After launching Slack AI in February, Slack appears to be digging its heels in, defending its vague policy that by default sucks up customers’ data—including messages, content, and files—to train Slack’s global AI models.
I’ve never used Slack and don’t intend to ever start, but the outcry about this reached far beyond Slack and its own communities. It’s been all over various forums and social media, and I’m glad Ars dove into it to collect all the various conflicting statements, policies, and blog posts Slack has made about their “Ai” policies. However, even after reading Ars’ article and the various articles about this at other outlets, I still have no idea what, exactly, Slack is or is not using to train its “AI” models.
I know a lot of people here think I am by definition against all forms of what companies are currently calling “AI”, but this is really not the case. I think there are countless areas where these technologies can make meaningful contributions, and a great example I encountered recently is the 4X strategy game Stellaris, one of my favourite games. The game recently got a big update called The Machine Age, which focuses on changing and improving the gameplay when you opt to play as cybernetically enhanced or outright robotic races.
As per Steam’s new rules regarding the use of AI in games, the Steam page included the following clarification about the use of “AI”:
We employ generative AI technologies during the creation of some assets. Typically this involves the ideation of content and visual reference material. These elements represent a minor component of the overall development. AI has been used to generate voices for an AI antagonist and a player advisor.
The game’s director explained that during the very early ideation phase, when someone like him, who isn’t a creative person, gets an idea, they might generate a piece of “AI” art and put it up on an ideation wall with tons of other assets just to get the point across, after which several rounds of artists and developers mould and shape some of those ideas into a final product. None of the early “AI” content makes it in the game. Similarly, while the game includes the voice for an AI antagonist and player advisor, the voice actors whose work was willingly used to generate the lines in the game are receiving royalties for each of those lines.
I have no issues whatsoever with this, because here it’s clear everyone involved is doing so in an informed manner and entirely willingly. Everything is above board, consent is freely given, and everybody knows what’s going on. This is a great example of ethical “AI” use; tools to help people make a product, easier – without stealing other people’s work or violating various licenses in the process.
What Slack is doing here – and what Copilot, OpenAI, and the various other tools do – is the exact opposite of this. Consent is only sought when the parties involved are big and powerful enough to cause problems, and even though they claim “AI” is not ripping anyone off, they also claim “AI” can’t work without taking other people’s work. Instead of being open and transparent about what they do, they hide themselves behind magical algorithms and shroud the origins of their “AI” training data in mystery.
If you’re using Slack – and odds are you do – I would strongly consider urging your boss to opt your organisation out of Slack’s “AI” data theft operation. You have no idea how much private information and corporate data is being exposed by these Salesforce clowns.
Twitter changed its name to "X" back in July of 2023. But while the site has taken the past 10 months to slowly adjust to its new name and logo, two things have remained constant: All of us still call it "Twitter," and the site's URL is still twitter.com.
It seems the times really are a-changin' though: As of today, twitter.com is officially x.com. Elon Musk confirmed the transition in a post (formerly known as a "tweet") on X (formerly known as Twitter):
But while Musk says "All core systems are now on X.com," it doesn't appear to be the case for everyone. For example, when I fire up twitter.com out of pure, unwavering habit, the site loads right up without redirecting. For me, it's still Twitter, even if in URL only. (The X logo is still very much fixed to the top of the page, which I suppose is at least better than Doge.)
On the flip side, if I type in the new x.com domain, it loads up just fine as well. It even makes a big deal about me visiting x.com itself, with a banner thanking me for checking out the new URL. It seems like the site really wants to encourage me to continue visiting x.com rather than twitter.com, even though the latter should automatically redirect to the former.
I'm sure once X's skeleton crew figures out how to force Twitter URLs to be X URLs, that will be that, until the site runs out of money and folds. I, for one, think typing x.com is not only stupid, it feels like I'm about to visit a very different kind of site—which, at this point, might be true, considering the types of bots that plague X as of late.
The internet and its associated digital industry are estimated to produce about the same emissions annually as aviation. But we barely think about pollution while snapping 16 duplicate photos of our pets, which are immediately uploaded to the cloud.
The island democracy was early to ban TikTok on government phones, and the ruling party refuses to use it. But a U.S.-style ban is not under consideration.
The British engineering company Arup has confirmed it was the victim of a deepfake fraud after an employee was duped into sending HK$200m (£20m) to criminals by an artificial intelligence-generated video call.
Hong Kong police said in February that a worker at a then-unnamed company had been tricked into transferring vast sums by people on a hoax call “posing as senior officers of the company”.
