Amazon raised the price of its own devices overnight on 21 August. The increases run to 60% on the cheapest product in the range, and they were not announced.
Fortune reported the change across the hardware line. Pocket-lint had reported the Fire TV increases earlier the same day. Amazon confirmed the rises and blamed memory and storage costs.
Kristy Schmidt, senior communications manager for Amazon Devices and Services, gave The Verge the statement the company issued to every outlet that asked.
“The consumer electronics industry is facing significant increases in memory and storage component costs,” it reads. “After absorbing these increases for as long as we could, we recently adjusted pricing across our product lines. Our approach has always been to offer great products at accessible prices, and that commitment hasn’t changed.”
Amazon told Fortune it will run promotions across the lineup through the year.
The Echo Dot went from $49.99 to $79.99. That is a 60% rise on the cheapest way into Amazon’s smart home range.
The Echo Spot rose from $79.99 to $109.99. The Echo Dot Max, which launched last year, went from $99.99 to $119.99. The Echo Show 8 rose to $199.99, the Echo Show 11 to $249.99, the Echo Show 15 to $349.99 and the Echo Show 21 to $499.99.
The 16GB Kindle went from $109.99 to $149.99, a rise of about 36%. The 16GB Kindle Paperwhite went from $159.99 to $199.99.
Pocket-lint listed the Fire TV range in full. The Fire TV Stick 4K Max rose from $60 to $85. The 4K Plus went from $50 to $70, the 4K Select from $40 to $50, and the HD model from $35 to $40.
The largest single increase in dollars was the Fire TV Cube, which went from $140 to $200. That device does not appear in the table The Verge published.
The eero 7 three-pack rose from $349.99 to $399.99. The eero Pro 7 three-pack went from $699.99 to $799.99. Both are increases of about 14%.
Ring cameras and video doorbells kept their prices, according to Fortune and The Verge. So did the Echo Studio, Amazon’s $219.99 speaker.
The Verge notes that Google has held the Home Speaker at $99.99. Pocket-lint notes that Google has held the TV Streamer at $100.
Amazon issued no announcement. Pocket-lint’s reporter found the increase by opening the Amazon app and noticing that the Fire TV Stick 4K Max was listed at $85.
Price history shows the Fire TV rises took effect across the board on 21 August, according to Pocket-lint, which contrasts that with Apple and Roku announcing theirs in advance.
Roku raised streaming device prices by up to 60% last month, and gave the same reason. The desk covered that increase on 26 July.
Engadget puts the Roku rises at up to $50.
Apple raised Mac and iPad prices in June. Chief executive Tim Cook called the situation “a 100-year flood on memory pricing”. The desk covered the MacBook Air rise on 3 August. Apple also moved the HomePod Mini to $129 from $99.99 this summer.
Microsoft is raising Xbox console prices by $100 to $150 depending on the version, Fortune reports, and has stopped selling the 2TB configuration. Dell, HP, Lenovo and Asus have raised prices or cut the memory in their products.
Nvidia’s largest customers were told that servers containing its AI chips will cost more than 15% more. The desk covered that rise on 22 August.
Chinese carmakers say printed circuit boards and multilayer ceramic capacitors are 20% to 30% short globally. The desk covered the carmakers’ shortage on 22 August. Xiaomi’s profit fell again last quarter as memory costs pushed up what its phones cost to build, which the desk covered as the memory crunch on 19 August.
The squeeze traces back to demand for memory from AI data centres. Counterpoint Research has warned that the surge threatens supply of broadband routers and set-top boxes, the same class of device Amazon has just repriced.
Two of the repriced Fire TV models, the 4K Select and the HD, run Vega OS, the Linux-based operating system Amazon introduced to replace Android on its cheaper hardware.
Andy Jassy raised the company’s capital expenditure guidance in late July. Amazon now expects to spend $220bn this year, up from a prior estimate of $200bn, mostly on data centres, and Jassy attributed part of the increase to higher memory costs.
He also told investors the company would not “have enough capacity to meet all the demand we have in 2026”, and added: “I believe this dynamic will also be true in 2027, too.”
Amazon Web Services took $42.2bn in the second quarter, up 37% from $30.9bn a year earlier. Jassy called it the fifth consecutive quarter of accelerated growth.
Amazon has not said how long the new prices hold, or which components drove which increase. It has not explained why Ring and the Echo Studio were left alone.
The two published price tables do not fully match. The Verge lists thirteen products with percentage changes. Pocket-lint lists five Fire TV models, including a Cube increase the other table omits. Neither is Amazon’s own list, because Amazon did not publish one.
The company has a device event coming this autumn, Fortune notes.
