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Finding a gift for the tech nerd in your life can be tough. They likely have all the tech they need and then some, but you can add to their kit with the right accessories. Apple, Samsung, Sony and other big tech companies all have affordable gear that comes in at $100 or less, you just have to know where to look. Below are some of our favorites, but it's worth remembering: you can often find alternatives that are just as good (and sometimes better) than these. But for the people in your life for which brand names really do matter, these gifts will speak to them.
Best tech gifts for $100 or less
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 For this week's giveaway, we've teamed up with Astropad to offer MacRumors readers a chance to win an iPhone 17 and one of Astropad's anti-reflective Fresh Coat screen protectors to go along with it.
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Meta is spinning out Vibes into a standalone app. Think TikTok… but every clip is cooked up by AI. After debuting Vibes inside its Meta AI app, the company is now testing a dedicated app that gives AI-generated videos their own spotlight. And in doing so, the tech giant is taking aim squarely at rivals […]
The post Meta Tests Standalone Vibes App to Compete With OpenAI's Sora appeared first on eWEEK.
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With over 155 million sold, Nintendo's Switch is officially the company's biggest console hit ever. It's been a long road to surpassing the DS, which reached 154 million consoles over its seven-year lifespan. The Switch, meanwhile, is a year shy of its 10-year anniversary.
We've seen the original console, the non-hybrid Lite and the OLED versions of the Switch over the decade, but despite being replaced by Switch 2, the original is still selling at a strong pace: 1.36 million units in Q3. Just think how many Joy-Cons it sold/replaced?
Next goal: try to be the best-selling console of all time. Currently, that's the PlayStation 2.
Nintendo is just shy of five million units to go.
— Mat Smith
The biggest stories you might have missedEverything we know about Valve's new Steam Machine
Apple AirTag (2026) review: Simply better
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After celebrating its fifth anniversary earlier this month, the tough-as-nails survival Viking game Valheim is coming to Switch 2 this year. Initially launched as a Steam Early Access game in 2021, Valheim lets you team up with up to nine other players online as you explore a procedurally generated open world inspired by Norse mythology.
Whether playing alone or with your Viking pals, survival depends on crafting the right gear, building shelters and prevailing in punishing combat encounters. The ultimate aim of the game is to kill various gods dotted around the game's different biomes to be deemed worthy of entering Valhalla. But you can ignore the bosses if you'd rather focus on collecting recipes and cooking up banquets for your fellow bearded adventurers.
If I'm being brutally honest, the Switch 2 version of Valheim doesn't appear to be much of a looker in the announcement trailer, but it's technically still an early access game at the time of writing, and you do get support for mouse controls and HD Rumble 2 on Nintendo's console.
After debuting on PC, Valheim later made the jump to Xbox and will also launch on PS5 later this year. There's currently no release date for that or the newly announced Switch 2 port, but they could arrive at the same time to coincide with the game hitting 1.0.
Valheim was announced during today's third-party-focused Nintendo Direct, in which a bunch of Bethesda games were also
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Google might have been officially ruled to have a monopoly, but we're still a long way from figuring out exactly what that determination will change at the tech company. Today, the US Department of Justice filed notice of a plan to cross-appeal the decision last fall that Google would not be required to sell off the its Chrome browser. The agency's Antitrust Division posted about the action on X. According to Bloomberg, a group of states is also joining the appeal filing.
At the time of the 2025 ruling, the Justice Department had pushed for a Chrome sale to be part of the outcome. Judge Amit Mehta denied the request from the agency. "Plaintiffs overreached in seeking forced divesture of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints," Mehta's decision stated. However, he did set other restrictions on Google's business activities, such as an end to exclusive deals for distributing some services and a requirement to share select search data with competitors.
Google has already filed its own appeal over this part of its ongoing anti
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That would be a major jump from the $72 billion that the Silicon Valley tech giant shelled out last year, as it aims to compete in the artificial intelligence race.
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Happy Memorial Day, Short Wavers! This holiday, we bring you a meditation on time ... and clocks. There are hundreds of atomic clocks in orbit right now, perched on satellites all over Earth. We depend on them for GPS location, Internet timing, stock trading and even space navigation. In today's encore episode, hosts Emily Kwong and Regina G. Barber learn how to build a better clock. In order to do that, they ask: How do atomic clocks really work, anyway? What makes a clock precise? And how could that process be improved for even greater accuracy?
- For more about Holly's Optical Atomic Strontium Ion Clock, check out the OASIC project on NASA's website.
- For more about the Longitude Problem, check out Dava Sobel's book, Longitude.
Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave at plus.npr.org/shortwave.
Have questions or story ideas? Let us know by emailing shortwave@npr.org!
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The last few weeks have been a PR bonanza for Taylor Swift in both good ways and bad. On the good side, her boyfriend Travis Kelce was on the winning team at the Super Bowl, and her reactions during the game got plenty of air time. On the much, much worse side, generative AI-created fake nude images of her have recently flooded the internet.
As you would expect, condemnation of the creation and distribution of those images followed swiftly, including from generative AI (genAI) companies and, notably, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. In addition to denouncing what happened, Nadella shared his thoughts on a solution: "I go back to what I think's our responsibility, which is all of the guardrails that we need to place around the technology so that there's more safe content that's being produced."
To read this article in full, please click here
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