Humane on Wednesday announced a $200 price cut to its flagship product, the Ai Pin. The Bay Area startup, founded by two former Apple executives, has reportedly struggled to sell the product, which launched in April for $700.

In a message sent to its email list, Humane highlights its return policy in the new pitch. “Ai Pin starts at $499 and includes your first month of Humane Plan on us,” the company writes. “Along with a 90-day return window, it’s completely risk-free to try.”

The device was poorly received by reviewers. By August, returns of the Ai Pin had reportedly begun to outpace sales, leaving some 7,000 to 8,000 devices in the hands of users.

The company reportedly began exploring a sale in May, amid poor reviews and poorer sales.

The best iPhone for most people

$799

Apple’s baseline iPhone has a 6.1-inch screen, two rear cameras in a rearranged vertical layout, a customizable Action Button, and a new Camera Control button. It’s set to receive a score of AI software features as Apple rolls out Apple Intelligence.

The best Android phone for most people

Google’s new Pixel 9 has a slightly larger 6.3-inch OLED display than its predecessor, along with a new Tensor G4 processor, a bigger battery, 12GB of RAM, and a dual rear camera setup with a new 48-megapixel sensor for its ultrawide.

The best high-end Android phone

The Galaxy S24 Ultra is the first in the series to use a titanium frame. It also includes an integrated S Pen and upgraded camera suite, along with the biggest display in the S24 line.

The best phone for around $500

$499

Google’s latest midranger touts a whopping seven years of software support and a number of small upgrades, including Google’s speedy Tensor G3 processor, a 120Hz display, and plenty of new AI features. Read our review.

The best high-end iPhone

$999

The iPhone 16 Pro sports a new 6.3-inch OLED panel with 120Hz refresh, all of which is powered by a new A18 Pro chip. Its triple camera array features a higher-res 48MP sensor for its ultrawide lens, and there’s a new physical Camera Control button for taking pictures and operating the camera app.

The best flip phone

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 offers slight design and performance upgrades compared to the previous generation. The AI-ready Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 now comes with 12GB of RAM and a vapor chamber for cooling. It also has a new 50-megapixel camera sensor that enables 2X optical zoom.

The best folding phone

$1799

The Pixel 9 Pro Fold features a 6.3-inch outer screen and an eight-inch inner screen once it’s unfolded — both of which are larger than the original Pixel Fold. The new foldable also lays flat when opened, sports IPX8 weather resistance, and offers a thinner design than the last-gen model.

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The best phone for something completely different

The Nothing Phone 2 embraces a certain retro-infused aesthetic that’s unlike anything else you’ll find on the market. It’s not certified to work on Verizon, and its rear-panel LED light strips are more stylish than functional, but it’s a good alternative to the big Android brands.

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Other good phones

Fujitsu has launched the FMV Zero notebook, which at only 634g (1.4 lbs), looks to claim the title of the world’s lightest 14-inch laptop.

This ultra-light device is part of FCCL’s FMV LIFEBOOK UH series and features Intel’s latest Core Ultra processors with integrated AI Boost NPUs for hardware acceleration of AI services such as Copilot on Windows 11.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is preparing for its Venus Orbiter Mission (VOM) and the spacecraft is set to launch on March 29, 2028. This mission aims to explore Venus, adding to our understanding of the planet. A recent Cabinet meeting approved an interplanetary mission to Venus. ISRO will use its new heavy-lift rocket, Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (LVM-3), to send the spacecraft, named Shukrayaan-1, on a 112-day journey to the planet. The orbiter is set to arrive at Venus on July 19, 2028, highlighting India’s advancements in space exploration.

The development of the spacecraft and launch vehicle will involve various industries, creating significant job opportunities and potential technological advancements for other sectors. Additionally, the mission will collaborate with academic institutions, offering training for students involved in design, development and testing. Recently during a press briefing S. Somanath, the ISRO Chairman and Secretary of the Department of Space (DoS), had confirmed that each of the approved forthcoming missions would include participation from the private space sector. This marks one of the most significant boosts for India’s emerging space startups from the government to date.

