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“LYING.” “DISGUSTING.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has made clear what he thinks of journalists and what should happen to us: “sue them and win money,” get them investigated for treason and “taken off the air.” Once he reassuringly noted that “I would never kill them, but I do hate them,” but he’s since clarified that he wouldn’t “mind so much” if someone shot the “fake news.” Ten years ago, some were inclined to shrug this off as hyperbole. Now it is crystal clear that Trump intends to do everything he can to stop journalists from reporting things he doesn’t like, which is most things that are true. The president has banned reporters from press briefings while inviting sycophants and propagandists. He has fantasized about…

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite is once again threatening to upend the PC CPU market. About two years ago, Qualcomm debuted the Snapdragon X1 Elite, an Arm chip that replaced the company’s mediocre 8-series Snapdragon chips and performed impressively. Now it’s the Snapdragon Elite X2’s turn, and the 18-core X2 Elite Extreme is ready for the spotlight. The performance is genuinely impressive. Intel’s Panther Lake and AMD’s successor to its Strix Point chips certainly will have to deliver to keep up with Qualcomm. Qualcomm didn’t allow journalists to “review” the chip in the traditional sense. Like the “tests” that were run on the first Snapdragon X Elite, Qualcomm provided test laptops, loaded them up with benchmark software, and allowed reporters to monitor the results afterwards. Naturally, this setup assumed Qualcomm supplied…

If the storage space on the C drive is running low, every free gigabyte counts. Windows often occupies more than 25 GB of space for things such as updates, restore points, and cache files. Plus, pre-installed bloatware further increases memory utilization. Freeing up memory can quickly become critical on notebooks with 128 GB SSDs or devices with soldered memory. But even on well-equipped systems, it’s worth decluttering Windows as it can lead to fewer processes, a faster startup, and a lower CPU load. Caution: Not every measure is risk-free. If you remove system components or libraries too aggressively, Windows may become unstable, updates may fail or programs may refuse to work. You should therefore always work with a restore point, back up your Windows installation, and choose your methods carefully.…

After months of testing, Apple has released iOS 26 to the public, and it’s a major update. The new version of the iPhone operating system features a new look and feel with Liquid Glass, which will instantly make your iPhone look fresh. But that’s not all. Under the hood, there are a bunch of refinements, utilities, and new APIs worth exploring. Here are the top things you absolutely should try once you update your iPhone to iOS 26. 1. EXPLORE THE NEW LIQUID GLASS INTERFACE Possibly the most notable change in iOS 26 is Liquid Glass, which is what Apple calls its new interface available across its family of operating systems. Liquid Glass simulates the effects of glass on the screen, bringing much more transparency and brightness to elements such as…

If you told me 25 years ago that Intel would end up in decline, that Nvidia would buy a chunk of the ailing company, and that the two would partner to build chips that integrate Intel x86 CPU cores with Nvidia’s RTX GPU cores, I would’ve called you crazy. But here we are. Nvidia has acquired a $5 billion stake in Intel—roughly 5 percent of the company. “For personal computing, we’re going to create new Intel x86 SoCs that integrate Nvidia GPU chiplets, fusing the world’s best CPU and GPU, to redefine the PC experience,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on an investor call following the announcement. The announcement made headlines and for good reason. This alliance will create a monster that Intel and Nvidia’s competitors—namely, AMD and Qualcomm—will struggle…

Apple’s macOS 26 public betas are now out, marking another major milestone on the road to their release this fall. While all the social-media discourse has been about Apple’s new Liquid Glass design, that talk obscures some of Apple’s other interesting choices in this year’s operating system cycle. While Apple would probably insist (like a proud parent) that it doesn’t have favorites among its platforms, the choices Apple has made in this cycle say an awful lot about the company’s priorities, especially when it comes to the Mac. LIVING IN GLASS HOUSES Let’s start with the Liquid Glass design itself. The entire premise of this design is that Apple’s devices are largely featureless glass slabs, so creating a software interface that plays on the illusion that it’s actually a set of glass…

As an IT expert, I’m used to building digital fortresses. Firewalls, virus scanners, complex passwords, two-factor authentication: My tech life is a high-security zone. I thought my physical home was, too—at least until I went into my garage one morning and realized the brackets for my planned solar-panel installation, which had been stored on a pallet in front of it, were missing. Foil cut, opened, and stolen. In the middle of the night. After the initial anger and the police report, my rage gave way to cool analysis: It was time to invest in more security. But my goal was to spend less than $500. BURGLARS ARE AT THEIR PEAK IN AUTUMN The risk of burglary increases dramatically during the darker months of the year, when dusk can set late…

Given the choice, Apple would have rolled out its first custom-designed Mac chips on its own terms, probably at a high-profile event in the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple Park. But given that it was November 2020, the company was forced to release a 45-minute video instead. No amount of in-person theatrics would have upstaged the star of that show, the M1 processor. Five years later, it’s clear that the arrival of Apple silicon has utterly changed the trajectory of the Mac. A CAREFUL START In that first event (which you can relive in this YouTube video), Apple announced its first wave of M1 Macs: the MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini. The Macs themselves all used the same design as their Intel predecessors, as Apple wrapped potentially scary…

Last year’s NV2 from Kingston delivered great bang-for-your-SSD-buck. This year’s NV3 is still wonderfully affordable, yet massively improved — even setting a record writing our 450GB single file. Who would’ve thought? Editor’s note: This article was edited on September 18, 2025 to correct the TBW ratings and add info about a new 2230 version. FEATURES The NV3 is a PCIe 4.0 x4 (four lane), M.2 NVMe SSD using a DRAM-less (Host Memory Buffer/HMB) design to cut down on costs. The controller is a Silicon Motion SM2268XG and the NAND is Kingston-labeled, stacked QLC. At least that’s my assumption given the performance off cache and TBW rating. The actual type of NAND and the number of layers wasn’t specified by Kingston, and the company says that will vary from capacity to capacity.…

