If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s a pretty dark and cool time of year, which makes it a good time to consider your indoor tech essentials. From TVs to wireless earbuds, this weekend’s list of deals is sure to keep you occupied inside. Be sure to check out our deals roundup from earlier in the week, where you’ll still find discounts on work-from-home gear and more headphones.

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Headphone and Speaker Deals

SteelSeries Arctis 1

Photograph: Steelseries

The Arctis 1 gaming headset is hard to beat for the price. It works well with PS4/5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PCs; has a detachable microphone; and is pretty darn comfy. This headset doesn’t have any wireless capabilities, so it’s strictly for anyone wanting to plug in via the 3.5-mm headphone jack.

If you have the budget to upgrade, the Arctis 9 is a great wireless gaming headset. I like the comfortable headband, and the included mic pops out of the headphones so that you don’t look like a dork wandering around town listening to music.

These active noise-canceling earbuds from Sennheiser have basically no business costing this little. They offer a solid fit (though you may want to avoid them if you have smaller ears). I really like the audio quality that comes through the custom transducer drivers. They even have an IPX4 splash-resistance rating, which makes them great gym buds.

Sometimes we just need a cheap pair of earbuds to carry us through our commute, workouts, and other daily tasks. If you don’t need noise canceling, it’s worth checking out this pair from Jabra, which have the same great ergonomics as the brand’s more expensive models but without the fancier tech and processing.

Polk Audio Signa S4

Photograph: Polk Audio

It frequently drops to this price, but this is still a great deal. This Polk (7/10, WIRED Recommends) is easy to set up and works via an HDMI Arc connection. You can choose between different sound profiles, like Cinema or Night, and you’ll get room-filling sound. The wireless subwoofer gives it some nice oomph too. Read our Best Soundbars guide for more.

Sony makes excellent soundbars that fit easily under TVs, but they tend to cost a few hundred dollars more than their counterparts. That’s why now is a great time to grab one of these soundbar/wireless subwoofer combos on sale. You’ll get higher build quality than similar bars from Vizio and Samsung, and this thing can even simulate Dolby Atmos for more immersive audio.

A solid little Bluetooth speaker like this one from Anker can quickly become one of your best musical friends. I like how simple and easy to touch the controls are (great for no-look presses from the shower). And with 24 hours of playtime between charges, you’ll get a lot of bathing in before you need to plug in a USB-C cable.

The Xtreme 2 from JBL is a perfect accessory to bring with you camping, on road trips, or to set up on the patio. I like that it has 15 hours of playtime (more than enough for that post-ski dance party) and that it’s 1PX7-rated waterproof, so you can chuck it in a pool. We’ve seen this price before, but it’s still a great deal on a large Bluetooth speaker.

TV and Home Deals

Samsung The Frame

Photograph: Walmart

I don’t know how easily you can hide a 75-inch screen anywhere, but if you want to make your screen disappear into the background as much as possible, check out The Frame. Between viewing sessions, this gorgeous screen masquerades as artwork on the wall, with thousands of famous paintings to choose from. It’s a pretty neat party trick, and great for those who have design-focused living rooms.

You won’t get the steepest discount ever, but if you want a bigger screen to watch the final couple of NFL games before the Super Bowl, now is a solid time to buy this Neo QLED from Samsung. In addition to the excellent color you’ll get from quantum dots, this TV comes with a center pedestal stand, which makes it easier to place the hulking thing on existing furniture.

We’re not the biggest fans of its trackpad, but we do like that this 2-in-1 actually works well as a tablet. You can flip the screen over the keyboard and use the impressive OLED display to doodle, take notes, or do anything you’d do on a touchscreen. Just know that Samsung is expected to announce new versions of these laptops soon, which is likely why the prices are dipping now.

Apple MacBook Pro M2

Photograph: Apple

We are pretty big fans of the latest Macbook Pro (7/10, WIRED Review) for its solid performance and battery life. We do wish that this smaller version had the same number of ports as the larger 14- and 16-inch variants, but that makes this model easier to lug around and work on anywhere.

