We’ve cut through the noise to find genuinely good early Black Friday 2025 discounts on Filter-recommended products across home, kitchen and beauty

• Big savings – or big regrets? How to shop smart this Black Friday

Like Christmas Day, Black Friday has long since ceased to be a mere “day”. Yuletide now seems to start roughly when Strictly does, and Black Friday kicked off around Halloween, judging by the landfill of exclamation-marked emails weighing down my inbox.

Black Friday is a devil worth dancing with if you want to save money on products you’ve had your eye on – and it can pay to start dancing now. Some of the Filter’s favourite items are already floating around at prices clearly designed to make them sell out fast. Other deals won’t land until the big day itself on 28 November, or even until the daftly named Cyber Monday (1 December).

Here’s how to spot a genuinely good laptop deal, plus the best discounts we’ve seen so far on everything from MacBooks to gaming laptops

• Do you really need to buy a new laptop?
• How to shop smart this Black Friday

Black Friday deals have started, and if you’ve been on the lookout for a good price on a new laptop, then this could be your lucky day. But with so many websites being shouty about their Black Friday offers, the best buys aren’t always easy to spot. So before you splash the cash, it might pay to do some research – and look closely at the specification.

I know this may not be welcome advice. After all, the thought of drawing up a spreadsheet of memory configurations and pricing history might put a slight dampener on the excitement that builds as Black Friday approaches. But buy the right laptop today and you can look forward to many years of joyful productivity. Pick a duff one, and every time you open the lid you’ll be cursing your past self’s impulsive nature. So don’t get caught out; be prepared with our useful tips – and a roundup of the Filter’s favourite laptop deals.

The story has sparked debates about cryogenics and fidelity. But it also tells us something deeper about our responses to loss

One of the last remaining fun things about the internet is getting to pass judgment on the goings-on in households that you would never hear about otherwise. On Reddit, for instance, there is a whole thriving sub for just this purpose called Am I the Asshole?, where people describe conflicts from their lives and ask strangers to adjudicate on them.

This week, a story on the BBC threw up a particularly juicy piece of other people’s business that has been sparking debates on Chinese social media. It starts in 2017, when Gui Junmin decided to cryogenically freeze his wife, Zhan Wenlian, after she died of lung cancer. She was the first Chinese person to undergo this procedure, which was paid for by a science research institute in Jinan, east China, that agreed with Gui to preserve his wife’s body for 30 years. Reports suggest Zhan herself consented to the process before she passed away.

Imogen West-Knights is a writer and journalist

We’ve rounded up the best early Black Friday TV deals, from 50in OLEDs and small smart TVs to big-name brands like Samsung and LG

• Do you really need to buy a new TV?
• How to shop smart this Black Friday

When it comes to buying a new TV during Black Friday, careful prep and a canny eye for detail are everything. Sometimes that big-screen bargain isn’t quite the steal you might think, and even if the price is right, niggling problems could sour long-term satisfaction.

And it may be that you don’t need a new TV at all – don’t let the Black Friday FOMO fool you. Read our guide to making the most out of the TV you already have .

X chatbot suggested gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau were ‘designed for disinfection’ not mass executions

• Europe live – latest updates

French public prosecutors are investigating allegations by government ministers and human rights groups that Grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, made statements denying the Holocaust.

The Paris public prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday night it was expanding an existing inquiry into Musk’s social media platform, X, to include the “Holocaust-denying comments”, which remained online for three days.

Investors cheer forecast-beating results from chipmaker, as attention turns to delayed US employment report

Tabletop gaming company Games Workshop has muscled its way to the top of the FTSE 100 share index, after predicting sales and profits will be higher over the last six months.

In a brief trading update, Games Workshop told the City:

The Board’s estimate of the results for the six months to 30 November 2025, at actual rates, is core revenue of not less than £310 million (2024/25: £269.4 million) and licensing revenue of not less than £16 million (2024/25: £30.1 million). The Group’s profit before tax (“PBT”) is estimated to be not less than £135 million (2024/25: £126.8 million).

Some may be nostalgic for a time when the landline made communication a family affair, before smartphones were an extension of each of us

When something becomes old and then new again during my lifetime, I might be forgiven for feeling at once quite aged and a little sentimental.

But suggestions that the landline telephone may be having a cultural renaissance just make me feel old and somewhat triggered by experiences of fraught teenage social negotiations over the long obsolete rotary dial phone of my youth.

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Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia columnist

Samantha Niblett highlighted government’s multi-billion-pound deals with Microsoft and ‘getting locked in’

Microsoft has “ripped off the NHS”, it was alleged in parliament on Wednesday, as MPs called on ministers to divert more of the government’s multi-billion-pound computing budget away from US technology firms and towards British companies.

The Seattle-based firm’s UK government contracts include a five-year deal with the NHS to provide productivity tools reportedly worth over £700m, while the wider government spent £1.9bn on Microsoft software licences in the 2024-25 financial year alone.

Company set to beat Wall Street expectations but analysts await projections for future demand for firm’s AI chips

All eyes are on Nvidia, the bellwether for the AI industry, as analysts and investors hope the chipmaker’s third-quarter earnings assuage concerns about whether the high-flying valuations of AI firms have peaked.

A great deal will ride on how confident Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang appears in his forward-looking guidance. Analysts and experts say that although they are largely confident Nvidia will beat Wall Street expectations, they’re anxiously awaiting news on the status of industry demand for the firm’s AI chips.