Helm’s creators reflect on its 10-year journey, from a $75 hackathon project to the new v4 release modernising Kubernetes packaging. Read...

It’s almost Black Friday and the hot deals are already rolling in, making this the best time to upgrade your monitor to an OLED beauty of the highest caliber. I’m talking about this LG UltraGear gaming monitor that just fell to its all-time lowest price by a large margin. You can get it now for just $549.99, a massive 35% discount from its original $849.99. View this Amazon deal The LG 27GX700A-B hits all the right notes at this price. The gorgeous OLED panel is visual perfection, delivering deep blacks and vivid colors at the sweet spot resolution of 2560×1440. That’s crisp for work and gaming, providing the most immersive experience without taxing your PC too much. The 27-inch size is neither too big or small, and the zippy 280Hz refresh rate with 0.03ms response time is extra smooth for that competitive edge with minimal lag. Other notable features include up to 1,500 nits of brightness (whoa!), deeper details with VESA DisplayHDR True Black 500, compatibility with Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro for tear-free gaming, two HDMIs and a DisplayPort for video input, and tilting stand. The only things missing are USB-C video with power delivery (for use with laptops) and VESA compatibility (for use with monitor arms). Overall, this LG monitor for just $549.99 is an unbeatable early Black Friday deal. OLED monitors don’t come cheap, so this is a great time to level up your setup with a winner. Otherwise, check out our picks for the best monitors for other options worth exploring. This 27-inch 1440p OLED monitor just fell to its best-ever priceBuy now on Amazon Read...

ChatGPT can help with many things—creating images, looking up information, role-playing, solving math problems, programming and much more. But at the heart of everything it does are so-called “large language models”—AI algorithms trained on unimaginable amounts of text. So it’s not surprising that what it does best is working with text. Having a conversation with ChatGPT can feel unreal. That’s how good it is at generating responses that make it sound like it understands what you’re saying and knows what it’s talking about. The grammar is flawless. The word choices are appropriate. It pretty much always stays on topic. It’s almost like magic. The same goes for many of the tasks you can give the AI chatbot that involve text processing. It often spits out results that are hard to tell were created by a machine. It’s not impossible to tell, and it will be easier if you read a lot of AI-written texts, but it’s nothing to worry about. Follow along and I’ll show you how to utilize ChatGPT for all things text and writing. Chat GPT is a competent proofreader that never gets tired.Sam Singleton Proofreading One of the simplest but most effective uses of ChatGPT is as a proofreader for your writing. By asking the chatbot to read a text carefully and respond with a corrected version, listing all the changes it has made with explanations, you’ll usually get a text that is similar but with grammar and spelling mistakes corrected and with other small changes suggested to make the text better. My suggestion is not to trust the AI blindly and copy the result, even if it is the easiest thing to do. It happens every now and then that it inserts new errors that were not there in your original text, even if it’s completely correct with the changes it shows it has made. Instead, rewrite your text yourself based on Chat GPT’s suggestions, and you will ensure that only the necessary changes are made. In return, you can get a better eye for typical mistakes you make when writing, and actually become better at writing. Having worked a lot with this myself, I have some tips that in my experience make ChatGPT do a better job with the correction. I’ve created a GPT (see below) with customized instructions. I used to have more intricate instructions, but have found that these more basic ones work better for me. This is what they look like right now: “Proofread the following text and correct any spelling and grammar errors. Show all changes directly in the text in bold and in a list after the corrected text. Stick to correcting errors – do not make any other improvements. The language should follow the author’s language and be neutral.“ As I write journalistic texts, I ask ChatGPT to follow the author’s language recommendations—you can of course skip that. If you prefer, you can also ask it to make major changes, but personally I want a proofreader to stick to just finding errors and mostly pointing out if part of the text is easily misinterpreted or incomprehensible. If you don’t subscribe to ChatGPT Plus, you can add instructions like these to a “project” instead, which even free accounts have access to. They will then be included in any chats you start in the project. One of the many things you can ask ChatGPT to do is to rewrite a text in a completely different style.Sam Singleton Improve and change your texts If you are writing on a type of text you don’t feel you master very well, you can let ChatGPT help you. You can try using a description or keywords associated with the type of text you are looking for, for example “rewrite this text to look like it was written by a lawyer, use legal terminology and be polite and matter-of-fact but still sharp”, or “rewrite this text so that it has a consistent tone and voice”. You can also upload a file with a text whose style you like and ask ChatGPT to rewrite another text in a similar style to the uploaded document. How well this works varies, but you can improve the results by, for example, asking ChatGPT to “read carefully” and “explain why you are making the different changes”—the latter can help the AI not to lose the thread, which can sometimes happen with longer texts. In fact, splitting up longer texts and working on one part at a time can often give better results. One chapter, section, or even paragraph at a time makes it easier to get ChatGPT to stay focused on making improvements to that particular part. Mohamed Hassan It’s a natural consequence of how language models work. They generate their answers one token (a word or part of a word) at a time based on the likelihood of a particular token following what has been generated so far and input from the user. If you type “What is the capital of Angola?”, there is a high probability that the first generated word of the Chat GPT is “Angola”. If it is, there is a high probability that the next word is “capital”. If so, there is a high probability that the next one will be “Luanda”, and so on. The longer the text, the greater the likelihood that the algorithm will “forget” the instructions first and go off on a tangent. If you’re more interested in the big picture, you should of course paste the whole text you’re working on instead. Then you can, for example, ask it to read through and suggest changes that make it better on an overall level. This is what such an instruction might look like: “Critically review the following text and make suggestions on how to improve it so that [the arguments are stronger / it is easier to read and understand / it has a clear thread].” Another thing ChatGPT can help with is adding references and examples. For references, it’s important that you double-check the sources and make sure they are correct—all language models have a tendency to ‘make up’ quotes, sources, and even authors. You’ve probably seen on the news one of the many occasions when, for example, a government agency has published a report that turns out to contain AI ‘hallucinated’ data. Sam Singleton Summarize and translate One of the most common uses of modern AI services like Chat GPT is to summarize large amounts of information. For example, not having to read through page after page of a report to get a picture of the key insights can save an incredible amount of time. Chat GPT is good at this, but far from perfect. Many politicians, civil servants, and consultants have been left scratching their heads after blindly trusting an AI summary that later turned out to be full of errors. For specific claims and figures, it’s therefore best to look them up. The easiest way is to search the text, but be aware that numbers with decimals and thousands may be formatted differently (if the text says “9,200,000” and Chat GPT summarizes it as “9.2 million”, it may be difficult to find). Chat GPT is also good at translating between different languages, with results that are more reader-friendly than older automated translations. There can still be some errors, especially when translating to or from less common languages or with very technical subjects, but on the whole they are usually correct. Unlike summaries, it will be harder to check yourself, so keep that in mind. Creating new texts Many people also use ChatGPT to write completely new texts. Some do this to save time with texts where personal style is not so important, others to write texts they don’t consider themselves good at, or when they have no idea where to start. If you start by uploading or pasting examples of your own texts and ask ChatGPT to analyze the style, you can then ask the chatbot to write a new text in the same style, which may produce results that are at least reasonably similar to something you could have written yourself. But sometimes this is not necessary at all. It’s often irrelevant whether a text sounds like it was written by you—the important thing is that it is written and conveys what it should. For example, if you are writing an email to your local authority to complain about something, you can ask ChatGPT to write it for you, and simply sign and send it if you’re happy with the result. However, you should read it carefully first to make sure it doesn’t say anything incorrect or sound fake. Mohamed Hassan ChatGPT as a sounding board to get ideas Even if you don’t want ChatGPT to take over and write for you, you may find the chatbot useful to get you started or to get you going if you’re stuck. Share what you already have and ask it to make some suggestions on how to start/continue. The suggestions don’t even have to be useful in and of themselves—in fact, they often leave a lot to be desired—but getting a few ideas can be enough to get your own creative juices flowing. This kind of idea exchange where ChatGPT acts as a sounding board is what it’s really good at, and it’s perfect when you don’t have a human available to bounce ideas off. My only caveat is that the design of the language models means that the suggestions generated can never be truly innovative. Even if it sounds inventive to your ears, it’s simply much more likely to mimic and come up with suggestions that are common than it is to “invent” something completely