OnePlus 15R will get a late launch next month
This month’s OnePlus 15 arrived to much fanfare about its enormous battery life, but no sign of the cheaper 15R that was expected alongside it. Now we finally know that phone will be revealed on December 17th, alongside the OnePlus Pad Go 2 and Watch Lite.
Both the phone and tablet will release in the US, Europe, and India, though the budget watch is only landing in Europe. There’s no guarantee that the 15R will actually go on sale to American buyers before the end of the year though — FCC delays caused by the government shutdown mean the 15 release is still pending, and the 15R will presumably only arrive after it.
OnePlus didn’t reveal many details, except to show off the colors and reveal a full house of durability ratings for the phone: IP66, IP68, IP69, and IP69K. As for the Pad Go 2, it’ll support 5G and an included stylus.
Why college students prefer News Daddy over The New York Times
Ankit Khanal gets his news from News Daddy. More than 20 times a day, Khanal, a sophomore at George Mason University, opens TikTok to have the biggest stories of the day delivered to him by a bleach-blonde 26-year-old named Dylan Page, one of the leading faces in a growing community of news influencers. Based in the United Kingdom, Page began posting content on TikTok in August 2020 and has since grown his “News Daddy Empire,” his posts amassing over 1.5 billion likes. His content spans breaking news, politics, pop culture, and sometimes, personal workout videos — delivered in the increasingly common, enthusiastic “YouTube accent.” While Page doesn’t explicitly cite his sources in every video, News Daddy appears to get his information from a mix of conventional news outlets, social media, and other influencers.
As a computer science major, Khanal says he’s cautious of algorithms and their effects on media consumption. He even wrote and delivered a speech on the topic to his peers for one of his classes. The thesis: “If you realize it or not, algorithms are determining everything on social media. From the content that you interact with to the opinions you form on the app. They are secretly affecting your life in ways that can be harmful.” The irony is not lost on him. Khanal understands TikTok is not always a reliable source; his presentation thoroughly explained how misinformation is quick to spread on social media. If Khanal wants to fact-check a video, he browses the comment section. “Most of the time, if the video is big enough, you will see something in the top comments telling you, like, ‘Hey, this is just wrong.’ That’s when I would actually look.”
And yet, rather than read traditional journalistic outlets that do the work of reporting, he still gets most of his news from aggregators like News Daddy. Social media is simply a more appealing news source for Khanal, who says he’s turned off by the biases and political leanings of traditional news outlets. News influencers, on the other hand, are “actually connected to the people they’re getting their news for.” Khanal’s behavior is not unusual. Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab polled 1,026 students at 181 two- and four-year institutions from December 19th to 23rd, 2024, on their media literacy practices. In January of this year, the survey results were published, showing that social media is a “top news source” for nearly three in four students. Of those surveyed, “half at least somewhat trust platforms such as Instagram and TikTok to deliver that news and other critical information accurately.” And word of mouth ranked second among students’ most popular news sources, an avenue for half of those surveyed. Legacy media, primarily newspapers, on the other hand, are regular news sources for just two in 10 students, even though they indicate that newspapers are more likely to convey accurate information.
Professor Karen North, founder of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg digital media program, agrees with the study’s findings. At the beginning of each of her classes, North discusses with her students the day’s most relevant headlines. She asks them where they caught wind of those events. The three most common answers among her students each semester: “They get their news from Instagram and TikTok. And from their professors.” But North says classroom newsgetting is a distant third, far behind social media’s grip on student news sourcing culture.
“I see the TikTok, I see more, I get interested, I look it up online.”
Zau Lahtaw, a junior at Syracuse University, says he also gets his news from scrolling on TikTok, primarily from Dylan Page, as well as from a talking fish — styled after the animated news anchor that delivers “breaking news” in SpongeBob SquarePants. “I don’t know. It’s just funny,” Lahtaw says.
