Microsoft said today that it’s shutting down its Movies & TV storefront on Windows and Xbox, though you’ll still be able to play the movies and TV shows you’ve previously purchased.
Microsoft’s newly published support document (found by Windows Central) is significant in that Microsoft is no longer selling video content via the Microsoft Store. It follows Microsoft’s decision to stop selling music as part of its Groove Music services, which was shuttered in 2017.
But Microsoft’s decision to stop providing movies and TV shows to rent or buy probably should be met with a shrug. Several streaming movie services already show movies just weeks after they’re released in the box office, with rumors that the recent Superman release might be opened to streaming services just 45 days after first appearing in movie theaters. Microsoft doesn’t offer a streaming service; instead, it provides direct sales and rentals to consumers. Plenty of services already do that.
So what will happen to movies and TV shows that you’ve already purchased? For now, they’ll remain on Microsoft’s servers. Microsoft’s support document indicates that you’ll be able to continue playing them via the Movies & TV app on either Xbox or Windows PC, and they’ll play back in high resolution.
Microsoft’s “Entertainment” page on the Microsoft Store is still technically active, although if you try to buy a movie you’ll see an error message.
If you don’t feel like launching a dedicated app for all this, services like Movies Anywhere (which is like GOG Galaxy 2.0 but for movies) can aggregate all the titles you’ve purchased elsewhere.
If you’re still suspicious, I can’t really blame you. Previously, Microsoft pushed consumers to Spotify and eventually shifted all of the licensed music purchased by consumers on to that streaming platform. Unfortunately, you can’t download the movies you’ve already purchased from Microsoft, so they’ll be left hanging for the time being.
Fortune reports that Delta Air Lines will be doing away with fixed fares on its flights altogether and will instead start using AI to individualize its fare offers on a per-passenger basis. It’s one move as part of a long-term strategy to boost profitability.
AI will determine the highest possible price that each individual passenger is willing to pay for their flight ticket. Delta has been piloting the new pricing strategy over the last year, with 3 percent of the airline’s fares being set by AI. The results have been “amazingly favorable.”
Delta now aims to have 20 percent of all fares individually set by AI by the end of 2025. But in the long term, the plan is for AI to completely take over the pricing of Delta’s flight tickets.
The new pricing scheme has already faced a lot of criticism, with one consumer organization in California accusing the airline of more or less trying to “hack” passengers’ brains. However, there are certain laws that the AI must adhere to with its pricing, and US airlines are not allowed to charge differently for flight tickets based on gender or ethnicity.
You need antivirus software. Attacks on your PC keep getting more sophisticated, thanks to the help of AI. Even the tech-savvy and cautious can get tricked into exposing themselves to malware, spyware, ransomware, or a phishing attack. Antivirus protection is an essential backup against such threats.
Windows computers come with security software baked into the OS, but for some folks, an upgrade can help demystify and simplify security. To help you choose a good suite, we’ve identified products that offer excellent protection, worthwhile features, and minimal performance impact on your computer.
Norton 360 Deluxe works for everyone—it consolidates all the biggest protections you need online into one affordable package, including parental controls. If you have trouble keeping up with security experts’ recommendations (or haven’t yet gotten around to following all of them), this suite centralizes and simplifies it all. That’s how it won out as our pick for the best antivirus software of 2025.
This plan has just about everything most PC users need, without extra bloat. For antivirus performance, Norton offers strong online protection, while having minimal impact on system resources if you don’t often download or copy large amounts of files. Additionally, you get malicious link and attachment screening, dark web and privacy monitoring, and webcam safeguards. Norton also tosses in 50GB of storage for cloud backups, access to Norton’s password manager and VPN, parental controls, and PC utilities that include the ability to monitor for outdated software. And those major extras—the password manager, VPN, and parental controls—have easy, simple interfaces, without feeling stripped to the bone.
Norton 360 Deluxe: Further Considerations
As part of its efforts to consolidate online security protections into a single software interface, Norton began promising better scam protection at the beginning of the year, in addition to its other features. But despite all this value, its pricing remains very reasonable. For the first year, you’ll pay $50 for 5 devices, and then $120 per year thereafter.
For those seeking utter ease of use, Avast One not only offers solid protection, but a simple, friendly interface. Combine that together with useful extra features and multi-device coverage, and you have a winning combo.
In addition to top-ranked antivirus protection, it offers safeguards against remote webcam takeovers, malicious websites, and trackers. The Avast One plan also includes dark web monitoring, a VPN with unlimited bandwidth, and protections for saved passwords to a browser. You get utilities to help you keep your PC’s drivers up to date, clean up your PC, and optimize your apps, too.
These features may sound standard, and to be fair, many of them can be found in rival software. But Avast makes staying on top of security dead simple, whether you’re a novice or a security veteran. Its default settings require little input to keep your PC protected, and if you want to dig in further or tinker, you still have that option, too.
Avast One: Further Considerations
Unlike Norton 360 Deluxe (our top pick), Avast One does not come with a password manager, nor parental controls. Yet despite having fewer features, Avast One costs more. You’ll pay $84 for 5 devices (or $120 for up to 30 devices) during the first year. The subscription fee rises to $180 and $300, respectively, per year afterward.
AVG is best known for its excellent free antivirus software, but there’s good reason to upgrade. AVG Internet Security not only offers more comprehensive protection, but also easy management of those tools. That user-friendly interface is valuable if you find keeping up with online threats too overwhelming or time consuming.
The Internet Security plan builds upon the free version’s top-ranked protection against malware and web, email, and network threats. It also guards the passwords saved to your browsers; webcam takeovers; unknown access to files with sensitive data; malicious redirects for websites you’re trying to visit (aka DNS hijacking); and Windows Remote Desktop attacks. Dark web monitoring is included as well. And the app has minimal impact on system resources when monitoring your system in the background, though full scans can hit budget or older systems harder.
AVG Internet Security: Further Considerations
AVG Internet Security costs just $60 during the first year for 10 devices, with the fee rising to $100 thereafter. The price is fair, especially given the deeper control and more expansive protection compared to the free version. But without elements like parental controls, VPN, and a password manager, it doesn’t provide the same value as Norton 360 Deluxe.
Avira Prime is one of the best choices for those seeking more help with managing their PC, thanks to its simple, clear interface and feature lineup. In addition to to solid antivirus protection, it offers a password manager, unlimited VPN, and a boatload of PC utilities that (among other things) can keep apps up to date, securely delete files, and back up data.
Thise security suite will best suit users seeking a simple antivirus suite, broad online protections, and robust PC utilities—and also want to use those latter tools for more confident management of their computer. Not every utility is a winner, but the overall set can help you identify and understand the more technical aspects of Windows and system upkeep.
Avira Prime: Further Considerations
The one major feature missing from Avira Prime is a set of parental controls. You can’t use it to filter web content or monitor device usage. The app also can hit older and budget PCs hard when full scans are running, if you’ve added or changed large amounts of files. But typically, it only minimally affects system performance when left to run in the background, so most people won’t notice Avira running.
For the first year, you’ll pay $60 for the first year, and then $105 for every year after. That first-year cost is slightly higher than our overall top pick, but if you prefer more newbie-friendly software, it’s worth the extra ten bucks.
Your personal information can be used against you online—and with data breaches so painfully common these days, it can be a relief to have help in tracking who has your info. For anyone who doesn’t have as much time to handle that work themselves, or even keep track of a separate service, McAfee Total Protection can serve as a central spot for managing all your online security concerns.
Total Protection hunts down current threats to PCs, with solid results. These days, dangers extend beyond just malware to identity and privacy issues, and this app addresses these just as much as it does ransomware and phishing sites.
That ID protection makes it stand out against competitors, especially if you pay to scale up the service. The plan we tested included dark web scanning for multiple pieces of personal information (email address, phone number, social security number, passport, driver’s license, date of birth, tax ID, credit card, usernames, and more). The app also offers to help change your password for online accounts, when applicable. VPN access is included as well.
McAfee Total Protection: Further Considerations
Mid-tier and budget machines can see impact on system resources when running McAfee scans. When we ran a full scan during a variety of common tasks (web browsing, document editing, etc), we noticed some dips in performance. You can mitigate this effect by timing scans for off hours, however.
Currently, McAfee Total Protection is available through third-party sellers (McAfee has turned its attention to its slightly newer McAfee+ plans on its website). We like this version still because of how extremely affordable it is—for example, a license on PCWorld’s own software site is just $19 per year, which covers up to ten devices for one year.
Panda Dome Complete – Most feature-rich offering
Pros
Very easy-to-understand mobile-like interface
Contains some basic smart home network monitoring
Month-to-month pricing option
Cons
Good performance results but currently limited in third-party testing
Price When Reviewed:
1 device: $58.49 I 3 devices: $64.99 I 5 devices: $71.49 I 10 devices: $110.49
All deluxe antivirus suites offer extra tools as part of their package, but Panda Dome Complete particularly stands out. It also has one of the most striking interfaces we’ve seen, while still putting everything right at your fingertips. Similar to Microsoft’s Bing homepage, Panda Dome features a beautiful background photo, with the interface elements placed on top of it.
A whole raft of utilities come with this suite, including a virtual keyboard, advanced virus removal, an update manager for your Windows apps, a disk defragmenter, hard drive cleaner, and startup apps manager. You also get Wi-Fi protection (which lets you see what devices are connected to your network), a password manager, parental controls, and a VPN that offers 150 megabytes of bandwidth per day.
In addition to offering reliable antivirus protection, Panda had the most minimal impact on system performance during our benchmarks. So minor, in fact, that in the real-world it worked out to no difference.
Panda Dome Complete: Further Considerations
As one of the most feature-rich offerings, Panda Dome Complete is among the more expensive options. You can purchase a subscription for $54 during the first year ($90 per year afterward), but that’s covers just one device. Fortunately, it only costs a little more to upgrade to a three device plan ($55 for the first year, $100 per year afterward) or five device plan ($54 for the first year, $110 per year afterward).
Tends toward false positives, especially with SmartScreen
Lacks the advanced features found in third-party products
Price When Reviewed:
Included with Windows 10 and 11
Who should choose Windows Security
Windows’ built-in security suite is an excellent free antivirus option—as we discovered in our roundup of the best free antivirus—even if its protection isn’t quite as strong as third-party rivals when your PC is offline. It bundles together Defender, which monitors for viruses and malware; Firewall, which blocks malicious incoming traffic and suspicious outgoing traffic; ransomware protections (including controlled access to folders, as well as data recovery via OneDrive integration); app restrictions; and even basic parental controls.
The most important of these protections are automatically enabled in Windows—you don’t have to lift a finger to get real-time antivirus scanning or network protection. You will have to manually switch on some features, though, including ransomware folder controls and file recovery. You can also find more features in other antivirus suites, like online privacy tools, a VPN, and encrypted cloud backups. But this free protection comes preinstalled on Windows machines and does a good job of keeping you protected from most threats.
Windows Security: Further Considerations
To coax the most out of Windows Security, you will have to configure it. (You can learn more in our video on How to use Windows Security.) You’ll also need to separately choose and manage additional security services for optimum online protection—e.g., privacy tools, VPN, password manager, and encrypted cloud backup.
