Technologies

Shipping delays could ruin your holidays

COVID, storms and a shortage of key materials have disrupted global supply chains.

The school year just started, Halloween is coming and Thanksgiving plans are still up in the air. We get it. Your hands are full.

Still, consider ordering your year-end gifts now if they’re an important part of your holidays. Gifts you buy online on Black Friday might not have enough time to arrive by Christmas a month later, let alone Hanukkah, which this year sees the first candle lit on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

Any product you order online could take longer than usual for delivery. Global shortages of microprocessors, magnets and plastic have slowed production to a crawl. When products are available, shipping has choked due to a combination of heightened demand, COVID-related port shutdowns and storm-created chaos. Seventy-three cargo ships await unloading at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach on Saturday, a record. Tennis balls, couches and even pickles have been affected.

The takeaway: It’s impossible to know whether a specific laptop, sound system or pair of jeans will be in stock ahead of the holidays.

«If there’s something you need or want, the risk of not having it in time for the holidays is likely,» said Mark Stanton, general manager of supply chain solutions at PowerFleet. He advises people to shop ahead of the holiday shopping season, if possible.

Holiday shopping rushes are nothing new, and the sales season has increasingly started earlier in the year. Black Friday, the day following Thanksgiving, now marks the generally accepted beginning of the shopping season. Sales online often start earlier.

Shopping for the holidays has driven roughly one fifth of annual retail sales in recent years, according to the National Retail Federation, which said US retail sales totaled more than $787 billion in November and December of 2020. Online spending accounted for more than 26% of that figure, the NRF said.

The shopping season is so well-anchored in our culture that it served as the backdrop of Jingle All The Way, a comedy featuring a panicked Arnold Schwarzenegger on the hunt for a toy his son wants. The movie debuted in 1996, the same year that Tickle Me Elmo, a toy based on the Sesame Street character, prompted fights among parents in Walmart aisles. Some desperate parents chased after delivery trucks to get their hands on the fuzzy, red monster toy, which bleats out electronic giggles.

A single toy hasn’t dominated holiday sales so fully in recent years. But an Elmo equivalent, if one emerges, will be harder to get than usual this time around. Additionally, it might be more expensive, because toy makers can recover the higher cost of shipping with full-price sales of high-demand toys near the holidays, according to e-commerce services company CommerceIQ. And the delays won’t be limited to toys. Anything computerized, magnetic or made of plastic — think electronics, appliances and home goods — could be hard to get.

Missing materials

Microchips power everything that runs software, including cars. The shortage in chips, triggered by a production lag early in the pandemic followed by surging demand, has meant manufacturers have struggled to produce enough computers, phones and tablets to fulfill orders, which soared during COVID lockdowns.

Since chips are in so many items, the shortage is weighing on products outside of home electronics. It’s been so bad that Ford had to temporarily shut down some manufacturing of its F-150, the best-selling vehicle in the US, as it looked for more chips.

Magnets, which are used in products ranging from toys to electronics, have also been in short supply. SDM Magnetics, a manufacturer, recently told customers that China has tightened regulation of the mining of rare earth minerals used in magnets. That’s prompted some middlemen to hold on to mineral supplies, leading to fewer and more expensive magnets for sale.

A chain of events sparked by early pandemic shutdowns has also created a shortage of one of modern society’s most common materials: plastic. That’s meant backlogs for cars and RVs, house siding and PVC piping, and disposable restaurant supplies such as plastic cups.

Bindiya Vakil, a supply chain expert, wrote in the Harvard Business Review that storms exacerbated the shortage by shutting down Texas and Louisiana oil producers that process the chemicals used in manufacturing plastic. The Gulf Coast storms started with Hurricane Laura in August 2020 and continued with an ice storm in early 2021.

Plastic makers still haven’t caught up to demand since those setbacks. That was among the issues that hobbled production and shipping of Rainbow High dolls, a toy that MGA Entertainment CEO Isaac Larian recently told The Washington Post might not make it into the US in time for Christmas.

Finally, due to outbreaks of the delta variant, the apparel industry has been hit by factory closures in Vietnam, where increasing amounts of clothing are made. On Thursday, Nike said the effects of the shutdowns will ripple into the New Year, when it expects to see shortages of its products.

