Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is getting ready to dump even more AI-generated posts into your social feeds. During an earnings call on Wednesday, Zuckerberg said the company will “add yet another huge corpus of content” to its recommendations system as AI “makes it easier to create and remix” work that gets shared online.“Social media has gone through two eras so far,” Zuckerberg said. “First was when all content was from friends, family, and accounts that you followed directly. The second was when we added all of the Creator content.” Though Zuckerberg stops short of calling AI the third era of social media, it’s clear that the technology will be heavily involved in what comes next.Zuckerberg said that recommendation systems that “deeply understand” AI-generated posts and “show you the right content” will become “increasingly valuable.” The company has already begun embedding AI tools across its apps and is now experimenting with dedicated AI social apps, too.Meta CFO Susan Li said people generated over 20 billion images within the company’s new Vibes app, which serves up a feed of AI-generated videos, similar to OpenAI’s Sora. “I think that Vibes is an example of a new content type enabled by AI, and I think that there are more opportunities to build many more novel types of content ahead,” Zuckerberg added.Meta reported revenue of $51.24 billion this quarter, up 26 percent year over year, but took a one-time $15.93 billion tax charge associated with President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill.

Google's NotebookLM is hands down my favorite AI tool. Frankly, it's also my go-to productivity companion. It's packed with genuinely useful features and stands out from every other AI app I've tried. Thanks to its source-grounded nature, it doesn't hallucinate nearly as often as most AI models do.

The Castlevania series is one of the most beloved and iconic action game and horror-themed franchises of all-time. Many people love the different iterations of the series that put players in the role of a vampire hunter standing against the forces of darkness led by the infamous vampire, Dracula. Whether it was the games on the NES, the iconic entries on the PlayStation, or any other modern-day video game console release, Castlevania games have been a staple of the action genre and continue to be very popular, especially during the Halloween season. But while the games have been front-runners of challenging and fun action games, their horror-inspired roots go pretty deep for those who love horror storytelling, and especially classic horror movies from throughout the decades.

At a Senate hearing Wednesday on government censorship of tech platforms, a Meta executive expressed regret to Republican lawmakers for failing to speak out more against the Biden administration's requests that it remove health and election misinformation, including satire. Google, meanwhile, held firm in its stance, saying that evaluating - and often rejecting - government content requests is business as usual. Democrats questioned why Congress was relitigating years-old moderation decisions instead of the Trump administration's recent speech crackdown - even as Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) hopes to recruit them for a new anti-jawboning bill. An …Read the full story at The Verge.

Kat Abughazaleh, who has announced a campaign for Illinois' 9th Congressional District, carries yard signs into her campaign office Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old Palestinian American and Democratic candidate for Congress in the 9th District of Illinois, has been indicted by the Department of Justice on charges connected to protests outside an ICE facility. The indictment alleges that Abughazaleh and a handful of other protesters conspired on the morning of September 26th to prevent an ICE agent “from discharging the duties of his office, and to injure him in his person or property.”The indictment accuses Abughazaleh and the other protesters named in it of banging on an ICE agent’s car and attempting to stop it from entering an ICE facility by physically surrounding it, scratching the word “PIG” into the car, breaking a side mirror, and breaking off a rear windshield wiper. As MSNBC reports, other defendants include Michael Rabbitt, a Cook County Democratic Committee member, and Cat Sharp, a candidate for the Cook County Board of Commissioners, and the charges of assaulting an officer can carry prison sentences of up to eight years.A video of Abughazaleh being thrown to the ground by an ICE agent outside the Broadview facility went viral in September, and on the same morning as the incident cited in the indictment, she posted a video on X of her and other protesters surrounding an ICE vehicle. As MSNBC notes, in recent weeks, right-wing accounts have repeatedly posted about her videos, calling for her to be arrested and tagging US Attorney General Pam Bondi. At the same time, Trump has said that Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson should be jailed for allegedly “failing to protect” ICE officers. The Trump Administration has also charged or threatened criminal charges against others who’ve opposed his agenda, including former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Abughazaleh, who has a background as a journalist and influencer on social media channels like Twitch, posted a video today responding to the indictment, stating:“This is a political prosecution, and a gross attempt to silence dissent, a right protected under the First Amendment. This case is a major push by the Trump administration to criminalize protest and punish anyone who speaks out against them. That’s why I’m going to fight these unjust charges.”Abughazaleh goes on to note that “ICE has hit, dragged, thrown, shot with pepper balls, and teargassed hundreds of protesters.” She also calls out the Trump administration for “weaponizing the federal justice system” to scare protesters, but vows “we’re not going to be silent.” “This case targets our rights to protest, speak freely, and associate with anyone who disagrees with the government.” 

There are a lot of different ways to go if you're looking for a new mouse. But if you want something that's a little different, that promises better comfort than the traditional mouse, we think this one from Logitech is going to be a good choice.

