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Growing up in Thailand, Sam Soar immersed herself in comics that fueled her imagination. One series, in particular, captivated her. It was "about a family that is so hardcore about saving money that they would do anything possible," she shared with Mashable. "They rent a one-bedroom apartment, and all sleep in one room, so they only have to turn on one [air conditioner], and they'll go around the shopping centers putting all the trolleys back to get the coins."

Inspired by these stories, Soar found her own inventive ways to earn and save money, like growing vegetables and cycling around town to sell them.

We discussed this over coffee on the second floor of Waterstones Piccadilly in London. The city was in the middle of a heat wave, and the bookstore — with its air conditioning and eight sprawling floors, six of which are dedicated to books — was bustling. But it’s not Soar’s favorite. While Waterstones is a well-known retailer, she gravitates toward the charm and community of small businesses, something evident in her TikTok content, where she highlights local gems like Round Table Books. 

But she humored me, a tourist eager to see the biggest bookstore in Europe. Remarkably, her vibe is exactly what you'd expect: warm, giddy, and thoughtful. As a micro-influencer with roughly 51,300 followers on TikTok, Soar has found what some might call a sweet spot in the world of influencing. She doesn’t have enough to quit her day job — though she’s perfectly happy with that — but she has enough of an audience to cultivate a sense of community with her followers and fellow BookTokkers. The pressure to post is there, but not so overwhelming that it takes away the joy. Plus, she gets to enjoy one of the perks of her passion: free books from publishers, which she reviews on her page — a fitting benefit for someone raised on comics about frugality.

Free books were one of the main reasons she started book blogging at just 11 years old. After moving to the UK when she was young, she launched her own blog, Sam Falling Books.

"Back then, when I had a blog, the community around that was so cute," she said. "There would be blog tours, and the bloggers would become friends."

Blogs, at the time, offered a kind of refuge. While some bloggers made it bigger than others, the blogging community felt safer and more intimate than other social media spaces. Soar didn’t want to put her face online because, as she admits, she was "so scared and embarrassed" — understandable for an 11-year-old. Blogs provided the perfect solution: a static, personal space without algorithms or the pressure of today's content-driven culture. It was just her, other like-minded people, and the books they loved.

Soar's passion for reading led her to spend countless hours borrowing books from the library, but there was one downside — the wait. Often, she found herself stuck on waiting lists, hoping the person ahead of her would return the book she was eager to read. Rather than wait, she took matters into her own hands and began emailing publishers directly: "My name is Sam, and I am a UK teenager who loves book blogging! I was wondering if you had any review copies of [insert book name here] that I could review."

And it worked.

"I'm so proud of my blog," she said, laughing. "I got so many free books."

When she went off to university, her book blog fell by the wayside. But eventually, she noticed the buzz around BookTok and decided to jump back in.

SEE ALSO: Drew Afualo is more vulnerable than ever in her debut book 'Loud'

"I saw everyone, and I was like, 'Oh, people are just like normal readers who post,'" she said. "You could have your face in it, but you didn't have to have your face in it. People are just recommending books. And I thought, There are lots of recommendations that I'd love to throw on this list. My only wish is that I'd started earlier."

Her success in obtaining the books she wanted sparked another consideration: the implications of overconsumption in the literary world. There's a growing trend where people want to be seen as readers, whether they actually are or not. Every celebrity has a book club, and the aesthetic of a well-stocked bookshelf is gaining noxious traction online, reminiscent of trendy decor styles like "coastal grandmother" or "Nancy Meyers core." It's not that people should read less or even buy fewer books, but when piles of unread books start accumulating in a corner of your apartment, it might be time to rethink how — and why — you got there. BookTok, with its focus on the latest editions and special releases, only amplifies this consumption.

"When I was younger, I couldn't afford books," Soar said. "I would just borrow from the library and hustle the publishers. To have people showing these massive book hauls with 20 or even 30 books and seeing that as a young person, you might think you have to have all of those books to be a real reader. I'm becoming more wary of that."

That doesn't mean Soar is entirely immune to the temptation of book collecting. She admits to feeling "a little bit of shame" when she looks at her overflowing shelves. For now, she's focused on buying less and tackling the growing stack of books on her TBR (to-be-read) shelf.

Beyond her reflections on overconsumption, Soar uses her platform to engage with important causes. She has posted about Operation Olive Branch, a grassroots collective that amplifies Palestinian voices and supports their needs. She’s also part of a group chat called "BookTok Union," where about 60 creators come together to support each other, discuss upcoming events, and share insights on how much to charge for sponsored posts.

For the most part, BookTok is just fun for Soar. She reads a lot of fantasy and romance, shares reviews, posts videos of her emotional reactions to the material, and highlights her favorite quotes for her audience of fellow bookworms. She started her page with the hope of reading more, and that's exactly what her account has allowed her to do.

