I used to be a big SmartThings user back in the day. Powered by its hub, it was the powerhouse of smart home automation, but since Samsung has moved away from the Classic app and the hub is now made by Aeotec, it has lost some of its more powerful features, such as WebCore for scripting.

I use Amazon Alexa for voice commands, as it’s the best voice assistant and has the widest range of devices, and I have been using Apple Home for Automations, as the devices I want to use are either compatible or can be added via HomeBridge.

As good as both platforms are (I particularly like the simplicity of Apple Home for quick device control), what’s missing is the power of the old SmartThings. That’s why I’m moving my automations to Homey.

MicroVision, a solid-state sensor technology company located in Redmond, Wash., says it has designed a solid-state automotive lidar sensor intended to reach production pricing below US $200. That’s less than half of typical prices now, and it’s not even the full extent of the company’s ambition. The company says its longer-term goal is $100 per unit. MicroVision’s claim, which, if realized, would place lidar within reach of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) rather than limiting it to high-end autonomous vehicle programs. Lidar’s limited market penetration comes down to one issue: cost.

Comparable mechanical lidars from multiple suppliers now sell in the $10,000 to $20,000 range. That price roughly tenfold drop, from about $80,000, helps explain why suppliers now are now hopeful that another steep price reduction is on the horizon.

For solid-state devices, “it is feasible to bring the cost down even more when manufacturing at high volume,” says Hayder Radha, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Michigan State University and director of the school’s Connected & Autonomous Networked Vehicles for Active Safety program. With demand expanding beyond fully autonomous vehicles into driver-assistance applications, “one order or even two orders of magnitude reduction in cost are feasible.”

“We are focused on delivering automotive-grade lidar that can actually be deployed at scale,” says MicroVision CEO Glen DeVos. “That means designing for cost, manufacturability, and integration from the start—not treating price as an afterthought.”

MicroVision’s Lidar System

Tesla CEO Elon Musk famously dismissed lidar in 2019 as “a fool’s errand,” arguing that cameras and radar alone were sufficient for automated driving. A credible path to sub-$200 pricing would fundamentally alter the calculus of autonomous-car design by lowering the cost of adding precise three-dimensional sensing to mainstream vehicles. The shift reflects a broader industry trend toward solid-state lidar designs optimized for low-cost, high-volume manufacturing rather than maximum range or resolution.

Before those economics can be evaluated, however, it’s important to understand what MicroVision is proposing to build.

The company’s Movia S is a solid-state lidar. Mounted at the corners of a vehicle, the sensor sends out 905-nanometer-wavelength laser pulses and measures how long it takes for light reflected from the surfaces of nearby objects to return. The arrangement of the beam emitters and receivers provides a fixed field of view designed for 180-degree horizontal coverage rather than full 360-degree scanning typical of traditional mechanical units. The company says the unit can detect objects at distances of up to roughly 200 meters under favorable weather conditions—compared with the roughly 300-meter radius scanned by mechanical systems—and supports frame rates suitable for real-time perception in driver-assistance systems. Earlier mechanical lidars, used spinning components to steer their beams but the Movia S is a phased-arraysystem. It controls the amplitude and phase of the signals across an array of antenna elements to steer the beam. The unit is designed to meet automotive requirements for vibration tolerance, temperature range, and environmental sealing.

MicroVision’s pricing targets might sound aggressive, but they are not without precedent. The lidar industry has already experienced one major cost reset over the past decade.

“Automakers are not buying a single sensor in isolation… They are designing a perception system, and cost only matters if the system as a whole is viable.” –Glen DeVos, MicroVision

Around 2016 and 2017, mechanical lidar systems used in early autonomous driving research often sold for close to $100,000. Those units relied on spinning assemblies to sweep laser beams across a full 360 degrees, which made them expensive to build and difficult to ruggedize for consumer vehicles.

“Back then, a 64-beam Velodyne lidar cost around $80,000,” says Radha.

Comparable mechanical lidars from multiple suppliers now sell in the $10,000 to $20,000 range. That roughly tenfold drop helps explain why suppliers now believe another steep price reduction is possible.

“For solid-state devices, it is feasible to bring the cost down even more when manufacturing at high volume,” Radha says. With demand expanding beyond fully autonomous vehicles into driver-assistance applications, “one order or even two orders of magnitude reduction in cost are feasible.”