new. Uploading and referencing other texts ChatGPT has an upload feature that you can utilize in several ways when working with text. You can upload examples of your own texts to ask the chatbot to use your style. Another use is to summarize texts. Uploading a PDF saves you having to copy and paste a long text. You can also upload texts and ask Chat GPT to do more complex tasks, such as comparing and analyzing the content of several files or finding suitable references for a text you have written among a number of uploaded files. Remember to double-check factual claims. Use projects to keep your chats organized All ChatGPT users now have access to a feature called projects. The idea isn’t new, it’s been around in other AI chatbots, and Open AI has thankfully been inspired by them. Projects work as a way to organize all the chats on different topics. A bit like folders in your computer’s file system, but with an additional feature that allows each project to be customized. Namely, once you’ve created a project, you can add instructions to be included in each new chat you start in that project. For example, if you create a project called Proofreading and add instructions asking the AI to proofread all the texts you share, you won’t have to rewrite (or copy and paste) the instructions each time. You can also upload files to the project, which all chats under the project can then access and refer to. If you have a lot of projects, you can make them easier to find by selecting from a bunch of available icons and one of a number of colours. One unfortunate detail is that it’s not yet possible to rearrange the order of projects—they are always sorted by creation date, with the oldest project at the bottom and the most recent at the top. Finally, you can use the Share feature to invite others to a project, so they can also access all conversations in the project and contribute or upload more files. Sam Singleton GPTs provide greater freedom to customize your virtual editor One of the benefits of paying for a ChatGPT Plus account is that you get access to the GPTs feature. These are specially customized versions of the chatbot that you can use yourself or share with others. You add instructions to be included in each conversation and can upload files for the chatbot to reference or retrieve information from. You can also select a preferred model and choose whether the GPT should have access to web search, canvas, image generation, and code interpreter and data analysis features. For more advanced use, GPTs can also be extended with something called actions. These allow the GPT to contact external servers to automate various tasks. For example, if you use Home Assistant to control smart home gadgets, you could create a GPT that connects to that server, so you can use the ChatGPT to switch lights on and off and so on—these are more advanced skills that are beyond the scope of this article, but you can see how it opens up a potential world of possibilities. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Robust design with good ergonomic stand  Big display size for the price  Good motion clarity for a 165Hz VA panel  Cons Curve is not uniform, creating issues in horizontal scrolling  Out-of-box settings provide poor image quality  HDR performance can’t hope to match OLED  Our Verdict The Samsung Odyssey G75F is gigantic LCD monitor sold at a reasonable price, but its hard to recommend over 32-inch OLED alternatives.  Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Samsung Odyssey G7 G75F Retailer Price $599.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices The Samsung Odyssey G7 G75F is big. Very big. So big that I nearly had to move the shelves on my wall to make it fit in my space. That makes it an appealing option if you want a monitor that can also be used like a TV, or if you like to be as immersed as possible. However, the G75F suffers from several downsides that make the monitor hard to recommend.  Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best monitors for comparison. Samsung Odyssey G7 G75F specs and features  The Odyssey G7 G75F has a 37-inch display with a 16:9 aspect ratio and 4K resolution. It’s important to note that, thanks to the magic of math, the monitor appears even larger than you might think. Its total display area is virtually identical to a 40-inch 21:9 aspect ratio ultrawide though, of course, the G75F is not as wide. The G75F’s display height is more than 18 inches, which is about 2.5 inches taller than a 32-inch 16:9 monitor.  Display size: 37-inch 16:9 aspect ratio with 1000R curve Native resolution: 3840×2160 (4K)   Panel type: Vertical Alignment (VA)  Refresh rate: 165Hz  Adaptive Sync: Yes, AMD FreeSync Premium Pro  HDR: VESA DisplayHDR 600  Ports: 1x DisplayPort 1.4, 2x HDMI 2.1, 1x 3.5mm audio out, 1x USB-B upstream, 2x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 Downstream Audio: None  Additional features: RGB-LED lighting ring on rear of monitor Price: $899.99 MSRP, $649.99 typical retail  The display’s size is its defining characteristic, and the feature set is otherwise modest. It has a refresh rate of 165Hz, supports AMD FreeSync and HDR, and has a couple of USB-A ports. USB-C is not included.  