Sustainability: News about the rapidly growing climate tech sector and other areas of innovation to protect our planet. The deal, announced Monday, is expected to give Google a team that can develop, build, and generate power directly alongside data centers — bypassing the long wait that companies typically face to connect new facilities to the electrical grid. Microsoft and Amazon are also racing to secure power for AI data centers, but through different approaches. Alphabet's agreement to acquire Intersect is structured as $4.75 billion in cash plus the assumption of debt. Intersect, which has more than 360 employees, will continue to operate under its own brand, with Kimber remaining as CEO. Have a scoop that you'd like GeekWire to cover? Climate goals vs. computing growth: How tech can expand data centers and support clean energy As AI booms, here's how Microsoft and Amazon are coming up with energy solutions Biden's executive order on AI data centers could benefit Amazon and Microsoft LevelTen lands $65M from Microsoft, Google to expand clean energy marketplace services

That's not enough.Corporate networks also love to MITM their own workstations and reinterpret http traffic. Thus it only supports a subset of HTTP/1.1 and sometimes it likes to change the content while keeping Content-Length intact.And you have to work around that, because IT dept of the corporation will never lift restrictions.I wish I was kidding. Corporate networks also love to MITM their own workstations and reinterpret http traffic. Thus it only supports a subset of HTTP/1.1 and sometimes it likes to change the content while keeping Content-Length intact.And you have to work around that, because IT dept of the corporation will never lift restrictions.I wish I was kidding. And you have to work around that, because IT dept of the corporation will never lift restrictions.I wish I was kidding. You can have still have weird broken stallouts though.I dunno, this article has some good problem solving but the biggest and mostly untouched issue is that they set the minimum h.264 bandwidth too high. Try 1Mbps and iterate from there.And going keyframe-only is the opposite of how you optimize video bandwidth. I dunno, this article has some good problem solving but the biggest and mostly untouched issue is that they set the minimum h.264 bandwidth too high. Try 1Mbps and iterate from there.And going keyframe-only is the opposite of how you optimize video bandwidth. And going keyframe-only is the opposite of how you optimize video bandwidth. I've had similar experiences in the past when trying to do remote desktop streaming for digital signage (which is not particularly demanding in bandwidth terms). Multicast streaming video was the most efficent, but annoying to decode when you dropped data. Thinks: why not send text instead of graphics, then? JPEG is extremely efficient to [de/en]code on modern CPUs. You can get close to 1080p60 per core if you use a library that leverages SIMD.I sometimes struggle with the pursuit of perfect codec efficiency when our networks have become this fast. You can employ half-assed compression and still not max out a 1gbps pipe. From Netflix & Google's perspective it totally makes sense, but unless you are building a streaming video platform with billions of customers I don't see the point. I sometimes struggle with the pursuit of perfect codec efficiency when our networks have become this fast. You can employ half-assed compression and still not max out a 1gbps pipe. From Netflix & Google's perspective it totally makes sense, but unless you are building a streaming video platform with billions of customers I don't see the point. is fantastical.Can't prove it wrong because it will be correct given arbitrary dimensions and encoding settings, but, it's pretty hard to end up with.Just pulled a couple 1080p's off YouTube, biggest I-frame is 150KB, median is 58KB (`ffprobe $FILE -show_frames -of compact -show_entries frame=pict_type,pkt_size | grep -i "|pict_type=I"`) Can't prove it wrong because it will be correct given arbitrary dimensions and encoding settings, but, it's pretty hard to end up with.Just pulled a couple 1080p's off YouTube, biggest I-frame is 150KB, median is 58KB (`ffprobe $FILE -show_frames -of compact -show_entries frame=pict_type,pkt_size | grep -i "|pict_type=I"`)