There are several popular talking fish accounts on Instagram, the most popular of which — @realtalkingfish, self-titled “America’s #1 news source!” — uploads daily news snippets to its 1.4 million followers. But there are countless pages across both Instagram and TikTok that deploy an AI-generated version of Bikini Bottom’s aquatic anchor to reach millions of viewers. Lahtaw says he doesn’t actively search for these pages, but on TikTok, the videos pop up on his feed anyway. And if the story interests him, he’ll sit through the video. That’s how he learned of Israel’s strikes on military and nuclear facilities in Iran. Lahtaw had been scrolling through his TikTok For You page — as he usually does for two to three hours a day — when he came across the fish news anchor explaining the attack had transpired earlier that morning. Lahtaw searched Google to check if the attack was real, and remembers confirming that it was, though he can’t recall if he’d read an article from CNN or ABC.
Just over a week later, Lahtaw learned from News Daddy that the US launched military strikes against Iran. After that first video, his feed was immediately flooded with posts about getting drafted for a potential World War III. He watched a few of these videos before returning to Google to verify that the draft was confined to memes. “I see the TikTok, I see more, I get interested, I look it up online.”
The TikTok-to-Google pipeline is not unique to Lahtaw. Among the 18 college students I spoke to for this story, this fact-checking funnel was overwhelmingly pervasive; all students were on either TikTok or Instagram or both and often turned to Google after seeing news on their feeds that they wanted to verify. North says her students do similarly, although most don’t google to read articles: “They search or google things and they only read, for the most part, the AI response as a shortcut, and they just assume that it’s correct.” She says, for her students, “AI is the new sort of Wikipedia.”
Stanford sophomore Zachary Gottlieb is the Opinions section managing editor for The Stanford Daily. Through the school, Gottlieb has free access to publications like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic — and he says he trusts the sources Stanford provides. Each morning, he browses daily newsletters and reads articles that catch his eye — usually national and global headlines. Throughout the day, his phone buzzes with emails and alerts on developing and breaking stories. Sometimes, he reads a few articles before going to sleep.
But even when he’s not actively seeking out the news, his exposure to social media is relentless. On Instagram and TikTok, outside of posts by followed publications, it’s impossible, during his one to two hours of daily scrolling, to avoid posts from News Daddy or fellow news-oriented influencers. Gottlieb uses words like “ubiquitous” and “chronic” to characterize the ineludible onslaught of headlines. “Nowadays, it could be anywhere. You open your phone or you open Instagram to go DM someone or search something up completely unrelated or open TikTok to relax and just be hit with something.”
Hoping to relax in the afternoon of September 10th, Gottlieb opened TikTok and was met with an infographic detailing Charlie Kirk’s shooting. Over the frenzied first hours after the fatal attack, Gottlieb saw graphic videos of Kirk being fatally shot while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University — each clip racking up millions of views, even from viewers who did not want to see them. “‘Wait, is this real? Is this, like, a joke or something?’” Gottlieb wondered at first. “Obviously, I verified.” He googled it. “And then later, obviously after it was confirmed that he was, in fact, killed, there were strong reactions, like, everywhere, obviously. And then I saw many Instagram stories, as happens with a lot of these kinds of things.”
In Instagram’s early, saturated years, the typical teen scrolling through their feed would have seen vibrant vacation photos, filtered sunsets, and colorful snapshots of a Starbucks Frappuccino. Today, many feeds have traded effervescent aesthetics for infographic activism, turquoise for text. In the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement and as Instagram continues to expand its carousel cap, the platform has evolved into a favored space for activists and students to like and share their politics in the form of posts.
Politics-related content characterizes 80 percent — a percentage by her own estimation — of what Harvard freshman Aria-Vue Daugherty sees on her feed. She swipes through dozens of activism-centered stories, posts, and reposts daily from friends. “Most of my friends I have made through various types of political organizing, so I feel like most people I follow are reposting news and that usually comes in the form of either some random sort of politically inclined person talking at you, from a reel or infographics, usually on their stories.” Sometimes, if she comes across a post she resonates with, she’ll repost it onto her own story.