One number is worth holding lightly. The 60% headline applies to a single product, the Echo Dot. Most of the range moved between 11% and 25%, on The Verge’s figures.
If you’re after a cheap printer that won’t cost you a fortune in ink, HP’s Smart Tank 210 is bang on the money. While it’s basic, and it can be achingly slow, it’s surprisingly good at turning out photos or plain paper prints. Most importantly, it arrives with enough ink for around 6,000 pages or more, making it far better value than a cartridge-based equivalent. Unless you only print very occasionally, this printer should save you a tidy sum.
Very cheap to own
Good print quality
Reasonably smart
Review Price:
£130
An ink-tank printer
This printer uses bottles of ink that cost less and last longer than cartridges. It’s a little more expensive to buy, but it should be far cheaper to own in the long run.
Pretty basic
The Smart Tank 210 is a printer only: it can’t scan, fax or copy. It doesn’t have a screen and it can’t automatically print both sides of each page, but you can share it over Wi-Fi.
If you’re after a budget printer, you could spend as little as £40 picking up an entry level inkjet. The problem is that cheap printers often come with punishing running costs; it’s not uncommon for new cartridges to cost as much as the printer did, and to last only a couple of hundred pages. The HP Smart Tank 210 takes a different tack. While it’s significantly more expensive to buy, it’s almost guaranteed to cost you less overall to own.
That’s chiefly because it’s an ink tank printer, fitted with refillable tanks rather than slots for conventional cartridges. It arrives with a full set of bottles that should last for around 6000 full-colour pages – in fact, if you didn’t use black, the three colour bottles could last for more than 10000 prints. You’d spend £100s or even £1000s buying an equivalent number of cartridges or toners for a regular printer.
These low running costs are one of the reasons I love ink-tank printers, but another is that with long-lasting bottles rather than short-lived cartridges, they generate much less plastic waste. In theory, you could buy this printer and churn out 6000 pages for only around £130, a cost-per-page of around 2.2p including the printer. That’s hard to beat, so what’s the HP Smart Tank 210 itself actually like?
There’s not all that much to this printer. It’s a squat off-white box with a few dark grey highlights, and a reasonably uncluttered appearance.
On the back you’ll find a simple extendable paper input tray, which outputs to an even simpler fold-out tray at the front. With no scanner, the top panel is almost featureless apart from a very basic set of buttons and a small LCD.
That would be it if the HP Smart Tank 210 wasn’t an ink tank printer. The splash of colour on its front panel isn’t just for show; the four windows here reveal the levels in its black, cyan, magenta and yellow tanks. It arrives with them empty, so the first job is to fill them up from the provided bottles of ink.
Like most refillable printers, you prime this one for action by simply removing the lid from a bottle, and upending it over the spigot on the relevant tank. Here there’s an important thing to watch out for – this printer’s bottles and tanks aren’t keyed to prevent mixing the colours up. That’s bad enough on a normal inkjet, but with a full tank potentially lasting years, here it could lead to thousands of pages of crossed colours.
Unlike rival ink tank printers from Epson and Canon, you also need to fit the print heads to the HP Smart Tank 210. I found this a needlessly fiddly job, particularly given the relatively narrow access available. Still, at least it’s a one-time only routine. In use you’ll need to keep an eye on the tank levels and top them up occasionally. My experience is that you can typically go many months – or even a couple of years – between refills.
The final setup task is to join this printer to your Wi-Fi, for which you’ll need the HP app. This detects the printer, asks you an unreasonable number of times if you want to share user data, and finally makes the HP Smart Tank 210 available to other devices on your network. If you have a PC you may prefer to download the Easy Start app and opt for the full suite of drivers, but without scan functionality it’s not really necessary.
Ink-tank printers cost more to buy than a cartridge equivalent, and pay you back over the long-term in lower running costs. They usually only become better value than a cheap cartridge device once you’ve printed a couple of thousand pages, which might take some users several years. With that in mind I prefer them to have a multi-year warranty, giving you the reassurance they’ll stay working long enough for you to recoup your money. While I’ve no reason to doubt HP’s build quality, it’s a shame this printer only gets 12 months’ cover.
On the other end of the scale, the HP Smart Tank 210 should save you bucket loads if you print in volume. Extra bottles of ink work out at about 0.2p per black page, or 0.5p for a full-colour page – far cheaper than standard inkjet or laser printers.
There’s precious little else of interest here. Although you can connect and share the HP Smart Tank 210 over a wireless network, there’s no wired Ethernet port or memory card slot. This printer can’t automatically print on both sides of a sheet – you’ll need to manually turn pages over if you want to duplex.