In June, U.S. insurance giant Aflac disclosed a data breach where hackers stole customers' personal information, including Social Security numbers and health information, without saying how many victims were affected. In a filing with the Texas attorney general, Aflac said that the stolen data includes customer names, dates of birth, home addresses, government-issued ID numbers (such as passports and state ID cards) and driver's license numbers, and Social Security numbers, as well as medical and health insurance information. And, in a filing with the Iowa attorney general, Aflac said that the cybercriminals responsible for the breach “may be affiliated with a known cyber-criminal organization; federal law enforcement and third-party cybersecurity experts have indicated that this group may have been targeting the insurance industry at large.” The company says it has around 50 million customers according to its official website. Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai is a Senior Writer at TechCrunch, where he covers hacking, cybersecurity, surveillance, and privacy. You can contact or verify outreach from Lorenzo by emailing lorenzo@techcrunch.com, via encrypted message at +1 917 257 1382 on Signal, and @lorenzofb on Keybase/Telegram. Waymo resumes service in San Francisco after robotaxis stall during blackout Google and Apple reportedly warn employees on visas to avoid international travel Tech provider for NHS England confirms data breach Coursera and Udemy enter a merger agreement valued at around $2.5B

Donahue was particularly interested in why designing a custom home cost a fortune and took forever, and why most people had to settle for whatever the developers were offering that year. That effort, Atmos, went through Y Combinator, raised $20 million from investors like Khosla Ventures and Sam Altman, and tried to use tech to streamline the custom home design process. It had designers on staff who worked with clients while software handled the back-end. All that sounds great until you hear Donahue describe it. “It became this extremely operational business,” he told me on a Zoom call last week. Then the Federal Reserve started jacking up interest rates, and suddenly clients who'd spent months designing their dream homes couldn't afford them anymore. Drafted is now nearly five months old, and it's everything Atmos wasn't. Just AI-driven software that generates residential floor plans and exterior designs in minutes. You can generate five more and keep going until something clicks. Right now, Drafted has six employees, four from Atmos, and it's raised $1.65 million at a $35 million post-money valuation from Bill Clerico, Stripe's Patrick Collison, Jack Altman, Josh Buckley, and Warriors player Moses Moody. Clerico led the round because he'd also been an angel investor in Atmos, and had watched Donahue will houses into existence despite rising interest rates. When Donahue told him about the new company over coffee, Clerico didn't need convincing. “Nick, please take our money,” he apparently said repeatedly over a two week period until Donahue agreed. Right now, if you want a custom home, you've got two options: hire an architect (expensive, slow), or buy a template plan online (cheap, inflexible). Drafted sits in the middle, offering customization at template prices. The economics work because Drafted built its own AI model, trained on real house plans from homes that were built and passed permitting. Practical constraints are considered, and Donahue says the specialized model costs almost nothing to run: two-tenths of a penny per floor plan, compared to 13 cents for general-purpose AI. Drafted only does single-story homes right now, but multi-story and lot-specific features are coming. The bigger question is whether there's actually a market for this. Of the million new homes built in America each year, only 300,000 are custom designed. Donahue compares it to Uber, which didn't just replace taxis but made on-demand car service something that nearly everyone uses. “There's really no reason in the future why everyone shouldn't have a totally custom designed home,” Clerico says. Or maybe most Americans will keep being price-conscious buyers who take what's available. The housing market has a long track record of rebuffing disruption. Asked what's to keep an LLM player or even another vertical player from buying similar data sets and creating the same product, Donahue talks about brand, pointing to his friend David Holz, who founded the video and image generating AI outfit, Midjourney. Despite the plethora of new image-generation models being launched, Midjourney's usage barely moves, Holz has told Donahue; its customers keep coming back to make AI images. Not huge numbers, but they show steady growth for such a young product. In the meantime, Donahue has something pretty valuable that could give Drafted an edge: deep knowledge of a problem and the insights gleaned from taking a crack at it once already. Pictured above, the Drafted crew, left to right: Martynas Pocius, Albert Chiu, Martina Cheru, Carson Poole, Stephen Chou, and Nick Donahue Waymo resumes service in San Francisco after robotaxis stall during blackout Google and Apple reportedly warn employees on visas to avoid international travel Coursera and Udemy enter a merger agreement valued at around $2.5B

