Arvind Krishnan has joined Alteryx as Chief Technology Officer to lead the firm`s AI analytics platform and global engineering team. Read...

Microsoft formally announced the next version of Windows 11 on Friday, Windows 11 25H2, and indicated that the upgrade will be much simpler than its predecessor. Windows 11 24H2 will be administered via what’s known as a “shared servicing branch,” which is the normal way for Windows to be updated. Microsoft simply takes the code that your machine lacks and sends it down to your PC via Windows Update, reducing the total download size by about 40 percent, Microsoft said. In early 2025, Microsoft rolled out an update to Windows 11 24H2, which required a much more intensive process. Microsoft called that rollout a full code swap, and when I performed the upgrade myself, it took as long as just under two hours on an older machine. That process essentially swapped all of the existing code for a total update. Since Microsoft is returning to a shared servicing branch, you can expect the update to move much more quickly. Essentially, Microsoft is saying that it will quietly download the Windows 11 25H2 components, then turn them on via an enablement package. Once the code is enabled, all a user has to do is reboot to “turn on” the new code. If you go to Windows Settings > System > About, you can see the new version, Microsoft said. Microsoft didn’t say when Windows 11 25H2 will officially roll out, but history says that it will probably be in September or October. Microsoft isn’t saying what new features will be rolled out as part of Windows 11 25H2. The company released two test builds for Windows 11 this week, one offering a dashboard for its Recall technology as a passkey integration with 1Password. Read...

