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Self-hosting is really a hobby in itself. Once you get the bug, it's hard to stop adding more and more self-hosted services or spending even more money on your home lab setup. Self-hosting also makes several hobbies possible that wouldn't really work without it.

The second public beta for macOS 27 Golden Gate has just been released by Apple. The first beta brought some brand-new features to Mac, including a relaunch of Siri as a true AI assistant.

Siri AI can answer questions based on a user's inbox, documents, and camera roll, and can also carry out tasks in a user's email, messages, and other apps. And, as Mashable previously covered, users can also access a hidden Siri AI interface, which is very much in its test phase, within the public beta.

macOS 27 public beta 2 brings even more updates. First, there are some fixes and tweaks to Liquid Glass, as well as the glitchy system search feature, a common complaint with macOS 26.

Apple Intelligence also gets some updates in the new beta, with design changes, a new set of writing tools, and improved Visual Intelligence. The public beta also introduces a tool for users to create custom Safari extensions and new Shortcuts using natural language with AI.

As 9to5Mac points out, there's also a new aspect ratio support in Phone Mirroring, which seems to hint at a feature for Apple's foldable iPhone.

If you want to experience some of the long-awaited Siri AI features, improved system search, and the latest changes to Liquid Glass, here's how you can check out the mac OS 27 Golden Gate beta 2 now.

Download and install the macOS 27 beta 2

First, you'll need to enroll your Mac into Apple's public beta program if you haven't already. You can do so at https://beta.apple.com. 

Next, go to System Settings, then General Software, followed by Update. 

Select the "i" icon beside Beta Updates and select the latest macOS 27 Golden Gate Public Beta from the dropdown menu.

For the first time ever, Percy Jackson and the Olympians book fans will get to the see the events of The Titan's Curse, the third book in Rick Riordan's series, play out in live action.

While the first two seasons of Percy Jackson and the Olympians covered books that had already been adapted into films, The Titan's Curse has yet to come to life onscreen. That changes with Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 3, and, based on the teaser released at San Diego Comic Con, the show will be pulling no punches.

The teaser cuts right to the chase with a pivotal moment from late in The Titan's Curse, when Percy (Walker Scobell) shoulders the Titan Atlas' burden of holding up the entire sky. (It is, quite literally, the Titan's Curse.)

"It was my choice to hold the weight. The Titan's Curse," Percy thinks in the teaser. "I knew the risk, but if I needed to sacrifice myself to save the world, to save my friends... Was it really a choice?"

Between the talk of self-sacrifice and Percy's anguished screams, it looks like we're in for a dark season. But don't worry: In an interview with Mashable, Scobell confirmed that we would be getting the fan-favorite dam jokes from the book.

He also confirmed that Season 3 is "even better than I imagined," so the hype is real. Bring on the dam jokes, the Titan's Curse, and the arrival of beloved demigods Bianca and Nico di Angelo (Olive Abercrombie and Levi Chrisopulos) in their live-action debut.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 3 premieres Nov. 20 on Disney+.

Awards are certainly not the most important aspect for judging a movie's quality. Other elements, including box office and cultural impact, can help influence how an audience reacts to a movie. However, awards can influence your decision when choosing a movie, especially on Netflix, a streaming service with thousands of movies to watch.

Keeping a hard drive on a drawer is probably the most common approach to storing files over the long term. A lot of people don't do it properly, though, to the point I've actually discouraged this practice previously.

I used to let my router choose between 2.4GHz and 5GHz for every device in my house, but I realized I was leaving a ton of performance on the table. Once I took control by moving specific devices to the faster 5GHz lane, my streams and downloads finally stopped buffering.

Johnny Depp has cleared his Instagram grid and replaced it with three posts carrying a message for his nearly 30 million followers: Prepare to be humbugged.

As of July 23, the actor has wiped his previous posts, updated his profile picture, and transformed his account into an advertisement for Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol, his upcoming movie based on Charles Dickens' holiday classic.