Picking up the Logitech MX Master 4 for the first time, I’m struck by how well it fits in my hand. Its shape is just right, with a slope that allows the wrist to rest naturally and the thumb to fall onto the buttons. It’s a mouse that feels long enough to keep your fingers from hitting the touch buttons—something that has annoyed me on many other models. The MX Master 4 isn’t about speed or RGB lights, it’s about comfort, precision, and getting work done. The surface is solid, the materials feel premium and the clicking sounds are almost nonexistent. The right and left buttons are extremely quiet and very sensitive, which is perfect in open-plan office environments but takes some getting used to. I quickly realize I’m pressing…

“AND THEY GET away with the corruption,” read the subject line. I knew it was from Bill Moyers, because launching right into the point was typical when he sent me news clips and ideas, sometimes several times a day, in the waning months of the first Trump administration. They would ding in at 5 a.m. or earlier—that, too, was typical of a man who, then in his mid-80s, showed no sign of slowing from a pace that his longtime producer, Judy Doctoroff, described to me as that of an “overwhelmingly energetic idea machine.” Moyers died in June, at 91. His life had an incredible arc—born to a dirt farmer in Oklahoma, ordained a Baptist minister at 25, LBJ’s right-hand man and present on Air Force One after the Kennedy assassination,…

Earlier this month, security guru Troy Hunt added a staggering 2 billion unique email addresses and 1.3 billion unique passwords to his Have I Been Pwned and Pwned Passwords databases. Aggregated by Synthient, the data comes from multiple credential stuffing sources shared by threat actors, as well as data stolen directly from individuals through info-stealer malware. The number of people affected is so massive that the rollout of notifications went out in waves to Have I Been Pwned subscribers. (This service is free—enter your email address into the HIBP search field, and then click on the Notify Me button that appears before any results.) The data also has particular characteristics that stood out to me. (You can read more about them in Hunt’s blog post here.) Between these details and…

AutoHotkey (AHK) is a free and simple yet powerful Windows scripting language. It doesn’t get a lot of press these days, but Windows geeks used to love writing and swapping AHK scripts. You can learn AHK and write the scripts yourself if you want to—the AutoHotkey documentation is pretty good—or you could use an AI tool like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, and so on to do the work for you. Well, that’s what I did. Months ago, I vibe-coded a script that changes how scrolling works on Windows. (Vibe coding is when you use prompt instructions to generate code via AI.) I still use it every day because it’s a huge help on my desktop PC’s big monitor. With AI, creating the script took less than an hour. All I…

What was long considered impossible has now been a reality for almost four years: iPhone owners are allowed to pick their own default apps for core functions such as email, phone, messaging, and web browsing. While Apple was reluctant to grant users these freedoms, pressure from regulators and competitors finally forced the company to yield ground. But how open is the system really? Who benefits? And are the non-Apple options genuinely useful in everyday life, or are they just a way to appease competition authorities? Let’s investigate. WHAT DOES A “DEFAULT APP” MEAN IN iOS? The default app for any given function is the one that iOS will use if it is not instructed otherwise. Until 2020, for example, Apple rigidly controlled which app “mailto:” and web links would open…

Some records are spellbinding; when we least expect it, they transport us to another place and time. A certain melodic flourish or perfectly timed percussive pulse can pull us down a rabbit hole of memories and emotions. These “lightning in a bottle” recording sessions often happen when intense planning, coupled with spontaneous improvisation, result in something ethereal and likely unrepeatable. When it comes to jazz recordings, Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, The Dave Brubeck Quartet's Time Out, and The Thelonious Monk Quartet's Misterioso fall into this category. Whether it's Columbia's storied New York studios or a smoke-filled night at the Five Spot, these recordings are alive with palpable energy, and passive listening is impossible. They also somehow manage to convey the essence of a moment in history or an aspect…

When pre-event rumors claimed that the iPhone 17 series would have a new horizontal camera bar, I admit that I was concerned. At the time, all we had were renders and supposed CAD designs, with the assumption that the camera bar’s purpose was to bulk up the camera array to make the rest of the phone seem even thinner. As it turns out, I was completely wrong. But as Tim Cook reminded everyone at the “Awe Dropping” event in September, Apple is the company of “design is how it works,” where a good design is one that works seamlessly and enriches your life, not just one that is visually appealing but devoid of functionality. As Apple demonstrated, the iPhone Air’s and 17 Pro’s camera “plateau” isn’t just a camera bar. Rather,…

First we ditched our housekeys for a numerical code that unlocked our doors, then we moved up to sometimes balky fingerprint readers. The TCL D2 Pro Palm Vein Smart Lock ups the ante with an amazing palm vein reader that takes just 0.3 seconds to unlock your door once you present your hand in front of its tiny scanner. TCL, best known for its budget-friendly TVs, moves further into the home security market with its second generation of smart door locks that hit the market alongside its B1 Security Camera. The D2 Pro is the top of the line and TCL’s only lock to feature a palm vein reader. The D2 Pro also features a built-in doorbell (but not a camera). Pressing the doorbell button a sounds a chime on…

For the longest time, Mac folder personalization was primarily limited to adding a name, tag, and custom icon. While you could tweak the look further through unofficial means, the default methods were quite restrained. With macOS Tahoe, that’s all finally changed. You can now easily add symbols or emojis, change the folder’s color, set a default look, and much more. Customize your folders to help organize your Mac or to add a little bit of your personal style. Here’s how. PICK A COLOR OR TAG FOR YOUR FOLDER If you’re a Mac user, you’re likely already familiar with tags in the Finder app. Tags let you organize files and folders based on criteria of your choosing. Each tag can have its own name and color, making it easy to identify…

