike a lot of software transitions, this one doesn’t offer much of a grace period, when it’s gone, access to any unmigrated text... Read more

After testing more than 60 mesh systems and routers in my last home, a modern two-story, 1,600-square-foot house, I found that single routers generally outperformed mesh systems, providing a faster and more stable connection, transferring files from one device to another on the network more quickly, and working efficiently... Read more

IGN Live 2026 returns this year to show off some of the biggest games coming out and celebrate 30 years of game site IGN (which is owned by CNET parent company Ziff Davis). There will also be plenty of game demos, celebrity appearances, livestreams and pop culture panels during... Read more

Photograph: Pete Cottell M-Audio has packaged everything this person would need in a tidy little box with its M Track Duo HD producer pack. It includes a two-channel class-compliant audio interface, an M100 condenser mic, a pair of HD41 headphones, a mic clip, a USB-C cable to connect the... Read more

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles. Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is a toughy. The purple category requires you to see four similar... Read more