Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Say More Safety Net Creator Hub Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Mashable Selects Switch Off Trending Now In My Bag VidCon with Mashable All Series The back-to-school sale prices end on Aug. 23. Lauren Allain is a freelance journalist covering deals at Mashable. She graduated from Western Washington University with a B.A. in journalism and holds an M.B.A from Webster Leiden. You can find more of her work online from publications including Reader's Digest, U.S. News & World Report, Seattle Refined, and more. When she's not writing, Lauren prefers to be outside hiking, bouldering, swimming, or searching for the perfect location for all three.

Brazil's president says Amazon oil is'passport to the future' Brazil's president says Amazon oil is'passport to the future' Brazil's President Lula da Silva has praised the discovery of oil off the Amazon coast, despite opposition from environmentalists to drilling in the area. He called the find a "passport to the country's future", saying it would strengthen Brazil's national sovereignty. Chinese company unveils new'Superman' humanoid robot Can Trump limit birthright citizenship?

How many Syrians have returned? A Syrian man died in police custody after his family alleged he was severely beaten despite his wife warning officers about his haemophilia. His death has raised fresh concerns over abuse in detention, while Syria's Interior Ministry says seven officers have been detained. Brazil's president says Amazon oil is'passport to the future' Chinese company unveils new'Superman' humanoid robot Can Trump limit birthright citizenship?

Nancy Guthrie kidnapping notes from Arizona contain comma splices and idiolect clues that a retired investigator says could help identify the author of the ransom messages.

A ninth-grade student opened fire at a high school in Zamboanga, Philippines, killing a fellow student and himself and wounding two others after apparently livestreaming the attack. Chinese company unveils new'Superman' humanoid robot Can Trump limit birthright citizenship?

Drone video shows cattle in parched landscape across drought-hit farmland as Britain endures one of its driest summers on record. More than two-thirds of England is now in drought, according to officials. Chinese company unveils new'Superman' humanoid robot Can Trump limit birthright citizenship?

AI to help planes avoid climate-warming'sky graffiti' We've all looked up and seen the white lines trailing behind aircraft in the sky. Known as contrails, these icy clouds contribute to climate change, and scientists have been trying to work out how to stop them. Now, a £5m UK trial will test whether AI can help, by predicting where warming contrails are likely to form and getting planes to avoid those areas. The 30-month Operation Blue Skies project brings together Google, the UK government, the Met Office, air traffic control provider National Air Traffic Services (NATS) and academic researchers. It will focus on the Shanwick Oceanic airspace in the eastern half of the North Atlantic corridor which accounts for approximately 5% of global contrail warming.

There are many tech irritants that are a scourge of modern life, yet we have lacked the vocabulary to describe them ... until now T he "dickover" is the scourge of the modern age. Coined in May by John Gruber, a tech writer, it is defined as "a modal panel, popover, or curtain presented by a website or app, deliberately obscuring its own content to frustrate the user". Essentially, it is the thing (or more often, things) you have to click away in order to read the thing you wanted to read. It is the "accept cookies" box, the "allow notifications?" box, the "sign in with Google" box, the pop-up video box, etc. We shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that dickovers are the only terrible thing about technology in 2026.

Z.ai's latest AI model release could help companies secure their systems--or find its way into the hands of hackers. Last Friday, the Chinese AI company Z.ai announced a powerful open-weight model that it says is capable of automating cutting-edge coding and cybersecurity tasks almost as well as the best publicly available models from Anthropic and OpenAI . The new model, GLM 5.3, could be a gift for companies looking to secure their systems against attacks, providing a cheaper way to scan for hidden bugs and other weaknesses. Open-weight--or free-to-download--models can be run on one's own hardware and are often significantly less costly than closed models like Claude and GPT. Alongside the new model, Z.ai released OpenVuln, a service for scanning code repositories for vulnerabilities using GLM 5.3.

"You're a fake reporter," Donald Trump told a CNN reporter who asked whether North Korea's president had requested the US president scale back military drills with South Korea. Chinese company unveils new'Superman' humanoid robot Can Trump limit birthright citizenship?