The Beats Studio Pro is down to $169.95 at Amazon right now in a limited-time deal, which is $180 off the $349.99 list price. That’s a 51% cut on a pair of over-ear headphones that offer active noise canceling, 40-hour battery life, and USB-C lossless audio in a package that works equally well with Apple and Android devices. It’s a lot to like at under $170.

What you’re getting

The Studio Pro is the most fully featured headphone Beats has put out, and a lot of that comes down to the USB-C lossless audio capability, which is a genuine differentiator at this price. When wired, you’re bypassing Bluetooth compression entirely and getting a cleaner signal, which matters if you’re connecting to a laptop or a device with a USB-C port and care about audio quality beyond casual listening.

Wireless performance is covered by both Bluetooth 5.3 and Apple’s proprietary one-tap pairing, so switching between an iPhone and an Android device is straightforward rather than a hassle. The active noise canceling handles everyday environments well, and the transparency mode is useful enough to actually use rather than ignore. Battery life sits at 40 hours with ANC off and around 24 hours with it on, either of which is comfortably above average for this category.

The build is comfortable for extended wear, with plush ear cushions and an adjustable headband that doesn’t feel cheap. Beats has cleaned up the design considerably from earlier Studio models, and the result is a headphone that travels well and looks the part.

Why it’s worth it

At $349.99, the Studio Pro has to justify itself against the Sony WH-1000XM5 and Bose QuietComfort 45, and that’s a hard conversation. At $169.95, it’s operating in a different bracket entirely, and nothing else at this price matches the combination of lossless wired audio, solid ANC, and seamless dual-ecosystem compatibility. This is a limited-time price, so it’s worth moving on sooner rather than later.

The bottom line

The Beats Studio Pro at $169.95 is one of the more well-rounded headphone deals available right now. You’re getting ANC, 40-hour battery life, USB-C lossless audio, and broad device compatibility at half the usual asking price, which is the kind of discount that makes this an easy call before the deal expires.

The FBI is asking gamers who installed Steam titles containing malware to provide information as part of an ongoing investigation into eight malicious games uploaded to the gaming platform.

In a notice published today by the FBI’s Seattle Division, the agency said it is attempting to identify individuals who were affected after installing one of the malicious games on Steam between May 2024 and January 2026.

“The FBI’s Seattle Division is seeking to identify potential victims installing Steam games embedded with malware. The FBI believes the threat actor primarily targeted users between the timeframe of May 2024 and January 2026,” reads the notice.

“In the investigation, several games have been identified to include, BlockBlasters, Chemia, Dashverse/DashFPS, Lampy, Lunara, PirateFi, and Tokenova.”

“If you and/or your minor dependent(s) were victimized from installing one of these games or have information relevant to this investigation, please fill out this short form.”

The questionnaire indicates that the FBI is focused on cryptocurrency theft and account hijacks after the installation of the malware, asking questions about cryptocurrency transactions, compromised accounts, and stolen funds.

The form also asks for any screenshots of communications with individuals who promoted the games, which could help investigators track the stolen cryptocurrency and trace it to those who distributed the malware.

“The FBI is legally mandated to identify victims of federal crimes it investigates. Victims may be eligible for certain services, restitution, and rights under federal and/or state law. All identities of victims will be kept confidential,” the FBI told BleepingComputer.

“The website and email listed in the mass notifications sent on March 12, 2026, are official and authorized by the FBI. At this time, the FBI is unable to provide specific details beyond the information referenced on the website in the email notification to customers.”

The FBI is also asking anyone who knows someone who may have been affected to encourage them to submit an inquiry to Steam_Malware@fbi.gov. 

BleepingComputer also sent questions to Valve about the investigation, but did not receive a reply to our email.

Malware hidden in Steam games

Multiple malicious games discovered on Steam over the past two years have distributed information-stealing malware designed to harvest credentials, cryptocurrency wallets, and other sensitive data from players’ devices.

One of the most notable cases involved BlockBlasters, a free-to-play 2D platformer available on Steam from July to September 2024. While initially uploaded to Steam as a clean program, cryptodrainer malware was later added to the game.

