On September 22, 2005, Criminal Minds began, one of those series that has kept police procedural fans hooked for 19 seasons, plus two spin-offs, a Korean adaptation, and several video games. I mean, it seems like the typical endless series… if it weren’t for the fact that Paramount has just killed it off.
Canceled Minds
Criminal Minds really ended in 2020, but two years later it was brought back for a continuation titled Criminal Minds: Evolution, which has lasted 5 seasons of 10 episodes each. We found out in the strangest way possible: AJ Cook, its star, dressed up for Halloween as a tombstone with the name Jennifer Jareau, her character for the last 21 years. Oof.
That said, all the actors have said the same thing: there are more stories to tell, and Criminal Minds has only ended “for now”. “If we can tell these stories somewhere else, it would be incredible”, Kirsten Vangsness has said. For now, the only thing we know for sure is that the series’ second ending will air in 2027, and there are no spin-offs or sequels on the table. For now.
The odd thing is that Criminal Minds isn’t a failure: its latest episode has spent months in Paramount+‘s top 10… But of course, after Warner’s acquisition they have to save money somewhere, and they’ve decided to do it with one of their most iconic franchises. With any luck, they won’t have any problem finding another home. After more than 350 episodes, Criminal Minds, like grandparents, should live forever.
When we spend several hours a day in front of the computer, the comfort of the workspace stops being a bonus and becomes a priority. This is where FlexiSpot presents its E7 Plus, a height-adjustable desk with four legs and the ability to lift up to 250 kg with ease. At Softonic we were able to test it and, from tightening the very first screw, there’s one thing that makes it stand out from many alternatives: its extraordinary stability.
The E7 Plus has that streamlined designer-desk look that fits into any office or space. Beneath this simplicity, however, you can see the care in its construction, its solid structure and a lifting system that is a market leader.
The first thing that catches your eye about the E7 Plus is, precisely, its structure. Compared with the usual two legs on adjustable desks, FlexiSpot has opted for four points of support. Where many desks cut costs by using a single motor and a single mechanism per leg, the E7 Plus chooses stability. Four legs, beyond aesthetics, make it possible to distribute the weight and control wobble much better. The result is a tremendously stable desk even when we raise it to its maximum height, something we were able to verify firsthand even with the largest tops.
The frame is made of carbon steel. If we remember the E7 PRO, which we also reviewed at Softonic, here the load capacity goes from 160 to 250 kg while in motion. At rest, according to the manufacturer, it can hold up to 280 kg. Those numbers are more than enough to sit on it while it goes up and down with several monitors and accessories, with plenty of room to expand our setup in the future.
Special mention should go to its resistance to twisting. In a desk of this type, putting weight over the legs is one thing, but doing it on the edge of the top, in the position where we’d normally work, is something else entirely. On the E7 Plus, the whole structure stays firm, even when we apply pressure on the ends to stand up or sit down, and that is, in large part, thanks to the four-leg configuration.
The adjustment range goes from 66 to 131 cm. With this we have enough to work seated or standing, even on a walking pad if we are between 1.63 and 2 meters tall. During assembly, which we’ll talk about in a moment, we can adjust its width from 99 to 159 cm, so the structure works for tops between 120 and 200 cm long and between 70 and 90 cm deep. The photos in this article correspond to an 80 x 180 cm top.
Assembly: simple, although the legs are quite heavy
The E7 Plus is heavy. Very. The frame comes in two packages weigh around 25 kg each and, when we start taking out the parts, we immediately understand where that solidity we were talking about a few paragraphs ago comes from. The part that requires the most effort is without a doubt moving and placing the legs, but if you clear plenty of space before starting, assembly is much easier than the weight of the box suggests.
As someone who works from home and has already assembled several adjustable desks, I have to say that FlexiSpot takes great care with this section. The instructions are very well illustrated, consist of only 7 steps per side and the whole assembly is designed so that the parts fit only in the correct position. All the screws, fittings and tools needed for the whole operation are included except for a Phillips screwdriver, which we have to provide ourselves.
There’s a small peculiarity in the electrical connections that I want to mention. When we get to the connector for the control system, it may seem like cables are missing. Here the instructions aren’t very clear. It turns out that those positions have to remain free. With this in mind, connecting everything is as easy as matching each cable to its port and plugging it in, nothing more. It will look just like in the photo above this paragraph.