Port closures and shipping container shortages

Shortages of components and material aren’t the only reason the ideal gift for your loved one might not make it to a US warehouse in time for you to receive it by December. Goods from overseas are put into shipping containers before being sent abroad. Then they’re unloaded and sent to warehouses around the country. That isn’t happening quickly right now.

The shipping slowdown is caused by both a glut of products moving through the system and a shortage of containers and equipment. With an influx of products coming out of ports, logistics companies aren’t always able to hire enough people to drive trucks and unload containers at their warehouses around the country, said Stanton, the supply chain expert. That slows the flow of empty containers back to ports in China and Vietnam and makes them even harder to get.

COVID-19 and storms have waylaid the industry too. If one port gets shut down due to weather or an outbreak, later points in the delivery system get thrown out of whack. In July, a typhoon struck an area of coastal China that’s home to several ports, causing shutdowns of air, rail and sea shipping. In August, the Meidong Container Terminal shut down its operations at the Ningbo Zhoushan port in response to a single positive COVID test. The decision effectively closed the world’s third-busiest port.

The highly contagious delta variant could bring further port closures in the future. In any case, the combination of disruptions has caused the cost of shipping to skyrocket, making it even harder for companies to import goods.

The system has also been plagued by random setbacks, as in July when the cargo ship Ever Given lodged itself into the Suez Canal, bringing a major shipping thoroughfare to a halt for nearly a week. Factory shutdowns in Vietnam mean that Nike expects shortages of its products in the New Year.

«It really is this ripple effect that goes down the supply chain,» said Jen Blackhurst, a professor of business analytics at the University of Iowa.

Alternatives to buying early

If you don’t want to spend the next three months tracking packages online, think about opting out of buying items shipped from overseas. Sure, you may have scoffed at alternatives to whatever the hot gift was in the past, but this is the year to reconsider.

If you have the time and skill, you can make homemade gifts or hand out vouchers for babysitting or yard work, if that’s something the recipient will appreciate. Buying tickets to events, museum memberships or restaurant gift cards are also easy options — and let your loved ones enjoy an outing.

You can also think about locally made products. Many small businesses sell items made by local artisans online, either through a web ordering platform or with Instagram and Facebook pages announcing new products, says Rachel Smith, the president of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.

«Those local businesses that have added or enhanced their e-commerce platforms have navigated the pandemic better» than those that didn’t, Smith said.

Dan Wallace-Brewster, a senior vice president of marketing at e-commerce services company Scalefast, says consumers are increasingly getting comfortable with buying secondhand goods online. Retailers and device makers often sell refurbished electronics on their websites, and the discounts they offer mean your budget can go a little further than it would on something new. Luxury brand resellers, such as the Real Real and the Vestiaire Collective, have also sprung up to offer big name brands at lower prices than retailers or manufacturers offer.

The products these companies sell are typically already in the US, meaning there’s little concern about the global supply chain. The quality of goods available on the sites along with growing consumer acceptance has reached «to the point where you might be willing to gift a secondhand product from the right market and not be ashamed of it,» Wallace-Brewster said.

If you’re still scrambling the night before your holiday gift exchange, there’s one more tried-and-true option: a gift certificate. It’s either that or tying a bow around a shipping confirmation for an ordered — but undelivered — gift.

Technologies

OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Health: A Dedicated Tab for Medical Inquiries

The company wants you to upload your medical records and connect the wellness apps you use.

ChatGPT is expanding its presence in the health care realm. OpenAI said Wednesday that its popular AI chatbot will begin rolling out ChatGPT Health, a new tab dedicated to addressing all your medical inquiries. The goal of this new tab is to centralize all your medical records and provide a private area for your wellness issues.

Looking for answers about a plethora of health issues is a top use for the chatbot. According to OpenAI, «hundreds of millions of people» sign in to ChatGPT every week to ask a variety of health and wellness questions. Additionally, ChatGPT Health (currently in beta testing) will encourage you to connect any wellness apps you also use, such as Apple Health and MyFitnessPal, resulting in a more connected experience with more information about you to draw from.

