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Your hearing health is important to your mental or physical health. Now, Apple’s new hearing health features can help you track, manage, and supplement it. Here’s how.

The Vivint smart home security system has all the sensors, cameras, security features, sensors, and remote automated control you could ever need.

The Vivint smart home security system has all the sensors, cameras, security features, sensors, and remote automated control you could ever need.

From November 1-3, stream these great movies for free, including a murder mystery, a James Bond installment, and a cute football story. 

One of fantasy and sci-fi’s all-time greats has passed away. Artist Greg Hildebrandt, known for his iconic work on Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Marvel and Magic: The Gathering, died on Thursday at 85. He and his twin brother Tim, who died in 2006, were a powerhouse duo — the Brothers Hildebrandt — until they decided to pursue solo careers in 1981.

The duo was perhaps best known for their “Style B” poster (above) for the original Star Wars in 1977. Released in the UK (Tom Jung’s “Style A” was the original US poster), the art shows Luke Skywalker heroically hoisting his lightsaber high above his head like King Arthur wielded Excalibur. He’s flanked by a blaster-toting Princess Leia, with C-3PO and R2-D2 looking on from behind. Darth Vader’s imposing mask peers down on them in the background among a sea of stars, the Death Star and starfighters.

As for Luke and Leia’s noteworthy lack of resemblance to Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, neither the Brothers Hildebrandt nor Jung had access to the actors’ photos. So, they made do with generic hero images that could have been ripped from 1970s fantasy book covers. (Still rad, if not screen-accurate.) The Hildebrandt poster was used in the UK until January 1978, when it was replaced by Tom Chantrell’s “Style C” poster, which depicted the actual cast.

Greg Hildebrandt / X

The brothers were also strongly associated with a series of The Lord of the Rings calendars. Decades before Peter Jackson brought the films to live action (and even before the 1978 animated version), their art — which drew on their influence from classic Disney films — was the most prominent visualization of Tolkien’s epic for many a 1970s fantasy reader.

Among Hildebrandt’s many other projects were comics for Marvel and DC, illustrations for Wizards of the Coast (Magic: The Gathering and Harry Potter), magazines Omni, Heavy Metal and Amazing Stories, album art for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Black Sabbath and a long list of book covers.

Hildebrandt also fought for freedom with his artistic gifts. After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he contributed illustrations for Operation USA’s benefit anthology comic book series. Profits were donated to Ukrainian refugee relief efforts. Explaining his decision, he wrote, “Any project that I can lend my art to that will thwart Putin is a project I will join with all my heart, soul and mind.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/greg-hildebrandt-iconic-star-wars-and-lord-of-the-rings-artist-has-died-at-85-193026772.html?src=rss

One of fantasy and sci-fi’s all-time greats has passed away. Artist Greg Hildebrandt, known for his iconic work on Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Marvel and Magic: The Gathering, died on Thursday at 85. He and his twin brother Tim, who died in 2006, were a powerhouse duo — the Brothers Hildebrandt — until they decided to pursue solo careers in 1981.

The duo was perhaps best known for their “Style B” poster (above) for the original Star Wars in 1977. Released in the UK (Tom Jung’s “Style A” was the original US poster), the art shows Luke Skywalker heroically hoisting his lightsaber high above his head like King Arthur wielded Excalibur. He’s flanked by a blaster-toting Princess Leia, with C-3PO and R2-D2 looking on from behind. Darth Vader’s imposing mask peers down on them in the background among a sea of stars, the Death Star and starfighters.

As for Luke and Leia’s noteworthy lack of resemblance to Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, neither the Brothers Hildebrandt nor Jung had access to the actors’ photos. So, they made do with generic hero images that could have been ripped from 1970s fantasy book covers. (Still rad, if not screen-accurate.) The Hildebrandt poster was used in the UK until January 1978, when it was replaced by Tom Chantrell’s “Style C” poster, which depicted the actual cast.

Greg Hildebrandt / X

The brothers were also strongly associated with a series of The Lord of the Rings calendars. Decades before Peter Jackson brought the films to live action (and even before the 1978 animated version), their art — which drew on their influence from classic Disney films — was the most prominent visualization of Tolkien’s epic for many a 1970s fantasy reader.

Among Hildebrandt’s many other projects were comics for Marvel and DC, illustrations for Wizards of the Coast (Magic: The Gathering and Harry Potter), magazines Omni, Heavy Metal and Amazing Stories, album art for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Black Sabbath and a long list of book covers.

