How to get another free year of updates for your Windows 10 PC

Officially, Microsoft will stop providing new security updates for Windows 10 PCs after October 14, 2025, a little over a decade after its initial release. It’s a stick that Microsoft is using to push upgrades to the newer Windows 11, whether you install it on a PC you already have or buy a brand-new PC to meet Windows 11’s system requirements. But if you can’t or don’t want to upgrade…

July 30, 2025
Read More >>

AI in Wyoming may soon use more electricity than state’s human residents

On Monday, Mayor Patrick Collins of Cheyenne, Wyoming, announced plans for an AI data center that would consume more electricity than all homes in the state combined, according to the Associated Press. The facility, a joint venture between energy infrastructure company Tallgrass and AI data center developer Crusoe, would start at 1.8 gigawatts and scale up to 10 gigawatts of power use. The project’s energy demands are difficult to overstate…

July 29, 2025
Read More >>

Apple releases iOS 18.6, macOS 15.6, and other updates as current gen winds down

Apple’s next-generation software updates are just a couple of months away, but Apple isn’t done with last year’s releases just yet. Apple has released iOS 18.6, iPadOS 18.6, macOS Sequoia 15.6, watchOS 11.6, tvOS 18.6, and visionOS 2.6 to the public today, fixing an issue with sharing movies from the Photos app but mostly patching a long list of security vulnerabilities. For iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, the list of resolved…

July 29, 2025
Read More >>

Acquisition sends thousands of Whistle pet trackers to IoT graveyard

Whistle pet trackers are headed to the Internet of Things (IoT) graveyard. After releasing its first product in 2013, the Seattle-based Whistle has just been acquired by a competitor that has decided to brick all of Whistle’s smart GPS and activity monitors. Tractive, an Austrian company that has also been selling Internet-connected GPS trackers for pets since 2013, on Monday announced its acquisition of Whistle from Mars Petcare, as spotted…

July 29, 2025
Read More >>

Bankrupt Futurehome suddenly makes its smart home hub a subscription service

Smart home device maker Futurehome is forcing its customers’ hands by suddenly requiring a subscription for basic functionality of its products. Launched in 2016, Futurehome’s Smarthub is marketed as a central hub for controlling Internet-connected devices in smart homes. For years, the Norwegian company sold its products, which also include smart thermostats, smart lighting, and smart fire and carbon monoxide alarms, for a one-time fee that included access to its…

July 28, 2025
Read More >>

Blender developers begin work on full-fledged mobile version

Popular open source 3D modeling tool Blender’s social media channels and subreddit have regularly seen people asking for a tablet version for years now. And according to a blog post by Dalai Felinto from the Blender team, the developers of the application have now committed to build just that. “The idea is to bring the full power of Blender to these devices,” the blog post explains. “This requires adapting to…

July 28, 2025
Read More >>

OpenAI’s ChatGPT Agent casually clicks through “I am not a robot” verification test

Maybe they should change the button to say, “I am a robot”? On Friday, OpenAI’s new ChatGPT Agent, which can perform multistep tasks for users, proved it can pass through one of the Internet’s most common security checkpoints by clicking Cloudflare’s anti-bot verification—the same checkbox that’s supposed to keep automated programs like itself at bay. ChatGPT Agent is a feature that allows OpenAI’s AI assistant to control its own web…

July 28, 2025
Read More >>

Pro-Ukrainian hackers take credit for attack that snarls Russian flight travel

Russia’s biggest airline cancelled dozens of flights on Monday following a failure of the state-owned company’s IT systems and, according to a Russian lawmaker and pro-Ukrainian hackers, was the result of a cyberattack, it was widely reported. The airline, Aeroflot, said it cancelled about 40 flights following a “technical failure.” An online departure board for Sheremetyevo airport showed dozens of others were delayed. The cancellations and delays hobbled traffic throughout…

July 28, 2025
Read More >>

After BlackSuit is taken down, new ransomware group Chaos emerges

Hot on the heels of a major ransomware group being taken down through an international law enforcement operation comes a new development that highlights the whack-a-mole nature of such actions: A new group, likely comprised of some of the same members, has already taken its place. The new group calls itself Chaos, in recognition of the .chaos name extension its ransomware stamps on files it has encrypted and the “readme.chaos[.]txt”…

July 26, 2025
Read More >>

Echelon kills smart home gym equipment offline capabilities with update

A firmware update has killed key functionality for Echelon smart home gym equipment that isn’t connected to the Internet. As explained in a Tuesday blog post by Roberto Viola, who develops the “QZ (qdomyos-zwift)” app that connects Echelon machines to third-party fitness platforms, like Peloton, Strava, and Apple HealthKit, the firmware update forces Echelon machines to connect to Echelon’s servers in order to work properly. A user online reported that…

July 25, 2025
Read More >>