Solid-State Lidar Design Challenges

Lower cost, however, does not come for free. The same design choices that enable solid-state lidar to scale also introduce new constraints.

“Unlike mechanical lidars, which provide full 360-degree coverage, solid-state lidars tend to have a much smaller field of view,” Radha says. Many cover 180 degrees or less.

That limitation shifts the burden from the sensor to the system. Automakers will need to deploy three or four solid-state lidars around a vehicle to achieve full coverage. Even so, Radha notes, the total cost can still undercut that of a single mechanical unit.

What changes is integration. Multiple sensors must be aligned, calibrated, and synchronized so their data can be fused accurately. The engineering is manageable, but it adds complexity that price targets alone do not capture.

DeVos says MicroVision’s design choices reflect that reality. “Automakers are not buying a single sensor in isolation,” he says. “They are designing a perception system, and cost only matters if the system as a whole is viable.”

Those system-level tradeoffs help explain where low-cost lidar is most likely to appear first.

Most advanced driver assistance systems today rely on cameras and radar, which are significantly cheaper than lidar. Cameras provide dense visual information, while radar offers reliable range and velocity data, particularly in poor weather. Radha estimates that lidar remains roughly an order of magnitude more expensive than automotive radar.

But at prices in the $100 to $200 range, that gap narrows enough to change design decisions.

“At that point, lidar becomes appealing because of its superior capability in precise 3D detection and tracking,” Radha says.

Rather than replacing existing sensors, lower-cost lidar would likely augment them, adding redundancy and improving performance in complex environments that are challenging for electronic perception systems. That incremental improvement aligns more closely with how ADAS features are deployed today than with the leap to full vehicle autonomy.

MicroVision is not alone in pursuing solid-state lidar, and several suppliers including Chinese firms Hesai and RoboSense and other major suppliers such as Luminar and Velodyne have announced long-term cost targets below $500. What distinguishes current claims is the explicit focus on sub-$200 pricing tied to production volume rather than future prototypes or limited pilot runs.

Some competitors continue to prioritize long-range performance for autonomous vehicles, which pushes cost upward. Others have avoided aggressive pricing claims until they secure firm production commitments from automakers.

That caution reflects a structural challenge: Reaching consumer-level pricing requires large, predictable demand. Without it, few suppliers can justify the manufacturing investments needed to achieve true economies of scale.

Evaluating Lidar Performance Metrics

Even if low-cost lidar becomes manufacturable, another question remains: How should its performance be judged?

From a systems-engineering perspective, Radha says cost milestones often overshadow safety metrics.

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“The key objective of ADAS and autonomous systems is improving safety,” he says. Yet there is no universally adopted metric that directly expresses safety gains from a given sensor configuration.

Researchers instead rely on perception benchmarks such as mean Average Precision, or mAP, which measures how accurately a system detects and tracks objects in its environment. Including such metrics alongside cost targets, says Radha, would clarify what performance is preserved or sacrificed as prices fall.

IEEE Spectrum has covered lidar extensively, often focusing on technical advances in scanning, range, and resolution. What distinguishes the current moment is the renewed focus on economics rather than raw capability

If solid-state lidar can reliably reach sub-$200 pricing, it will not invalidate Elon Musk’s skepticism—but it will weaken one of its strongest foundations. When cost stops being the dominant objection, automakers will have to decide whether leaving lidar out is a technical judgment or a strategic one.

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That decision, more than any single price claim, may determine whether lidar finally becomes a routine component of vehicle safety systems.

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from the they’ll-keep-doing-that-until-there-are-real-consequences dept

Judge Boasberg got his vindication in the frivolous “complaint” the DOJ filed against him, and now he’s calling out the DOJ’s bullshit in the long-running case that caused them to file the complaint against him in the first place: the JGG v. Trump case regarding the group of Venezuelans the US government shipped off to CECOT, the notorious Salvadoran concentration camp.

Boasberg, who until last year was generally seen as a fairly generic “law and order” type judge who was extremely deferential to any “national security” claims from the DOJ (John Roberts had him lead the FISA Court, for goodness’ sake!), has clearly had enough of this DOJ and the games they’ve been playing in his court.

In a short but quite incredible ruling, he calls out the DOJ for deciding to effectively ignore the case while telling the court to “pound sand.”