It is taking fast fashion to ever faster and ever cheaper extremes, and making billions from it. Why is the whole world shopping at Shein? By Nicole Lipman
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It's amazing, and a little sad, to think that something created in 1989 that changed how people used and viewed the then-nascent Internet had nearly vanished by 2024. Nearly, that is, because the dogged researchers and enthusiasts at The Serial Port channel on YouTube have found what is likely the last existing copy of Archie. Archie, first crafted by Alan Emtage while a student at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, allowed for the searching of various "anonymous" FTP servers around what was then a very small web of universities, researchers, and government and military nodes. It was groundbreaking; it was the first echo of the "anything, anywhere" Internet to come. And when The Serial Port went looking, it very much did not exist.
While Archie would eventually be supplanted by Gopher, web portals, and search engines, it remains a useful way to index FTP sites and certainly should be preserved. The Serial Port did this, and the road to get there is remarkable and intriguing. You are best off watching the video of their rescue, along with its explanatory preamble. But I present here some notable bits of the tale, perhaps to tempt you into digging further.
Two voice actors say an A.I. company created clones of their voices without their permission. Now they’re suing. The company denies it did anything wrong.
The European Commission has opened an investigation into the owner of Facebook and Instagram over concerns that the platforms are creating addictive behaviour among children and damaging mental health.
The EU executive said Meta may have breached the Digital Services Act (DSA), a landmark law passed by the bloc last summer that makes digital companies large and small liable for disinformation, shopping scams, child abuse and other online harms.
Broomgate Widely available, episodes weekly Never before has a broom been responsible for so much scandal – in 2015, the Canadian curling community was rocked by a team that used one instead of two. “To not have the other person out front cleaning in a frosty situation doesn’t make sense,” said one shocked commentator. The full story has never been told, so comedian and curling geek John Cullen investigates the switch to the “super broom” that caused a furore. Hannah Verdier
With a widespread telecoms blackout already in place, emergency help and humanitarian aid at risk if satellite service withdrawn, say NGOs
Nearly 100 humanitarian groups in Sudan have warned Elon Musk he risks “collectively punishing” millions of Sudanese by shutting down his vital Starlink satellite internet service in the war-ravaged country.
Sudan has been grappling with a widespread telecommunications blackout for several months, with many aid groups using Starlink to operate during the humanitarian crisis which the UN has warned is the largest in decades.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Scientist: Efforts to build a global quantum internet have received a boost from two developments in quantum information storage that could one day make it possible to communicate securely across hundreds or thousands of kilometers. The internet as it exists today involves sending strings of digital bits, or 0s and 1s, in the form of electrical or optical signals, to transmit information. A quantum internet, which could be used to send unhackable communications or link up quantum computers, would use quantum bits instead. These rely on a quantum property called entanglement, a phenomenon in which particles can be linked and measuring one particle instantly influences the state of another, no matter how far apart they are. Sending these entangled quantum bits, or qubits, over very long distances, requires a quantum repeater, a piece of hardware that can store the entangled state in memory and reproduce it to transmit it further down the line. These would have to be placed at various points on a long-distance network to ensure a signal gets from A to B without being degraded.
Quantum repeaters don't yet exist, but two groups of researchers have now demonstrated long-lasting entanglement memory in quantum networks over tens of kilometers, which are the key characteristics needed for such a device. Can Knaut at Harvard University and his colleagues set up a quantum network consisting of two nodes separated by a loop of optical fibre that spans 35 kilometers across the city of Boston. Each node contains both a communication qubit, used to transmit information, and a memory qubit, which can store the quantum state for up to a second. "Our experiment really put us in a position where we're really close to working on a quantum repeater demonstration," says Knaut. To set up the link, Knaut and his team entangled their first node, which contains a type of diamond with an atom-sized hole in it, with a photon that they sent to their second node, which contains a similar diamond. When the photon arrives at the second diamond, it becomes entangled with both nodes. The diamonds are able to store this state for a second. A fully functioning quantum repeater using similar technology could be demonstrated in the next couple of years, says Knaut, which would enable quantum networks connecting cities or countries.
In separate work, Xiao-Hui Bao at the University of Science and Technology of China and his colleagues entangled three nodes together, each separated by around 10 kilometers in the city of Hefei. Bao and his team's nodes use supercooled clouds of hundreds of millions of rubidium atoms to generate entangled photons, which they then sent across the three nodes. The central of the three nodes is able to coordinate these photons to link the atom clouds, which act as a form of memory. The key advance for Bao and his team's network is to match the frequency of the photons meeting at the central node, which will be crucial for quantum repeaters connecting different nodes. While the storage time was less than Knaut's team, at 100 microseconds, it is still long enough to perform useful operations on the transmitted information.
One of the most annoying aspects of Spotify's free tier is the ads. Every half hour or so, the service injects a bunch of ads that interrupt your listening. There are two ways to get rid of the ads: either pay for Spotify Premium, or use any of the Spotify ad blockers I've listed in this guide.