She's still learning to balance collecting and consuming, but she remains driven by the same passion that started it all — a genuine love for stories.

CrowdStrike has accepted the 2024 Pwnie Award for Most Epic Fail, with president Michael Sentonas delivering an acceptance speech in person. Sometimes the best course of action is to simply suck it up, admit your mistakes, and take the L.

This year's Pwnie Awards Ceremony was held on Saturday at the DEF CON hacker convention in Las Vegas. Now in its 17th year, the Pwnie Awards recognises some of the most outstanding achievements in technology security over the past year — as well as the greatest failures. 

SEE ALSO: CrowdStrike outage 3 days later: Where does everything stand now?

As such, it was obvious that CrowdStrike would take home an award this year. Over 8.5 million Windows computers went down in July after the cybersecurity company pushed out an update to its software, bringing numerous companies and services across the world to a sudden halt. Businesses impacted included banks, airlines, mail carriers, supermarkets, and telecommunications companies.

The CrowdStrike outage was a massive global event, which has now been recognised with a massive Pwnie Award trophy. The two-tiered trophy awarded to CrowdStrike dwarfed the smaller pony-shaped ones for other categories, as befitting the eclipsing size of its blunder.

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"Definitely not the award to be proud of receiving," Sentonas said in his acceptance speech, taking the stage to laughter and applause. "I think the team was surprised when I said straight away that I'd be coming to get it. We got this horribly wrong, we've said that a number of different times. It's super important to own it when you do things well, it's super important to own it when you do things horribly wrong, which we did in this case."

Accepting the large golden trophy, Sentonas stated that he intended to display it at CrowdStrike's headquarters in Austin, Texas. His hope is that it will serve as a reminder to CrowdStrike's staff to prevent such mistakes from happening in the future.

"The reason why I wanted the trophy is I'm heading back to headquarters," Sentosas continued. "I'm gonna take the trophy with me, it's gonna sit pride of place, because I want every CrowdStriker who comes to work to see it. Because our goal is to protect people, and we got this wrong, and I want to make sure that everybody understands these things can't happen, and that's what this community's about. So from that perspective I will say thank you."

Sentonas' in-person acceptance of CrowdStrike's Pwnie Award was widely well-received, with social media users praising him for accepting accountability with humility, class, and good humour.

CrowdStrike was the sole contender for 2024's Most Epic Fail Pwnie Award

Though CrowdStrike's Most Epic Fail trophy was only awarded this weekend, its win had already been announced alongside the Pwnie Award nominations in late July. This was within mere days of the infamous global outage that took down numerous companies and services worldwide. 

In a post to X at the time, the Pwnie Awards stated that it was granting the early award due to "extenuating circumstances." Said circumstance was likely the fact that CrowdStrike's fail was so epic that no one was likely to match it unless they deliberately tried. Even then, it would still be a difficult task.

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While all other categories at the 2024 Pwnie Awards had three finalists, CrowdStrike had no competition for the' Epic Fail Award. Instead, nominee details for the category simply read, "Lol. Lmao even."

"This award is for the defenders who dared to wonder, 'What could possibly go wrong?'" reads the Pwnie Awards' description of its Most Epic Fail Award. "This award will honor a person or corporate entity’s spectacularly epic fail – the kind of fail that lets the entire infosec industry down in its wake. It can be a singular incident, marketing piece, or investment – or a smoldering trail of whale-scale fail."

Last year's Most Epic Fail winner was the Transport Security Administration (TSA), after a hacker discovered their no-fly list on an unsecured server. Though at least the TSA can say its mistake didn't take out IT systems across the globe.

Uber has spent millions trying to get a proposal on the Nevada ballot that would restrict the legal fees that bankroll many lawsuits against companies.

The Mini is a bite-sized version of The New York Times' revered daily crossword. While the crossword is a lengthier experience that requires both knowledge and patience to complete, The Mini is an entirely different vibe.

With only a handful of clues to answer, the daily puzzle doubles as a speed-running test for many who play it.

So, when a tricky clue disrupts a player's flow, it can be frustrating! If you find yourself stumped playing The Mini — much like with Wordle and Connections — we have you covered.

SEE ALSO: NYT Connections today: See hints and answers for August 12 SEE ALSO: Wordle today: Here's the answer hints for August 12

Here are the clues and answers to NYT's The Mini for Monday, August 12, 2024:

AcrossThrows in the mix

• The answer is Adds.

Plant life

• The answer is Flora.

Chef's garment

• The answer is Apron.

Informal term for avid supporters of Kamala Harris

• The answer is KHive.

Simplicity

• The answer is Ease.

DownLetter before beta and gamma

• The answer is Alpha.

Pulitzer-winning historian ___ Kearns Goodwin

• The answer is Doris.

