Holiday Gift Guide 2022: Best Soundbars

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Holiday Gift Guide 2022: Best Soundbars
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A soundbar is a great purchase to go with your TV. Why? Because the speakers that are built into TVs are generally not that great. On some of the more expensive TVs, they are at least passable, but the good news is you can spend only a couple hundred of bucks to get a great soundbar for your TV. Whether it’s new or old.

When picking out a new soundbar, there are a few things you want to look for. Firstly is Dolby Atmos and eARC. Dolby Atmos is really important because it is going to give you a huge upgrade in the sound department. It’ll make your living room feel more like a movie theater. And with eARC, you’ll be able to control the sound of the soundbar, using your TVs remote. Making things a whole lot easier.

Here’s our list of the best soundbars you can buy this holiday season.

Best overall: Sony HT-A7000

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With the Sony HT-A7000 you can get a cinema-like experience in your living room

The Sony HT-A7000 is our pick as the best overall soundbar right now for a few reasons. But the deciding factor was the price. This is a $999 soundbar that does also offer Dolby Atmos, and the ability to fill a whole room with sound, from a single soundbar. Instead of needing a wireless sub somewhere in the room. That’s a big deal, and not many soundbars can do that, at this price.

Sony’s HT-A7000 does feature 7.1.2 channels of sound, along with Dolby Atmos, and it sounds incredible. If I wasn’t so invested in the Sonos ecosystem, this would definitely be the soundbar I use on my TV in the living room. How does Sony get such great sound out of such a small package? Well, it’s a combination of driver placement and psychoacoustic techniques. This allows the HT-A7000 to offer a broad and high soundstage. So whether you’re watching a movie and want to be immersed, or just watching the news and have it on the background, it’s going to sound great.

What makes the Sony HT-A7000 unique is perhaps the array of HDMI ports available. It does have HDMI eARC for connecting to your TV. There’s also two more HDMI 2.1 ports that are capable of pass-through. These can handle 8K60 and 4K120, in addition to Dolby Vision HDR. Sony hasn’t forgotten those with older audio inputs, as there is optical available here and a USB-A port. Sony really didn’t forget anything with this soundbar, and it’s quite impressive.

These days, we all use our soundbar for far more than just sound from the TV. And Sony has included loads of smarts in this soundbar. That includes adding in Spotify Connect, Apple AirPlay 2 and Google Chromecast. Being able to go into your Spotify app on any platform and start playing on Sony’s HT-A7000 is chef’s kiss. Not many soundbars support both Apple AirPlay 2 and Google Chromecast, so this is a huge win, no matter which mobile platform you use.

Sony HT-A7000 – Crutchfield

Honorable mention: Samsung Q990C

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One could argue that the Samsung Q990C is a better soundbar than the Sony HT-A7000, and we can’t dispute that. It is the better soundbar, but what gave the Sony HT-A7000 the best overall moniker is the price. This Samsung Q990C soundbar comes with a subwoofer and two rear speakers, with a regular price of $1,897 (we’ve seen it on sale for $1,397 quite often though).

Samsung’s Q990C is a 11.1.4 channel soundbar with Dolby Atmos included. It’s one of the best sounding soundbars that we’ve listened to. Which is saying a lot, since there are some really great soundbars out there right now. Samsung has included Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa with the Q990C, in addition to Bixby. So you can quickly ask your favorite assistant to play music on YouTube Music.

Samsung Q990C – Amazon

Best Dolby Atmos soundbar: Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar

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With the new Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar, you can get that Dolby Atmos goodness, in your own home

Dolby Atmos is a fantastic sound standard, and it’s one that I absolutely swear by. I won’t buy any speaker or soundbar that doesn’t have Dolby Atmos included. The Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar is not only a Dolby Atmos soundbar, but it’s also one of the best sounding soundbars for the money. With an MSRP of $899, the Bose Smart Ultra soundbar has a lot going for it, including the design.

This is a pretty understated soundbar, which is what you want. Whether you’re putting this on the console in front of the TV or on the wall below the TV, you really don’t want something standing out. And that’s the Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar. It’s a dark gray and black colored soundbar, using metal and a glass top.

Dolby Atmos sounds great and all, and that’s awesome. But Bose has also included ADAPTiQ, which is a way to calibrate your room to get the best sound from this soundbar. And honestly, this does work incredibly well, normally these room calibration features are just gimmicks but that’s not the case with Bose. It works incredibly well, and is something you should definitely do when you first pick up your new soundbar.

However, Dolby Atmos isn’t all that this soundbar has going for it. It’s also a well-connected soundbar. Not only does it have WiFi and Bluetooth like basically every other soundbar, but it also has support for Apple AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect. Unfortunately, there’s no support for Google Cast here, and that likely comes down to licensing with Google. However, there are other ways to play music from your Android device onto the Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar, including using your TV if it has Google Cast. Bose makes it easy to play music right from your phone onto this soundbar, it’s as easy as tapping a single button on Spotify.

Bose does give users a way to expand their sound system, if this single soundbar isn’t enough for you. There are options for a wireless subwoofer and rear speakers. But they aren’t required for the Smart Ultra Soundbar.

Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar – Amazon

Honorable mention: Sony HT-A3000

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Sony’s HT-A3000 is a fantastic soundbar with Dolby Atmos, hence why it is here as our honorable mention. It’s a 3.1-channel soundbar, so it’s not quite as good sounding as some of the other soundbars out there. It’s also worth mentioning that the subwoofer and satellites are sold separately. So here at this MSRP of $699 you’re getting just the soundbar.

Sony has included all of the connectivity features you could want. This includes WiFi, Bluetooth, Apple AirPlay 2, and Chromecast. So no matter what platform you’re using, you can connect to the HT-A3000 and play audio. And it’s great that Sony makes it so easy to connect.

Sony HT-A3000 – Amazon

Best mid-range soundbar: Sonos Arc

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Sonos’ Arc is a fantastic Dolby Atmos soundbar, that works well with its multi-room audio features

The Sonos Arc is one of my favorite soundbars. It’s a pretty cool looking soundbar, and if you are already invested in the Sonos ecosystem, then this is a no-brainer purchase. That’s because the Arc is going to work with your other Sonos speakers, and work with multi-room audio. For example, I have it paired with the Sub Mini, and a couple of Era 300 speakers which makes for an insanely powerful surround sound setup.

Arc was the first soundbar from Sonos to feature Dolby Atmos, and it’s a pretty special one. The Dolby Atmos sound out of this speaker sounds better than a lot of other Dolby Atmos soundbars at this price. It sounds more like a Dolby Atmos soundbar that is priced at over $1,000. You will have no complaints about this soundbar’s audio quality, at all.

The only downside with this soundbar is that there’s no Bluetooth or DTS:X support. Honestly, you likely won’t even notice. I never thought that my Sonos Arc needed Bluetooth, because Sonos already connects to everything over WiFi, which allows you to get more bandwidth for streaming music. Sonos does also support Apple AirPlay 2, making it super simple to connect to your phone to play music. There’s also an ethernet port available in case your WiFi is slower. Sonos also has support for both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. If you’re not a fan of digital assistants, there is a physical microphone button you can use to turn it off.

Inside the Arc, Sonos has included 11 drivers which are used to create your soundfield. And many of them are upfiring and angled into your room. This is to allow the sound to bounce off the walls and ceiling. This adds to the Dolby Atmos experience making it feel very immersive, in just a single soundbar, no sub needed. But if you pick up the Sonos Sub or Sub Mini, it can make a big difference.

Sonos Arc – Crutchfield

Honorable mention: Samsung HW-Q700C

Samsung Q Series Soundbar HWQ700C Front Angled

If you’re not invested in the Sonos ecosystem, then the Samsung HW-Q700C is a great mid-range Dolby Atmos soundbar that you can grab. And it has an MSRP of $699, making it a tad cheaper than the Sonos Arc too.

Samsung’s HW-Q700C is very impressive for its price. When we tried it out, we really liked how dynamic the audio performance is with this soundbar. It really makes it feel like you’re in a theater, but you’re just in your living room. Samsung does have support for Dolby Atmos and DTS:X (basically the open source version of Dolby Atmos).

Samsung HW-Q700C – Samsung

Best entry-level Dolby Atmos soundbar: Sonos Beam Gen 2

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The perfect soundbar for smaller TVs

The Sonos Beam Gen 2 is a rather impressive speaker for the price. It has an MSRP of $499, which makes it Sonos’ cheapest soundbar. But don’t let that make you think it is a bad soundbar – because it is anything but. In fact, this is the soundbar I’ve been using with my Amazon Omni QLED TV for the past year, and I absolutely love it. It’s small but mighty.

The Sonos Beam does come in two colors: white or black. That’s the same as the rest of Sonos’ portfolio, that way you can color-match them throughout your home, and so they don’t stick out. What’s really great about the Sonos Beam Gen 2 is that it uses soft-touch plastic on the outside, with a metal grille. This is great because it’s easier to clean and doesn’t attract as much dust, compared to some others on this list. It also looks rather unique.

Sonos includes a few buttons on the top, like play/pause, and volume buttons on either side. There’s also a microphone button and LED light behind those buttons. Since this soundbar does include Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, there are microphones inside. But you can turn them off fairly easily. I have the microphone turned off on mine – and neither assistant is set up anymore – because there were a lot of false-positives. Have a commercial from Amazon come on, and the Beam Gen 2 thinks I said “Alexa” which was not the case. And since my TV already has Alexa built-in, it wasn’t worth the hassle.

Sonos Beam was built for smaller TVs, around 40- to 55-inches. But you can easily use this with a larger TV, I am personally using it with a 65-inch TV and paired with a Sub Mini, and it still sounds incredible.

Sonos Beam Gen 2 – Crutchfield

Honorable mention: JBL Bar 500

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The JBL Bar 500 is a good entry-level Dolby Atmos soundbar, which also comes with a wireless subwoofer for only $599. Sure it’s more expensive than the Sonos Beam Gen 2, but it doesn’t sound as great, even with the wireless subwoofer. It sounds good, but Sonos still takes the crown here.