Consider Spotify Premium
If you can afford Spotify Premium, consider subscribing. You don't always have to pay full price, either: I previously wrote a guide that helps you find the best Spotify Premium discounts. With Premium, not only does Spotify block ads, but it also adds useful features such as the ability to download songs, view time-synced lyrics, use unlimited song skips, and turn on improved audio quality.
But even though the free tier has its limitations and annoyances, Spotify does let you access interesting features such as podcast transcriptions and Spotify Blend without paying a dime. The only problem is that Spotify can take away any free feature and put it behind a paywall at any point, as it recently did with time-synced lyrics, which used to be available for free.
What Spotify ad blockers can and can't do
A Spotify ad blocker will usually either remove ads from Spotify's free tier or automatically mute the app when ads are playing. An ad blocker will not let you access all of Spotify Premium's features without paying. There are certain modded Spotify clients for Android that will allow you to add in premium features for free, but you're using these tools at your risk. Your account might get banned, or worse, your phone and all the sensitive data in it could be compromised by rogue applications.
How to block Spotify ads in web browsers
Spotify’s web player works pretty well across browsers. If that’s how you use the service, a browser extension can block ads for you. Most people will want to use uBlock Origin to block Spotify ads, but note that it blocks ads on all other websites, too. If you’d rather not block ads across the entire internet, Blockify is the Chrome extension you need. It'll block ads on Spotify alone and nowhere else.
How to hide Spotify ads on PC
There are two ways to block all ads in Spotify’s Windows app without paying for Spotify Premium. Just know that these blockers won’t work with the Microsoft Store version of the Spotify app. You’ll have to download the app directly from Spotify’s website to be able to use them.
BlockTheSpot is among the best ad blockers for Spotify on Windows. Its GitHub page goes through all the install instructions, and the blocker will remove audio, video, and banner ads from Spotify’s app. BlockTheSpot now claims it'll continue to work even if Spotify gets updated, and that it also allows you to access audio in higher quality without paying. This app also lets you hide the Upgrade button, which Spotify uses to urge you to get Premium. You still won't be able to download music if you're using BlockTheSpot, though.
If you’re looking for an alternative to BlockTheSpot, try BurntSushi. The key difference between these two apps is that BlockTheSpot is a modified Spotify client that lets you remove various annoying features, while BurntSushi is an ad blocker that works by intercepting network requests to block Spotify ads. In theory, BurntSushi should be more resilient and continue to work for longer, but both of these apps have been around for years.
How to remove Spotify ads on Mac and Linux
On Mac, you can use BlockTheSpot-Mac to block ads on the app. Install the Spotify app, quit it, and follow the instructions on the GitHub page to install the ad blocker. If you’re using Spotify’s app on Linux, you can try Spotify-adblock—just be sure to check if it’s compatible with your Linux distro before installing it.
For those who are comfortable with command line interfaces, Spicetify is a good alternative.
Mute Spotify ads on Android
On your Android phone, you can easily mute Spotify whenever it plays ads. It's not a perfect ad blocking solution, but silence is far more bearable than annoying ads. To set this up, download Mutify. Once the app is installed, go to Spotify's settings and enable Device Broadcast Status. This will allow Mutify to figure out when ads are playing and mute Spotify. With this, you can enjoy listening to music while Mutify runs in the background and takes care of muting ads for you.
A new program, backed by Cornell Tech, M.I.T. and U.C.L.A., helps prepare lower-income, Latina and Black female computing majors for artificial intelligence careers.
The Break Through Tech A.I. program provides young women with learning and career opportunities in artificial intelligence.
Publishers have long worried that artificial intelligence would drive readers away from their sites. They’re about to find out if those fears are warranted.
You undoubtedly know about your browser's incognito mode: a special browser state where the software doesn't keep track of your activities in quite as much detail. Most of us will use our browsers as normal most of the time, and switch to incognito when needed—maybe when we need to search for something that we don't want staying on the record and being included in our browsing history.
However, you can also choose to start up your browser in incognito mode right from the start, on both desktop and mobile. It means you leave less of a digital trail behind you, and might suit you better as your default way of working.
How incognito mode works
Any time you use incognito (or private) mode, you need to be aware of what is and isn't being tracked when it comes to your online activities. Simply put, your incognito browser won't log the sites you've visited or the searches you've run. Cookies aren't saved either—those little data files that websites use to remember who you are (if you clear your browser cookies, you'll find you need to log into all of your online accounts again).
So, if you close down a tab while in incognito mode, you can't do the usual trick of bringing it back again: Your browser has already forgotten it existed. It's best used for those times when you don't want searches and site visits to show up again later—whether you're researching a sensitive medical issue or shopping for a secret and surprise present for a loved one.
Pay attention to the information displayed when you launch incognito mode.Credit: Lifehacker
However, incognito mode doesn't stop your internet provider from seeing what you're doing (you need a VPN for that). If you're at work, your employer can still see the sites you're loading up. And if you sign in anywhere—Google, Amazon, Facebook—then your activity is still being logged by those sites pretty much as normal. It's not something that makes you fully anonymous.