Did some chauffeuring

• The answer is Drove.

All there, mentally

• The answer is Sane.

Like a designer bag with the company name misspelled

• The answer is Fake.

Featured Video For You The Wordle Strategy used by the New York Times' Head of Games Featured Video For You The Wordle Strategy used by the New York Times' Head of Games Featured Video For You The Wordle Strategy used by the New York Times' Head of Games

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today's Strands.

If you're reading this, you're looking for a little help playing Strands, the New York Times' elevated word-search game.

By providing an opaque hint and not providing the word list, Strands creates a brain-teasing game that takes a little longer to play than its other games, like Wordle and Connections.

SEE ALSO: NYT Connections today: See hints and answers for August 12 SEE ALSO: Wordle today: Here's the answer hints for August 12

If you're feeling stuck or just don't have 10 or more minutes to figure out today's puzzle, we've got all the NYT Strands hints for today's puzzle you need to progress at your preferred pace.

NYT Strands hint for today’s theme: Everybody cut footloose!

The hint for the theme is they are great for TikTok.

Today’s NYT Strands theme plainly explained

The answers are related to different dances.

NYT Strands spangram hint: Is it vertical or horizontal?

Today's NYT Strands spangram is vertical.

NYT Strands spangram answer today

Today's spangram is DanceMoves.

NYT Strands word list for August 12

• Floss

• DanceMoves

• Twerk

• Moonwalk

• Vogue

• Hustle

• Pirouette

Looking for other daily online games? Find one you might like – or hints for another game you're already playing – on Mashable's Games page.

TL;DR: Now through Sept. 3, you can get a lifetime license to Microsoft Office Professional Plus for Windows or Mac (2019), on sale for only £19.61 (reg. £178.86)

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• Word

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It may not be the newest version, but all the tools you know and love are included, plus some exciting features like enhanced inking in all Office programs, new analysis functions in Excel, new presentation components in PowerPoint, and updated features in Outlook to manage emails and contacts.

This one-time purchase includes updates, as well as free customer support for life. Once you make your purchase, you'll receive a redemption code via email, which you'll need to redeem within 30 days to access your MS Office suite download. Once MS Office is set up on your device, the license will never expire — no monthly or annual subscription fees required.

Until Sept. 3 at 11:59 p.m. PT, score a lifetime license to Microsoft Office 2019 for only £19.61.

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Opens in a new window Credit: Retail King Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2019 for Windows or Mac £19.61 at The Mashable Shop
£179.86 Save £160.25 Get Deal

Oh hey there! If you're here, it must be time for Wordle. As always, we're serving up our daily hints and tips to help you figure out today's answer.

If you just want to be told today's word, you can jump to the bottom of this article for August 12's Wordle solution revealed. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

Where did Wordle come from?

Originally created by engineer Josh Wardle as a gift for his partner, Wordle rapidly spread to become an international phenomenon, with thousands of people around the globe playing every day. Alternate Wordle versions created by fans also sprang up, including battle royale Squabble, music identification game Heardle, and variations like Dordle and Quordle that make you guess multiple words at once. 

Wordle eventually became so popular that it was purchased by the New York Times, and TikTok creators even livestream themselves playing.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to yesterday's Wordle.

What's the best Wordle starting word?

The best Wordle starting word is the one that speaks to you. But if you prefer to be strategic in your approach, we have a few ideas to help you pick a word that might help you find the solution faster. One tip is to select a word that includes at least two different vowels, plus some common consonants like S, T, R, or N.

What happened to the Wordle archive?

The entire archive of past Wordle puzzles used to be available for anyone to enjoy whenever they felt like it. Unfortunately, it has since been taken down, with the website's creator stating it was done at the request of the New York Times.

Is Wordle getting harder?

It might feel like Wordle is getting harder, but it actually isn't any more difficult than when it first began. You can turn on Wordle's Hard Mode if you're after more of a challenge, though.

SEE ALSO: NYT's The Mini crossword answers for August 11 SEE ALSO: NYT Connections today: See hints and answers for August 11 Here's a subtle hint for today's Wordle answer:

A small vessel perfect for calm, shallow waters.

Does today's Wordle answer have a double letter?

The letter F appears twice.

Today's Wordle is a 5-letter word that starts with...

Today's Wordle starts with the letter S.

SEE ALSO: Wordle-obsessed? These are the best word games to play IRL. The Wordle answer today is...

Get your last guesses in now, because it's your final chance to solve today's Wordle before we reveal the solution.

Drumroll please!

The solution to today's Wordle is...

SKIFF.

Don't feel down if you didn't manage to guess it this time. There will be a new Wordle for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we'll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today's Strands.