The focus of this roundup is the best antivirus for Windows PCs, but many PC enthusiasts are the de facto IT for friends and family. If you want to help an associate or loved one achieve strong antivirus protection for an Apple machine, our colleagues at Macworld recommend Intego’s Mac Internet Security X9.
In the suite are two utilities: The better known one is VirusBarrier, which spots and eliminates malware threats, and gets strong ratings for its protective abilities. It comes paired with NetBarrier, a two-way firewall that watches for suspicious traffic going to or from your Mac. For the price of this suite, NetBarrier’s inclusion isn’t common, but definitely welcome.
As part of its protection, VirusBarrier X9 scans for threats on your Mac’s internal storage drive (including any downloaded email and compressed archives), as well as connected disks and iOS devices. The app quarantines suspicious files, which you can then mark as trusted, leave in quarantine, or try to have repaired.
And in a nice touch, Intego VirusBarrier looks like a real Mac program, too—making it an ideal match for anyone looking for an effective app that blends in seamlessly.
Intego X9: Further Considerations
As reviewed, Intego X9 costs just $25 (or £20.00) for the first year using this special Macworld link. If you need additional tools, like a backup utility, speed optimizer for your Mac, or parental controls, you can upgrade to the Mac Premium Bundle X9 for $40 for the first year (£23.99).
Other antivirus software tested
Surfshark One: This VPN software includes adequate antivirus protection with a clean, simple interface, but you’ll get more bang for your buck (and a lighter hit to your PC’s system resources) by choosing rival security software with a stronger focus on antivirus protection.
McAfee+ Ultimate: This comprehensive all-in-one package offers strong antivirus protection and a vast array of online protections, but its apps, services, and tools could use more polish. Its scans also can tangibly decrease performance on mid-range and budget PCs.
Avast Premium Security: You can choose a couple of different paths when upgrading from Avast’s already excellent free antivirus software—and this branch of the company’s software leans hard into safeguarding your PC. However, a couple of buggy features keep this suite from standing out among its rivals.
Bitdefender Total Security: Superb antivirus defenses are packed into an easy-to-use app that includes a unique safe payment environment. However, it lacks some features you get with similarly priced suites, like a password manager.
Malwarebytes Premium Security: Technology newbies will like this antivirus software’s simplicity, but you can get more bang for your buck elsewhere.
Norton Antivirus Plus: Its one-device limitation is tight, but this simplified antivirus suite is affordable and offers more features than similar rivals. If you can work comfortably with its quirks and potentially heavy performance effect, it can be ideal software for digital minimalists.
Trend Micro Maximum Security: Even when you can count on Trend Micro Maximum Security to work, this beginner-friendly antivirus suite feels underbaked. You can find much stronger malware protection, along with a more robust set of features, in rival software—and often at a lower price.
How we test antivirus software
Our approach to testing antivirus software is multi-pronged—we look not just at how well the suite catches malware and other threats (though that’s certainly a top factor), but other elements as well.
First, we spend some time in the interface, to determine if it’s simple or complex to use. Ideally, it should take just a click or two to find vital tools like PC scanning, and also the password manager and VPN (if included). Elements that are clickable should be clear, too. And alerts should make sense; you should both understand the info and they should be relevant to what you’re doing. We also look at the available features. Reputable antivirus suites should include basics like real-time protection and deeper scans. Better subscription plans will also add on a password manager or a firewall. Overall, we try to figure out if the extras are helpful, or just another marketing bullet point.
To evaluate how hard an antivirus app will hit your PC’s system resources, we run several benchmarks. The first is PCMark 10’s Extended test, which simulates various workloads, including editing documents, web browsing, video chatting, and light gaming. Second is UL Procyon, focusing on document editing in Microsoft Office apps—e.g., Word, Excel, PowerPoint. Then, as the most punishing test, we run Handbrake to transcode a large video into a smaller one. This encoding task often utilizes 100 percent of the CPU on many home PCs.
When performing benchmarks, we first run all three tests on our Windows 11 PC before installing the antivirus suite under review. Then we install the app and run the benchmarks again, as an approximation of how the app behaves while running in the background. Finally, we open the software and fire up full scans continuously while running each benchmark again. Afterward, we compare the scores to look for any decline, and note the amount.
Currently, the laptop we use for testing is an Acer Aspire 3 15 with an AMD Ryzen 5 7520U, 8GB RAM, and a 512GB SSD. We use a clean install of Windows 11 when testing each security suite. For calculating an antivirus suite’s detection abilities, we rely on the testing of dedicated security researchers. Most often, we look at reports from organizations like AV Comparatives and AV Test. We also evaluate pricing for each subscription, as well as the features you get for the price.
Generally, we do the bulk of our testing using free trials to understand what customers will actually see. Any review codes provided by companies are used to take clean screenshots for the review (i.e. free of reminders to upgrade or buy).
Why you should trust PCWorld for antivirus reviews
PCWorld has been deep in the trenches of testing computer hardware, software, and services since 1983—including security suites. As users of PC hardware and software, we run all products through rigorous testing, with plenty of hands-on evaluation and benchmarks (when the later is applicable). We don’t recommend gear or apps we wouldn’t use ourselves.
Who curated this article?
Alaina Yee is PCWorld’s security editor, with over 15 years of consumer tech journalism experience spanning PC hardware, software, and online security coverage.
How to choose the best antivirus software
A good antivirus suite should meet three basic requirements:
High detection rate for malware and other threats, both online and offline
Low use of system resources
A simple, clear interface
You should take other considerations into account, too. A lot has changed since the early days of antivirus software. Security suites now come packed with extras like a backup service for essential files, mobile apps for Android and iOS, advanced firewall features, content restriction and GPS location for family members, and the ability to install the app on multiple computers. Access to a VPN and a password manager have become more common, too. Your budget and personal situation will dictate if you need these additional features.
If you’re looking to go beyond the basics, our baseline recommendation is to find a suite that comes with a firewall, supports enough devices to cover what you own, and (if you don’t already have separate services set up) access to a password manager and VPN. Not sure if you need all that? Our guides on security suite features, password managers, and VPNs can help you decide.
FAQ
1.
Is antivirus necessary in 2025?
Unfortunately, yes. Viruses, malware, and other online threats have only increased and become more sophisticated over time. Spending time on the internet or attaching any external drives to your computer without antivirus software is like going into battle without a stitch of armor.
2.
Does Windows 10/11 need antivirus?
In the basic sense, absolutely yes—which is why Windows 10 and 11 come with in built-in antivirus protection. But while Windows Security performs well, the best third-party antivirus software have even higher rates of detecting threats. The top antivirus apps also offer more control over settings, detailed logs of your PC’s activity, a more user-friendly interface, and additional features to strengthen your online security beyond just viruses and malware. So strictly speaking, a Windows PC doesn’t need third-party antivirus software, but you can benefit from more comprehensive online protection. (Macs also need antivirus software.)
3.
Will antivirus software slow down my computer?
The short answer is maybe, but probably not. Antivirus software scans files and programs to ensure there is no malware or other harmful threat present. The longer the time frame between each scan, the more files the program will need to check. These intensive scans may have some noticeable effect on your computer speed. It’s therefore recommended that you schedule your scans to run more frequently and/or at night so as to not impact your computer usage.
While antivirus software can affect the speed of your computer, it is most likely not the only factor—or even the most prominent. Other factors such as unnecessary startup and background programs, insufficient RAM, or even undiagnosed malware can have more drastic effects on your computer speed than a simple antivirus scan.
4.
Should you pay for antivirus?
It depends on what antivirus features are most important to you. Do you just need a program that will scan, detect, and remove malware? Then go with a free version. But if you are looking for more advanced features such as the ability to block webcam hacking, run suspicious apps in a sandbox environment, and permanently delete sensitive files, then you should seriously consider upgrading to a paid premium antivirus service.
Overall, premium antivirus software is better suited to more complete coverage against threats—especially for inexperienced users. Children and seniors are particularly vulnerable to modern threats and therefore paid antivirus apps, which allow for multiple-device protection, may be a better option for families.
5.
How many antivirus programs are recommended for one computer?
These days, most antivirus software are full suites. They take over completely for Windows’ built-in protection, and that single suite is all you need. More than that, and the different apps can start to conflict with one another. So no need to double up!
6.
What should I do if my antivirus detects a threat?
In a perfect world, your antivirus software will halt and clean the infected files for you. However, this largely depends on which antivirus program you are using.
In general, the antivirus will send a warning to you and try to quarantine the infected file in order to keep it from spreading. Once isolated, the software will give you the option to try to remove the infection or delete the file altogether.
7.
What is the difference between a full scan and a quick scan?
A full scan performs a comprehensive and thorough check of your whole system. It usually checks your system memory, startup programs, system backup, email databases, hard drives, and any removable storage drives.
A quick scan only checks a few areas including startup programs, system memory, and boot sectors. It may not detect all malware, but it can usually give you an idea if your computer has a virus.
As to when you should do either, we recommend a full scan once per week, during computer usage downtime (such as late at night). A quick scan can be done anytime you like, but it’s usually only necessary if you notice suspicious activity on your PC.
8.
Do I need to update my antivirus software?
Absolutely! Keeping your antivirus software up-to-date is crucial in helping you to avoid the most recent threats.
That being said, most antivirus software today—whether free or paid—will default to automatic updates. This way you don’t need to worry about manually updating your software. It may still be worth checking to confirm that your antivirus is running the most up-to-date version from time to time.
9.
What features should my antivirus software have?
Great question—especially since antivirus software continues to add more and more components to help keep you safe online. At absolute bare minimum, your app should have a scanner to protect against malware and online threats like phishing sites and a firewall. But other services like remote access protection, individual file encryption, and a password manager can be helpful too. Our breakdown of antivirus software features lays out the details you need to know, so that you can decide what you need.
Android Authority has been digging around in the files of the latest ChatGPT app (beta version 1.2025.196) and now reports that OpenAI will soon start watermarking images generated using the AI tool.
When generating an image with ChatGPT, you will soon be able to select “Save without watermark” in the menu behind the three dots in the top-right corner of the app. Obviously, this feature would be rather useless if images weren’t going to be watermarked.
Will all users be able to save images without watermarks? We don’t know yet. Android Authority speculates that the feature may sit behind a paywall and only be available to paid ChatGPT subscribers.
None of this has been announced or confirmed by OpenAI as of this writing, and it’s possible this feature won’t make it through to the stable release versions of ChatGPT at all. We’ll have to wait and see.
If you’ve ever wandered through some of the less-legitimate corners of the internet and/or the real world, you may have seen those “stream everything for free” Android TV set-top boxes for sale. As it turns out, they’re a real problem, with many of them hosting malware that turns them into a botnet that hosts proxies and advertising fraud tools. Google is taking an unusual tactic to shut them down: litigation.
BleepingComputer reports that the revived BadBox 2.0 malware is now running on over 10 million Android-based devices, mostly those sketchy streaming video boxes. The botnet is mainly used to create fake and spoofed advertising tools that are essentially stealing money from Google and other advertising firms (presumably sending it back to operators believed to be in China) in addition to more varied activities like DDoS attacks, proxies, and ransomware proliferation.
Google says those proxy connections are being sold to other criminals, for up to $1,390 USD for 500GB. Fake apps distributed to phones across the world, in third-party stores beyond the control of Apple and Google, are being used to reel in ad money.