Daugherty regularly reads The New York Times, USA Today, The Associated Press, The Harvard Crimson, and the occasional articles from The Economist and The Atlantic. Though she says she tries to be intentional about her sources, the majority of the news she sees and reads is what pops up on Instagram, posts from sites she follows, or peers’ reposts. (In contrast to TikTok, Instagram tends to show users more posts from the accounts they choose to follow and fewer random viral videos.) When Daugherty opened Instagram while on campus on May 22nd, she estimates she saw at least 100 posts from peers — reposted infographics, reels — reacting to the news that the Department of Homeland Security had revoked Harvard’s certification to enroll international students. (International students make up over a quarter of the school’s total enrollment.) She checked an article from The Harvard Crimson to make sure it was true. Instagram, she says, is a convenient entry point, a quick way to stay up to date. “I think it would have taken me longer to go and check my email and read the Crimson daily briefing.”
By midday, it seemed like “everyone was very aware” of the news. Over the next few weeks, Daugherty reposted infographics and articles from the Crimson. “The least I can do is spread the word and tell people and at least try to raise awareness in this small way by reposting it and sharing my thoughts that this is, you know, deplorable and reaching out to my international friends.” Daugherty says she was thinking of her roommate and one of her best friends, an international student from Malaysia. “I had some peace of mind to know that, okay, people are doing things. People aren’t freaking out the way I am.”
In late June, a federal judge blocked the Donald Trump administration’s attempt to bar international students from Harvard. Daugherty read an article in the Crimson the day of. This time, she says she saw “maybe five” posts about the development. She had several conversations with friends who did not know about the update.
“There definitely was a gap,” she says. “Everybody knew about the first headline. It definitely seems like most people didn’t know about the second headline, except for those who were directly impacted by it.” Thinking back on it, Daugherty doesn’t know why she didn’t post anything on Instagram about the judge’s blockage herself, although she admits it would have been helpful to share the news online.
Khanal had an experience similar to Daugherty’s. When we spoke in October, coincidentally on the same day millions of people mobilized for a second round of No Kings protests, Khanal was surprised it was a national movement. “I thought it was a Boston thing,” he says, referring to a TikTok he remembers seeing out of the area during the first protests in June.
This dilemma is something Khanal reflects in his presentation about media consumption. In his outline, he dedicates a subsection to the algorithm’s influences: “Because people assume they are in control, they don’t question the repeated ideas and beliefs.”
In the survey published in January, which found that 72 percent of college students get their news from social media, just two in three students said they regularly check for accuracy, surveying for biases or cross-checking with other sources. And just half of students surveyed said they checked the information and identified sources before sharing it on their social media. From her decades teaching media classes, North is able to reaffirm that trend, one she says has risen in recent years, and vocalize another: “I believe that from what students say, they get a heads up about the news, they get sort of the headlines and the basic premise of the news from Instagram. And they get persuasive opinions from TikTok,” she says.
As Daugherty says, Instagram and TikTok can be helpful tools, expediting the spread of information, keeping her updated on headlines that might otherwise slip through the cracks. The other side of that cultural coin is that Lahtaw already knows he is susceptible to misinformation. “I can tell, like, our generation is going to be scammed in the future by AI and stuff,” he says.
Lahtaw says he sees many AI-generated videos on TikTok. In the age of AI deepfakes, it is getting harder to distinguish what’s real and what’s fabricated. In July, an AI-generated video of bunnies bouncing on a trampoline went viral, drawing over 240 million views and 25 million likes. Among the top-liked comments are “Please tell me this is real” and “This is the first time AI ever got me.” In August, an AI-generated video of orca trainer Jessica Radcliffe being killed was posted to TikTok. The hoax quickly went viral, and the fake footage circulated widely on social media. As with the bunny video, millions were deceived.
Khanal admitted he once posted an AI-generated image to TikTok as a joke. It was a picture of a forearm and, inked across it, a Roblox-related tattoo. “The most fake tattoo ever,” he says. “And people were genuinely believing me.” The post was seen nearly 190,000 times. And many of the comments were from enraged viewers, their reactions spurred by a seemingly genuine belief — even as Khanal had posted the TikTok with “#joke” in its description.
