hightechz.net

08 Aug

ChatGPT is bringing back 4o as an option because people missed it

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OpenAI is bringing back GPT-4o in ChatGPT just one day after replacing it with GPT-5. In a post on X, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed that the company will let paid users switch to GPT-4o after ChatGPT users mourned its replacement. “We will let Plus users choose to continue to use 4o,” Altman says. “We will watch usage as we think about how long to offer legacy models for.” For months, ChatGPT fans have been waiting for the launch of GPT-5, which OpenAI says comes with major improvements to writing and coding capabilities over its predecessors. But shortly after the…

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08 Aug

A decade later, Windows is still bringing Control Panel features to the Settings app

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I kid you not, we wrote these words in 2014: Microsoft has tried to dumb down its Control Panel with a simple UI over the years, rather than a list of options, but there’s still a number of settings that don’t exist in the new PC Settings app. “Why do I have to go the PC settings to forget a network and Control panel to change IP settings? Can’t this all be done from a single place?” It’s a fair criticism, and one that Microsoft should look to address with Windows 10. But the Control Panel still can’t die. The…

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08 Aug

How Wikipedia is fighting AI slop content

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With the rise of AI writing tools, Wikipedia editors have had to deal with an onslaught of AI-generated content filled with false information and phony citations. Already, the community of Wikipedia volunteers has mobilized to fight back against AI slop, something Wikimedia Foundation product director Marshall Miller likens to a sort of "immune system" response. "They are vigilant to make sure that the content stays neutral and reliable," Miller says. "As the internet changes, as things like AI appear, that's the immune system adapting to some kind of new challenge and figuring out how to process it." One way Wikipedians…

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07 Aug

OpenAI gets caught vibe graphing

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Something’s off with that chart on the left. During its big GPT-5 livestream on Thursday, OpenAI showed off a few charts that made the model seem quite impressive — but if you look closely, some graphs were a little bit off. In one, ironically showing how well GPT-5 does in “deception evals across models,” the scale is all over the place. For “coding deception,” for example, the chart shown onstage says GPT-5 with thinking apparently gets a 50.0 percent deception rate, but that’s compared to OpenAI’s smaller 47.4 percent o3 score which somehow has a larger bar. OpenAI appears to…

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07 Aug

The Browser Company’s AI browser now has a $20 subscription

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The Browser Company — the makers of the Arc browser — just launched a $20 per month subscription to its new AI-powered web browser, Dia, as reported earlier by TechCrunch. The new Dia Pro subscription comes with unlimited access to the browser’s chat feature, which lets you ask questions about the content in your tabs. People who use Dia for free will still have access to the same features the browser launched with, including the ability to interact with the browser’s AI chatbot and create custom skills. But free users might run into some limits if they frequently use Dia’s…

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07 Aug

The latest iPad Air is cheaper than ever 

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You can save $150 on various iPad Air configurations. Laptops are great, but sometimes it’s simply just more convenient to use a tablet like the iPad Air. The Air’s easier to carry, after all, and still powerful enough to handle everything from streaming to taking notes and reading. And right now, the latest version of the Air is down to a new low price. The M3-powered 11-inch iPad Air with 128GB tablet is available for $449 ($150 off) at  Amazon, Best Buy, Target, and Walmart. The 13-inch 128GB model is on sale as well, starting at $649 ($150 off) at…

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07 Aug

The 6 biggest changes coming to ChatGPT

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GPT-5 has finally arrived. Along with the announcement of the highly anticipated AI model, OpenAI also previewed several updates coming to ChatGPT, ranging from visual changes to improvements to the chatbot’s performance. Here’s a rundown of all of the changes you can expect to see in ChatGPT. Say goodbye to the model picker With the rollout of GPT-5, OpenAI is getting rid of the model picker and retiring many of its older models, including GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, and GPT-4.5. ChatGPT now runs on GPT-5 by default, and has a “single auto-switching system” that combines its previous models into a “faster, smarter…

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07 Aug

Friendslop is coming for the Switch 2

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During today's Nintendo Indie World showcase, I had two epiphanies. The first was the realization that friendslop games are about to hit the Switch 2 like a falling piano in a Road Runner cartoon. The second was that I love that for me, because that means I can finally play them. My friends love "friendslop," the initially derisive but now descriptive nickname given to indie co-op games with a loose gameplay structure that permits the kind of chaos that can make games go viral on social media. And from what I've seen, I would love it, too. Friendslop is known…

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06 Aug

Sonos confirms tariffs will increase its prices this year

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Tom Conrad took over as CEO of Sonos in January as it continues to recover from last year’s disastrous mobile app update, and now the company has issued its first quarterly earnings report after he dropped the interim tag from his title. Beyond the numbers, with $344.8 million in revenue and a net loss of $3.4 million, Conrad acknowledged the impact that President Trump’s tariffs will have on its business, saying that “it has become clear that we’ll need to raise prices on certain products later this year,” as reported earlier by Bloomberg. Conrad didn’t go into detail on the…

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06 Aug

The best budget robot vacuums

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Today’s robot vacuums are becoming a bit like cars: with all the features, upgrades, and fancy trimmings available these days, it’s easy to forget that they can just be simple machines that get us from point A to point B. Yes, some bots blow hot air on their bums (mop pads), deftly navigate dog poop, and have arms to pick up your socks, but there are plenty of basic budget robot vacuums that just do a decent job of cleaning your floor autonomously — as long as you tidy up first. Fancier models have obstacle recognition, and some even use…

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