Google says these cheap Android TV streaming devices and gadgets are being used to host and spread malware.
Google
While Google can’t do much about hackers in China, it’s siccing lawyers on the companies who host the tools that make this botnet’s basic operations possible. They’ve presented a RICO case (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a frequent tool used by US law enforcement to attack organized crime) that asks the US District Court to shut down more than 100 domains that are allegedly operating the malware and associated tools. If successful, Google and the court would be forcing some pretty big web service companies—including GoDaddy, CloudFlare, Amazon, and Alibaba—to shut down services to these sites.
I should point out that, even though these infected devices are running Android, they aren’t your typical Android TV/Google TV setups, and they don’t have Google Play Store or its associated safeguards in place. In fact, this botnet is conceptually no different from the big stuff that used to run almost exclusively across infected Windows machines in the 2000s and 2010s. It’s just that these Android-based boxes are cheap, popular, and easy to compromise thanks to Android’s easily modifiable nature.
It’s an unusual move, to be sure, but Google seems to have exhausted the options it has with its own tools, which include monitoring and shutting down ad accounts. It seeks to force registrars to cooperate with Google to identify and shut down the infected domains, with “permanent injunctions” to prevent the hackers from simply repeating the process with new domains. Oh, it would also like some money, in the form of “appropriate equitable relief under applicable statutes and law,” and the usual statutory damages and attorney’s fees.
The Platinum Edition not only includes the excellent base game, but also the Rise and Fall and Gathering Storm expansions, plus the six DLC packs that came out post-release. It’s a must-have for fans of the series, but it’s especially great as an entry point for Civ newcomers.
What makes Civilization VI so special?
The Civ series has earned itself a special reputation among strategy gamers, as it combines all the aspects you could wish for—global strategy with different factions, city building, tech trees, and combat—all at a very high level with deeply complex systems. All of these elements take place on a hex map, which is also an iconic feature of Civilization games.
Civilization VI is one of the best-rated games with a current score of 88 on Metacritic. The most recently released Civilization VII wasn’t as well-received by fans, so newcomers should try this one first.
In the Platinum Edition, you get all of the following content:
Sid Meier’s Civilization VI
Civilization VI: Rise and Fall (expansion)
Civilization VI: Gathering Storm (expansion)
Civilization VI – Viking Scenario Pack
Civilization VI – Poland Civilization & Scenario Pack
Civilization VI – Australia Civilization & Scenario Pack
Civilization VI – Persia and Macedon Civilization & Scenario Pack
Civilization VI – Nubia Civilization & Scenario Pack
Civilization VI – Khmer and Indonesia Civilization & Scenario Pack
If you decide to dive into Civilization VI, you can look forward to many sleepless nights thanks to its addictive “one more turn” nature. It’s great solo (local) and multiplayer (online).
How to get Civilization VI for free
All you have to do is log in to the Epic Games Store with an existing account and download Civilization VI. If you do this by 11 AM on July 24th, you can keep the whole game afterwards at no extra cost.
This is an insane deal since Epic normally charges $79.99 for Civilization Vi: Platinum Edition. Get it for free while you can!
Most security teams subscribe to more threat‑intel feeds than they can digest, yet attackers keep winning. Cyware’s Jawahar Sivasankaran explains why: Outside the Fortune 500 and federal agencies, many organizations still treat cyberthreat intelligence (CTI) as another inbox rather than an engine for action. They know intel is “absolutely critical,” but legacy tools and skill gaps..
Windows 11 25H2 is coming this fall, which is right around the corner. But until recently, Microsoft hasn’t given us many details about it, so we’re still pretty much in the dark. But that darkness is slowly receding… and we’re starting to get a better picture of what to expect.
The latest news is that Microsoft will be upping the “static analysis” requirements for driver certification, a move meant to improve the security and stability of Windows 11 25H2.
According to the Windows Driver Developer blog post from earlier this week, all drivers will be required to undergo a so-called static analysis. “Static analysis is a foundational requirement of Windows Hardware Compatibility Program,” says the post. “The validation … [identifies] potential issues in driver code before deployment.”
In other words, companies that want their hardware designated as reliably compatible with Windows 10 and 11 will need their drivers reviewed and validated by Microsoft.
Windows 11 25H2 will probably be released at the end of September, but expect the rollout to take a number of months.
I’ve previously tried various remedies for this thorn in the side of my PC experience, but Microsoft has patched and updated Windows often enough that they’ve all stopped working. I eventually gave up and resolved to leave the Start menu hobbled by Microsoft’s over-eager branding, even though I’d much rather use the tools I chose for myself (Vivaldi as my browser and DuckDuckGo as my search engine).
Such things are sent to try us. By Microsoft, specifically. Which shouldn’t be poking its nose into how individual users want to use the operating systems we’ve paid for. I’m not bitter, no, why do you ask?
But a recent Windows laptop purchase—this one, in fact, yes, sometimes we jump on our own deal posts, too!—brought these annoyances front and center once more. I stared at the Windows 11 setup process for 40 minutes, prodded at each step to pay Microsoft more money for 365 or Copilot or OneDrive, so I decided it was once again time to see if I could wrestle the Start menu away from Redmond’s panopticonic clutches.
A little Googling DuckDuckGoing led me to MSEdgeRedirect, which does what it says on the tin. This little tool redirects web searches from the Windows 11 Start search bar to any browser you want, using all the major search engines. You know, the way it should’ve worked from the start.
This is a neat little package, requiring only a standard installation, without any constantly-running-in-the-background programs. In addition to redirecting the web portion of the search to your true default browser, it can also handle most of the widgets that appear in the taskbar. Weather, news, images—if you use any of them, you can redirect them to your preferred browser and an alternative service (such as Accuweather).
MSEdgeRedirect still works as of July 2025, on my home-built desktop PC and my Snapdragon laptop. I can’t guarantee that it’ll stay working for any given amount of time. It’s a freebie on GitHub, and Microsoft has updated Windows to bork these kinds of tools before, which I consider to be a self-serving betrayal of customers like me. Customers that Microsoft might want to be a little less cavalier about pissing off these days.
But for the moment, it works. I hope it makes Windows 11 a little less annoying for you, too, especially if you’ve recently been forced to hop onto a new machine or operating system.
When we first heard about Arm chips in Windows laptops, at least some of us were hoping for more affordable options. That didn’t really happen… at least for a while. But over the last few weeks, we’ve finally started seeing some cheaper Snapdragon models, like this Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x that’s now $449.99 at Best Buy—today only! That’s a huge drop from its original $749.99 price.
This 15-inch laptop was already one of the cheapest on the market to feature Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X processor, and it comes with the fantastic battery life and Copilot+ features that are the hallmark of that hardware. Getting 16GB of RAM is great at this price—it’s the minimum I would consider for a Windows 11 machine—although 256GB of storage isn’t anything to write home about.
With a larger 1920×1200 screen and a roomy keyboard with a number pad, this is a great machine if you want a little more screen space for video or document work. Just don’t expect this laptop to be a gaming powerhouse, as Snapdragon laptops still struggle to perform with 3D games. I do like the fact that it includes a full-sized SD card reader, on top of two USB-A, one USB-C, and one HDMI port. For more details, check out PCWorld’s full review of the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x.
Microsoft has decided not to move forward with plans for a simplified system tray in Windows 11, reports Windows Latest.
The new design would have removed the full date and time display as well as the notifications icon, with the aim of creating a more stripped-down and barebones system tray.
Although we previously lost the clock icon for notifications with Windows 11 24H2, the intended minimalist design was never finalized or fully realized. Microsoft was pretty close to rolling out these further changes, but suddenly pulled back—without offering any explanation.
According to company spokesperson Brandon LeBlanc, the decision was made after negative user feedback, with only a few people showing actual interest in the simplified system tray design. As such, Microsoft listened to its user base and ultimately scrapped the plans.
Dr. Ian Cutress, also known as TechTechPotato on YouTube and the industry analyst behind More Than Moore, is a frequent and welcome guest on PCWorld’s videos and The Full Nerd. And with him in the studio in San Francisco, it would be a crime not to pick his brain on the topic of CPU manufacturing. So that’s exactly what Will did.
First up: what does it take to actually make a silicon chip in a factory? Or to be more accurate, a fabrication plant, or “fab” for short. I once heard it described as “A bag of goes in a machine on one side, the machine punches the bag, and you get a CPU on the other.” The reality is a little more complex. We’re talking thousands of individual steps with hundreds of different components and processes, some requiring scare and precious materials. And that’s just the physical stuff that goes into a chip. Actually getting the factory up and running is the work of years of planning and developing, and billions — sometimes hundreds of billions — of dollars from start to finish.
And of course, things are getting more and more complex as processors become more powerful, using smaller components and processes on the nanometer scale. While a fab can continue making chips for years or decades even after it’s no longer cutting edge, the new stuff is so difficult that it’s getting consolidated into giant competitors. Right now it’s Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Intel, and Samsung. Between them they make chips for pretty much everyone, from AMD and Nvidia to Apple, Qualcomm, MediaTek, et cetera.
But there’s a new “focused effort” to make a new 2-nanometer fabrication plant from a company called Rapidus, which is the spearhead for a new push for chip production in Japan. And like the other (remaining) big players, Rapidus would court production from massive clients like those listed above, along with partner companies in the country including Sony, Toyota, and Softbank, among others with the blessing and tax support of the Japanese government. It should be ready to start making absolutely bleeding-edge chips by 2027.
So all this stuff is pretty high-end corporate stuff, and not much of it trickles down to us on the consumer side. But what about the chips that go into graphics cards? And if Nvidia, and to a lesser extent AMD, can make all the money in the world selling chips to the AI industry…why would they even care to sell chips to PC gamers?
As Ian explains, a lot of the same tech and development that goes into that AI moneyspinner also goes into standard, consumer-level graphics cards, to say nothing of other applications like game consoles. To say nothing of the extreme specialization — you can’t just get a low-binned AI chip and throw it into a $2,000 graphics card instead. It also helps to diversify and stay relevant to consumers…because investors are consumers, too. Even a billionaire occasionally shops for a laptop.
Thanks so much to Dr. Cutress for breaking down these complex topics for us. For more on the latest news and trends in the tech industry, subscribe to PCWorld on YouTube, and watch our weekly podcast The Full Nerd.
Most of us are wise to money-saving travel tips from replacing expensive hold luggage with cheaper carry-on cabin bags to buying your foreign currency online rather than at the airport.
There’s another wise travel tip that could save you a bundle, and it’s much easier than stuffing all your clothes into a tiny backpack.
One of travel’s hidden expenses is expensive foreign data roaming charges when away from your home country, which can rack up significantly for those of us reliant on our phones every day for news, socials and streaming.
Getting an eSIM is the way to beat away unwanted hefty data charges via a dedicated digital mobile data plan.
GigSky
How eSIM’s make everything easy
An eSIM is a virtual version of the tiny SIM cards our phone carrier has us install in our phones. Just like the physical SIM, an eSIM controls our calls, texts and data—just 100% digitally.
You don’t need to change your phone number to take advantage of the much cheaper data while away, so you needn’t fear about being disconnected when you least expect it in an unusual foreign clime.
Safer than Wi-Fi
Of course, you could just rely on Wi-Fi, but outside of your hotel you must find a hotspot and then hope it’s a safe one where you won’t run the very real risk of exposing all your otherwise secure details to hackers.
