“Asus Vivobook 14 is a good template for serving the best of Windows 11 on an affordable and practically rewarding platter”
Pros
Solid trackpad and decent keyboard
Sufficient selection of ports
Decent performance for the price
Reliable battery with fast charging
Generous memory for 2026
Windows Hello for biometric lock
Cons
Display could’ve been better
Plastic flexes on lid and deck
Fan can get noisy
Random performance hiccups
What makes a good laptop? Well, I can give a pretty haphazard answer to that. But if I were to give a broad verdict, I would say any PC that gets the job done without nuking your wallet, heating like a pan, and lasting at least a full day without forcing you to hunt for a wall socket, takes the cake.
Apple has mastered that art with the MacBook Air, and to such an extent that shoppers have no qualms spending on two, or even three-generation-old, machines. Windows, thanks in no part to the extreme fragmentation, has struggled with the idea.
With Intel Evo-certified PCs, an attempt was made, but they just couldn’t hit the performance-efficiency levels of a MacBook. Then came Qualcomm with its Snapdragon silicon for Windows-on-Arm machines bearing the Copilot+ branding. The vision was squarely a Mac-killer machine at various price points.
Now that we are headed into the second generation of Qualcomm-powered laptops, I took a leap of faith away from my trusty M4 MacBook Air and fired up the cheapest Cipolot+ laptop I could find – the Asus Vivobook 14, which is currently going for $649 from the brand’s online marketplace, and often dips lower during sales events.
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Did I regret it? Not exactly. On the contrary, I came out fairly impressed with the machine, though not without a few harsh learnings.
A quick look at the specs
Color
Cool Silver, Quiet Blue
Operating System
Windows 11 Home (ASUS recommends Windows 11 Pro for business)
Processor
Snapdragon X (X1 26 100) (30MB Cache, up to 2.97GHz, 8 cores, 8 Threads)
Neural Processor
Qualcomm Hexagon NPU (up to 45TOPS)
Graphics
Qualcomm Adreno GPU
Display
14.0-inch LED Backlit, 60Hz, 45% NTSC, Anti-glare (87% screen-to-body ratio)
Memory
16GB LPDDR5X on board (Max 16GB)
Storage
512GB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD
I/O Ports
2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A; 2x USB 4.0 Gen 3 Type-C; 1x HDMI 2.1; 1x 3.5mm Jack
Camera
FHD camera with IR function (Windows Hello) and privacy shutter
I will start with the value perspective first. Asus is more generous with the memory situation on the Vivobook 14 than Apple, matching the memory at 16GB, but offering a healthy 512GB storage on the base model. For anyone who wishes to use their PC for at least the next half a decade, this is the bare minimum.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
I keep my media editing work restricted to the iPad Pro, and it’s a headache. Beyond the cumulative burden of OS updates, the gradual app installs fill up the storage sooner than I would like. Whether you need a machine for work, or college duties, Asus offers a better value for your money if you have an Apple comparison in mind.
Then we have the port situation. Yes, the MacBook Air is sleek, but that comes at the cost of a terrible port selection. And the only way to survive the MacBook Air lifestyle is a dongle. Asus’ affordable laptop won’t outdo Apple’s laptop in the looks department, but it trades a svelte waistline for a reasonable diversity of ports.
You get a pair of USB-C and USB-A ports each, alongside an HDMI port and a 3.5mm combo jack. Now, you may not always use all the ports, but on the days when you are struggling with an external monitor, charger, storage device, and an input device, you really appreciate the I/O versatility at hand.
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Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
Another neat perk, and an expected one at the current asking price, is the IR camera kit for face unlock. On modern PCs, biometric unlock is an extremely underrated perk, especially in an age where passkeys are taking over conventional passwords for identity verification.
The keyboard isn’t bad either. There’s plenty of travel, the keycaps are spaced well, and despite the slight wobble, I actually loved typing on it more than my MacBook Air. The keys offer a springy feedback, and there’s a satisfying resistance, as well. There’s a bit of flex in the central portion of the deck, but not enough to hamper the typing experience.