On December 22, 2025, this Court issued a Memorandum Opinion finding that the Government had denied due process to a class of Venezuelans it deported to El Salvador last March in defiance of this Court’s Order. See J.G.G. v. Trump, 2025 WL 3706685, at *19 (D.D.C. Dec. 22, 2025). The Court offered the Government the opportunity to propose steps that would facilitate hearings for the class members on their habeas corpus claims so that they could “challenge their designations under the [Alien Enemies Act] and the validity of the [President’s] Proclamation.” Id. Apparently not interested in participating in this process, the Government’s responses essentially told the Court to pound sand.

From a former FISC judge—someone who spent years giving national security claims every benefit of the doubt—”pound sand” is practically a primal scream.

Due to this, he orders the government to work to “facilitate the return” of these people it illegally shipped to a foreign concentration camp (that is, assuming any of them actually want to come back).

Believing that other courses would be both more productive and in line with the Supreme Court’s requirements outlined in Noem v. Abrego Garcia, 145 S. Ct. 1017 (2025), the Court will now order the Government to facilitate the return from third countries of those Plaintiffs who so desire. It will also permit other Plaintiffs to file their habeas supplements from abroad.

Boasberg references the Donald Trump-led invasion of Venezuela and the unsettled situation there for many of the plaintiffs. He points out that the lawyers for the plaintiffs have been thoughtful and cautious in how they approach this case. That is in contrast to the US government.

Plaintiffs’ prudent approach has not been replicated by their Government counterparts. Although the Supreme Court in Abrego Garcia upheld Judge Paula Xinis’s order directing the Government “to facilitate and effectuate the return of” that deportee, see 145 S. Ct. at 1018, Defendants at every turn have objected to Plaintiffs’ legitimate proposals without offering a single option for remedying the injury that they inflicted upon the deportees or fulfilling their duty as articulated by the Supreme Court.

Boasberg points to the Supreme Court’s ruling regarding Kilmar Abrego Garcia, saying that it’s ridiculous that the DOJ is pretending that case doesn’t exist or doesn’t say what it says. Then he points out that the DOJ keeps “flagrantly” disobeying courts.

Against this backdrop, and mindful of the flagrancy of the Government’s violations of the deportees’ due-process rights that landed Plaintiffs in this situation, the Court refuses to let them languish in the solution-less mire Defendants propose. The Court will thus order Defendants to take several discrete actions that will begin the remedial process for at least some Plaintiffs, as the Supreme Court has required in similar circumstances. It does so while treading lightly, as it must, in the area of foreign affairs. See Abrego Garcia, 145 S. Ct. at 1018 (recognizing “deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs”)

Even given all this, the specific remedy is not one that many of the plaintiffs are likely to accept: he orders that the US government facilitate the return of any of those who want it among those… not in Venezuela. But, since most of them were eventually released from CECOT into Venezuela, that may mean that this ruling doesn’t really apply to many men. On top of that Boasberg points out that anyone who does qualify and takes up the offer will likely be detained by immigration officials upon getting here. But, if they want, the US government has to pay for their plane flights back to the US. And, in theory, the plaintiffs should then be given the due process they were denied last year.

Plaintiffs also request that such boarding letter include Government payment of the cost of the air travel. Given that the Court has already found that their removal was unlawful — as opposed to the situation contemplated by the cited Directive, which notes that “[f]acilitating an alien’s return does not necessarily include funding the alien’s travel,” Directive 11061.1, ¶ 3.1 (emphasis added) — the Court deems that a reasonable request. It is unclear why Plaintiffs should bear the financial cost of their return in such an instance. See Ms. L. v. U.S. Immig. & Customs Enf’t (“ICE”), 2026 WL 313340, at *4 (S.D. Cal. Feb. 5, 2026) (requiring Government to “bear the expense of returning these family units to the United States” given that “[e]ach of the removals was unlawful, and absent the removals, these families would still be in the United States”). It is worth emphasizing that this situation would never have arisen had the Government simply afforded Plaintiffs their constitutional rights before initially deporting them.

I’m guessing not many are eager to re-enter the US and face deportation again. Of course, many of these people left Venezuela for the US in the first place for a reason, so perhaps some will take their chances on coming back. Even against a very vindictive US government.

The frustrating coda here is the lack of any real consequences for DOJ officials who treated this entire proceeding as a joke—declining to seriously participate and essentially daring the court to do something about it. Boasberg could have ordered sanctions. He didn’t. And that’s probably fine with this DOJ, which has learned that contempt for the courts carries no real cost.

