from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

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Filed Under: daily deal

I snore. Not politely, either. More like a diesel generator trying to restart in January, which means my wife occasionally wakes up at 3:00 a.m. weighing two options: hold a pillow over my head and see whether Trenton State Prison has decent Wi-Fi, or find an actual solution.

The $279 Ozlo Sleepbuds 2 are designed for the second option. Developed by former Bose engineers, these tiny sleep-focused earbuds mask snoring, traffic, hotel noise, barking dogs, and other overnight disturbances without relying on active noise cancellation.

Related Reading:

What Makes the Ozlo Sleepbuds 2 Different?

These are not conventional true wireless earbuds that have been made slightly smaller and given a rain-sounds playlist.

Ozlo says the Sleepbuds 2 are the smallest earbuds designed specifically for sleep. Their low-profile silicone housings sit flush inside the ear, while secure-fit wings are intended to keep them in place throughout the night. That matters most for side sleepers, who already know that pressing a normal wireless earbud into a pillow can become uncomfortable rather quickly. Each earbud weighs a reported 1.6 grams.

The Sleepbuds 2 also avoid active noise cancellation. Instead, they combine passive isolation with continuous noise-masking sounds intended to cover unpredictable interruptions such as snoring, barking dogs, traffic, roommates, and whatever the people upstairs are apparently building at 2:00 a.m.

Users can select from more than 30 built-in soundscapes and masking sounds, or stream music, podcasts, and audiobooks over Bluetooth. The earbuds can automatically switch from streamed content to a stored masking sound when the user falls asleep, after a timer expires, or when the streamed program ends.

Five customizable Sleep Modes determine how audio behaves during the night, while the new Sleep Shield feature blocks incoming calls, alerts, notifications, and unexpected Bluetooth audio. A private in-ear alarm can wake the wearer without disturbing anyone sleeping beside them.

What Has Improved?

Battery life increases from roughly 10 hours on the original model to up to 14 hours, based on Ozlo’s testing at 50 percent volume. The Smart Charging Case holds enough power for another two or three nights, although actual performance will depend on volume, Bluetooth streaming, enabled features, and battery condition.

Ozlo has also redesigned the Bluetooth system to improve connection reliability and range. That is an important upgrade because bedtime is a particularly bad moment for pairing problems, firmware drama, or an earbud deciding that it needs some personal space.

A physical button on the Smart Case provides phone-free access to basic functions, including starting a stored sleep sound and snoozing the alarm. Initial setup and streaming still require the Ozlo app and a compatible phone, but stored sounds can be configured to begin without an active Bluetooth connection.

The earbuds monitor movement and breathing, while sensors in the Smart Case measure bedroom sound, light, and temperature. The Ozlo app combines that information into sleep-pattern and environmental insights designed to help users identify what may be disturbing them during the night.

Who Might Actually Need Them?

The strongest candidates are light sleepers, side sleepers, shift workers, frequent travelers, apartment dwellers, and anyone sharing a bedroom with a partner whose snoring resembles a diesel generator trying to start in January.

They also make sense for people who already fall asleep to podcasts, audiobooks, meditation programs, or ambient sound but find ordinary earbuds too bulky or uncomfortable for overnight use.

They make less sense for someone who needs versatile everyday earbuds for calls, workouts, commuting, and serious music listening. There is no ANC, and the sound system has been optimized for masking noise and reproducing spoken content at low volume rather than delivering subterranean bass or an audiophile listening experience.

And at $279, they are not an impulse purchase. But for someone whose sleep is regularly interrupted by environmental noise, the real comparison may not be against another pair of earbuds. It may be against another exhausted morning, an increasingly annoyed partner, or a hotel-room air conditioner that sounds like it survived the Korean War.

Ozlo Sleepbuds 2 Specifications

• Battery life: Up to 14 hours
• Charging case: Two to three additional nights
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.3
• Weight: 1.6 g per earbud
• Sound library: More than 30 masking sounds and soundscapes
• Compatibility: iOS 17 or newer; Android 12 or newer
• Included: Smart Charging Case, four sizes of silicone ear tips, and USB-C cable

Where to buy:

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Disney+ has found a way to restore 4K UHD on selected TVs and streaming devices following a European patent injunction, but HDR10, Dolby Vision, 3D, Apple TV 4K, Samsung TVs, and game consoles remain on the outside looking in.

Disney+ has found a way to put some of the missing pixels back, but affected Premium subscribers in Europe should probably hold the fireworks.

