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Best VPN for Chrome 2025: Keep Your Browsing Traffic Private

Based on our years of testing and using VPNs across operating systems and browsers, these are the top factors you should consider when choosing a VPN for Chrome: Chrome compatibility If you’re looking for a VPN for Chrome, your primary consideration will be whether the VPN offers a Chrome extension. Most of the top VPN providers offer plugins for Chrome and other browsers, but some do not. Check that the VPN you’re considering offers a Chrome extension before purchasing. Alternatively, you can

Hackers Hijacked Google’s Gemini AI With a Poisoned Calendar Invite to Take Over a Smart Home

Within the titles of the calendar invites, the researchers added their crafty malicious prompts. (Google’s Wen contends that the researchers changed default settings on who can add calendar invites to someone’s calendar; however, the researchers say they demonstrated some of the 14 attacks with the prompts in an email subject or document title as well). “All the techniques are just developed in English, so it’s plain English that we are using,” Cohen says of the deceptive messages the team creat

“Red meat allergy” from tick bites is spreading both in US and globally

Hours after savoring that perfectly grilled steak on a beautiful summer evening, your body turns traitor, declaring war on the very meal you just enjoyed. You begin to feel excruciating itchiness, pain, or even swelling that can escalate to the point of requiring emergency care. The culprit isn’t food poisoning—it’s the fallout from a tick bite you may have gotten months earlier and didn’t even notice. This delayed allergic reaction is called alpha-gal syndrome. While it’s commonly called the

11 Best Chromebooks of 2025, Tested and Reviewed

The price for Chromebooks can range wildly, from $150 up to $800, and therefore the specs can vary. Processor: For the best experience, you should avoid older Chromebooks with Intel Celeron processors. The Chromebook Plus specifications offer a good baseline to guarantee speedy performance, and I’d recommend going with at least an Intel Core i3, Core i5, or AMD Ryzen 3 7000 processor. Just watch out for overspending on configurations with Intel Core i7 processors unless you need the extra horse

Formula E cars keep getting faster and faster: What’s next for the sport?

In addition to being bigger and heavier, teams are also going to have high- and low-downforce configurations. Racing drivers will always want more grip, but the addition of aerodynamics to push cars down onto the track surface can fundamentally change the racing, and not always in a way that makes for an entertaining spectacle for the audience. That said, Formula E isn’t adding downforce to Gen 4 just because. Change is never easy "This was a hot topic. No mitigation: car performance, car perf

How to move your Google Chrome's address bar on an Android phone (and why you should)

Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET Nearly a month ago, Google announced a small but highly anticipated addition to Chrome on Android -- the ability to relocate the browser's address bar to the bottom of the screen. "Depending on the size of your hand and your device," Google explained, "one address bar position may feel more comfortable than the other." This update gives you the flexibility to choose your preferred location. Also: You can ask Gemini AI anything directly in Google Chrome - here's how

Formula E wraps up season 11—where does the all-EV series go next?

In addition to being bigger and heavier, teams are also going to have high- and low-downforce configurations. Racing drivers will always want more grip, but the addition of aerodynamics to push cars down onto the track surface can fundamentally change the racing, and not always in a way that makes for an entertaining spectacle for the audience. That said, Formula E isn’t adding downforce to Gen 4 just because. Change is never easy "This was a hot topic. No mitigation: car performance, car perf

GEPA: Reflective prompt evolution can outperform reinforcement learning

Authors: Lakshya A Agrawal, Shangyin Tan, Dilara Soylu, Noah Ziems, Rishi Khare, Krista Opsahl-Ong, Arnav Singhvi, Herumb Shandilya, Michael J Ryan, Meng Jiang, Christopher Potts, Koushik Sen, Alexandros G. Dimakis, Ion Stoica, Dan Klein, Matei Zaharia, Omar Khattab Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.19457 TL;DR What was done? The authors introduced GEPA (Genetic-Pareto), a novel algorithm for optimizing prompts in complex, multi-module AI systems. Instead of relying on traditional reinforceme

Google will soon fix a security loophole in Chrome’s password autofill

Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority TL;DR Google Chrome on Android will let you require biometric authentication before autofilling passwords, adding a much-needed layer of security. This feature closes a loophole, as the existing biometric protection for autofill in Google Password Manager currently only applies to apps, not the browser. A newly discovered setting explicitly states this protection is “coming soon to Chrome,” finally preventing password autofill without user verification. Man

GEPA: Reflective Prompt Evolution Can Outperform Reinforcement Learning

Authors: Lakshya A Agrawal, Shangyin Tan, Dilara Soylu, Noah Ziems, Rishi Khare, Krista Opsahl-Ong, Arnav Singhvi, Herumb Shandilya, Michael J Ryan, Meng Jiang, Christopher Potts, Koushik Sen, Alexandros G. Dimakis, Ion Stoica, Dan Klein, Matei Zaharia, Omar Khattab Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.19457 TL;DR What was done? The authors introduced GEPA (Genetic-Pareto), a novel algorithm for optimizing prompts in complex, multi-module AI systems. Instead of relying on traditional reinforceme

