Category Archives: Blog

TL;DR: The SiftEase Litter Box Cleaner, usually $45, is $39.99 as of March 20 (that’s 13% off).

You may think scooping poop is a necessary evil that comes with being a cat parent. But that’s where you’re wrong. You shouldn’t be subjected to that stinky task, no matter how much you love your furry child. That’s what SiftEase is for.

The SiftEase Litter Box Cleaner eliminates the need for scooping all together, so you can finally cut the crap (literally). It’s usually $45, but you can get it on sale for $39.99 for a limited time and save 13%.

When your cat uses their litter box, instead of potentially contaminating the unused litter by pushing waste around, you can just dump the entire contents into the SiftEase box. The waste will collect at the top, while the fresh, unused litter carefully sifts to the bottom of the container. By ensuring the litter that remains is clean, you can eliminate some of the stink you’ve become accustomed to. And don’t pretend like your cat doesn’t stink. You’ve just become nose-blind.

The seven-inch deep basket in the SiftEase means you don’t have to be super particular when pouring in the litter. Just dump it in and watch the magic happen. You can even dump multiple litter boxes into the SiftEase without having to empty it.

See the SiftEase in action:

It takes just a few seconds to dump the litter into the sifter, then dump the waste on top into the trash. So, not only can the SiftEase potentially rid your home of litter box odors, but it might end up saving you time as well. Dealing with poop is still a necessary parenting problem, whether your kids are human or feline. But with the right tools, you can make the process easier and less gross.

Snag the SiftEase for $39.99 for a limited time.

Prices subject to change.

TL;DR: As of March 20, you can get The 2022 Complete Raspberry Pi & Arduino Developer Bundle — worth $1,800 — for just $39.99, which saves you 97%.

So, you’ve got a Raspberry Pi. Now what? Learning to program it isn’t as easy as pie, unfortunately, but this Complete Raspberry Pi and Arduino Developer Bundle breaks it down in a beginner-friendly fashion.

The bundle features nine courses and 61 hours of content on the hands-on programming basics you’ll need to get started with your Raspberry Pi. Your instructor will be Edouard Renard, a software engineer and entrepreneur who co-founded a robotics startup in 2016. He’s built a complete robotic arm from scratch with Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Ubuntu, and ROS and will help you work your way towards building fun projects of your own.

There’s no time like the present to start tinkering with everyone’s favorite single-board computer, as it celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. What better way to celebrate than with your own Raspberry Pi project? People have used the Pi’s versatile hardware to build everything from a Game Boy-inspired portable gaming console to DIY speakers.

But before you get ahead of yourself, you’ll have to learn the basics. The Raspberry Pi for Beginners course is a solid starting point that spans 10 hours and leads you through installing your Raspberry Pi OS, programming with Python 3, building circuits, controlling your Raspberry Pi with Python, and more. Fortunately, Python is widely considered one of the easiest languages to learn. But you’ll still need to dedicate some time to practicing your skills with hands-on coding projects, which you can find in the included Python 3 course.

Other courses cover the basics of Arduino, ROS2, C++, Object Oriented Programming (OOP), and practical Linux commands. With lifetime access, you’ll be able to work through the content on your own time — so there’s no need to rush.

This bundle of courses is just $39.99 ($1,800 value) for a limited time and can help you get started with your Raspberry Pi in honor of its tenth birthday.

Prices subject to change.

TL;DR: As of March 20, you can get 15 Bottles of Mixed Wines from Wine Insiders for just $85, which is 71% off their regular price of $300.

Can you ever really have too much wine? Sometimes you want a sweet red. Other times you want a crisp white. And on special occasions, you might even break out the sparkling ones. In other words, the answer is no, which is why this deal from Wine Insiders is so enticing. For a limited time, you can add 15 bottles of mixed wines to your collection for only $85 — that’s about 71% off the usual cost and comes out to less than $6 a pop.

This isn’t a wine club you need to subscribe to. It’s just a one-off deal where you get a bunch of wine delivered to your doorstep for a steal. The mix of reds and whites includes wines that Wine Insiders customers have particularly loved and rated highly. Does that mean you’ll love every single one? Probably not. But you can always save the ones you don’t like for when you have company over — or gift them at the next housewarming party you attend.