If you’re in a hurry, the HP Smart Tank 210 isn’t the printer for you. It’s not too bad when printing black text, managing to deliver a first page in 13 seconds, and five pages in 36 seconds – that’s equivalent to 8.3 pages per minute (ppm). It’s a bit faster on longer jobs, especially if you can live with slightly less good Draft quality: it printed 20 pages of text at a rate of 10.3ppm.
Things are much, much less impressive in colour. The HP Smart Tank 210 shuffled its feet when printing a lightweight page of black text and colour graphics, delivering a first copy in 29 seconds, and needing fully two minutes to squeeze out five copies. Our 20 page colour job inched along at a woeful 1.8ppm, one of the slowest results we’ve measured in recent years.
Commendably, HP has resisted the urge to de-content this printer in silly ways. It supports borderless printing on paper up to A4, and is happy to turn its hand to the family snaps. Using the Maximum DPI setting means you’ll get up to 4,800×1,200 dots per inch (dpi) quality, but you’ll have to wait a long time to see if it’s any good. I timed a borderless A4 print at a beard-lengthening 14 minutes and 23 seconds. The printer took almost half an hour to hand over six borderless postcard (6×4”) prints.
One of the benefits of a slow printer is that they tend to be quiet, and that’s certainly the case here. It’s easy to live with the Smart Tank 210 in a small home office, or even in the lounge.
Happily, what the 210 lacked in speed it made up for in print quality, beginning with dark, crisp black text that was easily good enough for formal letters or business use. Printing in Draft quality reduced the impact a little, but the results were still quite impressive. Colours stood up well on plain paper, too. Our test graphics looked fairly punchy, if a little undersaturated, and there was nothing to suggest these prints had come from a particularly low-end printer.
The real surprise came when I looked at the photos I’d printed. While no match for a high-end photo printer, these snaps were more than good enough for family scrapbooks or creative projects. The only real disappointment here was that skin tones all seemed a bit too pale, with the fairest people looking almost ashen in a couple of shots.
The HP Smart Tank 210 is inexpensive by ink-tank standards, and ridiculously cheap to run by any measure. It’s a great choice where you want to keep print costs down.
This is a simple printer. It’s slow, it can’t copy or scan, and it’s missing duplex printing. If it sounds too basic for your needs you’ll need to spend more.
I can’t pretend this is the best printer I’ve ever reviewed. If I ran a small business it would be too slow, and I’d bemoan its lack of scan and copy functionality. Even for my home office I’d strongly prefer it to have automatic duplex printing – it’s an easy and convenient way to save on paper.
But park all that. Considering its purchase price and how much ink you get in the box, the HP Smart Tank 210 has to be one of the best value printers you can buy. If I was on a tight budget, and looking for a printer that could deliver a few thousand pages for as little as possible, this one would be right at the top of my list. That could make it ideal for students, writers, or anyone who needs to print a reasonable amount on the smallest budget possible.
You’ll need to install the HP app on a PC, tablet or smartphone. Make sure Bluetooth is on, and that you’re connected to your wireless network, then click the plus button in the app. It should find the printer and configure it for your network.
For many users, yes. An ink-tank printer costs more to buy, but less to run. The more you print, the more likely you are to find that a tank-based device costs less to run than a conventional cartridge-based inkjet, or a laser printer. In practice the breakeven point is typically around 2,000 pages – if you print significantly more than that in the printer’s lifetime you should end up paying a lot less.
The flip side is that if you don’t print that much, or the printer fails before you can and isn’t under warranty, you’ll end up losing out. For this reason it’s ideal to try and get at least a couple of years’ warranty if you can.
| HP Smart Tank 210 Review | |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | HP |
| Quiet Mark Accredited | No |
| Size (Dimensions) | 434 x 360 x 135 MM |
| Weight | 3.73 KG |
| ASIN | B0GSGG1F19 |
| Release Date | 2026 |
| First Reviewed Date | 13/08/2026 |
| Model Number | 4A8H8A |
| Ports | USB 2 |
| Connectivity | 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi (2.4GHz only) |
| Ink Cartridge support | 32XL black ink (6,700 pages), 31 cyan, magenta and yellow inks (10,100 pages each) |
| Printer Type | Colour |
| Ink Type | Bottle |
| UK RRP | £130 |
| USA RRP | TBC |
| EU RRP | €156 |
| CA RRP | TBC |
| AUD RRP | TBC |
The third season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians is fast approaching, and at Disney’s D23 convention in Anaheim, California, last weekend, we got a glimpse of what’s to come as the cast answered fan questions during a panel discussion.