If you don't want your web activity being remembered at all, then you need to take other steps besides using incognito mode—like using the tools Google provides to automatically wipe away evidence of where you've been and what you've been up to. As long as you're clear about how incognito mode works, it's a useful option to have.
Starting in incognito on the desktop
To start Chrome or Edge in incognito mode in Windows, you first need to create a desktop shortcut—the easiest way to do this is to drag the application icon from the Start menu to a blank part of the desktop. Then, right-click on the newly created shortcut, and choose Show more options and Properties.
You'll see the path to the browser program in the Target field. All you need to do is add some text (what's known as a flag) to this path to tell the browser to launch in incognito mode. With Chrome, add "-incognito" at the end, without quotes, outside of the quotes pointing to the actual browser file. With Edge, it's a space and then "inprivate" (without quotes) at the end of the quoted file path.
Editing the Google Chrome shortcut properties on Windows.Credit: Lifehacker
Firefox makes this little easier: Click the three horizontal lines (top right), then Settings and Privacy & Security, then check the Always use private browsing mode option. On all three browsers, you can also right-click on the browser icon on the taskbar to launch an incognito window—so if the browser is pinned to the taskbar, this is another way to start it up in its private mode.
Over on macOS, in Safari you can open the Safari menu, then click Settings and open the General tab to find the relevant option: Make sure the Safari opens with drop-down menu is set to A new private window, and every time you launch the browser you'll see a private window first of all.
Setting the options for Safari on macOS.Credit: Lifehacker
For other browsers on macOS, you need to make use of the Script Editor, which you'll find in the Utilities folder from the Applications pane in Finder. Choose New Document, and you need to enter a particular line of text: For Chrome it's "do shell script "open -a /Applications/Google\\ Chrome.app --args --incognito"", and for Edge it's "do shell script "open -a /Applications/Microsoft\\ Edge.app -n --args --inprivate"" (with Firefox you can use the setting we've already mentioned).
Pick File and Save, give your new file a name with the ".app" extension, and make sure Application is selected as the File Format. This new browser shortcut shows up in the Applications pane, and from there you can put it in the dock, drag it to the desktop, or put it anywhere else you like.
Starting in incognito on mobile
If you're wanting to launch your browser app of choice in incognito mode on your phone or tablet, the secret is a long press. On Android, the majority of browsers—including Chrome, Edge, and Firefox—will show some kind of option to launch an incognito tab if you press and hold their icon on the home screens or in the app drawer.
Launching Microsoft Edge on Android.Credit: Lifehacker
Those of you on an iPhone or iPad device will also see an incognito mode option when you long press on the icons for most browsers on the home screens or in the app library, including Safari, Edge, and Firefox. With Google Chrome, the option actually says Incognito Search, but it opens a normal incognito window—you can run a search, but you can also just type in a website URL or do whatever you need to do.
According to a new study published in the journal Technology, Mind and Behavior, researchers found that internet use is associated with greater wellbeing in people around the world. "Our analysis is the first to test whether or not internet access, mobile internet access and regular use of the internet relates to wellbeing on a global level," said Prof Andrew Przybylski, of the University of Oxford, who co-authored the work. The Guardian reports: [T]he study describes how Przybylski and Dr Matti Vuorre, of Tilburg University in the Netherlands, analysed data collected through interviews involving about 1,000 people each year from 168 countries as part of the Gallup World Poll. Participants were asked about their internet access and use as well as eight different measures of wellbeing, such as life satisfaction, social life, purpose in life and feelings of community wellbeing.
The team analyzed data from 2006 to 2021, encompassing about 2.4 million participants aged 15 and above. The researchers employed more than 33,000 statistical models, allowing them to explore various possible associations while taking into account factors that could influence them, such as income, education, health problems and relationship status. The results reveal that internet access, mobile internet access and use generally predicted higher measures of the different aspects of wellbeing, with 84.9% of associations between internet connectivity and wellbeing positive, 0.4% negative and 14.7% not statistically significant.
The study was not able to prove cause and effect, but the team found measures of life satisfaction were 8.5% higher for those who had internet access. Nor did the study look at the length of time people spent using the internet or what they used it for, while some factors that could explain associations may not have be considered. Przybylski said it was important that policy on technology was evidence-based and that the impact of any interventions was tracked.
The new app is part of a much wider effort to combine conversational chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT with voice assistants like the Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri.
Source: www.theguardian.com – Author: Anna Isaac and Dan Sabbagh The IT company targeted in a Chinese hack that accessed the data of hundreds of thousands of Ministry of Defence staff failed to report the breach for months, the Guardian can reveal. The UK defence secretary, Grant Shapps, told MPs on Tuesday that Shared Services Connected […]
Airlines are using artificial intelligence to save fuel, keep customers informed and hold connecting flights for delayed passengers. Here’s what to expect.