In our experience with the JBL Bar 500, we found that it was able to provide cinematic sound, in a pretty slim profile. JBL also has a slew of smart features included, like Bluetooth and WiFi for connecting to your TV and wireless devices. As well as Apple AirPlay 2 and Google Chromecast. That’s actually pretty rare to have both at this price point.

JBL Bar 500 – Crutchfield

Best entry-level soundbar: VIZIO V-series Soundbar w/ Wireless Sub

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While the VIZIO V-Series is inexpensive, it’s also a really good sounding soundbar and wireless sub that’s a sure upgrade over your TV’s speakers

The VIZIO V-series is an excellent option for those that want a soundbar, but aren’t quite sure it’s worth buying just yet. It’s a cheap soundbar, coming in at under $200, and it even includes a wireless sub. This does not include Dolby Atmos, but does surprisingly have DTS:X, so you’re still getting great sound, just not the best sound.

When we tried out the VIZIO V-series we found it to be quite adequate for smaller rooms, like a dorm, or a small apartment. It won’t give you that home theater experience that some of you might be looking for. But with that included wireless sub, you do get a good amount of bass. And that is always great to see.

There’s HDMI eARC support here, which lets you plug this directly into your TV and then control your soundbar with the TV remote. Now the other downside here is that there’s no Apple AirPlay 2 or Google Chromecast, but you can still connect with your phone via Bluetooth.

VIZIO V-Series Soundbar – Best Buy

Honorable mention: Sony S100F

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The Sony S100F is one of those soundbars that we’ve had on our gift guides for quite a few years. It’s an older soundbar, but still rock solid. It now has an MSRP of just $99. So if you want a soundbar for your TV, but don’t want to spend a lot of money, this honorable mention is a great option.

It’s a 2-channel speaker, so it’ll fill the room with sound, but it’s not going to win any awards here. It does also have HDMI eARC available, allowing for you to use one cable to plug this into your TV. And also use your TV remote to control the volume. There’s Bluetooth support here, for streaming. Unfortunately, no Apple AirPlay 2 or Google Cast, but given the price here, that would be a surprise for it to be included. It’s not the end of the world, it just means you’ll need to do a bit more to stream your music.

Sony S100F – Best Buy


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Eric Schmidt bets on Future House to build an AI lab assistant

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Eric Schmidt bets on Future House to build an AI lab assistant
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In recent reports, netizens learned that Eric Schmidt is taking a bet on AI with Future House with an impressive project on hand. The Google Billionaire is investing in a non-profit start-up that has a unique vision. Over the next ten years, Eric’s investment alongside that of others will help the start-up to build a semi-autonomous AI scientist.

Now, that’s a big bet if you ask anyone who works in the science field or knows a thing or two about AI technology. The magnitude of this work might be why the start-up company will need over 10 years to perfect its idea. Once the 10-year time frame is over, this AI scientist might become available for usage in various science industries around the world.

With this type of technology on hand, the job of scientists around the world will become a bit easier. The rate at which these scientists work will see some significant improvements once this technology is put in place. However, some might fear the possible dangers that this level of AI technology will pose to its users and the public.

Eric Schmidt’s investment in Future House will bring AI technology into the field of science

The worlds of science and technology work hand in hand, with each complementing the other. Scientific and technological advancements in the world are driving development in certain areas of the world. But there’s a lot of work that goes into the achievement of these advancements, and mostly it’s as a result of human efforts.

This work is at times stressful on humans, as there is a lot of trial and error to get things right. With humans performing these trials and errors known as hypotheses, the workload is often enormous. Future House aims to train an AI model to perform these hypotheses, hence leaving humans to perform more daunting tasks during experiments.

Future House argues that humans are holding back the rate of development of scientific innovations. Having AI technology taking over some aspects of the scientific process that is a bit tiring will help boost innovations. With tens of thousands of individual hypotheses for each research, humans are falling behind schedule.

But with the help of Future House’s AI lab assistant, the company hopes to quicken things. Eric Schmidt and other investors are betting on this non-profit start-up company and its dreams. While the goals and aspirations of Future House are impressive, they might raise some concerns among netizens and those working in the science industry.


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US Man Sentenced to Over 21 Years for Dark Web Distribution of CSAM

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US Man Sentenced to Over 21 Years for Dark Web Distribution of CSAM
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In April 2023, Austen Peppers from Lawton, Oklahoma, pleaded guilty to advertising and distributing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on the dark web.

Austen Peppers, a 36-year-old resident of Lawton, Oklahoma, faced the gavel and received a sentencing of 21 years and 10 months in prison, followed by 15 years of supervised release. This judgment came after Peppers was found guilty in April 2023, of the advertising and distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on the dark web, as announced by U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert.