Reporting by Caitlin Welsh, Sam Haysom, Amanda Yeo, Shannon Connellan, Cecily Mauran, Mike Pearl, and Adam Rosenberg contributed to this article.

Connections is the latest New York Times word game that's captured the public's attention. The game is all about finding the "common threads between words." And just like Wordle, Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier—so we've served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle.

If you just want to be told today's puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for August 12's Connections solution. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

What is Connections?

The NYT's latest daily word game has become a social media hit. The Times credits associate puzzle editor Wyna Liu with helping to create the new word game and bringing it to the publications' Games section. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.

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Each puzzle features 16 words and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise of anything from book titles, software, country names, etc. Even though multiple words will seem like they fit together, there's only one correct answer. If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. Guess wrong and it counts as a mistake—players get up to four mistakes until the game ends.

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Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make spotting connections easier. Additionally, each group is color-coded with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, you can share the results with your friends on social media.

SEE ALSO: NYT's The Mini crossword answers for August 12 Here's a hint for today's Connections categories

Want a hit about the categories without being told the categories? Then give these a try:

• Yellow: Metals

• Green: Beds

• Blue: Toilet slang

• Purple: Types of Knives

Featured Video For You Connections: How to play and how to win Here are today's Connections categories

Need a little extra help? Today's connections fall into the following categories:

• Yellow: Metal Elements

• Green: Mattress Sizes

• Blue: Slang for Toilet

• Purple: Kinds of Knives

Looking for Wordle today? Here's the answer to today's Wordle.

Ready for the answers? This is your last chance to turn back and solve today's puzzle before we reveal the solutions.

Drumroll, please!

The solution to today's Connections #428 is...

What is the answer to Connections today

• Metal Elements: GOLD, LEAD, MERCURY, TIN

• Mattress Sizes: FULL, KING, QUEEN, TWIN

• Slang for Toilet: CAN, HEAD, JOHN, THRONE

• Kinds of Knives: BOWIE, BUTCHER, BUTTER, BUTTERFLY

Don't feel down if you didn't manage to guess it this time. There will be new Connections for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we'll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

Is this not the Connections game you were looking for? Here are the hints and answers to yesterday's Connections.

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today's Strands.

Never has the county, perhaps, felt more united than while watching Golden State Warriors player Stephen Curry absolutely dog on the French men's basketball team during the gold medal final of the Paris Olympics. In the annals of historic moments in US history, Curry's four straight three-point shots against France should be hung on a wall next to the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the Moon Landing.

As Team USA basketball edged out France 98-87 on Saturday, users on X (formerly Twitter) let their American spirit be known to the world.

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Let's not forget that the women's USA basketball team also won gold in Paris, also against the French, but in a way more dramatic fashion. Team USA won by the skin of their teeth as France guard Gabby Williams banked a game-tying shot — except her foot was on the line, meaning France lost by 1.

Naturally, the discussion of women's basketball's Olympic victory shifted to WNBA star Caitlin Clark, who was not selected to be on Team USA, because social media refuses to be normal about women's basketball.

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As the Paris Olympics mark their end, it was a generationally triumphant moment for Curry, Lebron James, Kevin Durant, and the rest of Team USA basketball.

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The 2024 Olympics may end, but Paris still has one more show: the closing ceremony.

On top of featuring French bands like Air and Phoenix, the closing ceremony will also see Paris hand its Olympic hosting duties off to Los Angeles, where the 2028 summer games will take place. Expect to see an aerial stunt from Tom Cruise in the LA-themed portion of the ceremony, as well as musical performances by Billie Eilish, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Snoop Dogg (who's been the ultimate Olympic hype man).

Here's how to watch the spectacle live:

SEE ALSO: Iconic moments from the 2024 Olympics: Our running list When is the 2024 Olympics closing ceremony?

The closing ceremony for the Paris 2024 Olympics kicks off at 3:00 pm ET.

Unlike the opening ceremony, which took the Olympians on a trip down the Seine, these closing ceremonies will take place at the Stade de France.

Where can I watch the 2024 Olympics closing ceremony?

You can live stream the closing ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games on Peacock, the Peacock app, NBCOlympics.com, NBC.com, and the NBC app.

If you miss the action live, you can catch the replay of the closing ceremony on Peacock, or during prime-time coverage on NBC.

The Mini is a bite-sized version of The New York Times' revered daily crossword. While the crossword is a lengthier experience that requires both knowledge and patience to complete, The Mini is an entirely different vibe.

With only a handful of clues to answer, the daily puzzle doubles as a speed-running test for many who play it.

So, when a tricky clue disrupts a player's flow, it can be frustrating! If you find yourself stumped playing The Mini — much like with Wordle and Connections — we have you covered.