Even in a state where surveillance is almost total, the experience of tyranny and injustice can radicalize people. Anger at arbitrary power will always lead someone to start thinking about another system, a better way to run society. [...] If people are naturally drawn to the image of human rights, to the language of democracy, to the dream of freedom, then those concepts have to be poisoned. [...] Here is a difficult truth: A part of the American political spectrum is not merely a passive recipient of the combined authoritarian narratives that come from Russia, China, and their ilk, but an active participant in creating and spreading them. Like the leaders of those countries, the American MAGA right also wants Americans to believe that their democracy is degenerate, their elections illegitimate, their civilization dying. The MAGA movement's leaders also have an interest in pumping nihilism and cynicism into the brains of their fellow citizens, and in convincing them that nothing they see is true. Their goals are so similar that it is hard to distinguish between the online American alt-right and its foreign amplifiers, who have multiplied since the days when this was solely a Russian project. Tucker Carlson has even promoted the fear of a color revolution in America, lifting the phrase directly from Russian propaganda.
The New Propaganda War: Autocrats in China, Russia, and elsewhere are now making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world. [SLAtlantic]
Apple faced a barrage of criticism from people who thought its ad for the latest iPad Pro was a metaphor for how Big Tech has cashed in on creative works.
Our columnist spent the past month hanging out with 18 A.I. companions. They critiqued his clothes, chatted among themselves and hinted at a very different future.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission clarified its net neutrality rules to prohibit more kinds of fast lanes. While the FCC voted to restore net neutrality rules on April 25, it didn't release the final text of the order until yesterday. The final text (PDF) has some changes compared to the draft version released a few weeks before the vote.
Both the draft and final rules ban paid prioritization, or fast lanes that application providers have to pay Internet service providers for. But some net neutrality proponents raised concerns about the draft text because it would have let ISPs speed up certain types of applications as long as the application providers don't have to pay for special treatment. The advocates wanted the FCC to clarify its no-throttling rule to explicitly prohibit ISPs from speeding up applications instead of only forbidding the slowing of applications down. Without such a provision, they argued that ISPs could charge consumers more for plans that speed up specific types of content. [...]
"We clarify that a BIAS [Broadband Internet Access Service] provider's decision to speed up 'on the basis of Internet content, applications, or services' would 'impair or degrade' other content, applications, or services which are not given the same treatment," the FCC's final order said. The "impair or degrade" clarification means that speeding up is banned because the no-throttling rule says that ISPs "shall not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of Internet content, application, or service." The updated language in the final order "clearly prohibits ISPs from limiting fast lanes to apps or categories of apps they select," leaving no question as to whether the practice is prohibited, said Stanford Law professor Barbara van Schewick.
Under the original plan, "there was no way to predict which kinds of fast lanes the FCC might ultimately find to violate the no-throttling rule," she wrote. "This would have given ISPs cover to flood the market with various fast-lane offerings, arguing that their version does not violate the no-throttling rule and daring the FCC to enforce its rule. The final order prevents this from happening."
I want to run GoToSocial on some *BSD system. Because I am who I am, I went for using NetBSD 10.0 . And because my hypervisor is running bhyve on OmniOS , you get the title of this blog post.
Don’t get too anxious, it is quite straightforward. So let the journey begin.
Bhyve is a hypervisor originating from FreeBSD, while OmniOS is a distribution of illumos, a continuation of the last open source Solaris release from Oracle. GoToSocial, meanwhile, is an ActivityPub social network server, so it belongs in the same family as Mastodon, Glitch, Akkoma, and countless others. This guide makes this whole process look like a piece of cake, so if you’ve ever been interested in running your own ActivityPub server – read on.
On a slightly related sidenote, there’s no OSNews AT instance, partly because I don’t want to deal with the moderation and costs, and partly because I’m incredibly happy being a member of Exquisite, a Glitch instance running on OpenBSD, managed by OpenBSD enthusiasts. Never say never, of course, but the odds of seeing an OSNews AT instance in the future are very slim.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken at the RSA Conference in San Francisco on Monday. He has described an increasingly zero-sum competition, in which countries will be forced to choose between signing up for a Western-dominated “stack” of technologies or a Chinese-dominated one.
The London-based developer of artificial intelligence systems for self-driving vehicles raised the funding from SoftBank, Nvidia, Microsoft and others.
Google Chrome’s address bar (or omnibox, as Google calls it), might seem simple, but you can actually do a lot more with it than just search for your favorite website. Turns out the Chrome URL bar also comes with a number of handy features baked right in. It can complete unit conversions, talk to Google Gemini, and even turn a browser tab into a blank notepad.
