I come from a car family, the kind that always had four or five vehicles in various states of “restoration.” Changing your own oil in my house was not only a rite of passage but a duty—proof that you were self-sufficient and economical, not, as my uncle would say, a “handy-man.” (“I open my wallet and hand over my credit card!” he’d roar.)

Suffice it to say, I changed my own oil for most of my adult life until about eight years ago, when I bought my first new hybrid SUV. Opening the hood for the first time, I saw an arrangement of black plastic rectangles, not the discrete auto parts I recognized. I didn’t know how to change the oil, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to figure it out. I was (and still am) a working parent, and I always appreciate having another chore taken off my plate.

The nearest oil change facility to my house turned out to be a Valvoline Instant Oil Change, and I have been going there ever since, for both that same hybrid SUV and a second one I bought a few years later. Hybrid vehicles require fully synthetic oil, which costs about twice as much per quart as conventional oil, so having the oil changed by a shop is typically worth it when factoring in the labor—especially if you have a Valvoline Instant Oil Change coupon.

Valvoline may be best known for its line of retail automotive products like oil and additives, but it also operates 2,100 US locations of Valvoline Instant Oil Change garages, which perform oil changes at up to 50 percent less than most car dealerships. And faster, too—usually around half an hour in my experience. If you, too, would like to have your oil changed quickly and inexpensively, or get some cash off some quarts of motor oil if you’re still DIY-ing, check out our Valvoline coupons and deals below.

Valvoline Advanced Full Synthetic 5W-30 Engine Oil

Get $10 Off Full-Service Conventional Oil Change

If you have a basic, non-hybrid vehicle driven under normal conditions (infrequent stop-and-go traffic, no towing), you’re in luck—your oil change will already be relatively inexpensive. It will be even cheaper with this $10-off Valvoline coupon, which includes 5 quarts of Valvoline brand motor oil (diesel quarts may vary), a filter, lube and maintenance check, and tax. Print it or save it to your phone so you have it next time you’re out and about. Not valid with other offers or customer-supplied oil (at that point, you may as well do it yourself).

Unlock $15 Off with Valvoline Blend Oil Change Coupon

This is the coupon I personally use when I get my oil changed. In fact, I’m printing it out right now! Synthetic and synthetic blend oils are best for hybrid vehicles, luxury vehicles, vehicles subjected to a lot of stop-and-go traffic, trucks that tow, or any car with an engine that needs a little TLC. Because synthetic oil is engineered to be more consistent and uniform, it provides better temperature stability and cleaning power, leading to less wear and tear on an engine. It is also, of course, more expensive than conventional oil, so this Valvoline coupon offers a little more off—$15 as opposed to $10. Like the offer above, this Valvoline coupon is good for up to 5 quarts of Valvoline oil, a filter, lube and maintenance check, and tax.

Save 25% When You Subscribe and Save

When you buy more at Valvoline, you save more. One of the easiest ways to save is to buy in bulk, which is especially cost-effective if you have multiple cars or a family with several cars. When you purchase multiple units of motor oil, gear oil, or transmission fluid, you’ll receive a larger discount the more you buy, up to 25% off.

Valvoline Promo Code: $5 Off

Do you change your own oil and shop at a farm store, such as Fleet Farm, Blains, Rural King, Bomgaars, Theisen, Farm King, Quincy, L&M, Runnings, Buchheit, Family Farm & Home, Tractor Supply, or Norby’s? If so, you can get a $5 rebate with the purchase of five quarts of any Valvoline Motor Oil or 1 gallon of Premium Blue Heavy Diesel Engine Oil. Limit 3.

Find Your Nearest Valvoline Oil Change

There’s a reason Valvoline is a go-to for convenient, one-stop oil changes. With more than 2,100 locations nationwide, it’s likely there’s a Valvoline within twenty minutes of you. You can even check online—enter your location on the map and it’ll instantly show the nearest locations, so you and your car can hit the road again. Be sure to check Valvoline’s offers, which often include several oil change coupons so you can save big on your next Valvoline Instant Oil Change. When you find an offer on the coupon page, text or email it, print it from your desktop, or save it to your mobile wallet so you have it handy for your next discounted oil change.

