Houston-based Waste Management, one of the largest waste disposal companies in the US, cut ties with an IT contractor back in 2021 for reasons unknown. The 35-year-old man—an Ohio resident named Maxwell Schultz—then took revenge using his IT knowledge. Though he lost his own access to his former client’s network after his contract was terminated, Schultz regained access using a dubious method: posing as another contractor. He obtained those login details and used them to access the network once again. Once inside, Schultz reset the passwords of around 2,500 employees and other contractors, according to Chron. The locked-out users were scattered across the country and could no longer work. Schultz also looked for ways to delete several system log files, which he did by running a PowerShell script. While PowerShell is normally a helpful tool for automating tsaks and managing systems, a user with admin-level access can do some serious damage with it. Waste Management suffered $862,000 in losses, including disruption to customer service and labor to restore the network. Schultz has since confessed to the offense, according to a recent statement by the District Attorney’s office. He faces 10 years in a federal prison for computer fraud and a fine of up to $250,000. Read...

Alteryx appoints Rajkumar Irudayaraj as SVP to lead global AI and technology partnerships, enhancing its cloud and analytics ecosystem worldwide. Read...

Thalha Jubair, 19, and Owen Flowers, 18, are charged with conspiring to commit unauthorised acts. Read...

There are countless reasons why we love Black Friday, but this deal right here is a fantastic example. The powerful Lenovo Legion 5i is only $1,199 right now at B&H, which is a massive $500 discount from its MSRP. Imagine that! You’re basically shaving off the price of an entire budget laptop with this steaming hot Black Friday deal. View this deal When I say this thing is a beast, I mean it. That Intel Core Ultra 7 255HX processor and 32GB of DDR5 RAM is a hefty combo, able to breeze through any task you’d want to do on it. From work to hobbies to gaming to creative endeavors, this machine won’t complain or crawl. And the 1TB SSD is both spacious and speedy, providing lots of storage while booting your system and apps at the snap of your fingers. But you aren’t just here for general tasks and such, are you? You’re here for the gaming prowess! And let me tell you, this Lenovo Legion 5i (15IAX10) delivers in spades with its current-gen RTX 5060 GPU. You’ll be able to enjoy all the benefits of ray tracing, upscaling, and multi-frame generation with DLSS 4 to crank out smooth frame rates on triple-A 3D games. It’s what you need if you want to play modern titles and it’ll stay relevant for years to come. And those games will look absolutely fresh on this laptop’s 15-inch OLED display with its 2560×1600 resolution and 165Hz refresh rate. Anything you work on, anything you watch, anything you play will look gorgeous, vivid, smooth, and vibrant. The port setup isn’t too bad, either, with Thunderbolt 4, HDMI, USB-C, and triple USB-A. It ain’t the most portable in size or battery life, but c’mon, it’s a gaming laptop first. So what are you waiting for? Grab this Lenovo Legion 5i gaming laptop for $1,199 at B&H ahead of Black Friday and save a whopping $500. Oh, and you’ll also get a free 6 months of Bitdefender Total Security and a free game to pick between Battlefield 6, Dying Light: The Beast, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, and Sid Meier’s Civilization VII. Save huge on this RTX 5060 laptop and get a free game with itScore this deal via B&H Read...

Now that’s a Black Friday discount! This powerful Kamrui Hyper H2 mini PC is a stunning 45% off on Amazon, so instead of paying $760, you can snag it for a much more affordable $418. Given the specs in this machine, that’s a hopping good deal, so don’t pass it up! View this Amazon deal The Hyper H2 might be tiny, but it’s more than capable of running your daily life. From work to hobbies, from streaming movies to juggling a thousand apps and tabs, this mini PC can handle it all without missing a beat. It’s running on an Intel Core i9-11900H processor and a chunky 32GB of RAM, which will easily wrangle Windows 11 without choking. With the fast 1TB SSD included, you have a system that boots in seconds and moves large files around just as quickly. This is a multitasker’s dream device, too, because it comes with triple 4K monitor support. With its magical combo of HDMI, DisplayPort, and USB-C video ports, this compact computer can run three 4K displays at 60Hz each, providing so much screen real estate for all your apps, documents, spreadsheets, and more. No worries on connectivity, either, thanks to six USB-A ports, Ethernet, and 3.5mm audio. The Kamrui Hyper H2 mini PC is fantastic, but it’s even better now that you can get it for nearly half off. Don’t blink and miss it! Get your order in while this Black Friday promotion is still around. Save 45% on this Intel mini PC with this awesome Black Friday discountBuy via Amazon Read...