Asus Chromebook CX14 Review: What You Get for $429

You could certainly make the argument that cheap Chromebooks keep the world running. That's at least true in schools. But for all their importance, not as many new affordable Chromebooks come out each year as you might think. Asus is changing that in 2025 with the Chromebook CX14, a surprisingly pleasant 14-inch laptop that costs just $429 in its higher-end configuration. As far as cheap Chromebooks go, this is among the best. Blending In Photograph: Luke Larsen The CX14 might not look like

How to sync passkeys in Chrome across your Android, iPhone, Mac, or PC (and why you should)

Lance Whitney / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET Passkeys promise to replace passwords as a more secure and convenient login method. But they still have a way to go before fulfilling that promise. That's because passkeys are often way too difficult to set up on one device, let alone all the devices you use. The industry itself offers no standard or consistent method to save and store passkeys, so each company has cobbled together its own process, which may or may not work. Also: Passkeys won't be

Making Roman concrete produces as much CO2 as modern concrete

Builders in ancient Rome used a special kind of ancient concrete to construct their aqueducts, bridges, and buildings. But is Roman concrete more sustainable than the Portland cement used in today's concrete? The answer is more nuanced than one might think, according to a new paper published in the journal iScience. Roman concrete produces as much CO 2 as modern methods, but fewer air pollutants. As we've reported previously, like today's Portland cement (a basic ingredient of modern concrete),

Google Chrome is testing iOS-like page transitions on Android, and you can try it out now

Rita El Khoury / Android Authority TL;DR Google Chrome is testing a predictive back feature that previews the previous page, preventing users from accidentally navigating away. Leveraging Android’s built-in functionality, the preview shows the prior page in your history, but a gray screen if it’s returning home. The feature is currently in A/B testing in Chrome’s stable version, but users can enable it manually via feature flags. Accidentally exiting an app can be frustrating, especially whe

5 browsers you should use instead of Chrome

Rita El Khoury / Android Authority Google Chrome dominates the browser market, holding an almost 70% market share globally, according to StatCounter. This widespread adoption is often attributed to its pre-installation on nearly every Android phone, leading to an effortless default for many users. Being a Google product also lends it a certain level of perceived trust – for better or worse. However, Chrome isn’t without its critics or its flaws. I’m not the biggest fan of the browser, as I thi

5 reasons why Firefox is still my favorite browser - and deserves more respect

Finally, there's something to be said for supporting the underdog. In the Windows desktop browser arena, Chrome is still the top dog by far (though some of the upcoming AI-based browsers may start nipping at its heels). Edge is in second place. That puts Firefox in third. But I think the browser should be defined by much more than its third-place status. Unlike Google and Microsoft, which are major corporate giants, the Mozilla Foundation is a nonprofit organization with a strong bent toward o

My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now, using GLM-4.5 Air and MLX I wrote about the new GLM-4.5 model family yesterday—new open weight (MIT licensed) models from Z.ai in China which their benchmarks claim score highly in coding even against models such as Claude Sonnet 4. The models are pretty big—the smaller GLM-4.5 Air model is still 106 billion total parameters, which is 205.78GB on Hugging Face. Ivan Fioravanti built this 44GB 3bit quantized version for MLX, spe

This Ancient Roman Artifact Is Also a 453 Million-Year-Old Fossil

Despite how Ross’ paleontology career is treated by his companions in Friends, there’s something special about finding the remains of creatures that lived millions if not billions of years before us. In fact, humanity’s interest in paleontology isn’t a modern development. Ancient Romans were just as fascinated by fossils. According to the ancient Roman historian Suetonius, Emperor Augustus established the first known paleontological museum at his villa on the island of Capri, where he showcased

Sign in with Google in Chrome

Sign in with Google in Chrome July 28, 2025 By Jeff Johnson of Underpass App Company Many websites such as Yelp show an annoying “Sign in with Google” banner when you visit. This is what Google calls the One Tap user experience. Fortunately, my web browser extension StopTheMadness Pro hides “Sign in with Google” banners. What you may not realize if you use Safari or Firefox is that the banners are never displayed in Google Chrome! You can see this in macOS Safari by spoofing the Chrome User

Principles for production AI agents

Every now and then, people ask me: “I am new to agentic development, I’m building something, but I feel like I'm missing some tribal knowledge. Help me catch up!”. I’m tempted to suggest some serious stuff like multiweek courses (e.g. by HuggingFace or Berkeley), but not everyone is interested in that level of diving. So I decided to gather six simple empirical learnings that helped me a lot during app.build development. This post is somewhat inspired by Design Decisions Behind app.build, but