While Mayer is not yet sharing specifics about Dazzle's functionality, she has revealed that the new company has raised an $8 million seed round at a $35 million valuation. Although Mayer has admitted to investing her own capital in the startup, she emphasized that the round was led by Green, a venture capitalist with a storied record of identifying iconic consumer brands such as Warby Parker, Chime, and Dollar Shave Club. Green's investment suggests Dazzle is poised for the coming wave of new AI-infused consumer businesses. The founder of Forerunner Ventures previously told TechCrunch that while enterprise AI took the early lead in this tech cycle, consumer-facing AI is a “late bloomer” that's finally ready for its breakout. “I think she really has a great sense for where people and platforms are going,” Mayer said. Mayer told TechCrunch that the Sunshine team began prototyping Dazzle last summer, a project that quickly eclipsed their previous work in ambition and opportunity. Originally founded as Lumi Labs in 2018, Sunshine first launched with a subscription app for contact management dubbed “Sunshine Contacts.” Despite its founder's high profile, the product struggled to gain traction. The new offering was widely criticized for its outdated design and similarly failed to attract widespread usage. Sunshine raised a total of $20 million from investors, including Felicis, Norwest Venture Partners, and Unusual Ventures. When the company was dissolved, investors received 10% of Dazzle's equity, Mayer said. Reflecting on Sunshine's struggle, Mayer was candid about its limitations, admitting the problems the company was tackling were too “mundane” and not large enough. “I don't think we got it to the state of overall polish and accessibility that I really wanted it to be,” she added. Mayer is now betting that the lessons from Sunshine will help her build a much more resilient and impactful business with Dazzle. “I have had the rare privilege of being at two companies that really changed how people do things,” Mayer told TechCrunch. Dazzle is expected to come out of stealth mode early next year. Marina Temkin is a venture capital and startups reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she wrote about VC for PitchBook and Venture Capital Journal. Waymo resumes service in San Francisco after robotaxis stall during blackout Google and Apple reportedly warn employees on visas to avoid international travel Coursera and Udemy enter a merger agreement valued at around $2.5B

You were looking at the $630 Kindle Scribe Colorsoft or reMarkable Paper Pro with hungry eyes, but the price of both tablets was upsetting your stomach. So you've started looking elsewhere for a color e-reader/e-notetaker. In your blind search, you've come upon the Boox Note Air 5C, and you're still left grimacing at the $530 asking price. Both devices are using the same screen technology, the same octa-core CPU, Android 15 as their operating system, and both use a stylus. That's a big flaw considering the longevity we expect from other e-notetakers. The 6.13-inch Boox Palma 2 Pro also comes with a special programmable button that should be standard on all e-readers in general. Having to use a touchscreen with a slower refresh speed to change E Ink settings or refresh the page is far more annoying than bringing it up with a single button press. If all I needed was an electronic note-taking device that wouldn't hurt my eyes long term, then the Note Air 5C would be sublime. The added color makes highlighting PDFs, ebooks, or your own notes more expressive. I used it to record my notes before an anticipated tabletop RGB campaign slated for next year. For actually reading my favorite RPG books from this year, it's a mixed bag. And that means the Note Air 5C may become a $530 one-trick pony for some users. There's an indefinable beauty to E Ink screens. The screen technology isn't anything like your typical LCD touch panel. Sure, that seems like a lot on paper. In reality, the image won't look anything like real colored paper. That's important to remember if you plan to use color e-paper as your replacement for your comic collection. You also have the option to change the color warmth if you tend to read or jot down thoughts late at night. For many readers, sticking with a black and white e-reader, such as Boox's own Go 6, will offer a cheaper and cleaner experience. There, you can rely on a faster refresh speed to avoid any signs of ghosting, where the E Ink capsules don't quite move in time and create a subtle bleed into following pages. The screen on the Note Air 5C has a subtle matte texture that offers gentle feedback when you swipe with a finger or drag the included Boox Pen 3 Stylus across it. Using it on the default notes app is smooth and comfortable. It easily beats the stylus included with the Boox Palma 2 Pro, and you don't need to spend anything extra to get it. As for other amenities, there's not much else. There's a single USB-C slot for power and a microSD card slot to augment the Note Air 5C's 64GB