IT General

Microsoft’s view of a constantly-updating OS with Windows 11 isn't always about removing features. Some functionality also gets ripped out from time to time, and the next feature to get kicked to the curb is Suggested Actions.

You may have noticed that some songs on Apple Music are mastered for "spatial audio", which sure does make the music sound different. But, does it actually sound good? I spent a few hours listening to spatial audio tracks, and the answer isn't as simple as "yes" or "no."

Linux Mint 22.1 is now available in beta. It's a fairly substantial upgrade with several new features and improvements, including the new Cinnamon 6.4 desktop environment.

Some 2.6 million Stanley mugs have been recalled after customers reported dangerous issues with the cup's construction.

If you're worried about your trendy, TikTok-must-have Stanley cup, however, you're likely OK. The recall is for the Stanley Switchback and Trigger Action travel mugs and not the big ol' Quencher tumblers you've likely seen all over social media.

SEE ALSO: What's so special about a Stanley? A guide to conspicuous consumption on TikTok.

The Switchback and Trigger Action mugs have an issue where the "lid threads can shrink when exposed to heat and torque, causing the lid to detach during use, posing a burn hazard," wrote the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in its recall announcement.

The CPSC said Stanley has received 91 reports worldwide of the lid detaching, which resulted in 38 burn injuries and 11 people requiring medical attention. The company is offering a free replacement lid to the affected consumers. You can see if your Stanley is part of the recall and request a replacement lid at the company's website.

Stanley previously had a PR kerfuffle when it was noted that some of its mugs contain small amounts of lead, but experts said it posed no threat at all to users — the lead was a part of insulation that's not exposed to consumers.

The new recall isn't ideal, but if you're affected it should be simple enough to get a new, better-working lid. And your Quencher is still fine to use on your next Target run.

I've been a drone and RC enthusiast for longer than I care to think about at this point, and there's never been a better time to get into the hobby (or even profession) if you get a good start to your journey. I've made some expensive mistakes over the years, but hopefully I can help you avoid that with a few good tips right out of the starting gate.

OpenAI has introduced new features for ChatGPT as part of its "12 Days of OpenAI" promotion. These features revolve around a Santa mode and Christmas themes, but also an update to Advanced Voice that lets users share their screens.

ChatGPT's Santa Mode is restricted to age groups that might already be questioning Santa Claus's existence.

The Santa voice is for ages 13 and up according to a disclaimer. OpenAI debuted the seasonal Santa Mode as part of Thursday's livestream, which also announced vision capabilities for ChatGPT. For ChatGPT Plus and Pro users, when using Advanced Voice Mode, they can select Santa's jolly, booming baritone among the voice options to interact with.

OpenAI won't let kids use Santa Mode. Credit: Screenshot: Mashable / OpenAI

But OpenAI has thumbed its nose at the joy of little children everywhere by restricting Santa Mode to teens and adults. How Grinch-y. Jokes aside, there is a reason for this. The 13-and-up age restriction applies to all of ChatGPT, a spokesperson told Mashable. According to OpenAI's terms of use, "You must be at least 13 years old or the minimum age required in your country to consent to use the Services. If you are under 18 you must have your parent or legal guardian’s permission to use the Services."

SEE ALSO: OpenAI's Sora is officially here

Some kind of age restriction makes sense for use of a technology that might share harmful or inaccurate information. But it also raises the question of what kind of raunchy adult content Santa Mode could get up to. That said, OpenAI has trained ChatGPT to restrict certain adult content and prevent misuse. But the real trick would have been creating a truly kid-safe version of Santa Mode.

Of course parents can always use Santa Mode with their kids or a tech-savvy pre-teen could get their parent's permission to chat with Santa. But it kind of takes away from the festive fun, knowing that Santa Mode is almost exclusively a gimmick for adults that are already in on the world's greatest conspiracy.

Meanwhile we'll be pushing the limits of Santa Mode to see how "adult" it can be.