Xbox sales have been tanking for a while now — and the story hasn’t gotten any brighter. Microsoft just released its Q1 2026 earnings and Xbox hardware revenue was down 29 percent year-over-year. Last quarter, it was down 22 percent. Down 29 percent in the first two quarters of 2025, down 42 percent in Q4 of 2024… You get the picture. As tariffs and inflation take their toll, Microsoft has dramatically increased the prices on its gaming hardware, with the Series X now starting at $599.99. Microsoft’s response has been to deemphasize the console and pursue an “Xbox everywhere” strategy. That has yielded some success on the content and services front, though revenue there was largely flat this quarter, only growing one percent year over year.Microsoft would obviously like to see more growth there. The company has reportedly been pursuing dramatic 30 percent profit margins there, leading to layoffs and cancelled projects. But the company’s outlook for Q2 isn’t much rosier. It expects Xbox hardware revenue to continue to decline, and content and services to continue low-single digits growth. Microsoft did see hardware growth from Windows OEM and Devices, with revenue increasing a modest 6 percent year over year. The company stopped reporting Surface earnings separately, so it’s unclear how those devices are performing. They had been on a steady decline for several years.It’s Azure and cloud services that remain the driving force behind Microsoft’s ascent. The growth of its intelligent cloud services is substantial. Revenue increased 28 percent year over year to $30.9 billion, with Azure specifically growing 40 percent. More broadly, Microsoft Cloud revenue was $49.1 billion, an increase of 26 percent from Q1 2025. The company’s cloud divisions and Azure have been growing steadily for several years now. In total, Microsoft reported $77.7 billion in revenue for the quarter, up 18 percent from the same time last year. And its net income was $27.7 billion, up 12 percent. While those increases are largely driven by the company’s various cloud offerings, its productivity and business processes still account for a significant portion of its income ($33 billion).Update, October 29th: This article was updated with details from Microsoft’s earnings call. The headline was also updated to specify that it was hardware sales that were down.

If your old Windows 10 laptop is starting to feel sluggish, switching to a lightweight Linux distribution might be the best way to extend its usefulness. These systems are designed to run smoothly on modest hardware while offering a clean, modern experience.

Having built and deployed a few firewalls before launching one at home, I'd like to think I know a thing or two about getting it right. Thankfully, if you're choosing between OPNsense and pfSense, it's difficult to get it wrong since even as a default installation. Both are fairly secure and will do a stellar job at keeping unwanted parties from gaining access to your local area network (LAN). But there are still some things I wish I had been told when I built my first firewall.

Rode’s Wireless Micro Camera Kit includes a charging case to extend the battery life of its receivers and mics. | Image: Rode Last November, Rode launched its Wireless Micro microphone system that paired two tiny lavalier mics with a small receiver that connected to your phone’s charging port. Rode later gave that product a free upgrade, sending out another receiver that let the mics connect to digital cameras, too. Now, the company is launching an updated version of that receiver with an OLED screen — but this time, it’s charging for it.The new version of Rode’s wireless camera receiver is now available as part of a Wireless Micro Camera Kit that bundles it with two Wireless Micro lavalier mics and an additional wireless receiver used to connect the mics to mobile devices using their USB-C or Lightning ports. The kit is priced at $149, which is what Rode’s Wireless Micro system was initially priced at when it launched last November (minus a camera receiver) before getting a price cut earlier this month to $99 when new color options were introduced. Rode’s wireless lav mics still don’t offer as much functionality as DJI’s offerings like the Mic Mini or Mic 3, but they’re more competitively priced.As with the original, the new receiver is designed to sit atop cameras by connecting to their cold shoe mount while audio from up to two wireless mics is delivered to the camera through a USB-C or 3.5mm audio cable. Battery life is estimated to be up to seven hours and is maximized by the receiver only powering on when it’s connected to a camera. The receiver’s runtime can be further extended to up to 21 hours using the Wireless Micro Camera Kit’s charging case when you’re away from a power source.The 1.1-inch OLED screen shows details about the battery life and signal strength of the receiver and wirelessly connected devices. It works alongside three buttons for navigating and adjusting various settings including gain assist levels, but for ease of use the receiver can also make those adjustments automatically to suppress volume spikes and ensure all the audio coming into the camera is perfectly balanced.

Running a self-hosted stack feels great. You spin up your first container, set up your first Nginx reverse proxy, maybe a Plex or Jellyfin server. It all feels great running your server, owning your hardware, software stack, data, and defining your own rules. Except when it comes crashing down. Trust me, as a seasoned self-hoster, even I'm guilty of losing track of what's happening under the hood. As your stack grows, containers crash, memory spikes happen, hard disks or SSDs start filling up, and you find yourself SSH-ing into your machine trying to make sense of everything.

It's no secret that we at XDA love the Steam Deck and a good home lab. So it was inevitable we'd find a way to combine them both. In fact, we've already used a Steam Deck as a home server. But that's far from the only use for a Steam Deck in your home lab environment.