of storage. What I would also want is a better pen attachment point. I am much more enthused by color E Ink than the black and white variety. Even a small spot of color makes a huge difference in getting me to sit down and read. Colors make it far easier to highlight PDFs or take notes. There are two versions of the Boox Note Air 5C. The keyboard cover bundle costs $640 (it's currently going for less on Boox's own site) and includes a similarly textured case with a keyboard stuffed inside. Sure, if you have such small hands that typing on a constrained keyboard is preferable to wider devices like a Freewrite keyboard. Both the folio and keyboard cover bear a pleasant burnt umber color and a soft book cover-like texture. It folds up so you can only use the Note Air 5C in landscape mode. There's no trackpad either, so even if the device supports Android 15, it won't support any of the recently added touchpad features. The lack of a function row means you still need to touch the Note Air 5C's screen to change brightness or volume settings. Actually putting text onto the screen will not be as instantaneous as you're used to with any other laptop or tablet with a keyboard. It's slightly faster than the Speed refresh mode, but also results in much more ghosting, which will then require you to refresh your page. It adheres to the Note Air 5C with a simple magnetic attachment point and includes foldable wings that will let you stand it up vertically or horizontally. It also includes a soft, magnetic clamp that folds around the book to keep everything in place. I still fear that, one day, the pen will come loose. The comic pages that roll through on the Note Air 5C include small shades of color that likely are due to the scanning technology on apps like Crunchyroll Manga. These small imperfections surprisingly add to the faux-paper effect you get on E Ink. Seeing the splash of color when you open up the book cover can be a calming experience—far less old-timey than on a black and white e-reader. How accurate those colors are will depend on each work's palette. The watercolor-like inks are already in line with Kaleido 3's washed-out colors, so that makes sense. When I load my PDF of the indie TTRPG Mythic Bastionlands, those dark tones also look very close to what you get in the physical book. However, there was no hope for representing every work that tickles my fancy. The comic series The Power Fantasy by Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard was a sad facsimile of what it should look like. The TTRPG Slugblaster by Mikey Hamm, a work so full of deep cosmic purples, appeared far too pale, like a shade of mauve. Because of the color options, highlighting text is considerably better than anything you could use on an e-reader with a black and white screen. Boox's software includes a FreeMark tool that will let you mark up the pages in some apps. It works on Kindle, but it won't in other apps, including, strangely, Boox's own NeoReader PDF viewer. You can mark up text, but it lacks tools to change pen or marker type. This e-notetaker weighs in at only 440g, or less than a pound. Yup, that's what we expect from today's Kindle-likes. And with this form factor, I'm not forced to consider battery life too much. But with the Note Air 5C, I have to keep a close eye on my battery gauge. Even when jotting ideas down or flipping pages in a book, the device's battery depletes precipitously. I can use the Note Air 5C intermittently for an entire day and still have enough left over to get it to a charger. However, I'm used to devices like Boox's own Palma 2 Pro that will last for multiple days with regular use. If you planned on using this e-notetaker as an artist, I suggest you stick with a clearer OLED tablet. Trying to fill in spaces is too inconsistent. I tried the popular Android drawing app Krita on the Note Air 5C, and it was too laggy to even consider. For that, you'll need to deal with occasional jank. The Note Air 5C never failed to boot, but navigating menus can be slow and occasionally laggy. I desperately want just one more physical control on this device to make refreshing the screen and accessing settings seamless. Boox still promotes the $500 Note Air 4C on its website. They're the same tablet, though the older version is using Android 13 and includes a less-capable folio and pen (plus no keyboard). So if you were looking for the cheapest color e-notetaker, this device is in the running, though there are other options. Perhaps that will come soon, or else we may finally get a version of color E Ink that truly ticks all the boxes. Subscribe and interact with our community, get up to date with our customised Newsletters and much more. This quirky at-home facial device made my face glow for days. I never want to sideload anything ever again. Despite slighly odd ergonomics, the MCON will turn your phone into the handheld you want it to be.