College junior Barnett Salle-Widelock studies political science at UCLA. He says he’s disillusioned by TikTok, which he says is “blatantly dedicated” to getting him to “doomscroll.” He finally uninstalled the app to avoid “doomscrolling” — a practice becoming more common among college students, who, on average, use social media for six or more hours daily. But Salle-Widelock still uses Instagram. Though most of his For You page real estate is basketball, golf, and memes, he gets the occasional video or infographic from The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, and his campus paper — publications he follows for his news. Sometimes, his feed will also show him viral headlines from the BBC and ABC News. Outside of Instagram and the rare subreddit, Salle-Widelock says he doesn’t seek out headlines, although he has an appreciation for traditional media. “I wish that I was a kind of worldly person that was sitting there with a newspaper every Sunday morning or something.” But why would he be? It’s easier to have the headlines picked and laid out for him, he says, accessible by the quick swipe of a thumb.
Toby Strawser, a junior at Lewis & Clark College, spends 15 to 20 minutes a day keeping himself up to date with the news. In the morning, he skims a daily newsletter from The New York Times and Letters from an American, a newsletter about the history behind current politics by historian Heather Cox Richardson (it is the third-largest US politics newsletter on Substack, behind The Free Press and The Bulwark). Outside of these emails and a subscription to a few newspapers like The Washington Post, every now and again, his family will have the news on — “NBC News or anything like that.” He has relatives working for the federal government, so he says his family is more inclined to stay engaged and active with news. Strawser also belongs to a college newsgathering niche that seems increasingly rare; he also subscribes to local news, particularly The Carmel Pine Cone, a weekly newspaper published in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, where he is from.
Harvard sophomore James Pippin similarly spends around 20 minutes a day getting his headlines from Apple News, reading articles between business and economics classes. “They’ve got a good spread on there,” he says. “It goes all across the spectrum, from CNN to Fox News.” He follows a few news sites on Instagram, including The New York Times, and says he tries not to take infographic activism too seriously. “I have made infographics before so I know how random and unreliable they can be. I’m a little cautious, but I think I’m probably a little more cautious than most of my peers.” Like Daugherty, Pippin learned of Trump’s proclamation to block international students from Harvard through an Instagram post. He went to Google and verified the news by reading an article from The New York Times. “If it sounds crazy, I try to vet it before I believe it.”
“As you grow up, you’re more involved in society,” he imagines. “I think it’s a thing.”
Headlines are expensive. Paywalls aren’t helping. According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in March, 83 percent of Americans say they have not paid for news in the past year. There are a few financial concessions for college students. Many colleges — including Harvard — provide free digital access to The New York Times through an “Academic Pass” program. And college papers, like the Daily Bruin and The Stanford Daily often offer national, global, and campus-centered headlines for free.
But are these select options more accessible, more attractive, than scrolling to have headlines handed out on social media? Salle-Widelock doesn’t think so. “It’s funny, because that feels wrong, and I feel like I should be doing my due diligence and doing my own research, but it’s like the curated feed and the ease of just having the headline picked out for you. It’s all right there. It’s all in one single site.”
Lahtaw suspects he’ll eventually outgrow social media scrolling and, in turn, source his news elsewhere. “As you grow up, you’re more involved in society,” he imagines. “I think it’s a thing. When you mature and you want to know what’s going on in the world, you become more interested.” When he graduates in four semesters with a degree in computer engineering, Lahtaw says he’ll turn to traditional media, metamorphosing into the kind of coffee-sipping, page-turning, “worldly person” that Salle-Widelock describes as obsolete for Gen Z. “I do think my generation neither wants to nor will ever consume news in that manner.”
Until then, the algorithm is still the appeal. Salle-Widelock has come to the conclusion that he, and the majority of his undergrad peers, get their news from social media for two primary reasons: The first, it’s a conscious, cost-efficient, and convenient choice guided by the dopamine rush of an algorithmic addiction. The second, maybe it’s Mark Zuckerberg “attacking” his brain. This was the running theme among the college students I spoke to for this story: Almost all of them were aware of the pitfalls of getting their news from social media, though none seemed interested in changing their habits.