We’ve featured a similar deal before, most recently ahead of Valentine’s Day. We like Wine Insiders because they eliminate the middlemen by partnering up with top wineries from across the globe. Bottles go straight to your front porch, ready for you to uncork them. 

Wine Insiders also sorts through the wines to ensure customers are only getting the best. Its wine-tasting panel of experts only approves about five out of every 100 sampled. Their efforts have paid off, too, as their selections have earned over 1,000 awards since 2015 — like the Wine of the Year award for their St. Désir Syrah/Merlot at the 2021 Sommelier Challenge International Wine and Spirits Competition.

Order a box of 15 of these expert-approved wines to your doorstep for just $85 for a limited time.

Prices subject to change.

TL;DR: As of March 20, the $1,794 Unlimited Lifetime Learning Subscription Bundle ft. Rosetta Stone is on sale for just $169.15 with code LEARN10NOW — that’s a 90% discount.

You can’t put a price on knowledge. But if you could, $169.15 ain’t so bad — and that’s all it costs to get a lifetime of learning through Rosetta Stone and StackSkills for a limited time.

First up in the Unlimited Lifetime Learning Subscription Bundle is lifetime access to Rosetta Stone, the world’s leading language-learning app that makes it possible for beginners to become fluent in a second, third, or 24th language. You’ll have unlimited access to all 24 offered languages and you can learn any of them at your own pace and on your own time through interactive software and proprietary speech-recognition technology.

Our friends at PCMag (which is owned by Mashable’s publisher, Ziff Davis) have deemed it the best premium software for learning a foreign language and gave it the coveted Editors’ Choice Award five years in a row. It’s particularly useful for beginners and is designed to help you build conversational skills and develop your command of the language through reading, writing, and speaking to native speakers.

The bundle also provides lifetime access to StackSkills (which we’ve featured before), the online learning platform for mastering today’s most in-demand skills. You’ll instantly gain access to a pre-selected library of over 1,000 courses, plus 50 new ones that are added monthly. Courses span all kinds of subjects, including IT, development, graphic design, finance, business, marketing, and more. Plus, they cover all levels, from beginner to advanced. Whether you want to learn for fun or for a potential career advancement, you’ll have plenty of options to choose from within the StackSkills curriculum.

Lifelong learning by any means is a way to stay sharp, open up opportunities, and live an enriching life. This bundle gives you two unique ways to commit to doing so.

Use the code LEARN10NOW to slash an extra 15% off the already-discounted price and get lifetime access to both Rosetta Stone and StackSkills for just $169.15.

Prices subject to change.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has just said for the very first time that, yes, the organization was indeed treaded on when it became victim of a massive hack last year.

The right wing organization best known for fighting common sense gun control measures after school shootings like the ones at Sandy Hook and Stoneman Douglas — and also acting as a “foreign asset” to Russia –– confirmed the ransomware attack in a Federal Election Commission filing made by the NRA’s political action committee (PAC).

The NRA finally admitted to the attack it suffered in the filing because it needed to explain discrepancies in its financial reports previously submitted to the government. The filing says that around $2,485 in contributions to the organization hadn’t been “processed correctly.” The NRA blamed the hack for the disparity. 

In October 2021, a ransomware group known as Grief targeted the NRA and boasted about the data it had stolen from the gun organization. Grief, which has ties to the Russia-based cybercriminal ring Evil Corp., allegedly stole tax, grant, and investor information from the NRA and posted the stolen information on its website. Grief later released more sensitive personal and financial data, such as bank accounts numbers.

At the time, the NRA would not confirm or deny the hack, releasing a statement that claimed that the “NRA takes extraordinary measures to protect information regarding its members, donors, and operations – and is vigilant in doing so.”

We now know they weren’t quite vigilant enough. Grief’s ransomware campaign attacked the NRA on Oct.20 and the gun group felt the effects well into November. The NRA’s internet access, emails, and online networks were subject to varied levels of downtime for weeks.