Hildebrandt also fought for freedom with his artistic gifts. After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he contributed illustrations for Operation USA’s benefit anthology comic book series. Profits were donated to Ukrainian refugee relief efforts. Explaining his decision, he wrote, “Any project that I can lend my art to that will thwart Putin is a project I will join with all my heart, soul and mind.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/greg-hildebrandt-iconic-star-wars-and-lord-of-the-rings-artist-has-died-at-85-193026772.html?src=rss

A new update for Instagram posted earlier today could fix one of the most frustrating problems for creators. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, announced a new filtering update on Instagram for creators’ inboxes.

Instagram users with a creator-designated account can now filter message requests in their inbox based on its sender in a similar way to Gmail’s labels. Creators can still sort their messages by the most “recent” received and by the “number of followers” but they can now filter out certain messages. The new filters include requests and messages from “verified accounts,” “businesses,” “creators” and “subscribers.”

The update also includes a way to sort all of your story replies on Instagram. If you go to the top of your inbox, you can also sort and filter your story replies “in case you just wanna get to these requests really quickly and easily,” Mosseri says.

“Now there’s a lot more to do to improve the inbox for creators and requests but hopefully this is one step in the right direction,” Mosseri adds in his video. He also said this feature was one a lot of creators were asking for, so hopefully Instagram will be adding more inbox tools in the near future to make that part of the app a bit cleaner.

Instagram has been toying with new ways to update its platform for higher profile users and creators for a long time now. The company started testing its creator account concept in 2018 that allowed celebrities and more famous social media stars to filter their direct messages and track stats of their followers.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/instagram-reorganizes-message-requests-for-creators-191802121.html?src=rss

A new update for Instagram posted earlier today could fix one of the most frustrating problems for creators. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, announced a new filtering update on Instagram for creators’ inboxes.

Instagram users with a creator-designated account can now filter message requests in their inbox based on its sender in a similar way to Gmail’s labels. Creators can still sort their messages by the most “recent” received and by the “number of followers” but they can now filter out certain messages. The new filters include requests and messages from “verified accounts,” “businesses,” “creators” and “subscribers.”

The update also includes a way to sort all of your story replies on Instagram. If you go to the top of your inbox, you can also sort and filter your story replies “in case you just wanna get to these requests really quickly and easily,” Mosseri says.

“Now there’s a lot more to do to improve the inbox for creators and requests but hopefully this is one step in the right direction,” Mosseri adds in his video. He also said this feature was one a lot of creators were asking for, so hopefully Instagram will be adding more inbox tools in the near future to make that part of the app a bit cleaner.

Instagram has been toying with new ways to update its platform for higher profile users and creators for a long time now. The company started testing its creator account concept in 2018 that allowed celebrities and more famous social media stars to filter their direct messages and track stats of their followers.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/instagram-reorganizes-message-requests-for-creators-191802121.html?src=rss

Audible is offering a sweet promotion as an early Black Friday deal, allowing new users to sign up for three months of its Premium Plus plan for just $3. That breaks down to $1 per month. It’s only for new users, so anyone who has previously dipped their toes in the Audible waters are out of luck.

This offer starts today, but is available all the way until midnight on New Year’s Eve. It’s only for US customers and, as usual, the subscription will automatically renew after the three months, so be vigilant about smashing that cancel button if it’s not working out. The regular price for Audible Premium Plus is $15 per month plus tax.

Audible Premium Plus is the top-tier offering for listening to audiobooks. A membership provides access to the entire catalog plus a monthly credit to purchase nearly any title outright. Subscriptions also offer discounts on other newly-released titles. All told, there are thousands of books to choose from, along with podcasts and Audible Originals.

To that end, there’s a whole lot of original content here for fans of different literary genres. James Patterson has an Audible Original that features a stacked voice cast, with Cobie Smulders and Reid Scott headlining. There’s also unique fare like sleep meditations and the like.

Check out all of the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/audible-is-offering-three-months-for-3-in-an-early-black-friday-deal-183640016.html?src=rss

VPNs, or virtual private networks, are everywhere. If you’ve spent any time at all on YouTube, chances are you’ve seen an ad selling VPNs — there have been literally hundreds and thousands of them. 