Reporting on the debut of the new Zellaton flagship, the challenge for me was to keep the focus away from the price of the loudspeaker. The mention of that number—$738,000 per pair—will inevitably provoke outrage in a segment of the audiophile community that views the escalating cost of the most ambitious products as a cynical money-grab, a corrosive trend that threatens to bring down the high end. Those folks have a valid argument—but only to a point. There are a relatively small number of wealthy individuals who identify as audiophiles, concentrated in certain markets, who seek out expensive products because they're expensive, the other prominent aspect of this form of conspicuous consumption being that they leverage their status to get a discounted price they can boast about to their friends.…

I WAS TOLD there would be a diamond-encrusted steak. One hot May morning in Las Vegas, I was wandering through an art gallery set up in the Venetian Resort hotel and casino’s cavernous convention hall—where 35,000 cryptocurrency enthusiasts were gathered for the seventh annual bitcoin conference—in search of Rare. Artist Maxfield Mellenbruch had supposedly transformed a hunk of meat into “an exquisite combination of platinum and 216 carats of diamonds and rubies,” according to the conference promoters. “Much like Bitcoin itself, Rare challenges conventional ideas of value, art, and asset.” The piece, appraised at $2.2 million and up for auction, was nowhere to be found among portraits of Pepe the Frog and bitcoin-themed Andy Warhol knockoffs. Instead, the exhibit commanding the most attention was considerably less dazzling: a dingy gray…

Apple likes to advertise its smartwatch on the wrists of sporty people—admittedly, they all look good—engaged in some physical activity against a breathtaking scene somewhere in the mountains or on the beach. This easily gives the impression that the Apple Watch is intended exclusively for athletes and fitness enthusiasts. The Apple Watch is interesting not only for athletes but also for those who have nothing to do with sports. It collects vital data and can use this data to provide valuable insights into your own health. Some emergency notifications have already saved the lives of more than a few people. Here are the Apple Watch features you can make the most of every day. HEART-RATE NOTIFICATIONS Most of the life-saving stories we’ve heard from our readers and followers concern two…

Well. I checked outside my window when news broke of a Steam Machine 2.0—no pigs. So with a bit of circular logic, I’ll say that Will shouldn’t have doubted the return of Valve’s living room gaming console. It is true that the first Steam Machine didn’t take. The world largely regarded it as a curiosity. Valve’s hardware partners and their subdued marketing didn’t do much to help that perception. No one knew what to make of a thing that was not quite a PC or console, with less ability to play games. I’ve seen this initial attempt called a failure, most recently by IGN in its news writeup of this reborn Steam Machine. But Valve held on for a long while—it gave the attempt several years. To me, its eventual…

Just as Razer enters the Mac market with its Pro Click mouse, Logitech strikes back with a long-awaited (and widely leaked) update to its popular MX Master series. The MX Master 3 was released way back in 2019, with an update to the 3S in 2022. The 3S wasn’t a major update, but the new MX Master 4 does represent a real step forward, with Logitech introducing haptic feedback technology for the first time. We are, however, pleased to note that the price remains the same, at $119.99/£119.99, despite the introduction of the new haptic technology. The MX Master 3S also remains on sale, now at a discounted price, so that’s still a good alternative to Apple’s Magic Mouse too. It’s worth mentioning that, as with previous MX mice and keyboards, there…

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips are often a solid choice for a budget laptop, as they deliver good-enough performance and solid battery life at a low price. Most systems, though, have smaller displays. The Acer Aspire 16 AI adds an appealing big-screen option that is packed with features including USB4, Windows Hello facial recognition, and a plus-size touchpad, among other things. SPECS AND FEATURES The Acer Aspire 16 AI has Qualcomm’s entry-level Snapdragon X chip with eight cores and a maximum multicore speed of 3GHz. It also ships with 16GB of memory and a 512GB solid-state drive. These are typical specifications for an entry-level Snapdragon X laptop. Model number: A16-11MT-X669 CPU: Snapdragon X1P-26-100 Memory: 16GB LPDDR5X-8448 Graphics/GPU: Qualcomm Adreno NPU: Qualcomm NPU up to 45 TOPs Display: 16-inch 1920×1200 120Hz IPS-LCD…

“WE ALREADY LIVE in a fascist state.” I’ve been hearing that so often these last few months, from friends, pundits, Mother Jones readers. And who can blame them? People have been disappeared to torture prisons overseas and ICE is terrorizing day care centers. The federal workforce is being gutted, the economy is on a razor’s edge, America’s global credibility is in tatters, and kids are going hungry while billionaires cash in. A conspiracy theorist is in charge of our health agencies. Universities, law firms, and nonprofits live in fear of the Eye of Sauron fixing on them. Midterm elections? Will we even have them? To feel grim in the face of all this is to be realistic. But to throw in the towel and declare game over—that’s something else.…

Phishing is alive and well in 2025, as even with robust antivirus and anti-malware protections, the weakest link in the security chain is often the human element. We all make mistakes, skim an email, and think it’s probably fine to click that link. But wait! Don’t do it! Phishing scammers rely on you not using due diligence to protect yourself, your data, and your devices with good personal security practices. The best way to spot phishing emails is to know what to look for. Here’s a list of some of the big phishing red flags that should send you running when you spot them. ASKING FOR ANYTHING For a scam to be worth doing, the scammers need to make money. For that, they need to get you to send them something…