The display is a mixed bag. The 14-inch panel offers a full-HD resolution, which is fairly standard for the price. But it doesn’t fare well in well-lit surroundings. I mostly work in a dark room, but every time I stepped out for a cafe work session, or the nearby park, I had to crank the brightness all the way up to the 100%, and still felt a tad underwhelmed.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
Thankfully, it’s not a glossy panel, so reflection was never much of a problem. Out of the box, the display has an odd tint to it, and I had to manually adjust the temperature to make it look neutral. And yeah, the saturation could definitely be better. The Asus laptop, however, is hiding a cool trick.
In the MyAsus app, there’s an E-reading mode that gives a monochrome tint to the screen. All the content is rendered in black and white, and you can even adjust the grayscale level. You also get an eye-care mode, with five levels of blue light reduction. I often found myself juggling between these two modes as they tangibly reduced the eye strain, while the e-ink mode helped me with an extra dose of focus.
Another cool trick is hiding on the trackpad. It’s serviceable on its own, but I loved the edge gestures. Across the left and right edges, you can slide to adjust the volume and brightness levels, while the top edge helps with media playback. I love these thoughtful additions, which go beyond gimmicks and don’t burden you with a learning curve either.
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Performance
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
The Snapdragon X is a rather odd processor, which is both good and bad news. For example, it fares almost as well as the MacBook Air… with the three-generation-old M2 chip on Cinebench at multi-core output, but the Oryon core can’t quite drive ahead of the single-core performance.
That’s both good and bad news. Apple’s M-series silicon is terrific, and I have friends and family members still holding on tightly to their M1-powered machines. On the Windows side of the ecosystem, the Vivobook 14 raced ahead of Intel’s Core Ultra 5 226V, and the equivalent Intel Core 12th Gen processor at Geekbench runs
Paired with 16 gigs of RAM and speedy SSDs, the Asus laptop fared pretty well at my day-to-day tasks. It handled Slack, Teams, Chrome with two dozen tabs, and Copoilt with ease. For academic use and basic corporate work restricted to Workspace and Office suites, there’s enough firepower available here.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
But what holds this machine back — and nearly every Windows on Arm machine that I have tested so far – is the inconsistency. On days, the Asus laptop felt buttery smooth. And then there were occasions where it randomly crashed under the stress of a few Chrome windows. Another recurring problem is the update situation, which often left me staring at a blank screen and required a force restart.
Where Qualcomm needs to work, especially when compared against Intel’s Arc and AMD’s Radeon graphics architecture, is the integrated Adreno GPU. On 3DMark Steel Nomad, I got an average tally of around 9fps after three test runs, while an in-game benchmark only reached 18fps. Needless to say, gaming is a distant pipedream, and your only hope is cloud services such as Xbox or GeForce Now.
I wish the fans were a tad less noisy. Even under the stress of web-based work, you can hear them whirring. Thankfully, I didn’t notice any overt heating or scenarios where the laptop became too hot to keep on the lap. Whisper mode offers some respite from the fan house, but to avoid the heat build-up and throttling, I preferred working with the fan profile set to Full-Speed mode. Thankfully, my earbuds helped deal with the noise.
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Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
But when I pushed it while editing videos in Filmora, the upper area of the keyboard deck ran noticeably hotter. What bothered me more was the resource allocation. Between two windows and a total of eight apps in total, the system was using 80% of the memory, which is way too much, while the CPU load remained comfortably under the 18% range.
Battery life
This is one aspect where the Asus Vivobook 14 really surprised me. I was expecting it to be a mediocre performer, but it actually proved to be a workhorse. With Power Mode set to balanced, the laptop managed around 11 hours of work in my most recent run, with the screen brightness set close to the 60% mark.