Drag and drop words to search
One of the most useful methods for getting the most out of the address bar is actually related to how you search. Instead of copying-and-pasting a word into the address bar, just highlight it and drag it there instead.
It’s a great feature for when your hands are full, say if you've got one hand on the mouse and another giving your pet some well deserved scritches. Just highlight the word, release your mouse button, and click and hold on the highlighted word to drag it around.
Talk to Gemini right from the Chrome address bar
While some of these features have been around for years, this is a new one. Gemini has its own webpage, but Google has made it possible to talk to Gemini directly in Chrome's address bar. All you have to do is type @gemini before your query, and the browser will open Gemini’s page and answer your prompt.
This feature is slowly rolling out to Chrome users, so it might not be available for you yet. But once it is, talking to Google’s AI chatbot will be even easier.
Get a blank notepad right in your browser
This secret is exceptionally useful if you take a lot of notes. You can actually open up a blank page in your browser at any point by pasting the following into the address bar:
data:text/html,
You can even add this page as a bookmark to make getting to it even faster. Just know that whatever you write won't be saved once you close the page.
Convert measurements and temperatures
Say you’re working on a new recipe for a cake for your significant other. The recipe calls for one measurement type, but you need to convert that unit to another. While you could Google the answer, you can also just go to Chrome and type the conversion you need right into the omnibox, which will give you the answer before you even press enter.
Just open up your Chrome browser and type in something like “forty ounces = cups” without the quotations. Chrome will spit out an answer right there under the address bar. It’s handy if you need to convert several measurements at a time. The same trick also works with temperatures, distances, and more.
Search bookmarks directly
Another useful feature is the ability to search through your bookmarks directly from the address bar. Type @bookmarks, hit space, and enter the name of the bookmark you’re searching for. It’s useful if you have a lot of bookmarks and need to find something quickly.
Search websites for something specific
To search a website for something specific, you don’t have to rely on the search function built onto the site. Instead, open up a new tab in Google Chrome and type “site:sitename query.” For instance, to find Lifehacker articles about Chrome, simply type “site:lifehacker.com chrome” and press enter. Google will pull up a ton of results for the keyword, but just from the specified site.
Search Gmail and Google Drive more easily
This feature lets you set up Gmail and Google Drive as search engines in the address bar. This can make it easier to look up specific things in your Google Drive folders, since you won't have to navigate to them manually.
Right-click on the address bar, then click manage search engines and sites. Now, navigate to the Site Search section and click Add. For Google Drive, add http://drive.google.com/?hl=en&tab=bo#search/%s as the URL. Then, enter @drive for the shortcut (or something similar), and name it Google Drive. Press Add once more to save the shortcut. Now enter @drive in the search bar and follow it with your query to search your files.
Google Chrome's Omnibox can also find items in your history, assuming you don't clear it too much for it to be useful. Just type @history before your query to search sites you've already browsed.
Alternatively, if you have a lot of tabs open and need to find something quickly, type @tabs and then your query.
Quickly start a new email
This is helpful for serial emailers: You can start an email from your default email client by typing mailto: in the address bar. This will automatically open a new email in the client you have set, so you can start composing an email without directly navigating there.
When you move in the real world, you usually fill out a change of address form with the post office, and boom!—your mail appears at your new home. If only it was as easy to change your email address. Whether you’re leaving an outdated service, moving to a new job, or just want to get rid of the silly username you created in high school, here’s how to make the transition to a new email address simple and orderly.
Pick an email you’ll actually keep
First, make sure your new email address is one you’ll actually use for a long time. That might involve finally getting your own domain and associating your email address with your real name. Something like firstname@lastname.com has a lot more staying power than yourname@yahoo.com. This way, you won’t deal with an email provider and you don’t have to worry about changing your email address ever again.
That might sound daunting to set up, but it’s actually pretty easy to get your own domain name and set up an email address you can use in a more familiar interface like Gmail (or your app of choice). Having an email address through your domain registrar might cost you a little extra each month for the privilege, but it’s a small price to pay for a custom email.
If you don’t want to spend the money on a domain, we’d recommend going with one of the big free providers like Gmail or Outlook. Basically, you want to avoid the email address you get from your school, the email address your ISP gives you, or your company’s email address. Work and school emails are fine, but they might not last forever. You need something you can always come back to.
As for your actual email address, make it as easy to remember and as “grown-up” as possible. That means avoiding cringe-worthy names like “thorinsparkles2000@gmail.com” or “zeldafan1969@outlook.com.”
Instead, stick to some variation of your given name whenever possible. You can add something to it if it’s already taken on whatever service you choose, but don’t use something potentially embarrassing or anything that gives away too many personal details about you: your birth year, your political affiliation, or your favorite sports team, for example.
