Okay, is someone messing with me? This is the second day in a row I’ve spotted a company putting weird crap into their newest monitor designs. Yesterday it was Lenovo, who put an AI NPU into a monitor. But at least that one matches up with current tech trends. Now I’m seeing that Asus has stuck an air purifier into a PC display. What? According to the press release, the VU Air Ionizer series of monitors comes in 24-, 27-, and 34-inch sizes, all of which include an air ionizer in the back. Maybe I should let Asus do the talking here, since I’m way out of my depth when it comes to copy that reads like it was lifted from Sharper Image… but I digress. The screens themselves are pretty basic, with IPS panels, 100Hz refresh rates, and standard 1080p resolution on the smaller models. The 34-inch VU34WCIP-W has a slight curve and a USB-C connection. More detailed specs weren’t provided, but in keeping with the general feel-good vibe, the monitors’ retail packaging can be re-folded into cardboard phone and laptop stands, a file holder, and a desk organizer box. A box that can be repurposed as a box. Will wonders never cease?Asus Incongruous combinations seem to be a trend with Asus, who recently released a mouse that doubles as an air freshener. And unlike Lenovo’s weird motorized AI monitor, these screens appear to be headed for sale, though the press release doesn’t mention a release date or price. Alright, I’ll be generous and consider how this might make sense. I suppose if you live in a small apartment and you want an ionizer, but you can’t spare even a cubic foot or two for it, then integrating it into your desk setup might appeal. Just don’t expect an OLED panel or a super-fast gaming refresh rate at the same time — after all, convergence devices always come with compromises. (I think I’d prefer one of these OLED monitors with a fancy Wi-Fi antenna.) Let’s go for a three-peat. Tomorrow I want to write about an Acer monitor that doubles as carbon monoxide detector. Fingers crossed. Read...

Intel has appointed George Chacko as General Manager for Sales, Marketing, and Communications in the SEANZ region, based in Singapore. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Stunning display Beautiful, shiny design Great Lunar Lake performance Cons Low battery life thanks to the display Webcam is annoying while using it No headphone jack Fingerprint reader is in an odd spot Very glossy and reflective Our Verdict The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14 is a sleek laptop with a unique aesthetic and an incredible display. But it makes some sacrifices to get there. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14 is a visually stunning laptop. That goes for both the both the stunning OLED display as well as the shiny glass lid that produces lots of interesting reflections. It’s also just a great productivity laptop thanks to the excellent use of an Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) processor, also known as Intel Lunar Lake. But everything in life is a compromise. That beautiful display seems to drain this laptop’s battery life faster than normal, and the beautiful design is just so glossy and reflective. And there are some other strange decisions here, like the lack of a headphone jack and an oddly placed fingerprint reader, which will bug some folks. Still, it’s a great machine – and it may be a dream machine for some people, especially if you’re looking for a beautiful and lightweight machine with a design that stands out. Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14: Specs The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14 (Gen 10) is a lightweight ultraportable laptop with an Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) CPU. Intel’s Lunar Lake hardware offers long battery life with solid performance for normal desktop productivity application — so web browsers, office apps, workplace chat tools, and all that good stuff. It doesn’t have high multithreaded performance, but that’s not what a lightweight ultraportable is all about, anyway. Lenovo combines that Intel Core Ultra 7 CPU with 32 GB of RAM and a 1 TB of solid-state storage, so they’re not cutting corners. The machine we reviewed retails for $1,899, but Lenovo also offers a version with 16GB of RAM and a slightly slower Intel Core Ultra 7 256V CPU for $1,759. CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 258V Memory: 32GB LPDDR5x RAM Graphics/GPU: Intel Arc 140V (16GB) NPU: Intel AI Boost (47 TOPS) Display: 3840×2400 OLED with touchscreen, 120Hz refresh rate, and HDR Storage: 1 TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD Webcam: 32MP camera Connectivity: 2x Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C) Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.3 Biometrics: Fingerprint reader for Windows Hello Battery capacity: 75 Watt-hours Dimensions: 12.32 x 8.01 x 0.57 inches Weight: 2.76 pounds MSRP: $1,899 as tested If you’re looking for an ultraportable with a beautiful display, one that also has a beautiful design, this is a compelling machine! Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14: Design and build quality IDG / Chris Hoffman This machine is all about good looks. It’s available in a “Tidal Teal” colorway, which looks beautiful. It’s all about the reflections: The lid is covered in impact-resistant glass, and it has a very cool looking effect that looks great when it reflects light. Lenovo describes it as a “3D swirling at-eye effect” that “makes your style pop from every angle, reflecting light beautifully.” It’s shiny. It looks great if reflections are what you’re looking for! If you don’t want your laptop to draw eyes with its impressive looking reflections, then it’s perhaps not the right machine for you. The larger issue with the reflections is just how glossy the display is, which is an issue in direct sunlight. This isn’t just an issue with this machine though, it’s an issue with laptops with glossy screens, especially machines with OLED displays. Also, that glass lid smudges easily. You’ll be wiping it to keep its crisp good looks intact. The build quality is good! Aside from the glass on the cover, this machine is made of aluminum. At 2.76 pounds, it’s a nice light weight, but not the absolute lightest PC. The hinge is easy to open with one hand and feels good. While this is branded a Yoga machine, this is not a 2-in-1 that can open to 360 degrees. Lenovo has decided to use the Yoga name, once meant for laptops that could bend into interesting shapes, for laptops in general. I continue to be absolutely baffled by this change in the Yoga branding. It’s not a problem, but be aware: This is a traditional laptop and not a 2-in-1. In fact, it can only open to about 135 degrees, it can’t even lie flat like many other laptops can. For a laptop that bears the Yoga name, this is pretty silly. There’s also more bloatware than I’d like to see — preinstalled McAfee antivirus and notification ads through Lenovo Vantage for services like Amazon Music. It’s fine and you can get rid of it easily enough. It’s common and more understandable on budget focused laptops, but it feels a little obnoxious on an almost $2,000 premium machine focused on beautiful design. Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14: Keyboard and trackpad IDG / Chris Hoffman The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i has a fine keyboard. It’s responsive enough, not as snappy and crisp as a ThinkPad keyboard or a good mechanical keyboard, but not mushy. It’s the kind of keyboard you find on a good lightweight laptop. You wonder if it feels a little shallow, but then you realize of course it does, they’re trying to make the laptop as thin as possible, so there’s less room for key travel. I do have a major bone to pick with the keyboard. The fingerprint reader is placed smack dab at the bottom right corner of the keyboard, and then the arrow keys are to the left of it. I found myself pressing the wrong arrow key when I moved my finger down there. I’d prefer to have the right arrow key at the left edge of the keyboard. The trackpad feels fine, too–it’s nice and smooth, and the click action is crisp and not mushy. That said, it’s a little on the small side, which makes clicking a little annoying at times since there’s less room to click down. This problem would’ve been remedied had Lenovo used a haptic trackpad. PC manufacturers should choose haptic trackpads more frequently, at least on lightweight ultraportables! The odd fingerprint reader location and slightly small trackpad are artifacts of the same problem: Lenovo has aimed to streamline this machine, cutting down the bezels, shrinking it, and focusing on beauty. There’s not a lot of room for a larger trackpad or to put the buttons elsewhere. For many people, a larger laptop that’s a little less streamlined and a little bulkier will just be more ergonomic, as it gives the keyboard and trackpad some room to breathe. Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14: Display and speakers IDG / Chris Hoffman The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i’s display is just beautiful. This is a 3840×2400 OLED display. It’s incredibly bright and vivid with a high resolution. It also has a good refresh rate at 120Hz — some OLED displays deliver only 60Hz. With 750 nits of peak brightness, it can also deliver a great HDR experience. If you’re looking for an ultraportable with a beautiful display, one that also has a beautiful design, this is a compelling machine! It’s a touch screen, too. The quad speakers with Dolby Atmos are reasonable. They have a lot of volume, way more than I need! That’s not always true on a laptop. The audio feels crisp and clear. However, as always on a laptop like this one, the built in speakers don’t produce a lot of bass. Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14: Webcam, microphone, biometrics IDG / Chris Hoffman The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i has an under display webcam, which helps Lenovo shrink the bezel as much as possible. The screen looks normal while you’re not using the webcam. Activate the webcam and a black circle will appear in the middle of the top area of the screen — annoyingly enough, right where you web browser’s tab bar would be. If you want a small bezel and don’t use your laptop’s webcam much, it’ll be a nice upgrade. If you frequently use your laptop’s webcam, this may be rather annoying compared to a traditional webcam that’s not located on your display. The webcam itself is a 32MP camera. While I’ve seen some complaints online, I’d say the webcam is usable, as I’ve seen much worse. It seems like the under display approach is making the image quality worse, though. To be frank, I would avoid this laptop if you frequently participate in video meetings. It’s really annoying having a black circle obstruct part of your screen while the webcam is in use. There’s also a physical camera shutter switch on the right side of the laptop, which is always nice to see. The microphone sounds fine — not unusually good and not unusually bad. It’ll be serviceable for online meetings, but I’ve heard better microphone quality on business laptops designed for this sort of thing. As far as biometrics, this machine has a fingerprint reader on the bottom-right corner of the keyboard for Windows Hello. It worked well, although I wish the right arrow key was down in that corner. This machine doesn’t have an IR camera for facial recognition with Windows Hello. That’s no surprise given the under display webcam situation. It is a shame, though — facial recognition is a convenient way to unlock your PC. Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14: Connectivity IDG / Chris Hoffman The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i follows the “What are the fewest ports we can include?” school of design. There’s one Thunderbolt 4 port on the left side and one Thunderbolt 4 port on the right side — a total of two places to plug in a USB Type-C cable. That’s it! And you’ll use one of them to charge the laptop. The lack of a headphone jack will be an immediate blocker to many people, although you can of course use wireless Bluetooth headphones or connect USB Type-C headphones. There’s also no microSD slot or anything else. Given that, only having two USB Type-C ports feels really skimpy. It’s another way this laptop is more design focused — it feels like Lenovo has set out to streamline the laptop as much as possible and made the compromises necessary to do so. Some people will like it, but many people will want something a little bulkier that’s more flexible. Thanks to Intel Lunar Lake, this machine does have Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3 support. It’s good to see Wi-Fi 7 becoming standard. Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14: Performance We’ve talked a lot about design, but let’s talk about the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i’s performance. The laptop performed well in the day-to-day desktop productivity tasks you’d use a lightweight portable machine like this one for. It runs nice and quiet in daily use, too. Of course, we ran the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14 through our standard benchmarks to measure its performance. IDG / Chris Hoffman First, we run PCMark 10 to get an idea of overall system performance. With an overall PCMark 10 score of 7,588, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i delivered excellent performance despite its thin-and-light nature. This machine feels like it’s squeezing every bit of performance out of Lunar Lake between its cooling system, RAM, and speedy storage. IDG / Chris Hoffman Next, we run Cinebench R20. This is a heavily multithreaded benchmark that focuses on overall CPU performance. It’s a quick benchmark, so cooling under extended workloads isn’t a factor. But, since it’s heavily multithreaded, CPUs with more cores have a huge advantage. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i delivered a multithreaded score of 4,350 in Cinebench R20. Intel’s Lunar Lake can’t deliver high multi-core performance and we see that here. That doesn’t matter for most people’s basic desktop usage, but it’s an issue if you have workloads that need serious multithreaded CPU performance. IDG / Chris Hoffman We also run an encode with Handbrake. This is another heavily multithreaded benchmark but it runs over an extended period. This demands the laptop’s cooling kick in and many laptops will throttle and slow down under load. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i completed the encode process in 1,249 seconds — that’s nearly 21 minutes. It’s a good score for a Lunar Lake system, but it shows how weak Lunar Lake is on multithreaded performance once again. IDG / Chris Hoffman Next we run a graphical benchmark. This isn’t a gaming laptop, but it’s still good to check how the GPU performs. We run 3Dmark Time Spy, a graphical benchmark that focuses on GPU performance. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i achieved a 3DMark Time Spy score of 4,476. That’s decent for integrated graphics, but it’s certainly much slower than what you’d see on a gaming laptop with a discrete GPU. Overall, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i delivers exceptionally good performance for an Intel Lunar Lake system. But this is still Intel Lunar Lake, so it’s weak when it comes to multithreaded performance. It’s more than fine for most people’s desktop productivity workloads, though. Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14: Battery life The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14 has a 75 Watt-hour battery, which is on the large side for an ultraportable laptop. Combined with an Intel Lunar Lake processor, we’d expect long battery life. But the display gets in the way. This laptop doesn’t exactly have bad battery life, but it has the lowest battery life I’ve seen from a Lunar Lake machine. IDG / Chris Hoffman To benchmark the battery life, we play a 4K copy of Tears of Steel on repeat in the Movies & TV app on Windows 11 with airplane mode enabled until the laptop suspends itself. This is a best-case scenario for any laptop since local video playback is so efficient, and real battery life in day-to-day use is always going to be less than this. We set the screen to 250 nits of brightness for our battery benchmarks, and it’s worth noting that this machine’s OLED display has a bit of an advantage, as OLED screens use less power to display the black bars around the video. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i ran for 859 minutes before it suspended itself. That’s a bit over 14 hours. It sounds like a long time, but the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 with its also-beautiful AMOLED display ran for 1,401 minutes — that’s another nine hours! (The Galaxy Book5 Pro 360’s display isn’t quite as stunning, though.) 14 hours may sound like a long time, but you’re going to get less battery life in real-world use while you use the machine in the real world. This just isn’t great battery life — you’re giving up a lot of battery life to power this over-the-top display. Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14: Conclusion The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i is a great machine if you want a unique design with an incredible display. It really is a nice piece of hardware. It even delivers very good performance for Lunar Lake. But I’d say that this machine isn’t for most people. Between the almost $2,000 price, low battery life, lack of a headphone jack, skimpy port selection, Lunar Lake’s low multithreaded performance, odd fingerprint sensor position, and so many other issues I’ve mentioned above, this won’t be the right machine for most laptop users. Still, some people are going to love this machine. When I open the beautiful laptop and see that stunning OLED display, for a moment, I can almost feel like all those other problems don’t matter. Read...

French Armed Forces Commander in New Caledonia General Yann Latil was in Vanuatu on Friday where he held meetings with Vanuatu Mobile Forces Commander Colonel Ben Nicholson. Read...

US car giant General Motors has had its Formula 1 entry for the 2026 season formally approved. Read...

If you’ve purchased a laptop or tablet with an AMD Ryzen chip inside, there’s a performance tweak you absolutely need to know about. Apply it to AMD’s AI/gaming powerhouse Ryzen AI Max chip, and you can score enormous performance gains in just seconds! Savvy gamers know instinctively that you can boost your game’s frame rate by lowering the resolution or the visual quality, or by making an adjustment to the Windows power-performance slider. But the Ryzen AI Max is a new kind of device: a killer mobile processor that can run modern games at elevated frame rates, and serve as an AI powerhouse. What’s the secret? A simple adjustment of the Ryzen AI Max’s unified frame buffer, or available graphics memory. While it’s a simple fix, in my tests, it made an enormous difference: up to a 60 percent performance boost in some cases. When I was comparing Intel’s “Arrow Lake” mobile processor to AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 processor, I was unable to perform certain AI tests because of the memory and VRAM requirements those tests required. After I published the story, AMD reached out to suggest dialing up the VRAM via the laptop BIOS to enable the test to run. (As it turned out, this didn’t make a difference in that specific test.) When Asus ROG provided me an Asus ROG Flow Z13 gaming tablet for testing AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ chip, the topic surfaced again. For whatever reason, Asus had configured its tablet with just 4GB of available video memory. The company recommended we test with 8GB instead. It seemed to be an opportune time to see what effects adjusting the Ryzen AI Max’s graphics memory would have. Why does video memory matter? VRAM stands for video RAM. If you use a discrete GPU, the amount of VRAM is predetermined by your graphics-card manufacturer, and the VRAM chips are soldered right onto the board. Some people use “VRAM” as shorthand when talking about integrated graphics, as well. That’s not entirely accurate; integrated graphics share memory between the PC’s main memory and the video logic, and the “VRAM” in this case is known as the “UMA frame buffer.” VRAM (and the UMA frame buffer) stores the textures used by a PC game inside your graphics card, allowing them to be quickly accessed and rendered upon the screen. If the texture size exceeds the amount of VRAM, your PC must pull them in from somewhere else (RAM or the SSD), slowing down gameplay. In the case of AI, the VRAM acts a lot like standard PC RAM, storing the weights and models of an AI algorithm, and allowing it to run. In many cases, insufficient VRAM means that a particular LLM might not run. In both cases, though, the amount of memory available to the GPU matters. If you own a discrete graphics card from any manufacturer, the amount of VRAM can’t be adjusted. On Intel Core systems, the available UMA frame buffer is also typically fixed, to half of the available system memory. In other words, if you have an Intel Arrow Lake laptop with 16GB of total memory, up to 8GB is accessible by the integrated GPU. And yes, adding more system memory increases the size of the UMA frame buffer. However, you still can’t adjust the UMA frame buffer’s size to your own preferences. The “front page” of the BIOS utility on our test tablet with the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ chip installed.Mark Hachman / Foundry AMD, on the other hand, typically allows you to adjust the size of the UMA frame buffer on its Ryzen processors (and not just the AI Max!), typically through adjustments made to the firmware. In my case, I obtained