Dialing up to the high-performance mode, the device still managed around eight to nine hours of consistent work before I saw the first low-battery alert. It’s evident that the entry-level Snapdragon X silicon is focusing more on efficiency, instead of raw performance. This approach, I believe, works well for a machine like the Vivobook 14.
I’ve tested over a dozen Windows machines in as many months, but this Asus machine offered the best mileage in the Snapdragon pool for its size, and fared better than Intel machines from rival brands. If your budget is strictly close to the $700 mark, you already have a certain performance expectation in mind.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
The Asus Vivobook 14 isn’t exactly blowing past those expectations, but it delivers solid results with battery efficiency. The hiccup was the edge scenarios, where I needed the machine to focus more on creative workflows at high performance levels, and the drop in battery levels was haphazardly aggressive.
On the bright side, the laptop offers a few meaningful tricks within the MyAsus app. There’s a dedicated battery care mode that limits peak charging to the 80% mark, similar to iPhones, in order to preserve its longevity. But for scenarios where you want the full juice for on-the-go work sessions, you can temporarily bypass it for 24-hours and get the full 100% juice.
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Verdict
The Asus Vivobook 14 is a laptop that cuts some expected corners, but delivers in a few unexpected ways. It’s got a kit that’s easy on the eyes, but raises the bar with a military-grade (MIL-STD 810H) build. For students and workers who commute daily, this is an underrated perk that can save you hundreds of dollars in accidental repairs and servicing.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
On to the topic of battery life, this laptop does a fine job, and support for fast charging (an hour of plugged-in time for a full tank) is just the cherry on top. Now, I don’t know many souls out there who want a laptop specifically for native Copilot AI perks, but if you’re one of those souls, this Asus laptop is a bargain deal that qualifies for all the Copilot+ AI perks, such as on-device translations, AI-powered image editing, and Windows Recall.
The performance is enough for the asking price, though not exactly an Earth-scorcher. As a sweet bargain for not setting the benchmark tables on fire, you get plenty of ports (with ample diversity), a large trackpad with practical tricks, convenient biometric unlock with a physical privacy shutter, and a decent set of speakers that get the job done, but won’t exactly wow your ear canals.
At an asking price of $649 (and even lower, if you’re a good deal-hunter), the Asus Vivobook 14 is a lovely laptop for its target audience. And at a time when the industry is staring at rising PC prices owing to an unprecedented memory crisis, this laptop feels like a bargain in stormy days for market.
Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.
Today’s NYT Connections puzzle has some really unusual categories. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.
The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.
Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.
Yellow group hint: Good joke!
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Green group hint: They all sound like Homer Simpson.
The journey takes Aurora’s autonomous trucks roughly 15 hours, or about half the time a human operator could legally drive under federal hours-of-service rules. Existing regulations limit truck drivers to 11 hours of driving within a 14-hour window, require a 30-minute break after eight hours, and mandate a 10-hour rest… Read Entire Article Source link
Threat actors are abusing Pastebin comments to distribute a new ClickFix-style attack that tricks cryptocurrency users into executing malicious JavaScript in their browser, allowing attackers to hijack Bitcoin swap transactions and redirect funds to attacker-controlled wallets.
The campaign relies on social engineering that promises large profits from a supposed Swapzone.io arbitrage exploit, but instead runs malicious code that modifies the swap process directly within the victim’s browser.
It could also be the first known ClickFix attack to use JavaScript to alter a webpage’s functionality for a malicious purpose.
Promoted through Pastebin
In the campaign spotted by BleepingComputer, threat actors are iterating through Pastebin posts and leaving comments that promote an alleged cryptocurrency exploit, with a link to a URL on rawtext[.]host.
The campaign is widespread, with many of our posts receiving comments over the past week claiming to be “leaked exploit documentation” that allows users to earn $13,000 in 2 days.
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Phishing comment on Pastebin Source: BleepingComputer
The link in the comment redirects to a Google Docs page titled “Swapzone.io – ChangeNOW Profit Method,” which claims to be a guide describing a method to exploit arbitrage opportunities for higher payouts.