The rocket will place the spacecraft in an Elliptical Parking Orbit (EPO), which ranges from 170 km to 36,000 km above Earth. This orbit has a specific angle and position. From there, the spacecraft will begin its journey to Venus. “The VOM will use advanced tools to explore Venus, focusing on its atmosphere, surface and geological features. The mission aims to detect any volcanic eruptions or quakes. The spacecraft will have cutting-edge instruments, including synthetic aperture radar and infrared and ultraviolet cameras,” explained Space expert Girish Linganna.

ISRO will oversee the development and launch of the spacecraft with a total budget of Rs 1,236 crore (approximaately $150 million). Out of this, Rs 824 crore is allocated for building the spacecraft.

The Shukrayaan-1 will be equipped with a range of scientific tools, such as the Venus S-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (VSAR), Venus Surface Emissivity and Atmospheric Mapper (VSEAM), Venus Thermal Camera (VTC), Venus Cloud Monitoring Camera (VCMC), Lightning Instrument for Venus (LIVE), Venus Atmospheric Spectro-Polarimeter (VASP) and Solar Occultation Photometry (SPAV).

“These instruments will assist scientists in studying Venus’s atmosphere, surface and plasma environment. The VOM is a worldwide collaboration involving such countries as Russia, Sweden, France and Germany. The Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF) will be a participant in providing the Venusian Neutrals Analyzer (VNA) to examine how the Sun’s charged particles interact with Venus’s atmosphere. On the other hand the private sector may be involved in materials procurement, supply chain management, rocket engineering, testing facilities, manufacturing units, assembly and integration, and launch operations,” added Linganna.

After travelling through space, Shukrayaan-1 will move into an orbit around Venus, ranging from 500 km to 60,000 km away. This process is called Venus Orbit Injection (VOI). Over six to eight months, a process, called aero-braking, will gradually adjust the orbit to a closer path around Venus, measuring 200 x 600 km. This new orbit will enable detailed studies of Venus’s surface and atmosphere for a planned mission lasting five years.

In an earlier analysis in THE WEEK, it was mentioned that ISRO’s VOM is expected to be one of the most challenging ones as the atmosphere of Venus is made mostly of poisonous sulphuric acid. Since Venus orbits the sun within Earth’s orbit, the planet appears to have phases like the moon. When Venus is on the opposite side of the sun, it is in full phase, while it appears in a new phase when it is between the Earth and the sun. Despite the poisonous atmosphere, a chemical called phosphine was discovered in Venus’s clouds recently. Incidentally, on Earth, phosphene is found to be produced by microbes. The study seemed to suggest that despite its extreme conditions, Venus might, after all, host life. Needless to say, the theory was disputed and alternate explanations were posited.

Linganna says landing on Venus’ surface can be an extremely challenging affair as a lander (or rover) must fall through approximately 35km (1,00,000ft) of the thick, murky lower atmosphere before the final couple of kilometres where the ground finally becomes visible from above. “During descent, the temperature starts at a comfortable 20 degrees Celsius and shoots up to 450 degrees Celsius just before reaching the surface. (A standard kitchen oven runs at about 200 degrees Celsius.) Near the surface, the air is so thick that the lander will settle to the ground much like a stone settles in water—no retrorockets or sky cranes are required,” remarked Linganna.

Google has been using artificial intelligence watermarking to automatically identify text generated by the company’s Gemini chatbot, making it easier to distinguish AI-generated content from human-written posts. That watermark system could help prevent misuse of the AI chatbots for misinformation and disinformation – not to mention cheating in school and business settings.

Now, the tech company is making an open-source version of its technique available so that other generative AI developers can similarly watermark the output from their own large language models, says Pushmeet Kohli at Google DeepMind, the company’s AI research team, which combines the former Google Brain and DeepMind labs. “While SynthID isn’t a silver bullet for identifying AI-generated content, it is an important building block for developing more reliable AI identification tools,” he says.

