Whether you’re just getting started with your first DIY project or you’re a veteran DIY’er who’s been tackling ambitious projects for years, you’re probably familiar with Harbor Freight. Found in most states across the U.S., Harbor Freight is a DIY dream place to find discount tools, equipment, and auto supplies. There’s even a page on the retailer’s website dedicated to DIY project ideas if you’re running low on inspiration.
Although Harbor Freight has a ton of budget-friendly gems, there are a few pieces of coal in the mix as well. It’s important to read through multiple user reviews, find any applicable coupons before you check out, and generally avoid making the most common mistakes people make when shopping at Harbor Freight.
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If you don’t have the time or energy to thoroughly research tools, supplies, and other products before you spend your hard-earned cash on them, we’ve got you covered. We’ve rounded up 15 Harbor Freight products every DIYer will wish they’d had sooner, each with a high average rating and an impressive recommendation score from Harbor Freight customers.
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Pittsburgh 15-Inch Adjustable Wrench
Adjustable wrenches from well-known brands can be expensive, and a regular set of wrenches in various sizes takes up a lot of space. Enter: the Pittsburgh 15-Inch Adjustable Wrench at Harbor Freight. This adjustable wrench is budget-friendly, space-conscious, and of great quality, everything a DIY’er could hope for.
It’s constructed with durable carbon steel and a triple chrome plating that resists corrosion and looks nice. With this adjustable wrench’s comfortable handle and 15 inches in total length, you’ll have plenty of leverage for loosening fasteners during your next DIY project. Customers say it’s easy to adjust, though some people note it may need frequent adjustment; it is solidly built and works just as well as higher-priced options from more recognizable name brands. At the time of writing, 97% of customers, who have left nearly 750 reviews in total, would recommend Pittsburgh’s 15-Inch Adjustable Wrench and have awarded it an average rating of 4.6 stars.
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Fasten-Pro Hammer Tacker
DIY’ers may overlook hammer tackers, but they can greatly speed up certain jobs around the home, like installing insulation, siding, house wrap, carpet padding, roof felt, and any other material you’ll cover in the end. A hammer tacker, which can also be referred to as a hammer stapler or a slap stapler, works similarly to a staple gun, but staple guns require squeezing the handle to trigger the spring inside, and hammer tackers only need to be whacked against the surface you want stapled.
Harbor Freight customers love the Fasten-Pro Hammer Tacker for its comfortable one-handed use, durable quality, and overall value. Some people have even said this affordable Fasten-Pro option outperforms more expensive hammer tackers from top industry brands. This all-steel hammer tacker currently has a 4.4-star average rating and an 89% customer recommendation rate, compiled from just over 500 total customer reviews.
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Pittsburgh 15-Inch Flat Pry Bar
One of the simplest, yet potentially most useful products for DIYers is a pry bar. The Pittsburgh 15-Inch Flat Pry Bar from Harbor Freight is incredibly cheap, but most customers rave about how sturdy and high-quality its construction is. It’s made of heavy-duty steel with a powder-coated finish to keep rust at bay, measures 15 inches in length to provide plenty of leverage, and both ends of the bar have nail slots, though the ends differ in shape to help with various prying jobs.
Whether you’re frequently demoing rooms and furniture, building a budget-friendly mechanic’s tool kit, or pulling nails out of old wood you’d like to repurpose, this pry bar is an excellent pick. Happy customers rave about this pry bar’s overall value, excellent leverage, and well-placed nail slots. At the time of writing, Pittsburgh’s Flat Pry Bar has gathered almost 2,800 total reviews, an average rating of 4.7 stars, and a near-perfect customer recommendation rate of 98%.
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Doyle Professional Retractable Utility Knife
Even for non-crafty homeowners and renters, a simple utility knife would likely get a ton of use, through opening boxes and breaking large cardboard pieces down to more manageable sizes for recycling. If you dabble in DIY, it’s a good idea to upgrade from a simple utility knife to a more feature-rich option like the Doyle Professional Retractable Utility Knife.
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The knife body is constructed from zinc alloy with nickel plating to extend its life, and it features built-in blade storage for five replacement blades, which are included with your purchase. After you’ve used the utility knife’s blade to cut or score the material you’re working with, all you have to do to put the blade away is press a single button to trigger the retraction mechanism and lock the blade in this ‘closed’ position.
Many utility knives will have a feature on the blade for cutting strings or wires, but with this Doyle Utility Knife, you don’t even have to get the blade out; there’s an integrated string and wire cutter that you can use while the blade is locked away. With all these features for less than $10, it’s no surprise this utility knife boasts an average 4.8-star rating and a 96% customer recommendation rate with nearly 1,100 total reviews.
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Avanti 2.5-Inch Angled Paint Brush
For anyone with a ton of painting in store during their next DIY project, consider treating yourself to an Avanti 2.5-Inch Angled Paint Brush from Harbor Freight. Its tapered bristles are made with a polyester/nylon blend and are epoxy-bonded, which simply means they can hold more paint and you don’t need to go back to your paint tray as often. As its name implies, the brush is angled, making it the perfect option for precise cutting-in work, whether you’re using it with latex or oil-based paints, stains, and sheens.