I recently moved to a much more rural area, so getting Starlink set up was one of my top priorities. My area is an internet dead zone where you might get a bit of 4G on a nearby hill, but that’s about it. There’s no cellular for phone calls, and the best I can hope from a landline connection is 3 Mbps. As a modern man with a modern family full of modern devices, I need fast internet—so I readied Starlink even before my kids’ beds. It worked pretty well, too. At first I heard a bunch of buzzing noises that I was not expecting, but that sort of coil whine is apparently pretty typical. A few minutes later, I was online! But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Having Starlink…

Can you imagine yourself having a conversation with Windows about what your PC is doing? Microsoft’s Windows chief can—and is trying to build a future where those interactions are the norm. In an interview with Microsoft AI product manager Christiaan Brinkhoff, the chief of Microsoft’s Windows + Devices group, Pavan Davuluri, explained that the company is trying to work toward a future where you can access Windows pretty much anywhere via the cloud, then use AI to fine-tune what you’re trying to accomplish. Microsoft described the conversation as “the next chapter of Windows,” with an eye toward delivering the changes within the next few years. Davuluri described what he hoped the Windows team could accomplish from a strategic level, without targeting any future version of Windows with these goals in…

Microsoft’s next Xbox will run Windows, a report says, blurring the line between PCs and consoles and making the latest Xbox Ally X the model of what Microsoft hopes to achieve in gaming. Windows Central, which has established some good sources inside the console space, claims (fave.co/4orEByV) that the next Xbox will run Windows, with an Xbox Full Screen Experience layered on top. Given that Microsoft has already established a close working relationship with AMD, those chips should be inside the console as well, with backward compatibility going all the way back to the Xbox 360, the site says. Microsoft hasn’t explicitly said that the next Xbox would run Windows, though the company hasn’t really tried to hide it, either. In June, Xbox president Sarah Bond said that the Xbox team…

There are few more frustrating iPhone experiences than receiving a spam call. Whether it’s interrupting your work or play, it doesn’t take much for a junk call to take you out of the moment. The problem is that they’re seemingly extremely difficult to stop, and no matter what you try, a few still seem to make it through the net. At least, that was the case before iOS 26’s Call Screening feature came along. Since I installed iOS 26, it’s stopped unwanted calls in their tracks, leaving me in spam-free bliss all day long. The way Call Screening works is extremely simple. When you get a call from an unknown number, the caller will first be put through to an automated voice that asks them to identify themselves and describe…

Surprise! We woke up this morning to a blockbuster mashup between Intel and Nvidia (see page 84). Team Green invested a cool $5 billion into Intel, and in exchange, the two companies will be co-creating consumer and data center x86 processors interwoven with Nvidia’s RTX graphics. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together…mass hysteria! It’s simultaneously a shocking shakeup of the PC chip triumvirate (AMD must be fuming), a much-needed lifeline for struggling Intel, and a recipe for a potentially exciting future—the world’s foremost graphics pioneer joining forces with the company formerly known as Chipzilla. Imagine the possibilities! But I also have to ask myself at the same time: What does this mean for the future of Arc, Intel’s own in-house graphics project? INTEL ARC’S SHORT HISTORY SHOWS PROMISE… Arc…

When Sheffield Lab released The King James Version in 1977, big band music was hardly my thing. A budding audiophile, a child of rock 'n' roll getting into classical music and 50s and 60s jazz, I assumed this would be pretty “square” stuff. Moreover, this was my parents' music. (Hey, I was young. And boy, was I wrong.) Although a few labels today record some of their LPs direct-to-disc—most notably Britain's Chasing the Dragon, Jack White's Third Man Records, Analogue Productions' Blues series, even a one-off of Brahms Symphonies by the Berlin Philharmonic—few today record exclusively D2D the way Sheffield Lab did during its heyday in the 1970s. This is understandable. The process is expensive by nature and fraught with technical as well as musical challenges. But before the advent of…

I know I’m not alone in the frustration that comes from dreaded Windows updates hitting at the worst times. The small, incremental updates aren’t too bad, but the larger updates that turn up every so often can be a real source of stress—that is, until you choose to be proactive and take control of them like I eventually learned to do. To be clear, Windows updates are important. Without them, you leave your PC open to malware, instability, and performance issues. (That’s why the end of Windows 10 support is such a big deal and why you should only stick with Windows 10 if you have extended support.) We recommend keeping your Windows PC updated whenever you can. Fortunately, while Microsoft is in charge of releasing the various Windows updates,…

In mortarboards and crimsonfringed gowns, thousands of students were last week joined by smiling families for the centuries-old ritual of graduation day. But this year was different. Alan Garber, the president of Harvard University, received a standing ovation and welcomed graduates “from down the street, across the country and around the world”, drawing applause for the last words: “Around the world – just as it should be.” It was a nod to the international students who are part of the lifeblood of Harvard but a target for Donald Trump, whose administration is seeking to revoke the institution’s ability to enrol overseas students. It is just one front in an escalating battle between a US president with authoritarian ambitions and the county’s oldest, wealthiest and most prestigious university. Trump has used…

SHERIFF COUNTRY PREMIERES FRIDAY, OCT. 17, 9/8C It’s high time Morena Baccarin got her High Noon moment! “She gets more than one,” raves Matt Lopez, the showrunner for this high-caliber Fire Country spinoff centered on the fabulously commanding Sheriff Mickey Fox (Baccarin). Introduced in a pair of episodes over the past two seasons of CBS’s hit drama as the aunt of Fire’s Bode (Max Thieriot) and stepsister of his Cal Fire boss Sharon (Diane Farr), the straight-shooting Mickey is now facing the heat of protecting and serving the shows’ fictional town of Edgewater, California. And from the very eventful pilot, Mickey and her portrayer are more than up for the job. Baccarin “is a great leader, she’s a great actor and I’ve enjoyed her performances for years,” continues Lopez (Promised…