Online privacy, especially in the age of AI, is a significant concern, and this announcement raises a range of questions regarding how your personal health data will be used and the safeguards that will be implemented to keep sensitive information secure — especially with the proliferation of data breaches and data brokers.

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«The US doesn’t have a general-purpose privacy law, and HIPAA only protects data held by certain people like health care providers and insurance companies,» Andrew Crawford, senior counsel for privacy and data at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said in an emailed statement.

He continued: «The recent announcement by OpenAI introducing ChatGPT Health means that a number of companies not bound by HIPAA’s privacy protections will be collecting, sharing and using people’s health data. And since it’s up to each company to set the rules for how health data is collected, used, shared and stored, inadequate data protections and policies can put sensitive health information in real danger.»

OpenAI says the new tab will have a separate chat history and a memory feature that can keep your health chat history separate from the rest of your ChatGPT usage.

Further protections, such as encryption and multifactor authentication, will defend your data and keep it secure, the company says. Health conversations won’t be used to train the chatbot, according to the company.

Privacy issues aside, another concern is how people intend to use ChatGPT Health. OpenAI’s blog post states the service «is not intended for diagnosis or treatment.»

The slope is slippery here. In August 2025, a man was hospitalized after allegedly being advised by the AI chatbot to replace salt in his diet with sodium bromide. There are other examples of AI providing incorrect and potentially harmful advice to individuals, leading to hospitalization.

OpenAI’s announcement also doesn’t touch on mental health concerns, but a blog post from October 2025 says the company is working to strengthen its responses in sensitive conversations. Whether these mental health guardrails will be enough to keep people safe remains to be seen.

OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

If you’re interested in ChatGPT Health, you can join a waitlist, as the tab isn’t yet live.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

Technologies

I Tested the Honor Magic 8 Pro and Found a Huge Problem With the Camera

I discovered a catastrophic problem with this phone’s cameras and it needs to be fixed fast.

I’ve found a big problem with the Honor Magic 8 Pro’s camera that urgently needs addressing. I’ve taken hundreds of test photos in my weeks with the company’s latest flagship phone, and while plenty of them are perfectly decent, many of the images I’ve taken with the ultrawide lens display horrendous image processing issues around the edges that ruin them completely.

I discovered the issue when I first got the phone late last year, and while it’s had several significant software updates since then, the problems persist. So what’s gone wrong? It’s possible that I’m monumentally unlucky and happen to have been given a broken unit. If so, I fully expect the replacement models I’ll be testing to be free of any issues. Or, maybe it’s a more widespread problem and I’ll see the same issues cropping up again. I personally think it’s more likely to be an issue at the software level, and as such, it could be a simple fix for Honor to push out in the coming days and weeks.

I’ve spoken to Honor about this and, unsurprisingly, the company is keen to say that this isn’t widespread, stating «Our internal investigation confirmed that the issue was limited to an isolated hardware anomaly in that specific early development sample. It doesn’t reflect the hardware or software polish of the final retail units now launching in the European market.» And sure, my test unit was an early non-EU version, but it is also the phone that the company did send me to review. Receiving early prerelease samples is common in the industry and while small hiccups can sometimes be expected, I rarely find such significant problems as this.

Honor is sending additional retail units for further testing and I hope that I’m able to confirm that this isn’t an issue seen on all models. I was prepared to write a full review of this new flagship phone, but these camera issues are severe and raise more questions than answers. I will update this article with more information and my testing results as they become available.

Read more: Best Phone to Buy in 2026

Even if it is an isolated incident, it’s still disappointing to see such significant problems on a new phone, especially a flagship that costs £1,099 in the UK. Honor doesn’t officially sell its phones in the US, but for reference, that price converts to roughly $1,480.

The phone does have some positives. I like its processor performance and display, for example, which I’ll come on to later. But the camera issues I’ve seen mean I can’t recommend buying this phone until it’s clear whether they’re limited to my review device or if they’re issues common across all models.

Let’s take a closer look at what’s going on.

