Random number generation is difficult, and by definition, computers are deterministic. Anything "random" is derived from real values using an algorithm, and as such, the security of these numbers depends on seeding them with data an attacker can't predict. A computer needs data to base the creation of something "random" off of, and if you can predict the original data it uses, it's not random anymore. Modern operating systems include well-vetted entropy collectors and cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generators, otherwise known as CSPRNGs; for most use cases, that's enough.

Matter is a smart home connectivity standard that launched with the promise of unifying disparate devices and ecosystems. Backed by tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Google, and others, Matter was heralded as the solution to smart home fragmentation; a single solution that would "just work" locally and securely across brands. In theory, a smart bulb, lock, or sensor with the Matter logo could be controlled from any platform (such as Home Assistant, Apple Home, Google Home, Alexa, and others) without needing separate hubs or cloud services. It was essentially touted as the future of smart homes.

If you've been looking to go in a different direction, a Mini PC could be just the thing, providing plenty of power in a compact size. Kamrui produces some of the more popular models found on Amazon, with a range of different options. This particular model is going to provide tons of power, and also comes in at a great price right now, thanks to a sizable discount that drops it down to just $141.

If you’ve got access to a 3D printer and a bit of creativity, there’s no reason to spend money on small household parts you can design and print yourself. Everyday fixtures, such as hooks, brackets, or covers, are simple to model and require very little filament. Most of them can be done in under an hour of design time, and many prints finish in just a few hours. With a bit of measuring and a basic understanding of your slicer, you’ll be surprised how fast these custom pieces come together.

NotebookLM, which is Google's AI-powered research assistant, is one of the few AI tools that has earned a permanent spot in my daily routine. Though I do use the tool for my work-related tasks here and there, I'd be lying if I said my main use isn’t still studying. Given how often I use NotebookLM, and the fact that work makes up a significant chunk of my day, it only makes sense to find ways to fit it into my professional workflow too.

When was the last time you used Windows XP? For some of us, it's likely the last time we booted it in a virtual machine, while others may not have touched it ever since they upgraded to Vista. Either way, hearing that nostalgic login jingle is enough to send me back a few decades.

When it comes to the operating systems you can actually use on your computer, there are really only three main ones that are ever brought up. You have Windows 11, macOS, and Linux (or, more accurately, Linux-based operating systems). Most people wouldn't ever think there's anything beyond that, especially because so many operating systems are based on Linux, whether it's Ubuntu, NixOS, or even Android.

