My FanCam works after you record, turning a wider group video into a tighter tracking shot around one person.

How to use My FanCam in Samsung Gallery

Samsung

Shoot a wider frame if you plan to use My FanCam

Samsung

Which Samsung phones support My FanCam?

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Upscaling software is getting better all the time, but there are still some caveats to be aware of.

Converting a video to 4K means creating millions of new pixels

Klenger/Getty Images

Professional 4K restorations often return to high-quality original source files

Microgen/Getty Images

Home upscaling uses interpolation or AI to fill in the gaps

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Upscaling a 1080p video to 4K doesn’t automatically improve it

Kateryna Onyshchuk/Getty Images

I’ve tested about a hundred laptops in my time as a reviewer. Seeing brands cram more powerful hardware into a small machine is always fun. Desktops, on the other hand, are a little different. My last experience with desktops was using one inside the computer lab at school. Sure, gamers still love building desktops, but getting all the components together and then trying to piece the puzzle together has never made me see the appeal. Given the huge increase in RAM prices in 2026, however, desktops make more sense than ever. You can configure them how you like and upgrade them later without replacing the entire machine.

If you’re in the market for a desktop for home use but don’t want the hassle of building it yourself, pre-built desktops are the way to go. And Asus has just released its new V500 SFF (V501SV) in India. You get Intel’s Core 5 210H processor, along with expandable 8GB of DDR5 RAM and a 512GB M.2 SSD. At ₹71,990, all of that could make it a decent option for home users and students alike. But should you buy? To answer that question, I’ve been using the V501MV for about two weeks and have made it my home computer.

Design & Hardware

Usually, when reviewing a laptop, there’s a lot to talk about when it comes to design and hardware. But with desktops, there isn’t much. These towers will generally sit beneath your desk, so design isn’t much of a concern. Still, Asus has given it some sweet details. On the front, you get a wood-like panel in a dark brown finish that adds a sophisticated feel. You can also get the V501 in white to match your interiors, and it replaces the wood with a grey mesh. Whichever you go for, the desktop won’t look out of place in most homes. As for the dimensions, the V501 is 12.15 inches tall and 11.59 inches wide. I wouldn’t call it small. It’s more of a medium-sized desktop and did fit well on top of my desk against a 27-inch monitor.

At a time when almost every laptop is removing ports, desktops are the last saving grace. With the V501, you get two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, one USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C port, and a headphone jack, all on the front. At the back, there’s RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet, one HDMI 1.4, one DisplayPort 1.4, four USB 2.0 Type-A ports, and 7.1-channel audio. This should be plenty for most accessories, since I had no problems connecting everything I needed. Beyond that, there’s also a Wi-Fi 6 card and Bluetooth 5.4 support. I do have one problem with this port selection, though. That’s the lack of Thunderbolt ports, which limits your options for high-speed peripherals and external storage.

Keyboard & Mouse

Asus bundles a keyboard and mouse combo in the box to get you started. And that’s about all the praise I can give it. Don’t get me wrong, you can use the included keyboard for work, but it’s not my favorite thing. The keys have decent feedback, but are a little too noisy for my liking. They are also not that tactile, and the build quality is scratchy plastic. I’d recommend getting another decent keyboard for most office work.

The mouse, on the other hand, is okay to use. It’s wired, so latency isn’t an issue, and the tracking was pretty accurate in my experience. The buttons are also decent, and the scroll wheel was good for navigating long web pages and documents. The build quality is the same as the keyboard, but that wasn’t a big problem at all.

Performance

At the heart of the Asus V501 sits Intel’s Core 5 210H processor, which includes eight cores that can boost up to 4.8 GHz. It’s paired with 8GB of DDR5 RAM and a 512GB M.2 PCIe Gen 4 SSD, both of which are expandable. As expected, the everyday performance of the V500 is pretty good. For home use, that is, browsing the web, making presentations, and watching videos, it handled everything perfectly, without any slowdowns or hitches. I was out of the country for a while, so the desktop was my sister’s primary work machine. She’s a student and said the V500 was great for filling out college applications, researching new topics, taking notes, and so on.

Since this is a machine aimed at students, I also installed a few IDEs to test the programming performance. The Asus V501 handled a large Python project in VS Code without any noticeable slowdowns. It can also be used to edit some photos and light videos, but the lack of a dedicated GPU makes editing 4K videos a distant dream. Since this is a review, I also ran a series of benchmarks to test the V500’s raw performance. On Geekbench, it scored 2214 points in the single-core test and 9496 in the multi-core test. In 3DMark TimeSpy, the device reached about 1,150 points. This level of performance should be enough for most household tasks for years to come.