I’ve always used Chrome to browse on my phone, not because I love it, but because it was what was there and it got the job done. However, recently I decided to branch out and explore the Edge mobile browser, and I've already found things that it does way better than Chrome.

Google has revealed its plans to build virtual reality and mixed reality headsets, in partnership with Samsung. Say hello to Android XR.

If you're just beginning to use Google Sheets, its extensive features and add-ons can be a bit overwhelming. Here are some tips to get you on the fast track to start using this powerful, free cloud-based alternative to Microsoft Excel.

Our sun regularly shoots out solar flares — explosions of light and radiation from its surface — into space. But how about superflares?

These stellar events are thousands of times more powerful than typical solar flares, which can wreak havoc on our power and communication systems. To better understand the superflare risk from the sun, astronomers sought to find how often sun-like stars blast out such potent radiation, and to find an answer they surveyed a whopping 56,000 stars.

The results astonished them.

"Stars that are similar to our sun generate superflares once per century, which is 30 to 60 times more frequent than previously thought," Valeriy Vasilyev, a stellar activity researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, told Mashable.

"We were shocked by the high frequency," he said. Vasilyev is a co-author on the research published in the journal Science.

SEE ALSO: Aliens haven't contacted us. Scientists found a compelling reason why.

Previous research, for example, found that sun-like stars emit powerful superflares every 3,000 to 6,000 years.

To better understand the behavior of sun-like stars, which are relatively stable stars, astronomers used observations captured by NASA's now-retired Kepler Space Telescope. Kepler was designed to expertly measure stellar brightness as it searched for new planets transiting in front of their distant stars. The astronomers identified 56,450 stars that have sun-like characteristics, and over a four-year period spotted superflares — which show telltale signs of immediate light increases followed by a long tail of decaying light — on 2,527 sun-like stars. From this large number of superflares over a relatively brief time range, they inferred the frequency of how often these stars are blasting out superflares.

"We were shocked by the high frequency."

The distant stars emitted energies of some 10³⁴ to 10³⁶ erg ("erg" is a unit of energy measurement), which is greater than any flare ever observed from the sun. Such a superflare packs the energy of roughly 1 trillion hydrogen bombs, Vasilyev said.

"We found crazy flaring stars," he marveled.

An illustration of a superflare on a distant star. Credit: NASA Scientific Visualization Studio Tweet may have been deleted

Solar flares explode from our star's surface when potent and changing magnetic fields naturally become tangled. "Like a rubber band that snaps when it is twisted too far, the tangled magnetic fields release energy when they snap," explains the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. "The energy emitted by a solar flare is more than a million times greater than the energy from a volcanic eruption on Earth!"

And when solar flares shoot out on the side of the sun facing Earth, it can have consequences — particularly if it's a strong solar flare. Such mighty solar flares are often accompanied with events called "coronal mass ejections," or CMEs, which are massive ejections of super hot gas (like throwing a chunk of the sun into space).

Infamously, in 1989 a potent solar flare-associated CME knocked out power to millions in Québec, Canada. The CME hit Earth's magnetic field on March 12 of that year, and then, wrote NASA astronomer Sten Odenwald, "Just after 2:44 a.m. on March 13, the currents found a weakness in the electrical power grid of Quebec. In less than two minutes, the entire Quebec power grid lost power. During the 12-hour blackout that followed, millions of people suddenly found themselves in dark office buildings and underground pedestrian tunnels, and in stalled elevators." The same solar event fried a $10 million transformer at Salem Nuclear Power Plant in New Jersey.

Fortunately, Earth's protective magnetic field and atmosphere shield people from such harmful radiation. But this new research suggests we should be aware of the potential technological impacts from a superflare, which would be significantly more potent than the 1989 event. It remains unknown, however, if the sun has all the requisite properties of these distant sun-like stars that would stoke such relatively frequent solar flares.

