As the official end of support draws nearer for Windows 10, there’s another option that can help ease the pain for Windows 10 users transitioning to Windows 11: Tiny11 Builder. Tiny11 has been out for a few years now; in fact, we last wrote about Tiny11 in 2023. It’s now received a substantial update, and the focus has slightly changed: Now, it’s an option for those who don’t want to deal with the bloat or the ad telemetry that Windows 11 brings. “After more than a year (for which I am so sorry) of no updates, Tiny11 Builder is now a much more complete and flexible solution — one script fits all,” ntdevlabs, the developer, wrote. “Also, it is a steppingstone for an even more fleshed-out solution.” Essentially, Tiny11 Builder takes a Windows 11 ISO, loads it, but chops out a ton of built-in Windows apps, the telemetry, and the “ads” to use specific Windows features. Yes, a Windows 10 user will be forced to transition to Windows 11. Tiny11 Builder’s mission, however, is to strip down Windows 11 to its essentials, even if that still means dealing with the new Windows 11 Start menu, the relatively static Taskbar, or other features. There’s another plus, though: Tiny 11 Builder removes the need for a Microsoft account. Tiny11 Builder can be downloaded from GitHub for free, from its developer, NTDEV, or netdevlabs. You’ll need to download the Windows 11 ISO from Microsoft, launch PowerShell, then follow the script instructions. It’s certainly not as easy as a one-click executable, but it doesn’t appear to be too difficult. You can use it on “any” Windows release, the developer says, and it will run on Windows on Arm, too. Since Tiny11 Builder slices off a few unneeded (to the developer, anyway) functions from Windows 11, it leaves what you’ll care about: the security updates, patches, and other features that will ensure that your PC is secure and up to date. What happens if the patch tries to force back Microsoft Edge, which Tiny11 removes? That shouldn’t happen, but the developer notes that there’s an “ongoing battle” between removing Outlook and Dev Home, which Windows apparently keeps trying to restore. Tiny11 removes a ton of Windows apps: Clipchamp News Weather Xbox GetHelp GetStarted Office Hub Solitaire PeopleApp PowerAutomate ToDo Alarms Mail and Calendar Feedback Hub Maps Sound Recorder Your Phone Media Player QuickAssist Internet Explorer Tablet PC Math Edge OneDrive The developer doesn’t seem to be quite finished, noting that it would like to implement better controls over which apps to delete and which to pare. Interestingly, while the developer’s announcement tweet lists Teams as one of the targeted apps to remove, the GitHub page’s list doesn’t mention it. (Tom’s Hardware noted the tweet as well as the update to the Tiny11 page.) The same page also lists a Tiny11CoreMaker option, but this is more of a development platform and should be ignored. As you’re probably aware, Windows 10 support expires on October 14, 2025. Users will either need to download and upgrade to Windows 11 before then, or risk running on an unsupported system. Otherwise, consumers can pay Microsoft $30 for a year’s worth of Windows 10 support patches. Alternatively, there are two free options: Turn on Windows Backup (which requires a Microsoft account) or redeem 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points instead. Otherwise, you’ll have to upgrade to Windows 11, where Tiny11’s latest update provides an alternative to a full copy of Windows 11. Read...

Earlier this summer, Instagram launched a new feature called Maps. The idea: You and other friends can share your location in real time, in what Meta calls a “new, lightweight way to connect.” (Having lived through the era of Foursquare and Yelp check-ins, I’m cynical about companies wanting people to share their locations for social purposes—it’s just a data treasure trove for monetization.) Maps is an optional feature—you have to choose to turn it on. You also can only share with friends (defined as “followers you follow back”), Close Friends, Only Selected Friends, or no one. But I nearly turned on location sharing through Maps by accident at launch, and it seems like I wasn’t the only one. A friend recently mentioned not knowing it was enabled. We both also have “friends” on Instagram that we don’t know very well.So, in theory, this new feature seems more private. In practice, you can accidentally end up sharing your real-time whereabouts with people you never intended to. Here’s how to check:  Open the Instagram app. Open your messages. At the top of the screen, you’ll see a globe icon called Map. If you’re not sharing, you should see a small red icon and the status message Not sharing. Don’t see these indicators? So long as location sharing for the app is off, you should still be locked down. I was saved from accidental sharing by Instagram’s lack of location sharing permissions—I had disabled those for the app previously. It slowed me down and made me realize what the app was actually asking for. I had initially assumed Instagram had asked who I’d be comfortable sharing my location info with for posts. Meta and a lack of privacy isn’t surprising, but it’s a good reminder to periodically check your settings in services and apps. You never know what new thing might be betraying your privacy. Read...