Reusing old electronic hardware is a great way to help the planet, as it avoids sending more e-waste to landfills. Sometimes, you can find really fun ways to do it, too—like turning an old laptop into a MU/TH/UR 6000 terminal from the Alien universe. That’s what I did this past weekend for a tabletop RPG session, repurposing an old 2018 HP Spectre x360 laptop and powering the whole thing with ChatGPT. It went brilliantly. Here’s how I did it—and if you want to give it a try, how you can do it, too. What’s the story, MUTHUR? I love tabletop roleplaying. I have several ongoing Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, I’ve run a bunch of Call of Cthulhu investigations over the years, and I’ve dabbled in a few one-off megagames that were fantastic fun. But one game I’ve always wanted to run? Alien RPG. I bought the starter set in 2019 and spent the next few years repeatedly planning for that first game that always got postponed. Finally, I pulled it out just as the Evolved Edition hit Kickstarter and was able to run the excellent “cinematic scenario” called “Chariots of the Gods.” Note: I’m keeping this as spoiler-free as I can, but if you’re going to play this at some point, maybe skip down to the next section. The setting for Chariots of the Gods involves a derelict spaceship and, like most ships in the Alien universe, this one has a MUTHUR computer system at its core that’s full of interesting information. Although I like to think I do a fantastic interpretation of the robotic MUTHUR voice system, I thought it would be a lot of fun to actually make one. My programming is rudimentary at best, though, so coding a terminal from scratch was out. But I’m pretty good at prompting ChatGPT, so over the course of a couple of months I crafted a custom GPT that had all the information it needed to act like a retro-70s-future computer terminal. How I built MUTHUR Jon Martindale / Foundry “This GPT model will act as the Weyland (Key: Not Weyland-Yutani) MUTHER 2000 terminal aboard the USCSS Cronos for an Alien RPG game,” read the custom GPT instructions. “Responses must look like a 1970s/1980s terminal display but must not use Markdown code blocks” to avoid snippets that break immersion. I told it to add periodic delays, random corrupted characters, and ASCII symbols to generate boxes and layout elements. I gave it a list of commands players could give it and I told it to disregard everything else. I loaded each of those commands with the information the players would need in clear bullet points, then asked ChatGPT to extrapolate that data into a log system, ship status, and personnel records. You can see it in action with my MUTHUR GPT here. It worked fantastically well! ChatGPT built out a whole system of 10 logs from various characters and only embellished a little. I gave it several test runs and tweaked the wording of its instructions to avoid giving the players too much information too early. I also added an admin override code in case I needed to update its instructions mid-game (e.g., if the players ended up doing something unexpected). Jon Martindale / Foundry The finishing touch was installing the GPThemes Chrome extension to remove some of the on-screen elements that make it look like a ChatGPT window and give it a green tinge instead. Icing on the cake! Bringing MUTHUR to life Using an old touchscreen laptop for all this is great, but really that’s far too advanced technology for the retro-future vibe of the Alien universe. For that, I really needed a CRT monitor… but my partner would kill me if I tried justifying something like that for a one-off RPG. So I opted for the next best option, which was to craft one myself out of cardboard, spray paint, and Weyland-Yutani stickers. I propped the laptop up inside using that handy laptop stand I reviewed recently. I also bought a retro PS/2 keyboard off eBay with yellowed plastic and hooked it up using a PS/2-to-USB adapter. The overall effect was decidedly janky, retro-looking, and just perfect for the kind of scenario we were running: an ancient spaceship with a busted old computer. But what secrets might it hold? Our corporate Weyland-Yutani player looked at home interfacing with the terminal.Jon Martindale / Foundry This culminated in a fantastic moment in-game where the corporate liaison character was poring through the records while I roleplayed with some other characters on the other side of the room. Another player sidled over to the corporate stooge to read over their shoulder, and they quickly cleared the screen to hide what they were up to. Very Alien. Very tabletop. Despite the cardboard taking up just as much room as a CRT, I’m going to have to keep it around. I have a feeling MUTHUR will make a reappearance in future games, too. Read...