On Jan. 15, 2025, the Gaia spacecraft took its last image. Then the craft ran a final round of engineering tests, fired its thrusters to leave Earth behind, and slipped into an orbit around the Sun, finally turning off on March 27. After more than a decade in operation, 3 trillion observations, and 2 billion stars observed, Gaia has earned its retirement. Launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2013, Gaia’s goal was “to map a billion stars,” and it succeeded. Compiling the map of where these stars are and how they move paints a picture of our entire galaxy — even the dark matter, whose gravitational influence subtly tugs on the stars. Along the way, Gaia found brown dwarfs, exoplanets, and quasars. Peering down to 20th magnitude, Gaia…

Private Internet Access (PIA) has seemingly been around since the advent of third-party VPNs. Since that time, it’s been a favorite VPN service for many users thanks to its excellent pricing and good privacy guarantees. Recently the service has made some truly promising improvements by lifting the device connection limit and undergoing a third-party audit. So, with these new updates, how does PIA stack up against the other titans of the VPN market? Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best VPN services for comparison. Private Internet Access in brief: P2P allowed: Yes Simultaneous device connections: Unlimited Business location: U.S. Number of servers: 35,000-plus Number of country locations: 91 Cost: $11.95 per month, $39.95 for a one-year plan, or $79 for a three-year plan FEATURES AND SERVICES…

In my review of the first Express 1M2 for PCWorld, I was stoked that uber-fast USB4 storage was finally at hand. In Macworld’s review, it was touted that SSDs don’t get much better than this. At the time, that was true. Now it’s not, thanks to the 1M2 80G. By the last three letters in the moniker, you might guess that the new model is 80Gbps. It is. It’s also USB4 80Gbps, so unlike Thunderbolt 5, it can also function on any USB port. It’s fast. We like it. FEATURES Though it looks almost identical to the older 1M2 (basically a large silver heatsink with an NVMe SSD inside), the 80G is slightly different. The silver color is a bit brighter, and the Type-C port on the business end is…

If Safari is your primary browser, like it is for me, it’s certainly one of the most important apps on the Mac. But did you know you can make it do more? You can with browser extensions. If you aren’t familiar with them, they are software add-ons that add functionality to Safari. Safari doesn’t have as many extensions as Google Chrome, but there are several you can take advantage of. Safari extensions are available through the App Store. You can find extensions for Mac Safari by selecting Safari → Safari Extensions in the Safari menu bar. Then click on the Browse Extensions button. An overview page will then open in the Mac App Store. Free and paid extensions are available; installed plug-ins are also automatically made available on iOS and…

IN JANUARY 2010, the private prison operator now known as CoreCivic announced the closure of a 752-bed facility in Walsenburg, Colorado. At the time, the Huerfano County Correctional Center was the second-largest employer in the county. Its shutdown caused a “major hit” to the economy, said John Galusha, then the county’s administrator. The town estimated a loss of $300,000 in revenue as almost 190 jobs disappeared, helping spike the county unemployment rate to 10.2 percent, above the state average. Without the contract that paid 25 cents a day per inmate into local coffers, Galusha said, “we had a hard time keeping up with the demand from social services.” For the last 15 years, the facility has lain dormant. But that may soon change. Vested with a $45 billion immigration…

1 THE NORTH POLE gets all the attention this time of year, but what about the South Pole? The southernmost spot on earth and Antarctica, the continent it sits on, are surreal. At the South Pole, the sun rises just once a year—and doesn't set until six months later. The landscape: snow and ice as far as the eye can see, and that ice extends down more than a mile. In some places, it's almost 3 miles thick. 2 FEW HAVE set foot in Antarctica. Its only inhabitants— between 1,000 and 5,000 people, depending on the season—live at one of 70 permanent research stations on the continent. Their food has to be flown or shipped in, since it can't be grown in the ground. Between the scientists and their support staff, roughly…

It takes a lot to get me up and out of bed for a 4 a.m. shuttle to the Albuquerque Sunport just to catch a flight to San Francisco. But REL Acoustics’ John Hunter, a co-owner and expert in the deep dark arts of low-frequency reproduction, is a very, very persuasive individual. And given the occasion—RELs 35th Anniversary and the debut of its latest Serie S subwoofers—it was an invitation I couldn't refuse, especially as I'm an owner of a three-year-old pair of S/812 subs Indeed, bass octaves were most definitely in the air when our group of roughly 15 journalists descended on REL's Berkeley HQ. (This was not a factory tour per se—the actual assembly of REL subs occurs at three other locations.) After a comprehensive office tour and…

Certainly one of the main highlights of iOS 26, which was announced in June at the Worldwide Developers Conference 2025, is the new Liquid Glass interface. But the update also comes with a lot of other new features—such as many new application programming interfaces that open up a lot of possibilities for app developers. While Liquid Glass is the most notable change for anyone trying out the iOS 26 public beta, it’s not the only one. With smarter battery tools, improvements for AirPods and Apple Music, and more capabilities powered by Apple Intelligence, the update brings improvements to everyone. So even if you’re not a fan of the new Liquid Glass interface or are wondering what else iOS 26 has to offer, we’re here to show you that the update…

On July 1, 2025, the NASAfunded Asteroid Terrestrialimpact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, detected an object some 419 million miles (675 million kilometers) from Earth that astronomers quickly confirmed had come from beyond our solar system. Designated 3I/ATLAS and C/2025 N1 (ATLAS) — the latter due to signs of cometary activity — it is only the third known interstellar object after 1I/‘Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov. FROM THE THICK DISK Moving much faster than either of the previously detected objects, 3I/ATLAS is approaching from near the galactic center, in the constellation Sagittarius. These factors together indicate it may have come from our galaxy’s thick disk, a more ancient stellar population that surrounds the thinner disk where our Sun resides. Stars in the thick disk often have different chemical…