ChatGPT is rapidly changing the world. The process is already happening, and it’s only going to accelerate as the technology improves, as more people gain access to it, and as more learn how to use it. What’s shocking is just how many tasks ChatGPT is already capable of managing for you. While the naysayers may still look down their noses at the potential of AI assistants, I’ve been using it to handle all kinds of menial tasks for me. Here are my favorite examples. Further reading: This tiny ChatGPT feature helps me tackle my days more productively Write your emails for you Dave Parrack / Foundry We’ve all been faced with the tricky task of writing an email—whether personal or professional—but not knowing quite how to word it. ChatGPT can do the heavy lifting for you, penning the (hopefully) perfect email based on whatever information you feed it. Let’s assume the email you need to write is of a professional nature, and wording it poorly could negatively affect your career. By directing ChatGPT to write the email with a particular structure, content, and tone of voice, you can give yourself a huge head start. A winning tip for this is to never accept ChatGPT’s first attempt. Always read through it and look for areas of improvement, then request tweaks to ensure you get the best possible email. You can (and should) also rewrite the email in your own voice. Learn more about how ChatGPT coached my colleague to write better emails. Generate itineraries and schedules Dave Parrack / Foundry If you’re going on a trip but you’re the type of person who hates planning trips, then you should utilize ChatGPT’s ability to generate trip itineraries. The results can be customized to the nth degree depending on how much detail and instruction you’re willing to provide. As someone who likes to get away at least once a year but also wants to make the most of every trip, leaning on ChatGPT for an itinerary is essential for me. I’ll provide the location and the kinds of things I want to see and do, then let it handle the rest. Instead of spending days researching everything myself, ChatGPT does 80 percent of it for me. As with all of these tasks, you don’t need to accept ChatGPT’s first effort. Use different prompts to force the AI chatbot to shape the itinerary closer to what you want. You’d be surprised at how many cool ideas you’ll encounter this way—simply nix the ones you don’t like. Break down difficult concepts Dave Parrack / Foundry One of the best tasks to assign to ChatGPT is the explanation of difficult concepts. Ask ChatGPT to explain any concept you can think of and it will deliver more often than not. You can tailor the level of explanation you need, and even have it include visual elements. Let’s say, for example, that a higher-up at work regularly lectures everyone about the importance of networking. But maybe they never go into detail about what they mean, just constantly pushing the why without explaining the what. Well, just ask ChatGPT to explain networking! Okay, most of us know what “networking” is and the concept isn’t very hard to grasp. But you can do this with anything. Ask ChatGPT to explain augmented reality, multi-threaded processing, blockchain, large language models, what have you. It will provide you with a clear and simple breakdown, maybe even with analogies and images. Analyze and make tough decisions Dave Parrack / Foundry We all face tough decisions every so often. The next time you find yourself wrestling with a particularly tough one—and you just can’t decide one way or the other—try asking ChatGPT for guidance and advice. It may sound strange to trust any kind of decision to artificial intelligence, let alone an important one that has you stumped, but doing so actually makes a lot of sense. While human judgment can be clouded by emotions, AI can set that aside and prioritize logic. It should go without saying: you don’t have to accept ChatGPT’s answers. Use the AI to weigh the pros and cons, to help you understand what’s most important to you, and to suggest a direction. Who knows? If you find yourself not liking the answer given, that in itself might clarify what you actually want—and the right answer for you. This is the kind of stuff ChatGPT can do to improve your life. Plan complex projects and strategies Dave Parrack / Foundry Most jobs come with some level of project planning and management. Even I, as a freelance writer, need to plan tasks to get projects completed on time. And that’s where ChatGPT can prove invaluable, breaking projects up into smaller, more manageable parts. ChatGPT needs to know the nature of the project, the end goal, any constraints you may have, and what you have done so far. With that information, it can then break the project up with a step-by-step plan, and break it down further into phases (if required). If ChatGPT doesn’t initially split your project up in a way that suits you, try again. Change up the prompts and make the AI chatbot tune in to exactly what you’re looking for. It takes a bit of back and forth, but it can shorten your planning time from hours to mere minutes. Compile research notes Dave Parrack / Foundry If you need to research a given topic of interest, ChatGPT can save you the hassle of compiling that research. For example, ahead of a trip to Croatia, I wanted to know more about the Croatian War of Independence, so I asked ChatGPT to provide me with a brief summary of the conflict with bullet points to help me understand how it happened. After absorbing all that information, I asked ChatGPT to add a timeline of the major events, further helping me to understand how the conflict played out. ChatGPT then offered to provide me with battle maps and/or summaries, plus profiles of the main players. You can go even deeper with ChatGPT’s Deep Research feature, which is now available to free users, up to 5 Deep Research tasks per month. With Deep Research, ChatGPT conducts multi-step research to generate comprehensive reports (with citations!) based on large amounts of information across the internet. A Deep Research task can take up to 30 minutes to complete, but it’ll save you hours or even days. Summarize articles, meetings, and more Dave Parrack / Foundry There are only so many hours in the day, yet so many new articles published on the web day in and day out. When you come across extra-long reads, it can be helpful to run them through ChatGPT for a quick summary. Then, if the summary is lacking in any way, you can go back and plow through the article proper. As an example, I ran one of my own PCWorld articles (where I compared Bluesky and Threads as alternatives to X) through ChatGPT, which provided a brief summary of my points and broke down the best X alternative based on my reasons given. Interestingly, it also pulled elements from other articles. (Hmph.) If you don’t want that, you can tell ChatGPT to limit its summary to the contents of the link. This is a great trick to use for other long-form, text-heavy content that you just don’t have the time to crunch through. Think transcripts for interviews, lectures, videos, and Zoom meetings. The only caveat is to never share private details with ChatGPT, like company-specific data that’s protected by NDAs and the like. Create Q&A flashcards for learning Dave Parrack / Foundry Flashcards can be extremely useful for drilling a lot of information into your brain, such as when studying for an exam, onboarding in a new role, prepping for an interview, etc. And with ChatGPT, you no longer have to painstakingly create those flashcards yourself. All you have to do is tell the AI the details of what you’re studying. You can specify the format (such as Q&A or multiple choice), as well as various other elements. You can also choose to keep things broad or target specific sub-topics or concepts you want to focus on. You can even upload your own notes for ChatGPT to reference. You can also use Google’s NotebookLM app in a similar way. Provide interview practice Dave Parrack / Foundry Whether you’re a first-time jobseeker or have plenty of experience under your belt, it’s always a good idea to practice for your interviews when making career moves. Years ago, you might’ve had to ask a friend or family member to act as your mock interviewer. These days, ChatGPT can do it for you—and do it more effectively. Inform ChatGPT of the job title, industry, and level of position you’re interviewing for, what kind of interview it’ll be (e.g., screener, technical assessment, group/panel, one-on-one with CEO), and anything else you want it to take into consideration. ChatGPT will then conduct a mock interview with you, providing feedback along the way. When I tried this out myself, I was shocked by how capable ChatGPT can be at pretending to be a human in this context. And the feedback it provides for each answer you give is invaluable for knocking off your rough edges and improving your chances of success when you’re interviewed by a real hiring manager. Further reading: No, don’t threaten ChatGPT for better results. Try this instead Read...