An eSIM is the safe, inexpensive and convenient solution to travelling with your phone while abroad. Buying a local SIM requires a physical purchase and activation, whereas an eSIM can be as simple as a download and speedy setup. You just leave your domestic SIM card in place, ready to swap back to when you get home.
One of the simplest eSIM implementations we’ve tried is from GigSky, where you control everything simply through a free app—from choosing your destination and setting up your eSIM to activating it when you arrive at your destination and then topping it up with extra data if you need it.
It couldn’t be easier.
GigSky
Who are eSIMs for?
Combined with the app, international eSIMs are great for both casual holidayers and frequent business travelers, with fixed data plans range from 500MB to 50GB and in duration from just a three-day city break or business trip to over two weeks in the sun, on the slopes and even on a cruise ship.
GigSky provides an unmatched service in 200 countries, including Cuba (which almost no other provider covers.
It even works on cruise ships with over 200 of the biggest names such as Carnival, Disney, Celebrity and Princess included. This is bundled with a regular land service so that a single plan works on the entire vacation—as well as inflight on over 20 different airlines.
Aside from the simple app that you need download only one, we like US-based GigSky as it is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) that owns much of its core network elements, offering more flexibility and control compared to most eSIM providers that are just resellers. This means that its customer service can much better diagnose any network or installation issues, and you don’t need to buy a new eSIM for every plan.
As a network operator, the app will always be accessible, even if you run out of data.
Free trial
Better yet, GigSky offers a free 500MB plan for Europe or 100MB everywhere else (no credit card required), for those who want to test this convenient and money-saving eSIM solution.
The demands of modern life can make it hard to stay on top of things. Just when you’ve made time to work on that creative project, suddenly there are emails that need dealing with, tasks to manage, or scheduling that requires immediate attention, all of which makes it hard to remain productive and inspired.
Well, with the latest Intel® Core™ Ultra powered Windows PC with AI capabilities there are a wealth of features and capabilities purpose-built to streamline your workload and free up time to spend on the things that are the most important to you.
How AI-powered PCs can help you regain control
AI might feel like a buzzword that’s plastered over everything at the moment, and in some cases if does seem like it offers much apart from basic party tricks. But Microsoft’s CoPilot, powered by Intel® Core™ Ultra processors, is an exception, as it offers plenty of very helpful tools and features that can speed up your workflow, maximise your time and help you stay focussed.
With its AI search you can quickly pull up any action points in your emails and have them listed and summarised. Need to write a quick reply? Let CoPilot take care of that, then you can always tweak it so it sounds like you. Have you been sent a document that will take ages to read, just ask the AI to break it down into the essentials and you’re done in seconds.
With the new Click-to-Go feature you can also get instant context-sensitive actions for text and image-based items, with the ability to summarise, refine or edit them without needed to open another app. Nothing to distract you, only the tools you need under your fingertips. That’s not all, you can also harness the AI power to create images, restyle them, use real language to search for files, add live captions to videocalls, plus have CoPilot change the lighting, background blur and more so that your presentations look professional.
Game-changing graphics. Incredible performance
To get the most out of the new AI capabilities, it’s important that you invest in powerful hardware that’s designed to work in harmony with these groundbreaking software tools. One excellent option is the Asus Zenbook S14, which comes equipped with the top-of-the-line Intel® Core™ Ultra 9 processor, 1TB of storage and a huge 32GB of memory. This beast of a machine can handle pretty much anything you throw at it, with the dedicated Neural Processing Unit meaning it can run the AI-processing on the device itself rather than relying on an internet connection for everything.
It also boasts Thunderbolt 4 ports so you can connect high-res displays, a 3K 120Hz OLED touchscreen, up to 12 hours of battery life, as well as lightning-fast Wi-Fi 7 connectivity.
Asus
Currys has a fantastic offer on at the moment, where you can pick up the Intel® Core™ Ultra 9 processor powered Asus Zenbook S14 for £1,399 which is a massive saving of £200 off the normal price. There’s also the Asus Zenbook S14 that’s powered by an Intel® Core™ Ultra 7 processor and packed with AI features for £1,199, which is an incredible discount of £200.
Work, create, and play. All day.
If you’re looking for an Intel® powered Windows PC that’s future proofed and lets you access the latest and greatest AI features, then there’s never been a better time to pick one up at Currys, as there are discounts across a wide range of models.
Don’t get bogged down in the menial tasks that take up too much time each day. Instead, set AI to work, while you get on with creating the things that really matter.
This year as I celebrated Canada Day, I was ever mindful of United States President Donald Trump’s persistent claims that we become the 51st state. His claim that Canada would be better off as a state prompted me, and likely many other Canadians, to reflect on our national identity and what it truly means to be a Canadian. Read More
The Razer Blade 14 delivers high gaming performance in cool, quiet, compact package with premium build quality. Its OLED display is beautiful, too. But it’s expensive.
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The Razer Blade 14 is a 14-inch gaming laptop that’s not much larger, thicker, or heavier than the average laptop. From the snappy keyboard to the quiet fans to the beautiful display, everything works as well as I hoped it would. This machine delivers exactly what it promises. Best of all, you don’t have to choose between power and portability.
Razer Blade 14: Specs
The Razer Blade 14 is a premium 14-inch gaming laptop that comes with an AMD Ryzen AI HX 365 CPU, based on AMD’s Zen 5 architecture. Our review unit was a $2,699 model that comes with Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 graphics, 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and a 1TB SSD. (It also has AMD Radeon 880M graphics, to save power when the beefy Nvidia GPU isn’t needed.)
Razer also offers a lower-end $2,299 model that comes with RTX 5060 graphics and 16 GB of RAM along with a $2,999 model that includes 64 GB of RAM and a 2 TB SSD.
AMD’s Ryzen AI hardware comes with an NPU, so you get access to Copilot+ PC AI features on this laptop.
Model number: Razer Blade 14 (2025)
CPU: AMD Ryzen AI 9 365
Memory: 32GB LPDDR5X RAM
Graphics/GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 and AMD Radeon 880M
NPU: AMD NPU (up to 50 TOPS)
Display: 2880×1800 OLED display with 120Hz refresh rate
Storage: 1TB PCIe Gen4 SSD
Webcam: 1080p webcam
Connectivity: 2x USB Type-C (USB4), 2x USB Type-A (USB 3.2 Gen 2), 1x combo audio jack, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x microSD slot, 1x power port, 1x Kensington lock slot
Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
Biometrics: IR camera for Windows Hello
Battery capacity: 72 Watt-hours
Dimensions: 12.23 x 8.83 x 0.62 inches
Weight: 3.59 pounds
MSRP: $2,699 as tested
The Razer Blade 14 is an excellent gaming laptop in a small package. If you want premium build quality, great gaming performance, and a beautiful display in a compact 14-inch laptop package, it’s a great option.
Razer Blade 14: Design and build quality
IDG / Chris Hoffman
The 14-inch Razer Blade 14 is the most compact gaming laptop Razer offers, alongside the larger Razer Blade 16 and Razer Blade 18. Razer says this is the thinnest Blade 14 it’s ever created, and at 0.62 inches thick and 3.59 pounds, it’s unusually portable for a gaming laptop with Nvidia GeForce graphics.
The build quality is excellent — the chassis is made of solid aluminum, the hinge is smooth and easy to open with one hand, and it keeps the display solidly in place without any jostling during gaming sessions.
Our review model, with its silver-toned “Mercury White” color has a surprisingly understated design for a gaming laptop. It’s all silver and black with a very restrained Razer logo on the lid. There are no blinking LEDs here — aside from the keyboard backlighting. With per-key LED lighting, you can create animated rainbow LED effects on the keyboard — or just switch it to pure white light for stealth mode. It looks professional and will blend in as a “normal” laptop to anyone who doesn’t recognize the Razer logo on the lid.
Razer Blade 14: Keyboard and trackpad
IDG / Chris Hoffman
The Razer Blade 14 has an awesome keyboard that feels great to use. On paper, the 1mm key travel isn’t a lot. But Razer also says the keys have 63g actuation force. That combination translates to a snappy keyboard experience without a lot of travel.
The keyboard here also supports per-key backlighting, so you can customize the color of each key in the Razer Chroma app — or activate complex animations. It’s the kind of thing that makes the laptop feel even more premium, and it lets you activate that rainbow LED “gamer” aesthetic — but only if you want it, and without blinking LEDs elsewhere on the laptop.
The Razer Blade 14’s trackpad is great. It’s extremely wide and comes right up to the lip of the laptop, and it’s smooth and responsive. Palm rejection is very good, so I didn’t have a problem with it getting in the way while playing games, despite its size. I’d prefer a haptic trackpad, but it’s fine. The click-down action feels great — and it’s quiet, which is underrated when many laptop trackpads make loud clicking sounds — but a haptic trackpad means that the top part of the trackpad would be clickable, too.
Razer Blade 14: Display and speakers
IDG / Chris Hoffman
The Razer Blade 14 has an absolutely beautiful 14-inch display. It’s a 2880×1800 OLED display, and it produces incredibly vivid colors. At a 120Hz refresh rate, it’s also nice and smooth. I do wish it supported HDR — and you can get higher refresh rate displays if you choose a laptop with an IPS display instead — but this display looks amazing. I’m a big fan of OLED displays, and this is a great one.
The Razer Blade 14’s speakers sound great for a laptop. The weapon-firing sounds in DOOM: The Dark Ages sounded nice and punchy. In music, there’s surprisingly crisp instrument separation in Steely Dan’s Aja for laptop speakers. Playing Daft Punk’s Get Lucky, there’s a fun sound with a bit of bass.
The volume level is good, although I’ve heard much louder laptop speakers; it’s good but doesn’t have the loudest top-end volume I hear on other laptops. Bass is the one thing that’s lacking compared to a good pair of headphones or external speakers, but there’s enough bass to make the speakers usable. (Still, a good pair of headphones or external speakers will be a big upgrade to your gaming or multimedia experience.)
Razer Blade 14: Webcam, microphone, biometrics
The 1080p webcam included here is surprisingly good. It delivers a clear picture with good color reproduction — nothing grainy or washed out. And, because this is a Copilot+ PC, you get access to the AI webcam tweaks in Windows Studio Effects.
The microphone sounds clear and has good noise reduction, but the audio could be a bit clearer. It’s no big deal. But, while I’d be happy using the built-in webcam for video meetings, I’d definitely prefer to use an external mic for gaming sessions.
The Razer Blade 14 has an IR camera for Windows Hello, and it works well. I prefer these to fingerprint readers: It’s nice to open your laptop and have it automatically sign in when it sees your face.
Razer Blade 14: Connectivity
IDG / Chris Hoffman
The Razer Blade 14 has a compelling selection of ports for a 14-inch laptop — including two USB Type-C ports (USB4 speeds) and two USB Type-A ports (USB 3.2 Gen 2 speeds).
On the left, you’ve got a power port along with a USB Type-C port, USB Type-A port, and combo audio jack. On the right, you’ll see a microSD card reader, a second USB Type-C port, a second USB Type-A port, an HDMI 2.1 out port, and a Kensington lock slot.
That’s about all you could want here — the only thing you could ask for is an Ethernet port, and I doubt one would physically fit here given the size of the laptop!