KRAFTON India has launched KIGI Cohort 4 to support more game developers and studios in the country. Applications open on September 22, 2026. Through KIGI, developers can get financial assistance, expert guidance, and access to global platforms as they work on their games. The new cohort will also consider projects that have moved beyond early development.

KIGI Cohort 4 Expands Support for Games at Different Stages

KIGI Cohort 4 will continue to support early-stage teams and new game concepts. However, the program is expanding its scope to include games further along in development. Mobile games in beta or soft launch can now be considered. For PC games, developers can apply with titles that have a live Steam demo. The demo should also be receiving encouraging community interest. This wider approach gives developers a chance to seek support at different stages of development.

KIGI’s Previous Cohorts and Growing Game Development Support

KIGI launched in 2023 to support emerging game development talent in India. Since then, its earlier cohorts have helped several studios move their projects forward. Studios from the first batch have already reached a successful soft launch. In the second batch, Mumbai-based studio Singular Scheme made progress. Its game, Frontier Paladin, became the first PC game to come out of KIGI and launched on Steam on April 24, 2026.

KIGI Cohort 3 received around 1,000 applications before selecting four studios. These included Xod Games Studio, EvolX Games, Ether Games, and RedDevil Studio. With Cohort 4 now open for applications, more game development teams can apply for support through the program.

What just happened? A KLM flight from Amsterdam to Curaçao returned to the Netherlands after a portable charger caught fire in the business-class cabin. The incident underscores how a small battery failure can become a major operational issue on a long-haul flight, especially when an aircraft is far from its destination. It also put a former KLM chief executive at the center of an incident that highlighted the airline industry’s growing focus on portable power banks.

The power bank belonged to Camiel Eurlings, the former chief executive of KLM. The fire started nearly six hours into the flight, while the aircraft was over the Atlantic Ocean. The device left marks on Eurlings’ business-class seat and the window blind beside it.

The timing added to the disruption. Returning to the Netherlands required passengers to retrace much of the route rather than continue to Curaçao. The delay also carried into the next day, when travelers were rebooked on another flight and eventually completed the journey without further disruption.

The diversion shows why airlines pay close attention to portable chargers and other battery-powered devices. A power bank is small, but it contains lithium-ion cells capable of storing a significant amount of energy. If a battery overheats or fails, it can produce heat, smoke, and flames in a confined cabin. Such an incident is harder to manage on a long-haul route, especially when an aircraft is already far from its destination.

Airline rules vary, but carriers have tightened their policies around power banks and charging cords in recent years. Passengers are generally instructed to stop using a device if it becomes hot or begins to smoke.

The incident drew added attention because Eurlings once led KLM. He was not simply a passenger on the diverted flight; he had previously been responsible for the airline whose aircraft was involved.

One passenger told Dutch broadcaster RTL that Eurlings was “very upset” by the disruption but described his decision as “stupid.” Another passenger said: “If you are just a passenger, such a mistake can happen. But if you have enforced the company’s house rules, then this is very strange.”

As portable chargers become standard travel gear, airlines face a difficult balance. Keeping the devices in the cabin gives crews and passengers a chance to spot overheating batteries quickly, but it also puts a potential ignition source in a crowded, enclosed space.

Image credit: RTL

From the day I started Heidi, the ambition was always bigger than writing doctor’s notes.

Dr Thomas Kelly said that on Tuesday, as the company he cofounded announced US$340m of new funding.

The money arrives in two parts. In its announcement, Heidi said Blackbird led a US$100m Series C that values the Melbourne company at US$900m. Phoenix Court, Point72 Private Investments and Headline also took part.

That price is almost double the US$465m Heidi carried last October, when Point72 led a US$65m Series B.

The other US$240m is not equity

The larger half comes from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund, and it buys no shares.

Olivia Poh reported for Bloomberg that the CVF is a debt-like instrument. General Catalyst holds no stock and no warrants in Heidi. It funds sales and marketing, then takes a capped share of the revenue that spending produces, on top of getting its money back.

Pranav Singhvi, who cofounded the fund, said it exists so companies with good unit economics can push their growth engine without spending their own balance sheet on it.

Heidi has now raised US$436.6m in total.

The numbers behind the round

Annual recurring revenue went from US$1m to US$50m in two years, reaching that mark in April.