SEE ALSO: NYT Connections today: See hints and answers for August 11 SEE ALSO: Wordle today: Here's the answer hints for August 11

Here are the clues and answers to NYT's The Mini for Sunday, August 11, 2024:

AcrossPart of a Batman or Spider-Man costume

• The answer is Mask.

"What are you ___ today?"

• The answer is Up to.

Soup eater's onomatopoeia

• The answer is Slurp.

The "dial" in "Don't touch that dial"

• The answer is Tuner.

"Don't move, Fido!"

• The answer is Stay.

DownSimply have to

• The answer is Must.

Best possible grade

• The answer is A Plus.

Backflip in an action movie, e.g.

• The answer is Stunt.

Its currency is the won

• The answer is Korea.

Ask some personal questions

• The answer is Pry.

Featured Video For You The Wordle Strategy used by the New York Times' Head of Games Featured Video For You The Wordle Strategy used by the New York Times' Head of Games Featured Video For You The Wordle Strategy used by the New York Times' Head of Games

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today's Strands.

Ever since Overwatch took over in the gaming mainstream, it seems every company wants its piece of the pie within the hero-shooter genre. That's how we've arrived at NetEase Games' Marvel Rivals, the latest live-service hero shooter from the Diabolo Immortal developers.

I was recently invited to the game's closed beta that ran from July 23 to August 5. Featuring a who's who cast of Marvel Comics characters, Rivals is the physical embodiment of a Disney executive going around asking why the company doesn't have its own version of Overwatch. (I'll be mentioning this game a lot, fair warning). However, the twist here is that Rivals is quite fun if you don't mind it being a ripoff of other, better games in the genre.

What is Marvel Rivals Credit: NetEase Games

Let's start with the basics. Marvel Rivals is a 6-vesus-6, third-person multiplayer hero shooter in a similar vein to Battleborn or Gigantic. Like other games in the genre, players can choose between a cast of 20+ Marvel Comics characters split into three classes: Vanguard, Duelist, and Strategist. Vanguard is your classic tank — beefy builds that soak up and deal heavy amounts of damage. This is one of the smaller groups in the game comprising The Hulk, Thor, Venom, Groot, Peni Parker, and surprisingly Doctor Strange and Magneto.

Duelists are assault-type characters focused on combat and mobility. You'll find the most characters in this group to play around with — the most common I saw in my playthrough being Black Panther, Iron Man, Magik, The Punisher, Spider-Man, and Storm.

Finally, we have the strategists, who are your classic support characters either dealing out health and buffs to their teammates or debuffs to opponents. During the closed alpha testing, there were only four support characters: Loki, Luna Snow, Mantis, and Rocket Raccoon. But with this closed beta, Adam Warlock and Jeff the Shark were added to the roster.

Credit: NetEase Games

Once your team of heroes and villains is chosen, you'll take this colorful cast of truly well-designed characters and compete in three game modes: Convoy, Convergence, and Domination. These are the same modes from Overwatch to a tee, minus Domination which is ripped from Call of Duty and Battlefield. Convoy has you either defending or attacking an objective as it travels on a set path to an endpoint.

Convergence is a best 2-of-3, King of the Hill-style battle as teams duke it over control of a single point that changes location. And then, I don't have much to say about Domination cause I could never find enough people to play it, but allegedly teams face each other for control of multiple points on a map.

Playing Marvel Rivals Credit: NetEase Games

I think a lot of the fun I had playing the beta is that it's extremely polished. It helps that NetEase had a template to work from, since Rivals is unashamedly an amalgamation of all that came before it. Even the maps feel like Overwatch and I haven't played that game in over six years. So imagine the déjà vu I felt loading up Rivals and immediately feeling like I had somehow downloaded the wrong game.

However, the game falters when it comes to hero kits. The sets of weapons and abilities in the game can be poorly matched to their characters and unappealing. Magneto, for example, is a tank class with a telekinetic shield and mind-controlled rocks, which feels off for his character, and is boring to play. Bruce Banner transforms into the Hulk, but once transformed, his abilities are limited to smashing and shooting gamma rays.

Some characters do fit their hero kits well. Iron Man as a duelist/assault class hero with rockets and an ion beam makes sense, as does the Punisher with his guns, and Spider-Man with his swinging and punching. But Doctor Strange as a shield character is both unfaithful to his character and dull in gameplay.

The inconsistent hero kits seem like a compromise aimed at multiplayer balance, yet this comes at the cost of fun and character fidelity. There's clearly a tightrope NetEase is trying to walk by making the game enthralling to newer players while trying to be faithful to the characters they're dropping into its sandbox. It can be fun at times, but it doesn't make for an interesting gameplay experience.

Credit: NetEase Games

A standout feature in Marvel Rivals is team-up abilities, where certain character combinations yield in-game benefits. For instance, Rocket Raccoon and Punisher together gain "Ammo Overload," giving Punisher infinite ammo and faster firing within Rocket's attack buff.