Unfortunately, that may be the real story here. Judge gets fed up, once again, with a DOJ that thumbs its nose at the court, says extraordinary things in a ruling that calls out the DOJ’s behavior… but does little that will lead to actual accountability for those involved, beyond having them “lose” the case. We’ve seen a lot of this, and it’s only going to continue until judges figure out how to impose real consequences for DOJ lawyers for treating the court with literal contempt.

Filed Under: cecot, donald trump, due process, el salvador, james boasberg, pam bondi, pound sand, trump administration, venezuela

Want Google out of your life? It’s pretty easy to find alternative search, email, and photo storage providers, but it’s much harder to come up with a mobile operating system that’s free of Google. The obvious answer is an iPhone, but if you want Google out of your life, you probably don’t want to immediately replace it with Apple. While a little better from a privacy standpoint, Apple is still not great.

Fear not, privacy-conscious WIRED reader, there are alternatives to Android. Technically speaking, most alternative mobile operating systems are based on Android, not alternatives to it, but these various projects all remove Google and Google-related services (to varying degrees) from the system. Typically that means all the Google services are stripped out and replaced with some alternative code (usually the micro g project), which is then sandboxed in some way to isolate it and restrict what it has access to. The result is a phone that is less dependent on Google, pries less into your privacy, and sometimes might offer a more secure experience. However, at their core, these are all still based on Android.

If you want a true alternative to Android, there are a few. I am sorry to say, free software fans, the best and most functional alternative to Android is still iOS. Most people looking for Android alternatives are not, however, looking to switch to an Apple device. There are a couple of Linux-based phone systems out there, most notably SailfishOS, which can run Android apps (I will be testing this next), but in my testing, none of the Linux-based operating systems are ready to be your everyday device.

Best Preinstalled Phone: Fairphone 6 With /e/OS

The best de-Googled phone experience for most people is going to be Murena’s /e/OS version of the Fairphone 6. Not only does it offer the full /e/OS experience out of the box, with a strong focus on privacy and blocking apps from tracking you, but the Fairphone hardware is repairable, the battery replaceable, and the bootloader is locked. The catch, if you’re in the United States, is that the Fairphone 6 only works with T-Mobile and its MVNOs. Somewhat ironically, it worked great on GoogleFi when editor Julian Chokkattu tested it last year. I tested it using T-Mobile’s prepaid plan, as well as RedPocket’s T-Mobile-based service, and had no issues with either.

The Fairphone 6 gets even better when you put /e/OS on it. Thanks to the privacy-first design of /e/OS, apps no longer track you, but they do still work 99 percent of the time, which is often not the case with some apps on alternate OSes (looking at you, banking apps).

The core of the privacy features in /e/OS revolve around the Advanced Privacy app and widget. Here you can block (or chose to allow) in-app trackers, and there are other features such as hiding your IP address or geolocation when you feel like it. The IP and geo-spoofing are nice for limited-use cases, but the main privacy feature for most of us is the ability to block trackers in apps—and it turns out there are a lot of those.

Murena also ships /e/OS with a very nice custom app store, the App Lounge. It’s similar to the Play Store, but with extras like privacy information about each app. Under each listing in the App Lounge you’ll see a grade from 1 to 10, where 1 is horrible for privacy and 10 generally means no trackers. The App Lounge also grades apps according to which permissions they require. The fewer permissions (like access to your photos or geodata), the higher the rating.

Gaming laptops used to be straightforward. They were powerful but thick and unwieldy. These days, you have options. There are gaming laptops that prioritize performance at all costs and others that home in on thinness, cost, or design. Heck, there are even gaming tablets and 2-in-1s.

That breadth of choice means choosing a gaming laptop in 2026 isn’t simple. While picking any option from our Best Gaming Laptops, Best Cheap Gaming Laptops, and Best Laptops guides is a good place to start, you still might not end up with a gaming laptop perfectly suited for your needs. Having tested many gaming laptops in over a decade of reviewing products, I’ll break down each element of these spendy machines to lead you in the right direction, as well as explain what to expect from the major laptop brands.

Updated February 2026: We’ve added information on the latest gaming laptop announcements from CES, as well as the new context on pricing, the memory shortage, and CPUs.

What Size Gaming Laptop Should You Get?