Superflares don't just pose threats to Earth. They could impact the many planets orbiting other stars, called exoplanets. For instance, Vasilyev wonders what impacts radiation-heavy superflares might have on worlds with protective atmospheres thinner than Earth's.

But superflares aren't inherently bad. Conversely, superflares might provide the energetic kick molecules need to form the building blocks of life. Perhaps a lifeless Earth, in its distant past, even benefited from a superflare, or two.

YouTube TV is a good way to keep access to live TV in the cord-cutting era. Compared to services like DirecTV, it's also pretty cheap. Now, though, prices are going up, taking away some of the attractiveness it had—at least until other providers inevitably do the same thing.

ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode now has video and screenshare capabilities.

The feature was last May with the release of GPT-4o, but only the audio modality has been live. Now users can chat with ChatGPT using a phone camera and the model will "see" what you see.

SEE ALSO: OpenAI's Sora is officially here

In the livestream, CPO Kevin Weil and other OpenAI team members demoed ChatGPT assisting with how to make pour-over coffee. By pointing the camera at the action, AVM demonstrated that it understood the principle of the coffee maker and walked the team through the brewing of their beverage. The team also showed how ChatGPT supports screensharing by understanding an open message on a phone with Weil wearing a Santa beard.

The long-awaited announcement comes a day after Google unveiled the next generation of its flagship model, Gemini 2.0. The new Gemini 2.0 can also process visual and audio inputs and has more agentic capabilities, meaning it can perform multi-step tasks on the user's behalf. Gemini 2.0's agent features currently exist as a research prototype under three different names: Project Astra for a universal AI assistant, Project Mariner for specific AI tasks, and Project Jules for developers.

Not to be outdone, OpenAI's demo showcased how ChatGPT's vision modality accurately identified objects — and was even interruptible. And yes, part of this included a Santa voice option in Voice Mode, complete with a deep, jolly voice and lots of "ho-ho-hos." You can chat with OpenAI's version of Santa by tapping the snowflake icon in ChatGPT. No word yet on whether the real Santa Claus contributed his voice for AI training or OpenAI used his voice without prior consent.

Oddly, when selecting the Santa voice in the ChatGPT app, the user is warned that the voice is only for people 13 and older.

Tweet may have been deleted

Starting today, video and screenshare are available to ChatGPT Plus and Pro users, with Enterprise and Edu availability coming in Jan.

Are your holiday lights connected to one of those old-fashioned timer switches or, worse still, manually operated? You can do better with one of the cheapest smart home upgrades available.

Apple just announced the "best" apps and games of 2024, with categories for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, visionOS, and even Apple Arcade.

SAVE: $50+: Now, through Jan. 4, 2025, you can use the code SHIPTGIFT to get 50% off a Shipt annual membership.

Opens in a new window Credit: Shipt Shipt Annual Membership $49.00 at Shipt
$99.00 Save $50.00 Get hald-off with code SHIPTGIFT Get Deal

With the holiday season in full swing, we could all use a little extra time to tackle our endless to-do lists, from grocery shopping and holiday meal planning to gift wrapping and sending out those last-minute cards.

To help you save time and money, Shipt (the same-day grocery pick-up and delivery service) is offering 50% off annual memberships now through Jan. 4, 2025, with the code SHIPTGIFT.

SEE ALSO: Save up to 20% on gift cards from Hulu, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, and more

Usually, annual memberships are $99, but with this special offer, you’ll get an entire year of unlimited grocery and other essential deliveries for just $49.

With an annual membership, you can get unlimited same-day deliveries on orders of $35+ and tons of other member-only perks. Plus, Shipt partners with major retailers like Target, Petco, CVS, and more, so you can get everything you need in as little as an hour.

Other December deals include:

• Get $15 off any order of $60 or more with the code HOLIDAYS now through Jan. 1, 2025.