However, some team-ups lack coherence. Black Panther and Magik, who rarely interact in the comics, gain a portal-travel ability already available to Doctor Strange. Magneto and Scarlet Witch make sense as father-daughter mutants and Guardians of the Galaxy characters have logical team-ups. Yet, pairings like Thor/Storm (lightning abilities) or Namor/Luna Snow/Jeff the Shark (water abilities) are only marginally logical.

So at the moment, having played around 10ish hours of Marvel Rivals, I can say that while it boasts polished gameplay and intriguing team-up mechanics, its hero kits and character balance often undermine the fun and authenticity.

With the beta having closed at the time of this writing, I'd say check this out if you like a good hero shooter that you can pick up and play and not feel obligated to overthink the right way to play. NetEase doesn't have an official release date for this yet, but rumors suggest the game will be released sometime next year.

Some states are banning phones in schools to reduce classroom distraction and cyberbullying. Tell us about your experience with tech in schools.

As the new school year starts, a wave of new laws that aim to curb distracted learning is taking effect in Indiana, Louisiana and other states.

UPDATE: Aug. 11, 2024, 5:00 a.m. EDT This story has been updated to include two new picks: The Microsoft Surface Laptop 7, and the Lenovo Legion 9i (Gen 9).

There's no such thing as a universal best laptop. Whether a laptop works well for you — and there could be several that fit the bill — is a largely subjective decision that comes down to your primary use cases, your preferred operating system, and your budget.

This is an annoying fact of life for both laptop shoppers and those of us doling out "best laptop" recommendations, since we can't make custom judgment calls for everyone in need of a new machine. (I would love to, but I've got a thing after this.) However, after spending countless hours reviewing popular laptops, we can confidently point you in the right direction of the best laptops that stand out for meeting important, impartial standards for performance and build quality.

SEE ALSO: The best cheap laptops for 2024, tested and reviewed

We think these laptops will serve most people well, and at the very least, we think they can be useful archetypes within different categories of computers (from MacBooks to Windows PCs, budget laptops, gaming laptops, and Chromebooks). Don't start from square one if you don't have to, you know?

Keep reading for Mashable's hands-on tested guide to the best laptops of 2024, including two exciting new picks for August: The Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 is now the best Windows laptop we've tried (and our new favorite laptop overall), dethroning the HP Spectre x360 14. And the Lenovo Legion 9i (Gen 9) has toppled the Razer Blade 14 to become our preferred gaming laptop.

FYI: We've listed the pricing and specs of our testing units, which may not apply to each laptop's base model.

TL;DR: Get Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2022 + The 2024 Premium Learn to Code Certification Bundle on sale for just $55.97 through Sept. 3.

For aspiring software developers, the journey from learning to code to landing a job in the industry can seem daunting. However, with the right tools and resources, you can pave a clear path toward a successful career without having to step foot into a classroom.

The Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2022 + The 2024 Premium Learn to Code Certification Bundle, available for $55.97, offers a comprehensive package designed to equip you with the practical skills and industry insights needed to get started in software development.

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Here's what people who weren't there don't know about the moment the dot-com bubble burst: there was no single moment.

The date was different for everyone, and the range varies a lot more than you think. So far as I was concerned, the dot-com economy crashed on the morning of January 11, 2000. That's when I entered the Time-Life building, seething because the Time Warner CEO had just sold our company to AOL, of all internet hellholes, for $183 billion. Just keep your head down, I thought in the elevator, and maybe you won't be asked to cover a deal that insanely overvalues a company you just called "training wheels for the internet."

As I crept into the morning meeting, a voice boomed: "Chris! Let me introduce you to the men you'll be covering this week," said Time magazine editor Walter Isaacson, presenting AOL CEO Steve Case and Time Warner CEO Jerry Levin. Cue forced smiles and clammy handshakes all around.

The vibe shift of the dot-com bubble began in ... January 2000?

The history of financial bubbles, from the South Sea original that suckered in Sir Isaac Newton to the AI implosion of 2024 where a lot of the smartest people in tech seem set to lose their shirts, can be summarized thus: it's all about vibes, man.

Fans of a new technology or financial scheme get so caught up in the potential for exponential profits, they shun nuance and caveats and risk. Irrational exuberance, as we started saying in the 1990s. Stock prices go through the roof, hordes of new investors stampede in. But nuance and caveats and risk are stubborn things, and there's always a moment where society at large starts to see through the illusion: a vibe shift, basically, like the one we're living through now.

Looking back on the decline of the dot-coms, something I witnessed up close in San Francisco and Silicon Valley from March 2000 onwards, two things strike me. First of all, the process was far slower than I thought; we were still very much living in true believer dot-com land for a time in 2001, with all the dumb business models and high-budget launch parties that implied. (Picture a lot of ice sculptures with slow-melting corporate logos; many of these startups were immune to irony.)

