Category: 4. Technology

eBay Marketplace has kicked off its own eBay 4th of July Sale with a limited time 20% off coupon code “JULYFINDS” that works on hundreds of products across tech, home, apparel, and more. eBay is one of the best places to score great deals on both new and used products and even outpaces the Amazon Memorial Day sale on tons of items. Just because you’re leery of buying from a private seller doesn’t mean you should shy away from this marketplace. Most of the major retailers that you’ve heard of – including Dyson, Bose, Roborock, and Ecoflow – as well as authorized resellers have their own seller accounts and offer discounts that you can’t find elsewhere else.

Bose 4th of July Deals on eBay

The best Bose headphones and soundbars offer exceptional sound quality through a range of in-ear and over-ear headphones as well as best-in-class active noise cancellation. Paying extra attention to aesthetics, comfort, build, and audio, Bose is the go-to headphone brand if you want immersive sound that will block out external distractions. The official Bose eBay Store carries certified refurbished products with the same 1 year warranty as buying new as well as an additional 2 year AllState warranty that runs concurrently.

Roborock 4th of July Deals on eBay

Roborock is one of the largest robot vacuum brands in the world. Its products offer more features than Roomba at a more attractive price point. That doesn’t mean they are lower quality. I’ve owned both Roborock and Roomba models and my current Roborock has lasted longer, performed better, and costs less to maintain than any of the Roombas I’ve owned in the past. The Roborock eBay Store carries certified refurbished units of their entire lineup of robot vacuums and mops, They carry a 6 month warranty, which is less than the 12-month warranty for new units. Fortunately, eBay is also offering its 2 year Allstate warranty that runs concurrently.

Dyson 4th of July Deals on eBay

Dyson is one of the most well known household brands around, and its name is synonymous with quality, but usually that quality comes at a premium price. Fortunately, Dyson has its very own Dyson eBay store with huge markdowns on their certified refurbished products. Dyson offers a 6 month warranty on refub vacuum cleaners and fans and a 12 month warranty on their refurb beauty products and eBay also includes a 2 year AllState warranty that runs concurrently.

Ecoflow 4th of July Deals on eBay

Ecoflow is one of the largest and most well-known manufacturers of portable power stations. Their products are solidly built with a lot of practical features at an affordable price point. Product support after the purchase is generally pretty good, and firmware and software updates are consistently rolled out. Ecoflow sells certified refurbished power stations through its official Ecoflow eBay store. It offers the same warranty on refurbs as brand new products, which is anywhere from 24 months to 60 months depending on the model you choose.

4th of July Gaming Monitor Deals on eBay

Take advantage of some big discounts on some of the best gaming monitors, from high-end monitors with OLED panels, up to 480Hz refresh rate, and 4K resolution to perfectly capable 1080p 144Hz gaming monitors that fall well within the tightest of budgets

4th of July Samsung The Frame TV Deals on eBay

Samsung’s “The Frame” TV itself apart from all other TVs with its seamless aesthetics. It features an Art Mode that showcases your choice of fine art so that your TV looks more like a frame piece of artwork than a big blank TV screen. You can display art purchased from the Samsung Art Store or your own personal collection of NFTs, personal photos, and artwork collection. The built-in motion sensor allows the TV to display art only when someone is nearby. Several 2024 and 2025 models are on sale with the 20% off Memorial Day coupon. Buydig is an authorized Samsung reseller.

Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn’t hunting for deals for other people at work, he’s hunting for deals for himself during his free time.

When journalists Lily Canter, a contributor to the South China Morning Post, and Emma Wilkinson started running together in ultra races – ones that take six hours or more to finish – in 2020, they noticed that there were few women. Those women that did take part, though, did remarkably well.

When the pair started to look into it, they realised this was true for other endurance sports, too.

In their new book Ultra Women: The Trailblazers Defying Sexism in Sport, they delve into the science of sporting performance to explore the differences between the sexes.

They ask questions like: could fat stores and muscle type give women an edge over men in ultra distances? And what roles do pace, preparation and motherhood play?

Speaking to elite athletes and scientists, they reveal the largely unknown past of female endurance.

