Posts

I Analyzed the Seven Biggest AI Chatbots to Determine How Safe They Are for Kids

Image
AI safety for both adults and children is under greater scrutiny than ever before, with a growing number of questions and concerns appearing around how beneficial or otherwise these conversational bots actually are for our mental well-being—even without considering their energy use, ethics, or economic implications. At the same time, an increasing number of apps and services are becoming age-gated in a growing number of countries around the world, as governments realize that letting kids loose on AI apps, social media platforms, and the web at large might not be the best idea for their ongoing development and prosperity. The big AI apps, such as ChatGPT and Gemini, are right in the center of these trends, and the companies behind them are taking steps that they promise will keep children safe. If you want to know what youngsters in your family may be getting exposed to, and what you can do about it, here's the rundown. ChatGPT OpenAI's ChatGPT has one of the more comprehens...
Post a Comment
Read more

How to Check Your Flight Status After the FAA Canceled the Ground Stop for All Airports

Image
Update, 8:41 p.m.: The Federal Aviation Administration announced it has ended the ground stop . On Friday afternoon, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a nationwide ground stop for all airports in the United States . If you're planning to fly this afternoon or evening, or you have friends or family doing the same, you're likely concerned about tracking flight statuses. While there's still a lot we don't know, there are tools to help track flights at this time: How to track flights during the nationwide ground stop There are a number of options for tracking flights, whether you have your flight number or not. If you have the flight number, the fastest method is to Google it: Google will display a live tracker of your flight at the top of the results page. You can also head to the airline's official website to track your flight: United Airlines , for example, has a flight tracker where you can either enter your route information or your flight number....
Post a Comment
Read more

This Vizio Soundbar Comes With Wireless Surround Speakers, and It's Nearly 50% Off for Early Black Friday

Image
We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Walmart’s early Black Friday sale just kicked off, offering no shortage of worthy tech deals, and one home audio deal in particular has our attention.  If you’re looking to level up your home theater audio setup for less, the Vizio 4.1 Pro SV410YW-10 Soundbar and wireless surround speakers setup with Dolby Atmos and DTS:X support is on sale for $79 (originally $148), a nearly 50% discount. Vizio 4.1 Pro SV410YW-10 Soundbar and Wireless Surround Speakers $79.00 at Walmrt $148.00 Save $69.00 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

How to Make Sure an 'Onion' Site on the Dark Web Is Legitimate

Image
The dark web isn't just for illicit activities. In fact, many legitimate online platforms maintain a ".onion" domain on the dark web for privacy reasons, including media outlets like ProPublica and BBC News, social media sites like Facebook, and privacy-conscious communication platforms like Proton Mail and SecureDrop.  But this also provides perfect cover for criminals and hackers who create clones of legitimate dark web sites to steal sensitive data and cryptocurrency from privacy-conscious users. And given that onion links are long and jumbled , it’s easy for users to accidentally click on the wrong link and end up on a fake website instead of the real one. When the FBI seized 276 onion addresses during 2014's Operation Onymous, they found that 153 of them were phishing sites. Thankfully, Tor Browser already has a cryptography-backed feature that can verify the authenticity of an onion site, by confirming whether it has end-to-end encryption and extended valida...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hackers Now Want Your Browser Sessions More Than Your Passwords, but You Can Stop Them

Image
In April of 2023, the FBI took down an invite-only dark web marketplace called Genesis Market. The seizure was part of “Operation Cookie Monster,” a DOJ collaboration with law enforcement agencies across 17 countries. They discovered 80 million stolen credentials from approximately 1.5 million devices, including session cookies that let scammers log into a user’s account without even entering a password.  Genesis Market may be gone, but bundles of leaked session cookies called “stealer logs” are still harvested and sold in other dark web spaces. In fact, NordVPN researchers counted more than 52.4 billion stolen cookies in infostealer data between June 2025 and 2026. That said, the good news is that stolen session cookies stop working as soon as you revoke active sessions from your account settings. As such, it's important to find out if your session cookies ended up on the dark web, remediate your account if necessary, and avoid such leaks...
Post a Comment
Read more

These M5 MacBook Air Laptops Are up to $250 Off Ahead of Black Friday

Image
We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Apple announced a slew of products in March, including the MacBook Air with the M5 chip, which ended up increasing in price in June due to the RAM shortage . These MacBooks come in both 13-inch and 15-inch sizes, and if you're interested in either, it's a good time to buy: In the leadup to Black Friday, Amazon is selling both at a $200 discount, and the 1 TB storage versions for $250 off. Those discounts bring the 13-inch MacBook Air to $1,099.99 (down from $1,299) and $1,349.99 (originally $1,499.99) for the 512GB and 1 TB versions , respectively. The 15-inch MacBook Air is down to $1,299 (originally $1,499), and the 1TB version is $1,549.99 (originally $1,799.99). All versions are at their lowest prices since the June price hikes, according to tracking tools . ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Apple Won't Make a Small Phone so This Company Is Stepping In

Image
We may earn a commission from links on this page. Big smartphones have long been the norm. It seems many, if not most, of us prefer our smartphones to be akin to tiny tablets. Even Apple's smallest iPhone isn't that small, with a 6.1-inch display. (Compare that to the 5.4-inch iPhone mini it used to sell.) But just because a lot of us like it that way doesn't mean all of us do. Despite what companies like Apple would lead you to believe, there are plenty of people out there who want their smartphones to be smaller. For some, the iPhone mini was perfect, featuring a design that most could use comfortably with one hand. While the sales might not have been steady enough for Apple to continue producing the mini line, anecdotally, I know quite a few people who would happily keep using iPhones this small, if only Apple would make more of them. Perhaps you know people like this too; maybe you're one of them. While the rumor mill does not suggest that Apple plans to make a ...
Post a Comment
Read more