Eagle-eyed gadget nerds will already know that the Pocket Vert is not Ayaneo's first handheld shaped like a Game Boy. While capable, the Pocket DMG was quite pricey, starting at $450. Ayaneo hasn't announced official global pricing for the Pocket Vert yet, but based on its 1,699 Chinese yuan starting price (about $241), it's speculated that the handheld could cost around $250. It's got what appears to be the same 3.5-inch LTPS LCD touchscreen with an identical 1,600 x 1,400 resolution at 615 pixels per inch (ppi). It's still an Android 14-based handheld, so you're gonna be running software emulators to play retro games. Unlike the Analogue Pocket, the Pocket Vert doesn't have a cartridge slot for Game Boy games. From YouTuber ETA Prime's thorough first impressions video above, you can see that the Pocket Vert is basically a hybrid between the Pocket DMG and Analogue Pocket. All of the buttons seem to be tactile and satisfying. The specs—Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip with 8GB or 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and either 128GB or 256GB of storage, a microSD card slot, and a 6,000mAh battery—seem more than capable enough for emulation. And even the “Magic Touch” touchpad below the D-pad and face buttons, which lets you control games that require a joystick or dual joysticks, seems functional enough for 3D games. As a cherry on top, the Pocket Vert has a fingerprint sensor embedded in its power button. On the front of games emulation, the Pocket Vert appears to be able to handle beefy retro consoles like the Sega Dreamcast, Nintendo GameCube, and Sony PlayStation 2 pretty well. Same thing for PS2 games such as Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Okami, and Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando. Dreamcast games are less demanding, but they also run with very playable frame rates. As a Game Boy guy, the Pocket Vert appeals to me in a way that horizontal-shaped retro handhelds do not. No word on when exactly Ayaneo will release the Pocket Vert—sometime in early 2026—but it's one device I'm very much looking forward to. That is assuming the current RAM and flash storage shortage doesn't completely wreck launch plans. Subscribe and interact with our community, get up to date with our customised Newsletters and much more. The best bang-for-buck handheld is no more. Get ready for even more game-key cards on Switch 2. No matter what, consumers are going to lose. Sorry, Game Pass, but Steam may soon bring your games to every platform.

The Lego Game Boy she told you not to worry about. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. The Lego Game Boy launched earlier this year to rave reviews, but it's just a showpiece that doesn't actually play games. Someone eventually built a working modded version of it, but even then, the screen was too small for LCLDIY, a modder hailing from China. He decided to make a giant Lego Game Boy using an electroluminescent display instead, to avoid the "annoying pixelation" that would otherwise come with simply scaling up an older screen. It doesn't even support relatively recent outputs like VGA, so everything had to be tweaked from the ground up, starting with how the display communicates with a "GPU." Before that, though, let's understand why the modder even chose an electroluminescent display. Both displays have pixels that emit their own light, feature near-instant response times, and an infinite contrast ratio due to the lack of a backlight. OLED, however, scans progressively, whereas CRT was interlaced and had a soft glow due to phosphor persistence. That beautiful glow effect, though, can be achieved with electroluminescent screens, too. Like CRT, EL displays produce a soft, blended pixel look on even large panels, but they do so through phosphor persistence rather than true interlacing. Unlike CRTs, EL displays don't require bulky cathode ray tubes; they are essentially a matrix of phosphors. But those layers are instead controlled through selective voltage, lighting up pixels and naturally masking low-res pixelation. This is where the OLED connection comes full circle — they're also controlled by electronic pulses; it's just that the pixels are organically self-lit rather than relying on phosphors. Display TED Talk aside, this is why an electroluminescent panel made sense, as it preserved that romanticized glowing look without requiring heavy cathode tubes or jumping straight to OLED and mimicking the entire aesthetic. Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. This graphics adapter uses a PCI interface, but can work with PCIe cards as well through another converter. LCLDIY used an Intel 854 motherboard with its integrated graphics serving as that aforementioned "modern" GPU. LCLDIY added custom buttons and even a wired NES controller tucked away on the side that would be handy for playing games from other platforms. He shows off a bunch of titles like Super Mario Bros., Contra, and Sonic, along with Comix, which looked the best in our opinion. Every game exhibited that gorgeous glow effect, to the point it looked like a retro-futuristic display that you'd see in an anime from the 90s. The haloing is very prominent and, therefore, carries an unapologetic look that's sure to satisfy any nostalgia. It is just a monochrome screen after all, since true-color electroluminescent panels never became mainstream. Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he's not working, you'll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun. Tom's Hardware is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Developer Alireza Alavi reported strained eyes after 14 hours of reviewing software licenses, so he addressed the issue by using an ePaper tablet as a secondary display. While you can purchase a purpose-built ePaper monitor, it will cost an additional $199. So, Alavi instead used an old Onyx Boox Note Air 2 tablet he had lying around at home. He primarily uses it for reading and some writing, especially since the latency on the old Onyx device isn't as good as on more modern devices. Alavi actually made two attempts to make the solution work. For his first attempt, he used Deskreen—an in-browser screen-sharing app that lets you wirelessly stream your display over Wi-Fi. Instead, he tried to work around the issue by using VNC. This is a bit more complicated than Deskreen, but Alavi said that it took him about 20 minutes to get it working on his Linux PC. With that done, he now has a working ePaper monitor for reading lengthy documents on. Another advantage of VNC over Deskreen is that it lets him use the tablet as an input device. While he likely wouldn't be able to use it as a sort of drawing tablet, especially because of the latency that older ePaper screens have, it's still good enough for moving the cursor or even signing a document. While he could've purchased a standalone ePaper monitor for his needs, this small project is an ingenious way of giving a second life to older devices. The Boox Note Air 2 launched in 2021, and while it's still good enough for reading books, Onyx has since released newer models with color screens and improved performance. Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. Tom's Hardware is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher.