Double Data Rate 4 memory—or DDR4 RAM if you’re short on time—has had a good run. It first popped into PCs over a decade ago, but at this point it’s hard to find a new laptop that hasn’t moved on to DDR5, and it’s only really relevant on the desktop side for budget mini PCs and AMD’s AM4 platform. DDR4 manufacturing is winding down, and that means it’s getting a whole lot more expensive. There appears to be something of a rush on the existing stock of new DDR4 memory. TrendForce reports that retail prices for DDR4 RAM kits being tracked have gone up shockingly fast, with the price of some SKUs having gone up by almost 40 percent in the last week. That’s due to several compounding factors, including decreased production from memory manufacturers and the Trump administration’s import taxes (tariffs) feeding anxiety over pricing. Those short-term price increases are, in fact, considerably higher than TrendForce predicted just a few weeks ago, where consumer-grade DDR4 modules for PCs was projected to rise 18 to 23 percent in the third quarter of the year. As Tom’s Hardware observes, this is an unprecedented situation: DDR4 might become more expensive than the much faster DDR5, based purely on scarcity as manufacturers like Micron and Samsung have wound down production. A few quick searches show that DDR4 prices haven’t yet eclipsed DDR5 at the consumer retail level, though the former is definitely higher than it should be for a technology that’s on its way out. I’m more concerned about devices that use soldered memory modules in more affordable form factors, which can’t easily switch to new hardware that supports DDR5. The newest Raspberry Pi is still running on a design that’s six years old, with DDR4 memory that can’t be replaced. If that memory suddenly doubles in price, the Pi 4 will be forced to rise in price, too. It might also be the final, arguably long-overdue death knell for AMD’s AM4 socket. AMD has been producing shiny new CPUs for the nearly 10-year-old platform as recently as this month, but it all depends on cheap and easily available DDR4 RAM to make financial sense. Without that component, we might see the end of a continually supported CPU socket that’s lasted through five chip generations and change. Read...

Australian businesses are shifting to flexible IT financing to stay agile, preserve cashflow, and keep technology current amidst rapid innovation and economic challenges. Read...

Cybercriminals increasingly target tech firms using AI, supply chain attacks, and stolen credentials, with ransomware surging 10% weekly worldwide, says Trustwave. Read...

New technology which deletes abusive social media comments in real time has been adopted by Rugby Australia and made available to players at all levels of the game. Read...

Still struggling with poor video quality? We all have those precious family footage from an old camcorder, grainy concert video clips, 720p AI videos, or even modern mobile footage that came out blurry and stuttering. For years, video enthusiasts have had to either accept overly-priced software with slow processing speed, or make do with tools that yield unnatural, infamous “painterly look”. Thankfully, a new generation of AI-based video enhancers is changing the game. Leading the charge is Aiarty Video Enhancer, a newly released desktop application designed to upscale videos, fix grainy issues, and restore realistic and natural details. You can get a free license code of Aiarty Video Enhancer with this time-limited debut offer, and see for yourself how its generative AI models efficiently elevate video quality. Get a free copy of aiarty video enhancer What Is Aiarty Video Enhancer Aiarty Video Enhancer is a desktop-based AI video enhancer equipped with video upscaling and enhancement models, plus AI frame interpolation and audio enhancement modules. In essence, it helps users to denoise, deblur, and upscale videos to 1080p/4K, and restore details for skin, hair, outdoor plants, fabric textures, etc. To address the core frustrations users face with both online and other desktop enhancers, Aiarty focuses on three aspects: better video quality through tailored AI models, turbo speed for AI inference (95% GPU utilization), and batch offline processing for privacy and security concerns. Aiarty: Upscale 540p to 1080p, moDetail AI Model for Fur/TextureAiarty Why Choose Aiarty Video Enhancer to Improve Videos When it comes to video quality enhancement solutions, common frustrations discussed in video-related communities are: detail loss, edge halos, jagged edges, ghost faces at a distance, hours or days of processing time, high upfront costs, and so forth. Here’s how Aiarty handles these challenges, making it a compelling option for videographers, vloggers, YouTubers, gamers, old video archivists, animation collectors, AIGC video explorers, and anyone. Aiarty: Restore Skin Details Upon UpscalingAiarty Restore Realistic Details: Instead of just sharpening, its unique hybrid Diffusion+GAN technology intelligently generates new details for life-like textures in hair, skin, foliage, fabrics, and more. Denoise, Deblur, and Enhance for Specific Scenarios: It leverages three dedicated AI models, each prioritizing clarity, fidelity, or super quality with tailored denoising and deblurring for specific video problems. 3X Speed with Turbo Mode: By fully utilizing your GPU, it processes videos up to 3x the speed of other AI video enhancer software, turning hours of waiting into minutes. For every minute of processing in Aiarty, a competing tool might take three minutes or longer. Secure Offline Processing: Your videos are processed locally on your computer, ensuring 100% privacy and freeing you from slow internet upload speeds. All-in-One Enhancement Suite: Beyond upscaling, it includes AI-powered frame interpolation to smooth motion up to 120fps, an audio denoiser to remove distracting background sounds, and quick edit tools Aiarty: Upscale, Preview, and Batch Export EasilyAiarty Special Debut Offer from Aiarty It’s clear that Aiarty Video Enhancer is an impressive new tool for anyone, from families wanting to restore old home movies to content creators needing to polish their final product. To celebrate its debut release, the company is offering a significant discount for a limited time. Readers can get a free license code or upgrade to a lifetime version for only $165 (down from $235), which also includes a free gift – Aiarty Image Enhancer. This is a fantastic opportunity to revive your video assets and ensure your memories are preserved in the best possible quality for years to come. Save 30% on Aiarty Video Enhancer Lifetime License & Get AI Image Enhancer For Free! GRAB SPECIAL DEALS NOW Read...