Khanal’s presentation outlines the various and detrimental effects of algorithms, with subsections ranging from how they create “echo chambers and a lack of diversity” to their role in expediting the spread of fake news to “actively disorient the person’s view of the world.” But within his three pages of neatly organized, highlighted notes, there’s just one sentence that offers what can only be vaguely construed as some sort of solution, a recommendation to mediate this addiction to algorithms: “The next time you’re scrolling through your feed keep in mind that it’s meant to be addictive.”
But that precept is more of an afterthought most nights when Khanal scrolls on TikTok until he’s tired enough to fall asleep. Tucked into bed and absorbed by the phone’s glow, he scrolls through hundreds of videos — most of them memes. For every hundred or so of those comedic videos, “four or five” of them are news-oriented. Of that fraction, he says isn’t always sure what’s real or fake. But Khanal knows for certain that with the eventual, algorithmic swipe of his thumb, he will see a post from News Daddy.
Microsoft is speeding up and decluttering File Explorer in Windows 11
Microsoft is making some changes to the File Explorer in Windows 11 that will make it less cluttered and launch faster. The latest Dev preview builds of Windows 11 include File Explorer preloading “to help improve File Explorer launch performance,” and changes to the context menu to reduce the amount of space less commonly used actions take up.
The preloading of File Explorer should hopefully mean Microsoft’s file and folder management tool launches faster on systems where performance is constrained. On modern PCs it’s nearly instant, but I’ve certainly witnessed it load slower on less powerful devices like Windows handhelds and tablets.
You’ll be able to disable the File Explorer preloading so it’s not always running in the background. After all, most PCs will not need to preload File Explorer. It’s similar to the work Microsoft did with its Office apps earlier this year, to improve the startup speed of Word with a scheduled task that runs silently when you boot your PC to make Office apps open quickly.
The File Explorer context menu changes will be welcome ones across fast and sluggish PCs. Microsoft is reducing the clutter in the context menu by moving actions that are rarely used into sub menus. There’s a new manage file flyout that includes compressing files into a ZIP, copy as a path, set as desktop background, and rotate right or left.
Cloud file options have also been moved into a separate cloud provider flyout, where you’ll also find Send to My Phone. The changes mean the context menu looks a lot cleaner now, and it should be easier to find frequently used actions.
All of these changes are being tested in the latest Dev preview builds of Windows 11, so they should roll out to all Windows 11 users in early 2026.
DOGE is no more, and in its wake, only chaos
In April, Elon Musk began backing away from his role as head of DOGE. By June, he was more or less fully gone from DC. In his wake, he left a power vacuum and significant ill will that has apparently led to the dissolution of DOGE eight months before its charter expires.
To call Musk’s DC tenure contentious would be an understatement. As a man accustomed to getting what he wants and functioning as a powerful executive, he swept through Washington with a figurative chainsaw, slashing budgets, firing workers, and making audacious power grabs. Musk’s brash behavior angered government employees and alienated would-be allies, like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Eventually, the bad blood reached a fever pitch, and Musk had a minor physical altercation with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Politico details the stunning fallout. By late May, DOGE and Musk had lost favor with President Trump, and White House aides began pushing back more forcefully against the fledgling government agency. When Musk was officially given a farewell by the White House on May 30th, it also pushed out his right-hand man, Steve Davis.
But Davis, an engineer who had worked closely with Musk for over 20 years, including at DOGE, simply refused to leave. He stepped in to try and take the reins, but this didn’t sit well with many of the remaining DOGE staffers. But others remained loyal, essentially splitting the department in two.
When those uncomfortable with Davis’ leadership, given that he was no longer a government employee, tried to plan for DOGE’s future without him, Davis accused them of staging a coup. The White House quickly rooted out his loyalists, putting an end to Davis’ brief attempt to consolidate control in less than two weeks.
