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How to Set Up and Use a Burner Phone

Authorities around the world can use your cell phone to track your location and potentially access other sensitive private information about you. One possible protection from this data collection is a burner phone. As invasive state surveillance ramps up globally—including new initiatives in the United States to monitor travelers, protesters, and vulnerable populations—privacy tools that were formerly the domain of digital hermits and people involved in organized crime are now more and more appe

The first Roku-powered smart projector is here

Folks in the US can now snap up the first smart projector that's powered by Roku tech. The Aurzen Roku TV Smart Projector D1R Cube is available on Amazon for a regular price of $250. Until October 1, though, there's a coupon that drops the price to $180 (a discount of $70). There was a Roku-branded 3M projector that arrived all the way back in 2012 , but that required a Roku Streaming Stick. The new Aurzen model has Roku's operating system built in. You'll be able to operate this projector usi

Calm's new Sleep app gives you a personal bedtime plan to help you rest better - plus earbuds

Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET's key takeaways Calm is launching a new app, Calm Sleep. The app is designed to help users easily fall asleep. The brand announced a partnership with Ozlo Sleepbuds. Mindfulness app Calm is coming out with a new app dedicated to sleep, the brand announced Tuesday. Calm Sleep is a standalone app with meditation and mindfulness tools made for bedtime. Also: I compared the viral $50 earplugs with my $300 sleep earbuds - here are the

Just Use HTML

September 10, 2025 Just use HTML I’ve worked on so many projects recently that were more complicated than they needed to be because they used JavaScript to generate HTML. JavaScript is… Slower to load Slower to run More prone to breaking Harder to read and reason about Doesn’t actually look like the final output It’s inferior to just using HTML in nearly every way. I’m not saying never use JavaScript, though. I think JS is great at augmenting and enhancing what’s already there, and addi

The Best Ventless Fireplaces for Cozy Vibes (2025)

The Lloyd from Solo Stove pays serious homage to the freestanding mid-century enameled MCM Preway fireplaces that fetch thousands on the vintage marketplace. For less than $1,000 and a few minutes of assembly, the Lloyd may be a solution for those who want a real flicker. The Lloyd comes in five easy-to-love colors and most resembles the OG Malm Zircon. Made of electroplated steel, metal, and glass, the 31-pound Lloyd stands 3.5 feet tall. The Lloyd uses TerraFlame gel fuel, a proprietary blend

Topics: flame fuel gel lloyd used

Calm launches standalone iOS app for sleep support

Calm is launching a new standalone app for more personalized sleep support, the company announced on Tuesday. The new Calm Sleep app is available on iOS and is designed to help people wind down, sleep better, and wake up refreshed, Calm says. The app features Calm’s content with new features designed to help users reach their sleep goals. Calm Sleep starts by getting people to complete a short onboarding questionnaire. The app then creates a personalized sleep plan, including recommended conten

Welcome to our pen-and-paper club

Considering all the tech that we cover here at The Verge, you’d think that the members of our staff would be using their phones, laptops, and other gadgets for all their productivity needs. But interestingly, when we asked people to talk about their favorite productivity tools, there was suddenly an enthusiastic discussion of notebooks, pens, and dry-erase boards. Welcome to a not-so-secret society where members are concerned with the format of an analog notebook, the quality of its paper, and

The looming crackdown on AI companionship

It’s hard to overstate the impact of these stories. To the public, they are proof that AI is not merely imperfect, but a technology that’s more harmful than helpful. If you doubted that this outrage would be taken seriously by regulators and companies, three things happened this week that might change your mind. A California law passes the legislature On Thursday, the California state legislature passed a first-of-its-kind bill. It would require AI companies to include reminders for users they

"Your" vs. "My" in user interfaces

“Your” vs “My” in user interfaces When referring to the user’s stuff, which is better out of these: “My account” or “Your account”? “My orders” or “Your orders”? “My cases” or “Your cases”? It’s a trick question because often you don’t need any prefix and can just use: Account Orders Cases Amazon is a good example of this in action because it’s obvious that it’s your account and your orders: But what if your product contains things that belong to you and to others – for example, a case

Facebook's settlement payments are on the way - here's how much you can expect

Maria Korneeva/Moment via Getty Images Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET's key takeaways Payments have started going out in the 2023 Facebook privacy suit. Each user who filed will get between $5 and $40. Your amount depends on how long you used the site. If you filed a claim in the $725 million Facebook privacy settlement back in 2023, your payment might be on the way. Several years ago, Facebook, its parent company Meta, and political marketing company Cambri

