2025-10-01 09:10:31
The votes are in, and the winner of Fat Bear Week 2025 is the indomitable Bear 32, also known as Chunk.
The public votes for their favorite brown bear each year in the March Madness-style tournament held by Katmai National Park and Preserve in partnership with the nonprofit Katmai Conservancy and online portal Explore.org.
Weighing in at around 1,200 pounds, Chunk captured voters’ hearts this year with his perseverance. He showed up to catch salmon at the Brooks River with a broken jaw that’s healing but likely now a long-term disability.
Chunk captured voters’ hearts this year with his perseverance
The brown bears need to pack on the pounds each fall, gaining as much as four pounds a day. That gets them through the winter, when they might lose as much as a third of their stored body fat.
This year’s contenders got extra fat and healthy thanks to an enormous salmon run. On top of having one of the biggest populations of brown bears in the world — around 2,200 — Katmai National Park says it’s also blessed with one of the healthiest wild sockeye salmon runs left on our warming world despite record-breaking high temperatures threatening previous years.
Even with Fat Bear Week coming to a close — narrowly avoiding a government shutdown — you can still catch the action on explore.org’s live Brown Bear Cam.
2025-10-01 08:15:13
Amazon's fall hardware event had a little of everything: updated Echo speakers, several Blink security devices, and even a Kindle Scribe with a color screen. Most of the gadgets won't ship for at least a couple of weeks, if not longer; however, most are also available for preorder at Amazon if you want to be among the first to try them.
To help make sense of it all, we've rounded up all of Amazon's upcoming wares, along with quick summaries and preorder details for each device. And if you're waiting for our thoughts, stay tuned: we'll be reviewing many of the new devices in the coming weeks, including the latest Fire TVs, Echo devices, and …
2025-10-01 05:17:48
Google appears to have blocked AI search results for the query "does trump show signs of dementia" as well as other questions about his mental acuity, even though it will show AI results for similar searches about other presidents.
When making the search about President Trump, AI Overviews will display a message that says, "An AI Overview is not available for this search":
Go directly to AI Mode, and you'll only receive a list of 10 web results instead of a summarized page of information:
Similar searches about Trump are limited in the same way. Various queries about dementia, Alzheimer's, and senility display no AI overview and only prod …
2025-10-01 05:00:08
Hello and welcome to Regulator. Today is the last day of The Verge's very good subscription sale: $4 for a month and $35 for the year, for full access to the entire site. Don't delay!
When we launched Regulator two months ago, the premise was that I'd write about the collision between Big Tech and Big Government. The key word was collision. Tech and politics no longer existed as separate planets that would occasionally cross paths - they were now crashing into each other in very messy and dramatic ways. The plan was to write a column about one subject a week that talked about a recent tech / politics collision.
But dear god, there are so …
2025-10-01 02:28:35
With the impact of President Trump’s tariffs leading to higher prices on Sonos gear, scoring a deal feels extra special. Right now, Sonos is currently offering up to 25 percent off a range of refurbished devices, including the Sonos Era 100, Era 300, and the portable Move 2, with prices starting at $134. If you want wireless headphones that can seamlessly integrate with your Sonos setup, a refurbished pair of Ace wireless headphones are currently $239, saving you $160 off the price of a new pair.
The refurbished Sonos Era 100 is down to $134 ($45 off), which is close to the price drop we saw on the same model over the summer. In his review of the smart speaker, former senior reviewer Chris Welch said the Era 100 provides rich sound that’s consistently strong across genres. Features include stereo sound, line-in and Bluetooth audio support, and more intuitive physical controls compared to the older Sonos One. The Era 100 has two tweeters, enabling proper left and right channel reproduction, and a larger midwoofer compared to its predecessor, resulting in more booming bass.
The Sonos Ace are currently just $239, saving you $80 off the refurbished price. They’re the company’s first set of wireless headphones that nail style, fit, and comfort. They also deliver on aspects like sound quality, noise cancellation, and a transparency mode that offers an impressive lifelike sound. The Ace also offers a feature called TV Audio Swap, which lets you transfer any sound coming from a Sonos Arc soundbar to the headphones with the press of a button. The private listening mode supports spatial audio and head tracking, providing an immersive experience when watching movies.
Finally, the refurbished Sonos Move 2 is down to $299 ($100 off), making the portable speaker much more affordable. In his review, Chris Welch called the Move 2 a “slam-dunk sequel,” praising its stereo sound, extra-long battery life, and line-in playback. The speaker initially launched for $449 and has since gone up to $499, making this price drop a great deal. Sonos Certified Refurbished products are thoroughly inspected, cleaned, and tested by the brand’s in-house team, and you get the same one-year warranty as new Sonos products, so what you get should look and perform as though it’s new.
2025-10-01 02:27:23
LG first announced its new 32-inch UltraFine monitor at CES 2025. The company still bills it as the “world’s first 6K monitor with Thunderbolt 5 connectivity” built right in. Ahead of the display launching in South Korea and Japan in September, followed by a US launch next month, LG has shared more specs and pricing details. It’s currently available for preorder through B&H’s online store for $1,999.99 with shipping expected to start on October 20th.
The UltraFine 32U990A features a 31.5-inch IPS panel with a native resolution of 6,144 x 3,456 and a maximum refresh rate of 60Hz. It supports 10-bit color covering 98 percent of the DCI-P3 and 99.5 percent of the Adobe RGB color spaces. It offers a 2,000:1 contrast ratio with 450 nits of brightness which helps explain why LG’s 6K display is nearly $3,000 cheaper than Apple’s similarly-styled but aging 6K Pro Display XDR which instead offers up to 1,600 nits of brightness.
Thunderbolt 5 support means LG’s display can move files around at speeds up to 120Gbps when connected to other T5 devices, but its port selection isn’t quite as extensive as what you’ll find on the many Thunderbolt 5 hubs now available. The UltraFine 32U990A features HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort, a pair of 96W T5 USB-C ports, a USB-C upstream port for connecting to your computer, and a pair of slower USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports.