The distribution of CSAM has emerged as a significant challenge for law enforcement, exacerbated by AI services capable of generating harmful images. Recently, the Internet Watch Foundation, a UK-based internet watchdog, revealed that cybercriminals are turning to generative AI platforms to create child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

The court documents unveiled a disturbing timeline spanning from March 2018 to August 2019, during which Peppers was involved in the sale and solicitation of images portraying minors subjected to sexual abuse. His transactions were executed in the shadows of the dark web, employing cryptocurrency, and utilizing platforms that he believed shielded him from law enforcement scrutiny.

Peppers also engaged in explicit conversations with individuals he believed were minors, persuading them to create sexually explicit self-images. Shockingly, Peppers accumulated an extensive library of thousands of images and videos depicting children suffering sexual abuse.

According to a press release from the US Department of Justice (DoJ),, Austen Peppers has been in confinement since his initial appearance in court on November 14, 2019. As part of the sentencing, Peppers was also directed to pay restitution of $57,000 to 19 victims who suffered due to his vile actions.

This case highlights the dangers posed by individuals utilizing the anonymity of the dark web for criminal activities, especially those exploiting and abusing minors. Engaging in illegal activities, particularly heinous crimes such as the distribution of CSAM, on the dark web is a serious offence that should be strictly avoided.

Hackread.com has consistently cautioned users about the dangerous nature of the illicit sections of the dark web, emphasizing the importance of refraining from engaging in unlawful actions while navigating its depths. To gain a deeper understanding of the potential risks and the activities that should be avoided on the dark web, you can explore further details here.

  1. Dark Web’s worst pedophile sentenced to 32 years in prison
  2. NHS Psychiatrist Jailed; Dark Web Forum and 7,000 Images Seized
  3. Creators of dark web chat room arrested for facilitating child abuse
  4. 210 days prison for crypto CEO who held 13k child abuse, beastiality files
  5. School Principal Gets 9 Years in Prison for Trading Nude Pictures of Students

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ThreatDown powered by Malwarebytes: A 15 Year Journey

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ThreatDown powered by Malwarebytes: A 15 Year Journey
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November marks a significant shift in our legacy. After 15 years as Malwarebytes, we are proud to introduce our rebranded identity, ThreatDown powered by Malwarebytes.

Building off Malwarebytes’ initial recognition for removing every trace of viruses that others missed, ThreatDown powered by Malwarebytes combines award-winning technologies that cover all stages of an attack, with managed services for teams with limited resources.

To say it’s been quite a journey to this point would be an understatement. From our beginnings as a remediation consumer tool to becoming a titan in business cyber protection, let’s walk through where we’ve come and where we’re headed.

Anti-Malware Small Business Edition (2008 – 2012)

Malwarebytes for Business began its journey in the late 2000s, offering corporate licensing for its consumer anti-malware product. By 2012, our focus intensified as we launched the Anti-Malware Small Business Edition, introducing advanced features to meet the specific demands of businesses.

Malwarebytes Enterprise Edition (September 2012 – 2016)

The introduction of Malwarebytes Enterprise Edition (MEE) in late 2012 solidified our position in the enterprise market. Tailored for businesses, governments, and educational institutions, MEE provided comprehensive threat protection and malware remediation. As the demand for our expertise grew, esteemed institutions such as The University of Alabama and NextGen Healthcare became part of our clientele.

Malwarebytes Endpoint Security (June 2014 – 2016)

2014 saw the birth of the Anti-Malware Remediation Tool, a streamlined malware solution for businesses. Shortly after, Malwarebytes Endpoint Security was launched, merging multiple essential tools into one comprehensive package.

Nebula (2017 – 2018)

Transitioning into cloud security management, 2017 introduced Nebula 1.0, our cloud-based console. This platform brought together our machine learning-backed Malwarebytes Incident Response and Endpoint Protection products.

OneView (2019)

2019 heralded the debut of OneView, a multi-tenant console tailored for Managed Service Providers (MSPs). With OneView, MSPs could efficiently manage multiple clients’ security needs from a unified platform.

Comprehensive Endpoint Detection and Response Offerings (2020 – 2021)

Throughout 2020 and 2021, we fortified our EDR capabilities, including extensions to support Windows servers. With features such as Flight Recorder Search, Threat Hunting Alerts, and Brute Force Protection, we further strengthened our protective measures against cyber threats.

Managed Detection and Response (2022)

Last year, we delved into a multitude of new services and tools, including Device Control, Vulnerability Assessment, Patch Management Modules, and many more. Our crowning achievement was the introduction of Malwarebytes Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service, providing 24×7 monitoring and investigations for resource constrained IT teams.

Securing The Against the Next Generation of Threats (2023 and beyond)

2023 marked our foray into Mobile Protection for iOS, Android, and Chromebook platforms, helping organizations crush mobile threats on iOS, Android, and ChromeOS. The introduction of an Application Blocking Module gave administrators even greater control over app installations on devices.

Further, with the release of Malwarebytes Security Advisor, we transformed the Nebula customer experience to enable organizations to visualize and improve their security posture in just a few minutes. We also released Malwarebytes Managed Threat Hunting (MTH), a 24/7 service that proactively identifies and then alerts EDR customers to potential threats before an active attack begins.