Independent researchers voiced similar optimism. “While no known watermarking method is foolproof, I really think this can help in catching some fraction of AI-generated misinformation, academic cheating and more,” says Scott Aaronson at The University of Texas at Austin, who previously worked on AI safety at OpenAI. “I hope that other large language model companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, will follow DeepMind’s lead on this.”

In May of this year, Google DeepMind announced that it had implemented its SynthID method for watermarking AI-generated text and video from Google’s Gemini and Veo AI services, respectively. The company has now published a paper in the journal Nature showing how SynthID generally outperformed similar AI watermarking techniques for text. The comparison involved assessing how readily responses from various watermarked AI models could be detected.

In Google DeepMind’s AI watermarking approach, as the model generates a sequence of text, a “tournament sampling” algorithm subtly nudges it toward selecting certain word “tokens”, creating a statistical signature that is detectable by associated software. This process randomly pairs up possible word tokens in a tournament-style bracket, with the winner of each pair being determined by which one scores highest according to a watermarking function. The winners move through successive tournament rounds until just one remains – a “multi-layered approach” that “increases the complexity of any potential attempts to reverse-engineer or remove the watermark”, says Furong Huang at the University of Maryland.

A “determined adversary” with huge amounts of computational power could still remove such AI watermarks, says Hanlin Zhang at Harvard University. But he described SynthID’s approach as making sense given the need for scalable watermarking in AI services.

The Google DeepMind researchers tested two versions of SynthID that represent trade-offs between making the watermark signature more detectable, at the expense of distorting the text typically generated by an AI model. They showed that the non-distortionary version of the AI watermark still worked, without noticeably affecting the quality of 20 million Gemini-generated text responses during a live experiment.

But the researchers also acknowledged that the watermarking works best with longer chatbot responses that can be answered in a variety of ways – such as generating an essay or email – and said it has not yet been tested on responses to maths or coding problems.

Both Google DeepMind’s team and others described the need for additional safeguards against misuse of AI chatbots – with Huang recommending stronger regulation as well. “Mandating watermarking by law would address both the practicality and user adoption challenges, ensuring a more secure use of large language models,” she says.

There are a lot of cloud storage services out there, and while a lot of folks probably rely on things like Google Drive and One Drive, it’s important to keep a local backup of your data still just to be sure. Luckily, external hard drives are still pretty common and have only improved in the past few years. In fact, some of them can even be connected directly to a phone, which can be a great benefit given a lot of the best phones on the market don’t come with a large amount of storage. So, whether you’ve taken advantage of one of the laptop deals or just want to grab yourself one of the best external hard drives out there, then there’s probably an option for you.

That’s why we’ve collected some of our favorite external hard drive deals below, although if you aren’t too keen on lugging around an external hard drive, there are a lot of solid internal SSD deals you can check out. Also, if you have a PS5, then you may consider expanding that storage too with these PS5 SSD deals.

LaCie Rugged Mini 2TB portable hard drive — $90 $100 10% off

If you have a lot of digital files you need to access while on the go or out in the field, LaCie’s Rugged Mini external hard drive has been where people like you have turned for years now. It’s available in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities, with this 2TB model often seeing a discount. The LaCie Rugged Mini is shock resistant up to four feet, and it’s dust and water resistant for all-terrain use. It connects to your laptop or other device via USB 3.0, which is up to four times faster than USB 2.0.

Western Digital My Passport 4TB portable hard drive — $121 $130 7% off

Western Digital has long been making affordable, portable, and mostly reliable external hard drives for some time. Its My Passport lineup is one of the most portable external hard drives out there, and though it utilizes spinning drives as opposed to solid state technology, that’s one of the things that makes these external drives so affordable. You can get a ton of storage space for cheap with a My Passport, with this 4TB model being a sweet spot in terms of pricing.