Use: flexibility, stability and quality motors
There are several things to consider when we evaluate an adjustable desk. On the one hand, there’s the speed of movement, which, moreover, is directly related to the noise of the motors. Here we have to consider, above all, how the movement starts and ends, how much it vibrates at those moments and what happens to anything on the desktop. Here the E7 Plus stands out for how smooth and balanced its operation is.
Its two motors let us move the surface at around 25 mm per second, with a noise level below 50 dB according to FlexiSpot. In my tests, the noise reading is a little lower, but the most important thing is the type of noise, not just its volume. The operation of the motors is, obviously, audible, but it can be described as pleasant, with quite a lot of bass and body; it doesn’t seem to strain as it moves. According to FlexiSpot, the mechanism has been tested to withstand more than 30,000 cycles.
We’ve already covered stability, so, having covered speed, noise and stability, it remains to talk about the control. Here we have a touch LED screen that shows the exact height of the desk at all times (not including the top). With its buttons we can raise and lower it and set the four programmable memories. We can save one for seated work, another for working standing and the rest for different people or tasks. With one touch, the desk returns to our favorite position without us having to adjust the height manually.
The control has an anti-collision system, which moves back slightly if it can’t keep going; a position-lock function, very useful if we have kids at home; and also a 20W USB-C port for charging the odd device.
All in all, the FlexiSpot E7 Plus is an excellent option when we’re looking for an adjustable desk that combines design, comfort and very high-quality construction. Its four legs, its ability to lift up to 250 kg and the smoothness of its motors make it feel almost as stable as a conventional desk but with the ability to help make our workday much more comfortable.
Thinking of getting an E7 Plus? FlexiSpot has lots of promotions lined up for November 11. If we buy on November 11 we’ll enjoy up to 13% off sitewide, from 10:00 to 10:59, using the code FSNO13. The sooner we buy, the more we’ll save!
OpenAI is preparing to make a huge change to ChatGPT. After the arrival of ChatGPT Work as a standalone feature, GPT-6 changes how we hand off full tasks in our regular chats. A very interesting improvement that comes along with a new way of tracking how much we use ChatGPT.
More features in the same chat
In the coming weeks, ChatGPT will be able to create web pages, prepare presentations, or take actions online directly in chat mode. We’ll explain what we want to achieve and the system will break the task into several steps, carrying them out automatically.
Until now this functionality was only available in the Work tab, now it’s coming to all chats. The change is interesting, because the most complex tasks will get the most satisfying response possible, but limits will play a more important role.
If until now we could manage our usage around ChatGPT’s limits by relying on Chat mode, which didn’t count toward the limits that have long been active in Work mode and in Codex, now the situation changes. According to OpenAI, starting in December ChatGPT and Codex will use the same usage allowance across Plus, Pro, and Business plans.
Instant mode will remain unlimited and won’t count against this allowance, but if for a certain task ChatGPT decides to use its extended work mode, there’ll be nothing we can do to avoid the extra usage that comes with it.
We can check how much usage we have left and when it renews in Settings → Usage. When we hit the limit, we can wait for the reset, upgrade our plan, or buy credits to keep using certain features. We get more versatility and more capabilities in one place, but we’ll need to manage our usage more carefully.
Luke Skywalker has plenty of memorable lines across Star Wars, but in The Last Jedi, “No one’s ever really gone” has the strongest claim to being his most important. It boils the saga down to the idea Star Wars returns to again and again: redemption, failure, forgiveness, and the kind of second chance that ought to be impossible, but isn’t.
He says it to Leia Organa on Crait through a Force projection, with the Resistance staring down defeat and Leia still grieving Ben Solo’s fall to the dark side. In that moment, the line plays as comfort, but it also feels like a confession. Luke is trying to reach Leia, and at the same time admitting his own failure, his fear, and how close he came to letting go of hope.
It also says more about one of Star Wars’ central beliefs than “I am a Jedi, like my father before me,” because the saga keeps circling back to redemption. You see it in Anakin Skywalker’s return from the dark side, and in the idea that Ben Solo’s humanity is still there somewhere under Kylo Ren’s violence. All of that pulls together the same set of ideas: failure, identity, forgiveness, and impossible second chances.
