Best 5G Phones to Buy in 2023 - CNET

Get the fastest data possible with the best 5G phones out there.

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WhatsApp is giving users a chance to hold onto Disappearing Messages just a bit longer with the new Keep in Chat tool.

The way it works is pretty simple. First, select the text with the important piece of information. Then tap the bookmark icon in the app’s top bar to save said message. The feature works with plain text as well as voice notes, according to a post on WhatsApp. Saved messages will sport the bookmark icon so you don't forget. You can also check the Kept Messages folder in the Settings menu which organizes everything by chat.

However, there’s a catch: you must have the consent of the person who sent the message in the first place. When you attempt to save something, the sender will get a notification informing them the recipient in the chat wants to keep the message. WhatsApp states the sender has final say. If they veto your request, there’s nothing you can do. The message will then “be deleted when the timer expires.”

Flexible messaging

You may think this update is rather strange as it appears to undermine the very concept of Disappearing Messages. Meta has been tweaking the feature to have texts last longer in chats since its launch back in 2021. The maximum amount of time before deletion is 90 days. Meta states in the announcement that Keep in Chat offers better “flexibility to keep the messages [people] need.” Of course, you can always screenshot the messages to keep them permanently, but maybe your on-device folder is a rat’s nest of random images making finding the right image a real chore. This update can help you organize things.

Keep in Chat “will roll out globally" over the coming weeks.

Speaking of texts, files discovered in a WhatsApp iOS beta from late March revealed Meta is working on finally allowing users a way to edit messages. So someday iPhone owners may be able to undo those embarrassing typos. It’s unknown exactly when the editing tool will launch since the feature is apparently still in development, but it is something to look forward to if it happens. Android owners, on the other hand, do have a beta readily available to them adding a new way to edit their contacts list. It’s available for download via the Google Play Store.

Be sure to check out TechRadar’s recently updated list of the best smartphone deals for April 2023 if you’re looking for something new on which to run the latest version of WhatsApp.

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Watch Your Electric Bills Drop By Unplugging These Appliances - CNET

Save $100 on your energy bill by simply unplugging a few items around your home.

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Besides writing cover letters, the future of ChatGPT may be in the health sector. Researchers from Stanford University took the generative AI and successfully linked it to an iPhone’s Apple Health app to create HealthGPT.

The large language model (LLM) will answer any question you have regarding your own personal well-being via a “chat-style interface” as it grabs information from Apple Health. For example, you can ask HealthGPT how much you’ve been sleeping in the past week if you’re feeling particularly tired. The app will respond by giving you a detailed description of your recent sleeping habits. Since it’s a reworked ChatGPT, you can ask follow-up questions, like tips on how to get better sleep. HealthGPT will then provide those tips as it pulls information from the internet.

The LLM also keeps track of other body metrics like “step count, active energy, exercise minutes, heart rate, and body mass.” In order to access this data, HealthGPT requires the necessary permissions to read from Apple Health features like Active Energy. It can even give users “tailored advice towards... fitness goals”, according to recent a Twitter post by Varun Shenoy, one of the developers. 

Installing the demo

You can download the HealthGPT demo on your iPhone via its GitHub repository. Instructions on installation are provided, although the process is pretty complex. The developers state their LLM was built on top of the CardinalKit framework from the Standard Byers Center for Biodesign which allows “for easy customization.” So if you know your way around coding on iOS, you can tweak the experimental HealthGPT to your liking.

In the demo, the developers remind those curious that the AI is not meant to be a “substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.” They even point out the LLM may “hallucinate” at times meaning it may provide “false information” so use HealthGPT “at your own risk.” Even if you don’t mind downloading experimental software, you may want to hold off on it. In the GitHub repository, the developers note that aggregated HealthKit data from the past two weeks will be shared with OpenAI. For people who don't want their health data uploaded to OpenAI, perhaps it's best to pass on this opportunity.

It’s unknown what the team intends to do with HealthGPT outside of this neat little experiment. If it ever comes out on the App Store as a full-fledged app, it could totally change fitness software as we know it. Imagine having a fitness assistant on your iPhone with intimate knowledge of your own health providing personalized advice. It’s certainly possible. Other developers have successfully added ChatGPT to the Apple Watch as a digital assistant of sorts.

We asked Varun Shenoy via email what the future holds for HealthGPT. It'll be interesting to see if it becomes an official app. This story will be updated if and when he responds.

• Best cheap fitness trackers 2023: Inexpensive wearables to monitor your health

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Best Wireless Charger for 2023 - CNET

These are our top picks for the best wireless chargers in 2023 for phones, smartwatches and wireless earbuds.