Perplexity has just launched its agentic answer to Google Chrome — it’s called Comet, and it knocked out a slate of tasks on my behalf, though I think I could’ve done some faster myself. The new AI-powered browser is currently only available to Perplexity Max subscribers or through an early access waitlist, and it’s supposed to simplify the way you browse the web by infusing AI into practically everything you do.For one, it replaces Google Search results with its Perplexity AI “answer engine,” which appears in your browser window when you type a query into the address bar. Unlike your typical search engine, Perplexity will first surface links to relevant websites and then generate information about what you’re looking for. Comet’s distilled search results come in handy when you want it to narrow down your results for you, but it’s a bit jarring not to see the massive selection of websites suggested by Google. Comet also comes with an AI assistant built in, similar to the Gemini integration that Google is testing in Chrome. Selecting the Assistant button in the top-right corner of the browser will open up a sidebar with a chat interface. From here, you can type in a query or use voice mode to chat about different topics, as well as ask specific questions about the webpage you’re on.Comet can generate a summary of an article, describe an image, summarize YouTube videos, or perform more research about a topic that catches your eye. It’s also able to scan all of your open tabs to provide summaries of those pages and compare products on them.At this point, these are all pretty standard features for an AI tool, but what makes Comet really stand out is its ability to complete tasks on your behalf. After linking my Google account to the browser, I found that it was frighteningly fast at generating — and sending — an email to myself containing a summary of this year’s hurricane season outlook. The browser also speedily complied with a request to close all the tabs I hadn’t opened in more than 15 minutes. It even wrote and published a post on my X account on my behalf about the upcoming Made by Google event.I asked it to unsubscribe from the promotional emails sent by Fubo and Fanatics.com as well. I watched as Comet’s AI assistant walked itself through the process. In the chat interface, Comet shows what it’s “seeing” as it locates recent emails sent by the companies, finds the unsubscribe button, and then actually selects it.I even had Comet go through my list of LinkedIn invites and accept requests from people with five or more mutual connections. The browser once again traced its own process of going through my invites, identifying which ones met my threshold for mutual connections, and then hitting Accept. But as I had Comet perform these tasks, I couldn’t help but think it’d be faster if I did them myself.It took Comet two minutes to unsubscribe from receiving emails from those two providers, but it only took me a little over 30 seconds to unsubscribe from the same ones (yes, I timed myself). Comet also ate up a chunk of time when accepting a couple of LinkedIn invitations, a task I could do in just a couple of clicks. I can see it serving as a great accessibility tool, as well as a way to complete tasks in the background while you’re doing something else.You can unlock even more agentic features when you start a prompt with “take control of my browser.” I didn’t realize this until I contacted Perplexity to ask when the browser would be capable of booking reservations or buying products. Without this phrase, Comet will stop short of completing these tasks and instead provide instructions on how you can do it manually. To start, I asked Comet to “take control of my browser” and summarize the comments on a Verge article. Instead of denying my request because it couldn’t read the collapsed comments section (like Gemini in Chrome did), Comet worked around this and opened the comments section itself. It summed up the sentiment surrounding my colleague Vee’s cursed piece about Grok’s AI anime waifu, calling users’ reaction to the chatbot overwhelmingly “negative and critical.” I took things a step further by asking Comet to take control of my browser, add aquarium sand and glue for an iPad repair to my cart on Amazon, and then check out. The process was surprisingly seamless, as I watched it acknowledge the total price, choose Prime’s one-day shipping speed, select my default payment option, and hit “order” without needing me to intervene. I only ran into some hiccups when having Comet book me a reservation for a restaurant. When I finally found a restaurant that accepts online reservations, I once again asked the browser to take control and make a reservation for me on a specific date. It completed the task, only it never asked for my email or phone number, and instead entered a generic placeholder for both. I was able to have Comet rebook with my actual email address, but it shows that the browser might not get everything right all the time.“Some of the more complicated agentic actions like shopping do have a higher failure rate than simpler tasks, but this is actually a limitation of current AI models,” Perplexity spokesperson Jesse Dwyer told The Verge. “So this will only get easier and better in Comet.”Still, Comet can do far more than Chrome’s Gemini integration, and it’s exactly the type of tool that Google has set its sights on creating. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas has made it clear that the startup wants to challenge Google’s dominance, and Comet may play a big role in bringing it up to speed.

I've had my PlayStation 5 since 2021, and boy, did it take a lot of saving petty cash. Now, the lack of a steady stream of exclusive titles has been one of my major gripes with the current console generation, but there's really nothing like kicking back into the recliner with the controller at the end of the week and putting on a game until my eyes droop.