Only days after Disney confirmed that a court ruling had forced it to remove 4K UHD and HDR streaming in parts of Europe, the company has begun restoring 4K through an alternative video technology. The good news is that selected subscribers can once again watch Disney+ content at 4K resolution. The bad news is that device support remains limited, and HDR has not returned.

Premium, apparently, is still a work in progress.

Related Reading:

Disney+ Switches From HEVC to VP9

According to German publication Heise, Disney+ is using the VP9 video codec for its temporary 4K workaround rather than HEVC, the technology at the center of its ongoing patent dispute with InterDigital.

Disney has not publicly confirmed VP9 by name, but it has acknowledged adopting an alternative technology and beginning the restoration of 4K UHD. Denmark has been specifically confirmed as part of the rollout, although Disney says availability may vary by market and device.

The switch matters because VP9 support and its implementation within the Disney+ app are not universal. A television or streaming device may be technically capable of decoding VP9 video without currently receiving a compatible Disney+ 4K stream.

In other words, do not assume that a 4K logo on the box means everything will work.

Which Devices Currently Support Disney+ 4K?

Disney says its alternative 4K delivery system currently supports:

• Selected Android TV and Google TV devices, including models from Google, Philips, Sony, and other manufacturers
• Amazon Fire TV devices
• LG televisions from 2020 onward
• Sky Glass
• Sky Stream

Compatibility can vary between individual models, regions, and versions of the Disney+ app.

Several major platforms remain unsupported, including:

• Apple TV 4K
• Samsung smart TVs
• Gaming consoles

That is not a minor omission. Samsung remains one of the world’s largest television manufacturers, while Apple TV 4K and game consoles are widely used as primary streaming devices in home theater systems.

Disney says it is working to expand device support, but it has not provided a timetable.

4K Is Back but HDR Is Not

The current workaround restores resolution, not the complete Premium viewing experience.

HDR10 remains unavailable in affected markets, while Dolby Vision and Disney+ 3D content have not returned. That means compatible devices may once again receive a sharper 4K image, but without the expanded brightness, contrast, and color range provided by HDR.

Disney says it is working to restore HDR as quickly as possible but cannot confirm when it will become available.

That distinction is important. Four times the pixel count of 1080p can improve fine detail, particularly on larger displays, but HDR often contributes more to the visible impact of modern movies and television programs. A 4K SDR stream is an improvement over the recent 1080p SDR downgrade, but it is not what Premium subscribers originally paid to receive.

How Did Disney+ Get Here?

The latest disruption followed a July 23, 2026, ruling from the Düsseldorf Local Division of the Unified Patent Court. The court found that Disney infringed an InterDigital patent covering certain HEVC video-encoding techniques and granted an injunction spanning 11 European Union countries, including France, Germany, and Italy. Disney can appeal the decision.

It was the second UPC injunction InterDigital secured against Disney in 2026. An earlier ruling from the court’s Mannheim division involved another HEVC-related patent and led to the removal of Dolby Vision and 3D support in affected markets.

As we previously reported, some Disney+ Premium subscribers were subsequently limited to 1080p SDR while continuing to pay the full price for a tier advertised around 4K UHD and HDR playback.

Can Subscribers Request a Refund?

Affected customers who subscribe directly through Disney+ can request a partial refund for the current billing period. Subscribers billed through Apple, Google, Amazon, or another third party will need to contact that billing provider instead.

Disney has also suggested that customers who no longer want the Premium tier can switch to a less expensive plan. Downloads are reportedly unaffected by the streaming restrictions.

The Bottom Line

Restoring 4K this quickly is a meaningful step, but Disney+ has not fully solved the problem. The current VP9 workaround provides 4K playback on a limited selection of televisions and streaming devices, while some of the most widely used platforms remain unsupported. HDR10, Dolby Vision, and 3D are also still missing.

Affected subscribers are therefore receiving something closer to Disney+ Premium Lite: more pixels, fewer devices, no HDR, and the same monthly bill.

Disney says broader device support and HDR restoration are coming. Until that actually happens, the service has only repaired part of the damage.

Walt Disney built the Magic Kingdom on imagination. Disney’s new leadership appears to be testing how many Premium features can disappear before subscribers do.