Samsung lists the Samsung Odyssey G7 G75F at $899.99 which, frankly, is way too much. However, Samsung (like other monitor makers, including Dell) has a habit of listing a monitor at a high price and then discounting it to a more reasonable figure. Amazon listed the monitor for $899.99 on September 15, 2025, but it dropped to $599.99 on October 7, 2025, and had yet to increase at the time this review was written.  Samsung Odyssey G7 G75F design  The Samsung Odyssey G7 G75F looks bland out of the box. It pairs slim black bezels with a black rear panel and a black stand for a super-stealth look, but the quality of the plastics used isn’t high enough to make the monitor feel luxurious. Shoppers looking for an extra touch of class need to leap to the Odyssey G9 line, which tends to look more premium.  With that said, I was happy to see the G75F boasts Samsung’s RGB-LED light ring on its rear. This is a circular RGB-LED lighting element that surrounds the point where the stand attaches to the monitor. It looks stylish and adds some ambient lighting in a dark room. It offers a more universal style than recent Asus and Alienware monitors, which use an RGB-LED logo. The light ring also supports CoreSync, which can change the light’s color to reflect content on-screen—though it’s dim and hard to notice unless you’re gaming in a pitch black room.  Matthew Smith / Foundry The G75F has a 1000R curve, which is dramatic (a lower number means a more aggressive curve). However, unlike most curved monitors, the G75F is only curved in the center third of the monitor. The left and right sides are flat.  This isn’t unheard of for Samsung, which has used this design in prior monitors, but I’m not a fan. The uneven curve creates a “warp” effect when viewing content that scrolls horizontally. This is visible at the point where the curve ends on each side of the display. It’s most noticeable in movies, which often have scenes that pan slowly, and in games where you scroll across a map, like Civilization VI or League of Legends.  The monitor includes an ergonomic stand that adjusts for height, tilt, and swivel. It’s a solid stand and uses an extremely flat base that keeps the desk space the stand occupies usable.  Samsung Odyssey G7 G75F connectivity and audio  Samsung keeps the Odyssey G7 G75F’s connectivity simple. Video input includes two HDMI 2.1 ports and one DisplayPort 1.4 for a total of three video inputs. That’s typical for a gaming monitor.  USB connectivity is slim. The monitor doesn’t support USB-C, which is always disappointing to see in 2025. A pair of USB-A downstream ports are provided and will connect to your PC over a USB-B upstream port. It’s better than nothing, but this is the bare minimum USB connectivity you can expect from a modern monitor.  A 3.5mm audio-out jack rounds out the options. It provides audio pass-through, which you may need, as the G75F doesn’t have built-in speakers.  Samsung Odyssey G7 G75F menus  The Samsung Odyssey G7 G75F’s control scheme deviates from the usual script. Most modern monitors use a joystick control, but the G75F instead opts for five buttons in a D-Pad arrangement. The result works a lot like a joystick and provides easy directional navigation through the monitor’s menu options, but it’s arguably easier to use because it’s more discrete and tactile. I like it.  Samsung also provides a good range of menu options with clear labels that are easy to understand. However, the Odyssey G7 G75F generally opts for vague labels rather than precise labels. For example, it doesn’t include a range of modes that target a specific color gamut, and the gamma adjustment doesn’t list a specific target gamma curve value (such as 2.2 or 2.4). This is acceptable for a gaming monitor, but competitors like Asus’ ROG do a better job here.  Matthew Smith / Foundry Unlike its competitors, Samsung doesn’t offer a Windows display utility that can adjust brightness, contrast, color, and other monitor settings. The company only offers Samsung Display Manager, which is a window management utility. Most of Samsung’s competitors have more feature-rich software utilities that provide control of monitor features within Windows, and some also support Mac.  Samsung Odyssey G7 G75F SDR image quality  The Samsung Odyssey G7 G75F is a monitor built to provide a huge display at a relatively low price. Its typical retail of $649.99 isn’t inexpensive, but its below most competitors in the 37-inch to 45-inch size category.  That means Samsung had to make some tough choices to keep the price low—but I ran into some additional issues while testing the G75F. The monitor ships with several features enabled that significantly reduce image quality. These include an adaptive contrast feature and a dynamic backlight that doesn’t work well.  The test results below were achieved with these features turned off. Would-be buyers should be aware of this. If you do choose to buy this monitor, you’ll want to turn the adaptive contrast and dynamic backlight features off to achieve the best image quality results.  Matthew Smith / Foundry First up is brightness, where the Samsung Odyssey G75F leaps to a good start with a brightness of 341 nits.  All of the monitors PCWorld has recently reviewed that are similar in size, refresh rate, or price were OLED displays, which typically have a maximum SDR brightness around 250 nits. The Odyssey G75F has an LED-backlight Vertical Alignment (VA) panel. 341 nits actually isn’t that bright for a LED-backlight monitor, but compared to OLED, it wins.  The higher brightness means the monitor is more comfortable to view in bright rooms.  