Razer Blade 14.

Photograph: Luke Larsen

This is a great place to start when shopping for a gaming laptop. When we talk about “sizes” of these machines, we’re usually comparing display sizes, measured diagonally. You’ll often see three sizes across brands: 14-inch, 16-inch, and 18-inch.

16-inch is the happy medium. Though they are large laptops, they give the powerful gaming hardware enough space for the thermals to breathe. Having a larger screen is certainly not a bad thing either. These 16-inch gaming laptops replaced the 15.6-inch gaming laptops of the past, which used a 16:9 aspect ratio screen. Those 15-inch laptops aren’t entirely gone, though, with some of our favorite gaming laptops like the Lenovo LOQ 15 still using 16:9. With a few exceptions, most modern displays use a 16:10 aspect ratio display with thinner bezels. 16-inch laptops can be thin like the Razer Blade 16 and Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 or thick like the Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 10 or Asus ROG Strix G16.

14-inch and 18-inch gaming laptops are more niche, but still have specific use cases where they are good solutions. 14-inch laptops are a newer development, tending to be highly portable and compact. The two primary standouts are the Razer Blade 14 and the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, but there are other models, like the Acer Nitro 14, Asus TUF A14, and HP Omen Transcend 14.

18-inch gaming laptops are the exact opposite. They’re too big for bags, too heavy to comfortably travel with, and are often quite thick. These are gaming laptops meant to primarily be left at a desk or workstation. Why buy them? Well, if you plan to mostly game at home, you might not mind the extra heft. The 18-inch screen gives you lots of real estate to game on. This is especially nice if you aren’t playing on an external monitor. Some of the notable options are the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 or MSI Titan 18 HX AI.

How to Navigate Performance

There’s a lot to consider when it comes to performance, but the place to start is with graphics cards. A gaming laptop needs a discrete GPU to be ready for 3D gaming, and typically, that means choosing from something in Nvidia’s RTX lineup. The latest options, the RTX 50-series, launched throughout 2025, include the RTX 5090, 5080, 5070, 5070 Ti, 5060, and 5050. Nvidia will have you believe that multi-frame generation is the reason to buy a new laptop with one of these GPUs, though in my testing, that hasn’t always proven true. Either way, the feature is there to play with regardless of which GPU your laptop has.

As you’d expect, performance and price scale step by step. I won’t list out all the specs for these graphics cards, but there are a few important things to know when deciding. The RTX 5090 (24 GB), 5080 (16 GB), and 5070 Ti (12 GB) all received additional VRAM over their predecessors in the RTX 40-series, whereas the RTX 5070, 5060, and 5050 are all stuck with just 8 GB. That means for certain game performance, the upgrade from the RTX 5070 to the 5070 Ti is bigger than the 5060 to the 5070. It’s also important to remember that these laptop GPUs do not correspond with the desktop versions in terms of specs.

Figure Technology, a blockchain-based lending company, confirmed it experienced a data breach.

On Friday, Figure spokesperson Alethea Jadick told TechCrunch in a statement that the breach originated when an employee was tricked with a social engineering attack that allowed the hackers to steal “a limited number of files.”

The statement said the company is communicating “with partners and those impacted,” and offering free credit monitoring “to all individuals who receive a notice.”

Figure’s spokesperson did not respond to a series of specific questions about the breach. 

The hacking group ShinyHunters took responsibility for the hack on its official dark web leak website, saying the company refused to pay a ransom, and published 2.5 gigabytes of allegedly stolen data. 

TechCrunch saw a portion of the data, which included customers’ full names, home addresses, dates of birth, and phone numbers. 

A member of ShinyHunters told TechCrunch that Figure was among the victims of a hacking campaign that targeted customers who rely on the single sign-on provider Okta. Other victims of the campaign include Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn). 

Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,400 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today – or scroll down further for the answers.

Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles, while Marc’s Wordle today column covers the original viral word game.

If you need a little help with your New Year’s resolution to be more active, you can save on the latest Apple Watch right now. The Apple Watch Series 11 is on sale for $299 for Presidents’ Day, which is $100 off and the lowest price we’ve seen. A number of other Apple devices are on sale for the holiday as well.

We named the Apple Watch Series 11 as our choice for best smartwatch overall. It scored a 90 in our review thanks to its 24 hours-plus of battery life and a thin, light design that’s easy to wear. It also offers new health metrics, including Apple’s hypertension alerts system and Sleep Score.

