Author: Awais

Holiday shoppers, it’s time to finish knocking out that seasonal wish list. At this point, your online purchases may not arrive in time unless you’re willing to pay extra for priority shipping — or you happen to get lucky. Still, gifting anything at all is awfully nice of you, regardless of when it arrives. If you’re shopping on a budget of $50 or less per item, we’ve crafted this gift guide specifically for you.Photographer, photo editor: Amelia Holowaty KralesArt director and designer: Cath VirginiaCreative director: Kristen Radtke

French cuisine has a reputation for precision: glossy sauces, just-so pastries, and techniques that feel better left to chefs in starched jackets. But here’s the truth—many of the most beloved French recipes are deeply practical, designed for home cooks who value good ingredients, a little patience, and plenty of butter.Until you book that plane ticket, let these French recipes turn your kitchen into a brasserie. This collection spans timeless classics like ratatouille, salade niçoise, and croque monsieur, alongside modern, unfussy updates—think banana pudding–inspired Paris-Brest and coq au vin made in an Instant Pot. Whether you’re cooking for a dinner party…

In one of the most consequential regulatory moves yet for the future of search, the European Commission has launched a formal antitrust investigation into Google.  At the center of the complaint is Google’s use of publisher content to train and power AI Overviews and other generative AI features – while potentially diverting traffic away from original sources. For anyone working in SEO, content strategy, or brand visibility, the implications are immediate.  Is Google crossing a line by repurposing publisher content for AI-generated answers, or is this simply the cost of participating in an open, crawlable web? With regulators now stepping…

Ostensibly, plant lovers should be the easiest to shop for. Just get them a plant, right?Wrong. (Well, most of the time.) I review indoor hydroponic gardens for WIRED and have been a proud plant parent for almost 30 years, so I can say that even if you have a running mental catalog of all your recipient’s houseplants and know which ones they don’t yet have, you may not know what they have space for, or what kind of substrate or pot they’d like to be using.In general, the best gifts remind them of the plants they do have, or that…

The iPhone 17 Pro is a superb video camera thanks to its glorious image quality, while its ease of use means it’s dead simple to quickly start shooting away. Then there’s the always fun 4K slow motion mode. Advances in mobile phone cameras mean It’s never been easier to shoot gorgeous footage of your family or your friends and the holidays are the perfect time to get creative with your videos. Don’t have an iPhone? Not to worry — other phones like the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, Pixel 10 Pro or older iPhones and Android phones are also capable of capturing…

Google’s Danny Sullivan discussed SEO and AI where they observed that their ranking systems are tuned for one thing, regardless if it’s classic search or AI search. What he talked about was optimizing for people, which is something I suspect the search marketing industry will increasingly be talking about. Nothing New You Need To Be Doing For AI Search The first thing Danny Sullivan discussed was that despite there being new search experiences powered by AI there isn’t anything new that they need to be doing. John Mueller asked: “So everything kind of around AI, or is this really a…

Resolve AI, a startup developing an autonomous site reliability engineer (SRE), a tool that automatically maintains software systems, has raised a Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, according to three people familiar with the deal. The headline valuation for the fresh round is $1 billion, sources said. However, the company’s actual blended valuation was lower because of a multi-tranched structure. In this setup, investors purchased some equity at a $1 billion valuation but acquired the remainder — likely a larger percentage of the round — at a lower price. This novel investment approach has recently become popular for the…

Are you just starting out with soldering and want to practice on a few cheap and easy projects? That’s exactly where I am in my microcontroller journey, and these are the simple projects I did first to really start to hone my soldering skills. HTG Wrapped 2025: 24 days of tech 24 days of our favorite hardware, gadgets, and tech Put a resistor in-line with an LED Every LED needs a resistor. One of the easiest soldering projects to do as a beginner is to solder a resistor to an LED. You can technically put the resistor on either side,…

Many bakers swear they have the secret to the ultimate cinnamon rolls. Maybe you opt to get a head start with overnight rolls or stick with a classic like our taste test-winning Quick Cinnamon Rolls. Or perhaps you call in an assist from cake mix, frozen bread dough, canned biscuits, refrigerated crescent dough, or Jiffy for a semi-homemade sweet roll often indistinguishable from its made-from-scratch peers. Some simply crack open a can (we’re partial to Immaculate Baking’s Ready-to-Bake Cinnamon Rolls), top them with eggnog, and blow everyone away with the fluffy treats that emerge from the oven. If you ask…

“Elite gift giver” is a title we all strive to achieve in life. But I’d argue that finding a unique eco-friendly gift is the final boss of thoughtful gifting — thoughtful because you clearly carefully considered what’d make them happy, and because you made a conscious effort to not fall into the wasteful overconsumption trap.I mean, consumerism really puts a damper on holiday cheer, particularly as it applies to waste and ethics. Consider how much non-recyclable packaging will be used, how many old tech devices will be trashed to make room for new ones, or how many underpaid workers put in…