It's always a good idea to back up your data. You never know when a device can fail, leaving you in a bit of a bad spot. While most people will recommend something like a USB drive or portable SSD, a NAS could also be a valid solution. This is great if you're someone that has a lot of information they need to back up or access.

When people talk about the FPS games they grew up with, it doesn't take long for the topic to move across all of the classics. Halo, Call of Duty, maybe even Goldeneye on the N64. But one that I haven't seen people talk a lot about is the TimeSplitters series, which is a huge shame, because I adored those games as a kid.

I have been an avid Evernote user since my first year of college, but I've finally uninstalled the app for good. There are a lot of reasons. Evernote's declining functionality, rampant greed, and general unfriendliness towards its users are three of the biggest reasons. Still, the main reason is that I've found an Obsidian setup that replaced my old Evernote configuration. It doesn't just match Evernote in terms of features; it leaves it in the dust. At first, I tried to make my Obsidian setup match Evernote in terms of appearance, but I've since ditched what is an outdated layout in terms of a much faster, more intuitive way of navigating between notes.

Qualcomm still sees this as a flagship chipset, just not an “Elite” one. When Qualcomm announced its high-end Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset in November, it mentioned that a non-Elite version was on the way, designed to power a more affordable tier of flagship phones. Now, that chip has finally arrived, with some drops in performance but the same core feature set.Qualcomm compares the 8 Gen 5 to 2023’s 8 Gen 3, boasting a 36 percent improvement in CPU performance and 11 percent improvement in GPU performance compared to that chip, along with efficiency improvements. But since the 8 Gen 3 is two years old, and Qualcomm has changed CPU architecture in the meantime, the recent 8 Elite Gen 5 is a more useful comparison.The 8 Gen 5 has a similar Oryon CPU structure to the Elite, but at slower clock speeds — its six performance cores cap at 3.32GHz, with its two prime cores at 3.8GHz, compared to 3.62GHz and 4.6GHz respectively in the Elite. On paper, that also sets its performance below last year’s Snapdragon 8 Elite, though we’ll have to wait to see how actual smartphones compare in practice.There are a few other downgrades from the new Elite. The regular Gen 5’s X80 modem has slightly slower peak 5G speeds, though Bluetooth and Wi-Fi performance should be the same, and both satellite and ultra wideband (UWB) are supported. It also has slightly downgraded specs on its Adreno GPU and Hexagon AI NPU, though Qualcomm has gone into less detail on the exact comparisons there, and it can’t use the latest UFS 4.1 storage. But other specs are identical across the two chipsets, including charging capabilities, display support, and the vast majority of the camera hardware options.Qualcomm says that several manufacturers, including Motorola, OnePlus, and Vivo, have already agreed to use the chip in new phones, with the first devices due to appear “in the coming weeks.” That might mean we’ll see it in the OnePlus 15R, now confirmed to launch in the US on December 17th.

Campbell’s is insisting that its soups aren’t made with 3D-printed chicken, lab-grown chicken, or bioengineered meat. The food giant issued the explanation on its website after leaked audio allegedly captured Campbell’s vice president of information technology saying the company’s meat “came from a 3D printer.”“A recent video contained false comments about our ingredients,” Campbell’s writes. “The comments heard on the recording about our food are not only inaccurate, they are absurd. We do not use lab-grown chicken or any form of artificial or bioengineered meat in our soups.” It adds that the company only uses chicken from “reputable” suppliers in the US that meet USDA standards.The audio was released as part of a lawsuit filed against Campbell’s by a former employee, who claims to have recorded a conversation with IT VP Martin Bally. During the conversation, the person purported to be Bally makes racist remarks, while calling Campbell’s food “bioengineered” and for “poor people.”“Even in a can of soup, I look at it — and look at bioengineered meat,” the person in the recording says. “I don’t want to eat a fucking piece of chicken that came from a 3D printer, do you?”3D-printed chicken isn’t entirely something out of a sci-fi movie. KFC, which has had to deal with its own chicken-related conspiracies, said it was working with a Russian firm in 2020 to develop a way to “print” lab-grown chicken nuggets using chicken cells and plant material.Campbell’s has put Bally on leave while it investigates the alleged comments. “Keep in mind, the alleged comments heard on the audio were made by a person in IT, who has nothing to do with how we make our food,” Campbell’s says.

