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How to change your PlayStation Network username
Everything Everywhere All At Once is charming, sprawling, and completely ridiculous
Jabra’s noise-canceling Elite 85t earbuds are on sale for their best price yet

How to change your PlayStation Network username

Posted: 12 Mar 2022 12:05 PM PST

*The first change is always free* | Photography: Vjeran Pavic

It wasn't always easy to change your PlayStation Network (PSN) account name. Actually, it wasn't until April 2019 that Sony allowed account holders to do it at all. Now, each account is allowed to change its username once for free. Any changes after that come at a cost: $4.99 if you're a PlayStation Plus subscriber, or $9.99 for everyone else.

Whether you've outgrown your username or you simply want to change it, we're going to walk you through the process. However, there are a couple of warnings to run through first.

If you mostly play newer games (specifically, games released after April 1st, 2018), Sony says that you shouldn't encounter many, if any, issues with the username change since those games were developed to support this feature. But if you still enjoy games from earlier in the PS4 era, that's another story. Sony has created a list of games with known issues that you might encounter if you change your username.

Right before you change your name, Sony will prompt you with numerous ways that some of your precious game save data might be affected, whether it's stored locally or in the cloud:

Your previous Online ID may remain visible to you and other players in some areas
You may lose progress within games, including game saved data, leaderboard data, and progress toward Trophies
Parts of your game and applications may not function properly both online and offline
You may lose access to content (including paid-for content) that you may have acquired for your games, including content like add-ons and virtual currency

If you're still up for changing your username, here's how to do it:

Using a web browser

*Just navigate to your PSN Profile tab and click Edit Online ID*

Your first step is to sign in to your Sony account. Once you do that, you'll see your PSN account name (Sony calls it your "Online ID") as the top option in the window. Click "Edit" to change your username.

Before you can proceed, Sony will raise those warnings listed above. Hit "I Accept" if you want to keep going.

There are more warnings on the next step. Sony informs you that if you encounter issues, you can revert the change and reclaim your old username. However, it also warns that doing so may not fix problems should they arise. In other words, there's a chance that something will get messed up. If you're cool with the risk, move forward.

Using a PlayStation 4

*The Settings menu is on the far right of the home screen on PS4*

On your PS4's main dashboard, navigate to "Settings" and select it

*The Account Management tab in the Settings menu*

Scroll through the list until you find the "Account Management" option. Click on that, then select "Account Information" > "Profile" > "Online ID."
You'll see the same warnings that Sony displays to browser users before allowing a username change
After accepting these warnings, you can enter a new username

Using a PlayStation 5

The process of changing your username on the PlayStation 5 is similar to what you'd see on the PlayStation 4, with some small changes in regards to the menu layout and navigation.

On your PS5's main dashboard, navigate to "Settings" and select it
Select "Users and Accounts" > "Accounts" > "Profile"
You'll see the same warnings that Sony displays to browser users before allowing a username change
After accepting these warnings, you'll be asked to enter your existing PSN credentials before entering a new username

How do I get my old username back?

According to Sony, you can revert to an older username for free by contacting the PlayStation support team. They're available by phone on weekdays between the hours of 6AM and 6PM PT and by online chat on weekdays from 6AM to 10PM PT and on weekends from 7AM to 8PM PT.

As I mentioned earlier, remember that Sony doesn't guarantee that going back to your old username will fix any problems you might have encountered with the new username.

Update March 8th, 2022, 2:20PM ET: This article was originally published on August 15th, 2019, and has been updated to add a section about changing your username on a PS5.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is charming, sprawling, and completely ridiculous

Posted: 12 Mar 2022 11:42 AM PST

Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All At Once — A24

Martial arts meets surreal sci-fi

Perhaps the weirdest thing about Everything Everywhere All At Once, a film in which a notable plot point involves riffing on 2001: A Space Odyssey to explain an alternate reality where humans evolved hot dogs for fingers, is that it sometimes doesn't feel that weird. Directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, it lies at the intersection of a frenetic music video marathon, a slapstick martial arts comedy, and a surrealist sci-fi pastiche. But it's anchored in an earnest family drama that's elevated by a series of great performances, particularly from central star Michelle Yeoh.

There's a whole lot going on in Everything Everywhere, but the basic gist is straightforward. Evelyn Wang (Yeoh) is the harried owner of a failing laundromat and a messy, unsatisfying life. Her apparently milquetoast husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) has served her with divorce papers, her perpetually demanding father's (James Hong) health is failing, and her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) is frustrated by Evelyn's own snippy disapproval. A ruthless IRS worker named Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Jamie Lee Curtis) is auditing her for, among countless other dubious decisions, claiming a karaoke machine as a tax expense.

