This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on AI mischief, follow Robert Hart. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.How it startedHacking the first generation of AI chatbots was a laughably simple affair. You didn't need any technical know-how, backdoor access, or even a basic understanding of what a large language model was. You didn't need to code. To get an AI system that had cost billions to build to abandon its safety instructions, sometimes all you had to do was ask.These attacks, known as jailbreaks, had the quality …Read the full story at The Verge.

Windows OS cleaners earned a bad name for themselves when they tried acting like a one-stop shop. The tools tried to remove unused registry entries directly, included deceptive marketing tactics that forced you to install other software for monetary gains, and wandered far away from their core task. CCleaner is a fantastic example of a tool that was very popular but slowly adopted all the above wrong traits, combined with security mishaps, that make it an untrustworthy app today.

I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to retro gaming. Sure, emulators are more easily accessible (and I don't have to worry about hardware giving out on me), but nothing matches the experience of sliding up the power switch on a Super Nintendo and watching it bloom to life on a good CRT. Here's the thing, though: the CRT is typically the weak point of a retro setup. While those things are a dime a dozen, they are absolutely not all created equally.

It's safe to say that I didn't know better when I bought my first NAS. While it was a few years ago, like most people, I ended up buying dedicated NAS drives because it felt like the obvious thing to do. I mean, it does say NAS on the hard drive, so I suppose they were better for the task at hand. These drives are designed for always-on operation, multi-drive setups, and are supposed to offer long-term reliability. And all of that seems like the safest route when you're trusting a box full of drives with all your photos, media library backups, and more.

When you’re building a reliable Network-Attached Storage server, you’ll typically use the SATA slots, drive bays, and M.2 ports to pair it with hard drives and SSDs. However, modern NAS units tend to pack a bunch of USB ports alongside the display and Ethernet interfaces – and I’m not talking about simple USB 2.0 connections designed to hook keyboards and mice for troubleshooting weird errors, either. I’ve got nearly a dozen NAS units in my arsenal, and each of them possesses a handful of USB 3.0 connections, with some including USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 sockets alongside USB Type-C 40Gbps.

If you've been on the fence about picking up an OLED monitor, maybe this is the one that'll change your mind. The Asus ROG Strix XG27AQWMG is a 27-inch, 1440p Tandem W-OLED monitor with a 280 Hz refresh rate and variable refresh rate (VRR). And it's strictly stunning.

Android Auto apps are few and far between, but over the years, Google seems to have successfully persuaded a sizable section of developers to integrate Android Auto (AA) support. This includes major-league apps like WhatsApp and Spotify, plus all those bits from the Google suite that make driving a breeze, such as Maps, Waze, Google News, and more recently, Gemini.

Whenever your Jellyfin or Plex stream buffers, you blame the network. To fix that, run an Ethernet cable from your home server to the router (or a network switch, if you have one). Wiring your media server with an Ethernet cable is the right call. Most people justify it for the wrong reasons.

I used Obsidian for months without running a cleanup. After a while, I ended up with folders, files, and plugins I hardly ever used. Most of what I added felt like it was only there for decoration. Eventually, looking at my setup became painful with all that mess, and that's when I snapped. I had put it off long enough and decided to save what was important and wipe whatever was left. When I was done, it looked so clean and organized, and that’s when I regretted not doing it sooner.

Plex quickly became a powerhouse with the rise of the network-attached storage (NAS) and self-hosting communities. As more looked to cancel streaming service subscriptions and host their own purchased media, Plex was positioned to take the market by storm, providing a reliable and intuitive way to catalog, store, and stream all content, be it TV shows, movies, or music.

Browse home lab forums for a few minutes, and you’re bound to come across dozens of tips to boost your Network-Attached Storage server’s capabilities. Many of these, like enabling SMB multichannel and using an SSD as the boot drive, actually make a lot of sense, and can improve your storage server’s performance. But you’re just as likely to encounter advice on enabling random services – some of which can cause more harm than good.

A lot of people treat cloud storage and local storage as interchangeable. There are two different ways to hold files, one of which comes with a monthly bill and the other requires effort to set up and maintain. That way of thinking quickly crumbles the first time you use a NAS as your primary working environment. Nobody realizes how slow cloud storage is until they have a modern NAS to compare it to. Once you experience them both side by side in your daily workflow, these two storage methods feel anything but similar.