IT General

The week before the annual SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, a mass shooter killed three people outside a college bar in the city's bustling downtown district. And at SXSW on Monday, a company called Angel Protection demonstrated technology that uses AI to identify potential shooters before they cause a mass casualty event.

Angel Protection was founded in the aftermath of another Texas mass shooting, the 2022 Uvalde tragedy that took the lives of 19 children and 2 teachers. Founder and CEO Lewis Matthews had two young children at the time of the shooting, and as a data scientist, he believed AI and visual intelligence could be used to mitigate future mass shootings and save lives.

Angel Protection's technology integrates with existing surveillance cameras and scans them simultaneously to identify firearms. If it detects a civilian brandishing a firearm, it alerts a human reviewer in the company's Midland monitoring center. Angel Protection says it can identify a shooter and alert law enforcement in 10 seconds or less.

Angel Protection founder Lewis Matthew demonstrates the company's technology at SXSW. Credit: Timothy Werth / Mashable

“As you can see, I’m an outsider, and I can see that it’s real, material stuff that’s broken in these systems,” Matthews told Mashable. “Stuff is broken at the local level all the way up through the federal government…So, we started studying it. We spent two years just really looking at the problem.”

Matthews said that, as a data scientist, he knew that if you want to change a broken system, you need to have some type of measurement to know if your efforts are working.

“The measurement we look at in this case is time. What’s the time problem that we’re solving here? We started with all the mass shootings from 1999 to 2025. Average time from first shots fired to 911 being initiated is 90 seconds. So if I put my gun out there and start shooting, it’s 90 seconds before someone picks up the phone and calls 911, because people go into denial. They think it’s fireworks, kids playing around, doors slamming, anything other than [what it is]."

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Even when people call 911, they often provide contradictory information.

“Then what happens…is they get inundated with a bunch of calls that describe everyone as being the shooter. Everyone is fleeing the scene. The shooter is black, the shooter is white, the shooter is bald. Shooters got long hair, tall, fat, shorts, jeans, whatever it is, they get every single description before the cops show up. All they know is they're looking for someone.”

Not only can Angel Protection Systems quickly identify potential mass shooters, but they can send a photograph and precise location directly to first responders.

“We use AI to detect those guns and humans to verify that [and] cut that 90 seconds down to sub 10 seconds, and we do that with extreme, extreme accountability," Matthews said.

Privacy experts are increasingly worried about AI's potential to be used for mass surveillance. However, Angel Protection's chief technology officer told me all the information processing occurs on-site to protect privacy, and Angel Protection is only alerted when a threat is identified.

The company's human reviewers also help cut down on false positives, Matthews says, though it still happens, especially in an open-carry state like Texas. (Angel Protection's visual intelligence doesn't alert to holstered weapons for this reason.) Apparently, ROTC students who carry rifles without wearing the proper uniform have been one early problem.

The ultimate goal, Matthews said, is to identify mass shooters in entryways or parking lots, as these shooters often arrive on scene brandishing a rifle. Mass shootings often progress at lightning speed, and he believes that quickly getting accurate information to first responders will save lives.

Angel Protection is still in its infancy, and a company spokesperson told me the company is currently monitoring about 2,500 cameras in Texas, checking for potential shooters twice a second. So far, the company is working with schools, hospitals, and government sites.

Looking for a good movie to watch this week? I think I can help. Paramount+ has a library of an estimated 2,500 movies in it, from Paramount Pictures, CBS, Showtime, and other studios. Some are hits, some are not, but there's a breadth to choose from, including blockbusters, biopics, and classics to dramas, comedies, action movies, and everything in between.

Hot take: If I were buying a GPU right now, in 2026, I wouldn't touch Nvidia with a ten-foot pole. I wouldn't buy AMD, either. I'd buy Intel. No, I'm not joking.

Who remembers walking up and down the aisles of DVDs and (gulp) VHS tapes at Blockbuster on Friday night looking for something good to watch? I mean, I don't either; I was just testing to see if you did. With its rows and rows of movies and shows to watch, Netflix can feel like that, too, sometimes. Well, since I've been around the, er, Block, let me help.

I often write about the best practices for homelabbers, but I don’t always follow my own advice. That came to bite me in the butt recently when my homelab was compromised and a crypto bot started running my server’s CPU at 100%—here’s what I did to fix it.

In honor of the 98th Academy Awards last night, this week we’re focusing on movies that have claimed the golden statue. There’s a catch, though. Instead of looking at current nominees and winners, we’re exploring some of the 20th century's Oscar winners streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Most people like to upgrade their phone every other year. Resourceful people hold off for three or four. I blew right past that by keeping my last phone for over five years. The truth is, I probably would’ve held on even longer if it weren’t for the phone that replaced it.