What followed was a series of restructurings, changes in leadership, and ultimately, the end of DOGE as a centralized organization. When Reuters reached out to the White House to ask about the status of DOGE earlier this month, it was told, “that doesn’t exist.”
Musk rode into Washington with big ambitions of slashing government spending by trillions of dollars. Instead, during his brief time in DC, government spending actually increased, and he left behind many burned bridges.
About This Account reveals the scale of X’s foreign troll problem
It’s long been known that X (and Twitter before it) is a major venue for foreign influence campaigns to meddle in American politics. Much of the focus has been on Russian troll farms, which the US government has targeted on several occasions. But the launch of X’s About This Account feature may have revealed the scope and geographical breadth of its foreign troll problem.
Almost immediately after the feature launched, people started noticing that many rage-bait accounts focused on US politics appeared to be based outside of the US. Profiles with names like ULTRAMAGA🇺🇸TRUMP🇺🇸2028 were revealed to be based in Nigeria. A verified account posing as border czar Tom Homan was traced to Eastern Europe. And America_First0? Apparently from Bangladesh. An entire network of “Trump-supporting independent women” claiming to be from America was really located in Thailand.
Threads quickly started growing, collecting all the pro-MAGA trolls that claimed to be American, but were really foreign actors from every corner of the globe. Some right-wing personalities were quick to jump on evidence that many left-wing X users were also not who they claimed to be. In no time at all, X was flooded with people calling out the seemingly endless list of fake and troll accounts focused on stoking political anger.
Shortly after the feature launched, X removed information about where accounts were created. And disclaimers were placed on locations for where accounts were based, noting that travel, VPNs, and proxies could lead to inaccurate data. This is certainly true for some accounts, however, it’s extremely unlikely to be true for even a majority of those being called out.
Some of these troll accounts are likely state-sponsored influence campaigns. Foreign entities like Russia and China have a vested interest in sowing chaos in the American political system. But it’s also likely that many are driven by monetary gain. While earnings from monetization on X can be paltry by Western standards, it can be life-changing in developing nations.
Some of the best Nintendo Switch games are up to $30 off for Black Friday
Nintendo has made some of the most iconic video games of all time, but building a library of the standouts can quickly become expensive, especially given that many titles don’t often go on sale at a significant discount. The good news is that Nintendo is already running a holiday sale in the run-up to Black Friday, allowing you to save on Nintendo Switch games, amiibo, and accessories through November 28th.
The biggest news is that Nintendo and select retailers are offering some of the Switch’s best games — including Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom — for as little as $29.99, which amounts to a healthy $30 discount. In some cases, these games are at their lowest price ever, and we don’t expect any of them to be this heavily discounted again until “MAR10 Day” rolls around next year.
Typically, Nintendo offers a discount on a Switch bundle that includes a digital copy of Mario Kart: 8 Deluxe or some other first-party title, but that doesn’t seem to be happening this year. The company has openly admitted that it’s shifting its focus to the Switch 2 — which isn’t on sale and isn’t expected to be anytime soon — and recently raised the price of the original Switch due to President Trump’s tariff policy.
Sadly, no Switch 2 games are part of the promo; however, you can play the discounted OG Switch titles on Nintendo’s latest console. Plus, if you are looking for deals related to the Switch 2, Woot is still running a video game promo through the end of today, November 23rd, giving you a chance to save on newer releases like Mario Kart World and the Switch 2 Edition of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Super Mario Odyssey
Super Mario Odyssey remains one of the crowning achievements of the original Switch thanks to its tight platforming, ingenious level design, and a game mechanic that lets you control certain enemies and parts of the environment. There are still bosses to battle and coins to collect, but Odyssey feels like a breath of fresh air. Read our review.
Where to Buy:
Princess Peach: Showtime!
Princess Peach: Showtime! is the first Nintendo game to star the Mushroom Kingdom royal in nearly 20 years, and it’s a welcome return to form. Peach finds herself having to fight, puzzle, and platform her way through different sets in a community theater. She inhabits a different role — with different abilities — in each stage, which keeps the game engaging. Read our review.