SEE ALSO: The early internet kept showing us the future, and we rolled our eyes every time

So it was less a bubble, more a balloon slowly leaking. And here's the second thing I find striking looking back at my diaries of the time: the balloon really seems like it started leaking a lot earlier than March 2000. That's when histories of this quintessential tech collapse place the vibe shift, which makes sense: The NASDAQ, that much-watched index of all things tech, hit its high water mark of 5,084 on March 10, 2000. It would not blast past that number again for 15 years.

But in the first two weeks of the year, a couple of events (or non-events) made the tech world seem like a paper tiger in the eyes of many. The year began with a profound sense of relief that the so-called Y2K millennium bug, where legacy software couldn't tell the difference between 1900 and 2000, hadn't produced the predicted global computer meltdown. But relief soon curdled into irrational anger: had all the techies just hyped up the threat in order to bilk us for unnecessary code rewrites? What else could they be lying about?

Topsy turvy tech titans: AOL's Steve Case, Time Warner's Jerry Levin. Credit: Allan Tannenbaum/Getty Images

Then came one of the most topsy-turvy deals in history. On January 10, the AOL-Time Warner deal was announced. But one factor kept getting downplayed in the press, especially by my employers: given that AOL would end up with 55 percent of the resulting company, it was a takeover.

"I almost had to check that it wasn't April 1," I wrote in my diary that day. "It sounded like a bad joke." After AOL CEO Steve Case walked into that Time magazine morning meeting to meet some of his new employees, I had to board a plane for Dulles and interview Case's lieutenants about all the celebrating that had gone on in AOL HQ. None of them could stop grinning at what this CD-pushing internet service provider had just achieved.

SEE ALSO: Dialing up the past: How did the early internet affect the media?

But investors weren't grinning. AOL stock slid on the news. There was something instinctively wrong about this deal. All well and good when the dot-coms were getting eye-popping valuations based on no profits now or potentially ever, but now they're going to leverage them to buy old-school giants who actually make a profit? It was the tail wagging the dog, and it clearly couldn't last.

Spoiler alert: the company has been broken up and sold off since then, most of it to AT&T. Time magazine was eventually sold to Marc Benioff, founder of Salesforce, who in 2000 was obsessed with promoting his company by sending me and other San Francisco journalists packages full of ... chocolate, for some reason.

We saw the crash coming

More than a year ahead of March 2000, you could already find voices in the media who knew what the sky-high valuations signaled. "This is a real bubble and it's going to pop," one tech analyst told Kiplinger's, a financial magazine, in November 1998. "A bit of the air leaked out of what many Wall Street pros call the internet bubble," the New York Times reported in January 1999, quoting a Morgan Stanley analyst: "I promise you, like all bubbles, this bubble will come to a very bad end."

Nobody had cared then. After Y2K and AOL-Time Warner, they started to care. My diary for January 25, 2000, the day my predecessor as San Francisco bureau chief quit to join a dot-com, reveals the mood of the time. "What the site does, I'm still not exactly sure," I wrote. The dot-com-bound journalist had already pitched me, with a line I now imagine being read in the voice of Kendall Roy: "I mean, internet telephony is a dark horse for story of the year. You should totally write about it."

The startup's exact business model, I concluded, "seems less important than the fact that it just got $60 million in VC funding. Who out there cares what most of this dizzying parade of dot-coms do anyway? They make money for papa on IPO day, that's what." Except that particular IPO never happened. Fast forward to 2024, and the site in question advertises itself as "the premier destination for psychic readings by phone or online chat."

(For what it's worth, Morgan Stanley, now a little more irrationally exuberant than it was back in 1999, recently predicted 10 to 15 AI IPOs this year. Whether there's any actual wiggle room left for AI company IPOs in a suddenly unfriendly 2024 landscape, however, remains to be seen.)

Microsoft made the dot-com bust official. But why?

Something else happened in January 2000 that made people uneasy about the tech world: On January 13, the world's richest man handed over the keys of the world's biggest tech company to a guy who would later become famous for dancing like a monkey.

Bill Gates' Microsoft, of course, was the 800-pound gorilla of the time. I'd been covering the company's trial, on antitrust charges, since 1998. It had clearly been stifling innovation in the early internet space, using its Windows desktop dominance as leverage.

"If Microsoft is a monopoly, should we risk angering it?" was one typically weird question I was asked in my first official AOL chat from San Francisco, a kind of proto Reddit AMA, on April 3, 2000.

That was the day U.S. Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson delivered his judgment: Microsoft had violated the Sherman antitrust act. Breaking up the company, as had been done with AT&T in the 1980s, was on the cards. The market sent Microsoft stock tumbling 15 percent in a single day.