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from the attacks-on-a-free-press dept

For much of Techdirt’s nearly three decades in existence we’ve covered attacks on the media by the rich and powerful. And sometimes we’ve been on the receiving end of such attacks ourselves. But I have never seen or heard of anything quite as extreme as what happened to Ina and David Steiner, proprietors of the website eCommerceBytes. As we and many others chronicled, the story that came out sounded impossible.

But now it’s finally concluded, with eBay and three of its former top execs agreeing to pay the Steiners nearly $49 million, plus another $7 million in charitable commitments — about $56 million total, for the horrors they put them through in response to (barely) critical reporting.

The Steiners ran a small online trade publication covering eBay, mostly focused on helping sellers on the site. For years they had a good relationship with the company itself, but in the late 2010s, the company was struggling and under new management, and its execs started to get annoyed at what they saw as critical coverage of the company by the Steiners (for example, questioning why a company that was struggling financially had decided to build a replica of an east coast bar in its headquarters).

What followed still reads like fiction. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend watching the documentary, Whatever It Takes, which tells the whole story in amazing detail, including security camera footage and getting one of the (low level) eBay employees who took part in the campaign of harassment to talk about what happened on camera.

The title of the film comes directly from a text then-CEO Devin Wenig sent to eBay’s communications boss at the time, Steve Wymer, saying that Ina Steiner needed to be taken down, “whatever it takes.” Wymer replied “we’re going to crush this lady.” According to the Steiners’ lawsuit, this was then communicated to others at the company and an operations exec, Wendy Jones, then told the company’s security boss, Jim Baugh, to take care of things “off the record,” apparently telling him she didn’t want to know any details.

This allowed Baugh to concoct an escalating campaign that started with angry DMs to Ina Steiner and moved on to shipping increasingly awful things to their home: a stack of pizzas, a preserved fetal pig, a bloody pig mask, a book about surviving the loss of a spouse followed by a funeral wreath, an envelope full of “barely legal pornography” that was (deliberately) sent to a next door neighbor. And on and on.

Multiple eBay employees also traveled to the town of Natick, Massachusetts, where the Steiners lived, repeatedly driving by their house and following the Steiners when they drove around town. They also planned to break into the garage and put a tracking device on the Steiners’ car.

As the documentary makes clear, much of this was driven by the somewhat wild imagination of Baugh, who had done private security for other tech CEOs before coming to eBay, where he moved improbably fast from the CEO’s bodyguard to running eBay’s entire global security operation. The documentary details how he pushed out most of the long-time security staff and brought in a crew of young and inexperienced female hires — at least one of whom he began a relationship with — making them watch movies about top secret operations, plying them with alcohol, and demanding total loyalty.

Bizarrely, what got them caught was the whole “going to Natick and following the Steiners around” bit, which allowed the Steiners to get a license plate which the police and FBI then used to track it back to the eBay employees. A bunch of eBay employees were arrested, all of whom eventually entered guilty pleas, and many ended up being sentenced to prison sentences, with Baugh receiving the longest at 57 months.

But the Steiners were (understandably) angry that Wenig, Wymer, and Jones were never charged. While the former execs insisted that they didn’t know this was happening, that they never would have condoned it, and that they were horrified by the news when it came out, that’s difficult to believe when so much of the evidence shows that all three were on board in a “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” way given the messages they sent between themselves and Baugh.

A few years back the Steiners filed a civil suit against eBay and those former top executives. The case was set to go to trial soon, but last week they reached a settlement, with the Steiners securing $55.7 million total — $48.7 million of it going directly to them, the rest in charitable commitments:

• The plaintiffs will receive $48.7 million in compensation, including $46.15 million from eBay, $2 million from former eBay executive CEO Devin Wenig, $500,000 from former eBay executive Wendy Jones, and $50,000 from former eBay executive Steve Wymer.
• eBay will fund $6 million in charitable contributions to various nonprofit organizations. Former eBay executive CEO Devin Wenig will contribute an additional $1 million to a charity dedicated to protecting First Amendment rights in the name of Ina Steiner.

In the end, this means that the lower level employees who did much of the dirty work ended up in jail. The top execs who set this in motion end up with small dents in their large bank accounts.

eBay’s statement on the matter is at least somewhat direct in calling what happened to the Steiners “reprehensible and should never have happened.” It also “acknowledges” what it says was “the unprofessional tone in internal communications demonstrated, to different degrees and number, by Mr. Wenig, Mr. Wymer, and Ms. Jones.” I’m not exactly sure that meets the requirements of the agreement which, according to the Steiners would include “a strongly-worded public statement regarding the conduct” of those execs from eBay.