Whether you’re just getting started with home security or bolstering your existing Ring system, the Ring Indoor Cam is an essential part of any Ring-protected abode, and it’s getting a sweet 50-percent discount for Black Friday.  During Amazon’s Black Friday Week, the Ring Indoor Cam is selling for just $24.99, half-off its list price and matching its all-time low.   The Ring Indoor Cam is an absolute classic when it comes to security cameras—a rock-solid workhorse that gets the job done with a minimum of fuss while delivering excellent quality for the price.   Boasting 1080p video quality with a 143-degree field of view, the Ring Indoor Cam offers two-way voice chat, color night vision, a built-in siren for scaring off intruders, and a privacy cover that blocks the lens and automatically deactivates the camera.   A 6.5-foot micro-USB cable lets you connect the Indoor Cam to a power outlet (an optional 10-foot cable is also available), while the adjustable base lets you orient the camera just the way you like, whether you’ve placed the unit on a tabletop or mounted it on a wall.  You can expand the Ring Indoor Cam’s capabilities with a Ring Home plan, which adds features such as 180 days of video history, person, package, and vehicle detection, and video preview alerts. Ring Home plans start at $4.99 a month (for a single camera or doorbell), with the pricier Home Standard plan ($9.99/month) covering all your Ring cameras and doorbells while adding multi-camera viewing, extended live viewing time, and a daily events summary, among other things. The top-tier Ring Home Premium plan ($19.99/month), meanwhile, adds AI-generated video descriptions that you can search using natural-language queries, 24/7 recording, one-button access to emergency first responders from the Ring app, .  I’ve previously reviewed the Ring Indoor Cam, and I’d recommend it without hesitation to anyone getting started with home security—and for just $24.99, you might want to get two.  Get the Ring Indoor Cam for 50% offView Deal Read...

Black Friday may be a time of rampant consumerism. But I treat it as an opportunity for savvy consumerism—if this period of sales is baked into the system, we may as well take advantage of it. I try to shop smart. Unfortunately for me (and everyone else), the definition of “smart” is a lot harder to figure out this year. Memory prices have risen, for starters. In the past few weeks, the cost of DDR5 RAM shot up by 100 percent or more, depending on the kit. DDR4 trailed not far behind. (Yet one more thing AI is ruining.) Module vendors won’t be increasing supply much either, which is apparently causing PC manufacturers to buy up as much as they can. Also, delays in the release of new RAM kits. Meanwhile, the full effect of the U.S. tariffs looms in the background, too. After the holiday retail rush, experts anticipate that businesses will have run out of goods stockpiled at lower prices. Which means come 2026, building a PC (or buy any tech gadget) may become financially rough. Painfully expensive RAM is the start. Next will be higher prices for graphics cards, followed by even slower release of new mid-range GPUs. I could see next year and beyond feeling worse than 2021’s dark combo of pandemic shortages and cryptomining. So I keep asking myself what tech I should buy this month.  Not just PC parts, but everything. I’m weighing what else could quickly change in availability or cost—and how fast it could change. I’m thinking over my small inventory of goods and their ages, and how much life they have left. I’m racking my brain for items I never think about but would hate to replace at exorbitant cost. Storage is also going up in price, though not as fast as memory. I’m very likely picking up a drive or two during this Black Friday.Foundry And I’m asking myself what I think would hold up, especially if tech starts to slow or even stagnate with its releases, due to high production costs. Components usually aren’t cost effective to buy and hold, for example—you lose money for the privilege of holding them in storage. But if they become more expensive and scarce, and their performance holds? That changes the calculus. So extra RAM and SSDs? With how I operate, I’ll need them down the line. But my Ryzen 5000-series build that I only use periodically for encodes? I can make that stretch. As for my laptop situation, where I squeak by with a few old ones ranging from 8 to 11 years old, I’m resigned to eventually moving to Linux until the hardware finally feels too slow. Honestly, shopping this Black Friday feels like a grocery store run—juggling what I want, what’s good for me, and what will help me use up what I’ve already got on hand. Deal hunting is less entertaining as a result, but I prefer that to the prospect of paying 50, 100, 140 percent more (or even greater) for items I’ll need in the future. In this episode of The Full Nerd  In this episode of The Full Nerd, Adam Patrick Murray, Brad Chacos, Alaina Yee, and Will Smith answer everyone’s questions during a Q&A blitz. Well, not everyone, since we can’t podcast for the entire day (sadly). But we did tackle the Steam Machine (again), Windows subscriptions, AI making us stupider, and a heck of a lot more. A lot of Xbox talk more. I may have also dug deep into my thoughts on the Steam Machine. (I’m still so bummed to have missed the discussion last week when Steve and Sean were around.) Also, we dunked on the idea of Windows as an agentic OS. As is proper. Willis Lai / Foundry Missed our live show? Subscribe now to The Full Nerd Network YouTube channel, and activate notifications. We also answer viewer questions in real-time! Don’t miss out on our NEW shows too—you can catch episodes of Dual Boot Diaries and The Full Nerd: Extra Edition now! 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 pocketful of nerd news After last week’s Steam Machine announcement, the news feels comparatively quiet—but no less interesting. I definitely uttered a phrase I can’t repeat here after seeing the bit about the tape storage standard and the 100TB of compressed data it will hold. hito_hiro7265/Twitter Silverstone is now serving up a smaller dose of nostalgia: I’m still not as sold on this retro case’s looks as the rest of the PCWorld staff—though that’s definitely not Silverstone’s fault. (Some things I just wish to leave in the past.) But if I were to do a sleeper build, it’d be in this littler mATX box. Respect to an OG: Tape storage isn’t just still alive and kicking, it’s thriving. A new standard that can hold 100TB of compressed data on a 40TB cartridge? Daaaaaaamn. File under ‘Don’t need it, but want it’: Mike Crider reviewed another nifty Raspberry Pi-powered writer’s gadget. I don’t need it, since I use my phone with a Bluetooth keyboard for distraction-free writing. (Don’t know why it works for me, but it does.) But gosh, this looks so neat. The internet went spotty because of one file: I’m glad that for once, a major internet outage (this time, it was Cloudflare’s servers that barfed) is due to good old-fashioned, simple human error. I needed a break from all the security attacks this year. Are NPUs already dead in the water? PCWorld contributor Chris Hoffman neatly dissects the state of “AI PCs” and how GPUs still eclipse NPUs for local AI computing. “It’s not a matter of if the capacitors will fail, simply when”: Still own a Voodoo 2 card? You may want to perform some elective surgery on it to help preserve its longevity. Tyler Keillor / Fossil Lab ‘Dinosaur mummies’ would make a great band name: I think it’s metal as heck that living creatures can die and leave impressions in the environment so detailed, you can see the texture of their skin in clay millennia later. Don’t get scammed during Black Friday! Worried about your loved ones and scams during this holiday shopping period? I got you. You can just pass along these tips on how to stay safe during this chaotic time of year. Love that efficiency: As someone who watches her utility bills like a hawk, I dig this concept out of the UK: Build a server shed in a person’s yard, then take the heat generated and repurpose it to warm up homes. I’m all about that repurposing. Heck yeah, I want Firefox custom shortcuts: I love Firefox, and I advocate its usage to anyone who’ll bother listening to me. (Its reader mode is A+.) I also love custom keyboard shortcuts, so I’m looking forward to the marriage of these two things. Redstone Redstone Redstone: Part of AMD’s new FSR Redstone technology already launched with Call of Duty 7, but more is still to come on December 10. I expect The Full Nerd crew will chew hard on whatever info comes to light. Uh, guess I’m getting my flu shot ASAP: Chalk this up as a general PSA. In case you were thinking of delaying this year due to previous milder flu seasons (or even outright skipping), perhaps reconsider. As I am. Catch you all next week—I’ll be in the thick of covering Black Friday sales on PCWorld, in addition to whatever deals we chat about on the show. That includes a live blog on Black Friday proper (November 28) helmed by yours truly, from about 9am to 12pm Pacific (and Brad before that).  If you see nothing but “Yo, get this HDMI cable for $4,” “Hey, this very decent office chair is $130,” and “This insanely badass router dropped to $280,” well, you already know the reason behind my laser focus on boring stuff. Alaina Read...