This is the lowest price we’ve seen on Amazon’s highest-end tablet (7/10, WIRED Recommends). We like it for reading Kindle books, listening to Audible, and watching Amazon Prime Video. It’s nice that you can add a microSD card to expand storage if you need to. The only downside is that the camera is poor.

You might be fine with streaming, but if you have a higher-end TV and sound system, you’ll be shocked at how much better content can come across in 4K Blu-ray. With its significantly higher bit-rates and lossless audio, I highly recommend this Sony unit if you’re looking to up your home viewing game.

This story originally appeared on High Country News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Last summer, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration observed dust blowing 85 miles from its source, Lake Abert and Summer Lake, two dried-up saline lakes in southern Oregon. This has happened before: Saline lakebeds are some of the West’s most significant sources of dust. California’s Owens Lake is the nation’s largest source of PM10, the tiny pollutants found in dust and smoke, while plumes blowing off the 800 square miles of the Great Salt Lake’s exposed bed have caused toxin-filled dust storms in Salt Lake City.

Saline lakes are rapidly losing water to climate change and agricultural and urban uses, becoming some of the West’s most threatened ecosystems. Now, new legislation is offering some support. On December 27, President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan Saline Lake Ecosystems in the Great Basin States Program Act, which allocates $25 million in funding for research and monitoring at saline lakes across the Great Basin. While this funding is an important step, it cannot give the lakes what they really need: more water.

The Interior West is full of salt lakes, created when snowmelt pools in the valley bottoms of the Basin and Range region. The valleys have no outflow, so the water remains until it evaporates, leaving behind the particles that were suspended in it. These accumulate over time, giving the lakes a high salinity.

“It creates a unique system that supports brine shrimp and alkali flies that can feed incredible populations of migratory birds,” said Ryan Houston, executive director of the Oregon Natural Desert Association, which seeks to conserve Oregon’s high desert, including Summer Lake and Lake Abert.

Yet this balance of runoff, salts, and evaporation also makes saline lakes highly sensitive to climate change. Decreasing snowpack and increasing evaporation due to higher temperatures means that there is less water in the lakes and a higher concentration of salt. That stresses shrimp and flies, which have adapted over time to specific salinities, and it also exposes dry lakebeds, creating dangerous dust storms.

Decades of diversions for agricultural and municipal use have also taken the lakes’ water. California’s Owens Lake, for instance, has been almost completely dry for nearly a century since its water was diverted to Los Angeles. A report released this month by Utah scientists and conservation organizations warned that the combination of water diversions and climate change has put the Great Salt Lake on track to disappear within five years. 

Many see poor air quality as the main reason to save the lakes. But the dust is a sign that the entire ecosystem is withering. Saline lakes are key stops on the Pacific Flyway, the bird migration route that extends from Alaska to Patagonia, Chile. “That we’re worried about dust says to me that we’ve already gone past the point of Lake Abert being lost as part of the Pacific Flyway, its most important ecological value,” said Houston. Over 80 species of birds either inhabit or migrate through Lake Abert, and 338 species depend on the Great Salt Lake.

When you run a major app, all it takes is one mistake to put countless people at risk. Such is the case with Diksha, a public education app run by India’s Ministry of Education that exposed the personal information of around 1 million teachers and millions of students across the country. The data, which included things like full names, email addresses, and phone numbers, was publicly accessible for at least a year and likely longer, potentially exposing those impacted to phishing attacks and other scams. 

Speaking of cybercrime, the LockBit ransomware gang has long operated under the radar, thanks to its professional operation and choice of targets. But over the past year, a series of missteps and drama have thrust it into the spotlight, potentially threatening its ability to continue operating with impunity.  

Encrypting everything on your machine isn’t just the domain of criminals, however. This week, we explained how to protect your files under digital lock and key on both macOS and Windows. Know what is just the domain of criminals? Money laundering, which a Chainalysis report published this week says is primarily facilitated by only five crypto exchanges, four of which helped scofflaws cash out $1.1 billion in 2022. 