For durability and a secure grip, this Avanti brush has a nailed, high-strength stainless steel ferrule and a sanded hardwood handle. With around 1,000 customer reviews currently, this angled paint brush has a 4.7-star average rating and a 98% customer recommendation rate. If you have even more paint-forward DIY projects lined up, Harbor Freight has quite a few useful paint-spraying accessories in addition to Avanti brushes.
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Harbor Freight Tools Fluorescent Magnifying Lamp
If your DIY projects tend to involve a lot of small pieces or intricate work that requires a steady hand and a watchful eye, you might fall in love with this Harbor Freight Tools Fluorescent Magnifying Lamp. It’s equipped with a 22-watt, circular lamp surrounding a 1.75x magnifying lens with a five-inch diameter and a dust cover you can close when you’re not actively using the lens. With this magnifying lamp, using a precision toolkit to repair electronics or a router to create delicate details in wood won’t feel nearly as tedious as it used to.
You can clamp this lamp to the side of a table or workbench and easily move it where you need it, thanks to its flexible swing-arm design. Most customers find the lamp’s brightness and magnification levels excellent, and it’s easy to assemble and set up. With nearly 1,200 reviews at the time of writing, the Fluorescent Magnifying Lamp has an average rating of 4.6 stars and a 96% recommendation rate.
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Pittsburgh 4-in-1 Aluminum Rafter Angle Square
One of the most essential tools for welders and woodworkers is an angle square, and the Pittsburgh 4-in-1 Aluminum Angle Square is one of the most affordable options you’ll find that doesn’t sacrifice quality. In addition to working as an angle square, this nifty DIY tool also serves as a ruler, protractor, rafter square, and combination square. It has a solid base that lets the square stand in place while measuring depth adjustments, and the measurements are cast into the tool in both inches and centimeters to make them easier to see.
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Plenty of customer reviews rave about this angle square’s price (it’s only $3), how great the quality is despite that low price, and how lightweight and easily portable it is. This Harbor Freight product currently has around 2,850 reviews contributing to its impressive 4.7-star average rating and 97% customer recommendation rate.
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Hercules 9- by 11-Inch 100-Grit Sandpaper
One product DIYers never seem to have enough of is sandpaper. Whether you’re using it with a power sander or hand sanding, high-quality sandpaper is a must for a ton of at-home projects. It can be helpful to have a variety of sandpaper grits on hand, but this dry 100-Grit Hercules Sandpaper is quite versatile, as it works well on paint, wood, metal, plastic, and drywall. This pack comes with five 9 x 11-inch sandpaper sheets, each with a tear-resistant backing and an anti-clog coating designed to extend its life.
According to multiple customer reviews, these sandpaper sheets with ceramic alumina grain do indeed last much longer than regular sandpaper, at a lower price, too. At the time of writing, this pack of five sandpaper sheets has earned an impressive customer recommendation rate of 96% and an average rating of 4.7 stars, with just over 750 reviews.
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Quinn 14-in-1 Painters Tool
If your DIY projects typically involve painting, you’ll love having this Quinn 14-in-1 Painters Tool in your toolbox. It’s super cheap, and yet, it can do so much. With this single tool, you gain a paint can opener, a spreader, a convex and concave scraper, a crack opener, and a chisel. To remove hardware before painting, this tool can serve as a Phillips and flat-head screwdriver, a nail puller, a ¼-inch and ⅜-inch nut wrench, and a chisel. Then, there’s a convenient cutout that works as a roller cleaner, letting you quickly squeeze excess paint from a roller back into the can.
Most customers find this painter’s tool comfortable to hold, thanks to its nonslip, ergonomic grip, and its stainless steel construction is durable enough for most projects. At the time of writing, about 850 customers have left reviews for the Quinn Painters Tool, resulting in a 96% customer recommendation rate and a 4.8-star average rating.
This bar clamp features a carbon-steel bar with a powder-coated finish to prevent rust, a comfortable handle for a secure grip, and a quick-release lever to speed up the project. Most customers really enjoy the quick-release feature and find it incredibly handy, but some have said it isn’t easy to use or requires too much strength. That said, Pittsburgh’s Quick-Release Bar Clamp has maintained an impressive 98% customer recommendation rate and a 4.7-star average rating.
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Chicago Electric Variable-Speed Rotary Tool 31-Piece Kit
It can be difficult to find a budget-friendly rotary tool kit that’s also durable and powerful, but the Chicago Variable Speed Rotary Tool Kit proves itself as a worthy contender. Compared to some of Harbor Freight’s other highly rated tools for DIYers, this 31-piece kit’s average 4.2-star rating and 87% recommendation rate (with about 3,000 reviews) are simply good, not great, but at such an affordable price, we’re certainly not complaining.
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Recent customer reviews report that the tool delivers a lot of power, works smoothly, and fits easily into tight spaces. The kit comes with everything you’d need for DIY projects involving shaping, sanding, deburring, grinding, and polishing, as well as a blow-molded case to store everything. With variable-speed control from 8000 to 35,000 RPM, you can use this tool to remove rust and cut through metal, plastic, and wood.