Into The Future With ThreatDown powered by Malwarebytes

Originating from Malwarebytes’ 15-year legacy in combating daily malware threats, ThreatDown powered by Malwarebytes has evolved in tandem with the ever-changing threat landscape.

ThreatDown’s mission for businesses is straightforward: neutralize threats promptly and efficiently, without the need for extensive IT teams, prolonged setup times, or substantial budgets. We combine the technologies and services that resource constrained IT teams need into four streamlined, cost-effective bundles that take down threats, take down complexity and take down costs:

  • ThreatDown Core Bundle: Basic malware protection and threat surface reduction. A simple yet superior solution integrating award-winning endpoint protection technologies.
  • ThreatDown Advanced Bundle: Everything included in core plus Automated Threat Hunting and Ransomware Rollback. Tailored for smaller security teams with limited resources.
  • ThreatDown Elite Bundle: Everything in Advanced plus 24/7 expert monitoring and response by Malwarebytes MDR analysts. Purpose-built for organizations with small (to non-existent) security teams that lack the resources to address all security alerts.
  • ThreatDown Ultimate Bundle: Everything in Elite plus protection from categories of malicious websites. Perfect for teams looking for a SOC-in-a-box, a one-and-done shortcut to cybersecurity done right.

In short, with ThreatDown, the mission is clear: To take down threats to businesses and reduce attack surfaces immediately, without the need for an IT army or big budgets. Together, we can overpower threats—and empower IT.

Visit www.threatdown.com to learn more.  


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When is Black Friday 2023?

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When is Black Friday 2023?
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Black Friday is the biggest sales day of the year. Retailers normally discount products by 50% or more. Making it the one day of the year that retailers are able to go from the red to the black, hence the name Black Friday.

So when is Black Friday this year? Well, it is always the day after Thanksgiving which would make it November 24, 2023.

Many stores used to open on Thanksgiving, from around 5PM til Midnight. But since the Pandemic, many stores have opted to remain closed on Thanksgiving, allowing their employees to be with their families, instead of at work with a bunch of crazy people trying to get those doorbuster deals.

Black Friday deals start well before Black Friday

Now while Black Friday does officially start on November 24, 2023, that’s not when the deals will start. Typically, we will start to see deals starting on the Tuesday before, which would be November 21, 2023. And in the past, we’ve seen retailers hold big sales ahead of Black Friday, with a “Black Friday Price Guarantee”. Allowing you to start shopping earlier, without worrying about paying more for the products.

As always, you can keep it locked here to AndroidHeadlines as we will be rounding up all of the best Black Friday Deals throughout the next month, to help you spend your money wisely. And make sure to subscribe to our newsletter too, for the latest deals for Black Friday and more this holiday season.

Don’t forget that Black Friday runs into Cyber Monday which will take place on November 27, 2023. Typically, Black Friday deals run through Cyber Monday, but there are usually a good amount of deals that go live specifically for Cyber Monday. So there will be plenty of great deals that you can take advantage of.

Despite the recession, analysts are still expecting consumers to spend more this year than any other year before. Which has been the case for the last few decades, actually.


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AI will help you design your next phone case

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AI will help you design your next phone case
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AI is good at many things. Ao it should come as no surprise that it will be able to help you design your phone case. That’s right; popular phone accessory brand PopSockets just introduced its AI Customizer. This is a service that will use generative AI to craft your next phone case.

The PopSockets AI Customizer could design your next phone case

So, we’ve all been through the pain of scrolling through case designs and not being able to find the design we like. Well, PopSockets has a solution to this problem. According to the report, the company will let you generate your own designs using generative AI and slap it on a case.

Popsockets didn’t design its own image model or anything like that; however, it enlisted the help of one of the best models out there. The company generates its images through stable diffusion. When you use the tool, you’ll enter the prompts that you want it to generate.  In generative AI fashion, the service will produce several designs per prompt. You’ll choose which one you like the best and put that on a case

$100,00 contest

Right now, you can use this tool in the US. You can go in now and start making your new case. Making a cool design will grant you a cool new case, but it could also award $100,000. The company is now offering a contest to see who can come up with the best design. That’s a major incentive to try out this new service.

Right now, we don’t know much information on this contest, but it’s still interesting. It could help raise attention about AI tools that the company might be working on. With so many companies using generative AI to deliver more experiences, who knows what other companies will have an idea like this one?


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Samsung working on advanced ray tracing for Exynos chips

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Samsung working on advanced ray tracing for Exynos chips
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Last year, Samsung released the industry’s first mobile GPU with hardware-accelerated ray tracing capability. The company teamed up with AMD to develop the Xclipse 920 GPU for its Exynos 2200 chipset, which powered the Galaxy S22 series. The two firms have continued their partnership for mobile GPUs based on AMD’s Radeon graphics technology. Meanwhile, Samsung seems to be working on a more advanced ray tracing technology on its own.

Samsung is developing ray tracing tech for Exynos chips

Ray tracing is a graphics technology that simulates the physical behavior of light. It creates realistic lighting effects and reflections on the on-screen objects while gaming. This enables a more immersive gaming experience with graphics akin to the real world. The technology was previously only available on PC graphics but is slowly making its way into mobile GPUs. It isn’t perfect but each new generation has come with improvements.