Billionaires like Elon Musk may have reason to celebrate. The flight-tracking platform ADS-B Exchange, which provided data for the @ElonJet account that tracked the Tesla and Twitter CEO’s private plane, has sold out. The company is now owned by aviation intelligence firm Jetnet, which is owned by private equity. Fans of ADS-B, including the creator of @ElonJet, are now jumping ship on the assumption that the new owner will be more likely to bow to censorship requests from the likes of Musk and the Saudi royal family.

But that’s not all. Each week we round up the stories we didn’t cover in-depth ourselves. Click on the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

As Russia’s catastrophic invasion of Ukraine has unfolded over the past year, the Kremlin has also tightened its repression of domestic and Russian-language media to quash anti-war dissent. The latest victim of that crackdown is, by some measures, the top independent Russian news website: Meduza. On Thursday, the Russian government added Meduza to its list of “undesirable organizations,” effectively outlawing any collaboration or promotion of the news outlet. The country’s general prosecutor went so far as to write in a statement that Meduza “poses a threat to the foundations of the constitutional system and the security of the Russian Federation.”

While Meduza has long been based in Latvia to shield it from Russia’s media restrictions and retaliation, the new measure makes it a crime for anyone in Russia to work for the news outlet, speak to its journalists, post a link to its website, or even so much as “like” one of its social media posts. A first violation of those restrictions is a misdemeanor defense under Russian law, punishable by a fine, but repeated violations are a felony, with years in prison as a possible sentence.

While a prison term is perhaps unlikely for anyone not actively involved in the news organization’s work—most violations of the law have so far resulted in a fine–Meduza has warned Russians and anyone traveling to Russia to be careful to delete social media posts in which they link to or promote its content. Regardless of how the law is enforced, its chilling effects will no doubt be significant, and the draconian ban on Meduza represents another small step in Russia’s long, slow slide into totalitarianism.

The FBI announced this week that it had foiled the operations of one of the world’s most prolific and disruptive ransomware groups, known as Hive, taking down its dark-web site and recovering decryption keys to unlock the systems of victims who were facing $130 million in total ransom demands. “We hacked the hackers,” deputy US attorney general Lisa Monaco told reporters in a press conference. In previous years of its extortion-fueled cybercrime spree, Hive victimized more than 80 networks and collected over $100 million in ransom payments, according to the FBI. But working with numerous law enforcement agencies, including German and Dutch federal police, the FBI surreptitiously gained access to the group’s systems, surveilling and ultimately disrupting them. Despite that win, no arrests were mentioned in the splashy announcement, signaling that—as is usual in ransomware cases—Hive’s hackers are likely located in non-extradition countries beyond the reach of Western law enforcement.

The FBI officially pointed the finger at a usual suspect in the cryptocurrency world’s ongoing plague of massive breaches and thefts: North Korea. In its investigation of a heist that stole $100 million in cryptocurrency last year, the Bureau accused two hacker groups long believed to be associated with the regime of Kim Jong Un, known as APT38 or Lazarus—the latter of which is sometimes used as a broader umbrella term for multiple North Korean hacker units. Those hackers targeted the Horizon “bridge” owned by US crypto firm Harmony, a system used to allow transfers from one cryptocurrency to another. Bridges have increasingly become lucrative targets for thieves, who have stolen hundreds of millions worth of digital currency from them in recent years. Aside from its name-and-shame announcement, the FBI also says some portion of the stolen currency was seized when the hackers attempted to launder it, and the agency pointed to crypto addresses where about $40 million of the stolen loot is still stored.

If Madison Square Garden didn’t want a legal scandal from its experiment in using face recognition technology to spot people it sought to ban from its venue, perhaps it shouldn’t have started by banning lawyers. Following revelations that MSG had used facial recognition to prevent attorneys from multiple firms involved in lawsuits against the venue from attending its events—and then enforced that ban with controversial facial recognition technology—New York attorney general Letitia James sent a letter to MSG’s owners demanding more information about its surveillance practices. The letter, which suggests the ban on lawyers is meant to dissuade people from filing lawsuits against MSG, asked about the reliability of the facial recognition technology MSG is using and whether it had safeguards against bias. “Anyone with a ticket to an event should not be concerned that they may be wrongfully denied entry based on their appearance,” James wrote in a statement, “and we’re urging MSG Entertainment to reverse this policy.” 