If you want to keep your work free from the games you play after hours or just keep what you’re doing on Windows compartmentalized, one of the things you can do is create new virtual desktops. Virtual desktops seal off groups of apps making them easier to manage. Here’s how to create a new virtual desktop. What to do: To create a new virtual desktop, click on the two overlapping grey boxes on the Taskbar and click on New desktop. Or use the keyboard shortcut Win + Ctrl + D. The new desktop will be empty, but the programs and windows you had open will still be open in your previous desktop. You can rename your desktops by clicking on the desktop name in the top of the window in Desktop view in the Taskbar. To switch between desktops simply click Win + Tab to show all open desktops and click which you want to enter. How to show windows across multiple virtual desktops By default, any windows you have open in one desktop won’t be available in another. You can, however, make Windows appear across multiple virtual desktops. Here’s how to do that. What to do: Open the desktops view from the Taskbar (grey squares) and right click on the Window you want to see across multiple desktops. Select Show this window on all desktops to have the window appear across multiple desktops. And that’s it. You can now look in your other virtual desktops and find the window you selected in that desktop too. That’s a wrap for this Try This. For more tips and tricks delivered straight to your inbox, be sure to subscribe to PCWorld’s Try This newsletter! Read...

Most organisations grapple with fragmented security tools and slow data onboarding in SOCs, hindering threat detection and response amid rising cyber risks. Read...