Importantly (and kudos to the Steiners for demanding and getting this) the agreement is totally public and “contains no confidentiality provision.” This is rare in cases like this (and it’s also something we insisted on in the case we dealt with). It’s important to be able to talk about this stuff, and tragically the rich and powerful who try to take down news sites are often able to negotiate confidentiality clauses into the agreements.

For what it’s worth, Wenig and Wymer are still working in Silicon Valley, with both of them co-founding AI startups, naturally. Incredibly, Wenig’s startup supposedly provides AI tools to journalists, which is quite a pivot from directing a security goon to “take down” a journalist with “whatever it takes.” That also makes the part of the agreement of Wenig providing an additional $1 million to a charity in Steiner’s name to help protect First Amendment rights even more striking.

The fact that the defendants in this case were willing to pay so much and allow the terms of the deal to be public suggests they knew exactly how badly a public trial would make all of them look.

Kudos and congrats to the Steiners. These days especially, for most media players who are attacked by the rich and powerful for their reporting, the best you can usually hope for is to get a case dismissed. Maybe, if you’re lucky, to win an anti-SLAPP motion to get your legal fees paid. To actually win a settlement this size is almost unheard of. But the Steiners deserved it. They didn’t just face bogus SLAPP lawsuits designed to shut them down. They were legitimately terrorized in ways that have had long-lasting effects.

While the Steiners situation was extreme, it’s important to recognize that this kind of thing is the inevitable end result of the constant escalation in the past few decades of the rich and the powerful attacking the free press for daring to do accurate and critical reporting on them. The craziest bit in this story isn’t even everything that eBay employees did to the Steiners, but the fact that they were so brazen about it and so careless that they got caught doing so in a way that resulted in this kind of payout. Most attacks on the press never see the light of day, let alone allowing the media entities targeted to be able to claim restitution.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, cyberstalking, david steiner, devin wenig, free speech, harassment, ina steiner, jim baugh, journalism, steve wymer, wendy jones

Companies: ebay, ecommercebytes

from the 99-out-of-100-doctors-say dept

This post is going to come with something of a warning label. RFK Jr. went on CNN this past weekend for an interview with Dana Bash. I’m going to post the entirety of that interview immediately below. Before you watch it, get yourself a bib, or some paper towels, or wrap yourself in one of those plastic ponchos they hand out to keep the rain off of you. You’re quite likely to spit out whatever is in your mouth, vomit, or perhaps even have your brains leak out of your ears. You’ve been warned.

Whether you’ve watched that entire thing or chosen not to, potentially for your own health, the interview is completely bonkers. It’s honestly pretty tough to pull out the lowlights to comment upon, it’s so bad. The themes of the 20-plus minute interview, however, are easy to outline: RFK Jr. takes no responsibility for what he’s done past or present, he spends the entire time attacking Dana Bash as though she personally is responsible for everything he hated about the COVID response, he pretends that Donald Trump had no agency over that response despite being president at that time, and he insists that only he is listening to the science and doctors when it comes to health outcomes.

Let’s get into some of those. When talking about the COVID response and specifically what we need to do better for the next pandemic, Kennedy predictably went into a minutes long diatribe about how the most important thing is our constitutional rights and how the entire constitution was thrown out by Anthony Fauci (and not Donald Trump, somehow). When Bash pointed out that wasn’t really what she was asking about, Kennedy snarled and attacked her.

“Forgive me, but you’re just talking about rights and I’m asking about a potential public health crisis that is coming,” Bash said after Kennedy launched into a lengthy defense of constitutional rights that he claimed were “dismantled” during COVID-19 lockdowns.

“I really want to move on,” Bash added as Kennedy repeatedly interrupted to continue his argument. That appeared to set him off.

“Of course you do, because you were part of the problem!” Kennedy shot back, pointing at the host.

“No, I wasn’t part of the problem,” Bash replied.

“Yes! There was absolute press malpractice,” Kennedy continued. “You weren’t allowing—”

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As Bash tried to interject, he kept going: “Your job is fierce skepticism toward authority. And you weren’t doing that. You were beating up the people who were dissenting.”

Somehow both predictably and unbelievably, this exchange ended with Kennedy stating that he wasn’t attacking Bash at all and instead insisted that she attacked him. She really didn’t. Go ahead and watch the interview if you haven’t. To that point, she hadn’t done anything that could even be misconstrued reasonably as “attacking” Kennedy.