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Pittsburgh 6-Inch Digital Caliper with SAE and Metric Fractional Readings
This 6-Inch Digital Caliper from Harbor Freight’s in-house brand Pittsburgh is constructed with a combination of durable stainless steel and ABS plastic and it can be used for inside, outside, step, and depth measurements up to six inches. Its digital LCD display can show you fractional and decimal readings of both SAE and Metric measurements and, according to its product listing, it will measure precisely to within 0.001 inch or 0.03 millimeter.
This digital caliper comes with a storage case that protects the tool when not in use and makes it easy to travel with between projects. It has a built-in auto shut-off feature to help preserve battery life. Some customers say the battery dies quickly, while others say they’re still using the included battery at purchase a year later. Ultimately, roughly 2,400 customers contributed to this digital caliper’s solid average 4.4-star rating, and 90% say they’d recommend it.
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Gordon 20-in-1 Multi-Tool
If you love taking on DIY projects, you need a good multi-tool on hand. The Gordon Multi-Tool at Harbor Freight is an excellent option with 20 different tools packed into compact dimensions of 4-by-0.9-by-1.5 inches. DIY’ers will most appreciate this multi-tool’s built-in pliers, needle-nose pliers, wire cutter, wire stripper, eight-inch ruler, bit driver, screwdriver, wood file, metal file, knife, saw, crimper, and scissors.
If you get in the habit of keeping the multi-tool on you at all times, you can also use it as a can opener, bottle opener, diamond-coated file, gut hook, serrated knife, or window breaker. With just over 550 reviews at the time of writing, Gordon’s Multi-Tool has earned itself a respectable 4.5-star average rating and a 90% customer recommendation rate. If you want to see what other options are out there, check out these multi-tools under $50 that are worth buying at Amazon.
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Hercules 16-Inch Tool Bag with 6 Pockets
The Hercules 16-Inch Tool Bag is one of the best tool bags you can pick up at Harbor Freight. It’s a beautifully bright shade of blue and has six pockets inside to keep all your tools, batteries, bit kits, and other DIY gear organized well. The bottom is padded to protect tools inside from damage, and the 16-inch-wide mouth opening is reinforced with steel to help it stay open while you load in or take out tools.
It comes with a convenient shoulder strap to leave your hands free, and on the outside, it’s made with tear-resistant fabric and heavy-duty stitching to help it last through tons of DIY projects. Just over 2,500 customers have left a review for this Hercules tool bag, and 99% would recommend it. The average rating for this medium-sized tool bag is 4.8 stars, and customers praise its overall durability, affordable price, and interior organization.
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Pittsburgh Pneumatic Roller Seat
Despite holding over 9,000 customer reviews, this Pittsburgh Pneumatic Roller Seat maintains an impressive average rating of 4.6 stars and a 96% customer recommendation rate. It’s made up of a thick cushion on top, 2.5-inch diameter nylon casters on the bottom, and a 360-degree swivel seat mechanism in between. Then, there’s a powder-coated finish to prevent rust, a lift range between 15.25 and 19.75 inches that can be adjusted with one hand, and a built-in tool tray right above the wheels so you can conveniently bring along the tools you need for the job at hand and not lose track of screws and other small pieces while you work.
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People love most how easy this rolling stool is to assemble, how smoothly it operates on solid ground, and how affordable it is for the value it provides. Older adults and those with physical disabilities particularly appreciate how comfortable this stool is and how it makes working for long periods much more manageable, unlike the Pittsburgh Automotive Mechanics Roller Seat, a tool you should think twice about buying from Harbor Freight
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Methodology
To find the 15 DIY products users would recommend at Harbor Freight, we started with our own collective experience here at SlashGear with DIY projects to identify potential tools that would come in handy for any DIYer. From there, we looked up specific products on Harbor Freight’s website and found in-house brands that were well-reviewed. Then, we found some items simply by perusing highly rated tools and other products at Harbor Freight.
For an item to be considered worth recommending, it needed to have at least 500 reviews and an average 4-star rating. That said, many of the items we picked have over 1,000 reviews, an average rating of 4.5 stars or higher, or both. Next to an item’s overall rating, there’s an average percentage of customers who’d recommend the product. With the exception of a few items, most products we selected have a customer recommendation percentage of over 95%.
India is pushing Aadhaar, the world’s largest digital identity system, deeper into everyday private life through a new app and offline verification support, a move that raises new questions about security, consent, and the broader use of the massive database.
Announced in late January by the Indian government-backed Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the changes introduce a new Aadhaar app alongside an offline verification framework that allows individuals to prove their identity without real-time checks against the central Aadhaar database.
The app allows users to share a limited amount of information, such as confirming that they are over a certain age rather than revealing their full date of birth, with a range of services, like hotels and housing societies to workplaces, platforms, and payment devices, while the existing mAadhaar app continues to operate in parallel for now.
Alongside the new app, UIDAI is also expanding Aadhaar’s footprint in mobile wallets, with upcoming integration with Google Wallet and discussions underway to enable similar functionality in Apple Wallet, in addition to existing support on Samsung Wallet.
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The new Aadhaar app with selective data sharingImage Credits:Google Play
The Indian authority is also promoting the app’s use in policing and hospitality. The Ahmedabad City Crime Branch has become the first police unit in India to integrate Aadhaar-based offline verification with PATHIK, a guest-monitoring platform launched by the police department, aimed at hotels and guest accommodations to record visitors’ information.