This is the slow time in the world of gadgets and consumer tech, a product purgatory between CES and Phone Announcement Season that makes for a dearth of device news. Right now, there’s only one thing to do on this week’s roundup of gadget news: Dive into the rumor well and figure out what Apple is doing.

Yet again, new details have leaked about Apple’s ongoing plans for building an AR/VR headset and mixed reality ecosystem. Thanks to reports from Bloomberg and The Information, Apple’s vision for its most anticipated device in years is coming into sharper focus.

Apple seems keen on creating a device that replicates its mobile iOS experience into a virtual or augmented realm. The headset, which Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman says is likely to be called Reality Pro and released later this year, will use internal and external cameras to track eye and hand movements so you can fiddle with AR objects that are projected into real spaces. It will allow for AR FaceTime calls, with realistically rendered video of the person wearing the headset. Reportedly, this will work for one-on-one calls, where calls with multiple people will show them all rendered as Apple’s slightly horrifying Animoji cartoons.

Apple has also been quietly building an AR software environment that it and other companies can build apps in. Apparently, Apple has leveraged tech usually used in video games, like procedural generation, to create virtual environments like a meditation garden and even an interactive Dr. Seuss story.

The headset is reportedly going to cost around $3,000, with cheaper models planned for eventual release in 2024 or 2025.

Here’s some more of this week’s gadget news.

Microsoft Will Stop Selling Windows 10

Windows 10, widely considered a pretty decent OS, is being phased out in favor of its mostly fine successor. Microsoft says that after January 31, it will no longer sell licenses to Windows 10.

But it’s not killing the OS entirely—at least not quite yet. On its Windows 10 store page, a disclaimer states that Microsoft will support Windows 10 until October 14, 2025. That’s about a decade of life for the OS, which is on track with Microsoft’s past support of its popular operating systems. (Microsoft stopped support for the very popular Windows 7 in 2020, over a decade after it was released.) Still, it signals that Microsoft is eager to shift more fully into its Windows 11 era. The company released the first big update for its new OS last September.

Substack Gets a Private Mode

Substack, the independent newsletter and blogging platform that has become a darling of independent journalist types, is getting a private mode. It works like your edgy Finsta account or Twitter Circle, where only people you’ve approved can see posts. Directly comparing it to Instagram’s private mode, the company says this will give Substackers a way to test out feeds or make posts available only to friends or certain communities. (You know it’s only a matter of time until some writer accidentally posts a horny 8,000-word screed on main.)

The move has an almost nostalgic appeal to it. After all, having a blog that few people read will probably feel very familiar to those of us who were online circa 2007.

U TikTalking 2 Me?

TikTok has been in the news quite a lot lately, mostly because everybody keeps trying to ban the app in the US. Still, the app continues to crank out quiet updates to its platform. The latest is the ability to customize who you receive DMs from.

You can choose between being available for DMs from everyone, mutual followers, or suggested friends. The suggested friends mode will allow DMs from people you’ve added via your contacts or other social media services like Facebook. You can also turn off DMs entirely. It’s not as comprehensive as Instagram’s recent quality of life updates aimed at protecting younger users, but clearly, TikTok is prioritizing DMs as a way to keep people interacting on the app.

Automobiles are available in a variety of colors. very dangerous for their occupants—over 1 million people globally die in car accidents every year. An additional 20-50 million are also affected by non-fatal accidents each year. These are terrible statistics. 

But driving doesn’t have to be this way. Many people hope that self-driving cars in the future will reduce the amount of car accidents each year. However, auto manufacturers want to make progress sooner. In reality, car safety may be addressed by 2023.

Carmakers including Mazda and Toyota are building a new generation of automobiles fitted with an array of sensors—from ECG sensors mounted on your steering wheel to ear-set sensors that can detect when drivers are not fit to drive. These sensors can detect sudden illnesses such as a heart attack or epileptic seizure, and even drunk driving. Human error accounts for over 90 percent of all auto accidents, and the introduction of multi-modal sensors (like the optical sensors and physiological monitors mentioned) to cars will continue to reduce risks for drivers and others on the road.