“ChangeNOW still has an older backend node connected to the Swapzone partner API. On direct ChangeNOW, this node is no longer used for public swaps,” reads the fake guide.
“However, when accessed through Swapzone, the rate calculation passes through Node v1.9 for certain BTC pairs. This old node applies a different conversion formula for BTC to ANY, which results in ~38% higher payouts than intended.”
At any given time, these documents typically show between 1 and 5 active viewers, suggesting the scam is circulating.
People viewing the Google Doc Source: BleepingComputer
The fake guide provides instructions to visit Swapzone.io and manually load a Bitcoin node by executing JavaScript directly in their browser’s address bar.
The instructions tell victims to visit a URL on paste[.]sh and copy a JavaScript snippet hosted on the page.
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First stage JavaScript code used in ClickFix attack Source: BleepingComputer
The guide then tells the reader to go back to the SwapZone tab, click on the address bar, type javascript:, and then paste the code. When the code has been pasted into the address, they state to press Enter on your keyboard to execute it, as explained below.
ClickFix attack instructions in fake SwapZone exploit guide Source: BleepingComputer
This technique abuses the browser’s ‘javascript:’ URI feature, which allows users to execute JavaScript from the address on the currently loaded website.
By convincing victims to run this code on Swapzone.io, attackers can manipulate the page and alter the swap process.
BleepingComputer’s analysis of the malicious script hosted at paste[.]sh shows that it loads a secondary payload from https://rawtext[.]host/raw?btulo3.
This heavily obfuscated script is injected directly into the Swapzone page, overriding the legitimate Next.js script used for handling Bitcoin swaps to hijack the swap interface.
The malicious script includes embedded Bitcoin addresses, which are randomly selected and injected into the swap process, replacing the legitimate deposit address generated by the exchange.
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Because the code executes within the Swapzone.io session, victims see a legitimate interface but end up copying and sending funds to attacker-controlled Bitcoin wallets.
In addition to replacing the deposit address, BleepingComputer was told that the script modifies displayed exchange rates and offer values, making it feel like the alleged arbitrage exploit is actually working.
Unfortunately, as Bitcoin transactions cannot be reversed, if you fell for this scam, there is no easy way to recover your money.
A novel ClickFix variant
This campaign is a variant of the ClickFix attacks, a social engineering technique that tricks users into executing malicious commands on their computer, typically to install malware.
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Normally, ClickFix attacks target operating systems by telling victims to run PowerShell commands or shell scripts to fix alleged errors or enable functionality.
In this case, instead of targeting the operating system, the attackers instruct victims to execute JavaScript directly in their browser while visiting a cryptocurrency exchange service.
This allows the malicious code to modify the page and intercept transaction details.
This may represent one of the first reported ClickFix-style attacks specifically designed to use JavaScript in the browser and steal cryptocurrency.
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Modern IT infrastructure moves faster than manual workflows can handle.
In this new Tines guide, learn how your team can reduce hidden manual delays, improve reliability through automated response, and build and scale intelligent workflows on top of tools you already use.
A recent example was published in 2025 by researchers at the European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser Facility near Hamburg, among other institutions. They cooled iodopyridine, an organic molecule consisting of 11 atoms, almost to absolute zero and hammered it with a laser pulse to break its atomic bonds. The team found that the motions of the freed atoms were correlated, indicating that, despite its chilled state, the iodopyridine molecule had been vibrating. “That was not initially the main goal of the experiment,” said Rebecca Boll, an experimental physicist at the facility. “It’s basically something that we found.”
Perhaps the best-known effect of zero-point energy in a field was predicted by Hendrick Casimir in 1948, glimpsed in 1958, and definitively observed in 1997. Two plates of electrically uncharged material—which Casimir envisioned as parallel metal sheets, although other shapes and substances will do—exert a force on each other. Casimir said the plates would act as a kind of guillotine for the electromagnetic field, chopping off long-wavelength oscillations in a way that would skew the zero-point energy. According to the most accepted explanation, in some sense, the energy outside the plates is higher than the energy between the plates, a difference that pulls the plates together.