Matthew Smith / Foundry Next up is contrast and, unsurprisingly, the G75F has a difficult time here. The monitor’s measured contrast ratio of 2970:1 is actually rather good for an LED-backlit panel, but it can’t compete with the incredible contrast provided by OLED’s per-pixel brightness control.  I also noticed that the G75F, like many curved monitors with an LED backlight, has issues with uniformity. I noticed significant bright spots at the top and bottom center of the display, as well as at the corners. They’re not obvious in bright content but easy to see, and distracting, in dark scenes.  Matthew Smith / Foundry The G75F has a decent color gamut that covers 100 percent of sRGB, 91 percent of DCI-P3, and 85 percent of AdobeRGB. This would’ve been great a few years ago, but the proliferation of OLED panels, as well as LCD panels with quantum dots, has boosted color gamut performance. The G75F’s color gamut is definitely behind OLED competitors and just average for a monitor in its price range.  Matthew Smith / Foundry Color accuracy is an issue for the G75F. The problem is most apparent in blue and cyan colors, which looked odd and reported high color error values—dragging the overall 12-color average along with it. The image still looks okay, but I’d recommend trying to calibrate it if you have calibration software available.  The monitor’s default gamma result comes in at 2.3, slightly off the target of 2.2. Color temperature was at a default value of 6700K, slightly over the 6500K target. These values mean the image may look darker and cooler than the content you’re viewing intended, though it’s a more subtle difference.  Sharpness is decent on the G75F. The monitor’s 3840×2160 resolution works out to about 119 pixels per inch across the 37-inch panel. By comparison, the pixel density of a 32-inch 4K monitor is roughly 138 pixels per inch. The G75F’s pixel density is closer to a 27-inch 1440p monitor. Still, the image looked sharp enough, particularly in games with any halfway decent anti-aliasing implementation.  Ultimately, the Odyssey G7 G75F’s problem comes down to this: It’s a VA panel monitor competing in a world increasingly dominated by OLED.  To be fair, the OLED competitors are generally more expensive and have a smaller display. So, if pure display size is what you want, the G75F can still make sense.  In most cases, though, an entry-level 32-inch OLED, like the Dell 32 Plus 4K QD-OLED or MSI MAG 321CUP, will provide much better SDR image quality.  Samsung Odyssey G7 G75F HDR image quality  HDR is supported by the Samsung Odyssey G7 G75F—but it’s not great.  The G75F is VESA DisplayHDR 600 certified, which means it should technically hit a peak brightness of up to 600 nits. That’s high for a monitor.  However, as mentioned, the G75F is an LED-backlit display. Specifically, it appears to be an edge-lit display, meaning the LED lighting is placed at the edges of the display and light channels are used to direct it.  This approach doesn’t really work for HDR. Turning on the dynamic backlight will boost contrast and brightness, but also causes obvious “pillars” of light in scenes with a mix of bright and dark. You can see lighting zones turn on and off as scenes change, which isn’t ideal, to say the least.  So, while it does support HDR, I can’t recommend using it for games or movies. The monitor looks its best in SDR with the dynamic backlight feature turned off.  Samsung Odyssey G7 G75F motion performance  The Samsung Odyssey G7 G75F can hit a maximum refresh rate of 165Hz. That’s not an amazing refresh rate for 2025, but the G75F’s motion clarity at 165Hz is rather good.  Viewing scrolling test images from DOTA 2 and League of Legends, as well as scrolling text, showed that the basic contours of a scene are easy to make out and that high-contrast text of reasonable size is readable with a bit of strain. It’d definitely not as good as OLED, which benefits from a lower pixel response time that in turn reduces blur, but I was pleased with the G75F’s motion clarity given its size and price.  The monitor also supports AMD FreeSync Premium Pro. Nvidia G-Sync is not officially supported, but it should work with most modern Nvidia graphics cards as the G-Sync Compatible standard uses the same technical underpinning as FreeSync. I found an Asus ProArt P16 with an Nvidia RTX 5060 mobile detected the monitor as G-Sync compatible.  Should you buy the Samsung Odyssey G7 G75F?  The Samsung Odyssey G7 G75F is a monitor that would’ve been easier to recommend a few years ago. It does provide a huge amount of display real estate, good motion clarity, and decent sharpness. The monitor’s build quality is also good for a display that’s towards the lower end of pricing in its size category.   However, the G75F suffers from the fact that OLED monitors have dipped drastically in price. The $680 Dell 32 Plus 4K QD-OLED is smaller, but it’s much better in both SDR and HDR image quality. Pay a bit more for an MSI MPG32URXW, and you’ll have a display that’s leagues ahead in ways you’re going to notice every day.  It’s ironic. Samsung is the leading manufacturer of OLED displays for monitors, and Samsung’s aggressive pricing is the reason why QD-OLED monitors are available for well under $1,000.  But that leaves a monitor like the G75F, which has a big LCD vertical alignment (VA) panel, in a tough spot. It only makes sense if you need a huge display at mid-size price. Read...