Migrate your old inbox to your new one
In a lot of cases, you can migrate your old emails and contacts to your new email address pretty easily. We can’t cover how to do this with every single webmail and domain provider out there, but here’s how you’d migrate to a new account with Gmail. (The process should be pretty similar with other services.)
How to migrate your email to Gmail
Once you set up a new Gmail account, you can import email and contacts into that account like so:
Sign in to your Gmail account and click the gear icon, then select Settings.
Open the Accounts and import tab.
In the “Check mail from other accounts” section, select Add a mail account.
Credit: Emily Long
Enter your old email address, click Next, make a selection, and hit Next again.
Select the options you want (label incoming messaging, always use a secure connection, etc.).
Credit: Emily Long
Click Add Account.
All your old emails will now be pulled into your new account. You’ll also get any new emails that come through, so you don’t need to worry about email forwarding. This process can be a little slow, so if you need to get the emails still going to your old address quickly, we’d recommend setting up a forwarding system on your old email account as well (see the next section for how to do that).
Gmail also has a separate “Import mail and contacts” option that can also pull in the aforementioned data from other accounts. Consider giving this a try, too.
Next, it’s time to set up a system so that anything sent to your old email account gets forwarded to your new one. You’ll need to do this on your old email account (if you switched to Gmail, you already set this up in the last step). This is different for each email provider, but here’s how to set up email forwarding from Gmail and Outlook.
How to set up email forwarding from your old Gmail account
Credit: Emily Long
If you switch from Gmail to another service, you want to forward those emails to a new account. Here’s how to do it:
Open Gmail and click the gear icon.
Select Settings.
Select the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
Click Add a forwarding address.
Enter your new email address.
Click Next > Proceed > OK.
You’ll get a verification email at your new email address—click the link to confirm.
Refresh your browser and go back to Forwarding and POP/IMAP > Forwarding > Forward a copy of incoming mail to to select what you want to have happen to the Gmail copy of your messages.
Now, when someone emails you at your old Gmail address, you’ll receive that email at your new email address. If you want to receive only select forwarded emails, you can set up filter-specific email forwards so you don’t bring along any junk or spam to your new email.
How to set up email forwarding from your old Outlook account
Credit: Emily Long
Email forwarding is easy to set up in Outlook:
At the top of the page in your web browser, select the Settings gear icon.
Select Mail > Forwarding.
Select Enable forwarding and enter your new email address.
Select Save.
Now, any email sent to your old Outlook address will go to your new one.
Update your email address on all your accounts
One of the biggest pains with a new email address is that you have to update your information in all your online accounts. This means you need to log in and change your email address everywhere on the web—from Facebook to your bank. It’s tough to remember everywhere you have accounts.
This process is much easier if you use a password manager, which should give you a long list of all the sites where you have accounts. Take an afternoon to log in to each of them and update your email address. And don’t forget to update your info in your preferred password manager while you’re at it so it isn’t using your old email address for your logins.
If you don’t use a password manager, it’s a little harder to find all your accounts. The easiest way to do this is to search through your old email for phrases like “confirm your email,” “unsubscribe,” “your new account” or “welcome to.” This should provide you with a solid list of websites you have accounts at, email newsletters you’ve subscribed to, and just about everything else.
Tell your friends and family
Finally, it’s time to break it to your friends and family that they need to update their address books with your new email address.
Depending on how many people you need to contact and your relationship with them, you might want to send out a few different emails to announce your big change: one for your family, one for friends, and one for business associates. Send the emails from your new email address and BCC everyone else on your list so you don’t accidentally share a bunch of email addresses that people might not want shared.
Finally, it’s time to throw an auto-responder on your old email address and let it die gracefully. Just head into your old account and create one (it’s also known as a vacation responder in some services) with a message that tells recipients about your new email address.
Credit: Emily Long
In some cases, you might need to follow up on your change-of-address email to make sure your initial note didn’t end up in someone’s spam or junk folder, but you should now be well on your way to ditching that old email address and moving on to something you’ll actually want to keep for a long while.
Do any of you remember the browser Dillo? The project’s been through a rough few years after the main developer of the layout engine sadly passed away, the lead developer disappeared from the project, the dillo.org domain was lost and taken over by spammers – but now there’s new people at the helm, and the browser just released it first new version since 2015. Dillo 3.1.0 brings a whole host of new features and improvements.
Add support for floating HTML elements, which involved a big redesign.
Add support for OpenSSL, LibreSSL and mbed TLS for HTTPS, which is now enabled by default.
Add a CI pipeline to build Dillo on Ubuntu, MacOS, FreeBSD and Windows (via cygwin).