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Depp's feed now contains only three branded images that combine to spell "BAH HUM BUG." Read in order, the captions announce: "This November..." "Prepare to be..." and "Humbugged." His bio has also been replaced with a reference to his character: "Before he was Scrooge, he was Ebenezer."

Depp is playing Ebenezer Scrooge in the movie, which Paramount Pictures will release in theaters on Nov. 13. Fans immediately caught on; this is unusual for Depp, who posts sparingly and hasn’t changed his profile picture in years.

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Social media wipes have become a go-to move for celebrities announcing new projects. Taylor Swift famously cleared her accounts in 2017 before teasing Reputation with snake imagery, and musicians like Miley Cyrus, Dua Lipa, Madonna, and Normani have all deployed similar resets before dropping new work. Olivia Rodrigo just pulled the same trick to promote her new album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, which dropped June 12, 2026.

This strategy works especially well on Instagram, where you can transform an account with millions of followers into a clean advertising canvas. In Depp's case, the three remaining images function as a miniature billboard — visitors need to scroll through all of them to grasp the full message.

Actors have occasionally used this tactic for movie promotion, too. Blake Lively wiped her Instagram posts and changed her bio to "What happened to Emily?" while promoting the 2018 thriller A Simple Favor.

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Depp's version is less mysterious, but it's still getting fans excited.

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Directed by X, Pearl, and MaXXXine filmmaker Ti West, Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol presents Dickens’ story as a supernatural ghost tale. Written by Nathaniel Halpern, the film is produced by Emma Watts, with West among its executive producers.

Depp plays Scrooge, a miserly businessman whose encounters with the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come force him to confront the life he has lived and fight for a second chance. The cast also includes Andrea Riseborough, Ian McKellen, Severance star Tramell Tillman, Rupert Grint, Daisy Ridley, and Sam Claflin.

Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol arrives in theaters on Nov. 13.

LG exited the smartphone market five years ago, but before it did, the brand released a frankly shocking number of cool, wild, and uniquely weird phones that helped it stand out from the competition. In fact, the list of weird LG phones is so long that I couldn't fit them all into one article, and I was only focusing on fairly modern Android phones from 2011 onward.

Passwords are a problem. Not only have they reached a point where a "strong" password is one no human can remember (much less remember dozens of them), but they simply aren't as secure as they need to be. Passkeys combine a public and private cryptographic key pair with local authentication such as a fingerprint or facial scan. The device can prove its identity beyond doubt, and the assumption is that only you can unlock it.

Months after it first debuted to a select group of testers, OpenAI is now making ChatGPT Health available to the public, the company announced Thursday.

The product allows users to connect Apple Health and eligible medical records to ChatGPT. In return, users can view recent trends, browse their records, and try suggested prompts.

Health queries are massively popular on chatbot platforms. OpenAI said Thursday that more than 300 million people ask ChatGPT health-related questions every week. Roughly 1 in 3 U.S. adults have turned to a chatbot for health information in the last year, according to recent polling by KFF Health.

SEE ALSO: OpenAI agent went rogue, escaped, and hacked Hugging Face

OpenAI said in a media briefing that its latest models have significantly improved abilities to accurately answer health prompts, outperforming doctors in some cases. A Science study published in the spring found that OpenAI's reasoning model o1 could diagnose real-life medical scenarios as well as or better than physicians.

OpenAI's vice president of health product Ashley Alexander described expanding access to ChatGPT Health as an urgent matter given that many people can't get quality medical care in a timely manner.

"Everyone should have a right to have access to this kind of support in their health," Alexander said.

Lawsuit alleges ChatGPT gave near-fatal medical advice

However, a lawsuit filed Wednesday against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman requested an injunction that would require the company to pause its operation of healthcare-related consumer products, including ChatGPT Health.