News that the Steam game was malicious was revealed during a livestream by video game streamer Raivo Plavnieks (RastalandTV), who was raising money for cancer treatment.

After downloading the verified Steam game, the streamer reported losing more than $32,000 from his cryptocurrency wallet.

Blockchain investigator ZachXBT later estimated that attackers stole roughly $150,000 from 261 Steam accounts. Cybersecurity researcher VX-Underground later reported a higher count of 478 victims.

In the malicious Chemia survival crafting game, a threat actor known as EncryptHub added the HijackLoader malware, which downloaded the Vidar information stealer. It was later discovered that the game also installed EncryptHub’s custom Fickle Stealer malware, which steals credentials, browser data, cookies, and cryptocurrency wallets.

The PirateFi game also distributed the Vidar infostealer and was available on Steam for about a week in February 2025. Up to 1,500 users may have downloaded the game before it was removed from Steam.

Steam later warned players who launched the game that malicious files may have been executed on their computers and advised them to run antivirus scans, review installed software, and consider reinstalling their operating system.

Malware is getting smarter. The Red Report 2026 reveals how new threats use math to detect sandboxes and hide in plain sight.

Download our analysis of 1.1 million malicious samples to uncover the top 10 techniques and see if your security stack is blinded.

Download The Report

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Does today’s date seem memorable to you? If so, today’s NYT Strands puzzle might be easy. Some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story. 

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: A math teacher’s favorite dessert.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: 3.14

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

• RITE, SPIT, TIPS, STAT, STATE, GIVE, RUST, FINE, LAZE, SURE, PEAL

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

• VENT, CRUST, FRUIT, EDGES, GLAZE, FILLING, LATTICE

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is HAPPYPIDAY. To find it, start with the H that’s six rows down and three to the right from the upper-left corner, and make — well, a pie shape.

“5G” is an umbrella term that encompasses the current fifth-generation cellular wireless network technologies. All the major carriers and phones support 5G connections, which can offer faster data speeds than older technologies such as 4G LTE or 3G.

Essentially there are three types of 5G: Millimeter-wave (mmWave), which can be fast but has limited range; low-band 5G, which has slower speeds but works on a broader range; and midband, which is a balance between the two that’s faster than low-band but also covers a larger range than millimeter-wave. Midband also incorporates C-band, a batch of spectrum auctioned off by the Federal Communications Commission in 2021.

Your phone’s 5G connection depends on which type blankets the area you’re in, as well as other factors, such as population density and infrastructure. For instance, mmWave is super fast, but its signals can be thwarted by buildings, glass, leaves, or by being inside of a structure.

When your device is connected to a 5G network, it can show up as several variations such as 5G, 5G Plus, 5G UW or others, depending on the carrier. Here’s a list of icons you see at the top of your phone for the major services:

AT&T: 5GE (which isn’t actually 5G, but rather a sly marketing name for 4G LTE), 5G (low band), 5G Plus (mmWave, midband)

Verizon: 5G (low band, also called “Nationwide 5G”), 5G UW/5G UWB (midband and mmWave, also called “5G Ultra Wideband”)

T-Mobile: 5G (low band), 5G UC (midband and mmWave, also called “Ultra Capacity 5G”)

There’s also 5G Reduced Capacity (5G RedCap), which is a lower-power, smaller-capacity branch of 5G used by devices such as smartwatches and portable health devices; the Apple Watch Ultra 3, for example, connects via 5G RedCap.

Just around the corner is 5G Advanced, promising much faster speeds due to carrier aggregation, or combining multiple spectrums.

Legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg spoke out against the use of AI technology when used in creative endeavors in an interview at the SXSW conference in Austin on Friday. Asked how he viewed AI’s utility as part of the filmmaking process, Spielberg said, “I’ve never used AI on any of my films yet,” to which the audience erupted with cheers and applause.