Where to Buy:
Donkey Kong Country Returns HD
Donkey Kong Country HD is the definitive version of the tough-as-nails platformer, which initially launched on the Wii in 2016. Don’t let the game’s cartoonish art, bopping soundtrack, and side-scrolling gameplay fool you, though; it will test your skills. That said, it’s still a blast to work your way through the game’s tougher sections, which require both precision and patience. Read our review.
Where to Buy:
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
Echoes of Wisdom finally lets you play as Nintendo’s titular heroine. The game’s basic premise revolves around trying to save the world using the fabled Tri Rod, an item that allows you to replicate the spirits of items and enemies you encounter along the way. The game mixes the top-down perspective of 2D Zelda games with gameplay from the series’ newer, open-world 3D entries. Read our review.
Where to Buy:
Luigi’s Mansion 3
Luigi’s Mansion 3 is the series’s most ambitious title, even though it retains the Luigi-as-a-Ghostbuster gameplay the series has employed since 2001. It takes place in a haunted hotel overrun with ghosts. To deal with them, you’ll need the help of Gooigi, a doppelgänger made of goop that can help you explore every nook and cranny. The game’s slapstick humor outweighs any spookiness. Read our review.
Where to Buy:
Nintendo Switch Sports
Nintendo Switch Sports didn’t change the world the way Wii Sports did in 2006, but it remains a fun party game. You can choose from six sports, including tennis and bowling, and use a single Switch Joy-Con as a motion controller. There’s an element of “swing the controller and hope the correct action happens on screen,” but it’s still a good time to play with friends. Read our review.
Where to Buy:
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is generally regarded as the best Mario RPG, and the Switch remake is well worth revisiting. Mario has more paper-like abilities than he did in the original Paper Mario game (including the option to turn into a paper airplane), and Nintendo didn’t feel the need to shake up the battle system or other gameplay elements like they did in subsequent entries.
Where to Buy:
Splatoon 3
Splatoon 3 is the latest entry in Nintendo’s paint-laden shooter franchise, and the hook this time around is a deeper single-player mode. You’ll assume the role of an undercover agent fighting through a city using a mix of shooting and platforming. As you progress, you’ll begin to find artifacts of the pre-apocalypse that shine a light on what happened in the Splatoon universe. Read our review.
Where to Buy:
Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe
Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe is another HD remake of a Wii game, but it introduces additional abilities, mini games, and an entirely new section that’s available once you complete the original story. The game doesn’t shake up the Kirby formula, but it’s still a fun game to play — especially with friends, as it supports four-player local co-op.
Where to Buy:
Tulin amiibo
Tulin is a Rito and the Sage of Wind from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. His amiibo will grant random items in both The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and its aforementioned sequel.
Where to Buy:
Yunobo amiibo
Yunobo is a Goron and the Sage of Fire from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Using his amiibo will drop random items in both that game and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Where to Buy:
Riju amiibo
Riju is a Gerudo and the Sage of Lightning from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Using her amiibo will drop random items in both that game and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Where to Buy:
Sidon amiibo
Sidon is a Zora and the Sage of Water from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Using his amiibo will drop random items in both that game and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Where to Buy:
Jamie amiibo
Jamie is a character in Street Fighter 6, and using his amiibo lets you save his outfit, color, and your own custom button settings. The amiibo also unlocks in-game rewards, including music and wallpaper.
Where to Buy:
Kimberly amiibo
Kimberly is a character in Street Fighter 6, and using her amiibo lets you save her outfit, color, and your own custom button settings. The amiibo also unlocks in-game rewards, including music and wallpaper.
Where to Buy:
Luke amiibo
Luke is a character in Street Fighter 6 who made his series debut in Street Fighter V: Champion Edition. Using his amiibo lets you save his outfit, color, and your own custom button settings in Street Fighter 6. The amiibo also unlocks in-game rewards, including music and wallpaper.