The book introduces poverty-stricken Greek mother Stamata Revithi, who sneaked into the 1896 Athens Olympics marathon; 1980s swimming pioneer Lynne Cox – who crossed the world’s coldest oceans in just a swimsuit; and Jasmin Paris, a British veterinarian who ran almost non-stop to win a 268-mile (431km) mountain race, the 2019 Montane Winter Spine Race along the Pennine Way in the UK – while breastfeeding.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 is back at Moscone West in San Francisco this October 27–29, bringing together 10,000+ startup and VC leaders to dig into what’s next in tech. And when it comes to artificial intelligence, the conversations aren’t just technical — they’re creative, cinematic, and boundary-pushing. That’s why Nikola Todorovic is headed to the AI Stage.

A visual effects veteran turned AI entrepreneur, Todorovic is the co-founder of Wonder Dynamics, now an Autodesk company. Alongside actor and producer Tye Sheridan, he helped launch Autodesk Flow Studio (formerly Wonder Studio), a groundbreaking AI platform that allows creators to seamlessly integrate 3D characters into live-action scenes. The platform uses cloud-based tools to automate complex processes like lighting, animation, and composition, giving filmmakers a radically faster and more accessible path to high-end visual effects.

Todorovic’s journey to this moment wasn’t traditional, but that’s exactly the point. As an award-winning filmmaker and VFX supervisor, he spent years working at the intersection of storytelling and technology. That experience led to Wonder Dynamics, where the mission has always been to empower artists, not replace them. The company’s acquisition by Autodesk in 2024 marked a major validation of that vision, and now Todorovic is helping shape the future of creative AI inside one of the industry’s biggest ecosystems.

At Disrupt, he’ll join other AI industry leaders for a wide-ranging panel on what’s coming next — from generative tools to ethical design to the future of creator workflows. Stay tuned to the fast-growing Disrupt agenda page for the latest updates. Expect a conversation in Todorovic’s session that spans beyond buzzwords and dives into the real-world impact of AI in media and beyond.

Join 10,000 other tech and VC leaders on the AI Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 to hear from Nikola Todorovic and other top voices driving the future of artificial intelligence. It’s all happening October 27–29 at Moscone West in San Francisco. Lock in your spot today and save up to $675 before prices go up.

When you’re not using your iPhone, the Lock Screen is what you see most often. Liquid Glass is everywhere in iOS 26, and it starts right when you pick up your device. The Lock Screen got a Liquid Glass overhaul, plus a few other new features.

Here’s what you’ll see first when you upgrade to ‌iOS 26‌.

Liquid Glass

The two customizable control buttons on the Lock Screen are larger and have a floating, glass-like appearance like the other Liquid Glass interface options in ‌iOS 26‌. The clock has a frosted glass appearance with the new “Glass” option, using lighting effects to make it look like glass in the real world.

Glass can be selected for any of the clock fonts, and you can choose a color to tint the glass. Apple has multiple preset options, or you can select your own.

When you tilt your ‌iPhone‌, light reflects and glints with the movement, for a realistic glass effect.

Notifications that are on your Lock Screen have a Liquid Glass aesthetic with a frosted glass look that leaves your wallpaper visible behind them.

Clock

In addition to having a Liquid Glass aesthetic, the clock can be resized to better match your ‌iPhone‌’s wallpaper using a new adaptive feature. When you’re customizing your Lock Screen, you can grab the corner of the time and drag it down to expand it.

Adjusting the size of the time only works with the first font option, and only with the standard Arabic, Western numbering.

With photo wallpapers, the time can automatically expand to fill in missing space, and it can change based on the image if you have Photo Shuffle set. The subject in photo wallpapers is meant to always be visible, and can overlap the time in unique ways in ‌iOS 26‌.

There is a Photos watch face for the Apple Watch that also supports time that changes size and position based on the wallpaper.

Wallpaper

There is a new default wallpaper that was designed for ‌iOS 26‌. It’s multiple shades of blue, with the same floating glass aesthetic that the rest of ‌iOS 26‌ features. The wallpaper can subtly shift with ‌iPhone‌ movement.

It’s a small detail, but the icons for selecting different wallpaper categories have been updated to better match the Liquid Glass design.