As far as gaming is concerned, you need to set your expectations. The V501 is not a gaming desktop. You don’t get a dedicated GPU, which limits the games you can play. However, it can run esports titles such as Rocket League, Valorant, and CS:GO. I got roughly 60 FPS in Rocket League at medium settings. Valorant delivered a similar experience, regularly hovering around 60 FPS, with 1% lows of around 50 FPS.

Verdict

At ₹71,990 for the unit I tested, the Asus V500 SFF (V501MV) is a competent home desktop solution for parents and students alike. You don’t have to deal with the headache of assembling everything yourself, and you’re getting a capable machine without going too far up the price ladder. The design is unassuming, but I actually like the way it looks on a desk. You get a standard keyboard and mouse combo, and there are plenty of ports. Performance isn’t class-leading, especially with just 8GB of RAM, but it’s still good enough to handle all everyday tasks and some photo/video editing on the side.

Situational Awareness, the AI focused hedge fund that was Wall Street’s fleeting obsession, is having a very bad month.

The company, led by twentysomething OpenAI alum Leopold Aschenbrenner, went all-in on a variety of AI investments and, for a period, enjoyed phenomenal growth. Then, at the end of July, a downturn in AI stocks erased billions of dollars in value at the firm. Now, federal regulators are reportedly probing the company as well.

The New York Times reports that the Securities and Exchange Commission has been subpoenaing banks that did business with the hedge fund. The subpoenas focus on the banks that supervised the fund’s trading and that channeled funding to support it, the outlet says.

The government reportedly warned the banks to “preserve any information” about the hedge fund, though it noted that Situational Awareness has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

Situational Awareness did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment but told the Times that scrutiny of high-profile funds is to be expected, and that it would “cooperate to the fullest extent with any regulatory request.”

The company, which very publicly hitched its wagon to AI’s star, may serve as a cautionary tale about the industry’s supposedly unstoppable trajectory.

It may finally be safe to eat lettuce again after June’s horrifying—and bagged-salad-trust-destroying—cyclospora outbreak. But the summer of ’26’s foodborne illness train rolls on with a new rash of recalls: for salmonella.

The FDA has reported multi-state salmonella bacteria outbreaks tied to jalapeños, granola, dog food, alfalfa sprouts (also featuring E. coli), and something most people probably have in their refrigerator at this very minute: eggs.

Though the eggs being recalled are only from one supplier, Midwest Poultry Services, they were sold under five brand names, including two distributed by one of the country’s largest grocery chains: Kroger and Simple Truth. While this July recall only concerned Kroger stores in Texas, why wait for the next one?

With the advice of two infectious disease experts, I tested what may be the easiest, most universally applicable way to ensure the eggs in your refrigerator are salmonella-free and safe to use—even in raw or near-raw preparations like Hollandaise and pasta carbonara. All it requires is an immersion circulator, a pot of water, and about an hour and a half of your day.

Anova

Sous Vide Precision Cooker 3.0 (1100 Watts)

Are All Eggs at Risk?

Salmonella, which can cause fever and severe diarrhea, is not a new problem for eggs.

In fact, “eggs remain the single food commodity most associated with outbreak illnesses,” says Alan Bulbin, director of infectious disease at Catholic Health’s St. Francis Hospital and Heart Center in Roslyn, New York.

Chickens and other poultry commonly carry Salmonella enteritidis, the bacterium most commonly responsible for salmonellosis in people, which can be transferred to the shell from contact with droppings or even deposited inside the egg itself from an infected chicken’s ovaries.

It’s difficult to tell just by looking if a chicken has salmonella, which is easily transmitted by rodents or wild birds. In fact, at one point, the USDA estimated that 1 out of every 20,000 eggs was thought to be contaminated with salmonella. That means out of the 67 billion eggs produced in the US each year, 3 million eggs could conceivably have dangerous bacteria in or on them. The USDA enacted a 72-page egg safety requirement in 2009 in hopes of eradicating contamination, but clearly, it hasn’t happened.

It’s good practice to always keep your eggs refrigerated at 42 degrees Fahrenheit or less and wash your hands before and after handling. It’s also worth noting that cooking eggs kills salmonella bacteria. As long as your eggs are “cooked thoroughly, with a firm yolk and white,” according to Bulbin, salmonella shouldn’t be a concern.

The Raw Truth

But what if you (like me) have kids who cook for themselves, who you know for a fact will never wash their hands after handling eggs? And more commonly, what if you’re not fully cooking the eggs? Many recipes, from mayonnaise and aiolis to eggnog and royal icing for cookies, call for eggs that will be consumed uncooked. How can you make sure they’re safe to use?

Photograph: Lisa Abelar

While in-shell eggs aren’t pasteurized, all liquid eggs are—the kind in the carton. However, these are just egg whites, not yolks, which means they won’t work for many of the above recipes.