Eufy recently released its new flagship robot vacuum, the Omni S2. The best part is that you can save $250 right now with the code EUFYS2FANS.

The automotive world is filled with incredible success stories. Ford gave us the Model T, Mustang, and F-150. The Chevrolet Suburban is the longest-running nameplate in automotive history, and the Corvette is the longest-running sports car nameplate. And from Europe came the Volkswagen Beetle, Porsche 911, and Mercedes-Benz S-Class.

Routers are usually set up once or twice and then they sit in a corner somewhere until a setting needs to be changed, or the router gets replaced. However, they're mini computers capable of doing far more than we normally use them for. Here are a few good ones to try.

SSD over-provisioning used to be a common practice for pretty much anyone who remotely cared about the long-term performance and longevity of their SSDs. These days, though, it has fallen out of practice. And there's a pretty good reason for this.

March Madness is here. The field is set for the 2026 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament, and Selection Sunday did exactly what Selection Sunday always does — gave 68 fanbases a reason to either celebrate or lose their minds on social media. The discourse was, as tradition demands, extremely annoying.

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The biggest flashpoint was the treatment of the Miami Redhawks — Miami, Ohio, not the other one — who were begrudgingly admitted into the tournament as a play-in team despite finishing with the first undefeated regular season since the 2020-21 Gonzaga Bulldogs. For months, pundits and fans spent an exhausting amount of energy debating whether the Redhawks would even deserve an at-large bid if they so much as dropped a single game. They finally did, falling in the MAC Championship quarterfinals, and apparently, going 31-1 still wasn't enough to earn any respect from the committee.

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Instead of a clean Round of 64 berth, Miami (OH) now has to survive the First Four — the tournament's opening round play-in bracket featuring the four lowest-seeded at-large teams and the four weakest conference champions. Even still, people are not happy.

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The selection committee's decision to keep Auburn out, however, was met with widespread approval from pretty much everyone who isn't an Auburn fan. The War Eagles' omission was made all the more satisfying by the weeks of national airtime eaten up by former Auburn coach Bruce Pearl — father of current Auburn coach Steven Pearl — passionately lobbying for a team with 16 losses to leapfrog a squad that went 31-1. The college basketball world heard the argument, considered it, and was very glad the committee did not.

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Outside of the Miami (OH) and Auburn discourse, Selection Sunday and the return of March Madness this year mean a great collection of really good tweets.

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If you like to keep things old school, there are several places to find printable, color brackets for this year's Men's and Women's tournaments.

They can be found, linked here, over at the websites of ESPN, CBS Sports, Yahoo Sports, The Athletic, USA Today, and, of course, the NCAA's official website. They can also be found on most local news sites as well.

We are now living in a post-Oscars world. One Battle After Another winning Best Picture closed the book on 2025 movies. Now, it's time to set our sights on the new movies coming this year. As for now, the best new movie to watch this week is the continuation of a famous crime series with an acclaimed actor leading the way.

GIMP has been one of the most popular alternatives to Adobe Photoshop over the years, even though it still has some lingering usability problems. The latest GIMP 3.2 update is fixing some of those issues, along with a few other new features.

For years, the premium compact SUV segment has belonged to Germany. Shoppers looking for a small luxury SUV almost automatically considered models like the BMW X3, the Mercedes-Benz GLC, and the Audi Q5, thanks to their polish and prestige.

Do you use the Chrome extension "Save image as Type?"

If so, you are one of more than one million users who woke up this morning to find out that Google has disabled the extension in your Chrome web browser. Why? According to the prompt informing users that the extension has been disabled, Chrome found that Save image as Type contained malware.

The extension has also been removed from the Chrome Web Store.

Save image as Type was a simple yet popular tool that allowed Chrome users to simply right-click any web image and immediately choose whether to save it as a PNG, JPG, or WebP file.

It's unclear at this time exactly what nefarious activity the Save image as Type Chrome extension was engaged in. As Android Authority points out, a few Reddit threads popped up over the last few days discussing issues with the extension. 

SEE ALSO: 3 new Google Chrome features to make your work day easier

It does seem like "Save image as Type" users don't have to worry about any of their sensitive data being stolen by the extension. According to Reddit users who looked into the extension's code, it appears Save image as Type swapped out affiliate codes for sites like Amazon and Best Buy to steal commissions from its users.