The most important thing is that this car will keep you safe and healthy as you drive it in 2023.

In 2023, we will continue to see a growing intersection between wellness, mobility, and AI—specifically, the evolution of multi-modal sensors to track and positively influence drivers’ health and wellness (physical, emotional, and mental). Consider Audi’s “Urbansphere” concept, which was unveiled earlier this year. It will feature stress-detection software that uses technologies such as facial scanners, voice analysis monitoring systems and AI to determine how drivers feel at any moment. The real-time data can then be used to provide personalized relaxation suggestions to drivers. This could include guided meditation.

Similar technologies are being used in the automotive industry by companies like Hyundai. The company’s “Smart Cabin” is equipped with sensors that can record a driver’s vital signs and adjust car conditions based on data collected. If the CO is detected, it can adjust car conditions based on that data.₂ If your car is registering dangerous levels, you can have your car roll down the windows and activate your outside circulation mode. This is an ongoing acceleration of programs developed by companies including Mercedes, where in-car comforts like the Energizing Coach suggest appropriate wellness interventions based on a driver’s monitored stress levels.

With car sales sitting at over 65 millions vehicles globally this year, there’s plenty of data-backed opportunities to keep us both safe and healthy on the road.

Responsible drivers take care of their vehicles. Tune-ups and regular maintenance are important to protect our investment. But in 2023, we’ll see our vehicles taking care of us too. The automotive industry is booming with multi-modal AI technologies, self-care being a top priority, and money flooding in. Your car can become an oasis of well-being.

Perception and memory Although they seem to have different experiences, neuroscientists were confident that their brains produced them in distinct ways. Neuroimaging research in the 1990s revealed that brain regions that are active for sensory perception were also activated during recall.

“It started to raise the question of whether a memory representation is actually different from a perceptual representation at all,” said Sam Ling, an associate professor of neuroscience and director of the Visual Neuroscience Lab at Boston University. Is it possible that our recall of a forest glade is just a replay of previous neural activity?

“The argument has swung from being this debate over whether there’s even any involvement of sensory cortices to saying ‘Oh, wait a minute, is there any difference?’” said Christopher Baker, an investigator at the National Institute of Mental Health who runs the learning and plasticity unit. “The pendulum has swung from one side to the other, but it’s swung too far.”

Even if there is a very strong neurological similarity between memories and experiences, we know that they can’t be exactly the same. “People don’t get confused between them,” said Serra Favila, a postdoctoral scientist at Columbia University and the lead author of a recent Nature Communications study. Her team’s work has identified at least one of the ways in which memories and perceptions of images are assembled differently at the neurological level.

Blurry spots

The world is seen through our retina’s photoreceptors. This information flows into the visual cortex where it is processed in different types of neurons. Each group adds new levels of complexity to the image: Simple dots of light turn into lines and edges, then contours, then shapes, then complete scenes that embody what we’re seeing.

In the new study, the researchers focused on a feature of vision processing that’s very important in the early groups of neurons: where things are located in space. The pixels and contours making up an image need to be in the correct places or else the brain will create a shuffled, unrecognizable distortion of what we’re seeing.

Participants were taught by researchers how to recognize four distinct patterns against a backdrop that was similar to a dartboard. Participants were instructed to place each pattern in the correct spot and associate it with the color of the central board. Each participant was tested to make sure that they had memorized this information correctly—that if they saw a green dot, for example, they knew the star shape was at the far left position. Researchers then recorded brain activity as participants remembered and perceived the location of the patterns.

Researchers were able to use brain scans to see how neurons marked where something was and what they remembered later. Each neuron attends to one space, or “receptive field,” in the expanse of your vision, such as the lower left corner. A neuron is “only going to fire when you put something in that little spot,” Favila said. Brain scans can easily detect neuron activity that is tuned to one spot in particular space.

