Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Mashable Selects Look Up Say More Safety Net Versus Creator Playbook In My Bag Trending Now Back to School Good Connection: Uplifting stories for a digital age Switch Off All Series Bypass content restrictions and protect your data with a high-quality VPN. Because incognito mode isn't going to cut it. Joseph Green is the Global Shopping Editor for Mashable. He covers VPNs, headphones, fitness gear, dating sites, streaming, and shopping events like Black Friday and Prime Day. Matt Ford is a freelance contributor to Mashable. All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers. If you buy something through links on our site, Mashable may earn an affiliate commission.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. MoboMaps makes it easy to compare boards, PCIe layouts, M.2 slots, and bandwidth sharing. It lets you see exactly how your motherboard shares PCIe lanes before you plug in any parts. Shopping for a motherboard can get surprisingly complicated. A board might advertise five M.2 slots and a stack of PCIe slots, which sounds great until you find out that using one of them can slow down or disable another.

VPN auto-connect, kill switch and protocol settings help protect travelers switching between airport Wi-Fi, hotel Wi-Fi and cellular data on the go.

Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Look Up Mashable Selects Creator Playbook In My Bag Say More Trending Now Back to School Good Connection: Uplifting stories for a digital age Switch Off Mashable Voices Safety Net All Series Proton VPN drops to $2.99 per month: Unblock global Netflix, sports livestreams, and more for 70% off Soumya is a deals writer who covers consumer tech, shopping deals, and the products people use every day. With experience writing about everything from AI tools and software to smartphones and home gadgets, she enjoys breaking down product research into clear, useful recommendations. When she's not tracking deals, she's usually comparing products, digging through reviews, and figuring out what actually makes a purchase worth it. All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers. If you buy something through links on our site, Mashable may earn an affiliate commission.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset . Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions . Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by LSEG . Should you use a separate computer for online banking?

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. These six commands make it much easier to find the page, file, or answer you need. Quotation marks, minus signs, and a few short commands can cut through pages of search clutter and turn you into a Google Search pro. Most of the time, Google's smart enough to understand the jumble of random terms you typed in. But if it can't make sense of your word salad and the results miss the mark, a few small commands can clean up the search.

Bitdefender VPN has an excellent starting price, even if it lacks the advanced features that privacy nerds may want. Lacks the most advanced privacy features. Pricing is less attractive after the first year. The internet is thick with VPN services . So thick, in fact, that it can feel a bit suspicious--and send you running back toward more familiar companies.

NordVPN leads with fastest speeds and advanced features, while Mullvad offers exceptional privacy at $5 monthly and ExpressVPN provides extensive US coverage. Utah's new law creates uncertainty for VPN users, potentially leading to traffic blocking or invasive identity checks by websites. Utah residents are facing a major shift in online privacy. A new state law, Senate Bill 73, has made Utah the first state to specifically target VPN use as part of its online age-verification rules, holding websites responsible even when users attempt to mask their location with a VPN. Privacy advocates warn the law could pressure websites into blocking VPN traffic entirely or expanding invasive identity checks for everyone.

We list all notations used in this paper in Table 1.

UK's Starmer announces crackdown on AI chatbots in child safety push United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced a crackdown on artificial intelligence chatbots that endanger children and pledged to seek broader powers to regulate internet access for minors. Starmer's office said on Monday that the government would target "vile and illegal content created by AI" and push for legal powers to act quickly on the findings of a public consultation that will consider a social media ban for children below 16 years of age. "Technology is moving really fast, and the law has got to keep up," Starmer said in a statement. "We are acting to protect children's wellbeing and help parents to navigate the minefield of social media," he said. The measures will require all AI chatbot providers to abide by digital safety laws, including a ban on creating sexualised images without a subject's consent.