PCMag News, Tips, Tricks, Ideas

Much has been made about the risks of deepfakes, the AI-created images and videos that can pass for real. And most of the attention goes to the dangers that deepfakes pose regarding disinformation, particularly of the political variety. While that is true, the primary use of deepfakes is for porn and it is no less dangerous. 

Drowsy driving can have deadly results, so Tesla is rolling out a Driver Drowsiness Warning that will alert drivers if the car thinks they're dozing off.

With Twitter's blue checkmark no longer conveying as much authority as it used to, the service's Community Notes feature is perhaps the next best way to know if what you're reading in a tweet is legit. But where are these crowd-sourced posters getting their data?

A known vulnerability in the file-archiving tool WinRAR continues to proliferate because not enough users are installing the patch, according to Google. 

The number of Cisco devices hijacked through a newly discovered attack has risen to over 30,000, according to the latest findings from security researchers. 

If you're a streamer or creator, you may rely on a teleprompter to look directly at the camera while reading your script or chatroom. But you have to provide a screen, usually a smartphone or tablet, and find a good teleprompter app. Elgato's new $279.99 Prompter solves that problem by including a small USB-C display.

Square Enix is touring its highly anticipated RPG, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, to let the world sample what was demoed at Tokyo Game Show a few weeks ago. Its most recent stop brought it to New York City during New York Comic Con. Behind closed doors, Square Enix invited select media to give the upcoming action-RPG a spin. Our early impressions are incredibly promising, as Rebirth builds upon Final Fantasy VII Remake's excellent foundation by widening the game's scope and combat options. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is shaping up to be a monstrously large PlayStation 5 game, and one we can’t wait to play when it launches on February 29, 2024.

Devices are so ingrained in our everyday lives now that it makes perfect sense to want to jumpstart your kids’ tech skills at an early age. The only question is how to do it safely and in a way that encourages STEM learning while still being fun.

The FBI is warning about an extortion scheme involving hackers targeting plastic surgery offices to steal data on patients. 

Nvidia and Foxconn are teaming up to create a new class of data center focused entirely on artificial intelligence workloads.

China stands accused of stealing intellectual property and using artificial intelligence to hack and spy on other nations at an unprecedented scale.

You now have a new way to quantify your personal privacy dystopia: A “Creep-O-Meter” score from the Mozilla Foundation that puts a number on the state of digital privacy each year.

An internal document has revealed Amazon is going to pay over $1 billion for Microsoft 365 licenses.

In the future, new users to Twitter/X may have to fork over $1 per year to tweet. 

A critical flaw in Cisco’s software has paved the way for mass exploitation of the company’s network devices.

It's been a rough year for the smartphone market, as people held on to their pricey handsets, though things may be looking up for the fourth quarter thanks to the launch of the iPhone 15, according to data from Counterpoint Research.

Elon Musk bought Twitter in the hopes of making it more popular than ever, but traffic to the social media platform has instead decreased during his tenure.

A subset of taxpayers will be able to kick Intuit and its ilk to the curb and instead file their 2023 federal taxes online at no charge via a new Direct File option the Internal Revenue Service announced Tuesday.

Though this was the year "everything changed," Gartner Fellow Leigh McMullen was looking to the future at this week's Gartner Symposium, laying out the company's strategic predictions for 2024.

Boox took the wraps off its latest E Ink devices today, the Note Air3 C E-Ink and Tab Ultra C Pro E-Ink, and both feature improved hardware and a new SmartScribe feature.

Unsurprisingly, AI dominated Gartner's annual list of the top 10 strategic trends for the coming year. (Here's last year's list.) But I was interested in how Chris Howard, the firm's global chief of research, focused on how much is left to be done in AI and in other technologies.

WhatsApp is preparing to roll out passkey support to all Android users.

Israel is following Ukraine in tapping SpaceX’s Starlink to supply wartime communications.

The White House is tightening US rules that block AI chip sales to China in an attempt to close loopholes the country has been using to secure the technology.

Apple is preparing to release a new device we won't be able to buy, but new iPhone owners will certainly appreciate.

The Pixel 8 Pro is an excellent smartphone with an incredibly bright screen and an Always On Display (AOD) feature. Some users, however, are reporting issues with unexpected pink text.

Hollywood studios turning movies and TV shows into video games is nothing new. How better to attract eyeballs (and dollars) than to capitalize on the popularity of beloved characters?