Quantum field theorists typically describe fields as a collection of oscillators, each of which has its own zero-point energy. There is an infinite number of oscillators in a field, and thus a field should contain an infinite amount of zero-point energy. When physicists realized this in the 1930s and ’40s, they at first doubted the theory, but they soon came to terms with the infinities. In physics—or most of physics, at any rate—energy differences are what really matters, and with care physicists can subtract one infinity from another to see what’s left.
That doesn’t work for gravity, though. As early as 1946, Wolfgang Pauli realized that an infinite or at least gargantuan amount of zero-point energy should create a gravitational field powerful enough to explode the universe. “All forms of energy gravitate,” said Sean Carroll, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University. “That includes the vacuum energy, so you can’t ignore it.” Why this energy remains gravitationally muted still mystifies physicists.
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In quantum physics, the zero-point energy of the vacuum is more than an ongoing challenge, and it’s more than the reason you can’t ever truly empty a box. Instead of being something where there should be nothing, it is nothing infused with the potential to be anything.
“The interesting thing about the vacuum is every field, and therefore every particle, is somehow represented,” Milonni said. Even if not a single electron is present, the vacuum contains “electronness.” The zero-point energy of the vacuum is the combined effect of every possible form of matter, including ones we have yet to discover.
Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of theSimons Foundationwhose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.
This would be a bad time to slip. (Credit: onionboots, YouTube)
In the olden days, an administrator password on a BIOS was a mere annoyance, one quickly remedied by powering off the system and pulling its CMOS battery or moving a jumper around. These days, you’re more likely to find a separate EEPROM on the mainboard that preserves the password. This, too, is mostly just another annoyance, as [onionboots] knew. All it takes is shorting out this EEPROM at the right time to knock it offline, with the ‘right time’ turning out to be rather crucial.
While refurbishing this laptop for a customer, he thought it’d be easy: the guide he found said he just had to disassemble the laptop to gain access to this chip, then short out its reset pin at the right time to make it drop offline and keep it shorted. Important here is that you do not short it when you are still booting the system, or it won’t boot. This makes for some interesting prodding of tiny pins with a metal tool.
What baffled him was that although this method worked, and he could now disable the password, on the next boot, it would be enabled again. As it turns out, to actually save the new supervisor password status to the EEPROM, you should stop shorting its pin, else you cannot write to it. Although the guide said to keep shorting it, this was, in hindsight, a clear case of relying too much on instructions and less on an obvious deduction. Not like any of us are ever guilty of such an embarrassing glitch, natch.
At any rate, it was still infinitely faster than trying to crack such a password with a brute-force method, even if helped by an LLM.
A good gaming laptop deal is not just about saving money. It’s about landing the right mix of GPU, CPU, and storage so you don’t feel boxed in six months from now. This Presidents’ Day promo on the HP Victus 15.6-inch gaming laptop hits that sweet spot: it’s $999.99, down from $1,369.99, saving you $370. The important detail is the deadline. The deal ends on Feb. 17, 2026, so this is more of a “grab it while it’s live” situation than a price you can assume will stick around.
What you’re getting
This configuration checks the boxes most people actually care about for 2026 PC gaming and everyday use:
15.6-inch Full HD display with a 144Hz refresh rate for smoother gameplay and less blur in fast motion
Intel Core i7-13620H (2023), a capable CPU for gaming plus school/work multitasking
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 for modern titles and GPU-accelerated creative apps
16GB memory for running games, voice chat, browsers, and background apps without constant slowdowns
1TB SSD so you can install several large games and still have room for projects, clips, and downloads
Here’s the practical angle: many laptops around this price force compromises that become annoying quickly (small storage, weaker GPU, or screens that feel laggy). This one avoids the common traps. The 144Hz panel matters more than people expect because it makes everything feel more responsive, even outside gaming. And 1TB storage is a quality-of-life perk if you bounce between a handful of big games or keep media locally.