Earlier during Disney’s D23 Entertainment Showcase, the show got a fresh, new trailer for November’s third season. Walker Scobell, who plays the title character of Percy Jackson, was joined on stage by Ming-Na Wen (Hera) and Andra Day (Athena) to present the new trailer, which showed Percy fighting underwater and in arenas as a titan emerges.
After the ill-fated, critically panned movies released in the 2010s made it only to the second book in Rick Riordan’s series, the Disney Plus original will be the first time The Titan’s Curse has gotten an adaptation. It follows Percy and his Camp Half-Blood crew on their mission to rescue the goddess Artemis (played by Dafne Keen).
“Season 3 is the season where some people get what they deserve,” Scobell said during Saturday’s panel. There will also be a lot of improv in season 3, Scobell said, with the cast now close enough to play off each other like siblings bantering (which they did, all panel long, arguing over who is the most powerful).
Tamara Smart, who plays Thalia, said scenes exploring the past and Olympus were her favorites to shoot. “Season 3 is the season where women run it,” she said.
“It’s great to play a powerful, confident woman,” Smart added. “She’s 100% angry, 100% sad, 100% yelling at Percy.” (She added that after every single take where she was forced to yell at Scobell, she apologized to him.)
Keen wasn’t allowed to tease much from the upcoming season, but said the newcomers to the show had a huntress camp where they all got to train together, learn as a pack and master archery.
“Love and loss inform all decisions,” she said of Season 3.
Saara Chaudry said bringing Zoë Nightshade to life in the new season “has been the absolute privilege of my life.”
“Season 3 is the season where the stars align,” Chaudry added.
Dan Shotz, a showrunner, writer and executive producer, had some more detailed hints about the upcoming season.
“We have this great source material, and we get to dive a lot deeper… You’re going to see all these great things you love from this book, but so much more,” he said. “We cannot have a season of this show without Annabeth.”
Shotz said we will meet all the gods this season, as well as get to see the junkyard of the gods.
But not everyone makes it out alive, executive producer Jonathan Steinberg said.
“I’m excited for everyone to go on that ride shown in the trailer,” Steinberg said. “The trailer doesn’t lie.”
The eight-episode season streams on Nov. 20 on Disney Plus.
An unpatched vulnerability in Calix GS7 XGS (GS5239XG) residential routers used by multiple U.S. broadband providers allows remote, unauthenticated attackers to create port-forwarding rules that can expose local network devices to the public internet.
The flaw is tracked as CVE-2026-75501 and is described as a missing authentication issue that affects devices running EXOS/6.6.47 firmware.
Security researcher Brian Khan Quintana discovered the flaw and, after trying to notify the vendor on June 7 without success, he reported the vulnerability to the Carnegie Mellon CERT Coordination Center.
Following multiple attempts to contact the vendor and receiving no response, CERT/CC coordinated a public disclosure, and Quintana published the technical details.
Calix is a significant vendor in the US broadband-provider market, working with large entities such as Cox Communications, Brightspeed, ALLO, CityFibre, and Conexon.
The affected model, GS5239XG, is also marketed as the GigaSpire 7u10txg and is a new, premium gateway device that combines Wi-Fi 7 capabilities with an integrated XGS-PON fiber terminal.
The CVE-2026-75501 vulnerability is caused by the device exposing “the MiniUPnPd control endpoint on the WAN interface on TCP port 5000 without access controls.”
“In affected firmware versions, the router binds its UPnP WANIPConnection SOAP service to the public WAN interface on TCP port 5000,” CERT/CC warns.
This allows an attacker on the public web to send the device unauthenticated “SOAP requests to add, delete, or enumerate port mappings, or to query the external IP address.”
This way, hackers can bypass the router’s Network Address Translation (NAT) and firewall protections and expose internal cameras, network-attached storage (NAS) devices, administrative interfaces, and IoT appliances.
“One unauthenticated request from anywhere in the world is enough to open a permanent hole through the router’s firewall to any device inside the house. No password. No prompt. Nothing on screen. The rule survives a reboot,” Quintatna says.
The researcher says that an attacker leveraging the security issue could take the following actions:
Quintana tested the finding by sending requests outside his home network to create a port mapping that exposed an internal address. A mapping configured with no expiration remained active after the router was power-cycled.
This practically means anyone on the internet can instruct vulnerable Calix routers to forward traffic from a public-facing port to a chosen device on the home network.
Given that there’s no fix for CVE-2026-75501, Quintana recommends that users of the vulnerable device disable UPnP through the administrative interface (Advanced → Security → UPnP).
The researcher notes that this workaround disables automatic port opening, which some games rely on, but it’s always possible to open specific ports manually.