Sunseeker is following a new trend with its budget-priced model L3 robot lawn mower: It eliminates boundary wires by combining AI vision with LiDAR to autonomously map and navigate your yard, ditching the need for a GPS antenna. The budget-priced bot will be one of the least expensive smart devices of its kind when it launches in the U.S. for $999 in January 2026. On display now at the IFA trade show in Berlin, the Sunseeker L3 will be able to handle lawns up to 1,000 square meters (0.25 acres) can create up to two separate maps, which will make it useful for more than one location. It’s a tiny mower, with a cutting width of just 7.1 inches (18cm) and an adjustable cutting height of between 0.8 to 2.4 inches (20- to 60mm). That maximum cutting height seems short for American lawns. When I’ve had other robots set that low, it has revealed bare patches in my lawn after dry spells. Sunseeker compares the L3’s feature set and specs to those of the Dreame A1 Pro, a LiDAR-only mower popular in the Europe, but that is not yet offered in the U.S. Dreame’s mower sits a bit higher, with a cutting height of 1.2- to 2.8 inches (30 to 70mm), and it has a wider cutting radius of 8.7 inches (22cm). The Sunseeker L3 looks small, but mighty The Sunseeker L3 use cameras, LiDAR, and AI to identify and avoid obstacles in its path.Sunseeker I hope the L3 lives up to the hype. I was very impressed with the more-sophisticated Sunseeker Orion X7 when I reviewed it in September 2024; it’s one of the best mowers I’ve tested in terms of obstacle avoidance. That mower blends RTK (Real-Time Kinematic) and vision combined with machine learning to navigate your yard. Vision combined with LiDAR is a less expensive means of navigation, with two-dimensional vision providing a much better means of identifying obstacles to be avoided and LiDAR adding a three-dimensional element. Adding quick-learning artificial intelligence on top of that should endow this mower with outstanding navigation abilities. But the L3’s sensors and cameras don’t only look ahead at the grass to be cut, Sunseeker says its AllSense technology also looks down and uses AI and camera positioning to detect small obstacles that forward-looking mowers might miss. If the Orion X7 was that good without LiDAR, and the L3 employs an even better version of Sunseeker’s machine learning technology, I have high expectations for its performance. We’ll see if it can live up to that—and if I can tolerate its short cutting height—when we put a review sample through its paces unit next spring. This news story is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best robot lawn mowers. Read...

Solving stuff is our new project to try and solve our readers’ problems. In this story, we hear from a retirement village resident keen to get her street on Google Maps. Read...

ChatGPT is rapidly changing the world. The process is already happening, and it’s only going to accelerate as the technology improves, as more people gain access to it, and as more learn how to use it. What’s shocking is just how many tasks ChatGPT is already capable of managing for you. While the naysayers may still look down their noses at the potential of AI assistants, I’ve been using it to handle all kinds of menial tasks for me. Here are my favorite examples. Write your emails for you Dave Parrack / Foundry We’ve all been faced with the tricky task of writing an email—whether personal or professional—but not knowing quite how to word it. ChatGPT can do the heavy lifting for you, penning the (hopefully) perfect email based on whatever information you feed it. Let’s assume the email you need to write is of a professional nature, and wording it poorly could negatively affect your career. By directing ChatGPT to write the email with a particular structure, content, and tone of voice, you can give yourself a huge head start. A winning tip for this is to never accept ChatGPT’s first attempt. Always read through it and look for areas of improvement, then request tweaks to ensure you get the best possible email. You can (and should) also rewrite the email in your own voice. Learn more about how ChatGPT coached my colleague to write better emails. Generate itineraries and schedules Dave Parrack / Foundry If you’re going on a trip but you’re the type of person who hates planning trips, then you should utilize ChatGPT’s ability to generate trip itineraries. The results can be customized to the nth degree depending on how much detail and instruction you’re willing to provide. As someone who likes to get away at least once a year but also wants to make the most of every trip, leaning on ChatGPT for an itinerary is essential for me. I’ll provide the location and the kinds of things I want to see and do, then let it handle the rest. Instead of spending days researching everything myself, ChatGPT does 80 percent of it for me. As with all of these tasks, you don’t need to accept ChatGPT’s first effort. Use different prompts to force the AI chatbot to shape the itinerary closer to what you want. You’d be surprised at how many cool ideas you’ll encounter this way—simply nix the ones you don’t like. Break down difficult concepts Dave Parrack / Foundry One of the best tasks to assign to ChatGPT is the explanation of difficult concepts. Ask ChatGPT to explain any concept you can think of and it will deliver more often than not. You can tailor the level of explanation you need, and even have it include visual elements. Let’s say, for example, that a higher-up at work regularly lectures everyone about the importance of networking. But maybe they never go into detail about what they mean, just constantly pushing the why without explaining the what. Well, just ask ChatGPT to explain networking! Okay, most of us know what “networking” is and the concept isn’t very hard to grasp. But you can do this with anything. Ask ChatGPT to explain augmented reality, multi-threaded processing, blockchain, large language models, what have you. It will provide you with a clear and simple breakdown, maybe even with analogies and images. Break down big tasks into smaller tasks Dave Parrack / Foundry If you’ve spent even five minutes with ChatGPT, you know that it likes to break things down into sections and categories. Well, why not take advantage of that and utilize to your own benefit? ChatGPT can help you break down overwhelmingly large tasks into smaller tasks that feel more