It made no sense that this event would be the starting gun for a run on dot-com stocks. If anything, a less powerful Microsoft would allow more upstart tech companies to flourish. But sense, as we've already established, has nothing to do with tech bubbles.

Together with news that the SEC was quietly cracking down on shady dot-com accounting practices, it suddenly felt like "the cops have finally burst in" on Silicon Valley's party, as Bloomberg wrote at the time. The vibe shift began with AOL Time Warner; as of April it was starting to feel irreversible.

The dot-com bubble took its sweet time deflating.

Even after the Microsoft decision, contemporary reports — and investors — were surprisingly tentative.

"Is the dot-com bubble ready to burst?" wondered the San Francisco Examiner on April 5, 2000. In July, the Palm Beach Post quoted an investor who was "not worried about the dot-com bubble bursting." By September, tech pundits generally agreed a dot-com meltdown had happened, but like Bill Gates, didn't think this meant the technology sector as a whole was in a downturn.

Here's the thing about market peaks; you don't see them until they're far in the rearview. In the case of the dot-com market, there were upswings in the meantime. Look at the NASDAQ chart for 2000, and you're not seeing a 1929-style crash. You'll note two giant spikes after March, moments in the summer and fall when the tech index seemed to be heading back to 5000 again. The NASDAQ would not hit its post-bubble low until October 2002.

Note the multiple highs in 2000, and the low in 2002. Credit: Wikimedia

In Silicon Valley, not much felt like it had changed. The IPO market may have cooled, but wasn't expected to stop completely. When I interviewed Larry Page and Sergey Brin for the first Time story on Google in the fall of 2000, I asked how it felt knowing they'd be billionaires soon. (In the end, Google would wait another 5 years before conditions were right for a public offering.)

The most iconic dot-com hot messes clung on for much longer than we remember. Pets.com didn't bite the dust until November 2000 — and that dog puppet of theirs was still making appearances at events in 2002. I'd been using Kozmo.com, a much-mocked Postmates-style service with no delivery fee, to bring me Krispy Kremes and DVDs in New York in December 1999; I was still using it in San Francisco as late as February 2001. Kozmo shut down 2 months later, which turned out to be very good news for my burgeoning waistline.

If the bubble burst in 2000, someone had forgotten to tell the fat-walleted engineers raising everyone's rents. In mid-2000, I reported on a protest by residents of the Mission, San Francisco's historically Hispanic neighborhood, against dot-com employees moving in. A card game called Burn Rate, where players took on the roles of dot-com CEOs weighed down with massive overheads, was all the rage in the city that year.

But it wasn't until 2001 that tech layoffs became a deluge. That was the year I wrote story after story with headlines like "It's grim and dim for the dot-coms" (that one was about companies coping with layoffs and the statewide "brownouts" brought on by California's reliance on the energy scalpers at Enron.)

As AOL Time Warner's own layoffs began to bite, demand for dot-com schadenfreude was never higher. In the second week of September, I was assigned to talk to former dot-com employees for a cover story with the tentative title "living happily with less." The day I had assembled them for dinner, the biggest news of the century broke. Dinner was canceled, and I was never asked to write a dot-com story again.

Tech rebounded faster than expected.

After the all-consuming catastrophe of 9/11, attention for tech news was in short supply. And that, ironically, was when the tech world got really interesting.

In October 2001, Steve Jobs handed me and other journalists the first generation iPod. But the tech world's stock was so low in New York, I had to fight for a single page in Time on the MP3 player that seemed so clearly like a game-changer — especially once I saw how fast my parents figured out how to use it.

That was the story of tech in 2001: without so much dot-com froth in the way, the future suddenly became much clearer.

The Google guys kept talking about a groundbreaking product, not yet called AdSense, and how it would actually extract that much-promised revenue from the internet. I wrote about Reed Hastings, a former AI researcher who'd quit in frustration at the slow pace of his chosen field. His company Netflix and its DVD-by-mail product seemed promising (I didn't focus so much on the long-term "deliver movies over the internet" plan; been there, heard that). Jeff Bezos, whom I'd pitched as Person of the Year two years prior, spent a day in Seattle trying to convince me that Amazon's business model would work in the long run.

Apple, Google, Amazon, and Netflix? All 2001 needed to complete the future lineup of the five tech giants was a programming prodigy who was then still in boarding school. Only in 2002 would he arrive at Harvard, where inspiration waited in the form of a dorm room face book.

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes" — so wrote another San Francisco journalist, one who repeatedly lost his shirt on startups, at the turn of a previous century. History isn't exactly about to repeat itself with the 2024 correction. But we can at least hope that the final line of this dot-com-AI stanza — the one where the strongest companies emerge, battle-hardened and ready to launch new revolutions — will be a couplet for the ages.