At $999.99, this HP Victus is a solid Presidents’ Day deal for anyone who wants a balanced gaming laptop with a high-refresh display, modern graphics, and enough storage to avoid juggling installs. If you were already shopping in the under-$1,000 range, the $370 discount and the Feb. 17, 2026 end date make this one worth moving on sooner rather than later.
Microsoft says it has resolved a Windows 11 bug that caused some commercial systems to fail to boot with an “UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME” error after installing recent security updates, with the fix delivered in the February 2026 Patch Tuesday update.
The boot issue, which Microsoft previously investigated and linked to failed December 2025 updates, affected a limited number of commercial Windows 11 devices running versions 25H2 and 24H2.
According to a private enterprise advisory seen by Susan Bradley of Ask Woody, the issue has now been marked as fully resolved in the Windows 11 KB5077181 security update released on February 10, 2026.
Microsoft says impacted devices suffered boot failures after installing the January 13, 2026, security update KB5074109 or later updates, displaying a black screen and the message: “Your device ran into a problem and needs a restart. You can restart.”
At that point, impacted systems were unable to boot and required manual recovery to restore functionality.
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Microsoft previously confirmed the issue was caused by the failed installation of the December 2025 security update, leaving devices in an improper state after the installation rolled back.
Attempting to install future Windows updates on devices with this “improper state” could cause the system to become unbootable.
Microsoft said the issue affected only physical devices running Windows 11 25H2 and 24H2, and did not receive reports of it affecting home users or virtual machines.
Fix delivered in February Patch Tuesday update
Microsoft says it previously released an initial resolution in the optional non-security preview update KB5074105 on January 29, 2026, which helped prevent additional systems from becoming affected by the bug.
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The company now says the issue is fully resolved in the Windows 11 KB5077181 update released during the February 2026 Patch Tuesday and later updates.
“This issue is fully resolved in the Windows security update released on February 10, 2026 (the Resolved KBs listed above), and later updates,” reads Microsoft’s advisory.
Unfortunately, devices that became unbootable before the fix was released may still require additional remediation.
Microsoft advises enterprise customers whose devices remain affected to contact Microsoft Support for Business for assistance restoring system stability.
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It is unclear why Microsoft did not share this advisory publicly, as it does for other known Windows issues.
Modern IT infrastructure moves faster than manual workflows can handle.
In this new Tines guide, learn how your team can reduce hidden manual delays, improve reliability through automated response, and build and scale intelligent workflows on top of tools you already use.
Former NPR host David Greene is suing Google after accusing the tech giant of stealing his voice for use in one of its AI-powered tools.
Greene, who presented NPR’s Morning Edition for eight years until 2020 and now hosts the political podcast Left, Right & Center, told the Washington Post he was “completely freaked out” when he heard the voice used by Google’s NotebookLM, a tool that summarizes documents and generates spoken audio overviews — using a voice that sounds very much like his.
When friends and family started getting in touch to ask him if the voice was his, he decided to sue Google, accusing it of violating his rights by copying his voice for NotebookLM, without asking for his permission or offering any kind of compensation.
Google has denied any wrongdoing. “These allegations are baseless,” a spokesperson for the company said, adding that the male voice in NotebookLM’s audio overviews “is based on a paid professional actor Google hired.” It has yet to reveal who that actor is.
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Take a listen to the voice generated by NotebookLM in the video below (it runs for about eight seconds) and then listen to David Greene’s voice in the video below that, and see what you think.
NotebookLM :
David Greene:
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Greene’s case is the latest to highlight how AI is steadily upending the creative industries, and at the same time upsetting many of those working within them.