CERT/CC also notes that the setting might be locked in some cases, and users who can’t change it should contact their ISP to request the deactivation.
BleepingComputer has contacted Calix for a comment about the flaw, the device models it impacts, and if a patch will be released, but we have not heard back as of publishing.
Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply.
The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments.
The Trump administration is proposing to make permanent a $103,265 fee on certain new H-1B visas, dramatically increasing costs for employers that rely on highly skilled foreign workers in tech, education, and research. “A federal judge in June ruled that the fee was illegal and blocked the Trump administration from collecting it,” reports Reuters. “A Boston-based appeals court is reviewing that decision while a different court considers whether a judge properly rejected a challenge to the fee by a major business group.” From the report: Trump’s temporary fee increase expires in September, one year after it was issued. The proposed rule by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, posted in the Federal Register on Monday, would make a fee of $103,265 permanent. It could be finalized by the end of the year. The H-1B program allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers with training in specialty fields and offers 65,000 visas annually, with another 20,000 for workers with advanced degrees, approved for three to six years. Those visas typically came with fees between $2,000 and $5,000 before Trump’s order. The fee would not apply to visas granted to foreign citizens already in the United States on student visas, who make up a large share of new H-1B recipients, or to renewals of current visas.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
For most of my career, my IEEE membership sat quietly in the background—a line on my résumé, a discount code for a conference registration, and access to the IEEE Xplore digital library, which I underutilized. I didn’t think much about the grade of membership available above that of the regular member. I assumed senior membership was reserved for people further along in their career than I was. They published more papers, had more gray hair, and had worked longer in the field.
I was wrong on all three counts. The misunderstanding cost me an important validation of my skills and professional competency.
I suspect a lot of other qualified members are where I was one year ago: eligible but unaware of the benefits of senior membership, and one application away from a meaningful career credential.
Here are a few of the misconceptions about senior membership:
It’s mostly for academics and longtime IEEE volunteers. It isn’t. The grade is explicitly built around a person’s professional engineering experience. Plenty of successful applicants have never published a paper. Industry experience counts for a lot.
You need a graduate degree. You don’t. A bachelor’s degree plus enough years of qualifying experience is sufficient on its own. An advanced degree simply offsets some of the required years of experience.
If I’m not well-known in my field, I won’t qualify. Senior membership isn’t a popularity contest. Rather, it hinges on whether you meet specific experience metrics. The requirement is “sustained, significant technical contribution,” not “known beyond your organization.”
I should wait until I have more significant achievements to point to. I believed this for longer than I should have. If you meet the 10-year experience threshold with five years of significant performance, you’re already eligible. Waiting doesn’t strengthen a qualifying application; it just delays getting a credential you’ve already earned.
The push to apply came from a practical need. As a senior data scientist at Apple in Austin, Texas, I work in applied machine learning, building large-scale systems that affect customer-support operations. I already had started taking on more peer-review work—checking papers for journals including Neural Networks and IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, mentoring at Apple, and writing on public platforms such as Medium and SimpleTalk.
I wanted a credential that reflected that shift from “engineer who codes” to “engineer who helps shape the field.”
The IEEE senior member grade turned out to be the validation of my work I was looking for. It’s not an award for a single achievement. You have to apply for it, and it’s a peer-evaluated process that confirms you’ve sustained a meaningful level of professional contributions over time.
That distinction matters. Having a research paper published or being granted a patent proves a moment in time. Senior membership reflects a pattern of continuous contributions.
The benefits to my career happened faster than I expected. It strengthened how search committees, IEEE conference organizers, and IEEE awards panels viewed me. Only senior members can hold certain IEEE leadership positions.
The senior grade also opened doors to editorial and reviewer roles I hadn’t even pursued before. Journal editors and conference organizers often look for reviewers with a track record they can verify quickly, and senior membership gives them that signal without extra vetting on their end. It also gave me a credential I could point to in professional contexts, including, in my case, supporting documentation for a U.S. employment-based immigration petition, where third-party peer recognition carries real evidentiary weight.
The process for applying for senior membership is easier than the title might suggest. To qualify, you need a combination of professional and academic experience in an IEEE-designated field: engineering, computer science, information technology, physical sciences, mathematics, or technical communications. The two must total at least 10 years, with at least five of them showing significant performance. Crucially, experience isn’t limited to job titles. Graduate research, technical leadership, and progressively responsible engineering work all count toward the total number of years. I’d been quietly accumulating qualifying years without ever framing them that way.
“I suspect a lot of other qualified members are exactly where I was a year ago: eligible but unaware of the benefits of senior membership, and one application away from a meaningful career credential.”