manageable. The AI will check that you’re both on the same page, then identify the major components of the task at hand and chunk it down to bite-sized pieces. You’ll end up with a set of small(er) tasks that you can then tackle in a step-by-step fashion—and once completed, you’ll see that you’ve achieved the monumental task you had in the first place. Analyze and make tough decisions Dave Parrack / Foundry We all face tough decisions every so often. The next time you find yourself wrestling with a particularly tough one—and you just can’t decide one way or the other—try asking ChatGPT for guidance and advice. It may sound strange to trust any kind of decision to artificial intelligence, let alone an important one that has you stumped, but doing so actually makes a lot of sense. While human judgment can be clouded by emotions, AI can set that aside and prioritize logic. It should go without saying: you don’t have to accept ChatGPT’s answers. Use the AI to weigh the pros and cons, to help you understand what’s most important to you, and to suggest a direction. Who knows? If you find yourself not liking the answer given, that in itself might clarify what you actually want—and the right answer for you. This is the kind of stuff ChatGPT can do to improve your life. Get weekly meal plans Dave Parrack / Foundry While artificial intelligence isn’t yet able to cook your food for you (though it’s only a matter of time), it can be used to plan out your meals. Just inform ChatGPT of any dietary requirements you may have, how much effort you’re willing to make, particular cuisine preferences, and your weekly budget. It’ll handle the rest. ChatGPT can tell you what to buy at the grocery store at the start of the week, then generate a meal plan with recipes that suit your needs and wants. You can guide it as much as you want, too, such as by asking it to increase your fiber and protein intake. Plan complex projects and strategies Dave Parrack / Foundry Most jobs come with some level of project planning and management. Even I, as a freelance writer, need to plan tasks to get projects completed on time. And that’s where ChatGPT can prove invaluable, breaking projects up into smaller, more manageable parts. ChatGPT needs to know the nature of the project, the end goal, any constraints you may have, and what you have done so far. With that information, it can then break the project up with a step-by-step plan, and break it down further into phases (if required). If ChatGPT doesn’t initially split your project up in a way that suits you, try again. Change up the prompts and make the AI chatbot tune in to exactly what you’re looking for. It takes a bit of back and forth, but it can shorten your planning time from hours to mere minutes. Craft personalized workout routines Dave Parrack / Foundry If you’re keen to get fitter and if you have specific areas of improvement in mind or specific ways you want to grow, you can ask ChatGPT to provide personal workout routines for you. Inform it of your current fitness level, the goals you’re looking to achieve, what equipment you have access to, any physical limitations you might have, and it’ll do the rest. For example, as someone who works from home, I asked ChatGPT to help me improve my posture and lose some weight. It duly created a daily 20-minute workout focused on those areas, but also provided some further tips to help me achieve my goals. Plan parties or events Dave Parrack / Foundry If you enjoy planning parties or events, skip down to the next section. For the rest of us who find party and event planning to be nothing but a chore, we can hand it off to ChatGPT. For this one, you need to be involved at the start (by defining the basic elements of your party or event) and the end (by actually inviting the guests, booking the entertainers, and organizing the catering). But for everything in between, ChatGPT can connect the dots. That includes breaking down the planning stages into categories, creating a list of tasks in order of importance, suggesting themes, menus, and decorations, and contingencies in case something goes wrong. Compile research notes Dave Parrack / Foundry If you need to research a given topic of interest, ChatGPT can save you the hassle of compiling that research. For example, ahead of a trip to Croatia, I wanted to know more about the Croatian War of Independence, so I asked ChatGPT to provide me with a brief summary of the conflict with bullet points to help me understand how it happened. After absorbing all that information, I asked ChatGPT to add a timeline of the major events, further helping me to understand how the conflict played out. ChatGPT then offered to provide me with battle maps and/or summaries, plus profiles of the main players. You can go even deeper with ChatGPT’s Deep Research feature, which is now available to free users, up to 5 Deep Research tasks per month. With Deep Research, ChatGPT conducts multi-step research to generate comprehensive reports (with citations!) based on large amounts of information across the internet. A Deep Research task can take up to 30 minutes to complete, but it’ll save you hours or even days. Organize rough notes into documents Dave Parrack / Foundry If you’re anything like me, you probably make notes about lots of different things—whether digitally (using one of the many note-taking apps out there) or on paper, whether about work or personal issues. If you have trouble organizing those rough notes, let ChatGPT handle it for you. The AI chatbot can turn them into documents. All you have to do is specify what style of document you want and ChatGPT will work its magic, grouping together related items, creating an outline, expanding your notes into fleshed-out sentences and paragraphs, then formatting it all into a document as requested. On the other hand, if you have a lot of documents and want a quicker way to digest all of that information or find the answers you need using simple prompts, then check out Google’s NotebookLLM app, which uses its own AI to manage your notes, research, and documents. Turn rough ideas into actionable plans Dave Parrack / Foundry ChatGPT isn’t just capable of turning notes into documents. It can also tough rough ideas into actionable plans. Let’s say you’ve been kicking around the idea of starting a business and you have concepts of a plan as to what that business will end up looking like. By letting ChatGPT in on your