Windows 10 end of support is approaching in less than three weeks, and Microsoft has now been forced to make its extended security updates truly free, without a catch, in certain markets in Europe. When Windows 10 goes end of support on October 14th, some European customers will no longer be required to turn on Windows Backup to enroll into its Extended Security Updates (ESU).Microsoft had wanted everyone to turn on Windows Backup to get the extra year of security updates, but thanks to pressure from the Euroconsumers group this is now changing in the European Economic Area. The consumer advocacy group has been asking Microsoft to do more for those still running Windows 10 across Europe, and it has successfully convinced the software giant to offer the extended security updates free without the requirement of enabling Windows Backup.Windows Backup requires a Microsoft Account and uses OneDrive, which could lead consumers to go above the 5GB of free storage by having to back up documents and settings. It’s a catch that benefits Microsoft, as it can then sell Windows 10 users additional OneDrive storage space.“We are pleased to learn that Microsoft will provide a no-cost Extended Security Updates (ESU) option for Windows 10 consumer users in the European Economic Area (EEA),” says the Euroconsumers group in a letter this week. “We are also glad this option will not require users to back up settings, apps, or credentials, or use Microsoft Rewards.”An unnamed Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the changes to Windows Central, noting that it’s “making updates to the enrollment process to ensure it meets local expectations and delivers a secure, streamlined experience.” These changes are only being made in the European Economic Area though, so everywhere else will still need to either enable Windows Backup or pay $30 for the year or redeem 1,000 Microsoft Reward points.Consumers will still only get extended security updates for Windows 10 until October 13th, 2026, but businesses have the option to purchase up to three years of important security updates. Euroconsumers is also trying to convince Microsoft to extend its security updates beyond a year for consumers, to avoid leaving devices “exposed to risk” next year.

Hollow Knight: Silksong builds on the formula that made Team Cherry’s first game a modern classic. Pharloom is bigger and more vertical, but it’s also full of hidden mechanics that are easy to miss. Beyond Hornet’s needle and silk powers, Silksong packs clever systems that change how you fight, explore, and even spend your hard-earned rosaries. Here are four surprising things you probably didn’t know you could do in Hollow Knight: Silksong.

I've talked about Raycast a few times already here on XDA. Since I discovered this app on my Mac Mini, it's been an absolutely game-changer, saving me time and frustrations with many of the tasks I need on a daily basis. Raycast was exclusive to macOS for a long time, but recently, a beta for Windows launched, and much like my colleague Adam Conway, I love it there too.

Living in Ireland, my electricity prices have gone from bad to worse in recent years, and a recent further price increase across most of the providers has pushed us to either the top spot in terms of energy prices in the world, or second place, depending on who you ask. Plus, some have had us at the top spot for several months at this point. With that price increase has come a re-evaluation of all of the tech that I use, with an attempt to consolidate as much as I can and to decrease the power usage of my appliances, too. As it turns out, though, your PC probably doesn't consume a whole lot of power.

Uber is launching a new discount program aimed at fighting against rising produce prices. The company is launching a new feature called “Fresh Days,” in which customers will receive discounts of up to 50 percent on “local fruits, vegetables, meats, and dairy.” The exact day and discount amount will vary from market to market, but Uber plans on launching the new feature in the US, Canada, the UK, South Africa, France, Japan, Taiwan, and Spain — with more countries to follow. Grocery customers are experiencing sticker shock across the nation, with most of the price increases affecting fruits and vegetables. Apple prices are up 9.6 percent year-over-year, according to the latest Consumer Price Index. Overall, fresh fruits and vegetables are up 2.3 percent compared to August 2024. This “veggie-flation” comes as farmers and growers face increasing costs of their own, with the USDA estimating that farm production expenses will reach $467 billion in 2025, up 2.6 percent from the previous year and more than 36 percent higher than in 2018.Uber’s Fresh Day new discount program will hopefully take some of the bite out of that grocery order. The company is offering its steepest discounts to its Uber One subscribers; for example, an Uber One member in the US could get an exclusive 30 percent off every Tuesday on select fresh produce, meats, dairy, and eggs.Uber Eats is also rolling out a number of other updates, including an new AI-powered replacement suggestion tool in case the item you ordered isn’t in stock. Uber Eats couriers can also now share photos with customers while shopping to better communicate when an item is out-of-stock or “low quality.” And Uber is now offering a freshness guarantee, meaning the company will replace any item that arrives spoiled, damaged, past its date, or stale.