Honor Magic 8 Pro camera troubles

Taken with the camera’s standard zoom, the shot above is fine — there’s a decent amount of detail and the exposure is even overall.

But switch to the ultrawide mode and things go horribly wrong. There’s a vibrant purple fringe around the edge that’s full of image processing artifacts that ruin the shot.

It’s not a subtle problem; it’s a huge red flag that something is very wrong with this phone.

For reference, here’s the iPhone 16 Pro’s ultrawide shot. Notice the difference?

As you can see, it’s not an isolated incident. It seems to be more apparent when there are areas of shadow in the edges. It makes me suspect that the phone is seeing these dark patches and trying — and failing — to brighten them and add detail back into the scene. It’s not dissimilar to the early problems I found on Google’s Pixel 8 Pro, which also struggled with shadow detail, suggesting to me that this is a software fault, rather than a mechanical problem with my unit.

It also doesn’t seem to affect the ultrawide lens when recording video, which again suggests it’s not a hardware issue as I’d expect to see the same problems from the lens in any mode. The downside of that is that it could theoretically affect all models of the Honor Magic 8 Pro. However, the big upside is that software problems can be easily remedied with over-the-air updates.

To be honest, I don’t love the camera elsewhere, either. The image processing has gone overboard in this image, brightening the shadows and trying to rescue the highlights in the background excessively. It’s resulted in an over-processed image that looks unnatural.

The iPhone 16 Pro’s attempt has allowed those shadows to remain what they are — shadows — and I vastly prefer this version as a result.

I’ve also noticed that there can be significant color shifts when switching between the main and ultrawide lenses, which I would again prefer not to see on a camera phone of this price.

However, this could be attributed to the same software processing issues I’ve already discussed, so I’ll have to leave my verdict on the camera for when I’ve done more testing.

On the upside, this shot of the Tennents brewery in Glasgow looks good.

And I like the colors and tones in this sunset scene in Edinburgh. So it’s not all bad — it can take a decent photo sometimes. So what about the rest of the phone?

Honor Magic 8 Pro: Display, performance and battery life

I like the phone’s 6.71-inch display, which is bright and vibrant. It’s lovely for gaming, too, thanks to its max 120Hz refresh rate. It’s powered by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon Elite Gen 5 processor, which puts in some of the best scores we’ve ever seen on our benchmark tests for both processor performance and graphics processing.

It certainly feels nippy in everyday use. Games like Genshin Impact, unsurprisingly, played smoothly at max graphics settings. The phone runs on a 6,270-mAh battery, which, while sizable, only gave average results on our battery drain tests. Battery performance sits alongside phones like the Galaxy S25 or Google Pixel 10, but it’s a big step below the iPhone 17 Pro Max or OnePlus 15.

If it feels like I’m glossing over the rest of the phone somewhat, it’s because I am. With the issues I’ve seen so far, it’s possible that there may be other early teething troubles elsewhere, so I’m going to hold off giving any kind of definitive verdict on any part of the phone until I’ve tested more models and have a full appreciation of what the phone is really like to use.

Honor Magic 8 Pro: Should you buy it?

Right now, I absolutely don’t think you should. The issues I’ve seen with the camera are significant and badly need addressing. It could be that it’s a simple software fix that can be rolled out in the coming weeks, or it might be an isolated incident that affects me and me alone. I’ll be retesting on multiple devices and it could be that they’re absolutely fine.

But unless you’re desperate for a new phone today and you absolutely have to have an Honor phone, then I recommend waiting until we’ve got more clarity about how deep these problems lie.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Jan. 8 #676

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Jan. 8, No. 676.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle was almost impossible for me, because it’s all focused on a certain TV show that I have never watched and barely know anything about. (Its fourth season premieres today, if you want to check it out.) If you’re like me, you need hints and answers, so read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: That’s just reality (TV)

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Show with plenty of trickery.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

SIDE, HIDE, START, TART, FAITH, TENS, BANS, FATE, SILT, CAST, TRAIT

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

CASTLE, SHIELD, MISSION, FAITHFUL, BANISHMENT

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is THETRAITORS. To find it, start with the T that’s three letters down on the far-left row, and wind across and then down.

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