ideas, you can have it create a timeline and sketch out a path on how to turn that dream into a reality. It will work backwards from the end-goal business you have in mind, informing you of what you need to do in order to get there. This also applies to other unreached hopes you may have, from learning a new language to securing a promotion at work. Convert file types Dave Parrack / Foundry ChatGPT can take the hard work out of converting text or data from one file type to another. All you need to do is upload the file you want to convert (whether it’s PDF, DOCX, CSV, etc.) and ChatGPT will extract the text or data, reformat it so that it’s compatible with the new file type, and export it as whatever file type you requested. Converting files from one type to another is an interminably dull chore, so having ChatGPT do it for you is an absolute godsend. And ChatGPT doesn’t just cope well with single file conversions, but can manage batch conversions too. As with everything related to ChatGPT, though, I highly recommend checking for errors afterwards. Summarize web articles Dave Parrack / Foundry There are only so many hours in the day, yet so many new articles published on the web day in and day out. When you come across extra-long reads, it can be helpful to run them through ChatGPT for a quick summary. Then, if the summary is lacking in any way, you can go back and plow through the article proper. As an example, I ran one of my own PCWorld articles (where I compared Bluesky and Threads as alternatives to X) through ChatGPT, which provided a brief summary of my points and broke down the best X alternative based on my reasons given. Interestingly, it also pulled elements from other articles. (Hmph.) If you don’t want that, you can tell ChatGPT to limit its summary to the contents of the link. Summarize emails and meetings Dave Parrack / Foundry If you have a white collar job, you probably deal with email chains, group discussions, and online meetings. The more people are involved in these, the trickier it can be to keep track of what’s being said, and important takeaways can get lost in the noise. ChatGPT to the rescue. ChatGPT can quickly summarize email chains, group chat logs, and meeting transcripts. It only takes a minute to cut through the fluff and get key points on what actually mattered in the end. This is a great trick to use for any long-form content that’s heavy on text, especially transcripts for interviews, lectures, videos, and Zoom meetings. The only caveat is to never share private details with ChatGPT, like company-specific data that’s protected by NDAs and the like. Simplify legalese or policy documents Dave Parrack / Foundry Every now and then, life forces us to read through important documents before signing on a dotted line, whether to buy a house, get life insurance, rent a car, etc. The problem is, those documents are dripping with legalese—and if you’re like me, it’s hard to digest. Thankfully, ChatGPT can help out here, dumbing down those policy documents into everyday language that’s easy enough to understand without needing a law degree. Just feed it the policy documents you’re being asked to sign and let it work its magic. Check laws and regulations Dave Parrack / Foundry Understanding the various laws and/or rules that bind us can be tricky, especially since most of them are written in overly complex “legalese” that’s meant to avoid exploitable loopholes. Thankfully, ChatGPT is capable of not only checking rules and regulations, but also dumbing them down so that normies like me can understand them. Just ask ChatGPT to explain a specific law or the rules and regulations surrounding whatever subject you’re exploring. It’ll likely ask you to clarify a few things (e.g., the jurisdiction you’re referring to or the organization making the rules) before providing an answer that defers to the most authoritative sources (e.g., government sites). Create Q&A flashcards for learning Dave Parrack / Foundry Flashcards can be extremely useful for drilling a lot of information into your brain, such as when studying for an exam, onboarding in a new role, prepping for an interview, etc. And with ChatGPT, you no longer have to painstakingly create those flashcards yourself. All you have to do is tell the AI the details of what you’re studying. You can specify the format (such as Q&A or multiple choice), as well as various other elements. You can also choose to keep things broad or target specific sub-topics or concepts you want to focus on. You can even upload your own notes for ChatGPT to reference. You can also use Google’s NotebookLM app in a similar way. Create a learning or training schedule Dave Parrack / Foundry In a similar vein to the above, if you have a definitive idea in mind for a personal goal, ChatGPT can help you achieve it. Let’s use language learning as an example. Just inform ChatGPT what level of Spanish (or whatever other language) you can speak right now and how fluent you want to be in the future. It will then create a learning schedule to follow to get you to that level. The same goes if you’re seeking to, say, improve wellness and get in shape. Just tell ChatGPT what your current fitness level is and what level you want to end up at. It can then create a bespoke training schedule designed just for you and based on your specific needs. Provide interview practice Dave Parrack / Foundry Whether you’re a first-time jobseeker or have plenty of experience under your belt, it’s always a good idea to practice for your interviews when making career moves. Years ago, you might’ve had to ask a friend or family member to act as your mock interviewer. These days, ChatGPT can do it for you—and do it more effectively. Inform ChatGPT of the job title, industry, and level of position you’re interviewing for, what kind of interview it’ll be (e.g., screener, technical assessment, group/panel, one-on-one with CEO), and anything else you want it to take into consideration. ChatGPT will then conduct a mock interview with you, providing feedback along the way. When I tried this out myself, I was shocked by how capable ChatGPT can be at pretending to be a human in this context. And the feedback it provides for each answer you give is invaluable for knocking off your rough edges and improving your chances of success when you’re interviewed by a real hiring manager. Further reading: Usually creative ways to use ChatGPT Read...