The problem with the smart home is that we become reliant on many of the features and functionality it can offer. That's not to say they're inherently bad, but if your power drops, it suddenly becomes useless due to the lack of a stable electrical current, which prevents all the moving parts from continuing to move. That's where an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) comes into play. Instead of everything halting immediately, this invaluable device can keep the lights on, so to speak.

One of the things I really love about Linux over Windows is how you can update all of your apps in one go. Checking your apps and operating system for updates can be as easy as clicking a button or typing a terminal command. It's a convenient way to make sure everything on your PC is topped up without booting up every app and checking for updates that way.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee released a package of 19 bills aimed at protecting kids on the internet, teeing Congress up for a chance at passing some of the most substantive internet regulations in recent history, alongside a fight over online speech rights.The subcommittee on commerce will consider the bills during a hearing on Tuesday, including the contentious Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). KOSA has been the centerpiece of advocacy from parent survivors whose kids died after suffering from a range of online harms, including cyberbullying, sextortion, and drugs purchased through the internet. But the new version of the bill omits the animating feature of the Senate version that passed overwhelmingly last year: the duty of care, which would have made tech platforms legally responsible for mitigating harms stemming from their services, like eating disorders and depression. Critics warned that could sweep up a host of legal speech, including resources that seek to mitigate the very harms KOSA aims to solve. The new version of KOSA omits the animating feature of the Senate version that passed overwhelminglyIn a new House discussion draft, the duty of care has been replaced by a requirement that social media platforms have “reasonable policies, practices, and procedures” to deal with four discrete kinds of harm: “Threats of physical violence,” “Sexual exploitation and abuse,” “Distribution, sale, or use of narcotic drugs, tobacco products, cannabis products, gambling, or alcohol,” and “Any financial harm caused by deceptive practices.” The extent of policies and procedures a platform has to have would need to be appropriate to the scale and complexity of the platform itself, and the technical feasibility of addressing the harms. The new version also expands the definition of who’s covered by the bill to include nonprofit platforms.The package includes several other significant bills. Among them is the App Store Accountability Act, the federal version of a bill that’s passed in several states requiring age verification at the app store level and transmitting age signals to developers. The Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) would raise the age of privacy protections from an earlier version of the law from under 13 to under 17, and ban targeted advertising to those covered by the bill. The Reducing Exploitative Social Media Exposure for Teens (RESET) Act, currently a discussion draft, would prohibit social media platforms from allowing any kids or teens under 16 to maintain accounts.It’s a significant step after last year, when House Republican leadership passed on the chance to advance KOSA. Though the Senate approved it 91-3, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) worried about the bill’s constitutionality and free speech implications. Opponents accused them of cozying up to the tech industry due to investments in their state. Now, it appears that House leadership may follow through on promises to reconsider kids online safety legislation — but it already looks far different than what was proposed last year, and there’s no promise it will cross the finish line.

We're only a few days away from the end of another month, and this is usually when Microsoft releases a list of everything it added to some of its popular software and services throughout the month. Excel is the first major one for which Microsoft has released a feature roundup for November.

Most people know by now that backing up information is critical. But there's still no definitive way to do it, with some people using USB sticks, others burning DVDs. There's also the option of using portable SSDs or cloud storage. As long as you get it done, there really isn't one right way to do it.

If you've built or tinkered with a PC in the last decade, you probably have experience enabling XMP or tweaking fan curves. The place you do this—what we call the BIOS—is actually a misnomer. What you're actually interacting with is UEFI. BIOS hasn't existed for years, and it's actually completely different to what we use today.

My first time booting up a match of City Trial in Kirby Air Riders, I was overwhelmed as I was hit with a flurry of attacks from other players, constantly had to deal with mid-match events, and didn't know which machines or stat boosts were the best to pick up. By the end of the match, I managed to build a speedy Chariot machine with a high Turn stat. That allowed me to dominate the final Button Rush stadium challenge and win that match.