Technologies

Presidents Day Sales 2023: Best Early Deals, What to Expect and More

Presidents Day is on Feb. 20 and you’ll find some surprisingly good deals.

With Presidents Day just around the corner, sales are about to be taken up a notch. Expect all of the big retailers to launch major sales in the coming days and weeks leading up to Feb. 20, with huge discounts on everything from TVs and laptops to headphones, kitchen appliances, mattresses and furniture.

If you’ve been waiting for the right time to pull the trigger on a bigger purchase like a new fridge or bed, you’ll find some of the biggest savings of the year. We’ll be keeping this page updated with alloh da the best Presidents Day deals as they appear, so be sure to check back often.

Best Early Presidents Day deals

More early Presidents Day sales:

Wayfair: Big furniture sale offering up to 50% off
Dell: Big savings on laptops, PCs and accessories
Samsung: Save on Galaxy phones, laptops, TVs and more
Newegg: 22nd birthday sale
Visible: Free AirPods Pro 2 + $200 gift card with iPhone 14
Sleep Number: Up to 50% off beds, pillows, sheets and more
Helix: 20% off site-wide + free pillows with mattress purchase
Lowe’s: Limited-time Truck Load Event offering sales on appliances, tools and more
Overstock: Winter Refresh Event discounting 1,000s of items

What is Presidents Day?

Presidents Day is a US federal holiday. Also known as Washington’s Birthday in honor of George Washington, the holiday is now used to celebrate every person who has served as US president.

When is Presidents Day 2023?

Presidents Day is always the third Monday in February, meaning that Presidents Day 2023 takes place on Feb. 20. Expect Presidents Day sales to kick off sooner than that, though.

When do Presidents Day sales start?

Like most annual holidays, Presidents Day brings along a bunch of sales at popular retailers and these aren’t confined to a specific date. Most will kick off a week or two early, some as early as Feb. 1, and many will continue for a few days after Presidents Day itself.

Where will the best Presidents Day sales be?

Presidents Day sales are wide-ranging, covering everything from tech, TVs and smart home gear to home appliances, mattresses, furniture and more.

If previous years are anything to go by, expect huge sales at major retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, Lowe’s and Home Depot plus others like Dell, Staples, Wayfair, Newegg and more all getting in on the fun. Chances are, your preferred retailer will be running a sale at some point in February for Presidents Day, and we’ll keep this page updated with all of the best sales as they kick off. Mattress sales are a particularly big deal around Presidents Day, too, so expect sales from Casper, Purple, Tempur-Pedic and many more with Black Friday-level pricing.

Technologies

Microsoft Is Testing Letting Copilot AI Interact With Your Whole Desktop

The new feature for Microsoft’s Copilot AI will give it greater access to the contents of your screen.

Microsoft has confirmed an upcoming expansion to its Copilot AI chatbot’s screen-sharing abilities: Soon it will be able to process your entire desktop, not just certain parts of it.

The company said Tuesday that this expansion of Copilot’s Vision capabilities has begun public testing. This update, now rolling out to the company’s Windows Insider program testers, will allow the AI chatbot to view, process and react to all aspects of a user’s desktop, where beforehand it was limited to specific apps or windows.

With this update in place, Copilot should be to process and react to multiple windows and apps at the same time. Microsoft touted the ability for it to assist with all aspects of a project you might be working on.

The Vision feature can be activated by selecting the «glasses» icon and selecting which desktop you’d like to share, and can be closed out by hitting «Stop» or «X» in the composer.

«When you share your desktop (or any specific browser or app window), Copilot can see what you see and talk to you about it in real time,» Microsoft’s blog post said. «It can help analyze content, provide insights, and answer your questions, coaching you through it aloud. Get tips on making improvements to your creative project, help with improving your resume, or guidance while navigating a new game.»

Technologies

Smart Cameras Power a Robot Umpire at MLB All-Stars for the First Time. Here’s How the Challenges Went

The auto-umpire system has debuted and is on track for regular season use, but accuracy could be an issue.

If umpires draw your ire for bad calls, you may soon have a new target: Major League Baseball used its ABS, or Automated Ball-Strike System, to call pitches at the July 15 All-Star Game for the first time. If trials this season go well, it will probably be adopted for the 2026 regular season. But challenges against the camera had an unusually high rate of success.

The ABS uses Hawk-Eye cameras, a technology increasingly common in games with high-speed objects. The cameras judge how a ball travels — in this case, over the strike zone — and are equipped to make a preliminary call.

A human umpire, along with batters and pitchers, have a couple of seconds to review the footage and challenge a call if they think the automated system was wrong. It’s a system the MLB has experimented with since 2019 and is finally ready to bring to the national stage.

This approach has caused some controversy, particularly because the Hawk-Eye cameras are programmed to see the strike zone very differently from human umpires. Instead of the standard cube shape that’s underpinned strike zone knowledge for decades, the ABS uses a two-dimensional rectangle standard that’s automatically adjusted to extend between 53.5% and 27% of the batter’s height. Batters are measured before each game.

Those worried about discrepancies now have new fuel for their worries. In the July 15 game, which the National League won in a home run derby after nine innings ended with a tie, four out of five challenges to the ABS and umpire Dan Iassogna’s combined work were successful. That’s much higher than the ABS spring training test, where teams won only around 50% of their challenges.

The MLB hasn’t revealed definitive plans on whether the ABS could replace umpires altogether, but at this time the human-based, real-time reviews from the umpire appear to be an integral part of the system.

The league did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for July 17, #297

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for July 17, No. 297.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

My blue group hint for today’s Connections: Sports Edition is geared toward Saturday Night Live fans, but if you know your basketball, you should be fine. I think the green group is even easier than the yellow group, but that might depend on how much time you’ve spent on the water. Read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, making its debut on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 9. That’s a sign that the game has earned enough loyal players that The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by the Times, will continue to publish it. It doesn’t show up in the NYT Games app but now appears in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can continue to play it free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: WKRP.

Green group hint: Ahoy!

Blue group hint: The only prescription is more cowbell.

Purple group hint: Fancy fores.