It’s unclear if the NRA ever paid a ransom to Grief in order to avoid the further release of any other stolen data.

Ransomware hacks can be detrimental to an organization. Businesses have shut down after suffering losses from such attacks. It’s too bad this wasn’t one of those cases.

Anthony Mackie is putting his money where his hometown is.

The New Orleans-born actor who now wears the mantle of Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe closed a deal on Friday to purchase 20 acres of land in New Orleans East. It’s believed that the location will be the home of East Studios LLC, a Mackie-led film studio, as multiple sources told the local news outlet NOLA.com.

Any specifics beyond that are unknown at this point, though Mackie has leveraged his Marvel success in recent years to take a more high-profile role on the projects to which he’s connected. He was credited as the executive producer on the 2019 science fiction film Io, and he’s listed as a producer on two more recent streaming projects — The Banker on Apple TV+ and Outside the Wire on Netflix.

Mackie is also set to star in and executive produce Twisted Metal, a comedy reimagining of the classic car combat video game series for Peacock that has him partnering with Deadpool writer/directors Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. He may also still be producing a biopic about celebrity lawyer Johnnie Cochran called Signal Hill, but there hasn’t been much news about that one since 2017.

The Mackie family already has a big presence in New Orleans, including a lengthy history of supporting the city. Anthony specifically has said the 2008 disaster the city faced after Hurricane Katrina prompted him to head home and invest himself in his hometown’s success.

“I loaded up my truck, I moved back to New Orleans, built a house,” he said in a 2011 interview with The Guardian. Upon arriving home, Mackie took note of how the government response and insurance company red tape failed the people on the ground who were still reeling and trying to find their way in the midst of widespread devastation

“Every time I go home now, I feel it with everybody who’s stayed and rebuilt, the magnitude of we did it,” Mackie said in the Guardian interview. “Even when the federal government fucked us, we did it on our own. We’re in a position where we can say we did it without your help, so kiss my ass.”

Mashable reached out to Mackie’s publicist for more details on what the plans for East Studios LLC look like and we’ll update this story if we hear back.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could just click a button and just wipe, say, the last 15 minutes of your Google search history?

iPhone users have been living that dream since last summer, when Google rolled out that very option to its iOS app. Now Android users can now feel the joy of deleting your most recent search history with a single tap too.

Google is now rolling out the option to remove the last 15 minutes of a user’s search history to its official Android app, according to The Verge and confirmed by the search giant. Some Android users are already reporting that the feature is now available to them.

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In order to take advantage of this new convenient tool, simply open the Google app on your Android device and tap on your profile. In the pop-up menu, you should see a “Delete last 15 minutes” option located under “Search history.” Tap that and the Google app will delete the last 15 minutes of your search history from within the app.

Google already offered ways to simply clear your entire Google search history. There are also options to automatically delete history that’s 3 months, 18 months, or 36 months old. Users could go through their history manually and remove individual items too. While this is all good, none of these options are particularly convenient if you want to quickly remove items from just one particular search session. The 15 minute delete option seems to be the perfect tool for that.

This feature will now be available on both the iOS and Android versions of the Google app. Google has not yet mention if or when the feature will be available for users on the desktop version of Google search.

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Ever miss a really important email? We’ve all been there.

The team over at the messaging platform Telegram probably knows exactly how bad that feels too. Now it’s banned in Brazil, and missed emails are the culprit.

According to Reuters, Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes issued an order Friday for Telegram to be blocked in the country. Much like in the U.S., the messaging platform has become a hub for conspiracy theories and disinformation surrounding Brazil’s elections as the far right supporters of President Jair Bolsonaro have flocked there. 

Authorities in Brazil have attempted to crack down on this disinformation and Telegram had complied with some requests, such as when it banned channels belonging to a pro-Bolsonaro blogger based in the U.S. earlier this year. However, according to Moraes, Telegram has overall been uncooperative and was not complying with Brazil’s local orders.

Telegram has a very simple explanation as to why it hasn’t worked with Brazil to avoid the suspension: The company missed Brazil’s emails. According to Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov, the company “had an issue with emails going between our telegram.org corporate addresses and the Brazilian Supreme Court.” 