Spatial Scenes

Aside from the Liquid Glass time, Spatial Scenes are the biggest change to the Lock Screen. 2D photos that you set as wallpaper can be turned into 3D spatial images that separate the subject of the photo from the background using depth information.

When you move your ‌iPhone‌, Spatial Scenes shift and move along with it, making the images feel alive. Spatial Scenes is a feature in the ‌Photos‌ app too, and it can be added to any image that you’ve taken with your ‌iPhone‌, including older ones.

Tap on the small icon with a mountain and a sun to activate the Spatial Scenes setting when choosing a photo wallpaper.

Lock Screen widgets can be placed on the top of the display under the time, or at the bottom of the display. In earlier versions of iOS, you could only put widgets at the top of the screen. With the adaptive clock and new wallpaper options, widgets can also shift down automatically to ensure the subject of an image is always visible.

Apple Music

Apple added a new Lock Screen widget for Apple Music search, but there are no other new Lock Screen widget options. What is new, though, is a new full screen Now Playing interface that shows album art. Artwork expands and animates right on the Lock Screen.

Read More

We have a dedicated iOS 26 roundup that goes into detail on all of the new features that are available in the update.

If you’re running the Engineering-Special (ES) builds of Cisco Unified Communications Manager or its Session Management Edition, you need to apply Cisco’s urgent patch after someone at Switchzilla made a big mistake.

Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CM) consolidates IP telephony, high-definition video, unified messaging, instant messaging, and Presence status indicators. Its Session Management Edition centralizes dial-plan and trunk aggregation across multi-site deployments.

However, the ES builds of both packages have hardcoded credentials baked in, and they cannot be changed or deleted, meaning an unauthenticated, remote attacker can quickly get themselves full root control of a system if they know where to look. There’s no workaround, and the only solution is to upgrade to the newest code for Unified CM, Cisco said.

There is an ostensible purpose behind the mistake, dubbed CVE-2025-20309, with a critical rating of 10.0. The credentials have been left in there to make development work easier, Cisco said in its advisory. However, if the attacker identifies the development account, then they can use these credentials and gain root – and then it’s game over for users.

The affected packages are Cisco Unified CM and Unified CM SME Engineering Special releases 15.0.1.13010-1 through 15.0.1.13017-1, and admins can find the patch needed to fix the issue here. If you want the ES patch, however, you need to go to your Cisco Technical Assistance Center account to get the fix.

To check if some malicious actor has already had a go at this, admins need to look for a log entry in

/var/log/active/syslog/secure

by using the

cucm1# file get activelog syslog/secure

command in the command line. Admins can then check if someone has been inside the system with sshd daemon and a successful SSH login as root – if so, that’s a parade of red flags.

Security staff at Cisco have got to be feeling nervous for their jobs at the moment – this is the second CVSS 10 flaw in a week and the third critical. On June 26, Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and Cisco ISE Passive Identity Connector were fixed, one an (im)perfect 10 and the other just a CVSS 9.8. Admins, and Cisco itself, better get busy locking down their systems. ®

It took a minute, but Apple has at last activated its official Threads account. And thanks to its massive Instagram presence, it instantly picked up nearly 5 million followers.

Today’s move comes well after several Apple-related accounts joined Instagram’s alternative to X right out of the gate. Apple Music, Apple News, Apple Books, Shazam, and Beats by Dre were among the first to show up shortly after Threads launched in mid-2023, but the main @apple account remained absent until now.

Instant 4.8 million following

Despite having yet to post anything, Apple’s Threads debut already carries quite a bit of weight. The @apple account had over 4.8 million followers the moment it went live, thanks to Threads’ auto-follow feature for Instagram accounts. Given @apple’s massive Instagram presence, currently at over 34 million followers, the immediate boost isn’t surprising.

What makes the move notable is obviously the broader context. Apple has long maintained a strong presence on X, to the point of facing criticism in recent years.

Over there, it has nearly 10 million followers and continues to use the platform to promote events, ads, and product launches. The company has been quiet on alternative platforms like Mastodon, where only Phil Schiller, Apple Fellow and longtime marketing chief, maintains a personal presence.

