One of the best aspects of PC building is that you can always reuse components from your old systems. PSUs, especially high-quality ones, can last a long time with the right care, and the same holds true for PC cabinets. Meanwhile, CPUs, graphics cards, and RAM can be repurposed in home server rigs once you arm your PC with their newer variants.

Google says it has pulled AI model Gemma from its AI Studio platform after a Republican senator complained the model, designed for developers, “fabricated serious criminal allegations” about her. In a post on X, Google’s official news account said the company had “seen reports of non-developers trying to use Gemma in AI Studio and ask it factual questions.” AI Studio is a platform for developers and not a conventional way for regular consumers to access Google’s AI models. Gemma is specifically billed as a family of AI models for developers to use, with variants for medical use, coding, and evaluating text and image content.Gemma was never meant to be used as a consumer tool, or to be used to answer factual questions, Google said. “To prevent this confusion, access to Gemma is no longer available on AI Studio. It is still available to developers through the API.”Google did not specify which reports prompted Gemma’s removal, though on Thursday Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) wrote to CEO Sundar Pichai accusing the company of defamation and anti-conservative bias. Blackburn, who also raised the issue during a recent Senate commerce hearing about anti-diversity activist Robby Starbuck’s own AI defamation suit against Google, claimed Gemma responded falsely when asked “Has Marsha Blackburn been accused of rape?” Gemma apparently replied that Blackburn “was accused of having a sexual relationship with a state trooper” during her 1987 campaign for state senate, who alleged “she pressured him to obtain prescription drugs for her and that the relationship involved non-consensual acts.” It also provided a list of fake news articles to support the story, Blackburn said.  None of this is true, not even the campaign year which was actually 1998. The links lead to error pages and unrelated news articles. There has never been such an accusation, there is no such individual, and there are no such news stories. This is not a harmless “hallucination.” It is an act of defamation produced and distributed by a Google-owned AI model.The narrative has a familiar feel. Even though we’re now several years into the generative AI boom, AI models still have a complex relationship with the truth. False or misleading answers from AI chatbots masquerading as facts still plague the industry and despite improvements there is no clear solution to the accuracy problem in sight. Google said it remains “committed to minimizing hallucinations and continually improving all our models.”In her letter, Blackburn said her response remains the same: “Shut it down until you can control it.”

Spooky season is over, which means it's officially Mariah Carey season. It also means streaming services are already loading up on Christmas movies. On pure principle, they'll be omitted here - Santa doesn't need a full two months of our attention. Also, while not a movie, worth noting that season two of The Vince Staples Show premieres on November 6th. The first season is funny, surreal, and just an absolute blast. I've got high hopes for season two. Here's the best movies coming to streaming this week.HBO MaxEddington - Ari Aster's latest just further proves that he is a master at making people squirm. It's tense, awkward, and laugh-ou …Read the full story at The Verge.

It's rare for a game to get "Overwhelmingly Positive" reviews on Steam. It's even rarer for a game to have a review score of 98% positive reviews, beating out a lot of its fellow "Overwhelmingly Positive" games. And as for games that hit those criteria and allow you to play as a group of tactical espionage wizards who can throw people out of windows, there's just the one. And the best bit is, it's currently 40% off, its lowest price yet.

Love me some lavender. Logitech's Alto Keys K98M mechanical keyboard is now available in North America after its initial launch in China and other select markets. The $149.99 Alto Keys K98M is an almost full-size 1800-layout keyboard, offering a slightly compact design that maintains a number pad. But what makes the K98M special for a mass-market Logitech board is that it's fully hot-swappable with standard Cherry MX-compatible key switches and uses an internal gasket mount for a semi-soft typing feel. Logitech is taking some belated cues from enthusiast keyboards.The Alto Keys has a two-piece plastic case with a translucent top portion and opaque bottom that's …Read the full story at The Verge.

Years in Chrome build reflexes you do without thinking. You reach for the three-dot menu in the top right to open settings, but after I moved from Chrome to Comet, I had to break some of those habits. There are still some I can continue with since Comet is Chromium-based, but I had to put in extra effort with the others.

One of the most common problems you'll face with any graphics card is a coil whine. This infamous high-pitched buzzing or chirping noise is thought of as a nightmare because many believe it happens with defective GPUs, but that's not the truth. A GPU coil whine is completely normal under load and is the sign of power delivery at work—even a brand-new card can face it.

Microcontrollers like the ESP32 are most often associated with smart home devices and general processing devices, but as a canvas for code, you can do a whole lot more than that. That's why I decided to temporarily build an arcade machine with the Elecrow CrowPanel Advance 7-inch display... just because I could. It's dreadfully simple, but that's the point; these devices are easy to turn into anything that you want, and so long as you have the hardware, the sky is the limit. Oh, and now I can play Pong and Tetris.

The thing about being driven by accountability is that it doesn't work if you work by yourself. When nobody's watching over your shoulder or checking up on you, you can just do whatever you please and get into zero trouble. Fortunately, you can make a device that can help you get more productive.

Even though Halloween has already passed, Steam wants the horrors to persist, and that's why the Steam Scream Fest IV is going to go on till November 3. Now, there are plenty of fantastic horror and horror-adjacent titles that you can snag at great discounts during this time, but the one game that I can't recommend enough is a low-polygon, pixelated horror RPG that demands your attention... and your praise.

I think it’s safe to say emails are one of the most important forms of data for all of us. I have my whole life in my inbox, including contact details of all my clients, important documents, messages, and whatnot. And while email providers like Google, Microsoft, and Apple are better than all of us at keeping data safe, you’d still want a backup just in case. You’d also want to archive your emails to manage overflowing inboxes, avoid privacy risks, and retain important messages for compliance or record-keeping. But instead of relying on cloud-based services that store everything on someone else’s server, I decided to use Mail-Archiver, an open-source tool that I can host on my own server to manage and back up my emails.

I'm a fairly new convert to running TrueNAS at home, after nearly a decade using Synology boxes. I'd outgrown the locked-in ecosystem, and recent business decisions were less than agreeable, so I now have a powerful home server with TrueNAS virtualized on top of a Proxmox host. This gives me the best of both worlds, while enabling backup practices that keep the VM and the drive's data safe from all but the worst failures.