It's weird because the correct answer to the query "what is the best printer" has not changed, but an entire ecosystem of content farms seems motivated to constantly update articles about printers in response to the incentive structure created by that robot's obvious preferences. Pointing out that incentive structure and the culture that's developed around it seems to make a lot of people mad, which is also interesting! Anyway, here's the best printer for 2024: a Brother laser printer. You can just pick any one you like; I have one with a sheet feeder and one without a sheet feeder. Both of them have reliably printed return labels and random forms and pictures for my kid to color for years now, and I have never purchased replacement toner for either one. Neither has fallen off the WiFi or insisted I sign up for an ink-related hostage situation or required me to consider the ongoing schemes of HP executives who seem determined to make people hate a legendary brand with straightforward cash grabs and weird DRM ideas.
Your IP address is something you usually don't need to think about—in fact you might never have heard of it before—but it's an important little piece of information attached to every device on your home network. Knowing the ins and outs of IP addresses can be useful in configuring the wifi network in your home, troubleshooting connection problems, and keeping your devices safe while they're online. Here's where you can find them, and what they do.
What is an IP address?
Every connected device has at least one IP address.Credit: Lifehacker
An IP address is an Internet Protocol address: It works a bit like a postal address does for the place where you live, enabling websites and web servers to find you and maintain a working connection. It's an essential bit of code in making the internet work, and it looks like a series of numbers and letters with a bit of punctuation thrown in.
Every device connected to your router at home will have a local (or private) IP address, which helps the router figure out which gadget is which and keep everything running smoothly. In addition, your router has an external (or public) IP address it broadcasts to the world, which helps everything else on the internet find you.
You'll come across both the older, simpler IPv4 addresses and the newer, more complex IPv6 addresses for your devices. Most current hardware makes use of both, but eventually it's expected that IPv4 will be phased out, albeit very slowly—IPv6 was introduced all the way back in 1995 because the internet was quite simply running out of addresses to use.
All of this is handled behind the scenes by your wifi router and your internet provider, fortunately. In fact, most routers and internet providers give dynamic IP addresses for local and external use, which are changing all the time (it's a bit easier and more cost-effective that way)—but your connection to the internet at large isn't affected.
You'll only really need to know your IP address for specific scenarios, usually involving some change in network configuration: Maybe you're connecting up a network drive to the web that you need to access remotely, for example, or you're trying to get online multiplayer features working on a games console. Here's how to find out what your IP addresses currently are.
How to find your external IP address
There's no shortage of websites around to tell you your IP address.Credit: Lifehacker
A host of different websites will tell you your IP address: It's a piece of information you give to every site you visit in exchange for connecting to them, though you can switch to a different external IP address by setting up a VPN. Remember, too, that as we've said, most internet providers give you a dynamic IP address that regularly changes.
VPNs will broadcast the IP address of one of their servers somewhere in the world, which means your external IP address stays hidden from the sites you load up. If you want to get at your external IP address, make sure you're not currently using a VPN.
With that check completed, all you need to do is visit a website such as the aptly named WhatIsMyIPAddress and you'll get both your IPv6 and IPv4 addresses on screen. (Depending on how the network you're using has been set up, across both hardware and software, you may only see an IPv4 or an IPv6 address.) You can also just type "what is my IP?" into Google and the search engine should tell you (though it might not be the top result).
How to find your internal IP address
Getting your IP address on Windows.Credit: Lifehacker
On a Windows computer, go to Settings from the Start menu, open up the Network & internet page and click either wifi and then the network name, or Ethernet, depending on how you're connected. Your local IPv6 and IPv4 addresses are then included in the information on screen, with a handy Copy button next to the details.
Over in macOS land, you need to open the Apple menu, then choose System Settings and Network. Pick wifi or Ethernet, depending on how you're currently connected to the internet, then select Details next to the network you're on. The Mac's local IP address is listed on the next screen, together with your router's IP address.
Next, the iPhone. From the main iOS Settings screen, tap wifi, then the small blue information bubble next to your current network to see your IP addresses. Note that phones will often have several listed—sometimes for extra privacy protection, and also to account for both wifi and cellular connections.
As usual for Android, the exact menu names and structure vary depending on your phone: On Pixels, open Settings and tap Network and Internet and Internet. Next to the network you're currently on there will be a gear icon: Tap this, then scroll down to see the IP address of your device.
With Samsung Galaxy phones, open Settings and select Connections, wifi, and then the gear icon next to the network you're currently hooked up to. Choose View more to see the relevant IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. If you're not using a Pixel or Galaxy phone, you should be able to find something along these lines through the internet options in Settings.
The automaker led by Elon Musk is no longer planning to take the lead in expanding the number of places to fuel electric vehicles. It’s not clear how quickly other companies will fill the gap.
The Justice Department and state attorneys general say that Google has abused a monopoly over the search business, stifling competitors and limiting innovation, something the company denies.
Blake Chandlee, TikTok’s president of global business solutions, last June. In Manhattan Thursday, he said: “We believe the facts and the law are clearly on our side and that we will ultimately prevail.”
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