• Get 25% off orders of $40 or more from Ulta Beauty at Target, CVS, Walgreens, PetSmart, Petco, Lowes, Carters, Office Depot, and Office Max through Dec. 14.

• Get 20% off top gifting categories at Target and Meijer through Dec. 24.

If you’d like to gift a membership to a friend or family member, Shipt is offering the same deal on annual membership gift cards (you’ll just need to apply the SHIPTGIFT promo code when you check out).

SAVE $200: As of Dec. 12, get the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE+ for $399.99 at Samsung, down from its usual price of $599.99. That's a discount of 37%.

Opens in a new window Credit: Samsung Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE+ $399.99 at Samsung
$599.99 Save $200.00 Get Deal

If you've been on the hunt for a new tablet, an iPad is always a good choice. But if you don't want to go the iOS route, Samsung has a great selection to choose from as well, especially as part of its Galaxy tablet lineup. You can snag a great one right now, despite the fact that the biggest holiday sales of the year have come and gone, by shopping directly from the retailer.

As of Dec. 12, you can get the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE+ for just $399.99, down from its original price of $599.99. That's $200 off and a 37% discount. Just scroll to the bottom of the page where you see "Samsung Trade-In" and select "No, get $200 Samsung Instant Savings" to take advantage of this deal, no trade-in required.

SEE ALSO: The best tablets in 2024

Mashable's RJ Andersen appreciated this tablet for its "impressive 12.4-inch LCD display" and called it a "well-made, beautiful tablet that's even dust- and water-resistant." It boasts a 20-hour battery life, an S Pen included in the package, and it's great for just about any purpose you want to assign it, whether that's taking notes, checking out your favorite shows and movies, or getting some work done on the go.

Andersen appreciated how "natural" the S Pen felt in comparison to using an Apple Pencil, as well as its powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip that made it appropriately zippy. And it was great when put through the paces with several different use cases, so if you're not into iPads anymore or just want to try something else, you can scoop up this alternative for a great price.

Microsoft Edge offers powerful security features to protect your online privacy and browsing experience, though they aren't all enabled by default. These are the features I use, and I recommend you do too.

Way back in Aug. 2020, music superstar Billie Eilish performed a two-song set for NPR's Tiny Desk (Home) Concert series. Then, she and her brother Finneas couldn't be at NPR's actual offices due to COVID-19 safety concerns, but a printed background of the Tiny Desk set served as a surprisingly solid substitute.

Revisit that moving mini-concert below:

In 2024, Eilish finally got to perform at the real Tiny Desk, complete with Finneas, a band, and a live audience. Tune in to hear Eilish perform three songs from her Grammy–nominated album Hit Me Hard and Soft: "The Greatest," "L'Amour De Ma Vie," and "Birds of a Feather." (Plus, "I Love You" from her first album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?)

Mozilla has removed the "Do Not Track" option from Firefox, but it's not because the company has abruptly abandoned all of its privacy principles. The setting was practically useless.

According to Windows Report which first spotted the change, Firefox browser settings with the latest Version 135 no longer have the ability to send websites a Do Not Track request. Instead there's a note saying Firefox no longer supports the option. Mozilla explained the change on the feature's help center page, saying "many sites do not respect this indication of a person's privacy preferences, and, in some cases, it can reduce privacy."

SEE ALSO: New service from Mozilla wants to protect you from data brokers

But this doesn't mean Firefox users are suddenly exposed to tracking from websites and third parties. Instead, Mozilla recommends an alternative signal called Global Privacy Control. GPC is an initiative founded by privacy-minded browsers including Mozilla, Brave, DuckDuckGo, and organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "GPC is respected by increasing numbers of sites and enforced with legislation in some regions," said the help center page. In some jurisdictions like California with the CCPA act, data privacy rights are legally protected.

In place of the Do Not Track setting with the latest version of Firefox, users can select the option that says, "Tell websites not to sell or share my data." This setting will turn on the GPC signal.