Anker’s 65W 735 Charger is $14 off in the run-up to October 7th. Amazon’s October Prime Day event (also known as Prime Big Deal Days) doesn’t officially start until October 7th, but that doesn’t mean you have to wait to find a good deal on charging accessories. Many speedy wall adapters, power banks, and large battery backup solutions are already on sale now from brands like Anker and Jackery. Most of these products are great for keeping your smartphone, laptop, or tablet charged at a cafe, while others are made to power your small appliances while you’re out camping.For starters, Anker’s 633 Magnetic Battery is available in multiple colors from Amazon and Anker (with code WS7DV2FSCH8D) for $39.99 ($20 off), its best price to date. The compact, MagSafe-equipped battery pack can supply compatible iPhone models with up to 7.5W of power and features an integrated kickstand, so you can prop up your phone while it charges. Alternatively, you can plug your device into its USB-C port for 20W charging, rather than relying on wireless charging, which is ideal when you’re in a rush and have a USB-C cord. Anker’s 633 power bank also supports passthrough charging — meaning you can charge a device and the battery pack simultaneously — and features A USB-A port on the bottom that lets you plug in a second gadget if needed. At 10,000mAh, it also has enough power and capacity to fully charge most smartphones at least once, with some juice left in the tank.Anker 633 Magnetic BatteryWhere to Buy: $59.99 $39.99 at Amazon $59.99 $39.99 at Anker (with code WS7DV2FSCH8D)If you could use a wall outlet, Anker’s 735 Charger is currently matching its all-time low of $25.99 ($14 off) at Amazon and Anker’s online storefront (with promo code WS7DV2L3ORHI). The three-port, 65W charger features a slim design that won’t block other outlets, as well as two USB-C ports with a combined output of 65W, which is fast enough to quickly charge phones, handheld game consoles, and select laptops at or near their maximum speed. It can even charge a 14-inch MacBook Pro from zero to 50 percent in 35 minutes.The single USB-A port tops out at 22.5W, which is still plenty fast for charging devices with small batteries, including mice, keyboards, headphones, and wireless earbuds. The charger will automatically adjust the wattage sent to each port if more than one device is connected, too, and the top USB-C port will always receive the most juice in every instance. One of my favorite touches is that its prongs fold down, which keeps them from getting damaged while traveling.Anker 735 Charger (Nano II 65W)Where to Buy: $39.99 $25.99 at Amazon $39.99 $25.99 at Anker (with code WS7DV2L3ORHI)If you’re an avid camper, Jackery’s Explorer 1000 V2 is a great way to keep your essential gadgets powered up when you go off the grid. The power station has three AC outlets, a DC outlet, two USB-C ports, and a USB-A port. Jackery says its 1,070Wh battery can charge a smartphone up to 74 times, a laptop up to 14 times, or power a coffee maker for over an hour and a half. An early October Prime Day deal knocks its price down to $429 ($370 off) at Amazon, its biggest discount of the year so far. You can top up the Explorer 1000 V2 by plugging it into an outlet, allowing you to take it from zero to 100 percent in as little as an hour with the emergency charging setting enabled. The company also sells a solar panel that’s compatible with it, which increases the charging time but should allow you to get by if you really can’t reach an outlet. The power station typically outputs up to 1,500W but has a peak output of 3,000W in case you plug in multiple appliances at once. Jackery says the power station’s battery cells should retain around 70 percent of their maximum capacity after 4,000 power cycles, which is equivalent to about 10 years.Jackery Explorer 1000 v2Where to Buy: $799 $429 at Amazon $799 $449 at Jackery

The OnePlus 15 no longer has a Hasselblad logo on its camera. OnePlus has revealed a few details about its next flagship phone at a Qualcomm event in China: it’ll be called the OnePlus 15, and it will come with Qualcomm’s freshly announced Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset and a 165Hz refresh rate display.You didn’t blink and miss the OnePlus 14, if you’re wondering about that. The OnePlus 13 will be succeeded by the OnePlus 15, likely to avoid including a “4” in the product name — bad luck in Chinese culture. It’ll pair nicely with the 8 Elite Gen 5 name, which follows the Snapdragon 8 Elite. It all makes sense somehow.The company showed off a black version of the OnePlus 15 on stage at Qualcomm’s second Snapdragon Summit in China, revealing that it looks less like the 13 and more like the 13T, also known as the 13S in India. It shares that phone’s rounded square camera island, and is likely to similarly drop the alert slider in favor of a customizable shortcut button.Aside from the chipset, refresh rate, and name, we also know that the OnePlus 15 will be the company’s first flagship for a few years without Hasselblad-branded camera processing. CEO Pete Lau recently announced that the two brands would be ending their five-year partnership, though confusingly, parent company Oppo will keep working with Hasselblad. But OnePlus is striking out on its own with a new image processing technology it calls the DetailMax Engine. I dunno, names are hard, I guess.