According to the Korean media, Samsung’s R&D unit SAIT (aka Advanced Institute of Technology) is developing a couple of advanced technologies to improve the ray tracing capability of its next-gen mobile GPUs: Neural Ray Reconstruction and Neural Super Sampling. The former helps fill in the light rays that are lacking in an image. This ensures a more realistic ray tracing in games and videos.

The latter tech lowers the burden on the system by speeding up image processing with upsampling. It converts low-quality images to high-quality while preserving all the details. Thanks to the anti-aliasing technology, edge lines in games and videos appear smooth for a more realistic effect. All of this works in tandem to enable more advanced ray tracing without increasing the burden on your phone’s graphics resources.

Samsung’s “dream chip” may boast this tech

SAIT is currently working on this project. The plan is to achieve better results than NVIDIA and AMD’s ray tracing tech. Unsurprisingly, it will take time. The company doesn’t expect the solution to be ready before 2025. That is when the Korean firm is expected to debut its first “dream chip” for Galaxy flagships. The 3nm SoC will be custom-built by Samsung’s smartphone division for the Galaxy S25 series.

To achieve the desired results, the SoC must feature a powerful network processing unit (NPU) too. So Samsung has a lot of work to do before realizing its dream chip. Preparations have already begun, with next year’s Galaxy S24 series touted to offer unmatched on-device AI capabilities. It remains to be seen whether the Korean behemoth will be able to fully develop its next-gen ray tracing technology by 2025.


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NBA Locks in on New Broadcasting Deal with Bally Sports Networks!

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NBA Locks in on New Broadcasting Deal with Bally Sports Networks!
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It’s official, the NBA will be remaining on Bally Sports’ regional sports networks for the rest of the 2023-24 season. A deal was reached between the two sides, and the details were partly unveiled as Bally Sports’ owned, Diamond Sports Group is currently going through its bankruptcy proceedings.

As part of this new deal, the rights revert back to the NBA for the 2024-25 season. Under the previous deal, those rights couldn’t revert until after the 2024-25 season. Basically the NBA can do what it wants with its rights a bit sooner. It’s also expected that the NHL will agree to a similar deal in the next few weeks.

What this deal means is that the NBA will get to decide at the end of this season if it wants to do another deal with Diamond Sports Group before the start of next year, or sell the local rights to those teams to another outlet. Previously, we’ve heard that Disney, Amazon, Apple and Google were all interested in picking up these rights. On top of all of this, the NBA’s national broadcasting contract with ESPN and TNT does expire at the end of the 2024-25 season. The NBA is expected to pursue and get more than the $24 billion it currently makes.

Does this help out Bally Sports’ on-going bankruptcy?

As part of Bally Sports’ declaring bankruptcy, it was forced to renegotiate a number of its contracts, so that it could actually pay them. Diamond Sports Group had suggested that the NBA take a 20% pay cut for its rights fee payments. Now it’s unclear if that happened or not, but it does sound very likely.

This is only one part of the bankruptcy though, for DSG. As the company also needs to agree with the NHL and MLB for rights fees. Bally Sports did give up the rights to a number of MLB teams over the summer. These included the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres. But for now, with this NBA agreement, all 15 teams that Bally Sports already had on its networks, will remain.


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Top 6 Cyber Incident Response Phases

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Top 6 Cyber Incident Response Phases
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Incident Response Phases

Modern security tools continue to improve in their ability to defend organizations’ networks and endpoints against cybercriminals. But the bad actors still occasionally find a way in.

Security teams must be able to stop threats and restore normal operations as quickly as possible. That’s why it’s essential that these teams not only have the right tools but also understand how to respond to an incident effectively.

Resources like an incident response template can be customized to define a plan with roles and responsibilities, processes, and an action item checklist.

But preparations can’t stop there. Teams must continuously train to adapt as threats rapidly evolve. Every security incident must be harnessed as an educational opportunity to help the organization better prepare for—or even prevent—future incidents.

SANS Institute defines a framework with six steps to a successful IR.

  1. Preparation
  2. Identification
  3. Containment
  4. Eradication
  5. Recovery
  6. Lessons learned

While these phases follow a logical flow, you may need to return to a previous phase in the process to repeat specific steps that were done incorrectly or incompletely the first time.

Yes, this slows down the IR. But it’s more important to complete each phase thoroughly than to try to save time by expediting steps.

1: Preparation

Goal: Get your team ready to handle events efficiently and effectively.

Everybody with access to your systems needs to be prepared for an incident—not just the incident response team. Human error is to blame for most cybersecurity breaches.So the first and most important step in IR is to educate personnel about what to look for.

Leveraging a templated incident response plan to establish roles and responsibilities for all participants—security leaders, operations managers, help desk teams, identity and access managers, as well as audit, compliance, communications, and executives—can ensure efficient coordination.

Attackers will continue to evolve their social engineering and spear phishing techniques to try to stay one step ahead of training and awareness campaigns. While most everybody now knows to ignore a poorly written email that promises a reward in return for a small up-front payment, some targets will fall victim to an off-hours text message pretending to be their boss asking for help with a time-sensitive task.