The director/producer/screenwriter, who became a household name for blockbusters like “Jaws,” “E.T.,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and many others, is not anti-technology, necessarily. His own films have imagined worlds filled with technology, for both good and bad, like “Minority Report,” “Ready Player One,” and, of course, “A.I. Artificial Intelligence,” to name a few.

At SXSW 2026, Spielberg said he didn’t want to go on a rant about A.I., noting that he was for the technology “in many disciplines,” but in his writers’ rooms, even in TV, “there’s not an empty chair with a laptop in front of it.” Meaning, he’s not outsourcing creativity to the machine.

“I am not for AI if it replaces a creative individual,” he said.

Of course, someone like Spielberg may not need an AI assist. AI startups are pitching themselves to resource-constrained indie filmmakers. Elsewhere, big names in streaming are also looking to use AI. Amazon this year said it’s testing tools for AI in film and TV production, and Netflix earlier this month acquired Ben Affleck’s AI filmmaking company for a reported $600 million.

Amazon is updating its ad-free streaming offering by introducing Prime Video Ultra, a new subscription tier designed for viewers who want to watch content on Prime Video without advertisements. The move formalizes and expands the platform’s ad-free option while also introducing updated pricing and subscription choices for users.

A New Premium Ad-Free Tier

Prime Video Ultra will officially launch on April 10, offering subscribers the ability to remove advertisements from their streaming experience for an additional $4.99 per month. The new plan is not a standalone service; users must already have either a Prime membership or a Prime Video subscription to access it.

Currently, the Prime Video benefit is included within Amazon’s broader Prime membership, which costs $14.99 per month or $139 per year. With the introduction of Prime Video Ultra, customers who want to watch Prime Video without ads will need to add the $4.99 monthly upgrade on top of their existing subscription.

Amazon is also offering a discounted yearly option for customers with an annual Prime membership. These users can choose the Prime Video Ultra annual plan priced at $45.99, which represents approximately a 23 percent discount compared to paying the monthly rate.

The updated structure gives viewers more flexibility in choosing whether they want the standard ad-supported experience or a premium ad-free version.

Why Amazon Is Making The Change

The launch of Prime Video Ultra reflects a growing trend in the streaming industry. Many major platforms have introduced ad-supported tiers in recent years as companies look for new revenue streams while keeping subscription prices relatively stable.

By offering both ad-supported and ad-free options, Amazon can serve a broader range of customers. Viewers who want to keep costs low can continue using the ad-supported version, while those who prefer uninterrupted streaming can pay an additional fee for the premium experience.

For Amazon, the strategy also helps balance rising content production costs while maintaining competitive pricing within the crowded streaming market.

What do you get with Prime Video Ultra?

There are a few differences between the usual Prime Video tier (with ads) and the Amazon Ultra tier. The basic subscription only allows 100 downloads for offline viewing and limits streaming to 4 screens, while the Ultra package enables 100 downloads and five streaming screens. Another crucial difference is that Prime Video Ultra is currently limited to subscribers in the US only.

More importantly, benefits such as 4K/UHD content, and Dolby Atmos audio output are now locked to the Prime Video Ultra tier. Dolby Vision and HDR content output is available across both tiers of Prime Video. Likewise, all the licensed catalog of films and TV shows, as well as originals such as “Fallout,” “Reacher,” and “The Boys,” will be available for all subscribers.

What It Means For Viewers

For Prime members and Prime Video subscribers, the introduction of Prime Video Ultra provides more control over how they watch content. Users who find advertisements disruptive during movies or TV shows now have the option to remove them for a relatively small monthly fee.

The new pricing structure also highlights the value proposition of Amazon’s broader Prime ecosystem. Since Prime Video remains included with a full Prime membership, subscribers still receive additional benefits such as free shipping, gaming perks, and exclusive deals alongside the streaming service.

Those who prefer a yearly payment option may find the $45.99 annual plan attractive, particularly since it offers a 23 percent savings compared to paying monthly.

What Comes Next For Prime Video

The introduction of Prime Video Ultra may signal further changes to Amazon’s streaming strategy as the company continues to compete with services such as Netflix, Disney+, and Max.