ChatGPT is rapidly changing the world. The process is already happening, and it’s only going to accelerate as the technology improves, as more people gain access to it, and as more learn how to use it. What’s shocking is just how many tasks ChatGPT is already capable of managing for you. While the naysayers may still look down their noses at the potential of AI assistants, I’ve been using it to handle all kinds of menial tasks for me. Here are my favorite examples. Write your emails for you Dave Parrack / Foundry We’ve all been faced with the tricky task of writing an email—whether personal or professional—but not knowing quite how to word it. ChatGPT can do the heavy lifting for you, penning the (hopefully) perfect email based on whatever information you feed it. Let’s assume the email you need to write is of a professional nature, and wording it poorly could negatively affect your career. By directing ChatGPT to write the email with a particular structure, content, and tone of voice, you can give yourself a huge head start. A winning tip for this is to never accept ChatGPT’s first attempt. Always read through it and look for areas of improvement, then request tweaks to ensure you get the best possible email. You can (and should) also rewrite the email in your own voice. Learn more about how ChatGPT coached my colleague to write better emails. Generate itineraries and schedules Dave Parrack / Foundry If you’re going on a trip but you’re the type of person who hates planning trips, then you should utilize ChatGPT’s ability to generate trip itineraries. The results can be customized to the nth degree depending on how much detail and instruction you’re willing to provide. As someone who likes to get away at least once a year but also wants to make the most of every trip, leaning on ChatGPT for an itinerary is essential for me. I’ll provide the location and the kinds of things I want to see and do, then let it handle the rest. Instead of spending days researching everything myself, ChatGPT does 80 percent of it for me. As with all of these tasks, you don’t need to accept ChatGPT’s first effort. Use different prompts to force the AI chatbot to shape the itinerary closer to what you want. You’d be surprised at how many cool ideas you’ll encounter this way—simply nix the ones you don’t like. Break down difficult concepts Dave Parrack / Foundry One of the best tasks to assign to ChatGPT is the explanation of difficult concepts. Ask ChatGPT to explain any concept you can think of and it will deliver more often than not. You can tailor the level of explanation you need, and even have it include visual elements. Let’s say, for example, that a higher-up at work regularly lectures everyone about the importance of networking. But maybe they never go into detail about what they mean, just constantly pushing the why without explaining the what. Well, just ask ChatGPT to explain networking! Okay, most of us know what “networking” is and the concept isn’t very hard to grasp. But you can do this with anything. Ask ChatGPT to explain augmented reality, multi-threaded processing, blockchain, large language models, what have you. It will provide you with a clear and simple breakdown, maybe even with analogies and images. Analyze and make tough decisions Dave Parrack / Foundry We all face tough decisions every so often. The next time you find yourself wrestling with a particularly tough one—and you just can’t decide one way or the other—try asking ChatGPT for guidance and advice. It may sound strange to trust any kind of decision to artificial intelligence, let alone an important one that has you stumped, but doing so actually makes a lot of sense. While human judgment can be clouded by emotions, AI can set that aside and prioritize logic. It should go without saying: you don’t have to accept ChatGPT’s answers. Use the AI to weigh the pros and cons, to help you understand what’s most important to you, and to suggest a direction. Who knows? If you find yourself not liking the answer given, that in itself might clarify what you actually want—and the right answer for you. This is the kind of stuff ChatGPT can do to improve your life. Plan complex projects and strategies Dave Parrack / Foundry Most jobs come with some level of project planning and management. Even I, as a freelance writer, need to plan tasks to get projects completed on time. And that’s where ChatGPT can prove invaluable, breaking projects up into smaller, more manageable parts. ChatGPT needs to know the nature of the project, the end goal, any constraints you may have, and what you have done so far. With that information, it can then break the project up with a step-by-step plan, and break it down further into phases (if required). If ChatGPT doesn’t initially split your project up in a way that suits you, try again. Change up the prompts and make the AI chatbot tune in to exactly what you’re looking for. It takes a bit of back and forth, but it can shorten your planning time from hours to mere minutes. Compile research notes Dave Parrack / Foundry If you need to research a given topic of interest, ChatGPT can save you the hassle of compiling that research. For example, ahead of a trip to Croatia, I wanted to know more about the Croatian War of Independence, so I asked ChatGPT to provide me with a brief summary of the conflict with bullet points to help me understand how it happened. After absorbing all that information, I asked ChatGPT to add a timeline of the major events, further helping me to understand how the conflict played out. ChatGPT then offered to provide me with battle maps and/or summaries, plus profiles of the main players. You can go even deeper with ChatGPT’s Deep Research feature, which is now available to free users, up to 5 Deep Research tasks per month. With Deep Research, ChatGPT conducts multi-step research to generate comprehensive reports (with citations!) based on large amounts of information across the internet. A Deep Research task can take up to 30 minutes to complete, but it’ll