To account for these adaptations, your internal training must regularly reflect the latest trends and techniques.

Your incident responders—or security operations center (SOC), if you have one—will also require regular training, ideally based on simulations of actual incidents. An intensive tabletop exercise can raise adrenaline levels and give your team a sense of what it’s like to experience a real-world incident. You might find that some team members shine when the heat is on, while others require additional training and guidance.

Another part of your preparation is outlining a specific response strategy. The most common approach is to contain and eradicate the incident. The other option is to watch an incident in progress so you can assess the attacker’s behavior and identify their goals, assuming this does not cause irreparable harm.

Beyond training and strategy, technology plays a huge role in incident response. Logs are a critical component. Simply put, the more you log, the easier and more efficient it will be for the IR team to investigate an incident.

You can also quickly protect yourself by isolating machines, cutting them off from the network, and running counteracting commands at scale if you use an endpoint detection and response (EDR) platform or an extended detection and response (XDR) tool with centralized control.

Other technology needed for IR includes a virtual environment where logs, files, and other data can be analyzed, along with ample storage to house this information. You don’t want to waste time during an incident setting up virtual machines and allocating storage space.

Finally, you’ll need a system for documenting your findings from an incident, whether that’s using spreadsheets or a dedicated IR documentation tool. Your documentation should cover the incident’s timeline, what systems and users were impacted, and what malicious files and indicators of compromise (IOC) you discovered (both in the moment and retrospectively).

2: Identification

Goal: Detect whether you have been breached and collect IOCs.

There are a few ways to identify that an incident has occurred or is currently in progress.

Internal detectionThe worst-case scenario is to learn that an incident has occurred only after discovering that data has been exfiltrated from your environment and posted to the internet or darknet sites. The implications are even worse if such data includes sensitive customer information and the news leaks to the press before you have time to prepare a coordinated public response.
External detectionAn incident can be discovered by your in-house monitoring team or by another member of your org (thanks to your security awareness efforts), via alerts from one or more of your security products, or during a proactive threat-hunting exercise.
Exfiltrated data disclosedThe worst-case scenario is to learn that an incident has occurred only after discovering that data has been exfiltrated from your environment and posted to internet or darknet sites. The implications are even worse if such data includes sensitive customer information and the news leaks to the press before you have time to prepare a coordinated public response.

No discussion about identification would be complete without bringing up alert fatigue.

If the detection settings for your security products are dialed too high, you will receive too many alerts about unimportant activities on your endpoints and network. That is a great way to overwhelm your team and can result in many ignored alerts.

The reverse scenario, where your settings are dialed too low, is equally problematic because you might miss critical events. A balanced security posture will provide just the right number of alerts to identify incidents worthy of further investigation without suffering alert fatigue.

Your security vendors can help you find the right balance and, ideally, automatically filter alerts so your team can focus on what matters.

During the identification phase, you will document all indicators of compromise (IOCs) gathered from alerts, such as compromised hosts and users, malicious files and process, new registry keys, and more.

Once you have documented all IOCs, you will move to the containment phase.

3: Containment

Goal: Minimize the damage.

Containment is as much a strategy as it is a distinct step in IR.

You will want to establish an approach fit for your organization, keeping security and business implications in mind. Although isolating devices or disconnecting them from the network may prevent an attack from spreading across the organization, it could also result in significant financial damage or other business impact. These decisions should be made beforehand and clearly articulated in your IR strategy.

Containment can be broken down into short- and long-term steps, with unique implications for each.

Short-termThis includes steps you might take in the moment, like shutting down systems, disconnecting devices from the network, and actively observing the threat actor’s activities. There are pros and cons to each of these steps.
Long-termThe best-case scenario is to keep infected system offline so you can safely move to the eradication phase. This isn’t always possible, however, so you may need to take measures like patching, changing passwords, killing specific services, and more.

During the containment phase you will want to prioritize your critical devices, like domain controllers, file servers, and backup servers to ensure they haven’t been compromised.

Additional steps in this phase include documenting which assets and threats were contained during the incident, as well as grouping devices based on whether they were compromised or not.If you are unsure, assume the worst. Once all devices have been categorized and meet your definition of containment, this phase is over.

Bonus step: Investigation

Goal:Determine who, what, when, where, why, how.

At this stage, it is worth noting another important aspect of IR: investigation.

An investigation takes place throughout the IR process. While not a phase of its own,it should be kept in mind as each step is performed. An investigation aims to answer questions about which systems were accessed and the origins of a breach.

When the incident has been contained, teams can facilitate a thorough investigation by capturing as much relevant data as possible from sources like disk and memory images and logs.

This flowchart visualizes the overall process:

You may be familiar with the term digital forensics and incident response (DFIR), but it’s worth noting that the goals of IR forensics differ from those of traditional forensics. In IR, the primary goal of forensics is to help progress from one phase to the next as efficiently as possible to resume normal business operations.