“As a result of this miscommunication, the Court ruled to ban Telegram for being unresponsive,” Durov continued. “On behalf of our team, I apologize to the Brazilian Supreme Court for our negligence. We definitely could have done a better job.”

Durov further explained that Telegram had referred the court to a dedicated email address it had for takedown requests. However, the Brazilian court continued to correspond via Telegram’s “old general-purpose email address.” Durov says the team missed these emails and are now working to comply with the court’s requests.

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As a result of Moraes’s ruling, Brazil’s telecommunication agency, Anatel, has been ordered to officially suspend the platform, at least until Telegram cooperates with local authorities, complies with Brazilian law, and pays the related fines. The court order also requests that Apple and Google aid in blocking access to Telegram in Brazil as well.

A Google spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that the company had received the Supreme Court order.

As Durov points out, Telegram has been inundated with official takedown requests over the past few weeks as a result of world events like Russia’s war in Ukraine. However, Telegram’s suspension in Brazil provides a valuable lesson: Always check your email.

They say “never meet your heroes” because reality never really lives up to what we picture in our heads, but “you might break one of said hero’s prized possessions” seems pretty scary, too.

Daniel Radcliffe lived that exact nightmare recently as he prepped to play the lead role in an upcoming “Weird Al” Yankovic biopic. After sharing the story of how he got cast during a Friday appearance on The Tonight Show, host Jimmy Fallon held up a picture of the Miracle Workers star posing proudly with one of Yankovic’s accordions.

Upon seeing the picture, Radcliffe launched into a story about how Yankovic lent him the pictured accordion to practice on as part of his prep for the role. He got to spend a month noodling with the instrument and getting a feel for it, but that blessed month almost went flying off the rails right at the start.

“On day two [of having the accordion] I broke one of the straps,” Radcliffe explained, eliciting immediate groans of worry and concern from the audience. “Yes,” the game Radcliffe deadpanned in response. “That’s how I felt.”

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Fortunately, it wasn’t a big deal at all. Radcliffe “immediately” replaced the straps and all was well in the end, thanks in part to Yankovic being who he is. “Thankfully, he’s like the nicest guy,” Radcliffe said. “If he was furious about it, he kept it to himself.”

Weird: The Weird Al Yankovic story was announced earlier in 2022 as a Roku-exclusive release. There’s no release date yet, but the movie is already in production. Watch the rest of the Tonight clip to hear Radcliffe recount exactly how Yankovic ended up casting him in the lead role.

Fashion choice or subtle act of protest?

The International Space Station’s newly arrived trio of Russian cosmonauts came aboard on Friday dressed in yellow flight suits with blue accents, echoing the color scheme of the Ukrainian flag. It’s a notable look given that Commander Oleg Artemyev had been seen wearing a blue flight suit during the docking process.

No one specifically mentioned Ukraine, but the color choice is notable given that Artemyev, along with fellow cosmonauts Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov, are the first to arrive aboard the ISS since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Artemyev explained after the boarding was complete that each crew chooses its own flight suit colors.

“It became our turn to pick a color,” he said (h/t Associated Press). “But in fact, we had accumulated a lot of yellow material so we needed to use it. So that’s why we had to wear yellow.”

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It’s hard not to clock the significance of seeing Ukrainian colors splashed across cosmonaut flight suits, however. Russian president Vladimir Putin’s widely condemned invasion of Ukraine has been accompanied by an online disinformation campaign intended to falsely paint the seemingly illegal military action as a heroic endeavor.

Tech companies are working to neutralize those disinformation efforts and isolate Russia financially, but Ukrainian iconography — such as the flag’s colors and the country’s national flower, the sunflower — has also become a way for people to express support (and raise awareness) online. Any ISS arrival is a cool space moment that has the potential to go viral, so whether it was intended or not, the yellow-and-blue flight suits left a mark.

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The arrival of Artemyev, Matveev, and Korsakov marks the start of their six-month mission in space. They’re replacing cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov who, along with NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, are scheduled to head back to Earth on March 30.