UIDAI has also positioned the new Aadhaar app as a digital visiting card for meetings and networking, allowing users to share selected personal details via a QR code.
Officials at the launch in New Delhi said these latest efforts are part of a broader effort to replace photocopies and manual ID checks with consent-based, offline verification. The approach, they argued, is meant to give users more control over which specific identity information they want to share, while enabling verification at scale without having to query Aadhaar’s central database.
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Early uptake on top of massive scale
While UIDAI formally launched the new Aadhaar app last month, it had been in testing since earlier in 2025. Estimates from Appfigures show that the app, which appeared in app stores toward the end of 2025, quickly overtook the older mAadhaar app in monthly downloads.
Combined monthly installs of Aadhaar-related apps rose from close to 2 million in October to nearly 9 million in December.
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The new app is being layered onto an identity system that already operates at enormous scale considering India’s population. Figures published on UIDAI’s public dashboard show that Aadhaar has issued more than 1.4 billion identity numbers and handles roughly 2.5 billion authentication transactions each month, alongside tens of billions of electronic “know your customer” checks since its launch.
The shift toward offline verification does not replace this infrastructure so much as extending it, moving Aadhaar from a largely backend verification tool into a more visible and everyday interface.
The expansion comes at a time of regulatory changes, easing restrictions, and a new framework (PDF), with UIDAI now allowing some public and private organizations to verify Aadhaar credentials without querying the central database.
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Consent, accountability, and unresolved risks
Civil liberties and digital rights groups say those legal changes do not resolve Aadhaar’s deeper structural risks.
Raman Jit Singh Chima, senior international counsel and Asia Pacific policy director at Access Now, said the expansion of Aadhaar into offline and private-sector settings introduces new threats, particularly at a time when India’s data protection framework is still being put in place.
Chima questioned the timing of the rollout, arguing that the federal government should have waited for India’s Data Protection Board to be established first, and allow for independent review and wider consultation with affected communities.
“The fact that this has gone ahead at this point of time seems to indicate a preference to continue the expansion of the use of Aadhaar, even if it is unclear in terms of the further risks that it might pose to the system, as well as to the data of Indians,” Chima told TechCrunch.
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Indian legal advocacy groups also point to unresolved implementation failures.
Prasanth Sugathan, legal director at New Delhi-based digital rights group SFLC.in, said that while UIDAI has framed the app as a tool for citizen empowerment, it does little to address persistent problems, such as inaccuracies in the Aadhaar database, security lapses, and poor mechanisms for redress, which have disproportionately affect vulnerable populations.
He also cited a 2022 report by India’s Comptroller and Auditor General, which found UIDAI had failed to meet certain compliance standards.
“Such issues can often result in disenfranchisement of people, especially those who were meant to be benefited by such systems,” Sugathan told TechCrunch, adding that it remains unclear how data shared through the new app would prevent breaches or leaks.
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Campaigners associated with Rethink Aadhaar, a civil society campaign focused on Aadhaar-related rights and accountability, argue that the offline verification system risks reintroducing private-sector use of Aadhaar in ways the Supreme Court has already explicitly barred.
Shruti Narayan and John Simte of the group said enabling private entities to routinely rely on Aadhaar for verification amounts to “Aadhaar creep”, normalizing its use across social and economic life despite a 2018 judgment that struck down provisions allowing private actors to use Aadhaar to verify people’s information. They warned that consent in such contexts is often illusory, particularly in situations involving hotels, housing societies, or delivery workers, while India’s data protection law remains largely untested.
Together, the new app, regulatory changes, and expanding ecosystem are shifting Aadhaar from a background identity utility into a visible layer of daily life that is increasingly hard to avoid. As India doubles down on Aadhaar, governments and tech companies are watching closely, attracted by the promise of population-scale identity checks.
The Indian IT ministry and UIDAI CEO did not respond to requests for comments.
If you are to believe the glossy marketing campaigns about ‘quantum computing’, then we are on the cusp of a computing revolution, yet back in the real world things look a lot less dire. At least if you’re worried about quantum computers (QCs) breaking every single conventional encryption algorithm in use today, because at this point they cannot even factor 21 yet without cheating.
In the article by [Craig Gidney] the basic problem is explained, which comes down to simple exponentials. Specifically the number of quantum gates required to perform factoring increases exponentially, allowing QCs to factor 15 in 2001 with a total of 21 two-qubit entangling gates. Extrapolating from the used circuit, factoring 21 would require 2,405 gates, or 115 times more.
Explained in the article is that this is due to how Shor’s algorithm works, along with the overhead of quantum error correction. Obviously this puts a bit of a damper on the concept of an imminent post-quantum cryptography world, with a recent paper by [Dennish Willsch] et al. laying out the issues that both analog QCs (e.g. D-Wave) and digital QCs will have to solve before they can effectively perform factorization. Issues such as a digital QC needing several millions of physical qubits to factor 2048-bit RSA integers.
Tem has built an energy transaction engine that relies on AI to cut prices relative to other energy traders. The company has signed up more than 2,600 business customers throughout the U.K. on the promise that buying energy from its utility division can save them up to 30% on their energy bills.