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5G May Be Your Answer to a Better Home Internet Experience - CNET

Mobile companies are raving about the wonders of 5G for your phone, but there's a real opportunity for your home broadband connection too.

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The 8 Best Wireless Car Chargers for 2023 - CNET

These wireless car chargers will have your phone juiced up by the time you arrive at your destination.

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Best Cheaper Rivals to Apple AirPods Max for 2023: Sony, Bose, AirPods Pro 2 and More - CNET

Apple's swanky over-ear noise-canceling headphones aren't exactly cheap at $549. Here are the best alternatives.

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As promised, Twitter Legacy Blue verification checks started quietly disappearing from user accounts Thursday afternoon. Now the only way to hold onto the coveted Blue Tick is by paying Twitter a $7.99 a month subscription fee.

Elon Musk announced the final day to pay up last week and -- even as he juggled the first SpaceX StarShip launch (which ended with a spectacular mid-air explosion) -- Musk found time to set his draconian plan in motion.

The change appears to have impacted many legacy verified accounts including those of The Pope, who goes by Pontifex on the platform, and actor Halle Berry, who made it clear in a tweet that she would not be paying. Even Beyoncé and Lady Gaga lost their Blue Checks.

As of this writing, basketball player Lebron James still had his Blue Check, which says he now subscribes to Twitter Blue. This despite the fact that James tweeted on March 31, "Welp guess my blue will be gone soon cause if you know me I ain’t paying the 5."

Who are you on Twitter?

The good news is that those who are verified with a Blue Check are being asked for more than just a credit card. Now, when you click on a Blue Check, you see this message: "This account is verified because they are subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number."

The phone number is to ensure that those seeking Twitter verification aren't impersonating someone. But is it useful? After all, it's still completely possible to have a phone number and claim you're Beyoncé even if you're not. There's also little to stop someone from changing their Twitter name (but not the "@" handle) to someone else's name. An issue Monica Lewinsky pointed out last month.

As Journalist Ed Krassenstien (a paying Twitter Blue member) wrote on Twitter on Thursday, there could be an imposter problem for those who've put in the time growing a Twitter following. "Some people spent years building up accounts and building a presence on this platform. They did so without the assumption of having to eventually pay for it. Now, it is extremely difficult for their fans to differentiate their posts from imposters’ posts unless they pay."

What does Blue get you

Twitter Blue is not all about the Blue Tick. Subscription has its privileges, including massive 10,000-character tweets, fewer ads, the ability to post longer and higher-quality videos, and prioritized rankings.

The last bit may prove frustrating for those previously verified, since it may soon be harder to get their Tweets noticed and found through search. Still, Musk's pay-to-play system may be necessary as the now-private Twitter struggles to become profitable. Musk's previous efforts have included massive staff cuts. He's also undermined his own efforts with tweets and actions that have so concerned advertisers that they fled the platform. There are some indications, though, that they are returning.

Today is a new day for Twitter. If nothing else, it's a social media landscape where anyone can have a Blue Check, if they're willing to pay. It remains to be seen if this is the magic elixir Twitter needs to survive.

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Watch Europa League Soccer: Livestream Sevilla vs. Man United From Anywhere - CNET

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It seems like we’re in the midst of something exciting for AMD when it comes to the creative market.

Team Red seems to have gotten a bit of its mojo back after having launched a pair of new graphic cards for workstations (the Navi-3 infused W7900 and the W7800), GPUs may be the precursors to the followup of the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo, which can be found in the Apple Mac Pro and pairs two GPU on one card. 

There’s also the more widespread adoption of EPYC as a workstation-class processor (rather than just for servers) with at least a dozen boutique vendors worldwide offering AMD’s Xeon rival in workstations (The Mediaworkstations aX2P deserves an accolade for being by far the most innovative with its 6-display mobile workstation).

The Mac Pro is the last Apple product that runs on non Apple silicon and while many may argue that the Mac Studio - Apple’s most powerful PC to date - is a great substitute for the majority of creatives, there’s a slim but still (probably) significant portion of professionals that would need (and want) more modularity and expansion capabilities.

Other than the fact that the Studio can be configured with up to only 128GB of RAM (the Mac Pro can take up to 12x more RAM), its GPU performance is still far behind what AMD and Nvidia’s discrete professional video cards can achieve. So unless Apple chooses to eliminate the Mac Pro line (because it is no longer a priority) or if it manages to magically solve all the current obstacles to a Mac Pro with Apple Silicon, chances are the next Mac Pro will still be based on x86.

AMD-based Apple Mac Pro?