Delta wants AI to set 20 percent of its ticket prices by the end of 2025. | Image: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images Delta Air Lines is leaning into dynamic ticket pricing that uses artificial intelligence to individually determine the highest fee you’d willingly pay for flights, according to comments Fortune spotted in the company’s latest earnings call. Following a limited test of the technology last year, Delta is planning to shift away from static ticket prices entirely after seeing “amazingly favorable” results.“We will have a price that’s available on that flight, on that time, to you, the individual,” Delta president Glen Hauenstein told investors in November, having started to test the technology on one percent of its ticket prices. Delta currently uses AI to influence three percent of its ticket prices, according to last week’s earnings call, and is aiming to increase that to 20 percent by the end of this year. “We’re in a heavy testing phase,” said Hauenstein. “We like what we see. We like it a lot, and we’re continuing to roll it out.”While personalized pricing isn’t unique to Delta, the airline has been particularly candid about embracing it. During that November call, Hauenstein said the AI ticketing system is “a full reengineering of how we price and how we will be pricing in the future,” and described the rollout as “a multiyear, multi-step process.” Hauenstein acknowledged that Delta was excited about the initial revenue results it saw in testing, but noted the shift to AI-determined pricing could “be very dangerous, if it’s not controlled and it’s not done correctly.”Delta’s personalized AI pricing tech is provided by travel firm Fetcherr, which also partners with Virgin Atlantic, Azul, WestJet, and VivaAerobus. In Delta’s case, the AI will act as a “super analyst” that operates 24/7 to determine custom ticket prices that should be offered to individual customers in real-time, per specific flights and times.Airlines have varied their ticket prices for customers on the same routes for many years, depending on a range of factors, including how far in advance the booking is made, what website or service it’s being booked with, and even the web browser the customer is using. Delta is no exception, but AI pricing looks set to supercharge the approach.Delta has taken heat for charging customers different prices for flights, having rolled back the decision to price tickets higher for solo-travelers compared to groups in May. It’s not entirely clear how invasive Delta’s AI ticketing will be when it analyzes customers to figure out prices, but Fortune notes that it has privacy advocates concerned.“They are trying to see into people’s heads to see how much they’re willing to pay,” Justin Kloczko of Consumer Watchdog told the publication. “They are basically hacking our brains.” Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego described it as “predatory pricing” that’s designed to “squeeze you for every penny.”

Prosser is accused of stealing trade secrets to leak details of iOS 26’s design before its announcement at WWDC. Apple has sued the well-known leaker Jon Prosser for the alleged theft of trade secrets related to iOS 26. Prosser has been accused of tasking another man, Michael Ramacciotti, with secretly accessing an Apple employee’s development iPhone and using that information to report on Apple’s planned changes in the then-unannounced iOS 26.According to the lawsuit, Apple claims that Prosser offered Ramacciotti “money or a future job opportunity” in exchange for access to a company phone belonging to his friend Ethan Lipnik, an Apple software engineer working on iOS. Ramacciotti allegedly learnt Lipnik’s iPhone passcode, used “location-tracking” to determine when he’d be away from home for an extended period, and then accessed the iPhone running a development version of the mobile OS. Apple says that Ramacciotti showed the software to Prosser over a video call, which Prosser recorded, shared with others, and used to create renders of the new designs.Apple says it found out the details of what happened in April from an anonymous email from someone who claimed to have seen Prosser’s recording of the call and recognized Lipnik’s apartment. The company also claims to have a voice note sent by Ramacciotti to Lipnik, apologizing for the incident and claiming that the subterfuge was Prosser’s idea, which Lipnik in turn provided to Apple. Lipnik was fired by Apple for failing to properly follow its policies around securing unreleased software.Prosser released several videos on his Front Page Tech and Genius Bar Podcast YouTube channels covering leaked features in the new version of iOS, which was then expected to be called iOS 19. In January 2025 he released “your very first look at iOS 19,” revealing a redesign to the camera app. In March came a look at the redesigned Messages app, and in April he published “the biggest iOS leak ever,” with a first look at Apple’s new Liquid Glass design language.Prosser has responded to the lawsuit on X, insisting that Apple’s account is “not how the situation played out on my end,” and claiming to have evidence to that effect. “I did not ‘plot’ to access anyone’s phone. I did not have any passwords. I was unaware of how the information was obtained.”In its legal filing, Apple asks for both damages and a court order preventing Prosser from disclosing Apple’s trade secrets again. The company adds that while iOS 26 has since been announced to the public, its secrets are still at risk because the development phone “contained other unannounced design elements.”

A little over halfway through 2025, I was searching for any well-received games I might have missed, especially one that I could play on my Nintendo Switch 2. I've already played most of the best-reviewed games, but there was one game that I hadn't seen discussed by many people, yet those who had had nothing but glowing praise for it. That game is The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, the first major release from Too Kyo Games, co-directed by two massive developers. Having now played a few dozen hours on my Switch 2, I can confirm that The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy is worthy of the hype.