October 14 officially marked the end of full support for Windows 10, a whopping decade after Microsoft debuted the operating system. You’re probably aware of this already, as Microsoft has been begging, pleading, cajoling, and almost demanding that Windows 10 users switch over to Windows 11 by upgrading to a new device or updating their operating system (if their hardware supports it). But if you haven’t done anything about it yet, you probably should. Here’s a quick summary of what you need to know and what to do about it. YOUR OPTIONS FOR WINDOWS 10 You don’t have to leave Windows 10 if you don’t want to. Hundreds of millions of PCs (about half of them, in fact) won’t stop working just because of a specific date on the calendar. This…

Panther Lake, the next generation of Intel’s Core Ultra series of laptop processors, is nearly here. But what is it, exactly? Intel spent several days explaining the fine details of Panther Lake to journalists at a recent press event, including its new compute cores, graphics cores, NPU AI, and wireless. If you’re interested, PCWorld has a deep dive into all of Panther Lake’s technologies. But if you just want the basics, stay here. Here’s what you need to know about Intel’s Panther Lake chip, in brief. 1. EXPECT PANTHER LAKE IN 2026 Intel executives talked about some of the details of Panther Lake themselves. But the details that matter to laptop buyers (speed, price, and which laptops will have them) will have to wait for CES 2026 in Las Vegas…

IN 2013, venture capitalist Tim Draper launched a “Six Californias” ballot initiative. The upshot was that with some 40 million people, more than the population of the 20 smallest states combined, California was too big, too diverse, to be “efficiently” governed. So why not, Draper argued, break it up into six new “startups,” a.k.a. states? Instead of two senators, we erstwhile “Californians” would get 12. Draper’s scheme was part of a long tradition—since California was admitted to the Union as part of the Compromise of 1850, there have been more than 220 proposals for it to divide or secede—but derided as a Silicon Valley ploy to create a libertarian deregulation zone. (Tellingly, the Bay Area state was to be named “Silicon Valley.”) And aside from the feasibility of making…

Now is a great time to buy a new Apple computer. One of the biggest decisions you’ll have to make when buying a new Mac is whether you should buy a desktop model or opt for a laptop instead. Apple’s laptops might seem like the best choice, with a combination of portability and price, but Apple also offers a great selection of desktops, from the teeny-tiny M4 Mac mini to the all-in-one iMac. So the next time you’re shopping for a new Mac, consider joining Team Desktop and opting for one of Apple’s less portable Macs instead of a MacBook. STATIONARY COMFORT Let’s face it, hunching over a MacBook for hours on end does your body no favors. You’ll typically use your laptop on an arm-level surface, whether that’s a desk…

One of the most consequential developments in the history of computing happened 50 years ago. It set Apple on course to becoming one of the most valuable companies on the planet and changed the face of computing in unfathomable ways. Yet you’ve probably never even heard of what went down. It’s an often-overlooked moment that had incredible consequences for years to come. Typing on a computer is something we all take for granted today. One of Apple’s key philosophies has long been to get the technology out of your way—Steve Jobs and Jony Ive have waxed lyrical on that idea—so day to day, we never really think much about how writing on a computer actually works. We can debate the pros and cons of various displays and even build our…

Windows 11 version 25H2 will be officially available in fall 2025 and marks the next major feature update for Microsoft’s current operating system. The new features are already available for Insiders and can be tested in the current Windows 11 25H2 Insider Preview. Though it’s categorized as an “enablement update,” the scope of the changes is considerable. The basic architecture remains identical to version 24H2, which means there are no new hardware requirements. If you don’t already have Windows 11, or just need a new license, you can grab it for 50 percent off on the PCWorld Software store right now. For all systems that are already running on 24H2, the upgrade requires minimal effort. A small enablement package activates the new functions without the need for a complete reinstallation or…

Microsoft’s vision for Windows in 2030 includes a “voice-first” interaction mode that shifts away from the traditional keyboard and mouse, making them feel “alien.” Under the hood, that means handing over control to “AI agents” who perform and handle tasks on our behalf. Hey, Microsoft…can you please stop? I don’t need an agentic AI operating system. Instead of working toward a future no one wants, how about you start delivering the operating system we do want? Here’s the thing. Even AI-loving power users don’t need Windows reimagined as an AI canvas, and they definitely don’t need a low-quality local image generator built into the Photos app. They’re accessing cloud-based AI tools or installing heavy local AI models and running them on high-end GPUs. Here’s what AI enthusiasts need from Windows: an OS…

What’s your malware tally? I’ve had plenty stopped by my antivirus and antimalware software, but the number I’ve had actually infect my PC is, I’m proud to say, a big fat donut (zero). What’s more, it’s been that way for more than 10 years. So what’s my secret? Here’s what I do to prevent malware from infecting my PC. 1. DODGY WEBSITES ARE A NO-GO FOR ME Hackers tend to infect websites that people flock to in droves or where people go to download programs for free. Because of that, I steer clear of torrent sites, unverified download sites, and adult websites, some of which are the worst offenders—teeming with malware. Also, if I get a banner or ad pop-up that I just can’t close, instead of trying to click…

It began with something strange in the woods. On 6 March 2025, a man out hunting in forest near Plymouth, Massachusetts, came across a skull. He was could see it wasn’t animal – there was no mistaking the human curve of it, even sunken in soil. Police were called, and the quiet woods turned into a potential crime scene. Just hours later, across state lines in Connecticut, another body was found. The woman was identified as 35-year-old Paige Fannon. Her body was pulled from the Norwalk River, with no clear sign of what had happened to her, and her belongings left on the riverbank. She had been reported missing in New York the day before her body was recovered by scuba divers, after she was spotted in the local area.…

