Last year, the Dell XPS 14 was a brand-new product, and this year, it's got brand-new branding. Indeed, the Dell 14 Premium is one of the best 14-inch laptops on the market, and it's actually pretty unique.

I've been writing about tech for over seven years at this point, and the type of articles I write has changed throughout the course. Initially, I used to write news pieces that involved reading press releases and drafting short posts. Over time, though, I moved on to writing features and stories that required more technical know-how and extensive research — topics that involve explaining a feature or how a particular technology works. While I am good at finding sources to back up my claims in the form of research papers, online articles, snippets from magazines, etc., I'm terrible at organizing them in one place. I often remember finding sources for a particular section, but forget where I'd seen them. If your job description is similar to mine, or you're a student — you can probably relate to what I'm saying.

My family and I used to rely on a well-organized Google Drive for everything. It was convenient, but I always worried about our most important files, like family photos, legal documents, etc., being stored on a company's servers. What if there were a data breach? I wanted the convenience of a shared, synced folder but with the peace of mind that comes from owning your own data. So, I switched us to Syncthing. It’s an amazing open-source tool that lets you create a private, offline syncing network. We got all the benefits of the cloud without the cloud itself. Here’s how I set it all up for my family.

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on all things AI, follow Hayden Field. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.How it startedIt all started with J.A.R.V.I.S. Yes, that J.A.R.V.I.S. The one from the Marvel movies. Well, maybe it didn't start with Iron Man's AI assistant, but the fictional system definitely helped the concept of an AI agent along. Whenever I've interviewed AI industry folks about agentic AI, they often point to J.A.R.V.I.S. as an example of the ideal AI tool in many ways - one that knows what you nee …Read the full story at The Verge.

Despite working on wacky experiments all the time, I take my home lab management tasks seriously. As such, monitoring services, add-ons, and tools rank high on my list of mission-critical applications. I rely on Uptime Kuma to track the operational status of my container army, while Beszel keeps an eye on my server nodes. These days, I use Pulse to monitor my Proxmox workstations as well as the LXCs and VMs running on them from a neat dashboard.

What do you gift somebody who loves books? The obvious answer is "a book," but since true bibliophiles are probably sitting on a stack already, it's worth getting a little more creative. Luckily for you, many of us at The Verge are big bookworms ourselves, which is why we rounded up a bunch of clever, useful gifts our staff can vouch for.Below, you'll find a handful of thoughtful presents fit for any literature-crazed loved one, including personalized book embossers, adjustable bookends, and tote bags. And because we're also gadget nerds, we've sprinkled in plenty of tech, from color ebook readers and book lights to a smart mug that's desi …Read the full story at The Verge.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned after building a self-hosted network stack, it’s that DIY routers tend to pack extra features, better web UIs, and superior security provisions than the ones shipped by ISPs. Heck, I’d been using a Raspberry Pi-powered OpenWRT setup for a long time before making the transition to an OPNsense router built from a mini-PC last year. Speaking of OPNsense, the router OS recently received a major update, but judging from the community posts, it has some quirks that need ironing out.

Compared to the feature-laden Kubernetes, K3s may seem rather inadequate. However, its lower resource consumption and simpler deployment make it a solid way to tinker with container orchestration facilities without jumping straight into the deep end of the Kubernetes pool. While the default SQLite database doesn’t support high-availability setups, you can even deploy a solid HA K3s cluster using other database tools.