If you want to be certain a whole, raw shell egg is free of bacteria, the only way to ensure this is to pasteurize it, which means heating the egg for a long period of time at 130 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, but not cooking it. Because this is tricky, the vast majority of eggs sold in the US are not pasteurized—if they are, you’ll know it, as they’re more expensive and the carton will indicate as much.

Bitdefender VPN was reliable in my time using it, as well. I didn’t experience any connection drop-outs or periods of unusually slow performance.

These are solid results, though not the best. For example, I saw slightly better speeds (up to 540 Mbps, the same as when not connected to the VPN) while using IVPN with the WireGuard protocol enabled, for example.

Still, Bitdefender is plenty fast, very reliable, and I can’t say I found the gap in performance noticeable outside of in particular testing. I expect that most people will find the data rates provided by Bitdefender VPN to be more than adequate.

Privacy Promises and Compromises

Unlike Mullvad, a privacy-pilled alternative that positions itself as a tool against mass surveillance, Bitdefender VPN focuses more on avoiding geo-restrictions, ads, cookies, tracking, and Wi-Fi sniffing. There’s nothing wrong with that approach, but if you want a service that puts the P in VPN, you should look elsewhere.

Bitdefender’s VPN is provided through a partnership with IPVanish. IPVanish provides the infrastructure, while Bitdefender provides the client software, branding, customer service, and so on. It’s worth mentioning, as IPVanish took a reputation hit back in 2018 when it handed user logs to the US Department of Homeland Security. This occurred in 2016 and happened despite having a no-logs policy.

However, IPVanish ownership has exchanged hands several times since then, and it’s now owned by media company Ziff Davis. IPVanish has undergone a number of successful independent, no-log audits, the most recent of which occurred in 2025. IPVanish also publishes a transparency report showing the volume of requests it has received from law enforcement and the data it has provided in response.

That’s good news, but wrinkles remain. IPVanish is a US company, and US law is pretty strict when it comes to law enforcement demands for data. IPVanish can’t provide what it doesn’t log, but privacy nerds often prefer VPN companies in less draconian jurisdictions.

It’s also unclear how Bitdefender’s service interact with IPVanish’s no-logs policy. Bitdefender obviously retains at least some information about the user, because a Bitdefender account is required to use the VPN, and users have to pay with a credit card. Bitdefender has some customer service information about its no-log policy, but the specific wording means this could be referring to the IPVanish audit.

Whether any of this matters depends on what privacy means to you. If you want an extra layer of network security to ward against trackers and prevent issues on compromised Wi-Fi connections, then Bitdefender VPN will do the job. However, Bitdefender VPN isn’t going to meet your needs if you’re worried about nation-state tracking or want to move across the web in near secrecy.

Conclusion

Bitdefender’s VPN is an easy-to-use service that works best for people with basic expectations for what a VPN should offer. It provides typical features and delivers solid network performance at a competitive price. It’s not the ultimate VPN for privacy and it’s lacking a few features some people will want, like Linux support and a static IP option.

Pricing might push you toward Bitdefender VPN—at least for the first year. The introductory offer of $35 for a year of service is an outstanding value. Just remember to check pricing again before it’s time to renew, as Bitdefender’s pricing after the first year is less enticing.

Pixel 11 Pro owners running the latest Gemini beta might notice a new option in the app’s plus menu. 

The new tool reportedly lets Gemini troubleshoot your smartphone rather than just point you to the right settings menu and list a dozen options.

So what exactly does this new device help tool do?

Tucked into the Gemini app’s plus menu or accessible through the overlay, the new option is called “Device help.” On the Pixel 11 Pro XL I’m currently using, it sits between Guided Learning and Personal Intelligence. It also carries a “Labs” label (similar to Personal Intelligence), indicating that Google is still testing the feature. 

The description below the name reads “Get help with your device,” and that’s exactly what the tool does. With a Device Help Agent, the tool can perform tasks like adjusting system settings for dark theme, brightness, and Do Not Disturb. It can also troubleshoot Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or battery drain, and break down your storage and battery usage.

In addition, the tool can also audit app permissions and walk you through Pixel-specific features and gestures in a step-by-step, easy-to-follow manner. In my opinion, that is a genuinely broad toolkit for something that lives and breathes inside a chat interface. 

Is this actually new tech?

Under the hood, though, the Device help tool doesn’t appear to be entirely new. The functionality reportedly leans on Google’s existing Device Assistance connected app. It’s the same one previously known simply as Utilities, now repackaged behind a conversational Gemini front end rather than a standalone utility.

Regarding who can try the new tool, it is strictly a Pixel 11 Pro thing right now. It is available in the Google app beta version 17.52, and neither the baseline Pixel 11 nor older Pixel phones get it, at least not yet. 

Given the Labs badge, I’d treat this as an early trial rather than a wider rollout. Google has a habit of testing features on one device before releasing it to others, and that’s if the feature works as intended.