You submit your application through IEEE’s member portal, mapped against the experience requirement, along with three references from current IEEE members—at least two of whom must be senior members or IEEE Fellows who can vouch for the credibility of your work.
The IEEE member grade evaluation committee reviews applications and renders decisions.
The part everyone underestimates is references. Applications can stall at this point. References must be IEEE members in good standing, and at least two need to be IEEE senior members—which means you can’t necessarily ask people who know you best. You need to find references who are both willing to vouch for you and are grade-eligible.
My advice is to identify and confirm all three references before you submit your application. It might be difficult to add or swap a reference during the process, and a stalled reference could delay your file.
Where to find references is the part I worried most about. But it turned out to be far easier than I expected.
Here are several sources:
A pattern I noticed when looking for references is that people are generally glad to be asked. Serving as a reference is a small lift for them and a meaningful one for you. Most senior engineers remember someone doing the same for them and are happy to pay it forward.
If you’ve been in the field for a decade or more, doing real technical work, and IEEE membership has been sitting quietly in the background of your career the way it did in mine, it’s worth 10 minutes to check the eligibility criteria against your history. You might find, as I did, that you qualified for the membership upgrade a while ago.
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What is Google TV and how does it work? Is Google TV free to use, or do you need to pay a subscription fee?
We explain all you need to know about Google TV including where you can access the platform, the included channels and how it works.
Once you’re finished here, make sure you visit our round-up of the best TVs and best streaming devices too.
Google TV is a smart TV interface that holds over 10,000 apps and offers access to over 400,000 episodes and movies in one place. These apps include the likes of Netflix, Disney Plus, BT Sport and even Spotify.
You can set up multiple profiles on Google TV and see your own personalised recommendations based on what you’ve watched in the past. Apps can be downloaded to specific profiles, and there’s supervision for children with Kid’s profiles where apps can be blocked or unblocked, viewing time limited and activity controlled via The Family Link app.
In addition, each profile also has access to its own watchlist, which allows you to save shows and films for later.
Or, if you know exactly what you want to watch but can’t find it, you can simply ask Google Assistant to fetch it for you – though you will need a compatible TV with a voice remote.
Despite its name, Google TV isn’t just for watching content. In fact, it can double as a smart home hub for controlling compatible products like smart light bulbs and the thermostat. You can also receive doorbell notifications from your TV and see a live view from your security cameras too.
Essentially, Google TV isn’t its own streaming platform that offers original content. Instead, it’s an interface that brings content from lots of different apps and platforms together into one place.
Yes, the Google TV interface is completely free to access. Just remember that you will need to pay for any subscription costs from third-party platforms.
At the top of the screen is a row of tabs such as ‘Search’, ‘For You’ and ‘Library’ to make it easier and faster for users to jump back into what they were watching or start something new.
Below that is a curated row of personal ‘top picks’ recommendations based on what you’ve watched and what you’re interested in. It also puts those recommendations in the ‘For You’ tab, which is aggregated from your subscriptions and content in other apps.
Beneath that row are apps you’ve downloaded. Any app available on Android TV is available on Google TV, which means YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, ITV Hub, My 5, Prime Video and more work with the interface.
You can also ask “What should I watch” and be presented with a list of popular films and TV episodes with options of how you can watch the content (stream, rent or buy). You can also click onto a title’s landing page and be met with a bevy of similar content, sending you down the rabbit hole for films and TV shows to watch.
There’s been some confusion in the past surrounding how Google TV differs from Android TV. While many have assumed that Google TV has taken over from Android TV, this actually isn’t the case. Instead, Google TV is powered by Android TV operating system (OS). That means there are other smart TVs and streaming sticks that are also powered by Android TV OS but don’t share the Google TV interface – called Android TV devices.
It’s a bit like the best Android phones, where they all run on Android OS but different manufacturers like Samsung or Google use different skins or interfaces.
There are a couple of ways to get Google TV. Firstly, if you already have a compatible TV set then you can plug in a Google TV Streamer to access the platform. This is a great way to make use of your existing TV without buying a new one – though make sure that your TV has an HDMI port, is near a plug socket and can access the internet.
If, on the other hand, you’d prefer to upgrade then you can simply buy a new TV with Google TV built-in. At the time of writing, you can enjoy Google TV built into models from the following brands:
Whether you’re using a Streamer or a dedicated Google TV device, you’ll need to ensure you have an internet connection and a Google account.
There’s also a dedicated Google TV app that’s available for both iOS and Android devices. Once you’ve signed into your Google account, you’ll be able to find movies and TV series to stream from across different platforms. When choosing something to watch, you’ll be redirected to either the corresponding app or to the App Store where you’ll be prompted to download the platform.