save you hours or even days. Summarize articles, meetings, and more Dave Parrack / Foundry There are only so many hours in the day, yet so many new articles published on the web day in and day out. When you come across extra-long reads, it can be helpful to run them through ChatGPT for a quick summary. Then, if the summary is lacking in any way, you can go back and plow through the article proper. As an example, I ran one of my own PCWorld articles (where I compared Bluesky and Threads as alternatives to X) through ChatGPT, which provided a brief summary of my points and broke down the best X alternative based on my reasons given. Interestingly, it also pulled elements from other articles. (Hmph.) If you don’t want that, you can tell ChatGPT to limit its summary to the contents of the link. This is a great trick to use for other long-form, text-heavy content that you just don’t have the time to crunch through. Think transcripts for interviews, lectures, videos, and Zoom meetings. The only caveat is to never share private details with ChatGPT, like company-specific data that’s protected by NDAs and the like. Create Q&A flashcards for learning Dave Parrack / Foundry Flashcards can be extremely useful for drilling a lot of information into your brain, such as when studying for an exam, onboarding in a new role, prepping for an interview, etc. And with ChatGPT, you no longer have to painstakingly create those flashcards yourself. All you have to do is tell the AI the details of what you’re studying. You can specify the format (such as Q&A or multiple choice), as well as various other elements. You can also choose to keep things broad or target specific sub-topics or concepts you want to focus on. You can even upload your own notes for ChatGPT to reference. You can also use Google’s NotebookLM app in a similar way. Provide interview practice Dave Parrack / Foundry Whether you’re a first-time jobseeker or have plenty of experience under your belt, it’s always a good idea to practice for your interviews when making career moves. Years ago, you might’ve had to ask a friend or family member to act as your mock interviewer. These days, ChatGPT can do it for you—and do it more effectively. Inform ChatGPT of the job title, industry, and level of position you’re interviewing for, what kind of interview it’ll be (e.g., screener, technical assessment, group/panel, one-on-one with CEO), and anything else you want it to take into consideration. ChatGPT will then conduct a mock interview with you, providing feedback along the way. When I tried this out myself, I was shocked by how capable ChatGPT can be at pretending to be a human in this context. And the feedback it provides for each answer you give is invaluable for knocking off your rough edges and improving your chances of success when you’re interviewed by a real hiring manager. Further reading: 9 creative ways to use ChatGPT that you probably haven’t tried yet Read...

As the back-to-school season approaches in 2025, teachers aren’t just buying markers or restocking textbooks—they’re reinventing what it means to educate in a hybrid, high-tech learning space. With students clamoring for more engaging, interactive lessons and administrators seeking technologies that bridge physical and digital classrooms, smart boards are no longer optional but imperative. Among the growing list of interactive screens, HKMLC 55? Smart Board stands out—not for dazzling stunts, but for its capacity to deliver what today’s classrooms actually need: clarity, connectivity, collaboration, and affordability. Here’s how HKMLC smart board can be put to use in a variety of teaching scenarios for the 2025 school year. Plug In, Power Up, Teach Smarter One of the first things you’ll notice when you glance at the HKMLC Smart Board is how quickly it comes online. Designed for educators—whatever their status, IT professionals or not—the unit provides plug-and-play with a built-in Android 11 OS. No more fiddling around with projectors, external computers, and calibration processes. Mount the board, turn it on, and you’re ready to rock. The Android interface is smooth and responsive, allowing them to easily transition between applications, browsers, video, and digital whiteboard functionality. And with support for multi-window multitasking, teachers are able to use a lesson while they consult their lesson plan or student feedback simultaneously. A Visual and Interactive Upgrade The 4K UHD resolution of the HKMLC board is not merely a spec-sheet boast—quite literally, it makes a big difference in classroom legibility, even in larger or light-filled classrooms. Students are able to read fine text easily, observe complex diagrams, and interact with multimedia materials without eye strain or glare. But where the board truly excels is in its touch performance. Able to handle up to 10 touch points simultaneously, students can work together—complex issues, moving things around on the screen, or co-editing in real time. The board comes with two styluses providing smooth digital ink and palm rejection, resulting in a writing experience very much like the old whiteboards—without the mess. HKMLC Built for Hybrid Learning and Device Integration Back to school in 2025 is more likely than not a mix of in-person, remote, and hybrid teaching. HKMLC knows. The board includes Eshare Pro, allowing wire-free screen casting from as many as 9 devices, including laptops, tablets, and smartphones. When a teacher wants to display a student’s work or a student wants to display research, the process is fast and lag-free. We were also glad to find screen capture and recording features, which allow lessons to be saved, shared, or reviewed—ideal for absent students or flipped-classroom classrooms. Teachers can work within split-screen environments, comment on current web pages or YouTube videos, and even launch third-party education software from the Android desktop. Designed for Engagement, Not Just Display Not only does HKMLC Smart Board replicate traditional teaching behaviors