"I dumped the data the extension stored and found the sites it was accessing," said Redditor AdamConwayIE. "It was using karmanow with over 578 sites ready to go. It would load a site in that hidden iFrame with the affiliate code, and this would replace an existing one in your browser."

The same extension on the Microsoft Edge browser was flagged for similar behavior more than a year ago on Reddit as well. According to XDA Developers, the Chrome extension appears to have been documented as having the issue for just as long, despite Google previously featuring it on the Chrome Web Store.

An archived page for the since-removed Chrome extension shows that "Save image as Type" had more than one million users. The extension also received more than 1,700 reviews, and had a rating of 4.2 out of 5 stars.

We'll see if Google allows it back in the Chrome Web Store if the issue is fixed.

You’ve probably seen a slew of “AI laptops” advertised over the last few months, and perhaps even years at this point. “AI” is the hot buzzword, and everyone wants to catch some of that hype. The problem is that not every laptop that calls itself an “AI” laptop is really what it claims to be. But what makes an AI laptop worthy of the name?

I was using a generic Text-to-Speech (TTS) voice for spoken announcements in my smart home for ages. It allowed me to generate audio without having to use the default Alexa voice, but it's still fairly bland. Now my Echo announcements use far more interesting voices—those of my family and me.

If you're a new homeowner getting ready to start a project, or finally ready to buy your first power tools, you'll notice all sorts of brands at your local hardware store. You have plenty of options, and Milwaukee is one of the most popular. The company has a vast selection perfect for beginners to pros, so once you get started, you'll have room to expand, learn, and grow.

Whatever happened to baby Jane?

No, I'm not just naming Joan Crawford movies. I'm wondering what in the world is going on with Jane Driscoll (Nicole Brydon Bloom) in Paradise Season 2. Specifically, what was the deal with episode 6's cold open, focused on Jane's birth?

SEE ALSO: 'Paradise' Season 2: Who is Alex?

The episode, fittingly titled "Jane," flashes back to May 29, 1997, when Circuit City employee Don (Francois Battiste) receives a strange email from someone named AlexQ.

"A KILLER WILL BE BORN ON JUNE 6 AT 12:01," the message reads. "SHE CAN BE STOPPED WHEN IT MATTERS IF YOU DELIVER A MESSAGE TO HER."

AlexQ continues to send Don these messages over email, instant messenger, phone, and pager. Instead of ignoring them as bizarre messages, Don takes them seriously and heads over to the hospital in June. There, he accosts newborn Jane and her mother (Laura Campbell) on their way out, ranting that baby Jane will be a killer, and that he has a message that will stop her. (Side question: Did Don just ask every mother leaving the hospital about their baby's birth time? Or was he lucky on the first try?)

Do we ever find out what the message is? Unfortunately not. Don is too busy yelling that he has a message to actually deliver it. Nor do we see what the message is on any of the many, many emails and texts Don receives. Very tricky, Paradise! Still, the whole message debacle feeds into some of the biggest questions of the season.

Paradise has to be doing time travel, right?

Ever since the first batch of Season 2 episodes, I've been convinced that Paradise is pulling some time travel or multiversal shenanigans. Episode 6 basically confirms this, because how else would someone be able to tell Don Jane's exact birth date and time? How else would they know she would grow up to be a killer? And how else would they have figured out how to stop her?

SEE ALSO: Wait, is 'Paradise' Season 2 doing time travel?

It feels like something large will play out with Jane in the continuing episodes, and that whoever is present for that will somehow be able to message Don in the past.

Paradise Season 2, I ask again, who is Alex?

Who might that someone be? Based on the username, it will be someone by the name of AlexQ, which brings us right back to the biggest question of Season 2: Who in the world is Alex? So far, the only Alex we've met is the deceased wife (Gwen Holloway) of professor and Vestige Quantum owner Henry Miller (Patrick Fischler). However, in 1997, Alex would still be alive, so she would be able to send Don the information about Jane. (If so, maybe the Q in her username stands for Quantum?) Of course, the biggest question after that remains: How did she get the Jane intel in the first place?

Alex is also the name of someone (or something?) tied to the top-secret project Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson) is working on. Maybe Sinatra, feeling threatened by Jane, sent the message back in time to stop Jane from eventually killing her?

While we're on the subject of worrying about who Alex is, we also need to ask, who is Don? I refuse to believe that Alex (whoever they are) would demand that just anyone tell a newborn baby that she's a killer. Don has to be linked to this scheme in some broader way, but it seems like Paradise will keep us begging for answers for at least another episode.

Paradise is now streaming on Hulu, with new episodes every Monday.