access to the UEFI/BIOS just by rebooting the tablet and tapping the F2 key as it rebooted. On the ROG tablet, I found the adjustment in the advanced settings. Several options were available, from an “Auto” setting to 24GB, with several increments in between. As I noted above, Asus had accidentally sent out its tablets with the 4GB setting enabled. All I did was select a new size for the frame buffer, save, and the boot cycle continued. Adjustments to the UMA frame buffer were on the “advanced” page.Mark Hachman / Foundry Warning: If you own a handheld PC like a Steam Deck, adjusting the UMA frame buffer to improve game performance isn’t that unusual. Making adjustments to the BIOS/UEFI does carry some risk, however. In this case, allocating too much memory to the GPU might not allow an application to run at all, or cause instability. You’re probably safe leaving 8GB reserved for main memory. If you don’t want to fiddle around in your laptop’s BIOS, you might find that your laptop or tablet ships with the AMD Adrenalin utility. In this case, you might be able to adjust the graphics memory from within the application itself. I found it within the Performance > Tuning tab. If you’re confused about how much memory you’re allocating to graphics and how much is left for your PC, the utility helps make that clear. Mark Hachman / Foundry Tested: Does adjusting the UMA frame buffer make a difference? I’m currently in the process of reviewing the Asus ROG Flow Z13 and its AMD Ryzen AI Max+ chip, but I paused to check to see what improvements, if any, could be made by adjusting the size of the UMA frame buffer. In general, I found that adjusting it made the most improvement inside games and especially AI. I didn’t see enormous gains in synthetic graphics benchmarks: Tweaking the UMA frame buffer using 3DMark’s Steel Nomad test boosted scores from 1,643 to 1,825, or about 11 percent. Ditto for PCMark 10, which measures productivity: The needle barely moved. I turned to Cyberpunk: 2077 to test how adjusting the UMA frame buffer applied to games. I ran four benchmarks, each using a UMA frame buffer of 4GB, 8GB, or 16GB. The idea was to see what the chip could do on its own, just rasterizing the game, as well as turning on all of the GPU’s AI enhancements to maximize frame rate: 1080p resolution, Ultra settings, with all enhancements turned off 1080p resolution, Ultra settings, with all enhancements (AMD FSR 3 scaling and frame generation) turned on 1080p resolution, Ray Tracing Overdrive settings, with all enhancements turned off 1080p resolution, Ray Tracing Overdrive settings, with all enhancements turned on The sharpest improvement from increasing the frame buffer size came in the 1080p Ultra settings.Mark Hachman / Foundry You can immediately see that the largest improvements in overall frame rate simply come from turning on AMD’s FidelityFX Super Sampling 3 (FSR 3). But adjusting the frame buffer gives you about a 10 percent boost in the Ray Tracing Overdrive mode. More importantly, it bumped up the frame rate on the 1080p Ultra settings, with FSR 3 on, by 17 percent. That’s all from a free, easy adjustment that costs you nothing. It’s worth pointing out that adjusting the UMA frame buffer doesn’t always scale. It seems to under the Ray Tracing Overdrive setting, but the same gains don’t play out elsewhere. I’ve found Cyberpunk‘s tests to be quite reproducible, so I’m inclined to believe that it’s not just statistical variance. I saw the same thing when testing AI, too. I used UL Procyon’s AI Text Generation benchmark, which loads in four separate LLMs or AI chatbots, and asks a series of questions. UL generates its own scores, based on speed and token output. Here, there was an amazing jump in overall performance in places: 64 percent in Llama 2 just by dialing up the frame buffer! But it was also interesting that the performance increase was “capped” at 16GB. Selecting a 24GB frame buffer actually lowered the performance slightly. Adjusting the frame buffer has some significant benefits in AI…but they don’t scale forever.Mark Hachman / Foundry (It might be worth noting that Procyon didn’t think it could run on the Ryzen AI Max, because the system didn’t report enough VRAM. It ran just fine, of course.) I also checked my work using MLCommons’ own client benchmark, which uses a 7 billion-parameter LLM to generate “scores” of tokens per second and an initial “time to first token.” I didn’t see as much improvement — just about 10 percent from the 4GB to 8GB buffer, and then virtually nothing when I tested it with a 16GB buffer instead. Integrated graphics matters again Until now, adjusting the UMA frame buffer was largely irrelevant: Integrated GPUs were simply not powerful enough for that tweak to matter. Things are different now. Again, if you’re a handheld PC user, you may have seen others adjusting their UMA frame buffer to eke out a bit more performance. But as my colleague Adam Patrick Murray commented, the Ryzen AI Max+ processor inside the Asus ROG Flow Z13 tablet is an odd hybrid of a handheld and a tablet. It’s more than that, of course, given that companies like Framework are putting it in small form-factor PCs. But lessons learned from the handheld PC space do apply — and well! — to this new class of AI powerhouse chips. Adjusting the UMA frame buffer on an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ chip can be a terrific free tweak that can boost your performance by dramatic amounts. Read...