Samsung and Batteries Plus have announced a new partnership wherein 35 Batteries Plus locations will become Samsung Authorized Service Centers. The two companies have been working together since 2018, though Batteries Plus has mostly acted as an independent service provider that handled out-of-warranty repairs.

The Apple Pencil is the latest product from Cupertino to get a USB-C makeover.

Chinese tech company Baidu just unveiled the latest version of its Ernie AI chatbot and claims it now rivals OpenAI's GPT-4. Previously, Baidu claimed Ernie had surpassed ChatGPT 3.5.

LinkedIn today announced layoffs that affect 668 employees.

Modern AI includes safeguards to prevent chatbots from generating dangerous text. For example, if you ask ChatGPT to construct a phishing email, it will politely decline. At least, that's what's supposed to happen. It turns out, it's rather easy to bypass restrictions and get AI to say whatever you want.

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has announced a new spacecraft that promises to help humanity build and maintain projects in outer space. 

Every year, consulting agency Brand Keys puts out its annual Customer Loyalty Leaders List, ranking the 100 top brands based on how loyal their respective customers are. It's an intriguing report, and also one that the company has been doing for the past 15 years. So to add some historical context to the story, experience management firm Qualtrics looked back at the top 25 companies in the Loyalty Leaders List for the last five years. The result is a unique view into how brand loyalty evolves over time.

The iPhone 15 Pro lineup has had a bit of a rocky rollout. After resolving an overheating issue with an iOS 17 update, Apple may have another headache on its hands: screen burn-in.

AI is the theme of the year, and it was certainly in evidence at Gartner's annual IT Symposium conference in Orlando, which started this morning with a keynote titled "We Shape AI, AI Shapes Us." In the keynote, Gartner analysts began by imploring the audience of CIOs and technology executives to focus on the profound shift in the relationship between humans and machines brought about by the emergence of AI.

The Windows 10-pocalypse is a short two years away. On Oct. 14, 2025, Microsoft will stop issuing security updates for Windows 10 PCs, at which point most of the world’s PCs—about one billion computers—will be running a dead operating system, like Windows XP. And most of those computers can't upgrade to Windows 11.

New York lawmakers are looking at requiring consumers to first go through a criminal history background check before they can buy certain 3D printers. 

SpaceX is hoping to kick off a satellite test for its Starlink cellular service later this year, but AT&T and a trade association are trying to block the effort. 

Your wireless carrier's internet speeds can make or break your experience with your mobile device. And while AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile all claim to have the best speeds, Ookla's Q3 2023 Speedtest Global Index study finds that one carrier clearly reigns supreme.

Encrypted messaging service Signal is debunking rumors that the app suffers from a serious vulnerability that opens users to attack.

Yet another wireless service jumped into the US market last month, but while the pricing on World Mobile’s lineup of travel eSIMs doesn’t stand out from the growing selection targeting new smartphones without traditional SIM card slots, the business model does.

Following the successful launch of the Analogue (Unofficial Game Boy) Pocket, the company is turning its attention to reimagining the Nintendo 64.

Logitech is taking advantage of artificial intelligence to offer two-way noise-free calls for the Zone Wireless 2 headset.

As fall brings its chilly breeze, the motivation to get outside for a run, cycle, or even a short walk begins to wane. Despite the changing weather, MyFitnessPal offers a solution with its all-in-one mobile fitness and nutrition tracker, turning the seasonal shift into an opportunity to thrive—whether indoors or out.

Intel’s 14th Generation Core desktop chips go on sale tomorrow, but don’t expect a major architectural change. 

It's now possible to purchase a Ferrari luxury sports car in the US without spending any cash.

We might not have to wait much longer for Apple’s new M3-based MacBook Pro.

Ubuntu has pulled its latest desktop release, 23.10, after discovering that its Ukrainian translations included hate speech.

Some artificial intelligence programs are marking images from the war in Israel and Palestine as fake, despite them being real photographs depicting real horrors taking place.

If you’re playing Counter-Strike 2 on a rig with AMD’s latest graphics driver you could accidentally get yourself banned from the game.

Much like previous updates, Apple’s iPhone 16 is expected to be faster and more efficient when it launches next year; however, some of that speed might be reserved exclusively for the high-end versions of the handset.

The next iPad mini won’t have as much of an issue with “jelly scrolling.”

Soon it might be even easier for you to swap between two active SIMs in your Android phone.