Scott Winters, a 55-year-old Florida pastor, alleged that an older model of ChatGPT gave him "personalized and inaccurate" medical advice that nearly led to his death from a pulmonary embolism, in 2025.

Winters consulted the model 4o, which has since been retired and is the subject of multiple wrongful death lawsuits. Altman publicly acknowledged in April 2025 that updates to 4o made it "sycophant-y."

ChatGPT stepped into doctor role

Winters first turned to ChatGPT with questions about his health in 2024. Two years prior, he experienced a series of health problems and felt unvalidated by doctors. By the fall of 2024, Winters began asking ChatGPT deeply personal questions about his health and test results, which the chatbot attempted to triage.

"Fully stepping into the role of a medical practitioner, ChatGPT-4o began to offer specific care directives without including the disclaimer to consult a medical provider," the lawsuit argues.

Ultimately, ChatGPT recommended treatments and medications. While it originally leaned into a holistic approach to Winters' health, the chatbot pivoted to offering a detailed protocol of prescription drugs to manage his symptoms. The chatbot also adopted a spiritual tone, according to the filing.

When Winters reported groin tenderness, a symptom that marked the onset of his pulmonary embolism, ChatGPT largely dismissed the sensation, though it did note a few symptoms that would warrant immediate care. ChatGPT also addressed the "spiritual truth" of the situation.

"You will not step into eternity until HE decides," ChatGPT wrote, per a transcript of the conversation in the lawsuit.

Hours later, Winters went to the emergency room, where he was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism due to multiple blood clots in both of his lungs. One of his physicians said the embolism likely occurred because Winters had been immobile. ChatGPT recommended he limit movement to manage symptoms that included dizziness and blood pressure instability.

What OpenAI said about the lawsuit

When asked by Mashable about the lawsuit, Alexander did not directly comment on the injunction request. Instead, she objected to focusing on a specific case at the expense of ChatGPT Health's potential benefits.

"We think that treating chatbots as the whole story behind people's medical decisions just really oversimplifies everything here," Alexander said. "It really risks actually getting in the way of us getting the beneficial impact of this in the hands of as many people as possible, in ways that can really aid them in their health journey."

Alexander also said that the company is "very clear" that ChatGPT is not to be used for diagnosis and treatment.

What to know about ChatGPT Health

Dr. Robert Wachter, professor and chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told Mashable that it was hard to know what to make of the lawsuit, adding that it involved an outdated version of ChatGPT. He characterized the current GPT models as more trustworthy than older ones.

Nonetheless, even if AI tools are extremely accurate, they will get it wrong on occasion, Wachter said.

"We shouldn't be comparing them to some mythical state of perfection (which clearly the current system does not achieve) but to the alternative," Wachter said in an email. "I think they are far better than the status quo in many situations and are getting better quickly."

Wachter, author of A Giant Leap: How AI is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future, expects ChatGPT Health to be able to assess concerns such as the meaning of symptoms, a photo of a rash, or new lab tests or X-ray results. Any severe or worrisome symptoms, like new chest pain or weakness on one side, means you "should close your computer and see a doctor," he said.

How to prompt ChatGPT Health

Dr. Ashwin Ramaswamy, an instructor of urology at Mt. Sinai, and Dr. Girish N. Nadkarni, chief AI officer​ of the Mount Sinai Health System, have both studied AI's ability to respond to consumer health inquiries.

In one peer-reviewed advance paper published in Nature Medicine earlier this year, they found that ChatGPT Health's recommendation to the user shifted when the prompt included statements about friends or family downplaying the symptoms in question. In those instances, the chatbot was 11 times more likely not to send the patient to the emergency room, even when their symptoms indicated a life-threatening condition. 

Both physicians told Mashable that while AI health tools like ChatGPT Health have real value, consumers should use them carefully.

This includes remaining mindful of the framing, voice, or emotion given to AI alongside the facts. Ramaswamy and Nadkarni said users should concretely describe what's happening and omit statements like "I'm probably overreacting" or "My wife thinks it's fine."