9to5Mac’s take

Apple’s arrival on Threads may not signal a full-on platform shift just yet, but it does show the company is at least willing to play in the broader social network field. Whether that translates into actual posts, or even full-on marketing campaigns, remains to be seen.

Many companies have rushed to join new platforms, only to let them sit dormant after the initial wave of hype. Just today, The Telegraph published a story called “The Left is abandoning its online safe space“, to which social media consultant Matt Navarra noted:

Still, with Meta continuing to push Threads as a more stable alternative to X and, at the same time, signals it’s finally ready to move beyond being Instagram’s sidekick, Apple’s quiet entrance is worth noting.

Accessory deals on Amazon

• Anker 25,000mAh power bank, 100W, USB-C: $119.99
• Anker Foldable 3-in-1 wireless charger, 15W, Qi2: 20% off, at $71.99
• AirPods Pro 2: 20% off, at $199.00
• AirTag, 4 Pack: 24% off, at $74.99
• HomeKit Smart Plug, 15A, 4 Pack: 20% off, at $34.99

It’s nearly the end of the road for Warcraft Rumble. Blizzard has announced that it will no longer be developing new content for the free-to-play mobile strategy game, and instead focus on “regular, systemic in-game events and bug fixes.” The change comes as the rest of Microsoft’s business is in upheaval: The company is laying off as many as 9,000 employees across its global workforce.

Blizzard’s statement doesn’t get into the details of what motivated the decision, but is clear that Warcraft Rumble hasn’t been living up to expectations. The game “struggled to find its footing” relative to Blizzard’s ambitions, prompting the studio to explore different options to improve it over the last few years. “Some of that work showed signs of progress, but ultimately wasn’t enough to put the game on a path to sustainability,” Blizzard writes.

Warcraft Rumble was announced in 2019 as Warcraft Arclight Rumble. Much like Hearthstone, the game was a high-profile attempt to translate a popular Blizzard franchise into something that works on smartphones and tablets. Warcraft Rumble plays like a more flexible version of Clash Royale, where miniaturized armies face off in PVP or singe-player challenges, and the biggest strategic choices are when and where characters are placed.

Aftermath reports that winding down Warcraft Rumble is a direct result of the wider Microsoft layoffs effecting Blizzard. While some of the team who created new content for Rumble will be given new roles at the studio, others will be let go, according to a staff email sent by Blizzard president Johanna Fairies that Aftermath viewed. Blizzard’s public statement doesn’t acknowledge these layoffs beyond a mention that the studio is “focused on supporting [its] teammates,” which is telling in context.

While Warcraft Rumble will live on for now in a diminished state, some future Xbox games have been outright cancelled as a result of Microsoft’s restructuring, including Everwild and Perfect Dark. The bigger damage is the loss of talent. Greg Mayles, the lead designer on Donkey Kong Country and creative director of Sea of Thieves, is leaving Rare, according to Video Game Chronicle. ZeniMax Online Studios shared on X that director Matt Firor is also making an exit following the cancellation of the studio’s next MMO.

Microsoft’s layoff of roughly 9,000 employees is continuing to have downstream effects at the company’s subsidiaries. Aftermath reports that as many as 100 developers at Blizzard have been impacted, and as a result the studio is winding down development on its mobile tower defense game Warcraft Rumble.

In an announcement, Blizzard wrote that while the game will not be abandoned entirely, the company will cease development on any new content. “Moving forward, we’ll continue supporting Rumble with updates focused on regular, systemic in-game events and bug fixes, but no new content. ”

Blizzard continued, saying Rumble, “struggled to find its footing relative to our ambition for its long-term success.” And while its developers worked to respond to player feedback that, “ultimately wasn’t enough to put the game on a path to sustainability.”

Warcraft Rumble was the first mobile focused game in the Warcraft Universe. It launched in 2023 after nine years in development and was originally one of two mobile games Blizzard was working on, the other being Blizzard’s take on Pokémon Go. That game was never officially announced by Blizzard and cancelled sometime in 2022. Warcraft Rumble joins a handful of other Blizzard games in development stasis along with Starcraft II and Heroes of the Storm.