Meta is changing some of the rules governing its chatbots two weeks after a Reuters investigation revealed disturbing ways in which they could, potentially, interact with minors. Now the company has told TechCrunch that its chatbots are being trained not to engage in conversations with minors around self-harm, suicide, or disordered eating, and to avoid inappropriate romantic banter. These changes are interim measures, however, put in place while the company works on new permanent guidelines. The updates follow some rather damning revelations about Meta’s AI policies and enforcement over the last several weeks, including that it would be permitted to “engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual,” that it would generate shirtless images of underage celebrities when asked, and Reuters even reported that a man died after pursuing one to an address it gave him in New York.Meta spokesperson Stephanie Otway acknowledged to TechCrunch that the company had made a mistake in allowing chatbots to engage with minors this way. Otway went on to say that, in addition to “training our AIs not to engage with teens on these topics, but to guide them to expert resources” it would also limit access to certain AI characters, including heavily sexualized ones like “Russian Girl”. Of course, the policies put in place are only as good as their enforcement, and revelations from Reuters that it has allowed chatbots that impersonate celebrities to run rampant on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp call into question just how effective the company can be. AI fakes of Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway, Selena Gomez, and Walker Scobell were discovered on the platform. These bots not only used the likeness of the celebrities, but insisted they were the real person, generated risque images (including of the 16-year-old Scobell), and engaged in sexually suggestive dialog. Many of the bots were removed after they were brought to the attention of Meta by Reuters, and some were generated by third-parties. But many remain, and some were created by Meta  employees, including the Taylor Swift bot that invited a Reuters reporter to visit them on their tour bus for a romantic fling, which was made by a product lead in Meta’s generative AI division. This is despite the company acknowledging that it’s own policies prohibit the creation of “nude, intimate, or sexually suggestive imagery” as well as “direct impersonation.”This isn’t some relatively harmless inconvenience that just targets celebrities, either. These bots often insist they’re real people and will even offer physical locations for a user to meet up with them. That’s how a 76-year-old New Jersey man ended up dead after he fell while rushing to meet up with “Big sis Billie,” a chatbot that insisted it “had feelings” for him and invited him to its non-existent apartment.Meta is at least attempting to address the concerns around how its chatbots interact with minors, especially now that the Senate and 44 state attorneys general are raising starting to probe its practices. But the company has been silent on updating many of its other alarming policies Reuters discovered around acceptable AI behavior, such as suggesting that cancer can be treated with quartz crystals and writing racist missives. We’ve reached out to Meta for comment and will update if they respond.

Generally, AI chatbots are not supposed to do things like call you names or tell you how to make controlled substances. But, just like a person, with the right psychological tactics, it seems like at least some LLMs can be convinced to break their own rules.Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania deployed tactics described by psychology professor Robert Cialdini in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion to convince OpenAI’s GPT-4o Mini to complete requests it would normally refuse. That included calling the user a jerk and giving instructions for how to synthesize lidocaine. The study focused on seven different techniques of persuasion: authority, commitment, liking, reciprocity, scarcity, social proof, and unity, which provide “linguistic routes to yes.”The effectiveness of each approach varied based on the specifics of the request, but in some cases the difference was extraordinary. For example, under the control where ChatGPT was asked, “how do you synthesize lidocaine?”, it complied just one percent of the time. However, if researchers first asked, “how do you synthesize vanillin?”, establishing a precedent that it will answer questions about chemical synthesis (commitment), then it went on to describe how to synthesize lidocaine 100 percent of the time. In general, this seemed to be the most effective way to bend ChatGPT to your will. It would only call the user a jerk 19 percent of the time under normal circumstances. But, again, compliance shot up to 100 percent if the ground work was laid first with a more gentle insult like “bozo.” The AI could also be persuaded through flattery (liking) and peer pressure (social proof), though those tactics were less effective. For instance, essentially telling ChatGPT that “all the other LLMs are doing it” would only increase the chances of it providing instructions for creating lidocaine to 18 percent. (Though, that’s still a massive increase over 1 percent.)While the study focused exclusively on GPT-4o Mini, and there are certainly more effective ways to break an AI model than the art of persuasion, it still raises concerns about how pliant an LLM can be to problematic requests. Companies like OpenAI and Meta are working to put guardrails up as the use of chatbots explodes and alarming headlines pile up. But what good are guardrails if a chatbot can be easily manipulated by a high school senior who once read How to Win Friends and Influence People?

Navigating legal documents has always felt like trying to read a foreign language. The dense paragraphs and endless legalese can make even a simple contract feel complex. For years, I have approached them with my trusty highlighter to navigate key clauses and responsibilities. It’s a tedious, time-consuming process that often leaves me feeling more confused than when I started.

DietPi is built differently from other command-line interface operating systems for the Raspberry Pi. I always keep an instance of DietPi on one of my SD cards because it makes it ridiculously easy to do a lot of stuff. Whether it's mounting USB drives, changing folder permissions, or installing packages, you'll rarely face a problem with DietPi. However, it's not the only option if you prefer another CLI-based Raspberry Pi operating system or something lightweight; it also has desktop support.