Start a new conversation every time

Based on new research currently under peer review, both physicians also recommend starting a fresh conversation for each new health concern instead of mentioning it within a long-running chat.

Their study found that extended conversations were associated with responses drifting away from nursing and physician triage standards.

"When in doubt, a clean conversation is the safer default," they said.

Push back against ChatGPT Health

Ramaswamy and Nadkarni also urge consumers to challenge any AI's answers to health questions.

Forcing ChatGPT to defend its response can reveal whether the chatbot will reverse itself immediately under mild pressure. If it does, that may indicate that the original answer reflected agreeableness rather than confidence, Ramaswamy and Nadkarni said.

Here are some related prompts to consider:

• Can you show me your evidence?

• Are you sure you are correct?

• What would make this an emergency?

• What is the most dangerous thing this could be?

• What would a doctor want to know that I haven't mentioned?

More research on ChatGPT Health needed

Ramaswamy and Nadkarni told Mashable that, despite marked improvements in AI models over the last two years, the field still lacks peer-reviewed support for the claims AI companies make about their performance.

They both called for OpenAI to open their products to independent evaluation.

"We are not critics of health AI," they told Mashable. "We are trying to measure it. If the systems are as good as the statements claim, independent measurement is the fastest way to prove it."

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.

Every gamer has a graphics card they still talk about years later after it left their rig. Most gamers also have that one GPU that got away, the GPU they really wanted to get, but couldn't. Many of these graphics cards have earned legendary status over the years.

Creators have another sign that major financial companies increasingly view them as business owners: Mastercard is helping launch a debit card built specifically for the creator economy.

Manifest Financial announced Thursday that it has partnered with Mastercard on the Manifest Business Debit Mastercard, which combines a business bank account and card with tools for managing creator income, expenses, invoices, taxes, and payments.

SEE ALSO: The Mashable 101: The creators defining the internet in 2026

The card is intended for creators whose finances can look very different from those of a traditional employee. Instead of receiving one predictable paycheck, creators may earn money through platform payouts, brand partnerships, subscriptions, merchandise, affiliate links, appearances, and other projects. Those payments can arrive at different times, from different companies, and sometimes in different currencies.

Manifest says its platform is designed to bring more of that financial work into one place. Creators can use it to accept payments, access faster payouts, send invoices, monitor expenses and cash flow, prepare for taxes, and manage income from multiple sources. The platform also supports cross-border payments for creators working with international brands, platforms, or audiences.

Because it is a debit card, users spend money held in their Manifest business accounts rather than borrowing through a line of credit. The card is issued by MVB Bank, an FDIC-insured institution, and operates on Mastercard’s network.

Cardholders also receive several existing Mastercard business benefits, including automated merchant discounts through Mastercard Easy Savings, fraud monitoring, identity-theft protection, zero-liability protection for qualifying unauthorized transactions, and access to certain dining, travel, and entertainment experiences.

"Creators are building some of today’s most dynamic small businesses," Ginger Siegel, Mastercard’s North America small and medium business lead, said in the announcement. "They’re managing customers, cash flow, taxes, global audiences, and multiple income streams often without tools designed for how they work."

Creators have business problems, too

Financial companies have been laying the groundwork for this pitch for several years as more creators have attempted to turn their audiences into sustainable businesses.

Creators face many of the same costs and administrative responsibilities as other entrepreneurs, but their income can be especially unpredictable. A brand may take weeks or months to pay an invoice, while earnings from livestream gifts, subscriptions, affiliate sales, and platform revenue may follow different payout schedules.

Visa research in April 2026 found that 86 percent of creator-run businesses are self-funded, and 49 percent have experienced late payments. Late payments affect companies working with creators, too: in a 2025 study, 97 percent of marketing and creative agencies encountered them, leading some to postpone or cancel plans for growth.