Apple

Get it now for 25 percent off. 

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The Apple Watch Series 11 deal is available on the 42mm case with a small/medium band. It also only includes GPS and four colorways: the Jet Black and Space Gray aluminum cases with a Black sport band, the Rose Gold aluminum case with a Light Blush sport band and the Silver aluminum case with a Purple Fog sport band.

Among the other Presidents’ Day Apple deals are mostly accessories: there are solid deals on AirPods, AirTags (the first-gen trackers, not the new, second-gen ones), the iPhone Air battery pack and even Apple’s new crossbody straps that attach to the company’s iPhone cases so you can essentially “wear” your iPhone like a bag. As with most Apple first-party accessories, you can find plenty of more affordable, third-party versions of them as alternatives. But if you’re keen on outfitting your phone with Apple’s own gear, it’s best to wait for discounts like these. We’ve collected the best Presidents’ Day sales on Apple gear below so you don’t have to go searching for them.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Presidents’ Day is a great time to buy appliances, mattresses and furniture as they are often on sale for the holiday. Tech also gets discounted around this time, but you have to do a bit more digging to find actually good deals. And this year, Presidents’ Day comes right after Valentine’s Day and Super Bowl 2026, which means there are some overlapping sales to consider. If you don’t want to sort through the mess of bad deals out there, Engadget has you covered. We’re curating the best President Day sales on tech we can find right here. We’ll update this post through the holiday as more deals become available.

Presidents’ Day deals under $50

Disney+ and Hulu bundle (one month) for $10 ($3 off): You can get one month of Disney+ and Hulu access for only $10 right now. That represents a small savings over the standard $13-per-month price for the bundle, but a 58-percent discount when you compare it to the price of paying for both services separately. It’s a good way to test out the bundle without paying too much before you decide if you want to subscribe for the long haul.

Anker Nano 45W USB-C charger for $30 ($10 off): Anker’s latest 45W charger has a small smart display on it that can show you real-time charging stats. It’s compact design is great for travel, as are its foldable prongs.

Waterpik cordless rechargeable water flosser for $40 (20 percent off): A water flosser like this one can make it easier (and less painful in some cases) to floss your teeth on the regular. This model from Waterpik includes two interchangeable tips and has two pressure settings. Its battery life should last up to four weeks with regular use as well.

Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max for $40 ($20 off): Amazon’s most premium streaming dongle supports 4K HDR content, Dolby Vision and Wi-Fi 6E. You may even be able to get it for $10 less than the sale price listed, for a final price of $30, when using the code MAX4KFTV at checkout.

Blink Mini 2K+ — 2 cameras for $45 (50 percent off): Blink’s latest plug-in security cameras support 2K video and improved audio quality. Like previous versions, these cameras have two-way talk, motion alerts and support for Alexa voice commands.

Anker Nano 5K ultra-slim magnetic power bank for $46 (16 percent off): This Qi2 power bank measures less than a half inch thick and snaps onto the backs of the latest iPhones for wireless charging. Its 5K capacity will be enough to top up your phone when it’s close to empty, preventing you from searching for a charger or outlet.

Presidents’ Day deals on Apple devices

Apple iPhone Air MagSafe battery pack for $79 (20 percent off): This magnetic power bank will add up to 65 percent additional battery charge to the iPhone Air, but note that it only works with Apple’s new, ultra-slim smartphone. We’ve tested plenty of others that also work with other iPhone and smartphone models.

Apple Magic Mouse for $68 (14 percent off): Apple’s sleek wireless mouse has a multi-touch surface that supports gesture control, and its battery should last about a month in between charges. And yes, it has a USB-C port.

Apple Watch Series 11 for $299 ($100 off): The latest flagship Apple Watch has excellent performance, a boosted battery life and a lightweight design that you can comfortably wear all day long — and even into the night to track sleep.

iPad mini (A17 Pro ) for $399 ($100 off): The updated iPad mini runs on the A17 Pro chip for improved performance, plus it has an 8.3-inch Liquid Retina display, a 12MP ultra wide camera with Center Stage, USB-C charging and compatibility with the Apple Pencil Pro.

Beats Studio Pro for $170 (51 percent off): Beats updated these cans to have improved sound quality, and you can really hear the difference from models that came before it. These headphones also have solid Transparency mode, good voice performance and USB-C audio.

