Intel’s ambitious plan to tie together your laptop and phone into a single, unified platform — Intel Unison — is dead, unless you own a particular brand of PC. Intel’s Unison page notes that the program “will soon be discontinued,” and a related Intel Knowledge Base article also claims that the app has reached its end of life. Dell puts it even more plainly: “The Intel Unison application is being discontinued and will no longer function correctly or be available for download after June 30, 2025.” Intel had said earlier this year that it planned to discontinue the Unison app, probably because the company is working to cut costs in the midst of a downturn that has produced company layoffs and a reported recalibration in its manufacturing processes that will see its next-gen 18A process assigned to internal use only. For a time, device makers were obsessed with making mobile devices interact with laptops. Dell’s Mobile Connect — which still appears to be alive, for now — was one option. Intel Unison was another, and one that wasn’t confined to any specific device maker. Intel talked boldly about Unison becoming not just an app, but a platform for cross-device connectivity. Microsoft, however, had other plans, with the Your Phone app for Windows, which was later renamed Phone Link. Unison offered closer connectivity between Windows and Apple iPhones than Phone Link originally did, but Phone Link covers all Windows PCs, and not just Intel-powered ones. Phone Link not only can oversee iPhone messages and calls, but it’s also being integrated into the Windows Start menu itself. However, there is one PC vendor which will continue using Unison: Lenovo. “Lenovo Aura PCs will retain service,” Intel said, apparently throughout the remainder of the year. These Aura Edition PCs will still use Unison: the Lenovo Slim 7 14ILL10, ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 Gen 10, ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13, ThinkPad X9-14 Gen 1, ThinkPad X9-15 Gen 1, Yoga 9 2-in-1 14ILL10, Yoga Pro 7 14IAH10, Yoga Pro 9 16IAH10, Yoga Slim 7 14ILL10, and the Yoga Slim 7 15ILL9. Intel once made Unison a key feature of its Evo program for premium laptops. While Intel’s Evo appears to still be alive and well, one of its selling points is officially going away. Read...

Could New Zealand end up following Australia down a horrible path of control over who can and can`t access information using search engines on the internet? Read...

Jimmy James Kouratoras` Hei Tiki - For the Love of Our Ancestors painting is currently being shown in New York`s Theatre District and has featured on a 10-metre high digital billboard. Read...

Creditsafe won the 2025 Nucleus Research ROI Award after achieving a 234% ROI and faster cash cycles using BlackLine’s financial platform. Read...

Tasman lost much of its mobile and internet coverage during Thursday`s extreme weather. Read...

1440p and ultrawide monitors have their place in PC gaming (and their place is on my desk). But if you want to go big and beautiful to show off your four-figure gaming desktop’s raw pixel-pushing power, you want 4K resolution. And today you can get it in OLED monitor form for a great price. Amazon has an MSI 32-inch 4K OLED for just $749.99. The MSI MAG 321CUP (catchy!) was already something of a budget design, at least in the very specific subcategory of 4K OLED monitors, at $900. With a $150 discount it’s cheaper than any 4K OLED gaming monitor I’ve seen, at least in new condition. It has a pretty standard array of specs for OLEDs at this point, including 165Hz of refresh and .03ms response time. That’s not the fastest in the world even for OLEDs, but at 3840×2160 resolution on its curved panel, it’ll push your PC to the limit on the newest games at the highest settings, no matter what’s under the hood. With DisplayPort and double HDMI inputs, this monitor is a great pick if you’re the kind of PC gamer who also has an Xbox or PlayStation sitting around. And with a USB-C port that can handle video and 98 watts of power delivery, it’s also a good companion to a gaming laptop. It really can do it all, including give you a little peace of mind thanks to a 3-year burn-in warranty on that dispaly panel. Amazon is showing this as a recent low price for this particular model, but there’s no time limit on the sale. I get the feeling that this one, or something substantially similar, will pop up during Amazon Prime Day…but I doubt you’ll find a much better price on a name brand. Be sure to check out our coverage of monitor deals, and PCWorld’s best picks for gaming monitors and more. View Deal Read...

As we’ve previously covered, Microsoft is working on another redesign of the Start Menu in Windows 11, and one of the new features is that apps will be divided into different categories automatically. According to Windows Latest, Microsoft has created a 15 megabyte JSON file with information about which apps should end up in which category. That’s right—pretty much every app on the Microsoft Store has been assigned a number, with 0 indicating Productivity apps, 1 indicating Social apps, 2 indicating Creative apps, and so on. As soon as you have at least three apps that belong to the same category, they will automatically be grouped together in the new Start Menu. The ranking of the apps will depend on how often you use them, so the apps in a category won’t be sorted in an alphabetical order. At the moment, it doesn’t look like Microsoft is going to give us the option to rename categories or add our own, so we’ll just have to accept the company’s categorization method… for better or worse. Read...