Heidi says its product has supported more than 175 million patient visits, up from 73 million at the Series B, and more than 67 million clinical hours. It puts weekly volume at about 2.8 million patient interactions, across 110 languages and 190 countries. A year ago it counted 116 countries.

At the Series B last October, Heidi reported about two million patient interactions a week across 116 countries. Those are the figures the new ones are measured against.

Enterprise activation sits at around 62%, by the company’s own measure. Heidi employs close to 600 people.

Kelly founded the company in Melbourne with Waleed Mussa and Yu Liu. Blackbird has held a stake since the pre-seed in 2021 and leads this round.

Michael Tolo of Blackbird, which has backed the company since its pre-seed in 2021, said generic AI will not close the healthcare deficit because clinicians ignore it.

Kelly told Bloomberg the company plans to add as many as 150 staff over the next year, and to push into Asia and the Middle East.

Where Heidi already runs

In the UK, Heidi is sole supplier to NHS England Midlands, in what the company calls the largest clinical AI procurement in NHS history. In the US it is used by Beth Israel Lahey Health in Massachusetts. In New Zealand it runs in every emergency department in the country.

Australian deployments include the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, Children’s Health Queensland and Metro South Health.

Britain is buying clinical AI at scale at the moment. Palantir’s £330m NHS contract is heading for renewal with a former deputy Labour leader newly on its payroll.

What the money pays for

Kelly said the round funds a move from documentation to agents that take on clinical work under supervision. He told Bloomberg that within six to twelve months Heidi should handle most of what a doctor asks of it.

Heidi has built its own models rather than renting frontier ones. It says transcription and note generation, which account for most of its compute, now run almost entirely on in-house technology.

Beyond the scribe it has shipped Evidence, which answers clinical guideline questions and has handled more than 10 million queries since March. It has also shipped Remote, a wearable for audio capture, and Dictate.

Part of the round pays for clinical evidence, quality management systems and regulatory submissions. Heidi says it will work with regulators on the appropriate pathway.

The General Catalyst money is tied to go-to-market spending by the structure of the fund, so the equity is what pays for the rest.

Not in the UK or EU

Heidi added one line under its investor quotes. The coming product capabilities will not be available in the UK and EU. The company gave no reason and no timeline.

It does list the paperwork it holds: ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, Cyber Essentials Plus and ISO 42001, plus alignment with NHS requirements, GDPR, HIPAA and the Australian Privacy Principles.

Europe has a route for autonomous clinical AI, and it is slow. Vara spent years securing CE certification for AI that reads breast screening images without a second radiologist.

The scrutiny around clinical AI

We reported in August that NHS AI scribes were making errors in patient records, with Healthwatch raising concerns and the MHRA involved. In a separate case, an AI receptionist mishandled a stroke patient.

Heidi says every agentic decision stays under clinician control. Its clinical research team runs testing, validation and published research ahead of release.

Bloomberg points to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey in which 60% of American adults said they would be uncomfortable if their doctor relied on AI to diagnose them.

Other scribe rounds this year

Tandem Health raised $100m on 15 September to turn its own AI scribe into clinic software. That is the same amount of equity, for the same strategic move, one week earlier.

Bloomberg notes two more. Forus took $150m this month at a $3bn valuation, and Latent raised $80m earlier in the year.

Kelly’s pitch against general-purpose assistants is retention. He told Bloomberg that healthcare involves a lot of setup and configuration, and that the company’s data shows customers stay.

The World Health Organization projects a shortfall of 11 million health workers by 2030. Heidi cites that gap as the market it sells into.

Shadow IT includes hardware, software, and services running outside IT and security teams’ visibility or approval.  It can include unapproved applications employees install, browser extensions with excessive permissions, and endpoints provisioned once and never enrolled in any monitoring platform. These unmanaged assets create visibility gaps because existing security controls do not monitor them.

Many organizations rely on network discovery scans to measure asset coverage. While useful, network discovery only identifies endpoints that respond during the scan window. Powered-off devices, isolated network segments, and software that does not expose listening ports can remain invisible. As a result, network discovery measures network reachability, not monitoring coverage.

Wazuh is a free and open source security platform that unifies SIEM and XDR capabilities across endpoints and cloud workloads. It collects system inventory data directly from each monitored endpoint, allowing security teams to compare what network scans report against what the Wazuh-monitored endpoints report.