If you watch Star Wars because you believe even broken people can come back, this reading will probably click, even if The Last Jedi’s guilt-ridden, disillusioned Luke Skywalker still divides you more than his later heroic return in The Mandalorian.
If you want to compare those two Luke Skywalker moments for yourself, both Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Return of the Jedi are on Disney+.
Binance has reopened withdrawals, including USD and major-network withdrawals, after a hack forced the exchange to pause them. Binance says the breach triggered that shutdown, and public estimates have pegged the loss at a record $6.3 billion to $6.4 billion. The company says that since November 1, users have pulled about $4.6 billion from the platform and deposited roughly $1 billion, for net outflows of about $3.6 billion. That’s 2.1% of Binance’s $171 billion in assets, which reads more like users being careful than a full-blown run.
Binance says users won’t be left holding the bag. According to the exchange, it has already replaced 90% to 95% of the stolen funds using its Secure Asset Fund for Users, or SAFU, along with other resources. Binance also says no private wallet keys were leaked, even though investigators traced the breach to a compromised DevOps laptop and other entry points. On top of that, the company says partners froze about $3 billion, including $1.56 billion in Tether’s USDT and $800 million in Circle’s USDC.
The FBI says the attack was carried out by North Korea-linked TraderTraitor, which is now converting the stolen funds into Ethereum before moving through decentralized finance, or DeFi, and instant swaps. By those estimates, the theft is far larger than Bybit’s $1.5 billion loss. Regulators, from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to authorities in the United Arab Emirates and South Korea, are paying closer attention to exchange security while the market waits for the sell-off to ease.
If you use Binance, check whether withdrawals are available for your account. You can access them through Binance’s platform as services come back online.
By June 2026, Prime Video’s Critical Role universe, the animated take on Critical Role’s Exandria campaigns, had grown well past its original scope. The Legend of Vox Machina is now up to four 12-episode seasons, Prime Video has already confirmed a fifth and final season, and The Mighty Nein has now launched too. That brings Vox Machina alone to 60 announced episodes, which means those older 56-episode totals are now out of date.
The Legend of Vox Machina adapts Critical Role’s first Exandria campaign and stays locked on Grog, Pike, Percy, Scanlan, Vax, and Keyleth. Keeping the story centered on one party gives it a cleaner, more character-driven kind of fantasy than The Rings of Power, The Wheel of Time, and the official Dungeons & Dragons adaptations.
This whole franchise started with a 2019 Kickstarter for a $750,000 special and ended up pulling in $11.3 million, according to Kickstarter. Amazon took it from there. Parrot Analytics later ranked The Legend of Vox Machina as the most in-demand U.S. animated series in Q1 2022, at 17.9 times the average, and season 4 followed that up with a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes and a spot in Prime Video’s Top 10 after its June 2026 release.
If you like lore that grows out of the characters, this is absolutely worth a look. The Mighty Nein, which premiered on November 19, 2025 on Prime Video with hour-long episodes set in another part of Exandria, opens up the world without giving up that same draw.
You can stream both series on Prime Video. The service says they’re dubbed in nine languages and subtitled in more than 30, though international viewing data is still pretty limited.
The AI chatbot boom is in a touchier stage now. Fresh numbers suggest parts of the market are starting to look bubble-like, even if that still falls short of saying a crash has to happen.
Ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, or Perplexity and the broad answer is similar: the risk is real, but a wipeout isn’t guaranteed. Useful tools for writing, coding, research, automation, and content creation can keep spreading even while overpriced companies flame out, which is pretty close to what happened in the dot-com crash of 2000–2002.
The reason this deserves a close look is spending.
Global investment is projected to hit 2.7 trillion in 2026, according to market projections, almost 50% above 2025, and AI companies pulled in 74% of the 498.2 billion in overall VC funding in the first half, according to venture funding data; OpenAI and Anthropic by themselves took 43% of startup funding, while OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and Waymo raised 188 billion in Q1, roughly 65% of global VC, according to the same funding data.