The startup recently closed an oversubscribed $75 million Series B led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from AlbionVC, Allianz, Atomico, Hitachi Ventures, Revent, Schroders Capital, and Voyager Ventures, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
The round values Tem at more than $300 million, a source familiar with the deal told TechCrunch. The startup plans to use the funding to help expand to Australia and the U.S., starting with Texas.
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“We’re in a nice position where we kind of have control over our own profitability. So I could have chosen not to raise at all and had a lovely, nice bootstrap business in some ways,” Joe McDonald, co-founder and CEO of Tem, told TechCrunch. “Well, we’re not that kind of business. We know what we want to achieve as someone who wants to go public over the years.”
Tem is a classic marketplace play, matching electricity generators with consumers. The company intentionally started by focusing almost exclusively on renewable energy generators and small businesses to fill both sides of the ledger. “The more decentralized and the more distributed, the better it is for the algorithms,” McDonald said. “But this works all the way up to enterprise.”
The company’s customers include fast-fashion retailer Boohoo Group, soft drink company Fever-Tree, and Newcastle United FC.
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Currently, Tem is running what amounts to two different businesses. One, called Rosso, is the transaction engine that matches suppliers with buyers. Here, machine learning algorithms and LLMs help predict supply and demand.
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The goal with Rosso, McDonald said, is to cut costs by eliminating several layers that are present in current energy markets. “In each of them, you’ve got different teams doing different jobs, taking different levels of profit from back office to trading, trading desks to other trading desks, and probably five to six intermediaries in total that enable the flow of money to move from one side to the other,” he said.
With AI, he said, “you now have an opportunity to replace the humans, the labor costs, and the disparate systems into one single transaction infrastructure.” The goal is to make the price that customers pay for electricity closer to the wholesale cost.
The other part of Tem, called RED, is a “neo-utility” built to prove the value of Rosso.
“When we first started, we tried to sell our infrastructure to the energy companies, and we got nowhere,” he said. RED is currently the only utility using Rosso, and McDonald said its growth has pushed the company to prioritize it over opening Rosso to others.
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At some point, though, Tem plans to allow other utilities in.
“In reality, it doesn’t matter how good [RED] is; it’s not going to get above a 40% market share. And it shouldn’t, because that becomes a monopoly in itself. So, me, I’d much rather go to get access to all the transaction flow,” McDonald said.
“Long term, we really don’t mind who owns the customer, who owns the generation as long as our infrastructure is being used,” he said. “This is just an infrastructure play in the same way AWS was, or Stripe was.”
Users on ChatGPT’s free and Go plans in the US may now start to see ads as OpenAI has started testing them in the chatbot. The company announced plans to bring ads to ChatGPT. At the time, the company said it would display sponsored products and services that are relevant to the current conversations of logged-in users, though they can disable personalization and “clear the data used for ads” whenever they wish.
“Our goal is for ads to support broader access to more powerful ChatGPT features while maintaining the trust people place in ChatGPT for important and personal tasks,” OpenAI wrote in a blog post. “We’re starting with a test to learn, listen and make sure we get the experience right.”
These ads will appear below at the bottom of chats. They’re labeled and separated from ChatGPT’s answers. Ads won’t have an impact on ChatGPT’s responses.
Ads won’t appear when users are conversing with ChatGPT about regulated or sensitive topics such as health, mental wellbeing or politics. Users aged under 18 won’t see ads in ChatGPT during the tests either. Moreover, OpenAI says it won’t share or sell users’ conversations or data to advertisers.
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A source close to the company told CNBC that OpenAI expects ads to account for less than half of its revenue in the long run. Currently the company also takes a cut of items bought through its chatbot via the shopping integration feature. Also according to CNBC, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told staff on Friday that the company will deploy “an updated Chat model” this week.
The tests come on the heels of Anthropic running Super Bowl ads that poked fun at OpenAI for introducing advertising. Anthropic’s spot asserted that while “ads are coming to AI,” they won’t appear in its own chatbot, Claude.
Patrick Williams discusses the tech trends he expects to see over the next 12 months and offers his advice to professionals navigating change.
On reflection of the technology landscape, particularly across the previous year, Patrick Williams – a 40-year veteran of the tech ecosystem – has come to the firm conclusion that “we are on the cusp of redefining survival”.
He elaborated: “In work and as humans, we need meaning more than ever to be able to cope with the speed of change we are facing. In the year gone by, I have seen a worrying increase in apathy.
“I believe a powerful emergent counter-trend is the pursuit of Ikigai, that vital nexus of: what we love to do, what we are good at, what pays and what is seeking to change the world.”
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In contrast to the “default facts before feelings mindset” he believes popular among those in leadership roles, Williams – who worked at Google for 21 years as a software engineer – said another emerging trend is the realisation that this old-fashioned model leads to a dead end of burnout and a lack of stability.
“The only way to optimise for efficiency is to work on the whole agile ecosystem. This means that we need more than just to be technically excellent; we need to be ‘self-aware and self-regulating,” he said.