You can also use the app as a remote control, and can move from watching on your phone to a nearby TV on the same Wi-Fi network.
Zillow and Redfin have reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and five states, ending a legal fight over a 2025 partnership that the FTC claimed hurt competition in the rental-listing market. The settlement was announced on Monday, just as the case was scheduled to head toward trial this morning.
The case stems from a deal announced last year in which Redfin agreed to display Zillow’s rental listings on its websites rather than compete directly with Zillow for rental advertisers. The arrangement could have kept Redfin out of the rental advertising business for as long as nine years. Redfin owns Rent.com and ApartmentGuide.com, two major rental-listing platforms.
According to the FTC and attorneys general from Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, and Washington, Zillow agreed to pay Redfin $100 million to keep Redfin from competing with Zillow.
The companies defended the partnership as a way to give renters access to a larger pool of listings. The FTC, however, argued that Zillow was paying one of its largest competitors to stop competing, potentially allowing the company to charge higher prices and provide less favorable terms to property managers. It could have also reduced the quality of rental listings available to consumers.
Under the proposed settlement, Redfin will be required to reenter the rental advertising business. The order also removes restrictions that previously limited Redfin’s ability to compete independently for property-management customers.
The settlement doesn’t completely end the relationship between the two companies. Redfin can continue displaying Zillow’s rental listings, but it will once again be able to compete for its own customers. Redfin will be able to sell advertising, display listings from its own clients, and pursue new rental customers without being required to share sensitive business information with Zillow.
The Zillow-Redfin case comes just months after the DOJ’s settlement with Ticketmaster, another antitrust case involving allegations that a dominant company used its power to suppress competition. However, 26 of the 30 state attorneys general who initially sued Live Nation alongside the DOJ chose to continue pursuing the case and won their lawsuit in April.
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The United States Navy has been hard at work replacing its aging Los Angeles-class and Ohio-class nuclear submarines with the newer and more advanced Virginia-class fast attack submarines, of which 25 have been constructed as of this writing. The latest boat to come out of the shipyards and enter the inventory is the USS Massachusetts (SSN-709), which is the eighth U.S. vessel named after the state. On the surface, pun definitely intended, the USS Massachusetts is like its preceding 24 Virginia-class submarines, but on August 17, 2026, it skipped a pivotal step in the process from construction to service.
After completing shakedown trials, the Navy determined that it was ready to proceed with fleet tasking, meaning that it could begin serving immediately. What’s interesting about this is the fact that the Massachusetts will not have to undergo its post-shakedown availability (PSA), thanks to its combat readiness and the boat’s superb construction. This move is a calculated risk, but as far as the Navy is concerned, the Massachusetts’ shakedown proved it was ready to join the fight.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle explained that the “USS Massachusetts is ready to fight, and that is exactly where we need her, in the hands of our Sailors and available to the Fleet. Waiving this availability reflects the exceptional condition of the ship and our determination to deliver combat-ready capability faster.” The Massachusetts’ delivery to the Navy is surprising, as SlashGear previously reported about its then-forthcoming shakedown period that is no longer happening. Regardless, the Massachusetts is now expected to begin fleet operations as soon as possible.
The process to build, commission, undergo sea trials, and perform a PSA is a tried-and-true method the Navy has employed since World War II. Because of this, it’s unusual to skip any of those steps, especially the PSA prior to passing the new vessel into the fleet. When a new sub finishes its sea trials, and before it’s ready for combat operations, the PSA is designed to address any maintenance or performance issues that arise.
Because the USS Massachusetts didn’t reveal any problems, it skipped the step. That’s significant, as it can take a year or more to move through the PSA in drydock to service entry. Because the USS Massachusetts skipped that step, it indicates that the boat is ready, but it’s also concerning, as it suggests that the Navy is rushing the sub through the customary process. All new U.S. Navy vessels undergo their PSA, which often requires a great deal of maintenance in a shipyard.
Any design flaws or issues are taken care of during the PSA, and while the Navy allowed the Massachusetts to skip it, it’s unlikely that no problems arose. Still, if there were concerns, they were likely minor and could be addressed during normal submarine operations. No other Virginia-class submarines skipped their PSAs, so the Navy’s decision has raised eyebrows. There are benefits beyond receiving the sub early, as freeing it from its PSA also frees up shipbuilding and maintenance facilities and personnel who can work on other vessels instead, so there are several positives resulting from this decision.