Where to Buy:
X’s messy About This Account rollout has caused utter chaos
Yesterday X started rolling out a new About This Account feature, which included what country the account was created from and what country the account is “based” in (which is different from “connected via”). Head of product at X Nikita Bier was quick to say that there were “a few rough edges,” but promised they’d be resolved by Tuesday.
There have definitely been complaints about inaccuracies. The company even ended up removing information about where an account was created, saying the data “was not 100 percent,” especially for older accounts.
The reaction from users on X was, of course, totally level-headed. They immediately recognized that the data was flawed and definitely didn’t spend the last 24 hours trying to score political points.
Just kidding.
People on X have done almost nothing but shout that accounts they disagree with are actually foreign operatives. Even users who have publicly complained that the information on their own profile was inaccurate continued on to make bad-faith posts about how their political opponents were running a foreign psyop.
The inaccurate data could have several causes. People who travel, or outlets with staff scattered around the globe, might appear to be “based” somewhere other than where they actually are, at least temporarily. If someone uses a VPN, it could affect where X shows their location. Some of it could just be old IP addresses. At the time of this writing, Hank Green’s account is listed as being based in Japan, MusicTech (a sister publication to the UK’s NME) is showing as based in the US, and AVID (Massachusetts-based maker of ProTools) is listed as being in Spain.
Of course, there is also a kernel of truth to some of this. Many political rage-bait accounts are not based in the US. We’ve long known that troll farms have been waging a foreign influence campaign on American politics. But some of it is also a financial scheme. Monetization on X is largely driven by engagement, and nothing gets people engaged like riling them up about politics.
Sony’s last-gen XM4 headphones are over 50 percent off for Black Friday
More than five years after making their debut, Sony’s WH-1000XM4 remain an excellent pair of noise-canceling headphones. And right now, Best Buy is offering a doorbuster deal that drops them to just $159.99 ($190 off) for a limited time, which is the lowest price we’ve seen this year. If you prefer the latest tech, you can also snag the newer XM6 for about $398 ($60 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target.
Sony WH-1000XM4
Where to Buy:
We once considered the XM4 to be the best headphones you could buy. We replaced them with the XM5, followed by the XM6 three years later, but the last-last-gen model is still a solid pick in 2025. The XM4 offer great sound quality, up to 30 hours of battery life, and terrific active noise cancellation, even if the ANC can’t quite compete with Sony’s newer models. They support multipoint connectivity, allowing you to pair them with two devices simultaneously, along with great voice call performance. They also feature a handy Speak to Chat feature, which can automatically pause your audio when you start speaking.
Additionally, the XM4 support wear detection, meaning they will automatically pause whatever is playing when you remove them from your head and resume playback when you put them back on. And unlike the last-gen XM5, the comfortable headphones fold when not in use, making it relatively easy to slide them into your bag.
As for what you miss out on by opting for the XM4 over the XM6, Sony’s latest model offers improved sound quality, more powerful ANC, and even clearer voice calls. You can also charge the XM6 while listening to them, though you’ll need to juggle two cables — a USB-C and a 3.5mm — since they don’t support audio over USB-C.
Read our full WH-1000XM4 review.
Vine walked so TikTok could run
What are thooooose? Well, they're my Vines, the six-second videos that helped mint a generation of famous comedians and also kicked off the era of endlessly looping vertical video that has consumed us all ever since. If you weren't there at the time, most Vines might seem utterly nonsensical. But if you were on the internet when Vine burned brightest - a much briefer moment than you might remember - you probably still find yourself saying "look at all those chickens" more often than you should.
For this episode of Version History, we tell the story of Vine from beginning to end. It takes longer than six seconds… but not that much longer. …
Apple TV wants to go big
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on streaming competition, follow Andrew Webster. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.
How it started
In 2022, Apple won an Oscar. The company behind the Mac and iPhone made a splash by winning Best Picture with the indie darling CODA, a remake of a French-Belgian film about the only hearing member of a family with a struggling fishing business. It was created with a modest budget reported around $10 million, and yet despite its relatively humble beginnings, for a time the movie was …