Keter is the latest manufacturer to take a shot at ending the epidemic of porch piracy plaguing online shoppers. Its Keter Package Delivery Box is the most basic solution I’ve tested—there’s no smart lock, no broadband connectivity, and no delivery notifications. What it lacks in technology, however, Keter’s box makes up in practicality. SPECIFICATIONS Like the garden sheds that Keter is best known for, the Keter Package Delivery Box is fabricated almost entirely from resin, with metal handles on its lid and door, and a hasp for a user-provided padlock. It arrives as a 41-pound flat pack and takes about 45 minutes to assemble (I missed an early step in the illustration-only instructions, so it took me considerably longer because I had to partially disassemble it to fix my error).…

MUSTANG VERSUS 911 is not a natural match up. However, thanks to the Balance of Performance measures that race-sanctioning bodies employ to enhance on-track competition among diverse vehicles, Mustang versus 911 became quite contentious this year in IMSA’s GTD Pro class. After the Mustang drew first blood with the class win at the season-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona in January, the two went back and forth in the standings all season long. Rewind a few years. Ford’s designers are shaping a clay model of the Mustang GT3 race car, and in walks CEO Jim Farley—a true Blue Oval fan who currently vintage-races a Shelby Cobra 289 and has campaigned a GT40. The short version of the story is that he took one look at the model and decreed a roadgoing…

Remember the first laptops? They were weird. Ancient laptops were often as large as desktop computers, but they had tiny screens that could only display a few dozen characters. Over time, progress ironed out the flaws and peculiarities of those first laptops—and the ultrabook trend of the 2010s pushed laptops to their natural conclusion: thin, light, and anonymous. But in 2025, a new trend has emerged. As Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm compete to provide more options, and as experimentation becomes less risky on certain fronts, the PC laptop arena has witnessed an explosion of laptops that are unique, unusual, and (in some cases) just plain odd. And if you ask me? I’m loving it. DUAL-SCREEN, FOLDABLE, AND ROLLABLE LAPTOPS HAVE BECOME A REALITY Laptops have always required compromise when it comes…

Apple has officially released iOS 26 to everyone, and while changes like Liquid Glass make the update impossible to miss, there are plenty of useful new features that aren’t as obvious. Some of them are buried in menus, and others only appear when you know where to look. Here are some of the best hidden features of iOS 26 that are worth trying, and exactly where to find them. USE AIRPODS AS A VIDEO-RECORDING MIC One of the most practical additions in iOS 26 is the ability to use your AirPods as an external microphone when recording videos with the iPhone camera. This means you can capture clearer audio, even if you’re standing a bit away from the iPhone. To do this, follow these steps: 1. Put your AirPods in your…

EARLY THIS YEAR, a surprise space rock made headlines around the globe when the International Asteroid Warning Network sounded its highest alarm since its creation in 2013. Threat levels for the newly discovered asteroid, named 2024 YR4, were steadily increasing rather than waning, and experts estimated that the superyacht-sized rock had as much as a 1-in-33 chance of hitting Earth in just eight years. Its relatively long four-year orbit meant it would not be detectable again until 2028 on its final pass, leaving very little time for intervention. Scientists were concerned, but weeks of additional tracking granted a reprieve. Further data indicated that YR4 would miss Earth, though still have a 1-in-25 chance of hitting the Moon in 2032. Relieved for the moment, astronomers nonetheless caution that a major impact…

I’ve often considered that Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass is the best deal in gaming, if you’re looking to get a huge amount of variety and access for a small monthly fee. I might have to recalculate after the latest price hike. On October 1 Microsoft announced prices going up in the U.S. by quite a lot, rising from $19.99 to $29.99 USD for the all-you-can-play Ultimate package. That still includes hundreds of local and streaming games (heavily featuring titles published by Microsoft’s various studios, of course) across Xbox and PC, and sometimes jumping between them. Microsoft is also trying to convince players that the increased price comes with extra incentives, including a new selection of “classics” from the Ubisoft+catalog of digital games. There’s also a new partnership with Epic, which…

There was a time when Apple offered one iPhone model. That’s it. You want an iPhone, you got it. Does someone else you know want an iPhone? They got the same one you did. Times are a little more complicated, and now Apple offers multiple iPhone lines and models. Plenty of reasons exist for why that is, including the evolution of technology, the maturing of the market, Apple’s approach to sales, and more. But all that doesn’t matter to you. What matters is that a simple task is no longer so: Which iPhone should I get? Apple is doing its part to clarify which iPhone is the right one for each customer. Take the iPhone 17 Pro Max, the focus of this review. It’s Apple’s top-of-the-line phone, and it’s oozing…

IN A BOLD NEW PROPOSAL for exploring Mars, aerospace firm AeroVironment has unveiled Skyfall, a potential mission concept that would ditch the traditional lander and rover in favor of a swarm of six autonomous helicopter drones. The proposed mission, announced July 24, would leverage the agility of autonomous rotorcraft like NASA’s Ingenuity, which operated on Mars from 2021 to 2024. If it becomes reality, a Skyfall mission could reveal prime locations for future human missions and scientific investigations. AeroVironment sees Ingenuity-like drones as ideal reconnaissance scouts, filling a gap between the global coverage of orbiters and the limited mobility of landers and rovers. The record for the longest distance covered by a rover, set by NASA’s Opportunity, is just over the length of a marathon, notes William Pomerantz, AeroVironment’s head…

If you go to Tokyo, there’s a good chance you’ll develop a new appreciation for shopping malls. The Japanese know malls. They know just what to do with them. Inside a Tokyo mall, you can peruse the usual handbags and shoes in their unending variety. But you can also stare at Fuji apples as large as a baby’s head swaddled in tissue paper, flip through the world’s most exquisite stationery, stock up on fabric from the 1920s, and taste things that will haunt you well into retirement. I remember having my first serious sushi in Tokyo on the top floor of a Ginza mall. My partner and I were led into a private room where a chef who didn’t speak a word of English prepared one of the four or…