This self-awareness has powered Williams’ own professional evolution over the course of the last 12 months, as he has moved away from the urge to constantly change his skin to fit the mould. Instead, he noted the importance of entering professional spaces with “a clear sense of purpose, proactively leading change”.
He said: “I believe this kind of sense of meaning and purpose is missing in the world right now, in fact, in three areas in particular.”
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The first being “meaning as a survival skill”, as if you don’t have a strong sense of purpose in your work, you may well be an “island of technical capability, but you are not going to be resilient enough to make a long-term difference”.
Secondly, he highlighted the need for new types of leadership. He said there is a shift away from top-down and “poor at best” communications and management, moving towards the idea of open communications and high-trust partnerships where the understanding of the self and wider teams is a priority.
Thirdly, he discussed the use of AI as an ‘EQ agent’, which he said is possibly the most exciting new trend. “It is being used not just as an automation tool, but as a mirror to help people reflect on and remember what gives their lives meaning.”
And this is all pulled together by recognising the “self as an instrument”. Williams is of the opinion that among the most important developments of this year will be those that can bridge the disconnect between technically complex problem-solving and human meaning.
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“As we struggle to grapple with a world where ‘doing it right’ is harder and harder to do and means more than just ‘speed of execution’ one thing is clear, it has to be work that can help the next generation be confident, resilient and emotionally intelligent in a world that is often designed to produce polar opposites,” he said.
A year of innovation
“The paradox for innovation as the 21st century unfolds,” explained Williams, “is a conflict between the short-term perspectives of an increasingly traditional corporate model driven by quarterly ‘Wall Street presence’, with its reactive ‘chameleon’-like tendencies for survival mode, versus the longer-term essential humanity-focus needed to drive sustainable change, particularly as innovation becomes more decentralised.”
To break free of the cycle, he is of the opinion that those powering the ecosystem must commit to double loop learning – the modification of goals or decision-making rules in the light of experience – that incorporates a more comprehensive review of an organisation’s challenges, goals and outcomes. He finds professionals should be encouraged to explore the fundamental need for meaning in their roles and should also have access to strategic consortia.
He said: “This complexity can be managed, tackled, only when it is attacked by a consortium of partnerships. Such ‘families’ give the collective and stable base necessary to innovate within the increasing chaos.
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“This (empowered by digital transformation success) will bring into focus the most valuable innovators, the ‘change agents’ who are not merely technically correct, but are giving licence for a more empowered generation of people who value confidence, resilience and EQ, not just the technical IQ.”
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Zillow Group wants to not only help people search for homes, but also facilitate other parts of the homebuying process such as mortgages. (Zillow Image)
When Jeremy Wacksman joined Zillow Group in 2009, his first job was getting the upstart real estate site onto the iPhone. Now, amid a generative AI boom, the CEO says the next platform shift is even bigger for Zillow than mobile — and so are the company’s ambitions.
“It’s going to enable all of our services to just be a lot smarter and a lot more intelligent and a lot more personalized,” Wacksman told GeekWire. “And I think it will help us solve the problem we’ve been after forever: how do we digitize the transaction, and how do we actually integrate and remove all the busy work and the redundant paperwork and the errors and the pain of the transaction?”
Zillow built its brand by letting people window‑shop for homes and by generating advertising revenue from real estate agents. More than 200 million people visit Zillow’s apps and sites on a monthly basis. But now, as Zillow marks its 20th anniversary on Monday, its leaders are pushing toward something bigger: a “remote control” that keeps buyers, agents and lenders inside Zillow for the entire home-buying experience.
Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman. (Zillow Photo)
It’s part of a “housing super app” strategy the company first laid out several years ago, following the failed attempt to build Zillow Offers, its “iBuying” home-flipping business. Zillow remains focused on finding ways to streamline how people buy homes beyond search and alleviate what can be a stressful process.
“More than half of buyers report that they cry during the transaction process,” Wacksman noted.
While Zillow’s traditional advertising business still makes up a majority of its revenue, it has made a bigger push into mortgages — which grew 36% year-over-year in the third quarter of 2025 — as well as rentals, which grew 41%. Zillow, which reports fourth quarter results this week, is also piloting closing services.
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The shift marks a deliberate move away from a model where Zillow made money when a shopper raised a hand, toward one where it participates in — and tries to simplify — the entire transaction.
Executives see AI as central to the super app play. Zillow CTO David Beitel, who has led technology efforts at the company since 2005, said the new capabilities of large language models feel “pretty monumental.”
He said AI models have improved so much and so quickly that there is no single part of the business where Zillow isn’t exploring how to harness them.
“It’s really starting to change the way we think about presenting information and change the way that we interact with our customers,” Beitel said.
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Long before Zillow launched an app within ChatGPT, the company has used AI in some form since its early days. It applied machine learning to create the “Zestimate” home value tool and later built out computer vision tools to enhance listings.
Now the company is using AI to boost CRM tools for real estate agents — summarizing calls, drafting follow‑up messages, prepping next‑step checklists, and reducing repetitive data entry. Zillow says agents have sent millions of AI‑assisted messages, and that those tools are improving conversion.
Inside Zillow’s own walls, the shift may be even more dramatic.