Then, as Evelyn is making a last-ditch attempt to save her business, Waymond's body is suddenly possessed by a counterpart from one of near-infinite alternate realities. He tells her she's the only person who can save the multiverse from a reality-destroying menace. And she still has to get her taxes done.

As alt-Waymond acknowledges, the multiverse's precise mechanics are complex and not always logical. "Verse-jumpers" can use earpieces to puppet the bodies of their alternate selves, and they can osmose skills from counterparts in other worlds by performing pivotal actions that set their lives on different paths. (For unexplained reasons, most of these tasks are painful or gross, like getting paper cuts or eating chapstick.) The process opens a slight psychic link between the counterparts, and for verse-jumpers who push themselves too far, comprehending this range of infinite possibilities can lead to a devastating existential crisis.

The setup offers Kwan and Scheinert a chance to pinball between a host of mini-narratives and a truly dizzying number of colorful costume changes, and it justifies a series of eccentric martial arts sequences that essentially work on dream logic. Everything Everywhere's fight scenes are more entertaining, more creative, and better-shot than those of many full-fledged action movies, including ones from the very cinematic franchises it's clearly drawing on. (They're far more fun than almost anything in the Marvel films made by the Russo brothers, who served as producers here.)

Yeoh's main self is a pitch-perfect confused everywoman who can suddenly pull off incredible acrobatic feats tempered by goofy physical comedy, while her other personas showcase her effortless charisma. Quan shifts fluidly between his hapless primary-universe self and his hyper-competent alter-ego, with both tone and body language flipping in split-second transitions. Even Curtis, introduced as a snide bureaucrat, gets a menacing turn in one of her many personas.

Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Michelle Yeoh, and James Hong in Everything Everywhere All At Once

Everything Everywhere is full of intricate connections and Chekhov's guns that cohere more on an aesthetic level than a narrative one. It's constantly looping back to build extended multiverse vignettes from minor details earlier in the film, including jokes that range from mild to fairly crass. (This is a good time to mention that Kwan and Scheinert also directed Swiss Army Man, a film that starred Daniel Radcliffe as a flatulent corpse.) A few of these callbacks feel extraneous, and based on a Q&A session following the film's SXSW premiere, that's after at least one subplot was left on the cutting room floor. But they help sell the film's humor by spinning cinematic references and throwaway gags — what if you put, like, everything on a bagel, man — into deadpan scenes delivered with visual flair.

The dramatic elements still don't always add up. Everything Everywhere's sci-fi sequences can be written like they're marking time between absurdities, peppered with expository dialogue that doesn't gel with the more compelling and naturalistic exchanges elsewhere. The script is full of monologues about life and humanity that sound good in isolation but are shuffled around as abruptly as the film's costumes, asserting character motivations that haven't been well-established before that moment.

Even so, the relationship between Evelyn, Joy, Waymond, and (unexpectedly) Deirdre builds up to something sweet that stays just a hair away from being cloying. Everything Everywhere's individual personas are largely archetypes, albeit archetypes that aren't often seen in mainstream sci-fi movies. But the film treats them as complementary facets of a single complicated person rather than a plethora of separate entities. There's no cheap ambiguity about whether any of the film's events are happening — the multiverse definitely exists, and it contains people whose fingers are definitely hot dogs — but its array of worlds have the vibe of fantasies that highlight aspects of the characters' core selves, making them more than gimmicks or weirdness for its own sake.

Stephanie Hsu in Everything Everywhere All At Once

This might be due less to the script than to the cast, who bring consistency to the most nonsensical scenarios. Quan gives Waymond a resilient vulnerability that comes through even when he's dragging Evelyn around the multiverse. While Hsu gets less screen time as her original-universe character, she balances being viciously nihilistic and hopelessly lost as one of Joy's alter egos. Deirdre is legitimately mean, but — like many real-world jerks — capable of kindness and affection.

And in a film evoking countless earlier movies about disaffected losers who discover they're secretly heroes, Yeoh offers a poignant and magnetic take on the trope. Her protagonist is disappointed in life but still a functioning, mature human being surrounded by people who are flawed but ultimately decent. Evelyn's plunge into the multiverse is foreshadowed by the way she navigates her multigenerational and multilingual family, her rapid-fire dialog switching between Mandarin, Cantonese, and English. One of Everything Everywhere's running jokes is that its protagonist is literally the least talented possible version of herself, but the gaps between Evelyn's selves never seem jarring — you can believe that a few decisions separate a beleaguered laundromat owner from a master chef or opera singer.