We test and review VPNs so you don’t have to — but what even is a VPN? The pitch is fairly simple: a VPN can mask your IP address and the identity of your device by routing your traffic through a remote server. Sites and services will see a different IP address to your own, and your internet service provider will only be able to see that you’re connected to a VPN server, rather than what sites you’re visiting. That means a VPN can be an important tool to keep your data private and secure, especially if you need to connect to an unsecured network. If you’re on public WiFi, for example, you can’t be sure what they’re tracking while you’re surfing the internet. With a VPN, there’s an additional layer of privacy — as long as you make sure the VPN provider can be trusted. But a VPN should not be the end of your security journey. Complex passwords, multifactor authentication and other security basics should be way higher on your checklist.

Another commonly advertised feature of VPNs is evading geoblocking techniques that companies use to prevent you from accessing certain content. Because you’re connecting to a remote server, a VPN can effectively change your location, allowing you to watch another country’s Netflix content or, say, watch Doctor Who on the UK-only BBC iPlayer. If you’re in the EU, it can allow you to access sites that are otherwise blocked due to the region’s strict data protection regulations. In the past, VPNs have even been used to skirt political firewalls put up to censor online access.

With many VPN makers making sweeping claims about military-grade encryption, digital invisibility and lightning-fast speeds, it’s tough to know what’s true and what’s marketing hype. That’s why Engadget started evaluating VPNs in 2023, looking at a number of factors such as security, speed, latency, usage limits and price. And while we don’t expect to ramp up to more VPN testing until 2025, our best VPNs guide will continue to be the home base of our coverage. In the meantime, this is our current VPN testing methodology. 

Background checks

Before we install or sign up for a service, our work begins by investigating each product’s lineage. We reference privacy policies, transparency reports and security audits that are publicly available, and note the security specs of each service. We also look into each company’s history of security incidents like data breaches. We rely on some pre-existing academic work from bodies like Consumer Reports, VPNalyzer and others when looking into security specs.

Setup

The next step in our review process involves a close look at what it’s like to get set up on the VPN. This involves looking at the various platforms each VPN supports, from certain web browsers to Smart TVs, to better understand how it can be used. We also look to see just how easy it is to get started on a new VPN. Some will automatically connect to a secure server every time you use your device, while others make you jump through hoops to stay signed in. We seek to understand how user friendly and intuitive these VPNs can be.

Usage limits

While many VPN providers promise that their service works across every device all the time, there is often small print to consider. We scan the terms of service for each of the company’s plans to understand what they are offering. Is there a limit to the number of devices a user can have connected at once? Is there a “fair use” limit that kicks in after a certain amount of traffic? Are advanced features multi-hop connections locked to only the priciest plans? We investigate all of these things so you don’t have to. We also conduct many of our more specific tests at the same time, which allows us to verify companies’ claims about simultaneous device use.

Speed and latency

The first step in testing speed and latency is to ascertain the baseline of the connection before connecting to a VPN. We then use the “quick connect” feature on VPN apps to connect to the “fastest” provider available when testing internet speed. Once connected, we run internet speed tests by Ookla and ping tests with meter.net. When relaying these results, we will note the average speed and ping across these results, as well as the difference between that average and our baseline when not connected to a VPN.

Geoblocking

We test all VPNs from within the US. To check that a service is able to effectively avoid geoblocking, we connect to a Canada-based server and attempt to access content on Netflix that is only available to users in that country. We then connect to a Hong Kong-based server to attempt to watch a news livestream on a YouTube channel that is exclusively available to users in that region. Finally, we conduct a gaming test by playing on servers in the United Kingdom. We’re looking to see not only if we can access the same content from all these servers, but also to test for lag or any other headaches that you could run into when using something.

Checking for leaks

A DNS leak happens when your device sends an unencrypted DNS query outside of your VPN service’s encrypted tunnel to an ISP’s DNS servers. This effectively nullifies the use of a VPN in the first place by allowing third parties to see and potentially track your browsing activity and IP address.

A WebRTC leak is an issue that can occur in modern web browsers that can similarly expose your personal IP address to a website you’re on. While you can avoid this by configuring your browser to not send such data, a VPN should be able to prevent this from happening.

To check for both of these issues, we use publicly available tools such as NordVPN’s IP address lookup tool and ExpressVPN’s leak tests before and after connecting to a VPN and make sure neither fault is occurring.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/vpn/how-we-test-vpns-175845189.html?src=rss