|
If one of your New Year's resolutions was to improve your cybersecurity, it's not too late. Most of the holiday deals are over by now, but plenty of services are still offering excellent prices. With access to a virtual private network (VPN), you can keep your activity hidden from your ISP and any advertisers it may sell that data to — all while streaming sporting events and TV dramas from all across the globe.
We strongly recommend using a VPN, but if you jump on the very first deal you see, you might get stuck with a substandard app. It's also easy to mistakenly end up paying more than you want to, as otherwise respectable VPNs sometimes frame their prices in misleading ways, with advertised deals not always as available as they seem to be.
Even with all those caveats, there are some great bargains on the table. Many of the best VPNs — including our top pick, Proton VPN — have deals that save you anywhere from 70 to 87 percent on annual subscriptions. Most of these discounts only apply if you sign up for a year or more, but if you divide the cost by the months of subscription, it's much cheaper over time.
Best VPN deals
|
|
Music hardware and software manufacturer Native Instruments has entered into preliminary insolvency proceedings, according to a report by Create Digital Music. This is the company behind iconic software like Massive, Traktor and Kontakt and hardware like Maschine . Native Instruments also owns the brands iZotope, Brainworx and Plugin Alliance.
We don't have many specifics as to what this entails and what the future of the company will look like. We do know that an administrator has been appointed to handle restructuring and, potentially, to sell off existing assets. Native Instruments employs hundreds of people and their fates also remain uncertain.
A private equity firm called Francisco Partners owns a majority stake in the company. It also owns majority stakes in entities like GoodRX and Verifone, among others. This isn't the first time Native Instruments has been forced into major restructuring. The company experienced plenty of layoffs and uncertainty between 2019 and 2020 before being purchased by private equity.
Again, we have no idea how this will shake out. It's possible that new investors will jump on board and it goes back to business as usual. It's also possible everything will be scrapped for parts and sold to the highest bidder.
— cdmblogs (@cdmblogs)
|
|
 Apple today updated its Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro apps, and there are many new features in both the one-time purchase and Apple Creator Studio versions.
|
|
A new year is the perfect time to get your spending in order, and if you're not trying to build your own spreadsheet, budgeting apps are one of the best ways to do it. To save yourself some money in the process, you can pick up a year-long subscription to Monarch Money, one of Engadget's favorite budgeting apps, for just $50 if you use code NEWYEAR2026 at checkout and you're a new subscriber. That's a 50 percent discount on the service's normal $100 price.
Monarch Money makes for a capable and detailed budgeting companion. You can use the service via apps for iOS, Android, iPadOS or the web, and Monarch also offers a Chrome extension that can sync your Amazon and Target transactions and automatically categorize them. Like other budgeting apps, Monarch Money lets you connect multiple financial accounts and track your money based on where you spend it over time. Monarch offers two different approaches to tracking budgeting (flexible and category budgeting) depending on what fits your life best, and the ability to add a budget widget on your phone so you can know how you're tracking that month.
|
|
 Mukaab, the world's largest skyscraper, is one of the most ambitious construction projects ever conceived. However, according to a new report, Saudi authorities have stopped construction of the the gigantic building, and its future now looks uncertain.
Cont
|
|
Owen Poole covers today's top tech stories, including how TikTok's new American owners will impact your feed. Plus, Apple announced an updated AirTag that promises to track things even more easily. The European Commission starts investigating Elon Musk's Grok for generating explicit images, following its bans in various countries.
|
RELATED ARTICLES | | |
|