Now that the USS Massachusetts is ready to join the fleet, it brings a great deal of undersea capability to the Navy’s submarine force. The U.S. Navy’s submarine fleet is big, and it includes several different types of boats. As the 25th Virginia-class submarine and the 7th built under the Block IV program, the Massachusetts is one of the most advanced and potentially lethal subs in the world. The Virginia-class program is expected to produce 45 total boats for the U.S. Navy, though three were sold to the Royal Australian Navy with an option to purchase additional subs in the future.
The Massachusetts is an impressive vessel that displaces 7,800 tons of seawater, stretches 377 feet in length, and can reach speeds of up to 29 mph. It will be crewed by 120 enlisted submariners and 15 officers. Thanks to its nuclear reactor and auxiliary diesel engine, the Massachusetts has an unlimited range and will not require refueling. Previous nuclear-powered submarines underwent mid-life refueling at 15 years, extending a boat’s service life to 30 years after modernization upgrades and enhancements.
The Virginia-class was built specifically to eliminate this need, and it’s expected to retire after 33 years. As a Block IV vessel, the Massachusetts utilizes the Virginia Payload Tube (VPT), a revolver-type vertical launcher system, of which it has two, whereas earlier blocks used 12 vertical launch systems. Each VPT can house and fire six Tomahawk cruise missiles. The boat is also outfitted with four torpedo tubes, enhanced acoustics and stealth capabilities, and advanced combat systems that make the USS Massachusetts an impressive boat.
Talk about sticker shock. Amazon just raised the prices of some of its most popular electronics — including Kindles, Echos, Fire TVs and more — by up to 60%.
You can thank the so-called RAMageddon for the across-the-board hikes, according to a company spokesperson, who blamed the rising prices on “significant increases in memory and storage component costs.”
The hardware component shortage isn’t new. The AI industry has been gobbling up the world’s supply of memory and storage for more than a year now, hacking away at the budget laptop and smartphone industries as tech companies scramble to allocate the remaining resources in the supply chains.
Now the buck is being passed to consumers buying e-readers, smart home products and more. Amazon’s largest price hikes affected its most inexpensive electronics, making entry-level products less affordable. The Echo Dot smart speaker jumped from $50 to $80, representing a startling 60% price increase. Other base-level products, such as the starter Kindle and Fire TV Stick HD, saw price hikes of 36% and 14%, respectively.
Read more: Best Smart Home Devices of 2026: Everyday Upgrades
An Amazon spokesperson told CNET that the company is still trying to figure out more accessible pricing, but that increases were needed to account for hardware costs. “After absorbing these increases for as long as we could, we recently adjusted pricing across our product lines,” the spokesperson said.
Conspicuously missing from the recent round of price hikes were Amazon’s Ring doorbell cameras. The $220 Echo Studio smart speaker was also spared from a price increase, though almost every other Echo product saw a hike of between 10% and 60%.
Amazon is far from the only company raising prices in response to the supply chain squeeze. Gamers have been brutalized by back-to-back console price increases and an ugly Steam Machine starting price. Folks looking for a new laptop have been routinely pummeled year-round.
Other smart home companies have struggled to keep up with rising component costs, too — which means consumers are besieged on all sides by rising consumer tech prices. Roku, a direct competitor to Amazon’s Fire TV streaming products, raised its prices by up to 60% just last month. Apple recently raised the price of its HomePod Mini smart speaker by 30%, and there are likely more price hikes on the way.
Here’s a full list of Amazon’s recent electronics price increases, by product type:
Product name
Former price
New price
Echo Dot (5th Gen)
$50
$80
Echo Spot
$80
$110
Echo Dot Max
$100
$120
Echo Show 8
$180
$200
Echo Show 11
$220
$250
Echo Show 15
$300
$350
Echo Show 21
$400
$500
Fire TV Stick HD
$35
$40
Fire TV Stick 4K Max
$60
$85
Kindle (16 GB)
$110
$150
Kindle Paperwhite (16GB)
$160
$200
Eero 7 (3-pack)
$350
$400
Eero Pro 7 (3-pack)
$700
$800
Raspberry Pi has published an official guide for building a cyberdeck, leaning into a viral trend of homemade portable computers built from repurposed cases, purses, and other oddball hardware. The guide uses a Raspberry Pi 5, keyboard, battery, and Pelican-style case. The Verge reports: Raspberry Pi’s head of social, Ashley Whittaker, acknowledged the cyberdeck trend today, saying “we haven’t been able to get away from cyberdecks this year.” Raspberry Pi has also increased its prices multiple times this year due to rising costs for RAM and other components, which could be another reason to support this growing market of active and would-be hobbyists. The 16GB version of the Raspberry Pi 5 included in the company’s official cyberdeck guide got a $100 price hike in April, nearly as much as the board’s original $120 price.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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