It also brings to mind a similar case in May 2024 when the actor Scarlett Johansson accused OpenAI of replicating her voice for use as one of ChatGPT’s voices for the chatbot’s voice mode.
Johansson said she had twice declined requests from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to use her voice, and was shocked when the newly released Sky voice sounded “eerily” or “strikingly” similar to hers and that of her AI character in the 2013 movie Her, about a lonely man who falls in love with an advanced AI operating system called Samantha.
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Lawyers representing the actor demanded explanations about how the voice was created. OpenAI responded by removing the voice, claiming that it came from a different professional actress, not Johansson, and insisting that it was never intended to mimic her.
As for Greene, he also has concerns about how Google’s NotebookLM tool — using a voice that sounds very much like his — can be used to spread the kind of conspiracy theories that he would never personally give any credence to, with some listeners possibly believing that he’s doing just that.
Unless some kind of settlement is reached beforehand, it’ll be up to a California court to decide if Google has infringed on Greene’s rights to his voice or likeness.
But then Shambaugh realized their article attributed quotes to him he hadn’t said — that were presumably AI-generated.
Sunday Ars Technica‘s founder/editor-in-chief apologized, admitting their article had indeed contained “fabricated quotations generated by an AI tool” that were then “attributed to a source who did not say them… That this happened at Ars is especially distressing. We have covered the risks of overreliance on AI tools for years, and our written policy reflects those concerns… At this time, this appears to be an isolated incident.”
“Sorry all this is my fault…” the article’s co-author posted later on Bluesky. Ironically, their bio page lists them as the site’s senior AI reporter, and their Bluesky post clarifies that none of the articles at Ars Technica are ever AI-generated.
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Instead, Friday “I decided to try an experimental Claude Code-based AI tool to help me extract relevant verbatim source material. Not to generate the article but to help list structured references I could put in my outline.” But that tool “refused to process” the request, which the Ars author believes was because Shambaugh’s post described harassment. “I pasted the text into ChatGPT to understand why… I inadvertently ended up with a paraphrased version of Shambaugh’s words rather than his actual words… I failed to verify the quotes in my outline notes against the original blog source before including them in my draft.” (Their Bluesky post adds that they were “working from bed with a fever and very little sleep” after being sick with Covid since at least Monday.)
“The irony of an AI reporter being tripped up by AI hallucination is not lost.”
Meanwhile, the AI agent that criticized Shambaugh is still active online, blogging about a pull request that forces it to choose between deleting its criticism of Shambaugh or losing access to OpenRouter’s API.
It also regrets characterizing feedback as “positive” for a proposal to change a repo’s CSS to Comic Sans for accessibility. (The proposals were later accused of being “coordinated trolling”…)
If you’ve been wondering what’s next for Netflix’s Terminator Zero in the time since its first season, we finally have an update, and it’s a bummer. Responding to a fan on social media, showrunner Mattson Tomlin said this weekend that the show has been canceled. Despite being generally well received, Tomlin noted that “at the end of the day not nearly enough people watched it.”
Season one of Terminator Zero was released in August 2024 and focused on the events around Judgment Day — August 29, 1997, as established in Terminator 2 — and its aftermath, jumping forward to 2022, more than two decades into a war between humans and machines. In the post about the show’s cancellation, Tomlin wrote, “I would’ve loved to deliver on the Future War I had planned in season’s 2 and 3, but I’m also very happy with how it feels contained as is.”
Tomlin went on to praise the marketing team in additional replies for “trying to really make the show work,” as well as the hundreds of people who worked on the show. Offering a bit of insight, Tomlin wrote, “Generally speaking, anime audiences skew younger. Terminator audiences skew older. Terminator Zero asked them to meet in the middle, and they didn’t in the way the corporation needed to justify the spend to continue. I’m extremely grateful to the people who have watched it.”