Studies of visual perception have shown that the receptive fields of neurons at lower processing levels had smaller amplitudes than those of neurons at higher levels. The higher-tier neurons draw information from a greater area of the visual fields, whereas the lower-tier ones are more adept at combining signals from multiple neurons. The larger receptive fields also have lower spatial precision. This can be analogous to putting large dots of ink across North America’s map to show New Jersey. Visual processing is basically a process of tiny dots becoming larger blurrier but still more important blobs.

Perhaps that is what you desire to save an image or a video clip from the web through your browser because it’ll make a great wallpaper or you want to include it in a video you’re making. In most cases (especially when it comes to pictures) you can simply right-click on the file and choose “save image as,” or something similar.

But sometimes that doesn’t work, or not well enough. What if there’s no save option on the right-click menu? How can you quickly save many images from one website? What if you’re trying to save an animated video as a GIF, or you keep downloading one of those .webp files no one wants?

That’s where third-party browser extensions can come in handy, add-ons that will dig deeper into a page’s HTML code to pluck out the image or the video clip you’re after and automate the process for you.

Image Downloader Continued

Open Image Downloader Continued (Chrome/Edge) and you’ll get a neatly organized grid of all the images on the current web page: You can see the format and the dimensions of each picture, save them to a disk, and even filter and order them based on their size. The add-on couldn’t be any simpler to use, and it’s one of the best for downloading images.

Take a look at all images

Download All Images Chrome/Edge works slightly differently than Image Downloader Continued. It might be able to grab some images when Image Downloader Continued can’t, and vice versa. Click on the extension button when you’re on a site, and every image on the page will be wrapped into a zip archive so you just have to choose where to save it.

Save All Images offers you several saving options.

David Nield: All Images 

Video Downloader Ultimate

If you’re struggling to save a video from a website—whether it’s embedded in the page or included in a social media post—Video Downloader Ultimate (Chrome/Edge) can lend a hand. With a single click, you’ll see a list of all the videos included in the website that you’re currently viewing, and you can then either get their URLs or save them locally.

Twitter Video Downloader

Twitter Video Downloader Chrome/Edge is a tool that can be used to download videos from Twitter. It embeds the clips in the webpage and grabs them quickly. Simply click the “Download” icon near a tweet that contains a video to save it.

Base Image Downloader can filter images by their size.

Base Image Downloader via David Nield

Base Image Downloader

Extracting GIFs is not an easy task. GIFs can be published on different sites. Others use the mp4 file format. Some convert them back. No matter what format you use, Base Image Downloader Chrome/Edge excels in grabbing almost any GIF-related image and supports all other formats. This extension opens a gallery with thumbnails of images. You can either save all or one image at a given time.

Screen Recorder and Editor

If other tools don’t work, you can try using a screen recording tool instead. The Screen Recorder and Editor (Chrome/Edge), one of my favorite screen recording tools, offers a variety of ways to record the tabs or entire desktop. It also includes the ability to edit.

You can save page WE to choose what parts of a site you want to download.

David Nield Saves Page WE 

Get a Discount on Page WE

A second option is to grab all elements on a webpage. This can be done using Save Page WE (Chrome/Edge). It’s simple to use and supports keyboard shortcuts. Depending on the site you’re working with, you can opt to save images from a page to a disk, and in some cases this works for audio and video files as well.

Take a look at all images

While Download All Images (Firefox) has the same name as another extension above, it’s not the same utility—and this one works with Mozilla’s browser. This add-on offers a host of options, enabling you to filter downloads by image size, image type, and even image URL (so you don’t accidentally download ads or other linked content), and there’s plenty of flexibility when it comes to how the grabbed pictures are saved.

You have many options with Download All Images

Screenshot: All Images Downloadable via David Nield 

DownThemAll

DownThemAll, also known as Firefox, is able to grab everything on a site, even images and video clips. It’s by no means a blunt instrument and comes with plenty of options for choosing what to save and where to save it. It is one of the extensions that you’ll quickly discover indispensable.

SingleFile

SingleFile (Firefox), an extension which saves web pages in full, is another great tool. It’ll download all of the HTML, text, and images on a particular website, and it integrates very neatly into the Firefox interface. If you’re struggling to grab images with other extensions, this one might be the solution.