This comparison helps identify unmanaged endpoints, unauthorized software, and monitoring gaps.

Why shadow IT resists discovery

Shadow IT persists because the tools that report findings often can’t observe the assets in question. Understanding where the gaps form helps security teams decide which controls to extend.

• Unmanaged endpoints: A workstation that is reimaged and never re-enrolled, or a virtual machine built for a short-lived project and left running, produces no telemetry. It does not appear in patch reports, vulnerability findings, or alert data, because no agent is installed to monitor them.
• Unapproved applications on managed endpoints: Remote access tools, file sharing clients, and productivity utilities installed outside the approved software baseline introduce risk on endpoints that are otherwise fully monitored. The endpoints are visible, but the software running on them is not always reviewed against policy.
• Software that opens no network port: Unauthenticated network discovery can infer services from the ports a host exposes, but it cannot reliably identify software that does not listen for inbound connections. Browser extensions, locally installed utilities, and remote access tools that initiate outbound connections to a broker are not observable through that method.
• Devices that cannot run an agent: Printers, switches, IP cameras, and other network devices require inventory and monitoring methods other than an endpoint agent.

Addressing these categories requires endpoint telemetry and additional data sources for devices that cannot run an agent.

Closing the blind spot with Wazuh

Wazuh helps organizations reduce shadow IT exposure through continuous system inventory collection, centralized analysis, and correlation of inventory data with vulnerability and policy information. The following capabilities help security teams identify unmanaged assets and unauthorized software across their environment.

• Continuous system inventory: The Wazuh agent collects hardware details, operating system information, installed packages, network interfaces, listening ports, running processes, services, users, groups, and browser extensions from each monitored endpoint. The Wazuh agent on Windows endpoints additionally reports installed updates. The Wazuh agent forwards this data to the Wazuh server, which processes it and stores it in the Wazuh indexer as the endpoint’s current state. The system inventory capability is enabled by default, runs an initial scan when the Wazuh agent starts, and rescans on a configurable interval that defaults to one hour.
  

  

• Centralized visibility across the environment: Inventory data from every monitored endpoint is aggregated into dedicated indices and presented on the Wazuh dashboard under IT Hygiene, organized into Dashboard, System, Software, Processes, Network, Identity, and Services sections. Security teams can query the entire data from a single interface rather than inspecting endpoints individually. The Network section includes a Traffic tab listing the ports actively listening on each endpoint. This is a host-side view of the same information a network scan attempts to infer remotely.

• Visibility into browser extensions and endpoint services: Wazuh 4.14.0 and later collect inventory data about browser extensions, endpoint services, users, and groups. The browser extension model is unified across Windows, macOS, and Linux, allowing security teams to identify extensions with broad permissions across the estate from a single query. The services inventory normalizes Windows services alongside Linux systemd units, which helps teams find unapproved software configured to start automatically.

• Coverage for devices that cannot run a Wazuh agent: Wazuh provides agentless monitoring over SSH for routers, firewalls, switches, and Linux or BSD systems. For devices that support neither an agent nor an SSH session, the Wazuh server accepts syslog directly from network appliances and other equipment. These capabilities provide additional visibility into devices that cannot run a Wazuh agent. However, SSH and syslog monitoring provide only the information exposed by the configured commands, files, and device logs.
• Monitoring agent coverage itself: Agent enrollment status measures coverage among endpoints already registered with the Wazuh server. It does not identify unknown endpoints that were never installed or enrolled. A Wazuh agent reports one of four states: never connected, pending, active, or disconnected. Agents that enrolled but never connected indicate deployments that did not complete. An agent moves to disconnected when no keep-alive message arrives within the configured window, which defaults to 15 minutes. Reviewing these states helps security teams identify endpoints assumed to be monitored but not reporting.
• Correlating inventory against vulnerabilities and policy: Inventory data supports security decisions when compared against a reference. Wazuh vulnerability detection correlates collected software inventory with vulnerability content from the Wazuh Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) platform. It does not probe endpoints or sweep the network, so the analysis runs centrally on data the endpoints have already reported. The same inventory can be joined against external data sources to identify end-of-life software that no longer receives security updates. 