online—it enhances them. Its interactive whiteboard feature comes with built-in templates like mind maps, grids, and diagrams, which enable instructors to organize material in a rush while it takes students along the way. Lesson material can be saved as image files or PDFs so students can view material outside of class, or instructors can keep digital records. Regardless of whether you’re creating a science diagram, a set of math problems, or a brainstorming list, it can be saved and shared in one tap. Practical Hardware, Future-Ready Build Physically, the board is modern, thin, and lightweight to be mounted or placed on a roll-around cart. It’s ideal for space-constrained classrooms or schools with several locations where they can utilize the same board. Ports are logically located, with multiple HDMI, USB, and LAN alternatives, and front facing for convenient use of USB stick input during instruction. Integrated speakers are adequate for most standard classrooms, and the general audio-visual setup supports a wide range of multimedia codecs. The build is heavy-duty and very durable—a requirement for school use where equipment must withstand intense usage. A Competitive Price Point for Tight Budgets Priced at around $1487 (on Amazon), the HKMLC Smart Board significantly undershoots many expensive alternatives without sacrificing critical functionality. For educational institutions wanting to meet performance with value, it is an attractive solution for classroom, training room, or small conference room equipment. While some smart boards are available with additional subscription-based software included in the package, HKMLC’s open Android platform gives schools the freedom to use their preferred software, avoiding long-term costs and vendor lock-in. HKMLC Clever, Accessible, and Ready for the Future of Education The HKMLC Smart Board is not trying to reinvent the wheel—but that is precisely why it wins. It’s focused on the things most important to educators: visual clarity, interactive input, hybrid compatibility, and simplicity. It’s the kind of board that steps back and lets teachers teach—and that is exactly what makes it so effective. As schools plan ahead for a new school year, expenditure on the right technology is no longer about catching up—it’s about empowering students, facilitating teachers, and making smarter classrooms. The HKMLC Smart Board earns a resounding A+ across the board. Read...

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At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Straightforward setup and mapping Delivered an even, thorough cut from the first mow Obstacle detection is promising (although it still needs work) Cons Somewhat underpowered for its size Rear-wheel drive only Underwhelming performance on slopes Our Verdict The Eufy Lawnbot E18 is a great robot lawn mower for smaller, flatter yards and for people who don’t want to spend a lot of time setting one up. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Eufy Lawnbot E18 Retailer Price Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices Research and development efforts aren’t cheap. Outsourcing is one of the ways manufacturers can more affordably expand their product offerings, and some smart home brands—including Anker’s Eufy smart home division—have taken this approach rather than developing their own products in-house. In this case, we’re talking about robot lawn mowers. The Eufy Lawnbot E-series robot lawn mowers that Anker debuted at CES last January are actually rebranded TerraMow models that have been available in Europe since mid-2024. Apart from battery size, the two Lawnbot E-series mowers are identical, with the model E15 capable of handling up to 0.2 acres, while the model E18 reviewed here is suitable for up to 0.3 acres. Specifications Both Lawnbot E-series mowers might seem small compared to much of the competition—suburban and rural American yards tend to be very large—but you don’t need to own an acre or more of turf to appreciate a robot lawn mower. The Eufy Lawnbot E18 will look familiar to European readers, as it’s based on the design of the TerraMow S2100 that came to market in that region in 2023.Ed Oswald/Foundry These are smallish, rear-wheel drive mowers, but don’t let their size fool you: Both machines are packed with smarts. The GPS navigation that so many other modern mowers use, however, is not one of their features. These mowers map your yard using computer vision alone. Moving from unboxing to mowing happened more quickly with the Eufy Lawnbot E18 than any other mower I’ve evaluated to date. The mower maps your yard completely on its own: you only direct it to the portions of the yard you want it to map and then draw pathways between these areas. I had the Lawnbot E18 up and running in my yard in less than 30 minutes. While it’s exciting to see a mower that doesn’t depend on GPS satellites or require a complex installation involving antennas on tripods and the like, I certainly had my doubts about a mower that relies solely on vision, but those have largely dispersed—at least regarding Eufy’s (and TerraMow’s) bots. Setup The Lawnbot E18 will memorize the location of its garage base station and use the pattern printed on its inside back wall for precise docking.  