Seagate 6TB portable expansion hard drive — $132 $160 18% off

Seagate is the brand to turn to if you’re in search of as much portable hard drive space you can get your hands on for as little cost as possible. These portable drives reach up to 18 TB in capacity, and we picked the 6 TB model for a great value play. This hard drive is designed to work with Mac or PC and connects to devices via an included USB 3.0 cable. And if you have any concerns about whether such an affordable drive offers much reliability, you can purchase it knowing it’s backed by Seagate’s 1-year rescue service.

Crucial X9 Pro 2TB — $170 $200 18% off

The Crucial X9 Pro is a great alternative if you don’t care so much about RG and want something fast and powerful that still comes with the latest USB 3.2 Gen2 standard. It has 2TB of storage, which is not too bad for the price, while having a read/write speed of 1,050 Mbps. It’s also relatively durable, able to handle a drop of up to 7.5 feet, so you should feel comfortable carrying it in a bag if you’re constantly on the move, while the 256-bit AES hardware encryption means that your files are safe, even if you do lose it.

Seagate FireCuda Gaming 8TB — $168 $220 24% off

If you have a gaming setup that’s full of RGB and you want to add a little bit to it while still extending your hard drive space, then you should absolutely grab this 8TB Seagate FireCuda Gaming. It has a customizable LED under the bottom lip of the hard drive, and it even comes with the latest 3.2 gen USB standard, so you can game off of it directly on your PC or older console. While you hopefully won’t need it, it also comes with 3-years of data recovery service, which is a nice plus at this price bracket.

Samsung T7 Shield 2TB — $180 $285 37% off

Another great option for a rugged external hard drive is the Samsung T7 Shield, which takes the standard T7 model and wraps it in a resistant shell, giving it an IP65 rating and some defense against the element. As such, it’s a great option if you’re always on the road and need storage out in the wild, or at a concert. It’s also pretty fast, with a read speed up to 1,050 Mbps and a write speed up to 1,000 Mbps so if you have to transfer large files quickly, it’s perfect. Just be aware that you need a My Best Buy Plus membership to get access to the deal.

WD BLACK D10 8TB — $190 $270 30% off

Western Digital Black hard drives are known for being excellent gaming HDDs, so if you need something that’s both high performance and high capacity, you can’t go wrong with this WD BLACK D10. It has a whopping 8TB of storage and rotates at 7200 rpm, giving you a read/write speed of around 250Mbps. While that’s not as fast as an SSD, the capacity is much cheaper if you try to buy the same capacity SSD, and if you aren’t playing the latest AAA games, that’s still pretty fast.

WD easystore 14TB — $270 $310 13% off

Sometimes, it’s all about storing a huge amount of files, and instead of going with something like a NAS, which can take a lot of space, the WD easystore is a great solution. While the deal we’ve picked has 14TB of storage, you can find models up to a rather dizzying 22 TB. That said, you do have to make some compromises, such as the fact that the WD easystore only has USB 3.0, so it’s not as fast as some other HDDs and SSDs on the list, and it’s also rather big and heavy, sitting at 32.6 ounces. Even so, if your primary interest is just pure storage space, it’s hard to compete with the WD easystore for compactness. You can also get an extra $20 off with a My Best Buy Plus membership, bringing it down to just $250.

More external hard drive deals

If you’re looking for as much storage as possible, one of today’s best external hard drive deals is on the Western Digital Easystore external hard drive. It comes in with a whopping 22TB of storage space and an impressive price point of just $400. This is a savings of $200 from its regular price of $600. Many of the best SSDs also make a great external storage option, as they’re even more portable than external drives with spinning disks, as well as much faster. The 2TB SanDisk Extreme Pro external SSD is seeing an impressive discount of $120 right now, bringing its price down from $295 to just $175.

External hard drive deals FAQ

The first two steps of choosing an external hard drive are setting your budget and determining what size you need. As cheap as storage is per gigabyte nowadays, the classic trade-off of hard drive size versus portability still holds; basically, is your primary consideration storage space or physical size? If your external hard drive is for home and office use at a single workstation and will more or less sit in one place, then storage space is more valuable than mobility. If, on the other hand, you’re frequently ferrying data around from one PC to the next, then a portable hard drive might be a better choice, even if you’re sacrificing some storage space for a smaller footprint.