• Threat hunting across inventory data: Because inventory is stored centrally and indexed, security teams can query it during investigations rather than collecting data on demand. The Wazuh blog post Threat hunting using inventory data collected by Wazuh demonstrates this with custom rules, CDB lists of unauthorized software and ports, and queries run against the inventory. This approach surfaces assets that no single alert flags on its own.
• Detecting and removing unauthorized applications: Security teams can configure custom Wazuh rules to detect selected unauthorized applications and use a tested Active Response script to remove them from monitored endpoints. The Wazuh blog post Managing shadow IT with Wazuh covers the full configuration, including the custom detection rules and the active response script that uninstalls unapproved applications from monitored endpoints.

Conclusion

Shadow IT is a visibility problem before it is a policy problem. Organizations cannot enforce a software baseline on assets they cannot see, and network scanning alone shows only the systems that respond during a scan.

Wazuh helps reduce this visibility gap by collecting inventory from monitored endpoints and ingesting data from configured agentless sources. Endpoint inventory shows what is installed, running, and listening on each host, while agentless monitoring and syslog ingestion extend visibility to supported devices that cannot run a Wazuh agent. Wazuh agent enrollment states also help security teams measure monitoring coverage instead of assuming it. 

With this data indexed centrally, security teams can identify vulnerabilities, investigate inventory across monitored endpoints, compare software with lifecycle information, and initiate configured remediation for applications outside the approved software baseline.

Discover more about Wazuh by exploring its documentation and joining its growing community of professionals.

Sponsored and written by Wazuh.

from the modular-design dept

A theme going on many years here at Techdirt has been the idea that separating content and advertising, as was the traditional model, makes far less sense in the modern era. Audiences are no longer captive in the way they used to be, with many ways to skip advertising. Entertainment vectors are far more plentiful then they used to be, with more options for how we spend our entertainment time. Eyeballs are the currency of the day, which has led to far, far more things competing for our attention.

Given all of that, content is always some form of advertisement, intentional or otherwise, and advertising definitely better include good content or it will be ignored. On the advertising side, this means creating ads of one sort or another that are engaging and interesting. That itself can take many forms, but absurdity and humor are a common method for achieving this.

And if you want absurdity and humor, allow me to introduce you to Ikea’s approach, which was to create a Skyrim mod.

Ikea, the Swedish furniture-and-stuff giant, has released a mod for Skyrim called Kallax Storageborn: A new companion who is also a shelf, who is also voiced by Matt Berry. If you think that sounds weird, it gets weirder, because this mod doesn’t just add a companion, it includes an entirely new questline built around the character. Becoming encumbered in the game, as will inevitably happen eventually, will give you the opportunity to visit an abandoned dwemer emporium, where you’ll embark upon a quest to “unravel the origins of a mysterious master.”

During this quest, you’ll assemble Kallax Storageborn, a companion “with unfathomable storage capacity,” who can be summoned with a newly-added Thu’um—Skyrim’s famous voice of power—even when he’s not your active companion. Your ultimate goal: Tidy up the clutter plaguing the realm of Nords and Dragonborn.

Advertisement

There’s more. You can acquire the Allenblade, which is, yes, a sword styled after an Allen wrench, a common tool shipped with Ikea furniture. There’s also a helmet that is made from a meatball, a nod towards Ikea’s famous in-store Swedish meatballs.

You can see the announcement video here for yourself.

This whole thing is incredibly dumb, and I mean that in the most endearing, praising way possible, because it’s also quite smart. It’s a creative way to advertise a brand and, yes, a specific model of shelving from a furniture store. The delivery is done with Monty Python-esque silliness, a motif which fits quite comfortably in the realm of Skyrim, an otherwise very serious game. The voice production is a nice touch. It doesn’t in any way take itself seriously.

And, if you’ve played Skyrim yourself for more than an hour, you’ll know that encumbrance and inventory capacity are major, and to some annoying, challenges within the game.

So, this is advertising on a relatively low budget in a game still widely played and modded to this day, with a mod that actually addresses something some players find annoying, and does so with absurd humor and self-deprecation. And a meatball helmet.

Whatever else you think of this advertising, there’s no denying that it’s also content.

Filed Under: advertising is content, allenblade, content is advertising, kallax storageborn, skyrim

Companies: ikea