This 2-in-1 Windows laptop has no business being this good (especially at this price)

HP OmniBook X Flip 14 ZDNET's key takeaways HP's OmniBook X Flip 14 with 16GB of memory starts at $849 at Best Buy. It's one of the better midrange convertible laptops of 2025, with a vivid OLED display and nice design elements. The battery life takes a dip with the demands of the OLED, and opting for upgrades inflates the price point. View now at Best Buy Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. HP's OmniBook Flip series has impressed us here at ZDNET this past year, stepping u

Need to modify user accounts in Linux? This is the command for you

Trevor Williams/DigitalVision via Getty Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. The usermod command is short for user modification, and, as the name implies, allows you to modify various aspects of a user account. For a Linux administrator, this command is crucial. For Linux users, the command most certainly comes in handy, especially given what it can do. Let's dive down this rabbit hole and see what's what with the Linux usermod command. 1. Change user details When you crea

Debian Upgrade Marathon: 3.1 Sarge

Debian Upgrade Marathon: 3.1 Sarge Apr. 25, 2025 [technology] Had my priorities been better aligned, I would have first begun building Linux skills sometime during the Bush (W) administration. It has left me feeling as though I should make up for that lost time. So I’ve decided to reclaim that lost experience of installing and using Debian from around the early-mid 2000s. From there, the plan is to upgrade the installation through each stable release up to present day Debian Stable. And hopefu

Free Spotify users can now pick songs, but of course there’s a catch

Ryan Haines / Android Authority TL;DR Spotify is improving its experience for free users. The service will now let non-paid subscribers pick and play the song they want. These users will also be able to play a song shared by a friend or artist. Spotify has long been focused on improving the Premium experience. For example, Premium members recently started gaining access to lossless audio, a feature that many have been waiting for. Now it’s finally time for free users to get a little somethin

OpenAI Reveals How (and Which) People Are Using ChatGPT

Large language models largely remain black boxes in terms of what is happening inside them to produce the outputs that they do. They have also been a bit of a black box in terms of who is using them and what they are doing with them. OpenAI, with some help from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), set out to figure out what exactly its growing user base is getting up to with its chatbot. It found a surprising amount of personal use and a closing “gender gap” among its frequent users.

What do people actually use ChatGPT for? OpenAI provides some numbers.

As someone who writes about the AI industry relatively frequently for this site, there is one question that I find myself constantly asking and being asked in turn, in some form or another: What do you actually use large language models for? Today, OpenAI's Economic Research Team went a long way toward answering that question, on a population level, releasing a first-of-its-kind National Bureau of Economic Research working paper (in association with Harvard economist David Denning) detailing ho

ExpressVPN Adds Siri, Widgets and Shortcuts to Its iOS App

Virtual private network service ExpressVPN is making it easier for iPhone and iPad users to control their VPN connections with the latest update to its iOS app. The platform announced new features that will allow integration with Apple's Siri voice commands, Home screen widgets and Shortcuts, allowing users to manage their VPN connections without opening the app. Don't miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source. With the update, users can

Most People Use ChatGPT for Personal Life, Not Work, According to a New OpenAI Study

When ChatGPT first launched in November 2022, parent company OpenAI pitched it as a productivity tool and a game-changer for delegating menial work tasks, such as responding to emails or writing memos. OpenAI just released a new paper looking into how hundreds of millions of people globally actually use ChatGPT, and the results show a striking shift in how people use it. What started as a work assistant is now a tool people use for their personal lives. In mid-2024, nearly half of all conversat

Awake’s new app requires heavy sleepers to complete tasks in order to turn off the alarm

A new iOS app called Awake, designed specifically for heavy sleepers who must complete missions to turn off their alarms, launched Monday. The app is only available to users with the iOS 26 update, which also came out on Monday. Unlike traditional alarm clocks that can be silenced with a simple tap, Awake is intended to actively engage users’ brains to ensure they fully wake up. Once the alarm sounds, users must complete a series of interactive missions to turn it off. These tasks include a va

Finally, a convertible laptop I'd actually use as a tablet (especially with that OLED display)

HP OmniBook X Flip 14 ZDNET's key takeaways HP's OmniBook X Flip 14 with 16GB of memory starts at $849 at Best Buy. It's one of the better midrange convertible laptops of 2025, with a vivid OLED display and nice design elements. The battery life takes a dip with the demands of the OLED, and opting for upgrades inflates the price point. View now at Best Buy Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. HP's OmniBook Flip series has impressed us here at ZDNET this past year, stepping u