As usual, Microsoft has fixed numerous security vulnerabilities in Windows 10 and Windows 11 with the big November patch this week. But this is the first big month forward for Windows 10 users, who should heed the following statement from Microsoft in the wake of Windows 10 ending official support back in October: The Extended Security Updates (ESU) program for Windows 10 provides customers with a more secure option to continue using their Windows 10 PCs after October 14, 2025, while they transition to Windows 11. The ESU program helps reduce the risk of malware and cybersecurity attacks by providing access to critical and important security updates […] ?for devices running Windows 10, version 22H2. ESU enrollment does not provide other types of fixes, feature improvements, or product enhancements. It also does not come with technical support. […] You can enroll in ESU any time until the program ends on October 13, 2026. The first Windows 10 ESU update is here The first ESU update for Windows 10 PCs is update KB5068781, officially known as “2025-11 Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 22H2 (KB5068781)” and now available to those enrolled in the ESU. This is the first security update for Windows 10 PCs, and you should install it (as well as all future security updates) to keep your system guarded against ongoing risks and threats. These updates will keep coming over the next year until Microsoft ends the ESU program. What does update KB5068781 do? With the ESU program being a source of security updates, Windows 10 PCs will no longer receive feature updates. That means no new features will be coming to your Windows 10 PC anymore. Update KB5068781 fixes 63 security vulnerabilities, one of which is already being actively exploited by hackers in the wild and is therefore considered a zero-day vulnerability. The update also fixes a bug that issued a false warning on PCs eligible for the ESU program that they had reached the end of Windows support. Microsoft recently released an emergency update that fixed that false warning. How to get the KB5068781 update As soon as your Windows 10 PC is registered for ESU, it will automatically install KB5068781 (about 200MB) because it’s an important security update. You don’t need to install it manually. After installing this update, your Windows 10 PC will have Build Number 19045.6575. Update KB5068781 is also available for manual download via the Microsoft Update Catalog. Depending on your system architecture, this download ranges in size from 430MB to 776MB. But again, this manual download isn’t necessary for most—only in exceptional cases. Further reading: How to upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 Read...

Dell Technologies upgrades its PowerProtect portfolio with new features to strengthen cyber resilience across cloud, edge, and hybrid environments for organisations. Read...

Dell upgrades its PowerProtect portfolio with new appliances and cloud features to boost cyber resilience and simplify data backup across edge, core, and cloud. Read...

Guys, I just found the absolute cutest charger! If you want something that stands out and brings joy, forget about boring black or white power adapters. Get this Ugreen Uno that looks like a tiny robot instead! It’s only $17.98 on Amazon right now, a huge 40% off its regular MSRP and a brand-new all-time lowest price. Hurrah! View this Amazon deal This GaN charger block is fast and efficient, able to charge your devices in no time. With 30W of output, it’s perfect for smartphones, tablets, and tons of other gadgets. It’s even fast enough for MacBook Air laptops, if you have one. The charger features a single speedy USB-C port, so note that you can only plug one device at a time. Besides the fact that it looks absolutely adorable with its robot shape in shades of blue, white, and pink, it also features an LED screen. That’s where you’ll see the robot’s cute face, which changes when the device is back at 100% battery to let you know it’s ready to unplug. The outlet prongs are “hidden” within the robot’s shoes, so you’ll need to take them off when using it. (Those shoes are magnetic, by the way, which means they’re easily stored and hard to misplace.) No matter what your desk space looks like, this Ugreen Uno charger block will most definitely cheer things up! $18 is a small price to pay for the cutest charger block everBuy now on Amazon Read...

