A dedicated outdoor TV? Surely that’s a luxury too far, and who could possibly want one? Turns out, I do.

I’ve long been a fan of watching outside, particularly sport.

Back in 2010 when ITV HD launched, I set up a friend’s inflatable projector screen and we watched the England vs USA World Cup game. It felt amazing, except for when ITV cut to a car advert, rather than showing the goal, but you can’t have everything.

Since then, improvements in technology have meant that projectors have got better, smaller, brighter and smarter. Come the Euro 2020 final (actually held in 2021), we had our garden full of friends, a projector screen attached to my office at the bottom of the garden, and the game at a massive size.

It’s hard to believe that back-to-school season is upon us. 

Kids will return to the classroom in many parts of the US in a few short weeks, some as early as August 3. School supply lists are already available, so you can start shopping. In addition to notebooks and paper, parents are learning that many lessons and projects are expected to be completed using technology, such as laptops and tablets. Some schools, like my son’s elementary school, provide devices such as Chromebooks. But many school-aged and college students will be expected to have a separate device at home, which puts parents in the market for laptops or tablets. 

But today’s educational tech doesn’t come cheap. The evolution of AI led to a memory chip shortage. Those chips are vital to most devices, including phones, gaming consoles, computers and tablets. And that shortage means you can expect higher prices. One workaround could be refurbished or secondhand models. 

In April 2026, CNET found that nearly half (48%) of US adults have considered secondhand devices within the past year. Several factors influenced their decision, including cost-effectiveness (31%) and newer models being too expensive (25%). 

However, refurbished tech isn’t exempt from those price hikes. So what should you do if you have to buy a laptop or tablet for school but don’t want to break the bank? I’ll explain. 

How is the RAM shortage impacting refurbished tech? 

Older devices bypass new chip costs, making them a potentially more cost-effective option. But the RAM shortage is increasing demand and prices for refurbished products. 

Apple is the latest tech company to raise prices on its new and refurbished products. Its Certified Refurbished store saw price increases of 6% to 15% in June. A refurbished 14-inch MacBook Pro M5 with 16GB of memory and 1TB of storage cost $1,699, but a discount brought it down to $1,439 on June 14 after looking at Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. It now costs $1,999, but a discount brings it down to $1,699. 

Other companies, including Samsung and Microsoft, have also been affected by chip shortages. Microsoft will increase the prices of its Xbox Series X/S on Aug. 1, and its new Surface laptop models will cost more. The chip shortage isn’t expected to end until 2028, so more companies may continue to raise prices on new and refurbished devices. 

Refurbished back-to-school tech may still cost less than new devices, but there are a few shopping tips to keep in mind if you need to buy a laptop or tablet soon. 

Compare policies and prices from refurbished retailers 

You may find good deals when buying secondhand tech online, including discounts and accessories. Buying and selling on online platforms such as Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp can offer good deals, including accessories or a better price than major retailers. However, you won’t have a warranty, return policy or professional assessment of the device. That could mean you’re stuck with tech you’re dissatisfied with. 

Certified refurbished retailers, such as Back Market, have limited-time warranties, money-back guarantees and inspections to help you feel comfortable buying a used device online. Compare prices, warranties and policies and specifications across major retailers, such as Amazon’s Renewed Store and Best Buy Outlet, for the best deal. And tech brands have refurbished stores, too, like Apple’s Certified Refurbished, Dell Refurbished and HP Refurbished Certified. You may even find limited-time back-to-school savings on secondhand tech, but it’s worth making sure you have the right protections if you’re unhappy or the device isn’t what you expected when it arrives. 

Once you’ve settled on a device you’re comfortable with, pay with a credit card with purchase protection in case the device is stolen, damaged or lost within a certain timeframe (usually three to six months). Keep all of your receipts and tracking information, and make sure the device is in the expected condition when you receive it. 

Trade in your old device for savings 

Major retailers have trade-in programs that can lower the cost of a new device. Apple’s Trade-In program gives you an Apple gift card based on the value of your old device. You can use it toward a new or refurbished Apple product or accessory. And Amazon’s trade-in program similarly lets you trade-in your old device for an Amazon gift card that can be used toward buying refurbished tech on Amazon. 

