Things are looking prettier. | Image: MicrosoftMicrosoft is sharing several new Xbox gaming updates for March that include a new look for Game Bar on PC, a new Cloud Gaming feature, and fresh benefits for playing some free-to-play games through Game Pass.Game Bar on PC, which gives you the ability to quickly launch games, control audio mixes, and monitor game performance, now comes with a cleaner UI. The Home Bar and widgets, including Capture, Performance, Resource, and the Widget Store, now look more lightweight with fewer lines and colors, giving them less of an Adobe Photoshop tools vibe. Microsoft says this is only the beginning of the visual changes rolling out this week.The update happened the same week Discord changed its UI with improved spacing between sections in the app and support for a full dark mode overlay. Both Game Bar and Discord let you view widgets while playing a game.As for the Xbox Cloud Gaming update, there’s now a way to shift between games without having to jump out and return to the Home page. For now, it only works with several Assassin’s Creed titles, but Xbox promises it will work with other cloud games soon. Also, Cloud Gaming is expanding more titles that support Stream Your Own Game.Finally, Xbox is expanding in-game benefits to include more free-to-play titles such as Heroes in the Storm and, in April, Call of Duty: Warzone. It lets you acquire cosmetics, characters, in-game currency, and more in games like Overwatch 2 and Valorant.

There's a lot you can do when it comes to smart home automation, particularly with a Raspberry Pi. However, if you're like many home automation enthusiasts, you probably already have a few of those lying around, and you're looking for your next project that's actually new to you. That's where an ESP8266 comes in. It's basically a Wi-Fi microcontroller that you can hook up to more or less anything, and there are a few reasons why you should consider it as the centerpiece of your next home automation project.

Gaming history is filled with bizarre experiments — whether weird, experimental games that end up defining genres or peculiar console concepts that either didn’t see the light of day or evolved into something else. Over the years, manufacturers have constantly pushed the envelope, throwing everything at the wall to see what would stick.

During a briefing on Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced plans to put a 25 percent tariff on cars and trucks imported into the US. Trump said the taxes would go into effect on April 2nd — the same time he’s expected to introduce a round of reciprocal tariffs, according to The New York Times.The tariffs, which Trump called “permanent,” would also apply to American companies that manufacture vehicles in other countries and then bring them into the US. Trump said the tariffs would result in “tremendous growth in the auto industry,” though they’re expected to drive up prices for consumers.As pointed out by Axios, a 2024 analysis from the US International Trade Commission found that a 25 percent tariff on cars shipped to the US could reduce imports by 74 percent, while the average vehicle price could increase by five percent. Trump’s tariffs on China, Canada, and Mexico have already gone into effect, affecting a wide range of products like clothing, food, lithium batteries, and more.The April 2nd tariffs are expected to “be customized for each US trading partner,” according to Bloomberg. Trump has said the tariffs might be more “lenient than reciprocal” as concerns grow over their impact on prices.

Being a PC user comes with a certain level of anxiety. "Am I settling for an underpowered GPU?", "Should I spend the premium on that fancy motherboard?", and "Is it finally time to buy an 8-core CPU for gaming?" are some common questions you might have asked yourself at some point. While the first two questions don't have one right answer, the last one does — you still don't need 8 cores for gaming.

Nothing’s Ear (a) stand out with their bright yellow colorway, but they’re also available in black and white.From the AirPods Pro to the Shokz OpenRun Pro 2, Amazon’s Big Spring Sale has ushered in a number of surprisingly good deals on wireless earbuds. Neither of the aforementioned picks is probably the best option if you’re working with a tight budget, though, fortunately, there are cheaper alternatives. Right now for example, the already inexpensive Nothing Ear (a) are on sale at Amazon starting at $77.50 (around $23 off), which is a new all-time low.Nothing’s entry-level earbuds deliver solid value for the price, which is why they remain our favorite pair of earbuds for under $100. They combine decent active noise cancellation with enjoyable sound, which you can further fine-tune using Nothing’s mobile app. The water-resistant buds also come with three sizes of swappable silicone tips, which allow for a more secure and comfortable fit (should you find the right size).What’s more, the ANC earbuds offer multipoint Bluetooth pairing, Fast Pair (for Android), and a low-latency gaming mode — the latter of which is relatively rare at this price point. They also sport ChatGPT integration, so if you own a Nothing phone, you can ask the AI tool questions on the go using your voice. Or, you know, not.Read our Nothing Ear (a) hands-on impressions.

Microsoft Word offers powerful collaboration tools for editing and organizing documents. If you’re working with a team, these features help you ensure smooth communication, precise changes, and effective document management. Here are some of the essential collaboration options in Word to organize your editing process.

Pivot tables are the unsung heroes of Excel. They transform raw data into actionable insights with just a few clicks. But are you truly harnessing their full potential? Many Excel users only scratch the surface of what these powerful tools can do. Following the tips below, you will learn to leverage advanced filtering, calculated fields, dynamic grouping, interactive dashboards, and insightful formatting to transform your data analysis workflows.