Ed Oswald/Foundry The initial setup of the Eufy Lawnbot E18 involves finding a suitable location for the mower’s base station, plugging it in, and then turning your attention to the mower itself. While the mower comes with enough charge to complete setup, we charged it to 100 percent, which took less than half an hour (Eufy says a drained battery should reach a full charge within 90 to 110 minutes). After that, you can start mapping from within the app. Place the E18 anywhere within a grassy area (the app will guide you) and allow it to calibrate. The mower will spin in a circle, utilizing its cameras to determine its location in the world. Watching a robot doing donuts in your yard will seem odd, but that’s how this mower determines its precise location without the assistance of GPS. Once that orientation process is successful, the mower will proceed to map the entire area of grass. I have a complex yard, so I set the Lawnbot E18 free on the easiest patches of grass first. It handled these spectacularly, needing less than 10 minutes to map the 400 square feet. The mower struggled in the sloped portions of my yard, however, often attempting to map areas that were too steep for it to navigate. This required me to set no-go zones and boundaries within the app to prevent it from getting stuck. All-wheel drive would have helped with this, but the E-series mowers only drive their rear wheels. The Eufy Lawnbot E18’s smaller size allows it to more easily navigate narrow pathways in your yard compared to most robot lawn mowers.Ed Oswald/Foundry The mower also insisted on returning to its base station after each zone was mapped, which I found frustrating. When it came to mowing areas far from the base station, this added a considerable amount of time to the mapping process. This behavior might be necessitated by the Lawnbot E18’s reliance on computer vision for navigation. Apart from that, the Lawnbot E18 was surprisingly smooth at mapping, even in areas with view obstructions or obstacles. You won’t spend much time setting up a more basic yard; indeed, moving from unboxing to mowing happened more quickly with the Lawnbot E18 than any other mower I’ve evaluated to date. Performance The Lawnbot E18 is underpowered compared to most of the rear-wheel drive mowers I’ve tested in this price range, and it can climb slopes of only 18 degrees or less. If you have anything more than gradual rises in your yard, you will likely run into trouble with this mower. While the Lawnbot E18 is smaller than most robot lawn mowers I’ve reviewed, its size—and the fact that its cutting blades are quite close to the edge of its deck—gives it at least one important advantage: Bulkier mowers can have difficulty maneuvering around obstacles, leaving unsightly strips of uncut grass behind. Slopes are not the Lawnbot E18’s forté, as its limited to climbing 18-degree grades.Ed Oswald/Foundry That said, the E18’s small cutting radius—8 inches—results in longer mowing times than many other robot mowers. But I’m OK with that, provided the mower does its job. And for the most part, the Lawnbot E18 does its job. While its vision navigation isn’t perfect, the mower performed well overall, and the maps it created became increasingly more precise with each run. This meant the E18 left fewer untouched patches of grass after a few mowing sessions. Another surprise came when I packed the mower away and then re-installed it later for a photoshoot. I put its base station in approximately the same location, but I assumed the mower would need to create an entirely new map; instead, it recognized the yard and adjusted itself accordingly. Some of the most significant navigation issues I experienced were sun blindness and incorrectly identifying tall grass and weeds as obstructions. You can change the direction of its cut by zone; however, there is no option for alternating the direction it mows to prevent its wheels from leaving tracks in your lawn. Segway’s E3-series mowers have this feature, and it’s great. The Lawnbot E18 can’t operate in the dark, either, even though it’s equipped with an LED light that can be turned on while it’s in remote control mode. This means you won’t be able to mow your lawns at night, as you can with some competing mowers. The Eufy app From left to right: the Eufy Lawnbot E18’s in-app scheduling function, live view, and primary screen.Ed Oswald/Foundry Some of the problems I encountered with the Lawnbot E18 can probably be chalked up to software/firmware issues. Until June, the base station had to be placed within a mow zone, or the bot wouldn’t be able to find it. And you could only set the mow direction for your entire yard rather than by zone. Also, an errant firmware update in early June temporarily prevented some Eufy mowers from operating at all. These problems reminded me of what I dealt with during my Mammotion Yuka 1500 review last year. In both cases, things improved over time. Eufy’s Lawnbot app is now much more stable than when I first tested the E18 in May. It also got better at detecting transitions between grass and sidewalk. Walkway stones, on the other hand, continuously tripped up the mower, as it would treat them as a solid sidewalk. If you own other Eufy smart home devices—whether it be security cameras, video doorbells, smart lighting, vacuums, or mops—you’ll use the same app to control the Lawnbot. It will appear under the Clean tab. The app is generally easy to use, although a bug would sometimes cause the mower to occasionally disappear from the app’s Home page. The app’s live-view feature is generally useful, provided you have good Wi-Fi coverage in your yard, but it does take some getting used to. The mower’s movements are somewhat jerky, so it can appear as though the machine is lurching in unexpected directions when it really isn’t. I didn’t thoroughly test the app’s remote-control function, however, as my Wi-Fi router doesn’t blanket my yard with coverage. Should you buy the Eufy Lawnbot E18? That the Eufy Lawnbot E18 is a rebranded TerraMow product doesn’t lessen its appeal—at least for homeowners with smaller lawns. Its reliance on visual navigation is novel, but that feature gets you as close to plug-and-play as you’ll get with a robot lawn mower. It’s a great option for folks who feel overwhelmed by modern technology. And if you own other Eufy smart home products, you won’t even need to download another app. If you have a larger or more complex yard, the Sunseeker Orion X7 AWD will probably be more suitable. Or if you don’t want to wait for a mower to learn the shape of your yard, you might consider the Mowrator S1 4WD, which you control with a gaming console-like remote instead of relying on the mower to navigate. This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best robot lawn mowers. Read...