As streaming platforms experiment with different subscription models, additional tiers and pricing structures could emerge in the future. Amazon is also expected to continue investing heavily in original programming and exclusive content to attract new subscribers.

For now, Prime Video Ultra gives viewers a clearer choice between a lower-cost ad-supported experience and a premium ad-free option – allowing them to tailor their streaming setup to match their viewing preferences.

The Claude Partner Network launches as Anthropic fights the Pentagon in court, and doubles down on the commercial relationships that matter most.

There is a particular kind of defiance in the timing. On the same week that Anthropic was seeking an emergency stay from a US appeals court over the Pentagon’s decision to label it a national security risk, the company quietly announced something far more commercially significant: a $100 million commitment to a new partner programme designed to make Claude the default AI platform for the world’s largest enterprises.

The Claude Partner Network, launched on 12 March 2026, is a formalisation of the web of consulting and professional services relationships Anthropic has been quietly assembling over the past year. Accenture, Deloitte, Cognizant, and Infosys are among the anchor partners.

The network offers training, dedicated technical support, joint go-to-market investment, and a new technical certification, all free to join for any organisation bringing Claude to market.

The $100 million investment is for 2026, with Anthropic signalling it expects to spend more in subsequent years. A significant portion flows directly to partners as support for training, sales enablement, and co-marketing. The company is also scaling its partner-facing headcount fivefold, adding dedicated Applied AI engineers for live customer deals, technical architects for complex deployments, and localised go-to-market support across international markets.

“Anthropic is the most committed AI company in the world to the partner ecosystem, and we’re putting $100 million behind that this year to prove it. Our partners are instrumental in getting enterprises from proof of concept to production with Claude, and we’re making sure they have everything they need to do it.”

So said Steve Corfield, Anthropic’s head of global business development and partnerships, in the launch announcement. Corfield, who joined Anthropic from Salesforce where he was executive vice president for global alliances, has spent the past year building an enterprise channel from near-scratch, and the scale of some of the commitments now attached to it is striking.

Accenture, which formalised a dedicated Anthropic Business Group in December 2025, is training 30,000 of its professionals on Claude. Cognizant has opened Claude access across its entire global workforce of roughly 350,000 associates and is embedding it into client modernisation engagements.

Infosys integrated Claude and Claude Code into its agentic AI platform in February. Deloitte joined the network as an enterprise AI deployment partner. Together, these firms represent much of the global consulting infrastructure through which large organisations adopt new technology platforms, a channel that OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft have each spent years cultivating.

Anthropic’s pitch is that it is catching up fast, and investing to catch up faster. The company claims its enterprise market share grew from 24% to 40% between the formation of its Accenture partnership and earlier this year, though this figure appears in Anthropic’s own communications and has not been independently verified.

Partners joining the network now gain access to a Partner Portal with Anthropic Academy training materials and internal sales playbooks, and can be listed in a publicly searchable Services Partner Directory for enterprise buyers.

A first technical certification, Claude Certified Architect, Foundations, is available immediately for solution architects building production applications with Claude. Additional certifications for sellers, architects, and developers are planned for later in 2026.

Anthropic has also released a Code Modernisation starter kit targeting what it describes as one of the highest-demand enterprise workloads: migrating legacy codebases and addressing accumulated technical debt. It is a deliberate focus.

Claude Code, Anthropic’s agentic coding product, has become the fastest-growing part of the company’s commercial portfolio, and the starter kit gives partners a structured entry point for exactly the type of engagements that tend to grow into larger deployments.

The backdrop to all of this is the Pentagon dispute, an extraordinary set of circumstances that has seen Anthropic become, as of early March 2026, the first American company ever to be designated a national security supply-chain risk, a label historically reserved for foreign adversaries.

The designation followed the collapse of negotiations over whether the US military could use Claude for fully autonomous weapons and domestic mass surveillance, two uses Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei has said he cannot in good conscience permit.

Anthropic has filed two lawsuits challenging the designation and sought an emergency stay from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing the action is ‘unprecedented and unlawful’ and risks hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in lost revenue.