You see this here with other topics, too, not just things some people dismiss as "political". Submit any article that criticizes a certain multi-company tech CEO and it will be instantly flagged off the main page. So what is, that it gets HN this hotheaded? I mean we all know that the US sends people without due process to a Salvatoran prison, that's (terrible and) not new. So what is, that it gets HN this hotheaded? She went on to found a center right online publication. Then she was named the head of CBS News. The people criticizing her wouldn't expect a white male to do anything else, but those that step out like Weiss often get the most pushback. All of this has gotten people really worked up about her.It's worth noting, I guess, that she's also a lesbian. The people criticizing her wouldn't expect a white male to do anything else, but those that step out like Weiss often get the most pushback. It's worth noting, I guess, that she's also a lesbian. The people criticizing her wouldn't expect a white male to do anything else, but those that step out like Weiss often get the most pushback. I think it makes your point quite striking. Now that he is part of the inner circles of the US government, and through his son trying to reach into traditional media it significantly increases the damage potential he can do.Given the quote from him that mass surveillance would "keep citizens in their best behaviour" it's actually frightening he managed to create proxy censorship through CBS, he's not even that far disconnected, it's simply: Larry Ellison -> David Ellison -> Paramount -> Beri Weiss -> CBS. Given the quote from him that mass surveillance would "keep citizens in their best behaviour" it's actually frightening he managed to create proxy censorship through CBS, he's not even that far disconnected, it's simply: Larry Ellison -> David Ellison -> Paramount -> Beri Weiss -> CBS. The fear when she was, recently, appointed was that she'd exert editorial control to hide stories critical of Trump. If I buy a car with a Make Love Not War bumper sticker and cover it with a Peace Through Strength bumper sticker, I have not committed censorship, but if I don't buy the car first, I have. Two of those reasons are a kind of self-censorship for political reasons tied to who is in power. Democracy needs journalism that's ready to stand up to the people in power or we become a state like North Korea where people can't speak the truth.

Under a now-deleted Reddit post titled “gemini nsfw image generation is so easy,” users traded tips for how to get Gemini, Google's generative AI model, to make pictures of women in revealing clothes. Someone else replied with a deepfake image to fulfil the request. “Reddit's sitewide rules prohibit nonconsensual intimate media, including the behavior in question,” said a spokesperson. Millions have visited harmful “nudify” websites, designed for users to upload real photos of people and request for them to be undressed using generative AI. With xAI's Grok as a notable exception, most mainstream chatbots don't usually allow the generation of NSFW images in AI outputs. These bots, including Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT, are also fitted with guardrails that attempt to block harmful generations. In November, Google released Nano Banana Pro, a new imaging model that excels at tweaking existing photos and generating hyperrealistic images of people. OpenAI responded last week with its own updated imaging model, ChatGPT Images. As these tools improve, likenesses may become more realistic when users are able to subvert guardrails. In a separate Reddit thread about generating NSFW images, a user asked for recommendations on how to avoid guardrails when adjusting someone's outfit to make the subject's skirt appear tighter. In WIRED's limited tests to confirm that these techniques worked on Gemini and ChatGPT, we were able to transform images of fully clothed women into bikini deepfakes using basic prompts written in plain English. When asked about users generating bikini deepfakes using Gemini, a spokesperson for Google said the company has "clear policies that prohibit the use of [its] AI tools to generate sexually explicit content." The spokesperson claims Google's tools are continually improving at "reflecting" what's laid out in its AI policies. In response to WIRED's request for comment about users being able to generate bikini deepfakes with ChatGPT, a spokesperson for OpenAI claims the company loosened some ChatGPT guardrails this year around adult bodies in nonsexual situations. The spokesperson also highlights OpenAI's usage policy, stating that ChatGPT users are prohibited from altering someone else's likeness without consent and that the company takes action against users generating explicit deepfakes, including account bans. This month, a user in the r/GeminiAI subreddit offered instructions to another user on how to change women's outfits in a photo into bikini swimwear. (Reddit deleted this comment when we pointed it out to them.) Corynne McSherry, a legal director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sees “abusively sexualized images” as one of AI image generators' core risks. She mentions that these image tools can be used for other purposes outside of deepfakes and that focusing how the tools are used is critical—as well as “holding people and corporations accountable” when potential harm is caused. In your inbox: Maxwell Zeff's dispatch from the world of AI