![Heathrow has said passenger numbers were 60% lower in November than before the coronavirus pandemic and there were “high cancellations” among business travellers concerned about being trapped overseas for Christmas as Omicron spreads. The UK’s largest airport said the government’s travel restrictions had dealt a fresh blow to travel confidence and predicted it was likely to take several years for passenger numbers to return to pre-pandemic levels. This week ministers said passengers arriving in the UK would have to take a pre-departure Covid test, as well as a post-flight test, because of fears about the spread of the new variant. “[The] high level of cancellations by business travellers concerned about being trapped overseas because of pre-departure testing shows the potential harm to the economy of travel restrictions,” the airport said in an update. Heathrow said the drop in traveller confidence owing to the new travel restrictions had negated the benefit of reopening the all-important corridor to North America for business and holiday travel last month. Eleven African countries have been added to the government’s red list, requiring travellers to quarantine before reuniting with families. “By allowing Brits to isolate at home, ministers can make sure they are reunited with their loved ones this Christmas,” said John Holland-Kaye, the chief executive of Heathrow. “It would send a strong signal that restrictions on travel will be removed as soon as safely possible to give passengers the confidence to book for 2022, opening up thousands of new jobs for local people at Heathrow. Let’s reunite families for Christmas.” Heathrow said that if the government could safely signal that restrictions would be lifted soon, then employers at Heathrow would have the confidence to hire thousands of staff in anticipation of a boost in business next summer. The airport is expecting a slow start to 2022, finishing next year with about 45 million passengers – just over half of pre-pandemic levels. This week Tui, Europe’s largest package holiday operator, said it expected bookings for next summer to bounce back to 2019 levels. However, Heathrow said on Friday not to expect the aviation industry to recover for several years. “We do not expect that international travel will recover to 2019 levels until at least all travel restrictions (including testing) are removed from all the markets that we serve, at both ends of the route, and there is no risk of new restrictions, such as quarantine, being imposed,” the airport said.](https://wordupnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/shutterstock_1100012546-scaled-400x240.jpg)
![Heathrow has said passenger numbers were 60% lower in November than before the coronavirus pandemic and there were “high cancellations” among business travellers concerned about being trapped overseas for Christmas as Omicron spreads. The UK’s largest airport said the government’s travel restrictions had dealt a fresh blow to travel confidence and predicted it was likely to take several years for passenger numbers to return to pre-pandemic levels. This week ministers said passengers arriving in the UK would have to take a pre-departure Covid test, as well as a post-flight test, because of fears about the spread of the new variant. “[The] high level of cancellations by business travellers concerned about being trapped overseas because of pre-departure testing shows the potential harm to the economy of travel restrictions,” the airport said in an update. Heathrow said the drop in traveller confidence owing to the new travel restrictions had negated the benefit of reopening the all-important corridor to North America for business and holiday travel last month. Eleven African countries have been added to the government’s red list, requiring travellers to quarantine before reuniting with families. “By allowing Brits to isolate at home, ministers can make sure they are reunited with their loved ones this Christmas,” said John Holland-Kaye, the chief executive of Heathrow. “It would send a strong signal that restrictions on travel will be removed as soon as safely possible to give passengers the confidence to book for 2022, opening up thousands of new jobs for local people at Heathrow. Let’s reunite families for Christmas.” Heathrow said that if the government could safely signal that restrictions would be lifted soon, then employers at Heathrow would have the confidence to hire thousands of staff in anticipation of a boost in business next summer. The airport is expecting a slow start to 2022, finishing next year with about 45 million passengers – just over half of pre-pandemic levels. This week Tui, Europe’s largest package holiday operator, said it expected bookings for next summer to bounce back to 2019 levels. However, Heathrow said on Friday not to expect the aviation industry to recover for several years. “We do not expect that international travel will recover to 2019 levels until at least all travel restrictions (including testing) are removed from all the markets that we serve, at both ends of the route, and there is no risk of new restrictions, such as quarantine, being imposed,” the airport said.](https://wordupnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/shutterstock_1100012546-scaled-80x80.jpg)