For all the bizarre stuff that's thrown into Everything Everywhere, Kwan and Scheinert's riskiest move is arguably picking a nearly 140-minute runtime for a comedy built around deliberate tonal whiplash, a potentially polarizing style of humor, and an exhausting pace. Everything Everywhere is a giant tangled yarn ball of a movie, and if it doesn't work for you, that feeling will last for a very, very long time. If it does work, though, it might be one of the most charmingly ridiculous movies you see this year.

Everything Everywhere All At Once debuts in theaters on March 25th

Jabra’s noise-canceling Elite 85t earbuds are on sale for their best price yet

Posted: 12 Mar 2022 11:00 AM PST

*Jabra's Elite 85t offer solid noise cancellation, excellent controls, and multipoint functionality for just $149.99.*

If you're on the market for a great pair of noise-canceling earbuds, it's hard to go wrong with Jabra's comfortable Elite 85t, which are on sale at Amazon right now with a pair of Qi-certified wireless charging pads for just $149.99 ($80 off). Although the Elite 85t are not Jabra's newest model, they still offer good noise cancellation, solid on-earbud controls, and the ability to pair with two devices simultaneously, a feature many true wireless earbuds still lack. They also come with a case that charges wirelessly or via USB-C, and they carry an IPX4 rating for water and sweat resistance. Read our review.

The 12.9-inch iPad Pro is a capable device, but it can't do it all. Luckily, there are accessories like Apple's well-made Magic Keyboard, which allows you to transform your 12.9-inch iPad Pro into something more akin to a traditional laptop. The latest model can accommodate the thicker, 2021 iPad Pro — as well as the third, fourth, and fifth-gen models — but, otherwise, the sturdy keyboard case shares the same design as the previous model, providing both an excellent trackpad and a backlit keyboard that's comfortable to type on.

Normally $349, Apple's Magic Keyboard for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro is on now sale in white at Amazon for $293, its best price to date. The retailer is also discounting the keyboard case in other configurations, including one that's compatible with the 11-inch iPad Pro, the 2020 iPad Air, and the forthcoming iPad Air with Apple's M1 chip. That model, while a far cry from its all-time low of $249, is on sale right now at Amazon for $288 instead of $299.99. Read our 2020 Magic Keyboard review

If you've been on the market for an app-connected smart lock, Amazon and Best Buy are both selling August's latest Wi-Fi Smart Lock for $198.59 instead of $229.99. While we've seen the fourth-gen model go for as low as $169.99 in the past, this is the lowest price either retailer has sold it for this year. The small, Alexa-enabled lock is compatible with most US deadbolt locks and is easier to set up and install than its predecessor. Plus, unlike the bigger last-gen model, it doesn't require an external bridge for connectivity — you just need to add the lock to your existing Wi-Fi network through the August smartphone app. Read our review.

If you don't need a lot of horsepower or storage when it comes to computing, Asus's Chromebook Detachable CM3 — our pick for the best detachable Chromebook — is on sale today for its best price to date. Right now, the convertible Chromebook is available at Best Buy with 64GB of storage and 4GB of RAM for $329.99, $40 off its typical list price. The CM3 is a 10.5-inch tablet that comes with a detachable keyboard, a garaged stylus, and a dual-folding kickstand, which allows you to fold the tablet so you can use it as a laptop or stand it up horizontally. The convertible Chromebook also boasts nearly 13 hours of battery life, though, note it only comes with a USB-C port and a 3.5mm audio jack, as far as ports go. Read our review.

Here are some other great deals happening this weekend

Newegg is currently selling a 32-inch, curved gaming monitor for $359.99 when you use the promo code GMDBQ8395 at checkout. That's a $60 discount on Gigabyte's QHD panel, which comes with a fast 165Hz refresh rate, a 1ms response time, two HDMI 2.0 ports, and support for AMD FreeSync.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, an excellent remaster of the last-gen Wii U title and one of the best games you can buy for the Nintendo Switch, is still on sale at Amazon and Best Buy in celebration of Mario Day. You can pick up the popular racing title for $39.99, its best price to date, through tomorrow, March 13th.
HyperX's ultra-comfortable Cloud II Wireless is discounted to just $129.99 ($20 off) at Amazon for a limited time. The USB-C gaming headset — which works with the PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and PC — may be missing an audio mix dial, but it still offers great voice quality and well-balanced sound. Read our review.

Magnificent News

Sunday, March 13, 2022