Bash then pivoted to the measles outbreaks of the last 20 months, pointing out that the messaging from Kennedy on getting vaccinated hasn’t been clear and asking for his stance on it. Kennedy then did what he always does. First, he affirmed that everyone should be getting vaccinated for measles… and then launched into his conspiracy-laden and well-worn diatribe explaining all the reasons parents shouldn’t necessarily get their children or themselves vaccinated, and that vaccines haven’t been proven to be safe.

“Do you want people to get the MMR vaccine?” Bash later asked.

“Yeah, I said that already,” Kennedy replied with a smirk before pointing at the host. “I know you’re flustered now, and it’s frustrating.”

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Bash quickly pushed back.

“I’m not flustered at all. I am frustrated,” she said. “The reason I’m frustrated is because you are the HHS secretary and you are talking about things that lead to vaccine hesitancy in this country. And it is something that causes problems for people when there is not anything—”

Kennedy cut her off again.

“Let me ask you something,” he said. “Do you see your job as ending vaccine hesitancy, or do you see your job as telling the truth to the American people?”

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Bash replied, “I see my job as telling the truth, and the truth is that there is study after study after study. It‘s one of the most studied things out there in science—”

“You’re repeating it like a parrot,” Kennedy snarled as he lunged forward over the table. “You‘re repeating it like a parrot. I’ve actually read the science.”

The conversation again devolved into raised, overlapping voices, before Bash proclaimed: “I’m not debating nonsense.”

“All you know how to do is repeat what people told you and say ‘trust in the experts,’” a red-faced, wildly gesticulating Kennedy replied, blaming trust in Fauci for poor public health.

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Now, one thing that was cut off from my transcription of the COVID response portion of the interview was this. Pay close attention to who Kennedy indicates we should listen to in crafting public policy, because on this I believe he’s right:

Got it? In that clip he says we should listen to “frontline doctors.” Now, while there’s no official poll of national physicians to rely on, we can certainly look to the groups that those same frontline doctors choose to represent them. Many of those groups have directly called on RFK Jr. to resign.

So, Kennedy can do something principled and brave after this absolute meltdown of an interview. He can listen to frontline doctors. And he can resign.

But he won’t. Because it’s not actually frontline doctors he wants to listen to at all. He’s carefully choosing his language. When he says “frontline doctors” he doesn’t mean any of the actual frontline doctors represented by any of those trusted groups mentioned above. Instead, he means the propaganda/conspiracy organization known as “America’s Frontline Doctors,” the same group that focused most of its attention on selling bogus COVID treatments, and whose founder went to prison for her role in the January 6th insurrection. Not surprisingly, that group (which these days appears to consist of just a random Substack) repeatedly supports all of RFK Jr.’s totally unsubstantiated claims. How surprising.

Filed Under: dana bash, health & human services, measles, responsibility, rfk jr., science, vaccines

Companies: america’s frontline doctors

SpaceX has ramped up purchases of Tesla Megapack, spending $295 million on the battery storage devices in the second quarter and $329 million so far this year, according to the company’s earnings report released on Tuesday.

The purchase illustrates just how interconnected Elon Musk’s universe of companies are. Musk, who is the CEO and largest shareholder of SpaceX, also runs Tesla. Musk’s artificial intelligence business xAI acquired his social media platform, X, in 2025. Earlier this year, SpaceX gobbled up xAI.

The industrial-scale batteries are likely being deployed at the company’s xAI data centers. Before xAI merged with SpaceX, the AI company bought $430 million worth of Megapacks for its data centers. In the first quarter of this year, xAI had purchased only $34 million worth of the equipment. SpaceX also reported that as of December 2025, it had acquired $131 million worth of Tesla Cybertrucks at manufacturer’s suggested retail price, according to its regulatory filing.

Though xAI has leaned heavily on natural gas to power its data centers — including dozens of unpermitted turbines at a site in Mississippi not far from the Colossus data center project — large batteries like the Megapack are still a critical part of data centers. 

In addition to providing substantial backup power that can be tapped in a second or less, batteries can provide extra power to GPUs when they demand it. AI data centers don’t draw power consistently. Rather, their power demand ramps up and down depending on the demands of training AI models and running inference.

Such peaks can incur significant charges from a local utility or overwhelm on-site generators. Batteries help smooth out those peaks, lowering costs while ensuring that the data center can operate consistently.

Electronic Arts is once again a privately held company, but it’s saddled with $20 billion in new debt.