“Digital fingerprinting” is a way for advertisers and other, even less scrupulous people (if there is such a thing) to track you online. Going far beyond simple cookies, these systems can track specific, unique users across the web. Firefox browser maker Mozilla is fighting back, integrating more aggressive protections against fingerprinting in its latest update. Mozilla has rolled out a new version of Enhanced Tracking Protection that’s, well, even more enhanced. According to the company’s Distilled blog, the new changes can reduce effective single-user tracking from over 60 percent of users down to below twenty percent. This is achieved with a variety of techniques meant to befuddle the automated systems that use your hardware and software settings to identify specific users and devices. This includes blocking specific scripts, inserting random data into canvas elements, not allowing access to locally installed fonts, or even reporting an intentionally incorrect screen resolution or CPU core count. As of Firefox version 145, these changes are only on by default in Private Browsing Mode. But according to Mozilla, the company is working to apply them to all users in standard browsing mode. Privacy advocates will no doubt be happy to hear this. It’s a win for Mozilla, which needed one. As PCGamer notes, the company recently came under fire earlier this year for amending Firefox’s terms of service to, allegedly, enable Mozilla to sell user data. It didn’t help that this happened at the same time as new “AI” features were introduced. Mozilla claimed that it was a misunderstanding and that the amended terms were necessary to implement new features, but the promise not to sell data is still missing in action from the Firefox FAQ page. Read...

Hardly anyone can have missed the AI phenomenon that has taken the world by storm. Almost every major company has some kind of AI initiative now. Politicians talk about how important it is not to “fall behind in the AI race,” and hundreds of millions have started using AI chatbots. The AI wave took off when OpenAI released its chatbot ChatGPT, which gives large language models a conversational interface. Many competitors have emerged since then, from both small and large companies, but ChatGPT remains the most popular. ChatGPT isn’t necessarily the “best” AI service out there (recent tests show other tools can outperform it in certain areas), but it’s the most widely known and the benchmark that all other services are compared to. It’s the standard, plain and simple. If you’ve never tried AI yourself, this guide is for you. Follow along, and I’ll show you how to get started. Make an account and get started You can try out ChatGPT’s simplest features without creating an account, but to access features like the ability to save conversations for later, you’ll need an account. You can create your account in several ways, in the browser on your computer or in the ChatGPT app for iPhone or Android. For this guide, I have chosen the computer, but the app works the same way. You can either create an old-fashioned account with an email address and password or log in with Google, Microsoft, or Apple to avoid having to remember another password. Once you’re in, just start chatting. ChatGPT is conversationally trained, so you can ask questions, request help, or give prompts just like talking to a human. Responses also feel natural and ChatGPT “remembers” everything” (up to a point) that’s been typed in a conversation, so you can ask follow-up questions and reference things you’ve typed before without confusing the chatbot. Should I subscribe? One question many people ask is whether it’s worth paying for a ChatGPT Plus subscription or if the free version is enough. Here are the main advantages of a paid account: Access to the most advanced models (currently GPT-5) Better and faster image generation Other enhanced features More context (“memory”) Possibility to create customized chats, so-called GPTs Access to the Sora video generator Programming assistance with Codex For real power users, there’s also a Pro subscription, but it costs $200 a month. You get minimal restrictions, the highest possible speed of response, and access to experimental new features. My recommendation is that you start exploring ChatGPT without paying. Then, if you get curious about features that require a subscription, try it out for a few months. If you end up liking it, consider switching to an annual subscription, as it will be cheaper in the long run. Managing chats, GPTs, and Projects Foundry / Ashley Biancuzzo The interface of ChatGPT is simple, with a column on the left where you can find the different features and a list of past chats, and a main window on the right, where the chats themselves are displayed. At the top of the left column, there’s a quick button to open a new chat, a search bar for past conversations, and a Gallery feature, which collects images you’ve created with the chatbot. New users will also see a Projects button and Plus subscribers get an extra GPT button. Your previous chats are listed just below. Projects is a new addition that allows you to collect multiple chats on a particular topic in one place and get a bit more organized. It basically works like folders and you can use it for all sorts of categories. Once you’ve created a project, you can give it its own icon in any color to make it easier to find if you have many. Foundry / Ashley Biancuzzo If you have a Plus subscription, you can also create GPTs. A GPT is a customized chat where each conversation starts with a set of instructions on how the AI should respond. You can upload files that the GPT has access to, choose a preferred model (for example, GPT-5 delivers stronger reasoning capabilities), and enable additional features like web search and image generation. You can just talk to ChatGPT If you prefer, you can talk