At a list price of $40—and often on sale for less—the Roku Streaming Stick Plus hits a sweet spot. It’s not the cheapest streaming dongle Roku sells, but it’s the least expensive option with 4K HDR video, and it sports slightly better performance than the $30 Roku Streaming Stick. Its portable design is also an improvement over the Roku Express 4K+, which Roku previously sold at the same price. I still have some misgivings about Roku’s software, which is gradually getting more complicated and bloated. But if you enjoy the Roku experience as it is, the Roku Streaming Stick Plus is a solid option. WHAT’S INCLUDED WITH THE STREAMING STICK PLUS The Roku Streaming Stick Plus has the same finger-size design as the cheaper Roku Streaming Stick I reviewed in July,…

Netflix is still perceived as the default on-demand TV streaming service, delivering movies and series to over 300 million paid subscribers. Despite its popularity and sizable catalog, the platform has been steadily raising prices while introducing changes that downgrade the overall user experience. Apple TV+, on the other hand, offers a more limited content library and has only attracted around 45 million users. Nevertheless, after using both platforms for years, I canceled my Netflix subscription and decided to embrace Apple’s alternative service. Here’s why. SHARING IS CARING One thing I despise is when tech corporations paywall free features instead of innovating to boost their revenue. Once upon a time, Netflix allowed multiple users to share a single account—even when they lived in separate households. In fact, the company encouraged this…

Plugable’s 11-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 (TBT-UDT3) docking station is a moderately priced Thunderbolt 5 dock that can future-proof your PC for years to come. While it might not offer the dedicated display ports of older docks, its integrated Thunderbolt Share delivers file sharing and a KVM-like experience for free. What Plugable doesn’t offer is integrated storage or active cooling, saving your wallet some additional cash. Just keep in mind that you may have to make up for that by buying some additional display cables. DESIGN AND BUILD Plugable calls this dock the Plugable Thunderbolt 5 Dock with 3× Thunderbolt 5 ports, 140W Laptop Charging, or TBT-UDT3. It’s a rather compact Thunderbolt 5 docking station, measuring 6.9×1.6×3.1 inches. I’ve always been somewhat partial to docks which utilize vertical space, such as the…

PLENTY OF AUTO MAKERS have claimed to draw inspiration from fighter jets, but no vehicle has gone as far as the Czinger 21C. Here, you climb under a canopy and tuck yourself into a central driver’s seat. Which is just one aspect that makes this California-built hypercar unique. Parent company Divergent Technologies specializes in additive manufacturing, a.k.a. 3-D printing [see “CTRL + P,” page 51], and has been toying with the idea of producing a car for at least a decade. Founder Kevin Czinger built a running proof of concept called the Divergent Blade that debuted in 2015 and showcased many of the company’s 3-D-printed parts, an inline seating arrangement, and similar looks to the 21C that were inspired by the curves of Lola T70 racers from the 1960s. (Before…

With Apple’s rather pricey and then some internal storage upgrades, you can get a lot more bang (capacity) for your buck with external solutions. Not that the 4-drive TerraMaster D4 SSD is cheap at $300 sans drives, but even after you add SSDs, it’s a lot less expensive per GB than what Apple charges you. A lot. It’s also a nicely designed unit with good performance. FEATURES The TerraMaster D4 SSD is a 4-slot (M.2/NVMe) external enclosure utilizing the 40Gbps USB4 protocol. That’s basically Thunderbolt 4 but with better backward and forward compatibility than USB3.2×2. You can see the interior in the image, right. The D4 SSD measures 5.5 inches deep and tall, by about 2.35 inches wide. Relatively speaking, it’s a featherweight for a desktop drive, weighing in at…

Generative AI data centers are gobbling up trillions of dollars in capital, not to mention heating up the planet like a microwave. As a result, there’s a capacity crunch on memory production, shooting the prices for RAM sky high, over 100 percent in the last few months alone. Multiple stores are tired of adjusting the prices day to day and won’t even display them. You find out how much it costs at checkout. That’s according to BlueSky user Steve Lin (spotted by PCWorld’s own Mark Hachman), who snapped a photo at Central Computers, a retail chain in central California. The store cites a global shortage in memory chips that is causing prices to change drastically every day. “Because of this, we can’t display fixed prices on certain products at this…

Apple Mail is a decent alternative to Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Spark, and all the other email clients available for the Mac. But even though Apple has been delivering its in-house mail client for years and regularly updates it, it doesn’t come without criticisms—it could be a much better email client if it weren’t for these annoyances. HALF-HEARTED AI IMPLEMENTATION Since macOS 15.4 and iOS 18.4, Apple Intelligence has been an integral part of the operating system and also of Apple Mail, but it can still only tinker with email texts—summaries, smart replies, writing tools, and a bit more. There is enormous potential for AI features, especially in email management and spam detection. Instead of relying on real artificial intelligence, Apple Mail continues to rely on so-called “intelligent” folders for…

Twenty years ago, Mac OS X Tiger introduced us to a search feature that would stand the test of time: Spotlight. And while at the time I found myself ambivalent about its many quirks, some of which were maddening, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s hard not to be impressed by how far Spotlight has come. Almost every year, Apple has made Spotlight a little better, and macOS Tahoe is its biggest and most impressive upgrade ever. So let’s celebrate Spotlight for what it was, is, and is about to become. WHEN DISKS BECAME BIG ENOUGH TO SEARCH As soon as the classic Mac OS became capable of holding more than a few dozen files on tiny floppy disks, there was a need to find files. So Apple introduced a…