Another way to save money on refurbished tech during back-to-school season is to sell your old device on a buy-and-sell platform — such as Swappa, ItsWorthMore or ecoATM — and trade it in for cash to put more toward a refurbished device you’re considering. You may get more or less depending on your device’s age and condition. Newer models in good to excellent condition typically sell for more. It’s worth comparing offers across sites to get the most money for your device, which can mean paying less for your new one.

Don’t count out new laptop and tablet models yet 

Buying refurbished tech may seem like an easy way to cut costs on a laptop or tablet for the upcoming school year, but back-to-school deals and student discounts can sometimes bring the price of a new device down to the cost of a refurbished one.

As enticing as refurbished tech may be, pay attention to software upgrades, the device’s battery health and the device’s overall condition. Some devices, such as Intel MacBooks, aren’t eligible for software upgrades anymore, which isn’t ideal when you plan on using it for some time. In that case, a new device may be best. 

• Darktrace reports cryptojacking via a compromised AI gateway (LiteLLM‑Proxy on AWS Bedrock), breached through exposed SSH and abused with XMRig mining
• Attackers also showed suspicious IAM activity, hinting at possible cloud credential misuse, with connections traced to Vietnam
• Experts warn AI gateways concentrate privileged access, urging strict port closures, least‑privilege roles, and control‑plane monitoring to reduce blast radius

If you are using AI gateways as part of your tech stack, be wary – they are being leveraged in cryptojacking attacks, experts have warned.

Cybersecurity researchers Darktrace have published a new report on a cloud-hosted AI gateway, connected to Amazon Bedrock, which was compromised and used for cryptocurrency mining.

Research published this year has given a name to something employers have been circling for a while. Deskilling is what happens when an expert stops practising and gets worse. Never-skilling is what happens when a novice never gets good in the first place, and it is the more awkward problem, because the people it affects are the ones companies are already hiring fewer of.

The sharpest evidence comes from a randomised controlled trial run by Anthropic researchers Judy Hanwen Shen and Alex Tamkin, published in January.

They recruited 52 mostly junior software engineers, gave half of them an AI assistant, asked all of them to learn Trio, a Python library none of them knew, and then quizzed everyone on the concepts they had used minutes before.

The AI group averaged 50%. The hand-coding group averaged 67%. Anthropic describes the gap as the equivalent of nearly two letter grades, and it was statistically significant, with a p-value of 0.01.

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The speed benefit, which is the entire reason anyone reaches for the assistant, did not really materialise. The AI group finished about two minutes faster, a difference that failed to reach significance, partly because several participants spent up to 11 minutes composing queries, roughly a third of their allotted time.

They learned less, finished no faster, and came out worst on the thing that matters most when the machine is wrong. That thing is debugging, where the gap between the groups was widest. The control group, denied an assistant, hit errors and had to resolve them, which is a fair description of how debugging is learned. The AI group did not hit the errors.

Medicine has arrived at the same worry from a different direction. A Nature Medicine Perspective published in May, led by Duke-NUS Medical School with co-authors at Harvard, UCL, and King’s College London, coined it for trainees who lean on AI during their formative clinical years and never build the reasoning that safe, independent practice requires.

It adds a third category with even less attention on it: mis-skilling, the trainee who accepts an AI error uncritically and files it away as fact.

Those authors are careful in a way the coverage of them has not always been. Direct evidence from medical training, they write, is absent. The argument rests on learning theory and on early signals from non-clinical settings, which is to say from studies like Anthropic’s.

Their prescription is a three-phase framework: build competence without AI, then teach people to calibrate their scepticism, then introduce the tools under supervision.

How the tool is used matters more than whether it is used. In the Anthropic trial, the high scorers asked conceptual questions or requested explanations alongside the code. The low scorers delegated wholesale, or leaned on the assistant to debug for them.

Employers are already pricing this in. Gartner predicts that critical-thinking atrophy will push half of global organisations to require “AI-free” skills assessments through 2026, which is a polite way of saying that hiring managers no longer trust a portfolio.

Ford, meanwhile, has been rehiring engineers to fix what its AI systems got wrong, an expensive demonstration of what happens when the people who could have caught the error are no longer on the payroll.

The trial comes with real limits, and its authors say so. The sample was small, the quiz measured comprehension immediately rather than months later, and it used a sidebar assistant rather than an agentic coder. The researchers expect the impact of those to be more pronounced, not less.