Beitel said software teams are shipping more code with the same headcount thanks to AI‑assisted development — in some cases, up to a 15% improvement in productivity. The company also uses internal copilots that sit on top of documents, Slack conversations and email, letting employees ask natural‑language questions against Zillow’s own data. Recruiters are using AI to help schedule interviews and coordinate with candidates.
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Zillow CTO David Beitel. (Zillow Photo)
Just in the past two years, Beitel said, the company has “much higher expectations of our team about embracing these tools and using them in their daily jobs.” Zillow encourages experimentation but stops short of mandating specific tools across every team, letting managers decide how to adapt LLMs to their own workflows.
Both executives stressed that, for all the automation, they don’t see AI replacing real estate professionals. Instead, they framed the technology as the next step in a long evolution that started when agents were gatekeepers of listing books and became guides in a world where buyers already know what’s on the market.
“It’s going to pull away all the busy work, all the back office work, all the coordination, all the data collection — all the stuff that a machine can do — to let the human do a great job of actually being your guide,” said Wacksman, who was named CEO in 2024, taking over for co-founder Rich Barton.
All of this is unfolding against a housing market that Wacksman describes as “bouncing along the bottom.” Existing home sales remain well below pre‑pandemic norms; affordability is still strained in many markets; and even optimistic forecasts call for only modest improvement this year. That puts pressure on Zillow’s bet that it can keep growing revenue at a double‑digit clip by capturing a bigger slice of every transaction, even if there aren’t many more transactions to go around.
At the same time, the company is facing louder questions from regulators and rivals about how much control one platform should have over the digital plumbing of the housing market. Zillow is a defendant in a high-profile antitrust lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission and multiple states over its multifamily rental listings syndication deal with Redfin — a case that alleges the arrangement stifles competition in the rental advertising market. The company is also defending a lawsuit from brokerage Compass challenging Zillow’s private‑listing policies and a separate copyright infringement case from rival CoStar over the use of listing photos.
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Wacksman said it hasn’t changed the core roadmap — or Zillow’s room to grow. He said the company still touches a single-digit share of U.S. transactions. “We can grow our business regardless of what happens in [the] macro, and regardless of the clouds from external forces,” he said.
If you’ve ever watched a stream or a YouTube video and thought, “The visuals are fine, but the audio is rough,” you already know the truth: sound quality makes or breaks content. The Logitech Creators Blue Yeti USB microphone is $94.99, down from $139.99 for 32% off. For anyone starting a podcast, upgrading a WFH setup, or trying to make game chat and voiceovers clearer, this is one of those practical buys that pays off the first time you hit record.
What you’re getting
The Blue Yeti is a USB microphone built for easy plug-and-play use on a PC. You don’t need an audio interface or a complicated setup to get studio-ish voice quality compared to a laptop mic or a basic headset.
It’s popular for a reason: it works across a ton of use cases, including streaming, podcasting, voiceovers, Discord, and general video calls. It’s the kind of mic that can follow you from “I’m just trying this” to “okay, I’m doing this consistently” without forcing an immediate upgrade.
Why it’s worth it
This deal is worth attention because sub-$100 is a great price point for a microphone that can become your default for years. The real win is clarity. Your voice sounds fuller, background noise becomes less of the main character, and listeners do not have to strain to understand you.
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It’s also an underrated upgrade for non-creators. If you’re on calls all day, a solid mic makes you sound more professional with basically zero effort. Pair it with a decent set of headphones, and your whole communication setup feels cleaner.
The bottom line
At $94.99, the Logitech Blue Yeti is a strong value if you want an easy, reliable way to improve voice quality for streaming, podcasting, YouTube, gaming chat, or work calls. If you want something ultra-compact or you prefer an XLR studio workflow, there are other options. But for a straightforward plug-in-and-sound-better upgrade, this 32% discount is a great time to buy.
The 2026 Winter Olympics are taking place in Italy this year, with all the action taking place in Milan and the Alpine city of Cortina. This year marks the fourth time Italy has hosted the Winter Games; most recently, Turin hosted in 2006. Of the 16 sports featured at the Winter Olympics, 15 will return, including figure skating, hockey, luge, speed skating, and one entirely new sport, snow mountaineering. (Will it be as big a hit as the 2024 Summer Games’ new addition, breaking? It remains to be seen.)
Live coverage of every event at the Olympic Winter Games Milan Cortina 2026 will be available to stream on Peacock — though thanks to the time difference between Italy and the U.S., to watch many of the events live, you’ll have to wake up (or stay up) until 2AM or 3AM ET. Primetime replays and select live coverage will air on NBC. Here’s what else you need to know about watching the 2026 Winter Olympics.
How to watch the 2026 Winter Olympics
Dates: Feb. 6 – Feb. 22
TV channel: NBC
Streaming: Peacock
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When are the 2026 Winter Olympics?
The Winter Olympics officially begin with the opening ceremony on Feb. 6, although some events will start as early as Feb. 4). The Milano Cortina 2026 games will run through Feb. 22. The closing ceremony of the 2026 Winter Olympics will take place in the Arena di Verona on Feb. 22.
Where are the Winter Olympics this year?
The 2026 Winter Olympics will be held in Northern Italy, primarily in Milan and also the Alpine mountain resort town of Cortina d’Ampezzo, where events like bobsled, skeleton, alpine skiing, curling, para snowboard, and more will take place.