This laptop also has Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 support, making it nice and future proof for the latest standards. I had no problem with the Wi-Fi.
Razer Blade 14: Performance
The Razer Blade 14 performed great in both gaming and real-world desktop use — naturally. The cooling system works well and blasts the hot air out of the back of the machine, not out of the sides where it would blow on your mouse hand. The keyboard stays surprisingly cool for a gaming laptop.
The metal above the F key row can become rather hot while gaming, so that’s where so much of the heat is being redirected to. It ran DOOM: The Dark Ages great, with smooth gameplay even on high graphical detail settings. And the fans stayed surprisingly quiet for a compact gaming laptop that needs to vent a lot of heat, too — no loud whirring jet engine noise, as with some gaming laptops.
As always, we ran the Razer Blade 14 through our standard benchmarks to see how it performs compared to competing laptops.
IDG / Chris Hoffman
First, we run PCMark 10 to get an idea of overall system performance. With an overall PCMark 10 score of 7,994, this machine delivered similar overall performance to the 16-inch Razer Blade 16 on this benchmark and only fell a bit short of the HP Omen Max 16 with its higher-end and more power-hungry Intel Core Ultra 9 CPU.
IDG / Chris Hoffman
Next, we run Cinebench R20. This is a heavily multithreaded benchmark that focuses on overall CPU performance. Since it’s heavily multithreaded, CPUs with more cores have a huge advantage.
With a multithreaded score of 7,800, this system delivered good numbers — falling short of systems with more cores, naturally. The AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 chip here has 10 cores, while the 370 chip in the Razer Blade 16 has 12 cores. The Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX has a whopping 24 cores. You can see how that affects performance in multithreaded CPU benchmarks, but the difference in real-world gaming performance can be marginal.
IDG / Chris Hoffman
We also run an encode with Handbrake. This is another heavily multithreaded benchmark, but it runs over an extended period. This demands the laptop’s cooling kick in, and many laptops will throttle and slow down under load.
The Razer Blade 14 completed the encode process in 789 seconds — that’s just over 13 minutes. Once again, only laptops with CPUs that have more cores performed better.
IDG / Chris Hoffman
Next, we benchmark the laptop’s GPU. We start with 3Dmark Time Spy, a graphical benchmark that focuses on GPU performance.
With a 3DMark Time Spy score of 13,069, the Razer Blade 14 sits in the middle here. Laptops with Nvidia RTX 5080 or 5090 graphics will of course be faster — but it’s harder to pack a higher-end GPU in a compact machine! Compared to the other 14-inch laptops in our benchmark table, you can see how much faster Razer’s machine is than an older gaming laptop with Nvidia RTX 4060 graphics.
After that, we run the benchmarks built into some games. First, we use the benchmark in Shadow of the Tomb Raider to test all the gaming laptops we review. It’s an older game, but it’s a great way to compare GPU performance across different PCs.
IDG / Chris Hoffman
With an average FPS of 161, the Razer Blade 14 delivered high performance. As you can see, this older game is seeing diminishing returns from higher-end GPUs.
Finally, we run the benchmark in Metro Exodus. This is a more demanding game, and we set the benchmark to 1080p resolution at the Extreme detail setting.
IDG / Chris Hoffman
With an average FPS of 56 in this high-end Metro Exodus benchmark, the Razer Blade 14 delivered playable performance even at these brutal graphical settings. Of course, it comes in behind larger 16-inch laptops with higher-end GPUs.
Overall, the Razer Blade 14 delivered high gaming performance in a compact package with great cooling and quiet fans. This is a great combination of performance and portability if you’re looking for a 14-inch laptop.
Razer Blade 14: Battery life
The Razer Blade 14 includes a 72 Watt-hour battery. Gaming laptops generally aren’t known for their long battery life, but AMD’s Ryzen AI hardware can be surprisingly power efficient, and that’s what we see here. This isn’t going to put up the kind of numbers you see from low-power Qualcomm Snapdragon X or Intel Lunar Lake laptops, but it’s much more power efficient than you might expect in light usage.
IDG / Chris Hoffman
To benchmark the battery life, we play a 4K copy of Tears of Steel on repeat on Windows 11 with airplane mode enabled and the keyboard backlight turned off until the laptop suspends itself. This is a best-case scenario for any laptop since local video playback is so efficient, and real battery life in day-to-day use is always going to be less than this.
We set the screen to 250 nits of brightness for our battery benchmarks, and it’s worth noting that the Razer Blade 14’s OLED display has a bit of an advantage, as OLED screens use less power to display the black bars around the video.
The Razer Blade 14 lasted for 680 minutes in our benchmark — that’s over 11 hours. Real-world battery life will vary, but this is a great battery life number to see out of a gaming laptop that’s all about power.
Razer Blade 14: Conclusion
The Razer Blade 14 is an excellent gaming laptop in a small package. If you want premium build quality, great gaming performance, and a beautiful display in a compact 14-inch laptop package, it’s a great option. Yes, it’s expensive at $2,699. That’s the big downside — although it was on sale for $2,299 on Razer’s online store while I was finishing this review.
Compared to high-end Razer Blade 16 variants that pair top-end GPUs with thin designs for a high price, this combination of power, portability, and price makes a lot more sense. It’s an excellent machine, but there are tradeoffs: You can get more gaming performance for less money in other, larger gaming laptops. You can get other 14-inch gaming laptops, too — but they won’t feel all this premium or have fans this quiet.
We often talk about co-design as something residents must be invited into. But what about the role of government itself? What happens when public service isn’t just about delivery — but about enabling, facilitating and stepping back so others can step forward? Read More
Zimperium, a provider of mobile security software, this week published a report that notes more than 5 million unsecured public Wi-Fi networks have been detected globally since the beginning of 2025
Hey, PCWorld readers! I’ve been fascinated by time lapse videos ever since I saw the video effect used on a bean-sprout growing in second grade class.
Being able to condense days of growth into a short video that I could watch in just a minute seemed like magic to me. What’s more, it opened my mind to something about plants that you just can’t see every day — the fact that they’re not just inanimate things. They can move just like us (albeit a lot more slowly).
The great thing about making a time lapse video these days is you don’t need a studio or specialist equipment to pull it off. It can be done with a mobile phone and / or a free app in Windows.
So, if you’re into a hobby that lends itself well to a time lapse (and that can be almost anything), why not make a time lapse video? Here are some ideas for inspiration:
A flower bud opening
An artist painting
Traffic moving on the street
Your own hair growing out after a snip
Tip: Slow moving things like snails and clouds make excellent subjects but require a little more time to shoot.
What to do:
One of the simplest ways to create a time lapse video is with an app called Time Lapse Creator. It gives you the option of either uploading images or videos, or shooting a video directly via the app itself.
For the purposes of this “how to,” I’ve assumed that you’ve already shot your pictures, uploaded them to your PC, and stored them in a folder. Now you can do the following:
Select either Import Folder or Import Files to select the images you’d like to turn into your video. Also select the order of the images to be played (by date or by ascending or descending order).
Choose the frame rate (fps), video quality, and bitrate. As a guide to fps, to make 10 seconds of time lapse a professional time lapse videographer will use 240 images editing at 24fps, 250 images editing at 25fps, and 300 photos editing at 30fps.
Press preview to view your video and tweak the settings until you’re happy.
Once you think you’ve nailed it, save your video to make an MP4.
Dominic Bayley / Foundry
And that’s it! If you’d like more tips like this one delivered to your inbox twice a week every week, be sure to sign-up to our PCWorld Try This newsletter.
Welcome to The Full Nerd newsletter—your weekly dose of hardcore hardware talk from the enthusiasts at PCWorld. Missed the hot topics on our YouTube show or latest buzz from across the web? I’ve got you covered.
This past week, Adam published a look back at the past few decades of PC component history, through the lens of my colleague Gordon Mah Ung’s career. The memories stretch from the mid-1990s (including Gordon in a full suit and tie) to the present day of contests for the slowest benchmark results. And by the end, I could see other people latching on to “change” as the biggest theme throughout.
The visual evidence is there: the move from beige boxes to bright, even obnoxiously colored chassis; shifting case configurations and attitudes toward cable management (oh, for the days when we could shove everything inside and just slap the side panel back on); even the leap to ferocious high core-count processors and screaming-fast graphics cards.
Vintage Alienware.
Willis Lai / Foundry
But while others could argue that change has been the constant in computer hardware, I’d instead champion ATX as one of the truest mainstays—and all the evidence of its steady, reliable presence over the past 30 years is right in the video.
In build after build, ATX is there. An over-the-top, ludicrously decked out Dream Machine built by the crew at Maximum PC? ATX. The machine that won the ongoing competition between Gordon and others (including our friend Dr. Ian Cuttress) for the slowest benchmark results in Cinebench R15? Also ATX. And even Gordon’s signature troll build, the “reverse sleeper build” that sported a shiny new case on the outside, and old-as-heck parts on the inside? Yeah, ATX.
Gordon had his bones to pick with ATX—he complained often that ATX was holding back the PC industry. (And I mean often, not just on The Full Nerd when the cameras were rolling.) But in the very next breath, he would then rail against companies like Apple, which has zero issue with (in Gordon’s words) throwing older tech overboard.
ATX’s longevity is why you can put parts that look like this in a brand-new, sparkling clean case.
Willis Lai / Foundry
I’ve always had a different outlook, largely along the lines of Gordon’s follow-up rant. I’m open to a newer standard that evolves the layout of motherboards, sure. But I view the jump from the AT form factor to ATX more as a practical response, as opposed to just the insatiable hunger for innovation. ATX followed AT after a decade, bringing further improvements to standardization and swappability of parts. But when BTX launched nine years later, arguably “on schedule,” it failed to take.
Not enough innovation, you could argue. But I view it as a sign of what truly motivates leaps in technology, whether the advent of the printing press or desktop-sized personal computers. I also think ATX’s ongoing relevance tells us a lot about the future of the PC. Innovation is a response to a need. As the PC industry has become increasingly more personal, with a far wider spectrum of options to address specific needs, what innovation looks like may continue to become smaller and more subtle. And possibly, it may even become less constant.
In this episode of The Full Nerd…
Willis Lai / Foundry
In this episode of The Full Nerd, Adam Patrick Murray, Brad Chacos, Alaina Yee, and Will Smith talk about Intel being on the ropes, Zen 6’s emergence in the wild, and AI in Windows. To me, I found a lot of commonalities between these topics—they made me extremely contemplative about what innovation in the PC space will look like, because things feel a little…confused.
Also, we got a glimpse into the remarkable details of the decor in Will’s home office. All I can say is: That potato has a butt.
Missed our live show? Subscribe now to The Full Nerd YouTube channel, and activate notifications. We also answer viewer questions in real time!
And if you need more hardware talk during the rest of the week, come join our Discord community—it’s full of cool, laid-back nerds.
This week’s intriguing nerd news
I’m facing a second week in recent months where I’m questioning my deal-hunting skills, but a few technology wins are keeping my spirits up. What currently has me a bit starry-eyed: insanely fast internet. So fast that I’m a little giddy at the thought, even though I may never see it in my neck of the woods.
I can’t top this data hoarder’s deal-hunting skills: Estate sales can be a good way to pick up useful, interesting, or downright quirky stuff for pretty cheap. But so far, I haven’t encountered any finds on the level of 11 Western Digital 8TB external hard drives for just $360. Man. What a score.