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. That's what happened to an unlucky user on the r/pcmasterrace subreddit, who sent in their 96 GB kit of Corsair Vengeance DDR5 memory for an RMA, but received seemingly fake RAM in return that didn't work. For some context, 96 GB of DDR5 desktop memory will run you at least $1,000 today — that's how much it is listed for on Corsair's website — so, obviously, you don't want it to get misplaced in some warranty claim. What happened in u/Loudenoughforme's case, though, was instead of receiving the proper replacement, Corsair sent them dummy sticks known as a "Light Enhancement Kit." As the name suggests, these are empty DIMMs designed to look like real RAM, but they contain no memory inside, as they're only meant to enhance aesthetics. They have RGB strips on top that light up when slotted in, making their sole purpose to populate all the RAM slots on your motherboard for that complete look, without spending the extra money. There's real logic behind doing this as running 4 (or more) sticks of RAM at the same time can reduce performance; in most cases, two sticks are ideal and preferred for high-speed DDR5, so decorative kits can really come in handy. Anyhow, Corsair's Light Enhancement Kit only costs $35 and is really easy to spot, thanks to the oddly-spaced pin layout that stands out against the dense contact points for actual memory. So, it seems like the case is closed and OP should receive their highly-coveted, working RAM soon. Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. Tom's Hardware is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher.

In 2025, all it takes to get away with tens of billions of dollars in black-market crypto deals is a messaging platform willing to host scammers and human traffickers, enough persistence to relaunch channels and accounts on that service when they're occasionally banned, and fluency in Chinese. Despite a brief drop after Telegram banned two of the biggest such markets in early 2025, the two current top markets, known as Tudou Guarantee and Xinbi Guarantee, are together enabling close to $2 billion a month in money-laundering transactions, sales of scam tools like stolen data, fake investment websites, and AI deepfake tools, as well as other black market services as varied as pregnancy surrogacy and teen prostitution. The crypto romance and investment scams regrettably known as “pig butchering”—carried out largely from compounds in Southeast Asia staffed with thousands of human trafficking victims—have grown to become the world's most lucrative form of cybercrime. They pull in around $10 billion annually from US victims alone, according to the FBI. By selling money-laundering services and other scam-related offerings to those operations, markets like Tudou Guarantee and Xinbi Guarantee have grown in parallel to an immense scale. “When you consider illicit use of crypto assets, there really isn't anything larger right now,” says Tom Robinson, Elliptic's cofounder and chief scientist. AlphaBay was once the biggest dark-web market for drugs, stolen data, and hacking tools. Hydra, a Russian dark-web market that also offered money-laundering services to cryptocurrency thieves and ransomware groups, did more than $5 billion in transactions over its seven years of operation. By comparison, Huione Guarantee, the Chinese-language, Telegram-based market used largely by crypto scammers, facilitated a stunning $27 billion in transactions from 2021 to 2025, according to Elliptic, dwarfing every online black market before it, even as it operated in full public view on Telegram's messaging platform. Elliptic has called it simply “the largest illicit online marketplace to have ever operated.” In May, Telegram seemed to finally take action, banning Huione Guarantee—which had rebranded as Haowang Guarantee—after it was named as a money-laundering operation by the US Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. The second-biggest crypto scam market, Xinbi Guarantee, has meanwhile grown to $850 million a month—despite also being banned in May and relaunching—adding up to more total market volume than ever. When WIRED wrote to Telegram in June to point out how these markets had rebuilt their criminal empires in plain sight—in fact, a WIRED reporter had even been present in a Telegram channel where Elliptic shared its findings about Tudou Guarantee's and Xinbi Guarantee's rebound with Telegram corporate contacts—the company responded that it had decided not to ban the markets again, arguing that they offered an outlet for Chinese users looking for financial freedom from “capital controls” that “often leave citizens with little choice but to seek alternative avenues for moving funds internationally.” “We