What channel are the Olympics on?
The 2026 Winter Olympics will air on NBC and stream live on Peacock.
How to watch the 2026 Winter Olympics without cable
For $11/month, an ad-supported Peacock subscription lets you stream live sports and events airing on NBC, including the 2026 Winter Olympics, Super Bowl LX and more. Plus, you’ll get access to thousands of hours of shows and movies, including beloved sitcoms such as Parks and Recreationand The Office, every Bravo show and much more.
For $17 monthly you can upgrade to an ad-free subscription which includes live access to your local NBC affiliate (not just during designated sports and events) and the ability to download select titles to watch offline.
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When is the Winter Olympics opening ceremony?
The Milano Cortina 2026 opening ceremony will be held on Feb. 6, 2026. Due to the time difference, the ceremony will kick off around 2PM ET/11AM PT.
Winter Olympics time difference
This year’s Olympic Games are in Italy, which is 6 hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Time. Meaning that some events will start bright and early for U.S. viewers, and live coverage will likely wrap up around 4PM ET each day. NBC will have primetime replays of the biggest moments each night.
Hockey (bronze medal games) – 1PM (Peacock – Live)
Friday, Feb. 20
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Biathlon mass start – 6AM (Peacock – Live)
Speedskating final medals – 8AM (Peacock – Live)
Figure skating gala – 1PM (Peacock – Live)
Saturday, Feb. 21
Men’s hockey gold medal game – 12PM (Peacock – Live)
Women’s hockey gold medal game – 3PM (Peacock – Live)
Men’s hockey gold medal game – 8PM (NBC – Primetime)
Sunday, Feb. 22 – closing ceremony
Cross-country skiing final event – 6AM (Peacock – Live)
closing ceremony – 2PM (Peacock – Live)
closing ceremony – 8PM (NBC – Primetime)
More ways to watch the 2026 Winter Olympics on NBC
While Peacock is the best way to watch the Winter Olympics, there are other options if you restrict yourself to the NBC broadcasts. As our guide to the best live TV streaming services to cut cable notes, both YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV are excellent options, but you’ll want to skip Fubo until and unless the service resolves its contract dispute with Comcast, as NBC channels remain unavailable for now.
If you’re looking to up your privacy game on the internet in the new year, you can do so for a little less than usual thanks to ExpressVPN’s latest deal. Its two-year plans are up to 81 percent off right now: the Advanced tier is on sale for $88 for two years, plus four additional free months. The Basic plan is where you’ll see the biggest discount: it’s $68 for two years, plus the same four additional free months.
We’ve consistently liked ExpressVPN because it’s fast, easy to use and widely available across a large global server network. In fact, it’s our current pick for best premium VPN. One of the biggest drawbacks has always been its high cost, and this deal temporarily solves that issue.
ExpressVPN
Get two years (plus four bonus months) for $88.
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In our review we were able to get fast download and upload speeds, losing only 7 percent in the former and 2 percent in the latter worldwide. We found that it could unblock Netflix anywhere, and its mobile and desktop apps were simple to operate. We gave ExpressVPN an overall score of 85 out of 100.
The virtual private network service now has three tiers. Basic is cheaper with fewer features, while Pro costs more and adds extra perks like support for 14 simultaneous devices and a password manager. Advanced sits in the middle and includes the password manager but only supports 12 devices.
Elon Musk in Seattle in 2015. (GeekWire File Photo / Taylor Soper)
Elon Musk’s xAI is establishing its Seattle-area engineering center in a former Epic Games space in downtown Bellevue, Wash., following through on Musk’s announcement in September that the company planned to open an outpost in the region.
The location was first reported Monday by the Puget Sound Business Journal, and confirmed by GeekWire based on references to xAI in online permit logs. The nearly 25,000-square-foot space is on the 8th floor of the Lincoln Square South building at 10400 NE 4th St.
The lease makes xAI the latest AI company to set up shop in Bellevue, following the news last week that OpenAI is expanding to nearly 300,000 square feet at nearby City Center Plaza.
In fact, the xAI and OpenAI offices in downtown Bellevue will be about a 10-minute walk from each other, should Musk and Sam Altman ever find themselves in their respective Seattle-area hubs at the same time and decide to patch things up.
Founded in 2023, xAI is best known for Grok, its AI chatbot, which is integrated into Musk’s social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
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News of the company’s Seattle-area location comes days after SpaceX announced its acquisition of xAI in a deal valuing the AI company at $250 billion, further consolidating Musk’s businesses. The key tenant-improvement filing for the Bellevue space was in late December, indicating that the lease was in the works before the acquisition closed.
Job listings show xAI is hiring for a range of engineering roles in the Seattle area, with salaries from $180,000 to $440,000. The positions go beyond networking and infrastructure to include core AI research roles, such as members of the technical staff focused on CUDA/GPU kernel development, image generation, video generation, and world models. This signals that the Bellevue office will serve as a hub for AI model development, not just operations support.
SpaceX already has a large presence in the Seattle region, focused on the development of Starlink satellite internet service out of the company’s Redmond engineering offices.
We’ve contacted xAI for more information about its plans for the office.