How people actually use ChatGPT vs Claude - and what the differences tell us

Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET's key takeaways Most ChatGPT use is non-work, focused on writing tasks. Claude is used more for automation, especially coding. AI adoption is uneven, with wealthier regions benefiting first. Two of the biggest AI companies have revealed how people use their models. Also: The best AI chatbots of 2025 OpenAI released a research paper analyzing millions of ChatGPT conversations, while Anthropic publishe

Show HN: MCP Server Installation Instructions Generator

This project was originally created to serve html requests for users who tried to access a mcp url that was secured by the hyprmcp/mcp-gateway in the browser. Checkout the installation instructions for this hosted mcp server here: https://demo.hyprmcp.cloud/mcp-install-instructions-generator/mcp How To Install a Remote MCP server? Instructing users on how to install an MCP server is hard, because configuration is different for each client. If this has been your experience hosting an MCP server

Google thinks it can have AI summaries and a healthy web, too

So, I don’t want to speak about the specifics of the lawsuit, but I can speak to our philosophy here, which is, look, we want a healthy ecosystem. The 10 blue links serve the ecosystem very well, and it was a simple value proposition. We provided links that directed users free of charge to billions of publications around the world. We’re not going to abandon that model. We think that there’s use for that model. It’s still an important part of the ecosystem. But user preferences, and what users

Snap unveils Snap OS 2.0 with native browser, WebXR support, and more

Snap has unveiled the second version of its Snap OS, the software powering its AR glasses known as Snap Spectacles. The update includes a new native browser, WebXR support, and more. The launch comes as the company rolled out its fifth-generation Snap Spectacles for developers last year and plans to launch a consumer version sometime in 2026. The release also comes just ahead of Meta’s Connect conference this week, where the company is expected to reveal its latest updates in smart glasses, AI,

Fixing Hallucinations Would Destroy ChatGPT, Expert Finds

In a paper published earlier this month, OpenAI researchers said they'd found the reason why even the most powerful AI models still suffer from rampant "hallucinations," in which products like ChatGPT confidently make assertions that are factually false. They found that the way we evaluate the output of large language models, like the ones driving ChatGPT, means they're "optimized to be good test-takers" and that "guessing when uncertain improves test performance." In simple terms, the creator

Unplugging these 7 household devices saved me $200 a year in electricity

Adela Stefan / 500px / Getty Images Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET's key takeaways Unplugging idle devices can save on power bills. TVs, consoles, coffee makers, and mini-fridges are top culprits. Small daily changes help cut energy waste and lower electricity costs. With costs climbing across the US, energy prices stand out -made worse by record-breaking summer heat and recent waves scorching multiple states. Having endured several of them this season, I'm alw

Cory Doctorow: "centaurs" and "reverse-centaurs"

Science fiction’s superpower isn’t thinking up new technologies – it’s thinking up new social arrangements for technology. What the gadget does is nowhere near as important as who the gadget does it for and who it does it to. Your car can use a cutting-edge computer vision system to alert you when you’re drifting out of your lane – or it can use that same system to narc you out to your insurer so they can raise your premiums by $10 that month to punish you for inattentive driving. Same gadget, d

Topics: ai fact lists summer use

Meta bypassed Apple privacy protections, claims former employee

A former Meta product manager has claimed that the social network circumvented Apple’s privacy protections, as well as cheating advertisers, and fired him when he repeatedly raised the issue internally. Meta is said to have found ways to identify Apple users even after they refused consent for app tracking, in order to avoid an estimated $10 billion loss of revenue … App Tracking Transparency hit Meta hard Meta relied heavily on selling personalized advertising, which required it to be able t

Spotify’s free users can finally play the songs they want

Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Spotify has removed restrictions that prevented free users from listening to specific tracks. With Lossless audio now finally rolling out to paying subscribers, the music streaming service has announced that it’s also allowing non-paying listeners to search, play, and share any song they want, without having to upgrade to a Premium subscription. The update is being rolled out globally and addresses one of t

I unplugged these 7 household devices and saved $200 a year in electricity

Adela Stefan / 500px / Getty Images Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET's key takeaways Unplugging idle devices can save on power bills. TVs, consoles, coffee makers, and mini-fridges are top culprits. Small daily changes help cut energy waste and lower electricity costs. With costs climbing across the US, energy prices stand out -made worse by record-breaking summer heat and recent waves scorching multiple states. Having endured several of them this season, I'm alw