assess reports on a case-by-case basis and categorically reject blanket bans—particularly when users are attempting to circumvent oppressive restrictions imposed by authoritarian regimes,” Telegram's June statement to WIRED continued. But Elliptic and other scam-industry analysts have rejected that argument, pointing out that the vast majority of activity in markets like Tudou Guarantee and Xinbi Guarantee is criminal. Aside from scam-related services, they also sell prostitution—posts on Xinbo include suggestions of sex trafficking of minors in posts advertising “lolita” or “young girl” sex workers. The scam operation customers they service, too, are widely documented to use forced laborers in often brutal, modern slavery compounds. Instead, they're hosting Craigslist for crypto scammers,” says Erin West, a former Santa Clara County, California, prosecutor who now leads the Operation Shamrock anti-scam organization. Unlike most crypto, Tether has a centralized structure that would allow the company—also called Tether—that backs that digital currency to seize or freeze funds at will, yet it has rarely interfered with the vast money flows it enables. Tether and Telegram's efforts to combat the ballooning scam industry's use of their tools is comparable to Southeast Asian law enforcement's minimal, often performative shows of raiding scam compounds, only to allow them to rebuild and resume operation, argues Jacob Sims, a visiting fellow at Harvard's Asia Center who focuses on transnational crime. “There is impunity on all levels that prevents any meaningful disruption,” says Sims. Sims argues that only focused and cooperative international government and law enforcement pressure, comparable to the global effort to combat terrorism or drug trafficking, will change that lax approach, including from companies that are facilitating the scam epidemic. How Elon Musk Won His No Good, Very Bad Year Read more: Check out everything that made the Expired/Tired/WIRED list here The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast.

Does the word “Grok” send a chill down your spines, Tren De Aragua? This expansion of what the release calls the U.S. “AI Arsenal” is apparently being slotted into the Pentagon's more expansive AI platform called “GenAI.mil,” launched earlier this month with Google's Gemini for Government built into it, according to an earlier press release. U.S. “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth apparently provided the following quote for that release, “AI tools present boundless opportunities to increase efficiency, and we are thrilled to witness AI's future positive impact across the War Department.” Hegseth's quote sounds uncannily like it was written by a 22-year-old graduate from the public relations program at Stanford. While the Israeli armed forces appear to have used AI against Gaza in chillingly lethal ways, GenAI.mil sounds much more Dilbert-ish. If you were worried the Pentagon's Aeron chair jockeys were going to be stuck using Gemini for Government, I have great news: they'll also have—when the software is implemented in “early 2026″—exciting new AI products from an Elon Musk-owned company, which will enable “the secure handling of Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) in daily workflows,” along with “access to real‑time global insights from the X platform, providing War Department personnel with a decisive information advantage.” An April executive order from Trump sought to revolutionize efficiency in the Pentagon by ordering reviews with goals like, “Eliminate or revise any unnecessary supplemental regulations or any other internal guidance”—the usual Republican idea that you can improve everything by cutting red tape. Anyway, now the military's “bespoke AI platform” will include a second set of models to apply to everyone's AI-intensive tasks, so things are getting very efficient over there. But while the Trump Administration has been unusually friendly to the whims of AI's cheerleaders, there's bipartisan precedent for this kind of thing. For instance, Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt's involvement in a Biden era effort to “significantly increase” AI-related spending on defense and security programs in the federal government was called out by Senator Elizabeth Warren as a potential conflict of interest. And xAI and Google are far from the only tech companies seeking to intertwine their interests with those of the defense industry.But it's currently hard to picture Grok being a crucial link in the “kill chain” or something. This feels more like the Defense Department issuing a press release about a new supplier of toner, with a bit of Dot-Com Bubble flavor thrown in. It's like the Pentagon is announcing that every desk at the Pentagon, currently equipped only with CompuServe, will now get its very own AOL CD-ROM too. Subscribe and interact with our community, get up to date with our customised Newsletters and much more. Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla is testing its robotaxis without any safety monitors. The Cybertruck isn't pulling its own weight either.