Turns out you can put a price on nostalgia: $349 bucks is the cost of reliving your best childhood memories—aka getting your hands on a remade Commodore 64, compatible with over 10,000 C64 games and modernized to support HDMI, USB, and Wi-Fi. I hope this works out better than the Analogue 3D. (Not gonna lie, I’m a little worried Analogue won’t survive the tariffs, as they’re absorbing the higher costs.)
Self-destructing SSDs? Pass. Don’t get me wrong—TeamGroup’s reveal of an SSD that destroys itself with the push of a button got my attention. But look, I’m cheap. Taking a hammer to my drives seems way simpler and costs a lot less. (As does taking them over to a company that has a proper shredder.) Also, if I’m handling data sensitive enough to require instant obliteration…why is it in my home?
The internet is built on duct tape and string: For systems engineers, DNS probably gives y’all a lot of headaches. I certainly would have one, knowing just how fragile the system is. Or when seeing proof that malware can be casually slipped into DNS records. Fun.
Linux is winning: Just kidding, it’s still barely a fraction of users on desktop PCs. But it is gaining a little bit of headway in the U.S.—we’ve now reached a milestone of over 5 percent market share.
You may need to finally upgrade your Gigabyte motherboard if it’s vulnerable to a new security exploit.
Gigabyte
When will 6-cores become default? Well, not just yet: Brad floated the idea during this week’s episode that Zen 6 could shift to six-core CPUs as the baseline. But we’ve also commented multiple times on the show that the budget end isn’t getting much attention. I guess those laments won out, as the hottest chip news this week is AMD’s Ryzen AI 5 330, a four-core, eight-threaded Copilot+ laptop chip.
Update your Gigabyte motherboard ASAP…if you can: Running an Intel processor? Perhaps one within the range of 8th gen to 11th gen? Is it sitting in a Gigabyte motherboard? Better check pronto if an update is available for it, because a vulnerability that lets attackers bypass Secure Boot was just disclosed. But if yours is too old, you may actually have to upgrade your hardware all together to avoid this security hole. ð
Why not just buy actual gold instead? Look, I know the RTX 4090 has largely held its value. And maybe that’ll extend to the RTX 5090, too. But when I first saw Asus’s RTX 5090 ROG Astral Real Gold Edition (aka the RTX 5090 made with 11 pounds of 24-carat gold), I thought, “Surely investing in actual 24-carat gold bars would be the better call.” I’m a product of my upbringing, which includes very immigrant grandparents.
I want Japan’s fiber optic internet tech: The land of the fax machine is claiming a record-breaking transmission rate of 127,500GB/s (yes, the big B, so really fast) over a distance of roughly 1,100 miles. Sure, I’d only use such speed to load cat videos instantaneously, but I still want it.
Catch you all next week, when hopefully the hot parts of the world are cooler, and the cold parts are warmer. It’s 62 degrees right now in San Francisco. Also supposed to rain next week. Yup.
Alaina
This newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Gordon Mah Ung, founder and host of The Full Nerd, and executive editor of hardware at PCWorld.
Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg and several other members of the social media giant’s top brass agreed to settle increasingly heated privacy violation claims for the price of $8 billion.
It is far from the first time that the company, its subsidiary Facebook, or its executives have responded to alleged user privacy violations with billions upon billions of dollars.
The lawsuit at hand accused Zuckerberg and other Meta leaders of failing to prevent years of violations of Facebook users’ privacy. The claims, which were originally filed in September 2018, took years to process, eventually resulting in a trial at the Delaware Court of Chancery. But on just the second day of proceedings, with Zuckerberg himself set to testify early next week, the multibillion-dollar settlement was announced, to timing that many observers found suspicious and revealing.
While nobody at Meta will confirm that the settlement was reached to avoid having to testify, it very much looks like it to yours truly.
The case was brought by shareholders who accused Meta executives of many years’ worth of negligence and failure to enforce a 2012 agreement that was reached by the US Federal Trade Commission, which was designed to safeguard user data. The shareholders who filed the lawsuit claimed that Zuckerberg and former Meta Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg “knowingly ran Facebook as an illegal data harvesting operation.”
The shareholders wanted the 11 defendants they sued to use their personal wealth to reimburse the company after years of alleged reputational damage due to compiling privacy fiascos. The defendants denied the allegations, which they called “extreme claims.” The parties did not disclose details of the settlement. The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Sam Closic, said the agreement “just came together quickly.”
In 2019, Facebook paid a record-breaking $5.1 billion penalty after the FTC found the company had deceived users about control over their personal data. The FTC ordered Facebook to implement new restrictions and overhaul its corporate structure, ensuring greater accountability in decisions related to user privacy. This fine was imposed by the FTC after the agency concluded that Facebook had violated the earlier 2012 FTC order by deceiving users about their ability to control the privacy of their personal information. The investigation was triggered by the Cambridge Analytica meltdown which showed the data of 50 million users was obtained without express permission and used for political purposes.
The $5 billion penalty explains a large part of the $8 billion demanded by the shareholders this week. In addition, Meta faced several fines in the European Union (EU). Among others, a 1.2 billion euro ($1.4 billion) fine for Meta’s transfers of personal data to the US without explicit consent.
All this is why the shareholders wanted Zuckerberg and others to reimburse Meta an estimated $8 billion or more for the FTC fine and other legal costs. The shareholders also questioned the timing of share sales by the executives.
By settling, Zuckerberg and other defendants avoid having to answer probing questions under oath. In January, former Meta COO Sandberg was sanctioned for deleting sensitive emails related to the Cambridge Analytica investigation, complicating her testimony.
The Delaware Chancery Court will likely manage access to full court documents for this case through its case files or release them via public interest or watchdog groups as the settlement process concludes. Until then, speculation about the settlement’s magnitude will run rampant. What will remain unrevealed is the true reason why Meta’s executives chose to settle. But it stands to reason that they expected the damages of a continued trial and the associated testimonies would have been even more damaging.
What has become very clear, even without knowing all the details, is that those in the know feel that Meta keeps abusing users’ personal data for monetary gain.
Despite promises to obtain specific user consent, offer privacy settings, and improve practices, Meta has consistently disregarded users’ privacy.
We don’t just report on threats – we help protect your social media
At least three people have been killed after an explosion at a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department training facility. NBC News' Aaron Gilchrist has early details on the incident.
At least three people have been killed after an explosion at a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department training facility. NBC News' Aaron Gilchrist has early details on the incident.
NBC News' Julie Tsirkin reports on the House of Representatives passing a bill cutting $9 billion in spending that had already been approved, including cuts to foreign aid funds for services like NPR and PBS.
NBC News' Julie Tsirkin reports on the House of Representatives passing a bill cutting $9 billion in spending that had already been approved, including cuts to foreign aid funds for services like NPR and PBS.
Amid mounting pressure from his closest allies, President Donald Trump posted that he asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to “produce any and all pertinent grand jury testimony, subject to court approval” relating to the Jeffrey Epstein case. It comes as a bombshell report from The Wall Street Journal that describes a birthday album that contains letters from Trump and dozens of other friends and associates. NBC’s Ryan Nobles reports for TODAY.
Amid mounting pressure from his closest allies, President Donald Trump posted that he asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to “produce any and all pertinent grand jury testimony, subject to court approval” relating to the Jeffrey Epstein case. It comes as a bombshell report from The Wall Street Journal that describes a birthday album that contains letters from Trump and dozens of other friends and associates. NBC’s Ryan Nobles reports for TODAY.
Massistant is the presumed successor to Chinese forensics tool, “MFSocket”, reported in 2019 and attributed to publicly traded cybersecurity company, Meiya Pico.
The forensics tool works in tandem with a corresponding desktop software.
Massistant gains access to device GPS location data, SMS messages, images, audio, contacts and phone services.
Meiya Pico maintains partnerships with domestic and international law enforcement partners, both as a surveillance hardware and software provider, as well as through training programs for law enforcement personnel.
The good news, per Balaam, is that Massistant leaves evidence of its compromise on the seized device, meaning users can potentially identify and delete the malware, either because the hacking tool appears as an app, or can be found and deleted using more sophisticated tools such as the Android Debug Bridge, a command line tool that lets a user connect to a device through their computer.
The bad news is that at the time of installing Massistant, the damage is done, and authorities already have the person’s data.
In our series “The Cost of Denial” NBC News’ Brian Cheung reports on the couple who used artificial intelligence to get approval for the medication they needed to help with the side effects of cancer treatment. Previous efforts had been denied three times and delayed getting the medication in question for months.
In our series “The Cost of Denial” NBC News’ Brian Cheung reports on the couple who used artificial intelligence to get approval for the medication they needed to help with the side effects of cancer treatment. Previous efforts had been denied three times and delayed getting the medication in question for months.
Nintendo is re-opening playtests for what is likely a Minecraft-style MMO, and you'll need to act fast to get a chance to try it out. The company is taking 40,000 total applicants this time around, up from 10,000 in the last playtest session, but based on how quickly spots filled up last time, I still wouldn't expect them to last for more than just a few seconds.
The playtest will begin on July 28 and last through Aug. 10, and will work on both the original Nintendo Switch and the Nintendo Switch 2. While Nintendo is being secretive about the playtest, and asking players to do the same, the company did say that this test will be of the same software "for which we performed a test in October of 2024."
Technically, players were bound to secrecy during that test as well, but that didn't stop leaks from hitting the internet. Nintendo has used copyright strikes to attempt to put the genie back in the bottle, but searching Reddit still shows footage for the software in question. While it seems pretty rudimentary at this point, it appears to be an MMO in the vein of Minecraft, with multiple players able to team up to move blocks around a digital world.
Supposedly, according to datamining performed by a Bluesky user named Sky, the game is being developed by the same team that made the Nintendo Labo, and the final version is set to include minigames, mechs, a character creator, and PvP.
If that sounds like something you'd like to try out, you might want to rearrange your schedule for this evening. Applications for the playtest open tonight, July 18, at 6 pm ET and 3 pm PT. Technically, you're able to submit an application up through Monday at 7:59 am PT, but since Nintendo says "applicants will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis," don't expect slots to be there for you if you dawdle.
To submit an application, visit Nintendo's form and click the "Advance to Application Creation" button at the bottom of the screen once the gates open. You'll need to have had an active Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership as of yesterday, July 17, as well as have been at least 18 years of age by the same deadline. Your account must also be registered to one of the following countries:
Japan
United
United Kingdom
France
Germany
Italy
Spain
Canada
Brazil
Mexico
That's pretty strict, but if you're planning to play with friends, Nintendo is throwing at least one bone your way: Instead of everyone filing an application individually, you're able to apply as a group. You'll need to elect a representative, then have that person create an application and send an invitation URL to everyone in your group, where they can then log in to complete the process. Everyone will need to belong to the same region, but it's one potential way to get around trying to load what is sure to be a busy website later tonight.
Smart security cameras can be useful portals into what's happening in and around your house. The problem with security cams is that in order to access the clips of everything that's happened, you need to store them someplace—and for most cameras, that means a subscription.