to the ChatGPT instead of typing and reading the answers. The AI can recognize and respond in many languages, and you can choose your preferred spoken language in the settings. Using ChatGPT as a search engine Many people now use AI instead of traditional search engines like Google. Google even shows “AI summaries” at the top of the search results, and many users likely read those instead of scrolling past. So it’s very common to use ChatGPT to find information of any kind–facts, news, recommendations, and so on. Foundry / Ashley Biancuzzo Doing so is easy and the results sound credible. The only problem is that AI is often wrong. Sometimes extremely wrong. According to a study commissioned by the BBC, ChatGPT is flawed in 81 percent of answers, with at least one serious error in a whopping 45 percent of all generated answers. The less knowledgeable you are about a topic as a user, the less likely you are to spot errors and flaws in the AI-generated results yourself. That’s why you shouldn’t rely on what ChatGPT spits out without first checking more reliable sources. You can ask the chatbot to include links to sources and sometimes it will do so on its own, but it’s good to actually follow these and double-check. ChatGPT and other AI chatbots don’t actually “know” anything. Their responses come either from external sources (like a search) or from the data the model was trained on. The more accurate information about a topic that’s in the training data, the more likely the results will be correct, but errors can still creep in. There’s no technical difference between a correct answer and a hallucinated one. What ChatGPT is good (and bad) at What ChatGPT and other AI chatbots using large language models are best at is generating answers that sound good–responses that feel believable and have a clear connection to what you asked for. This in turn makes ChatGPT an excellent tool for improving and rewriting text, rewriting a text in a different style, translating, and much more where form is more important than content. ChatGPT can also summarize long texts, give instructions, and answer complex questions on many topics, but you have to be careful with specific facts. Overall, it almost always gets it right, but individual numbers and other facts often get it wrong. With pictures and videos, it’s easy to see whether the results are good or not, but with text it’s more difficult. The latest reasoning models are better at solving equations, though it’s still easy to trick them into making mistakes on purpose, and some problems they completely miss. ChatGPT is good at generating and correcting errors in code, but it’s not great at building complete systems. You need to have the ideas and the big picture, otherwise it’s easy to pancake. It costs nothing extra to try again Was the result you got from ChatGPT when you asked for something not very good? Try again! For regular text chat, there’s no limit to the number of times you can ask it something. By rephrasing or adding additional details, you can often get the AI to produce significantly better results. To understand why, you need to know a bit about how the AI generates its answers. Large language models are extremely advanced word guessing machines. They take an input in the form of text, turn it into a string of numbers, and then use a huge statistical model to work out what the continuation is likely to be, one piece at a time. The AI has no knowledge, cannot distinguish between fact and fiction, and has no real understanding of anything. But it’s trained on vast amounts of existing text and conversations between humans. Since humans mostly speak coherently and stick to the topic at hand, the AI is likely to do the same. Adding more details increases the likelihood that the generated answer will be appropriate. Prompt engineering can give better results Systematically tweaking and refining prompts to ChatGPT has become a new skill called “prompt engineering.” There are thousands of videos on YouTube with tips on how to get better results, whether you’re writing code or generating images. Dozens of books have already been published on the subject. The basic idea is that some prompts, on average, lead to better answers. For example, adding a phrase like “now it’s time to think hard and rethink all assumptions” when brainstorming a problem can make ChatGPT’s response more creative. Since others have spent a lot of time finding such tricks, you can get a lot out of trying tips from videos, books, and articles. Watch out for fart fatigue Experimentation should be fun and inspiring, but it’s easy to get carried away with fine-tuning. “This is good, but maybe it could be even better if I just change this word here and that word there…” If you find that you’ve started to think like this and that your conversations with ChatGPT don’t feel fun and mentally relieving, you may be suffering from fart fatigue. This is a new phenomenon. The goal of introducing AI is to save time, letting employees get more done, but in many cases they end up spending as much time fine-tuning their prompts as they previously spent doing the work themselves. Privacy and security Foundry / Ashley Biancuzzo ChatGPT isn’t like a noticeboard in a town square where anyone passing by can see what you’ve written. But it’s also not a completely private service, so don’t share your deepest secrets on there. Your conversations aren’t encrypted, so there’s a chance OpenAI staff can see them. The likelihood of your chats being read is low, but it can happen. In addition, if you don’t change the privacy settings, OpenAI can train its models on all your conversations with ChatGPT. You can turn this off in Settings -> Data Controls -> Improve modelling for everyone. But even if you do, you should avoid sharing personal data and other sensitive information, as you can never be sure it won’t leak. Read...