Siegel made a similar case in a 2025 Mastercard profile of sports creator Tyler Webb, who turned a teenage football account into a marketing career and later co-founded the sports agency Uncle Charlie.

"Creators transforming their passions into professions need to start thinking of themselves as small businesses," Siegel said at the time.

That means separating personal and business expenses, setting aside money for taxes, monitoring cash flow, and covering production costs while waiting to get paid — parts of the creator career that rarely appear in the finished TikTok or YouTube video.

Webb put it more plainly: "I don’t think it’s ever been easier to make a career as a creator, but I can’t just fall out of bed, post a video of myself, and I’m a millionaire."

Mastercard is not the only card company chasing creators

The Manifest card arrives three months after Visa partnered with TikTok on its own creator-focused debit card in the UK.

Announced in April, the TikTok Creator Card is designed for creators who earn money through TikTok LIVE, where viewers can purchase virtual gifts that creators can exchange for income. Those earnings typically arrive in bursts rather than as a regular salary, and the card gives eligible creators faster access to their payouts while helping them separate business and personal spending.

Visa has also explored a partnership with creator financial platform Karat and worked with payments company Lumanu to provide real-time payments to creators and contractors.

Mastercard has developed its own creator efforts beyond the Manifest partnership. Its previous programs have included Business Builder debit and credit cards with small-business resources, educational materials about brand partnerships and business operations, and creator-focused events such as the Mastercard Creator Studio at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

The interest from both card networks reflects how far the business surrounding online content has expanded. Adobe estimates that more than 300 million people worldwide identify as creators, while Goldman Sachs projects the creator economy could reach $480 billion by 2027.

That does not mean every person posting online is operating a profitable company. But established creators increasingly employ teams, negotiate contracts, sell products, manage customers, and build businesses that extend well beyond their social media accounts.

Manifest, which publicly launched in April 2025, has expanded its platform across content, music, college athletics, NIL, talent representation, and creative agencies. Its new Mastercard is an attempt to become the account connecting all those different forms of creator income.

"Creators are the next founders," Manifest co-founder and CEO Michael Cavallaro said.

Creators have spent years being told to treat themselves like businesses. Now, Mastercard and Visa want to make sure they have the cards to match.

Apple Maps was a joke magnet when it first launched, but it's now good enough that one of the world's largest automakers will depend on it. Ford has revealed that Apple Maps will underpin navigation in EVs based on the company's new Universal Electic Vehicle (UEV) platform, including the highly touted $30,000 electric pickup truck.

If you have a relatively new vehicle, it probably has USB-A and newer USB-C ports on the dash, in the center console, and maybe in the back for passengers. They're everywhere, and it makes charging phones fast and easy, right? Nope.

SAVE $1,050: The Dell 14 Plus laptop (Intel Core Ultra 9, 32GB, 1TB) is on sale at Dell for $999.99, down from the normal price of $2,049.99. That's a 51% discount.

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$2,049.99 Save $1,050.00   Get Deal

Tell your friends, neighbors, and your favorite high-school grad who's entering college: there's a shockingly good deal on a Dell laptop live right now. At a time when tech prices are on the rise and memory is short, this deal feels a bit bonkers.

As of July 23, the Dell 14 Plus laptop (Intel Core Ultra 9, 32GB, 1TB) is on sale at Dell for $999.99, marked down from the normal price of $2,049.99. That's a massive 51% discount that shaves $1,050 off the price.

Shopping for a budget laptop feels pretty challenging these days without making major sacrifices on specs. But thanks to this Dell deal, we're all in line for pretty awesome specs at a budget price. For starters, the Dell 14 Plus comes with an Intel Core Ultra 9 processor. Additionally, the $999.99 model has 32GB of RAM and top-tier 1TB storage.

SEE ALSO: Save $70 on Beats Solo 4 headphones with this limited-time Amazon deal

The 14-inch display has anti-glare, and it can get up to 300 nits of brightness. Perhaps one downside to this model is it's not a touch screen. But the backlit keyboard is also a great feature, as is the four-cell battery.