If you're someone with Google Nest cams, the cost for your subscription is about to get hiked. For the basic plan, which gets you 30 days of clips, pricing will go from $8 a month to $10; for users of the upgraded plan, called Nest Aware Plus, you're about to see a substantial hike from $15 a month to $20. Nest Aware Plus gives users more time to access old clips and 10 days of 24/7 video history. That price change is coming soon, too. Current users will see those changes starting Aug. 15.
If, like me, you refuse to submit to one more monthly fee, then it might be time to either choose less-expensive cameras, or cameras that will let you avoid subscriptions altogether.
To avoid monthly fees, store clips locally
In order to avoid a subscription, you'll need to either accept live access only (no saved clips), or find a camera that offers local storage. Let's dismiss the first option: the real value of a security camera is the saved clip, not the live view. Live view is a tool mostly used for when you're home and someone rings the doorbell, for instance, or you know a delivery person is approaching.
Local storage allows you to skip the cloud, and many cameras currently offer either a slot for a microSD card or a networked hard drive that will capture clips from all your cameras. Don't be deterred by the notion of the microSD card—often you don't need to retrieve the card to view the clips. Rather, you can access them through the app, just as if you had cloud storage. Networked hard drives work the same way.
I almost exclusively now use Eufy cameras alongside a HomeBase (Eufy's networked hard drive). I like the cameras a lot, but I love that I don't need a subscription, and can add as many cameras as I want to the HomeBase. I pull up clips quickly.
Amazon Blink cameras work similarly. If you have a Sync Module, you don't need a subscription. The Sync is simple and small; you plug it into an outlet inside your home, as close as possible to the cameras. It isn't as solid a connection as Eufy's Homebase provides, but considering how inexpensive Blink cameras are, this is an excellent choice for those looking to spend less.
Reolink cameras can be networked to a Home Hub, which works similarly to Eufy.
Many Tapo cameras offer a slot on their cameras for a microSD card. The card acts as a drive for your clips, and while it's unlikely to offer as much storage as a local hard drive, it still affords the user a decent amount of space. And Tapo cameras are some of the most affordable on the market, often below $50, so you're saving on the camera and the subscription.
Aqara—a brand I love for their wide range of smart sensors—also offers a security camera with onboard microSD storage. The camera also serves as a hub for all other Aqara products.
MicroSD cards are a perfect storage solution when the camera is too far from your home network to use wifi to transfer files. Remote cameras that rely on 4G are becoming more popular, and in this case, having local storage on board the camera itself will free you from subscriptions, while allowing you to see camera activity when you retrieve the card.
Millions of images of passports, credit cards, birth certificates, and other documents containing personally identifiable information are likely included in one of the biggest open-source AI training sets, new research has found.
Thousands of images—including identifiable faces—were found in a small subset of DataComp CommonPool, a major AI training set for image generation scraped from the web. Because the researchers audited just 0.1% of CommonPool’s data, they estimate that the real number of images containing personally identifiable information, including faces and identity documents, is in the hundreds of millions. The study that details the breach was published on arXiv earlier this month.
The bottom line, says William Agnew, a postdoctoral fellow in AI ethics at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the coauthors, is that “anything you put online can [be] and probably has been scraped.”
The researchers found thousands ofinstances of validated identity documents—including images of credit cards, driver’s licenses, passports, and birth certificates—as well as over 800 validated job application documents (including résumés and cover letters), which were confirmed through LinkedIn and other web searches as being associated with real people. (In many more cases, the researchers did not have time to validate the documents or were unable to because of issues like image clarity.)
A number of the résumés disclosed sensitive information including disability status, the results of background checks, birth dates and birthplaces of dependents, and race. When résumés were linked to people with online presences, researchers also found contact information, government identifiers, sociodemographic information, face photographs, home addresses, and the contact information of other people (like references).
Examples of identity-related documents found in CommonPool’s small-scale data set show a credit card, a Social Security number, and a driver’s license. For each sample, the type of URL site is shown at the top, the image in the middle, and the caption in quotes below. All personal information has been replaced, and text has been paraphrased to avoid direct quotations. Images have been redacted to show the presence of faces without identifying the individuals.
COURTESY OF THE RESEARCHERS
When it was released in 2023, DataComp CommonPool, with its 12.8 billion data samples, was the largest existing data set of publicly available image-text pairs, which are often used to train generative text-to-image models. While its curators said that CommonPool was intended for academic research, its license does not prohibit commercial use as well.
CommonPool was created as a follow-up to the LAION-5B data set, which was used to train models including Stable Diffusion and Midjourney. It draws on the same data source: web scraping done by the nonprofit Common Crawl between 2014 and 2022.
While commercial models often do not disclose what data sets they are trained on, the shared data sources of DataComp CommonPool and LAION-5B mean that the data sets are similar, and that the same personally identifiable information likely appears in LAION-5B, as well as in other downstream models trained on CommonPool data. CommonPool researchers did not respond to emailed questions.
And since DataComp CommonPool has been downloaded more than 2 million times over the past two years, it is likely that “there [are]many downstream models that are all trained on this exact data set,” says Rachel Hong, a PhD student in computer science at the University of Washington and the paper’s lead author. Those would duplicate similar privacy risks.
Good intentions are not enough
“You can assume that any large-scale web-scraped data always contains content that shouldn’t be there,” says Abeba Birhane, a cognitive scientist and tech ethicist who leads Trinity College Dublin’s AI Accountability Lab—whether it’s personally identifiable information (PII), child sexual abuse imagery, or hate speech (which Birhane’s own research into LAION-5B has found).
Indeed, the curators of DataComp CommonPool were themselves aware it was likely that PII would appear in the data set and did take some measures to preserve privacy, including automatically detecting and blurring faces. But in their limited data set, Hong’s team found and validated over 800 faces that the algorithm had missed, and they estimated that overall, the algorithm had missed 102 million faces in the entire data set. On the other hand, they did not apply filters that could have recognized known PII character strings, like emails or Social Security numbers.
“Filtering is extremely hard to do well,” says Agnew. “They would have had to make very significant advancements in PII detection and removal that they haven’t made public to be able to effectively filter this.”
Examples of résumé documents and personal disclosures found in CommonPool’s small-scale data set. For each sample, the type of URL site is shown at the top, the image in the middle, and the caption in quotes below. All personal information has been replaced, and text has been paraphrased to avoid direct quotations. Images have been redacted to show the presence of faces without identifying the individuals. Image courtesy of the researchers.
COURTESY OF THE RESEARCHERS
There are other privacy issues that the face blurring doesn’t address. While the blurring filter is automatically applied, it is optional and can be removed. Additionally, the captions that often accompany the photos, as well as the photos’ metadata, often contain even more personal information, such as names and exact locations.
Another privacy mitigation measure comes from Hugging Face, a platform that distributes training data sets and hosts CommonPool, which integrates with a tool that theoretically allows people to search for and remove their own information from a data set. But as the researchers note in their paper, this would require people to know that their data is there to start with. When asked for comment, Florent Daudens of Hugging Face said that “maximizing the privacy of data subjects across the AI ecosystem takes a multilayered approach, which includes but is not limited to the widget mentioned,” and that the platform is “working with our community of users to move the needle in a more privacy-grounded direction.”
In any case, just getting your data removed from one data set probably isn’t enough. “Even if someone finds out their data was used in a training data sets and … exercises their right to deletion, technically the law is unclear about what that means,” says Tiffany Li, an assistant professor of law at the University of New Hampshire School of Law. “If the organization only deletes data from the training data sets—but does not delete or retrain the already trained model—then the harm will nonetheless be done.”
The bottom line, says Agnew, is that “if you web-scrape, you’re going to have private data in there. Even if you filter, you’re still going to have private data in there, just because of the scale of this. And that’s something that we [machine-learning researchers], as a field, really need to grapple with.”
Reconsidering consent
CommonPool was built on web data scraped between 2014 and 2022, meaning that many of the images likely date to before 2020, when ChatGPT was released. So even if it’s theoretically possible that some people consented to having their information publicly available to anyone on the web, they could not have consented to having their data used to train large AI models that did not yet exist.
And with web scrapers often scraping data from each other, an image that was originally uploaded by the owner to one specific location would often find its way into other image repositories. “I might upload something onto the internet, and then … a year or so later, [I] want to take it down, but then that [removal] doesn’t necessarily do anything anymore,” says Agnew.
The researchers also found numerous examples of children’s personal information, including depictions of birth certificates, passports, and health status, but in contexts suggesting that they had been shared for limited purposes.
“It really illuminates the original sin of AI systems built off public data—it’s extractive, misleading, and dangerous to people who have been using the internet with one framework of risk, never assuming it would all be hoovered up by a group trying to create an image generator,” says Ben Winters, the director of AI and privacy at the Consumer Federation of America.
Finding a policy that fits
Ultimately, the paper calls for the machine-learning community to rethink the common practice of indiscriminate web scraping and also lays out the possible violations of current privacy laws represented by the existence of PII in massive machine-learning data sets, as well as the limitations of those laws’ ability to protect privacy.
“We have the GDPR in Europe, we have the CCPA in California, but there’s still no federal data protection law in America, which also means that different Americans have different rights protections,” says Marietje Schaake, a Dutch lawmaker turned tech policy expert who currently serves as a fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center.
Besides, these privacy laws apply to companies that meet certain criteria for size and other characteristics. They do not necessarily apply to researchers like those who were responsible for creating and curating DataComp CommonPool.
And even state laws that do address privacy, like California’s consumer privacy act, have carve-outs for “publicly available” information. Machine-learning researchers have long operated on the principle that if it’s available on the internet, then it is public and no longer private information, but Hong, Agnew, and their colleagues hope that their research challenges this assumption.
“What we found is that ‘publicly available’ includes a lot of stuff that a lot of people might consider private—résumés, photos, credit card numbers, various IDs, news stories from when you were a child, your family blog. These are probably not things people want to just be used anywhere, for anything,” says Hong.
Hopefully, Schaake says, this research “will raise alarm bells and create change.”
There are all kinds of reasons to not have an Instagram account, from a general aversion to social media all the way to a dislike of Meta in particular. But there's also often information on Instagram that you can't find anywhere else—a nearby shop might list their alternative hours on the site.
Instagram itself is quite aggressive about forcing you to sign in if you want to read such things, with pop-ups that tell you to sign up in order to see more. You can close the initial pop-up to browse the first few images but that doesn't let you click an image or read the caption, which is (annoyingly) right where the information you want is probably hiding.
This is where the website Imginn comes in. This free, ad-supported site lets you browse any public Instagram page, without an Instagram account. To get started, head to the homepage and type the name of the account you want to browse. You'll see a list of results. Click the account you want to see and you can browse to your heart's content.
Credit: Justin Pot
Click any image or video and you can see it in full resolution, read the caption, and even download the media.
The site doesn't stop with image and video posts—you can also use this to browse both pinned and current stories. These are both things you usually can't see at all without logging in. Reels are also supported.
Is this useful if you already have an Instagram account? Mostly no, though it is nice to be able to download images, videos, and even stories—that's something you need special tools for otherwise.
To me, though, the main use for Imginn is those moments when I need to quickly check something that is otherwise behind Instagram's walled garden without getting sucked into the rest of the ecosystem. It's perfect for people who don't have—and don't want—an Instagram account.
We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.
If your phone’s camera is already doing most of the work when it comes to video, adding a good gimbal like the DJI Osmo Mobile 7P can take that content up a few notches. It’s currently down to $125 from its original $149, which also happens to be its lowest price yet, according to price trackers.