Six Principles for Production AI Agents

Every now and then, people ask me: “I am new to agentic development, I’m building something, but I feel like I'm missing some tribal knowledge. Help me catch up!”. I’m tempted to suggest some serious stuff like multiweek courses (e.g. by HuggingFace or Berkeley), but not everyone is interested in that level of diving. So I decided to gather six simple empirical learnings that helped me a lot during app.build development. This post is somewhat inspired by Design Decisions Behind app.build, but

Google Chrome adds AI-powered store summaries to help US shoppers

Google on Monday announced an update to its Chrome web browser that will introduce AI-generated store reviews to U.S. shoppers with the aim of helping to determine the best places to make a purchase. The feature, which will be available by clicking an icon just to the left of the web address in the browser, will display a pop-up that informs consumers about the store’s reputation for things like product quality, shopping, pricing, customer service, and returns. The feature, which is currently a

Here are the laptops I’d tell any parent to consider for their back-to-school student

is a reviewer covering laptops and the occasional gadget. He spent over 15 years in the photography industry before joining The Verge as a deals writer in 2021. We’re in the heart of summer fun, but it’s already time for back-to-school planning, especially if that involves buying a new laptop. The dizzying number of different laptops and configurations can feel overwhelming, especially if you want something that doesn’t cost too much but will still last a long time. My general guidelines are t

The New ‘Toxic Avenger’ Promises Heart Along With All That Goopy Gore

Troma Entertainment… in Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con… in the year of our Lloyd Kaufman 2025? You better believe it. The cult hero rises again in The Toxic Avenger, a title that’s still popular enough 40-plus years after the release of the original Toxic Avenger to command the convention’s largest meeting room. With that panel came an in-room-only sneak peek at the unrated horror comedy; as the marketing for Macon Blair’s long-awaited reboot has teased (it premiered back in 2023 at Fantastic Fe

How to sync passkeys in Chrome across your PC, Mac, iPhone, or Android

Lance Whitney / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET Passkeys promise to replace passwords as a more secure and convenient login method. But they still have a way to go before fulfilling that promise. That's because passkeys are often way too difficult to set up on one device, let alone all the devices you use. The industry itself offers no standard or consistent method to save and store passkeys, so each company has cobbled together its own process, which may or may not work. Also: Passkeys won't be

Syncing desktops and better AI wallpapers are coming to ChromeOS

Google has released a new version of ChromeOS that allows you to sync desktops between devices, ideal for anyone who works across more than one Chromebook. It also significantly improves the AI wallpapers available on Chromebook Plus laptops with a completely freeform prompting field. Desk sync is designed to help you pick up where you left off when changing devices. It will sync your windows, tabs, and cookies so you can change devices without losing where you were. Google suggests it’ll be pa

I switched to a $280 Chromebook from my Windows laptop for a week - and didn't regret it

Lenovo Chromebook Duet Gen 9 ZDNET's key takeaways The Lenovo Chromebook Duet Gen 9 is available now for $279 at Best Buy. It's a versatile and highly-portable device that's as useful at home as in the office. Some of the most buzzworthy features are tied to subscriptions, and the keyboard and trackpad are very small. $279 at Best Buy $379 at Lenovo more buying choices The ninth-generation Lenovo Chromebook Duet is an 11-inch 2-in-1 laptop/tablet that combines a nice display, a versatile form

This might be the only Google Chrome alternative that could rip me away from Firefox

Andy Walker / Android Authority Choosing a web browser is a deeply personal decision, as I’ve learned from reading spicy comments on various forums over the years. I’ve been loyal to Firefox for a long time, but Mozilla’s recent missteps and the browser’s growing flaws have started to bitter my experience. So, I explored the Play Store for sweeter alternatives and stumbled across a potential candidate: Banana Browser. What Chromium-based browser do you use? 60 votes I use Google Chrome. 43 % I

Here’s why that embattled retro gaming YouTuber might not be so innocent (Updated)

Update, July 23, 2025 (03:46 AM ET): Android Authority reached out to Once Were Nerd for this story, but he declined to comment in light of the ongoing investigation. When possible, he will “provide more in-depth updates on the matter on [his] channels.” The original story mentioned that unused consoles were sold on Facebook, but they were actually sold on Telegram. This has been corrected in the text below. Original article, July 22, 2025: Creating emulation-focused content online is risky bus

The Promised LAN

🖧 The Promised LAN The Promised LAN is a closed, membership only network of friends that operate a 24/7 always-on LAN party, running since 2021. The vast majority of documentation is maintained on the LAN, but this website serves to give interested folks, prospective members or friends an idea of what the Promised LAN is, and how it works. A Manifesto for The Promised LAN For background on why we started the lan, what we hope to achieve, and how we approach the social-technical dynamics, we h