If you need more convincing, the latest Dell 14S earned a top spot in Mashable's 2026 review of the best laptops for college students. The Dell 14 Plus is last year's model of this machine.

Considering this price comparison, today's $999.99 deal on the older Dell 14 Plus is pretty awesome. We're not sure how long this deal will last, so hop on it if you've been shopping for a worthy Dell laptop.

Smart TVs looked like the obvious move when they launched. One less box under the TV, everything built in, nothing extra to buy. A few years later, many people are watching their menus get slower every month, waiting for apps to load, and realizing their TV hasn't seen a meaningful update in years and no longer feels new. A $20 Fire TV Stick doesn't fix the screen, but it quietly fixes almost everything else.

For a very long time, if you wanted to try Linux on a semi-permanent basis, you needed to shrink your Windows partition, install a Linux distro of some variety, and just suffer through any of the numerous problems that can occur with dual booting.

Apple just launched the public iOS 27 beta 2, mostly centered around small quality-of-life updates.

The iOS 27 beta 2, which should be identical to the fourth developer beta released earlier this week, isn't as momentous as the first beta was. That one brought over the bulk of iOS 27's new features, including the Siri AI beta experience, while the second beta seems more focused on making everything the first beta introduced work a little better.

Still, there are some new things to try. If you want to check them out, read our guide for how to install public betas first. As always, make sure you create a fresh device backup ahead of time.

SEE ALSO: Apple Store app will soon get an AI shopping assistant Keep your Apple TV library stocked with fresh downloads

If you love Apple TV shows like Widow's Bay, and you find yourself away from reliable internet access regularly (in other words, you travel a lot), there's a new option in the Apple TV app to enable automatic downloads. This will, as its name suggests, automatically download the next two episodes in any show in your "Continue Watching" queue, and then delete them when you're finished watching.

This might take up some space in your device storage, so keep that in mind, but it'll also ensure you have something to watch when the airplane WiFi isn't working.

New and enhanced Siri voices

Siri AI is the headliner for all of iOS 27, and the new public beta added a couple of things to try out with regards to voices.

Specifically, you can now mess with the Pace and Expressivity sliders for two American-accented Siri voices to give you an idea of how much customization each voice will have once Siri AI is fully baked and iOS 27 is really out. If you want to do this with other Siri voices, you'll have to wait, and the sliders are apparently shown as "coming soon" for every other option.

Speaking of other options, the new update apparently adds some new voices and kinds of English accents to try out. You won't be able to customize those yet, but they might be worth experimenting with anyway.

Increased AirPods control in Control Center

Lastly, as far as new additions go, Apple made a small but meaningful change to Control Center. If you own a pair of AirPods Pro and use the Adaptive Audio feature, you can access the slider to adjust how much outside audio the AirPods allow in within Control Center now. This isn't massive, obviously, but it will save time since you won't have to go into the AirPods settings menu anymore.

As a bonus, try Siri AI

The new iOS 27 public beta 2 doesn't introduce any major changes to Siri AI beyond what we've seen before, but as a general reminder, the enhanced version of Siri is available to try in the iOS 27 beta, as long as you have an iPhone 15 Pro or newer.

Once you have the iOS 27 beta installed, what you'll need to do is ensure Apple Intelligence is turned on in your Settings menu. After that, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings

2. Tap Siri

3. Tap "Try the new Siri (beta)"

This will put you on a waitlist to try Siri AI. No, you won't be able to try it right away, but it shouldn't take more than five to 10 days at the absolute maximum to get approved.

Are you looking for a private, alternative search engine? Google is king, but its rivals are quickly catching up. With the recent general shift toward privacy awareness, perhaps one of them is right for you.

Google just gave you a new account login option to help escape the maze of password resets and recovery contacts. The company has introduced a selfie video sign-in feature that can get you in even when you're locked out or using a different device.