It is worth noticing who ran it. Anthropic sells the assistant, and it has published a paper arguing that using the assistant carelessly makes you worse at your job. That is either unusual candour or the opening of a pitch for learning modes, and both readings can be true.

What the research does not say is that juniors should code by hand. What it says is that the shortcut and the skill are not the same road, and that the industry has spent two years assuming they were.

Valve recently released a new version of the Steam Controller, which features a wired USB puck that serves both as charger and dedicated, low-latency wireless receiver. The downside is they aren’t currently available for purchase separately, but that’s not a worry because you can now make your own thanks to [safijari]’s OpenPuck project.

OpenPuck uses the highly affordable Pro Micro NRF52840 board, programmed to emulate the wireless receiver portion of the puck, meaning one can pair their Steam Controller to it just like they would with the factory puck. A major part of the project was naturally documenting the wireless protocol, but there’s also an array of extra features offered by OpenPuck.

Hitting button combos lets one conveniently emulate Xbox, Nintendo Switch, or Sony PlayStation controllers. Meaning OpenPuck can for example be plugged into a Nintendo Switch and it will see OpenPuck as an official wired controller, complete with motion sensor and haptic feedback.

Why is it necessary for this emulation to be done from OpenPuck? Because while the Steam Controller has tight integration with Steam Input — a sort of highly useful translation layer for controller inputs — that integration also means the controller’s best features only work while Steam is running. OpenPuck’s ability to emulate other console controllers makes it flexible in a way the factory puck isn’t, and a user can make the most of a single controller this way.

It’s worth noting that while the real puck has the ability to charge the controller (whether or not the user makes it walk itself), the OpenPuck doesn’t have this ability. Does that mean one must still use the factory puck for charging? Not at all, as the Steam Controller charges just fine over a USB-C connection.

There’s a short video below that demonstrates the flashing and setup, so check it out if you think it might be useful to you.

Thanks for the tip, [Jaki]!

The Rolling Stones are heading to Roblox with a brand-new interactive experience that celebrates the band’s six-decade career. Launching on July 10, the experience arrives alongside the release of the band’s 25th studio album, Foreign Tongues, and lets players relive different eras of The Rolling Stones through gameplay, music, and collectible rewards. Beyond the game itself, the legendary band has partnered with Roblox creators to launch exclusive avatar items and real-world merchandise that players can buy directly in-game.

A Roblox Game That Takes You Through 60 Years of The Rolling Stones

Developed by Roblox Innovation Studio in collaboration with creative agency Sawhorse and members of Roblox’s creator community, the experience transforms The Rolling Stones’ musical legacy into a cooperative adventure. Players travel across different decades of the band’s career, where colorful crystals inspired by the group’s 2023 album Hackney Diamonds have trapped pieces of its history. Working together, players must locate and shatter these crystals while iconic songs from the corresponding era play in the background.

Each completed challenge powers up the band’s famous tongue-and-lips logo, which unleashes a burst of rock energy to unlock the next decade. The experience gradually evolves into a shared community event in which everyone’s progress contributes to unlocking the final performance. The game will be hosted inside The Block, Roblox’s always-available entertainment hub where artists can create interactive experiences for players.

Finale Event Brings Live Performances and Rotating Eras

The experience won’t end after launch. Between July 17 and July 19, Roblox will host a special finale event that changes every hour. Each rotation will focus on a different era of The Rolling Stones, complete with classic songs, themed visuals, interactive artwork, dynamic lighting, and visual effects inspired by the band’s history. Players will also be able to unlock in-game rewards and abilities inspired by The Rolling Stones throughout the event.

Alongside the game, Roblox invited more than a dozen creators from its global community to redesign The Rolling Stones’ iconic tongue-and-lips logo. The result is a collection of exclusive avatar accessories that players can wear inside Roblox. Interestingly, some of these virtual designs will also be available as limited-edition physical merchandise through an in-game Shopify integration, allowing fans to purchase them directly from The Rolling Stones’ online store without leaving Roblox.

Participating creators include Jazzyx3, CASKA’s HAUS, Touzled, Blizzei, DIONESS, morphist4u, WhoseTrade, Empyro, Bad_B0y, raekaro, Spiraxy, Valkenheim, DuckXander, Clockset, and dvdko.