The DIY smart home and home security specialists at Abode Systems have released their first Apple TV app, along with an upgraded version of the company’s existing Android TV app. The new software promises to make it easier for Abode users to control their self-installed systems from their couch, using their TV or set-top box remote. The company already has apps for smartphones, smart watches, computers, and tablets. Users will be able to manage their security system and control their smart devices (lights, thermostat, from the Abode dashboard, but the primary attraction will be the ability to view live feeds from up to four Abode security cameras and/or video doorbells on their connected TVs. You can also watch recorded clips, and with AC-powered cameras that have 24/7 recording enabled (more on this in a bit), you can scrub back and forth along a 10-day timeline and jump to specific events. Abode Systems Abode is one of the few home security developers with products–specifically, the Abode Smart Security Kit and the Abode Iota All-in-One Security Kit–that support Apple HomeKit as well as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Its cameras, however, do not support Apple’s HomeKit Security Video platform. You can find out more about Abode smart home integrations at the preceding link. Abode has also released a revamped version of its existing Android TV app, which offers a similar set of features. Abode says the Android TV menus and general layout will look slightly different from the Apple TV app, but that users will have the same camera features. They will also be able to control their Abode system and the devices connected to it directly from their Android TV. Abode says it’s not developing apps for other TV operating systems–such as Amazon Fire TV, LG’s WebOS, Roku OS, or Samsung’s Tizen OS–at this time, but didn’t rule out doing so in the future. Abode Iota All-in-One Security Kit Read our review Best Prices Today: $299.99 at Amazon Further reading: TechHive’s highest-rated smart home systems As is typical of DIY home security systems, Abode offers free and paid service plans, but a paid plan is required to get security camera recordings (you get only a live view without one). The company has two paid plans that include up to 10 days of event-based camera recordings: Its Standard plan costs $8 per month ($75 per year), while its Pro plan that adds professional monitoring and cellular backup in the event the system loses its primary connection to the internet costs $26 per month ($240 per year). Either a Standard or Pro plan is required to get 24/7 recording for an unlimited number of AC-powered Abode security cameras, a service that costs $10 per month ($110 per year) on top of either of those subscriptions. Read...

A driving factor is the rising number of women joining medical schools, the General Medical Council says. Read...