Last week, Ukrainian drone hunters picking up the debris from Russia’s nightly assault on their cities found a weapon that stood out from the rest. Read...

My wife always gets annoyed when we game together. Not because I complete the jump puzzles in It Takes Two faster than her (I do), but because my wireless Xbox controller is “always disconnecting.” Not regularly, not even that often, but whenever we play a game where we’re both using our wireless gamepads, my controller disconnects for a second. It’s been that way for years. And I’m an idiot… because it was such an easy fix. I’m still kicking myself for not doing it sooner. It turned out all I needed to do was update the firmware. But I actually had to look up how to do it—I don’t know if I’ve ever updated the controller’s firmware. It really was due for a bit of care. It’s easy to forget the firmware When it comes to familiar technology, we so easily fall into a rut. That controller, keyboard, mouse, or whatever doesn’t work quite like it used to, but you’re too busy to figure it out right now, so you settle for a workaround or just put up with the issue until later. That’s how it was with me and my wireless controller. I never quite knew what the issue was. It just seemed to randomly lose power for a second or so while playing. No warnings, no system crashes, no signs as to what it could be. Replacing the batteries didn’t make any difference, nor did switching from Bluetooth to the wireless dongle. Just imagine the withering glare I got every time this happened.Jon Martindale / Foundry I tell you all this because I did try to fix the problem. I’d often pause the game we were playing to spend a couple minutes fussing with settings, or unplugging and replugging the dongle. All to the soundtrack of my wife’s sighs as she glanced at her phone. How long until one of the kids inevitably wakes up? Better to just turn the controller back on and get back to the game. I’ll fix it later. Yeah… “later.” The thing is, if I’d only plugged the darn thing in, all would’ve been solved. But it’s a wireless controller, so I’d never plugged it in. Why would I have? It works as is! And yet, if I had, I would’ve gotten a prompt to update its firmware and it would’ve saved me all sorts of hassle. Update your wireless controller on PC If you’re like me and you’ve never updated your wireless controller’s firmware, hopefully you’re now convinced that you should. Below are the quick steps I took for my wireless Xbox controller, but the process shouldn’t be too different if you have another kind. First, you’ll need to download the Xbox Accessories app. I’m going to have to send you to the Microsoft Store for it, but bear with me. Click the Download button and get it installed. (PlayStation wireless controllers have their own firmware update app, and third-party controllers by companies like 8BitDo have their own as well.) Jon Martindale / Foundry Once the app is installed and ready, grab a USB-C cable and plug your controller into an available port on your PC. Launch the Xbox Accessories app and you should see your controller displayed on the main window, though if you have multiple controllers or other Xbox accessories connected, you might have to cycle through them. When you’ve found your controller, select the little three-dot menu, followed by the firmware update button. Make sure the USB cable is plugged in and no kids or pets are around to run past and yoink the cable out. When you’re ready, hit Continue to begin the update. Wait for it to complete. When prompted, unplug the controller. From there, you should have a fully updated wireless controller that’s ready to game without any spouse-frustrating disconnects. I can’t promise that a firmware update will fix every problem your controller might face, but it fixed mine. And just in time for me and my wife to take a crack at Split Fiction! Further reading: Our no-BS guide to buying PC gaming controllers Read...