Crytocurrency hasn’t just ruined the hunt for an affordable graphics card, or the conversation at that little bar you used to like. Now it’s come for everyone’s favorite alt browser, too. Dozens of fake cryptocurrency wallet extensions—indistinguishable from their nominally legitimate counterparts—are flooding Firefox’s add-on repository. It’s a problem. Koi Security researchers report that a coordinated campaign has been going on since April of this year, posting fake versions of popular crypto wallets like Coinbase, Ethereum, and MetaMask, making copies of the open-source wallet programs and inserting malicious code. The fake versions of the wallets will steal user data—primarily the access to real cryptocurrency—allowing the allegedly Russian-speaking hackers to drain the legitimate crypto accounts. Copied names and logos, fake reviews, and the usual spammy nonsense are being used to impersonate the real versions of the cryptocurrency wallets. Though Mozilla has automated systems in place to prevent malicious extensions from getting into the repository, these systems seem to be overwhelmed, with at least 40 fakes making it through (most subsequently removed) as of this week. BleepingComputer was given an official comment on the situation, but it seems fairly boilerplate. Even well after the crypto and NFT boom has died down, there are still hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of value tied up in Bitcoin and its many alternatives. If you need access to these systems, double- and triple-check your sources for software and tools, going directly to the necessary URLs if possible. Once “anonymous” cryptocurrency gets stolen, especially across international borders, it’s all but impossible to recover. Read...

Last week, I secured my lowest price for Spectrum internet in years. All it took was a call to Spectrum’s retention department, which is where you end up after telling the automated system you want to cancel your service. After a mildly tedious conversation with an exceedingly friendly rep, my monthly bill dropped from $68 to $45 per month for the next full year. Not only did I save money, but my speeds increased from 400 Mbps to 500 Mbps. While I can’t guarantee the same results everywhere, in general it’s a great time to threaten to cancel cable internet service. For years, Comcast and Charter (which operates the Spectrum brand) have boasted to shareholders that growth in home internet more than offsets the collapse of cable TV, but now they’re losing internet customers to vendors offering faster fiber and cheaper 5G wireless alternatives. They are highly motivated to keep potential defectors on board, so you should take full advantage of their collective insecurity. What competition looks like Last year, Spectrum and Comcast lost 508,000 and 411,000 home internet customers respectively . The year before, Comcast lost 66,000, while Spectrum lost 61,000. Stock prices for both companies are already below what they were two years ago. By contrast, fiber and wireless home internet are growing. T-Mobile and Verizon added 1.7 million and 1.5 million wireless home internet customers in 2024 respectively, while AT&T added 1 million customers to its fiber service. Both of their stocks are up from two years ago. This isn’t rocket science: Wireless home internet is cheaper than cable, with plans starting at $35 per month for T-Mobile and Verizon when bundled with mobile phone service. Fiber, meanwhile, offers symmetric upload and download speeds, which aren’t always available with cable, and it can be cheaper as well. (AT&T’s 500 Mbps plan, for instance, costs $75 per month on a non-promotional basis, $10 per month less than Comcast.) Cable providers should have reckoned with this new reality years ago. Instead, they resorted to scare tactics and misinformation. Comcast and Charter both rolled out ad campaigns to convince people that they didn’t actually want cheaper internet service, which they later had to modify for being misleading. Comcast then tried to advertise its internet plans as “10G” in a desperate attempt to look better than 5G (despite being unrelated technologically). Advertising watchdogs pressured Comcast to drop that line of attack as well. Cable’s response Only now are the cable giants doing what they should have done all along, which is to actually compete. Comcast, for instance, announced a somewhat-simplified set of home internet plans last week, starting at $40 per month for 300 Mbps service with a one-year price guarantee. (Customers can also pay a higher price of $55 per month to lock in that rate for five years.) These new plans also reverse a longstanding policy of enforcing data caps in most markets. Comcast’s internet service plans as of July 2025.Comcast Last year, Comcast also launched a separate pair of internet plans under its “Now” brand, priced at $30 per month for 100 Mbps and $45 per month for 200 Mbps. Those plans don’t include data caps either. Spectrum’s response hasn’t been as splashy. It’s been more focused on increasing internet speeds and bundling more services together, including free streaming services on its cable TV side, and an offer of $30-per-month home internet (at 500 Mbps) when bundled with two mobile lines. It’s also been scrapping hidden fees and trying to improve its customer service. But here’s the problem: Cable companies don’t want to hand out big discounts to existing customers if they can avoid it. While Comcast says its new packages are available to anyone, existing customers must call in to make the switch, and I’ve heard from a few readers who’ve run into problems getting the plans they want. As my experience with Spectrum has shown, it’s all a matter of reaching the right representative. What you should do about it Negotiating a lower home internet price is easy. You just need to bypass the standard customer service department and skip straight to the one with the goal of keeping you from cancelling your service. You can often accomplish this through the automated answering system by selecting the options that lead to cancelling your service. I understand this can be nerve-wracking. If you have no intention of switching providers, you certainly wouldn’t want the cable company to call your bluff and cut you off without warning. Trust me, that’s not going to happen. Cable companies operate retention departments for the express purpose of pumping the breaks on cancellations and talking things out first. They also have access to promotions that standard customer service reps don’t. (Every Spectrum retention specialist I’ve ever talked to has relished pointing this out.) If it makes you more comfortable, just approach the subject in a circumspect way. Once the retention rep is on the line, tell them you’re thinking about cancelling, or you want to discuss the logistics of cancelling at a convenient future date. In my experience that’s enough to set the promotional gears in motion. And if that doesn’t work, maybe it’s time to look into other options. There are more of them available now in more places, much to the cable companies’ dismay. Sign up for Jared’s Cord Cutter Weekly newsletter for more money-saving advice. Read...

SOCRadar has launched its MCP Server, enabling secure AI access to real-time threat intelligence and simplifying cybersecurity teams` workflows globally. Read...