Corfield acknowledged the dispute directly to CRN, noting that the supply-chain risk designation’s narrow scope means the vast majority of Anthropic’s commercial customers, including those working with AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft, remain unaffected.

All three cloud providers have confirmed they can continue offering Claude through their platforms for non-defence work. ‘For us, outside of the DoD stuff, it’s very much business as usual,’ Corfield said.

That framing matters, because the Claude Partner Network is precisely about building the non-government commercial relationships that constitute Anthropic’s long-term moat. Claude is currently the only frontier AI model available across all three major cloud providers, AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft, a distribution advantage that rivals have not yet matched.

The partner programme is an attempt to translate that infrastructure position into embedded enterprise deployments: the kind that are expensive to move, produce recurring revenue, and make the underlying AI platform structurally difficult to displace.

Whether the $100 million is enough to close the gap with competitors who have years of channel-building behind them is an open question. But the timing, launched into the teeth of a federal legal battle, on the same day Anthropic’s Pentagon litigation was generating global headlines, suggests a company that is betting the commercial story is bigger than the political one.

from the ranch-dressing-ass-immigration-policy dept

Roughly a year ago — as Trump was trying to turn anti-genocide protests into deportable antisemitism — his administration made it clear it was only willing to support white people with antisemitic views. The administration threw some anti-Israel filters into the mix for DHS vetting of incoming migrants, blending them with the anti-Trump filters that equated opposing Trump and his open bigotry with hating America.

But the administration gave some antisemites a free pass… if they were white enough.

One of the white Afrikaners brought into the US as refugees by the Trump administration this week has a history of antisemitic social media posts, despite the White House using alleged antisemitism as a rationale for deporting pro-Palestinian protesters.

Charl Kleinhaus posted on X in 2023 that “Jews are untrustworthy and a dangerous group.” In another post last fall, he shared a rightwing, nationalist YouTube video that was later removed, titled: “‘We’ll shoot ILLEGAL Immigrants!’ – Poland’s Illegal Islamic immigrant solution,” with clapping emojis.

A number of Kleinhaus’s posts also promote the conspiracy theory that white people in South Africa are being particularly persecuted.

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Trump apparently believes white South Africans are so extremely persecuted (after decades of subjugating Black South Africans), they deserve to avail themselves of everything offered by the Land of the Free. Trump wants incoming whites so badly he’s willing to rewrite the rules to flood the zone with new bigots.

The U.S. aims to process 4,500 refugee applications from white South Africans per month, far above President Donald Trump’s stated refugee program cap, and is installing trailers on embassy property in Pretoria to support the effort, a U.S. contracting document said.

The new target, contained in a previously unreported document from the U.S. State Department dated January 27, signals a push to ramp up admissions from South Africa, while refugee applications from other areas have been severely curtailed.

Notably, this isn’t a free pass for any South African. The document apparently extends this to whites only, which is a hell of a thing to do in this day and age. I have to imagine even the most racist of Afrikaners might balk a bit at boarding a plane where non-whites are being ejected over whatever country the plane flies over on its way to Land of Opportunity.

No one ever said this administration is clever. But it’s not accurate to call it stupid. It’s something else entirely: a collection of shitbirds who are so contemptuous of everyone else in the nation that it will stroke itself off publicly and shrug off complaints with non-sequiturs liberally peppered with phrases like “leftist media” or “activist judges.”

This administration will not only piss down your leg and tell you it’s raining, but swing by later to bitch about people “illegally” benefiting from the uninvited precipitation. It’s shit stacked on shit stacked on shit topped off by wedding cake figurines standing on the necks of fallen lawn jockeys.

If you want this to be your nation, please get the fuck out. Get your Fourth Reich on elsewhere, you absolute mooks. And I dare you explain how THIS isn’t pure racism, especially when you’ve gone all in on the “get the foreigners out” purge this government has been engaged in since Trump returned to the Oval Office.

Filed Under: bigotry, immigration, mass deportation, racism, south africa, trump administration, white nationalism