Beats Solo 4 headphones for $130 (35 percent off): These on-ear headphones support spatial audio and dynamic head tracking, and they have up to 50 hours of battery life. The “fast fuel” feature allows them to get up to five hours of playback time with just a quick 10-minute power-up.

Beats Studio Buds+ for $100 (41 percent off): These tiny buds have both active noise cancellation and transparency mode, and they’ll work just as well with either Apple or Android devices.

More Presidents’ Day deals on tech

Ring Battery Doorbell for $60 (40 percent off)

Logitech MX Master 3S for $80 (20 percent off)

Levoit Core 300-P air purifier for $85 (15 percent off)

Sony WH-CH720N wireless headphones for $94 (48 percent off)

MasterClass Premium (one year) for $120 (50 percent off)

Shark Steam & Scrub steam mop for $125 (22 percent off)

Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 earbuds for $179 (22 percent off)

Sonos Beam Gen 2 soundbar for $369 ($130 off)

Hisense 75-inch QD7 Mini-LED 4K smart TV for $548 (16 percent off)

DJI Mini 3 Fly More Combo drone bundle for $575 (20 percent off)

Breville Barista Touch espresso machine for $800 ($200 off)

Motorola Razer Ultra (2025) for $800 (38 percent off)

Google Pixel 10 Pro for $849 (23 percent off)

Airbnb says its custom-built AI agent is now handling roughly a third of its customer support issues in North America, and it’s preparing to roll out the feature globally. If successful, the company believes that in a year’s time, more than 30% of its total customer support tickets will be handled by AI voice and chat in all the languages where it also employs a human customer service agent.

“We think this is going to be massive because not only does this reduce the cost base of Airbnb customer service, but the quality of service is going to be a huge step change,” CEO Brian Chesky said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call this week. This seems to suggest he believes the AI would do a better job than its human counterparts in resolving some issues.

The company also touted its recent hire of CTO Ahmad Al-Dahle, poached from Meta for his AI expertise, and its plans to create an AI-native experience.

With his guidance, Chesky said that Airbnb was poised to introduce an app that doesn’t just search for you, but one that “knows you.”

“It will help guests plan their entire trip, help hosts better run their businesses, and help the company operate more efficiently at scale,” Chesky explained, adding that’s why Airbnb brought Al-Dahle on board.

“Ahmad is one of the world’s leading AI experts. He spent 16 years at Apple, and most recently led the generative AI team at Meta that built the Llama models. He’s an expert at pairing massive technical scale with world-class design, which is exactly how we’re going to transform the Airbnb experience,” Chesky noted.

Like other businesses poised for disruption by AI, Airbnb’s leadership is pushing the idea that it has a unique database and product that other AI chatbots can’t replicate.

“A chatbot doesn’t have our 200 million verified identities or our 500 million proprietary reviews, and it can’t message the hosts, which 90% of our guests do,” Chesky told analysts during the earnings call. Instead, he pitched the idea of layering AI over the Airbnb experience, which he claimed would help to accelerate growth.

The company forecast revenue growth would be in the “low double digits” this year, after pulling in $2.78 billion in the fourth quarter, above estimates of $2.72 billion. This quarter, it expects revenue of $2.59 billion to $2.63 billion, above Wall Street forecasts of $2.53 billion.

Investors still wanted to know if AI platforms could be a risk in the long-term, assuming they moved into the short-term rentals market. Chesky, however, pushed back at that idea, saying that Airbnb isn’t just the consumer-facing app; it’s also the host app, the customer service, and the protections it offers, like insurance and user verifications.

“We’ve built this over 18 years. We handle more than $100 billion in payments through the platform,” he said.

Meanwhile, AI chatbots serve a function similar to search, in that they deliver top-of-funnel traffic, he noted. That traffic also converts at a higher rate than traffic from Google, Chesky pointed out, suggesting that the shift to AI would benefit Airbnb.

The company is already using AI to power its search, with the feature now enabled for a “very small percentage” of Airbnb’s traffic, while it experiments with making its search more conversational. Later, the company plans to integrate sponsored listings within search.

While Spotify this week told investors its best developers hadn’t written a single line of code since December, thanks to AI, Airbnb offered a more high-level metric on its own internal AI adoption. The company said that 80% of its engineers now use AI tools, and it’s working to get that to 100% soon.