Anthropic reportedly brought in 16.3 billion in first-half 2026 revenue, up 1,368%, while also pursuing a 1.5 trillion valuation.
If you’re following AI stocks or startups, take that seriously.
Then late October delivered a roughly 1 trillion Nasdaq 100 sell-off and a 500 billion one-day drop for Alphabet, according to market data, as investors zeroed in on capex, negative free cash flow, and debt risk; some expect a more selective repricing, while others, including Torsten Slok and Ray Dalio, think the signs look a lot like classic bubble conditions.
The numbers are easy enough to follow in public filings, earnings reports, and venture funding data.
Between October 27 and October 31, 2026, Anthropic tightened Claude’s rules around game development. The assistant now refuses prompts that ask it to remake, clone, or reproduce copyrighted games, even when a project changes character names or tries to present itself as “original.”
You can still use Claude for original games, genre-inspired projects, and work built with your own code, mechanics, art direction, and assets. What Anthropic is cracking down on are near one-to-one remakes. That comes as coding and reverse-engineering tools have cut the time needed for ports, browser builds, and decompilation from years to weeks. You can already see it in recreations of Halo: Combat Evolved, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Call of Duty: Black Ops, The Simpsons: Hit & Run, and in bbport, the Bloodborne Windows port effort.
That same copycat pressure is changing how studios handle demos. Digital Sun and Alliance Arts, among others, have started limiting demos or swapping them out for private sessions because they’re worried about copycats and extortion emails.
If you use Claude in development, keep this update on your radar. Debugging or troubleshooting requests can still get blocked. People who really want to get around safeguards can still do it, or just move to open-source tools. And Steam, along with the law, still doesn’t have any long-term answer for copycats or the ongoing disputes over AI authorship.
Claude is available through Anthropic’s web and app platforms.
Blade Runner 2099 lands on Prime Video on November 25. It tells a standalone eight-episode story set roughly 50 years after Blade Runner 2049. Showrunner Silka Luisa has already made one thing clear: this isn’t a direct continuation of Denis Villeneuve’s film, so you shouldn’t need to do homework first. If you haven’t seen either of the earlier movies, the series is still meant to work on its own.
Luisa says the show is set after an uprising, in a world where replicants now hold the power and humans have slipped into a second-class position. The revelation from Blade Runner 2049 about a child born from replicants is apparently not going to be the engine of this story.
The focus shifts elsewhere. Michelle Yeoh plays Olwen, an aging replicant Blade Runner who’s nearing the end of her life. Hunter Schafer plays Cora, a human passing as a replicant. The two end up in an uneasy partnership centered on the hunt for a rogue replicant. That setup leaves space for the franchise’s familiar ideas, identity, mortality, memory, and the old question of what being human actually means, while keeping K, Deckard, and Ana Stelline out of major roles, even if cameos haven’t been ruled out.
If you’ve wanted a way into Blade Runner without needing to start from the beginning, this looks like a pretty inviting one. It still pulls from the films and from Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, but it seems built to stand on its own. All eight episodes will be available to stream on Prime Video, and Ridley Scott is on board as an executive producer.
Microsoft has locked in the first Xbox Game Pass arrivals for November 2026: Gravhounds on Nov. 2, VOID/BREAKER Version 1.0 on Nov. 4, Football Manager 27 and Warhammer Survivors on Nov. 10, and Thronefall on Nov. 11.
It’s a pretty mixed first batch. Gravhounds brings co-op base-building, VOID/BREAKER goes the bullet-hell roguelite FPS route, Football Manager 27 fills the sports sim slot, Warhammer Survivors leans into survivor-style action, and Thronefall handles the kingdom-defense strategy side of things. day-one launches are still a big part of what Game Pass is selling.
And there may be more right behind them. Reports point to Pit of Goblin on Nov. 3, Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School on Nov. 5, plus a Football Manager 27 early-access preview starting Nov. 3. If that ends up being accurate, the first half of the month could reach at least seven additions.
If you use Xbox Game Pass regularly, this is a pretty solid way to open November, especially with Microsoft continuing to move away from Xbox One and cycle out October departures such as LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga and Grim Fandango Remastered.
You’ll be able to play these releases through Xbox Game Pass on Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Cloud.