Is there a potential for an Epyc-based Mac Pro on the horizon? We wouldn’t discount that possibility. AMD is no longer the challenger, Intel is (at least based on market capitalization) and while future Intel Xeon products look very promising, right now, AMD, with its Zen 4 architecture, has the upper hand and seems to be the logical partner for an x86-based Mac Pro, one that will buy Apple a few years until it finally get the Mac Pro on its own silicon.

So what would a top-of-the-range Mac Pro based on AMD parts look like? We went for a fairly comparable spec but there’s the possibility that Apple goes for a significantly more powerful system as Epyc processors can be paired with a total of 192 cores.

• Also check out our list of the best switches and best small business routers

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Galaxy Watch 5 Update Makes It Easier to Track Your Menstrual Cycle - CNET

The update to Samsung's Galaxy Watch 5 and Watch 5 Pro models aims to help make fertility tracking a little simpler.

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Stop Waking Up Tired: 8 Ways to Get Better Rest at Night - CNET

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Facebook might owe you some money and now you have the means to collect.

Meta, Facebook's parent company, agreed late last year to pay out $725 million to settle the Cambridge Analytica data privacy leak class-action lawsuit.

The now four-year-old case started after journalists discovered the political research firm had collected and shared private data on at least 87 million Facebook users and that Facebook had failed to notify users of the data leak.

Finally, roughly six months after the company settled, an estimated 280 million Facebook members (current and former) may be entitled to a cash payout.

If you've already done the math, you know that no one is getting rich off this settlement. Sure, it's nearly a billion dollars out of Meta's pocket, but you might see just a few dollars.

This scandal marks what may have been the darkest time in Facebook's history. It was a massive personal data breach that happened not because Cambridge Analytica hacked Facebook, but because Facebook didn't pay close attention to what Cambridge Analytica was doing.

In a 2018 interview Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg apologized and admitted it "was a major breach of trust," and added, "We have a basic responsibility to protect people’s data."

How to collect your Facebook settlement

Meta and Facebook have made it easy to gather your handful of dollars, launching an online Claim Form.  You have until August 25, 2023, at 11:59 PM PT to fill it out. 

The only eligibility requirement is that you must have been a member of Facebook between May 24, 2007, and December 22, 2022. Even if you deleted Facebook, you can still collect funds.

Granted, the amount of information Meta requests may give you pause, especially considering the company's data privacy record. Among the requested bits of personal information are your full name, address, email, phone number, and payment information.

That last bit, which includes credit cards, PayPal, Venmo, and Zelle info, is not so you can pay them, but so Meta can get those few dollars to you.

You even have to sign a form saying you are not making any of this up. It is a lot to go through for what might just be $3 or less. On the other hand, if enough people are turned off by Meta's form, a hearty, relative few may in fact get a windfall of, who knows, $50?

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Russian state-sponsored threat actors have built custom malware and are using it against old, unpatched Cisco IOS routers, a joint US-UK report has warned. 

The UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released a report in which they state that APT28, a group allegedly affiliated with the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), developed a custom malware named “Jaguar Tooth”. 

This malware is capable of stealing sensitive data passing through the router, and allows threat actors unauthenticated backdoor access to the device.

Stealing data

The attackers would first scan for public Cisco routers using weak SNMP community strings, such as the commonly used “public” string, BleepingComputer reports. As per the publication, SNMP community strings are like “credentials that allow anyone who knows the configured string to query SNMP data on a device”. 

If they find a valid SNMP community string, the attackers will look to exploit CVE-2017-6742, a six-year-old vulnerability that allows for remote code execution. That allows them to install the Jaguar Tooth malware directly into the memory of Cisco routers. 

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"Jaguar Tooth is non-persistent malware that targets Cisco IOS routers running firmware: C5350-ISM, Version 12.3(6)," the advisory reads. "It includes functionality to collect device information, which it exfiltrates over TFTP, and enables unauthenticated backdoor access. It has been observed being deployed and executed via exploitation of the patched SNMP vulnerability CVE-2017-6742."

The malware will then create a new process called “Service Policy Lock” that gathers all the output from these Command Line Interface commands and harvests them using TFTP: 

• show running-config
• show version
• show ip interface brief
• show arp
• show cdp neighbors
• show start
• show ip route
• show flash

To address the problem, admins should update their Cisco routers’ firmware immediately. Furthermore, they can switch from SNMP to NETCONF/RESTCONF on public routers. If they can’t switch from SNMP, they should configure allow and deny lists to limit who can access the SNMP interface on internet-connected routers. Also, the community string should be changed to something stronger.

The advisory also says admins should disable SNMP v2 or Telnet.

• You might also want to check out our list of the best endpoint protection software available now

 Via: BleepingComputer

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