With the recent Firefox 136 update, Mozilla’s web browser got several improvements and new features, including vertical tabs that sit in a new sidebar and provide a better overview when you have tons of open tabs. The update brings improved security via fixed vulnerabilities, which apply to Firefox ESR and Tor Browser as well. Mozilla’s 2025-14 Security Advisory report shows at least 15 fixed vulnerabilities in Firefox 136, with a “high” risk rating given to five entries for individual vulnerabilities reported by external researchers. For example, the CVE-2025-1930 vulnerability can be used to break out of the browser sandbox on Windows. In addition, there are three summarized entries on internally discovered vulnerabilities, which also have high risk ratings. Exploitation of these vulnerabilities leads to a “potentially exploitable crash” and the potential for arbitrary code injection and execution. Otherwise, Mozilla doesn’t provide information on the exact number of vulnerabilities covered. Mozilla plans to release Firefox 137 on April 1, 2025. What’s new in Firefox 136? In Firefox 136’s new sidebar, you can store and keep an eye on your bookmarks and history, plus have direct access to an AI chatbot as well as tabs from other synced devices. Browser extensions can also reside in the sidebar, provided the support is added by developers. The sidebar can be located either on the left or right side. The new vertical tabs feature is also located in the sidebar. If you enable vertical tabs, the tabs move from their usual position at the top of the browser to the sidebar and appear stacked, one below the next. This lets you see more tabs at once, and it’s clearer if you have tons of open tabs. To enable the new sidebar, go to Settings > General and scroll downn to the “Browser Layout” section. There you should see a checkbox for Show sidebar. Tick it and you’ll get a narrow sidebar on the left side of the browser window. Then, click the cogwheel icon at the bottom of the sidebar to open sidebar customization, where you can then switch on vertical tabs, move the sidebar to the right, and more. Firefox 136 also uses HTTPS-First by default now, which means Firefox always tries to open web pages using HTTPS first. If that fails, then it will fall back to the unencrypted HTTP. Controversy over changed Terms of Use At the end of February, Mozilla updated Firefox’s Terms of Use regarding its handling of collected data. You might’ve encountered irate users or even conspiracy theories on Reddit and other social media. But it’s all been blown out of proportion. It’s not as bad as it sounds. In a nutshell: basically nothing has changed. Mozilla has merely chosen clearer wording because the legal regulations in various US states made updated phrasings necessary. Updates for Firefox ESR and Tor Browser Mozilla has updated its long-term versions Firefox ESR 128 and ESR 115 with security fixes, addressing at least 10 vulnerabilities in Firefox ESR 128.8.0 and at least five in Firefox ESR 115.21.0. The updated Tor Browser 14.0.7, based on Firefox ESR 128.8.0, is now available. An update for Tor Browser 13.5 to version 13.5.13 is also available if you’re running Windows 7 or 8.1 or macOS 10.13 or 10.14. Mozilla recently announced that support for Firefox ESR 115 will be extended to at least September 2025. Mozilla will then decide whether to further extend support come August. For Tor Browser 13.5.x, which is based on Firefox ESR 115, it’s still unclear whether the Tor Project is willing and able to maintain an additional browser version. Further reading: Firefox adds AI to browser, surprising no one Read...

TV antennas are having something of a renaissance in the U.S. Buoyed by the ever-increasing costs of cable and streaming subscriptions, and additional channels enabled by the advent of digital TV, roughly one in five U.S. homes now rely on an antenna for their television. Beyond the cost of the antenna, all the channels are free, and you might even get a better picture than through a pay TV service. When it comes to choosing an antenna, the selection is almost as wide as the programming you can receive, but if you do a little homework, you should be able to buy with confidence and ensure a good picture. We’ll walk through the steps required to figure out what kind of antenna you need and what you might receive, then you can use PCWorld’s buyer’s guide to help narrow down your choices when you’re ready to shop. The first step is figuring out what TV programming is available where your live. What can I tune in with a TV antenna? The quantity and selection of TV channels depends on where you live. In general, the closer you are to a large metro area, where the broadcasters’ towers are generally located, the more channels will be broadcast. In rural areas, the opposite is typically the case. If you live near the Canadian or Mexican borders, you might be able to receive additional channels from those countries. Most parts of the U.S. have access to the four major commercial networks (ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC) and a local PBS station. Many of these stations broadcast additional digital networks dedicated to a particular theme, such as children’s shows on PBS Kids and classic TV on MeTV, Cozi, and Antenna TV. If you find yourself limited to an indoor antenna, you’d be best served by one that includes a signal amplifier. These draw electrical power from a USB adapter or an open USB port on your TV.Winegard To figure out what’s available, we recommend navigating to Rabbit Ears. This website models TV reception based on the location of the antenna and TV transmitter data from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The Signal Search Map page is where you need to be. Enter your address (street, city, and state) When the map updates to show your house, click “Move pushpin to center of Map View” in the panel below the map Set the approximate height your antenna is above ground level Click “Go” The site will display its best prediction of the TV channels available in your location, along with an estimate of the strength of their signal levels (higher numbers are better). Take a look at the channels and networks and figure out what you want to receive; make a note of the predicted signal level. Use the website RabbitEars to discover the TV broadcast tower locations in the vicinity of your home address. The signal strength it reports will help you determine whether an indoor antenna will be strong enough to pull in the channels you want to see, or if you’ll need to buy an attic or roof-mount model.Michael Brown/Foundry As a rule of thumb, an indoor antenna will be sufficient for channels with a good signal level, an attic or outdoor antenna will likely be required for stations marked fair, and a larger outdoor antenna with an amplifier will be required for those marked poor. Stations marked as bad will likely be difficult to receive without extreme measures. Finally, take a look at the direction of the transmitters from your location. If they are all in roughly the same direction, a single antenna should be fine. If they are wide apart, an antenna on a rotator—a motor that can turn the mast the antenna is mounted to to change the antenna’s orientation—might be required, especially if the signals strengths are poor. Choose an antenna Now you’re armed with everything you need to make an informed decision. PCWorld’s antenna picks are divided into several categories, from cheap indoor antennas to substantial roof-mounted ones. In general, an outdoor antenna will always deliver the best performance, no matter the signal level. They’ll provide much more reliable reception than indoor antennas, which are always a compromise. If an indoor antenna will fit your needs, this transpartent Ultra-Vizion model virtually disappears when attached to a window.Martyn Williams/Foundry That said, not everyone can install an outdoor antenna, so we have several indoor antennas, from basic, thin antennas that can be put in a window so better amplified antennas that should provide a step up in reception. A further level up are smaller outdoor antennas, many of which can easily be installed on the side of a house, on a balcony, or inside an attic space. Many of these are also amplified. Finally, we have tested a number of roof-mounted antennas that are the gold standard in TV reception. A roof-mounted antenna will provide the most reliable reception and should pull in the greatest number of channels. If you are planning to install one yourself, please use safety precautions when on a roof and ensure the system meets local building code requirements, especially for grounding. Warning! Don’t believe the claims If you browse online shopping sites or look at the advertising for antennas, you’ll see lots of dubious claims. The first rule is to ignore anything about antenna range claims. Reception depends on a multitude of factors, including the transmitter frequency and power, the location of the transmitter, the immediate environment around your house, and more. There is simply no way an antenna can guarantee its claimed number of miles. Use the method outlined above, that takes all these factors into account. Don’t fall for the specious claims some TV antenna manufacturers make for their products. It’s highly unlikely that any indoor antenna will be capable of pulling in signals from a broadcast tower 130 miles away. Nor will one be capable of streaming ESPN.Jared Newman / Foundry The second thing to remember is that there’s no such thing as an HD, 4K, or NextGen TV antenna. An antenna simply receives signals and isn’t dependent on the format being broadcast, so ignore those claims as well. PCWorld’s antenna reviews are conducted under real-world conditions with the same equipment and at the same location, so we can give an honest and measured comparison of every antenna we test. Attention renters, HOA residents, and apartment dwellers If you rent a house or apartment or live under the terms of an HOA (Homeowners Association), don’t let anyone tell you you cannot install a TV antenna. In the U.S. federal law gives you the right to do so under the FCC’s “OTARD” regulations. In short, you have the right to install a TV antenna for reception of local broadcast signals in an area you rent or have exclusive access to. If you’re facing resistance, read the FCC page, linked above, and quote the OTARD rule. Connecting the antenna to your TV A length of coaxial cable cut and ready for a connector to be attached. Martyn Williams/Foundry Most indoor antennas come with a small cord attached that can be connected directly to a TV or amplifier, if one is supplied; other antennas might come with a cable or require you to supply your own. TV antenna cable is called coaxial cable, or coax for short. It has a center wire that carries the signal, a plastic insulator, an outer braid that shields the center cable from interference, and an outer sheath protects the cable from the elements. The standard for TV antennas is called RG-6. It’s important to use a good quality coax because cables result in signal loss. You can minimize this by using a good cable and keeping the length as short as possible. If you need to run a very long cable, consider an amplifier, ideally at the antenna end of the connection. And that’s how to choose a TV antenna That should be everything you need to choose and install a TV antenna. TV reception is mostly a science but can be a little bit of an art; so, if you don’t get satisfactory reception, go over the steps again. Try moving the location of the antenna to see if that improves picture quality. If you get a lot of interference, consider adding an amplifier. Most of all, don’t give up! A good antenna will provide thousands of hours of free entertainment for many years, so invest a bit of time and money into getting it right. Still unsure which one to buy? Check out PCWorld’s most highly recommended TV antennas. Read...