It's easy to get caught up using cloud storage services for keeping your data online. Not only is it extremely convenient, but it's also relatively affordable as well. Of course, the one downside is that you have to perpetually pay for the service in order to keep your data secure, and there's always the chance that you'll need to spend more each month as your data needs grow.

Members of a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee met Wednesday to discuss what’s typically a highly bipartisan topic: protecting kids online. But in a far-from-typical political climate, the mood was tense and confrontational.Republican lawmakers are eager to revive a handful of bipartisan bills like the Kids Online Safety Act, which House Republican leadership blocked at the finish line last year. Many Democrats on the panel support these proposals, calling them an urgent response to a social crisis. But they’re raising a new question: as the Trump administration ignores congressional statutes and Supreme Court precedent to gut the federal government, will there be anyone left to enforce these laws?Last week, President Donald Trump abruptly — and under current law, illegally — attempted to fire the two sitting Democratic commissioners on the Federal Trade Commission, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya. The move left two Republicans on the commission, with one more expected to soon be confirmed. Like many agencies across the federal government, the FTC has seen recent staff cuts, though in far smaller numbers than many of the most prominent targets of the right. Even in the minority party, Slaughter and Bedoya warn that their removals will thwart transparency and accountability for any decisions made in their absence, and they’re planning to sue to return to their work. Without dissenting voices in the room, Slaughter and Bedoya have warned, there’s no one to push back and illustrate what alternative paths the FTC could have taken, or provide important context to the agency’s decisions. “I’m going to be even more worried about actions taken to withdraw settlements, modify settlements, [and] votes taken to not sue a company,” Bedoya told reporters outside the hearing room. “If there’s an action brought up to the commission, and the commissioners say no, that never becomes public.”“We had in place what was needed to protect our children,” ranking member of the commerce subcommittee Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) said in her opening remarks. “And that’s why I am absolutely furious right now that there has been this effort to fire the two members of the FTC.” The Democratic minority invited Slaughter to testify alongside witnesses invited by Republicans, including representatives from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), and Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) — the latter, as one Democrat pointed out, contributed to Project 2025. Bedoya, though not formally invited, sat behind his colleague in the hearing room. “This hearing is about children. It’s not about what’s going on here in Washington, DC”Republicans painted the FTC firings as a distraction. “This hearing is about children. It’s not about what’s going on here in Washington, DC,” said full committee Chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY). When reporters outside the hearing room asked about the attempted firings, subcommittee Chair Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) said he’s “focused on the hearing today.” Rep. Erin Houchin (R-IN) apologized to parents in the audience “for the things that are being taken away from this conversation not being focused on protecting children, but instead on someone’s job at the FTC.” Houchin complained that a reporter had stopped her in the hallway to ask about the agency. “Shame on the media if the only thing they cover from today is the FTC, because children are dying,” she said.But Democrats argued that laws are useless without effective enforcement, which they believe is under threat. The FTC would be primarily in charge of enforcing two major bills that passed through the House Energy and Commerce Committee last year: KOSA and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) “We can talk about the importance of passing new legislation here in this hearing,” said KOSA co-sponsor Kathy Castor (D-FL). But she questioned how they could regain trust in Republicans “ if you take the cops off the beat, you give the Big Tech CEOs a front row seat to the inauguration, [and] you block the KOSA and COPPA that was hammered out over years of work in this committee?”The questions about rule of law and who will enforce it extend far beyond the FTC. In empowering Elon Musk’s pet project, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Trump has deputized the richest man in the world to slash the federal workforce, and seek to shut down agencies created by congressional statute. Trump has asserted power over what are supposed to be independent agencies, including the FTC, and loyalists he’s appointed to run them have so far welcomed him to do so. Many experts say we already are or soon could be in a constitutional crisis, as Trump appears willing to flout everything from a law seeking to ban TikTok to court orders.Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), ranking member of the full committee, even pointed out that Republicans were the reason KOSA didn’t pass last year. “Let’s not kid the people here to suggest that these bills are going to become law,” he said. “The bottom line is we passed KOSA and we passed COPPA out of this committee last session and the House Republican leadership refused to bring these laws to the floor. And you know why? They’re in the pocket of Big Tech. And Big Tech does not care at all about kids.”KOSA and COPPA 2.0 both garnered criticism that, as written, they could infringe on speech and privacy. But this criticism could extend to virtually any child safety law.Slaughter echoed Democrats’ sentiment to reporters after the hearing. “You can’t meaningfully address kids online safety in bills that would empower the FTC to enforce kids online safety, if you don’t talk about whether the FTC is a functional body consistent with the design of Congress,” she said.

Cooling is a major consideration when building your gaming rig because AAA titles push your CPU to the maximum and generate tremendous heat. That's why investing in the best CPU cooler isessential for dissipating heat and ensuring you don't experience CPU throttling or excessive wear on components.

I don't know about you, but if I were to spend $69 billion on something, I'd want to get the most out of that purchase. Especially if I wanted to have any hope of making that money back in some way.