As AI music generators like Suno and Udio make it easy to churn out passable music, streamers like Spotify are getting flooded with AI-generated content, leaving audiences and artists alike to wonder what is “real” music anymore. On Thursday, Spotify announced new policies that attempt to tamp down on three problems the platform has with AI: slop, impersonation, and disclosing whether AI was used to create the music. The goal of the company’s efforts is to “protect authentic artists from spam and impersonation and deception” and make sure listeners don’t feel “duped,” Spotify’s global head of music product, Charlie Hellman, told reporters at a press briefing about the announcement. At the same time, he said that Spotify wants to let artists use AI if they want. Spotify is working with the music standards-setting organization DDEX to develop a new metadata standard for disclosing the use of AI in any part of song creation. This includes using AI to create the sounds that end up in the track, like vocals and instruments, as well using AI as an assistant during mixing and mastering the track itself, among other steps, Sam Duboff, head of marketing and policy, said to reporters.  Fifteen record labels and music distributors have committed to adopting the AI disclosures, Duboff said. There is no specific timeline for when the standard will be released, Duboff said, adding that labels and distributors will need to update their process of delivering the credit information to Spotify. The platform also upped its response to impersonation, which it defines as including another artist’s voice — real or faked — without their permission, and which covers “unauthorized AI voice clones, deepfakes, and any other form of vocal replicas or impersonation,” Duboff said.  Duboff also said that Spotify is also rolling out over the next few “weeks or a few months” a music spam filter that identifies uploaders who try to game the system. He mentioned several tactics commonly used by spammers, like uploading tracks just over 30 seconds long in order to “try to rack up royalty-bearing streams,” or uploading the same tracks many times with slightly different metadata. In the last 12 months, Spotify says that it removed 75 million spam tracks. The company also addressed rumors of AI-generated songs getting added to its playlists in order to avoid paying artists. Duboff called the rumors “categorically and absolutely false,” adding that Spotify does not create any music “with AI or without it,” adding that “100% of it is created, owned, uploaded by licensed third parties.” He did not address whether AI music is being added to Spotify’s editorially curated playlists during the briefing. Later, Duboff provided the following comment to The Verge on the matter: “Our editors are focused on playlisting music that they think will resonate with audiences. And on tracks that appear to be primarily prompt generated, we’re seeing a very low level of engagement. But there is no truth to the conspiracy theories that we’re adding AI music to playlists or promoting AI music in any way for any financial benefit – all of the music on Spotify is licensed by third parties, we don’t create or own any of it, and we pay out royalties to third parties on all of it.”

After delaying the inevitable for as long as I could, I finally bought an OLED monitor this month. The Alienware AW3423DWF QD-OLED monitor was available at a great price, so I pulled the trigger to experience what an ultrawide OLED display feels like. While games and videos looked spectacular due to the sheer quality of the QD-OLED panel, not everything was perfect. Text rendering was suddenly weird, HDR wasn't functioning like it was supposed to, and I still hadn't completed the OLED burn-in prevention checklist. Here's what I did next.

Avenir Telecom is making a line of new Energizer-branded laptops aimed at marathon battery life. There are three productivity-focused models: the Energizer EnergyBook Pro 15, EnergyBook Pro XL 18, and flagship Energizer EnergyBook Pro Ultra. The Pro Ultra sports a giant 18-inch display with a meager 1920 x 1200 resolution and an absolutely massive 192Wh battery.It’s listed as including an AMD Ryzen 5 processor, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and 512GB NVMe SSD. Ports include USB-C, USB 3.0, HDMI, SD card reader, and a headphone jack. There isn’t much more info at this time, except a price of €449 ($523). That’s likely a starting price for one of the smaller models. We’ve reached out to Avenir Telecom for more details.But let’s get back to that big 192Wh battery, claiming to get up to 28 hours of “intensive office use” or seven days of standby time. That ain’t gonna fly. Literally.The FAA does not allow passengers to take a lithium battery greater than 160Wh on a plane, and even one above 100Wh requires air carrier approval. It’s why most big laptops top out at 100Wh. The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority has some exceptions for large batteries meant for wheelchairs and mobility aids, but they’re supposed to be outside the device. Perhaps the Energizer is strictly a road trip laptop?

Twitch is launching a feature this week I’ve wanted for a very long time: the ability to scrub back on a livestream right from a streamer’s main channel page. You can already look back at previous parts of livestreams as they’re going on by clicking through to the Videos section of a streamer’s profile, but it seems like this change will be a much easier way to rewind and see what you missed.Rewinding will be available first on the web, and initially only for Twitch Turbo subscribers or for channels that you subscribe to individually. Twitch is doing this more limited launch to start because the company needs to make sure that the feature doesn’t become a way to get around ads, CEO Dan Clancy says in a livestream. Twitch plans to release the feature to everyone at some point in the future and is also working on bringing it to mobile.

Kimmel’s return on Tuesday was met with a standing ovation from the live audience. | Image: Jimmy Kimmel Live! The FCC’s efforts to shut down Jimmy Kimmel’s platform have seemingly blown up in its face, with the return of Kimmel’s talk show breaking viewership records on YouTube. Tuesday’s episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! contained Kimmel’s most-watched monologue ever on the video platform, a 28-minute segment addressing the censorship which has reached over 19 million views at the time of writing.The increased viewership could be explained by people who are unable to watch the show on network television flocking to YouTube instead, as Nexstar and Sinclair continue to block it from being broadcast on roughly one-quarter of ABC stations. Nielsen figures reported by The New York Times that don’t include streaming viewership also show that Tuesday’s episode averaged 6.2 million viewers — nearly four times higher than his usual audience. These figures are preliminary and expected to grow in the coming days.Poetically, it seems the party proclaiming to be the public defenders of “free speech” has unintentionally amplified Kimmel’s platform, even as 20 percent of ABC affiliates have bent the knee and boycotted the show.