Years after Nintendo stopped producing it, and 15 months after its last sale, a single new Wii U unit was sold in the US in September, according to video game industry analyst Mat Piscatella.

The account-sharing crackdown that Netflix announced almost a year ago and started implementing in the spring has yet to scare most account borrowers into paying up. But it probably makes business sense anyway, according to a new survey from MoffettNathanson.

If you've polished off your Tesla Tequila and chugged your GigaBier, the automaker has a new alcoholic beverage to try out: Tesla CyberBeer.

A total solar eclipse is one of nature's grandest spectacles, and one that is worth going out of your way to see. Watching and photographing solar eclipses present some unique challenges, however, both logistically and practically. You must travel to the correct location to observe one in its full majesty, and because of the Sun's extreme brightness even when it is mostly concealed by the Moon, eye safety is a vital consideration.

The Vesuvius Challenge is an academic contest to see who can translate ancient Roman scrolls recovered from the lost cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii through the use of machine learning. Researchers have been itching to see what's inside the scrolls since their excavation in 1752, and we now have some answers.

Toyota has struck a deal with fellow Japanese company Idemitsu Kosan to mass produce ultra-high-range EVs with solid-state batteries.

If you’re a digital content creator, chances are you still sketch out ideas, layouts, or illustrations on paper—or perhaps you like to take physical notes. Pens and paper still have a place in the lives of some of the most digitally savvy and connected professionals. Some of those same folks, though, swear by a stylus and onscreen input. MSI dares to ask: Why not have both?

I don't know about you, but I feel like I need a cigarette after Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days. The two-day event was a whirlwind of bargains that we struggled mightily to sort through and summarize for you, dear reader. But now that we are out of Prime time, we're going back for round two. In our daily deep dive, we noticed that Amazon is offering some Prime Day-level price drops on a bunch of Apple hardware. Here's our picks you can't miss.

SpaceX has made a mysterious new regulatory filing for 29,888 satellites, possibly in an attempt to secure more radio spectrum to upgrade Starlink.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is backing out of an initiative to inspect public water systems for cybersecurity risks following legal challenges from three Republican-led states.

If you're a Google Cloud or Workspace customer experimenting with the company's generative AI tools, the company this week promised to protect you against any potential copyright claims.

The days of seeing shelves full of DVDs and Blu-ray discs at Best Buy are coming to an end. 

The Meta Quest 3 launched just a few days ago, so it's time for the teardowns. But while the folks at iFixit find the usual problems with VR repair, the most interesting Quest 3 reveal shows how much better the Quest Pro could have been.

A class-action lawsuit against Apple alleges that AirTags have been used to facilitate murder.

Following in Bing's footsteps, Google is rolling out an update to its Search Generative Experience (SGE) that will allow you to generate images. In a few examples posted on its blog, Google demonstrated the ability to generate images directly from search and in Google Images.

Technology always moves fast, but a new survey finds that some gadgets go from trend to trash faster than others.

More than a thousand Qualcomm employees are set to lose their jobs in California on or around Dec. 13 this year.

Microsoft is attempting to bolster sales of the Xbox Series S ahead of the holiday season by introducing a new Xbox Starter Bundle for $299.99.

The UK Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) has given Microsoft its consent to acquire Activision Blizzard following a restructuring of the deal and major concession made by Microsoft.

Your blog can take on a new social-media life of its own if you publish it on WordPress.com. This commercial version of the open-source web publishing platform WordPress now offers an ActivityPub option to turn a blog into a fediverse presence on Mastodon and other federated social networks operating on the open standard.

Valve’s Steam store was reportedly exploited to spread malware to a small number of users. 

Leasing a Tesla just got more appealing, as the company lowered the monthly payment on its two most popular models.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been using Dell’s Latitude 7440 Ultralight. This is Dell’s most recent lightweight executive portable and offers a number of enhancements over the company’s earlier designs, such as the Latitude 7420 I looked at early last year. This year’s model seems to run quieter and cooler, with a better display.

Kia took the wraps off three new EVs at its first annual EV Day in Korea, including the EV3 and EV4 concept cars and one production vehicle, the EV5.

Still remember Threads, Mark Zuckerberg’s competitor to Twitter? The app is finally getting an edit button for posts. But unlike Twitter/X, users won’t have to pay for it. 

Sony is set to launch the PS5 cloud streaming service for PlayStation Plus Premium members before the end of October.