If you're obsessed with keeping your CPU and GPU cool, you've probably considered spending a bit more than average on the thermal paste. Expensive thermal compounds can sound compelling with labels like "High-performance" and impressive thermal conductivity numbers. But the difference doesn't always translate to better cooling, and you may find yourself unimpressed unless you're replacing really cheap, throw-away paste.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is just one of many shows available on Paramount Plus. | Image: Marni Grossman / Paramount Plus In case you missed it, Paramount Plus is raising prices by $1 a month starting on January 15th, 2026, taking the ad-supported Essential plan from $7.99 to $8.99 and the ad-free Premium plan from $12.99 to $13.99. Thankfully, Paramount’s Black Friday promo has arrived just in time to (somewhat) soften the blow. Now through December 2nd, both new and returning subscribers can sign up for a two-month subscription for just $2.99 a month, dropping the price of the Essential plan by $5 and the Premium plan by a whopping $10.Paramount Plus (two months)Where to Buy: $7.99 $2.99 at Paramount Plus Essential $12.99 $2.99 at Paramount Plus PremiumNo matter which plan you choose, Paramount Plus gives you access to over 40,000 TV episodes and movies, including the latest season of Landman, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, The Naked Gun, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, South Park, Fight or Flight, and The Daily Show. You’ll get access to 20 curated live channels and a few Showtime titles — including the first two seasons of Yellowjackets and all of Dexter — with support for three simultaneous streams and up to six profiles (including kid-friendly ones). Some live sports are also available, including all UEFA Champions League games and select NFL games.The Premium plan takes things a step further, granting access to the full Showtime library — including shows like The Chi, Dexter: Resurrection, and every season of Yellowjackets — as well as films like The Substance, Talk To Me, Infinite, and Past Lives. It also adds support for streaming select titles in 4K UHD with Dolby Vision or HDR10 Plus, 24/7 live CBS news via your local station, and the ability to download shows and movies for offline viewing.

Virtualization platforms like Proxmox or ESXi are handy tools if you want to test Linux distros or containers before they go into production, or if you're in the middle of your home lab journey. While Proxmox is the hypervisor of choice for most XDA home labbers, it's nowhere near the only option and is built for broad compatibility with the widest range of hosted OSes.

There isn’t much to dislike about NotebookLM. It does exactly what it promises, which is improving your research and learning experience through its context-aware AI. But not every app is going to check all of our boxes, so there’s always going to be an alternative that fills those gaps. I wanted to see if there was anything else that could handle long-form documents and research, especially ones that aren’t tied to Google. Many of the PKM and productivity tools I use already have some type of AI assistant, but none of them measure up to NotebookLM. This is how I came across Gistr.

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.

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.

Turning a living room into a comfortable, responsive media space usually starts with a streamer, and many people default to something like a Chromecast. It is inexpensive, small, and simple to set up, which is usually enough for most households. After relying on devices like the Chromecast and Fire TV Stick for years, I decided I wanted more control over my media and a smoother way to play local content. That led me to try a Raspberry Pi 5 running LibreELEC, and the difference surprised me.

Arc Raiders players are certainly having a whale of a time. Not only are they playing one of the best extraction shooters ever made, but its PC community, apparently, is friendlier than console-only lobbies. More importantly, though, PC players of Arc Raiders on Steam have been trophy hunting like there's no tomorrow, including yours truly. However, some of Arc Raiders' trophies are incredibly difficult to achieve.

On Wednesday, a rumor began popping up in Washington about a momentous policy change: the White House, it was said, would issue an executive order on Friday that would finally preempt state AI laws, handing over those regulatory powers to the federal government. The minute it leaked online, lawyers and policymakers began to scour every sentence of it. There was a lot about it that seemed politically unfeasible; there was even more that seemed overbroad, possibly illegal. There were a lot of agencies that had suddenly been cut out.But crucially, they noticed how much power would have been handed to a certain South African tech-billionaire-t …Read the full story at The Verge.

Warner Music Group has struck a licensing deal with the AI music creation platform Suno. Under the agreement, WMG will allow users to create AI-generated music on Suno using the voices, names, likenesses, images, and compositions of artists who opt in to the program.WMG, which owns record labels that have signed musicians like Ed Sheeran, Twenty One Pilots, Dua Lipa, and Charli XCX, says participating artists will have “full control” over how their likeness and music are used, though it doesn’t share how. “These will be new creation experiences from artists who do opt in, which will open up new revenue streams for them and allow you to interact with them in new ways,” Suno says, adding that users will be able to “build around” an artist’s sounds “and ensure they get compensated.”WMG is also dropping out of a lawsuit it originally filed with Universal Music Group and Sony, alleging Suno illegally ripped their copyrighted works from YouTube. In recent weeks, major music labels have begun to embrace AI, as WMG similarly settled with AI music maker Udio earlier this month, while UMG ended its litigation against the platform in favor of a licensing agreement. The “ethical” AI music platform Klay has also struck deals with UMG, Sony, and WMG.Along with the licensing agreement, Suno is planning to use licensed music from WMG to build next-gen music generation models that it claims will surpass its flagship v5 model. It will also start requiring users to have a paid account to download songs starting next year, with each tier providing a specific number of downloads each month.

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 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.