The 7P is foldable, lightweight, and designed to handle even large phones like the iPhone 16 Pro Max or Galaxy S25 Ultra. Once clamped in, it keeps your phone level and smooth while walking or tracking a moving subject. There’s a built-in extension rod for overhead or wide-angle shots, and the embedded tripod makes it possible to shoot hands-free, whether you're filming a dance tutorial or doing a sit-down livestream.
The design feels solid without being heavy. All the key controls—joystick, record button, camera toggle, zoom dial—are right where your fingers expect them. You can reorient the phone from landscape to vertical just by pressing the trigger on the back. A small multifunction module comes included and snaps onto the clamp magnetically. It lets you use gesture controls for subject tracking, even if you’re using third-party apps like Instagram Live or TikTok. That means you can keep the tracking going without being locked into DJI’s app, which is rare for gimbals (even older DJI models), notes this PCMag review.
Battery life depends heavily on how much of it you’re using. You’ll get around 10 hours with just the gimbal, but that reportedly drops to 4.5 hours with the tracker on, and only three hours if you’re also using the fill light. That might be a downside for longer shoots, especially if you’re relying on the added features. Still, with support for most modern phones, a strong clamp that avoids the power and volume buttons, and DJI’s helpful app with tutorials built in, the Osmo Mobile 7P covers a lot of ground. If your filming style involves motion, multitasking, or one-person setups, this might be the right tool to simplify your workflow without sacrificing quality.
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
How to run an LLM on your laptop
In the early days of large language models, there was a high barrier to entry: it used to be impossible to run anything useful on your own computer without investing in pricey GPUs. But researchers have had so much success in shrinking down and speeding up models that anyone with a laptop, or even a smartphone, can now get in on the action.
For people who are concerned about privacy, want to break free from the control of the big LLM companies, or just enjoy tinkering, local models offer a compelling alternative to ChatGPT and its web-based peers. Here’s how to get started running a useful model from the safety and comfort of your own computer.Read the full story.
—Grace Huckins
This story is part of MIT Technology Review’s How To series, helping you get things done. You can check out the rest of the series here.
A brief history of “three-parent babies”
This week we heard that eight babies have been born in the UK following an experimental form of IVF that involves DNA from three people. The approach was used to prevent women with genetic mutations from passing mitochondrial diseases to their children.
But these eight babies aren’t the first “three-parent” children out there. Over the last decade, several teams have been using variations of this approach to help people have babies. But the procedure is not without controversy. Read the full story.
—Jessica Hamzelou
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Agent It undertakes tasks on your behalf by building its own “virtual computer.” (The Verge) + It may take a while to actually complete them. (Wired $) + Are we ready to hand AI agents the keys? (MIT Technology Review)
2 The White House is going after “woke AI” It’s preparing an executive order preventing companies with “liberal bias” in their models from landing federal contracts. (WSJ $) + Why it’s impossible to build an unbiased AI language model. (MIT Technology Review)
3 A new law in Russia criminalizes certain online searches Looking up LGBT content, for example, could land Russians in big trouble. (WP $) + Dozens of Russian regions have been hit with cellphone internet shutdowns. (ABC News)
4 Elon Musk wants to detonate SpaceX rockets over Hawaii’s waters Even though the proposed area is a sacred Hawaiian religious site. (The Guardian) + Rivals are rising to challenge the dominance of SpaceX. (MIT Technology Review)
5 Meta’s privacy violation trial is over The shareholders suing Mark Zuckerberg and other officials have settled for a (likely very hefty) payout. (Reuters)
6 Inside ICE’s powerful facial recognition app Mobile Fortify can check a person’s face against a database of 200 million images. (404 Media) + The department has unprecedented access to Medicaid data, too. (Wired $)
7 DOGE has left federal workers exhausted and anxious Six months in, workers are struggling to cope with the fall out. (Insider $) + DOGE’s tech takeover threatens the safety and stability of our critical data. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Netflix has used generative AI in a show for the first time To cut costs, apparently. (BBC)
9 Does AI really spell the end of loneliness? Virtual companions aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be. (New Yorker $) + The AI relationship revolution is already here. (MIT Technology Review)
10 Flip phones are back with a vengeance At least they’re more interesting to look at than a conventional smartphone. (Vox) + Triple-folding phones might be a bridge too far, though. (The Verge)
Quote of the day
“It is far from perfect.”
—Kevin Weil, OpenAI’s chief product officer, acknowledges that its new agent still requires a lot of work, Bloomberg reports.
One more thing
GMOs could reboot chestnut trees
Living as long as a thousand years, the American chestnut tree once dominated parts of the Eastern forest canopy, with many Native American nations relying on them for food. But by 1950, the tree had largely succumbed to a fungal blight probably introduced by Japanese chestnuts.
As recently as last year, it seemed the 35-year effort to revive the American chestnut might grind to a halt. Now, American Castanea, a new biotech startup, has created more than 2,500 transgenic chestnut seedlings— likely the first genetically modified trees to be considered for federal regulatory approval as a tool for ecological restoration. Read the full story.
—Anya Kamenetz
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)
+ This stained glass embedded into a rusted old Porsche is strangely beautiful. + Uhoh: here comes the next annoying group of people to avoid, the Normans. + I bet Dolly Parton knows a thing or two about how to pack for a trip. + Aww—orcas have been known to share food with humans in the wild.
The term "Gen Z stare" is popping up all over social media and non-socialmedia this week. It refers to the blank expression that is supposedly common among people between the ages of 13 and 28 years old, noticed especially often among retail workers. Gen Z, it is said, responds to boiler-plate greetings and small talk with an inscrutable stare instead of a smile or nod. While it's not a new term—this video explaining the phenomena is nearly a year old— it has gone very viral lately. But is this a real shift in cultural behavior or a pointless age-based online carping campaign?
Is the Gen Z stare even real?
Maybe? When it comes to something as amorphous as people online saying, "the barista looks at me funny when I order Starbucks," there's no way to know whether it's a widespread, troubling trait in a broad demographic, or just meme-y way for older people to bag on those damn kids. So until further research is conducted, I'll say this: It's probably a small behavioral shift that's been blown way out of proportion by generational anxiety. Kind of like Millennials killing casual dining (and 100 other things), vocal fry, Jenkem, rainbow parties, switchblades, and the "overly jaunty" rhythm of Bing Crosby's "Deep in the Heart of Texas." (To be fair, that shit is fucking jaunty.)
In the musical Bye Bye Birdie, Mr. Mcafee describes kids as "disobedient, disrespectful oafs" who are impossible to control, then asks asking plaintively, "Why can't they be like we were? Perfect in every way?" That was written in 1960, but it could have easily been posted by a 35-year-old on TikTok yesterday. A lot of the informal online cultural discourse about the Gen Z stare has the tone of generational critiques that were played out 40 years ago. Millennials are between the ages of 29 and 44 years old, the prime age to be wracked with that "I'm not young anymore" anxiety that so often results in feeling envious at younger people while talking shit about them. So the Gen Z stare is probably mostly that. But on the other hand, there could be some embers blowing up all this smoke.
If the Gen Z stare is real, what causes it?
If Gen Z really is more prone to blank stares, what's behind it? It depends on who you ask. Forbes rounded up some opinions from "generational experts," so take your pick:
Joe Galvin, chief research officer at Vistage, "The World’s Largest CEO Coaching & Peer Advisory Organization" ascribes the Gen Z stare to "a growing generational disconnect in employee communication and expectations."
Sujay Saha, president of Cortico-X, a consulting firm that "helps clients realize meaningful business values through a human-centric approach to business problems," says the stare became ubiquitous because "Gen Z entered the workforce in an era defined by screens, social distancing and remote communication."
No offense to these experts (I'm sure they're fantastic) but if a researcher at a coaching organization, a director of a "Purpose and Flourishing" initiative, and a consultant trying to "realize meaningful business values through a human-centric approach to business problems" tried to explain my generation to me, I'd respond with a blank stare too. A stare requires someone is stared at, and maybe they're the problem.
The delicate dance between stare-er and stare-ee
Most examples of the Gen Z Stare online describe interactions between customers and consumers or relationships between entry level employees and their boss. Given how some people treat others, maybe they should to be glad that Applebee's waitress is looking at them blankly instead of, say, stabbing them in the eye with a steak knife. As anyone who has ever worked a "service job" knows, sometimes a blank stare isn't contempt, it's disbelief.
"We stare when you don’t understand common sense," explains Caleb Worley, who posted this video to explore the stare-ers point of view:
Another theory: Maybe the Gen Z's stare is more Meursault in The Stranger than Buddy the Elf in Elf; not a display of witlessness, but a look of fatal indifference because life has reached depths of absurdity that would terrify Camus. Imagine you're a 22-year-old working a low-wage job in 2025. You spent your "teen years" hiding in your house from a deadly virus, you're saddled with student debt, ICE agents are carting away your neighbors, and you'll probably never be able to afford a car, let alone a house. Then the middle-aged CEO of flourishing says, "your problem is you don't smileenough."
Or maybe it’s just a face. Either way, it's not worth freaking out about; I mean, you should see how they look at you behind your back.
Welcome to Edition 8.03 of the Rocket Report! We are at an interesting stage in Europe, with its efforts to commercialize spaceflight. Finally, it seems the long-slumbering continent is waking up to the need to leverage private capital to drive down the costs of space access, and we are seeing more investment flow into European companies. But it is critical that European policymakers make strategic investments across the industry or companies like PLD Space, which outlined big plans this week, will struggle to get off the launch pad.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Avio celebrates freedom from Arianespace. Representatives from Italy, Germany, and France met at the European Space Agency headquarters last week to sign the Launcher Exploitation Declaration, which officially began the transfer of Vega C launch operation responsibilities from Arianespace to the rocket’s builder, Avio, European Spaceflight reports. "It is a historic step that reinforces our nation's autonomy in access to space and assigns us a strategic responsibility towards Europe," said Avio CEO Giulio Ranzo. "We are ready to meet this challenge with determination, and we are investing in technologies, expertise, and infrastructure to ensure a competitive service."
The last few years have seen several smartphone makers pull back or totally abandon their mobile efforts. UK-based Nothing Technologies, however, is still trying to carve out a niche in the increasingly competitive smartphone market. Its tools have been quirky designs and glowing lights, along with a focus on markets outside the US. With the Nothing Phone 3, the company has brought its "first flagship" phone stateside.
Nothing didn't swing for the fences with the Phone 3's specs, but this device can hold its own with the likes of OnePlus and Google. Plus, it has that funky Nothing design aesthetic. There's a transparent back, a tiny dot matrix screen, and a comprehensive Android skin. But at the end of the day, the Nothing Phone 3 is not treading new ground.
Designing Nothing
Despite Nothing's talk about unique designs, the Nothing Phone 3 looks unremarkable from the front. The bezels are slim and symmetrical all the way around the screen. Under a sheet of Gorilla Glass 7i, it has a 6.67-inch 120Hz OLED screen with an impressive 1260 x 2800 resolution. It hits 4,500 nits of brightness, which is even higher than Google and Samsung phones. It's more than bright enough to be readable outdoors, and the touch sensitivity is excellent—sometimes too excellent, as we've noticed a few accidental edge touches.
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