Moments of significance can separate our lives into a “before” and “after.” For me, one such example is life before I introduced a bidet into my home, and then every moment that’s come since. Now I cannot imagine life without a bidet toilet seat, and I mourn the absence of the innovation on every business trip I take or any other reason that keeps me from my personal bathroom. (When it gets to the point where you’re installing a bidet in the guest bathroom at your in-laws’ house, you know something existential has shifted.) These devices have changed my life, and for the better.

Though bidets date back to 18th-century France, and bidet seat attachments have been popular for decades in Japan, the fixture may still be new to many Americans. However, bidets are finally growing in popularity stateside as an increasing number of folks realize that our standard-issue bathroom habits are sort of, well, gross. A bidet’s pressurized water is highly preferable to simply smearing oneself over and over again with wadded clumps of paper.

It was my honor—seriously—to test the latest bidet-industry innovations, including a simple toilet seat add-on and an all-new modern masterpiece of all-in-one toilet technology. Call it a modern marvel, call it “buttmaxxing”—whatever you call it, count me in (especially if the bidet in question includes advanced features like a heated seat and precision oscillation).

Looking for more ideas to boost your bathroom performance? Check out our guides to the best shower water filters, best electric toothbrushes, and best eco-friendly cleaning products.

Updated July 2026: We’ve added the Kohler Veil One-Piece and PureWash E930 Set and ensured up-to-date links and prices.

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A Bidet No One Will Ever Notice

Kohler Veil One-Piece and PureWash E930 Set

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Best High-End (for Water-Pressure Enthusiasts)

Bio Bidet BB-2000

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Best Bidet for Most People

For functionality, simplicity, and effectiveness, the Brondell Swash 1400 is best-in-class, offering everything a novice bidet enthusiast could possibly desire, and at an attractive price point, no less.

I found the Swash to perform its functions perfectly: a warmed seat, an adjustable nozzle, a persistent but not invasive flow rate, and an effective deodorizing option. The simple design is approachable, and the included remote control is intuitive to use from the very first go. You can program two users, which is nice for those who have particular preferences. The Swash’s drying capability is also prompt and effective.

Put plainly, the Swash is so comfortable and inviting that after I finished testing bidets for this feature, it’s the one I reinstalled for personal use.

Best High-End Bidet Seat

The S7A is the flagship model from Toto, the Japanese bidet maker that invented the bidet seat attachment. You could easily mistake the S7A for a regular toilet seat—at least until the lid lifts and the night-light clicks on, when the device senses your presence in the bathroom.

The controls work in the same intuitive way as other Toto washlets, with buttons to adjust the position, intensity, and angle of the sprayer. There is also a button to make the spray oscillate. The slim, 4-inch remote allows preprogramming for four people. If there’s any weak point on the S7A—and this bidet is nearly perfect—it’s that the drying fan seems a little weaker than on the previous model (the S550e), perhaps due to design compromises made when shaving down the height.

From LG to TCL and even Amazon, there is no shortage of manufacturers putting out great TVs in 2026, but there’s one brand that’s been in the game for what feels like an age, and that’s Sony. Time and time again, Sony has proven itself to be a formidable force in the world of audiovisual tech, and the culmination of that talent and expertise can be seen in the best Sony Bravia TVs that money can buy.

Although Sony is probably best known in the TV space for putting out the type of sets that really push the bar with high-end OLED panels, luscious colours and incredible attention to sound, the brand still produces a good amount of budget-friendly TVs each year so if you aren’t looking to spend too much then there are options available to you.

Still, if you are looking to shop exclusively at the cheaper end of the market then you may find that your money goes a bit further with the likes of TCL and Toshiba. We have a separate guide to the best cheap TVs for those shopping on a budget. Sony on the other hand is best appreciated at the higher-end, where you can really see what all the fuss is about.

Not only are Sony TVs incredible for experiencing the feeling of true cinema at home, but because of the company’s gaming chops via its PlayStation division, it also has an acute understanding of what makes for a great gaming experience. All of this goes into a range of TVs that tick pretty much every box you could possibly want.

For anyone who’s still on the fence or pondering what type of TV they should get, you can dive into our helpful explainers on OLED vs LED, and what Mini-LED is all about. Once you’ve gotten all the details out of the way, you can shop with confidence that all of the Sony TVs here have passed our rigorous testing process with flying colours.

Best Sony Bravia TV at a glance

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