What exactly you are using your hard drive for will also factor into your purchase decision. If your external HDD or SSD is just for file storage, then this is rather simple, but if you’re going to be regularly reading and writing to your external storage (for example, doing video editing right from the drive itself rather than from your computer’s system drive), you’ll want to be sure you get something that has good read and write speeds and that uses up-to-date connectivity standards such as USB 3.0. For more details about external hard drive designs and features to look for when making your purchase decision, read on.

HDD vs. SSD

Storage drives mostly fall into two main categories: traditional hard drives, or HDDs, and solid-state drives, or SSDs. Most hard drives, until recently, were mechanical HDDs. These have moving disks (called platters) inside, where the data itself is written and read. These traditional hard drives have largely fallen out of favor for use as system drives, but their larger capacities and much cheaper per-gigabyte cost means they are still a very popular choice for external storage use.

In recent years we have witnessed the solid-state drive revolution. These drives are basically a type of flash memory, where data is written onto chips rather than magnetic platters — that means no moving parts, which in turn means faster read/write speeds as well as (in theory) increased long-term reliability. However, these drives are typically smaller and considerably more expensive per gigabyte than HDDs; the trade-off is that they are what you’ll typically find when looking for portable external hard drives that are small enough to carry around in your pocket.

There are also hybrid hard drives, sometimes called SSHDs. These hybrid drives are essentially HDDs that feature built-in flash storage (usually a fairly small amount) where your most-used files are stored and read, combining much of the responsiveness of SSDs with the larger storage capacity of HDDs. These could be worth the price if you need the boosted storage of an HDD but expect to actively read and write to the external drive a lot.

Are all external hard drives SSDs?

Pretty much any hard drive can be used as an external drive with an appropriate hard drive enclosure, and these are available as both SSDs and HDDs. Although SSDs are quickly replacing HDDs for use as internal system drives (the hard drive inside your PC where your operating system and other software are installed), HDDs still remain hugely popular for external use since they are much, much cheaper per gigabyte and thus give you a lot more storage capacity for your dollar.

Are external hard drives reliable?

An external hard drive is simply any HDD or SSD — just like the ones found in laptops and desktop PCs — that’s inside an external enclosure. This enclosure features some means of connecting the hard drive to your computer or another device, usually a USB port, and may also (depending on its size) have some sort of power adapter. What that means is that an external hard drive will be about as reliable as any internal hard drive so long as it comes from a reputable manufacturer. Stick with proven makers like Western Digital, Seagate, SanDisk, Samsung, and Kingston, and your data should be in safe waters.

Are external hard drives fast?

A very important thing to consider is read and write speeds (the speeds at which data is downloaded from and uploaded to the hard drive), but this is less of a potential pitfall than it was in the past. Even traditional rotary hard drives (HDDs) offer pretty solid read/write speeds today, with 7,200rpm being the standard. Be sure to double-check this and avoid any that use the older 5,400rpm standard, although these are less common now. Solid-state drives naturally offer the best read/write speeds, but, as explained above, offer the least value per gigabyte.

Also, don’t overlook connection speeds. The fastest read/write speeds will be bottlenecked when transferring data over a connection that uses an older standard like USB 2.0. Make sure your external hard drive uses at least USB 3.0 (which is about ten times faster than USB 2.0 by comparison).

Do external hard drives need power?

Hard drives are electronic devices that need power from some external source, but that’s not to say that all external hard drives need to be plugged into a wall. Most can typically draw enough power over the same USB connection that they use for transferring data, but larger HDDs may require an external AC adapter that will come with the hard drive. This isn’t a huge problem for most but it is something to be aware of if power outlets are prime real estate where you’re going to be setting up your drive.

Looking for more great stuff? Find tech discounts and much more on our curated deals page.