Digital forensics techniques are designed to extract as much useful information as possible from any evidence captured and turn it into useful intelligence that can help build a more complete picture of the incident or even to aid in prosecuting a bad actor.

Data points that add context to discovered artifacts might include how the attacker entered the network or moved around, which files were accessed or created, what processes were executed, and more. Of course, this can be a time-consuming process that might conflict with IR.

Notably, DFIR has evolved since the term was first coined. Organizations today have hundreds or thousands of machines, each with hundreds of gigabytes or even multiple terabytes of storage, so the traditional approach of capturing and analyzing full disk images from all compromised machines is no longer practical.

Current conditions require a more surgical approach, where specific information from each compromised machine is captured and analyzed.

4: Eradication

Goal: Make sure the threat is completely removed.

With the containment phase complete, you can move to eradication, which can be handled through either disk cleaning, restoring to a clean backup, or full disk reimaging. Cleaning entails deleting malicious files and deleting or modifying registry keys. Reimaging means reinstalling the operating system.

Before taking any action, the IR team will want to refer to any organizational policies that, for example, call for specific machines to be reimaged in the event of a malware attack.

As with earlier steps, documentation plays a role in eradication. The IR team should carefully document the actions taken on each machine to ensure that nothing is missed. As an additional check, you can perform active scans of your systems for any evidence of the threat after the complete eradication process.

5: Recovery

Goal: Get back to normal operations.

All your efforts have been leading here! The recovery phase is when you can resume business as usual. Determining when to restore operations is the key decision at this point. Ideally, this can happen without delay, but it may be necessary to wait for your organization’s off-hours or other quiet periods.

One more check to verify that there aren’t any IOCs left on the restored systems. You must also determine if the root cause still exists and implement the appropriate fixes.

Now that you have learned about this type of incident, you can monitor for it in the future and establish protective controls.

6: Lessons learned

Goal: Document what happened and improve your capabilities.

Now that the incident is comfortably behind you, it’s time to reflect on each major IR step and answer key questions; there are plenty of questions and aspects that should be asked and reviewed; below are a few examples:

  • Identification: How long did it take to detect the incident after the initial compromise occurred?
  • Containment: How long did it take to contain the incident?
  • Eradication: After eradication, did you still find any signs of malware or compromise?

Probing these will help you step back and reconsider fundamental questions like: Do we have the right tools? Is our staff appropriately trained to respond to incidents?

Then the cycle returns to preparation, where you can make necessary improvements like updating your incident response plan template, technology, and processes and providing your people with better training.

4 Pro Tips to Stay Secure

Let’s conclude with four final suggestions to bear in mind:

  1. The more you log in, the easier the investigation will be. Log in as much as possible to save money and time.
  2. Stay prepared by simulating attacks against your network. This will reveal how your SOC team analyzes alerts and their communication ability—critical during a real incident.
  3. People are integral to your organization’s security posture. Did you know human error is responsible for 95% of cyber breaches? That’s why it’s important to perform periodic training for two groups: end users and your security team.
  4. Consider having a specialized 3rd party IR Team on call that can immediately help with more difficult incidents beyond your team’s ability to resolve.  These teams, which may have resolved hundreds of incidents, will have the IR experience and Incident response tools to hit the ground running and accelerate your IR.

You can download a free incident response template here.


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The TCL NXTPAPER 11 is finally making it to the States

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The TCL NXTPAPER 11 is finally making it to the States
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Well, it’s about time! TCL announced its latest paper-like tablet, the TCL NXTPAPER 11, earlier this year. We were waiting for it to become available to purchase it stateside, but it remained unattainable. However, the TCL NXTPAPER 11 is finally launching to the US market, according to a new report.

What’s the deal with this tablet? Well, it’s all about the display. It uses the tablet’s proprietary NXTPAPER technology. This is meant to give you the most paper-like experience of any tablet. The warm light that the screen emits contains up to 60% less blue light than other displays. Studies show that using this display before can help you sleep more easily than if you used a regular display.

If you take that with the unique texture of the display, you’ll feel like you’re using a sheet of paper rather than a tablet display. That’s a rare quality for most modern displays.

When it comes to the rest of the tablet, you’re getting a pretty standard experience. For a tablet like this, you’ll most likely use it to watch movies and TV shows. Whether you’re vegging out on the couch, or relaxing on your patio, the screen is plenty bright to suit your needs.

It comes with Android installed, so you can use it for both play and work if you need. It’s got enough power to handle most light tasks you throw at it.

The TCL NXTPAPER 11 is now available in the US

So, this tablet seems really nice, but folks in the US couldn’t get their hands on it. Well, that’s finally changed. You can pick this tablet up for just $230.

This is a nice tablet if you love consuming content from your favorite streaming services. 11 inches is the perfect size, and it gets bright enough to view outside. So, feel free to watch movies and shows on the patio. You can enjoy them for hours because of the large battery inside.

The TCL NXTPAPER 11 is a great device to buy for yourself or purchase as a gift for a friend or loved one. Be sure to check it out if you’re looking for a new tablet this holiday season.

TCL NXTPAPER 11 – TCL Store


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