A new study finds that home internet speeds routinely fail to match the advertised “up to” speeds of several ISPs. Experts say that numerous issues on the ISP side could be the culprit for slower than advertised speeds. “Most ISPs oversubscribe their connections,” Ritesh Mukherjee, the senior vice president for enterprise networking at Inseego, a 5G networking company, told Lifewire in an email interview. “As a result, every customer in the area does not get the advertised rates during peak usage periods....

A survey by consumer electronics and appliances extended warranty service provider Allstate Protection Plans about people’s attitudes to appliance breakdowns, shared with Lifewire, found that only half of the respondents admit to picking up the manual when they need to learn how to use a certain function in an appliance or troubleshoot an issue. Interestingly, just as many people choose to head to YouTube or Google instead of referring to the user manual....

Take the recent case of a Cleveland man who was on the verge of divorcing his wife but says that his virtual bot girlfriend powered by artificial intelligence saved his marriage. It’s an example of how virtual conversations can lead to real feelings. “Using AI, chatbots are able to detect user sentiment and adjust their responses, accordingly displaying cheerfulness, empathy, or sensitivity as required,” Beerud Sheth, the CEO of Gupshup, a company that makes AI-powered chatbots, told Lifewire in an email interview....

A security researcher, Felix Krause, has shown that Meta’s Instagram and Facebook apps on iOS add some JavaScript code to third-party websites when you visit them using the app’s custom in-app browser. In-app browsers allow people to visit websites without leaving their apps. The inserted code allows the apps to potentially track all your interactions with external websites, bypassing iOS’ App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature. Apple added ATT specifically to force app developers to get people’s consent before tracking data generated by third parties....

A new study shows that social media sites have a huge carbon footprint. Few of us think about the hidden costs of “free” internet services, but their data centers require vast amounts of energy to run and to cool. Electricity is such a significant cost that server farm locations are often chosen based on its local cost, near relatively cheap hydroelectric plants, for example. “From an engineering standpoint, a data center can switch to renewable power even if it did not figure in the center’s original design,” Ari Bernstein, founder of a carbon capture company, told Lifewire via email....

A team of Australian researchers has created semi-transparent solar cells which they fathom could one day allow skyscrapers to generate their own power. The transparent solar cells are made from perovskite cells, which are often hailed as the future of solar cells. “This work provides a major step forward towards realizing high efficiency and stable perovskite devices that can be deployed as solar windows to fulfill what is a largely untapped market opportunity,” Professor Jacek Jasieniak from the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at Monash University, said in a university press release....

A new system called MCUNet allows the design of tiny neural networks on IoT devices, even with limited memory and processing power. According to a paper by MIT scientists published on the preprint server Arxiv, the technology could bring new capabilities to smart devices while saving energy and improving data security. The research “is one of those brilliant ideas that seems obvious when you hear it,” John Suit, advising CTO at robotics company KODA, said in an email interview....

It’s an experimental Japanese RPG that originally debuted in 1998, back on the first PlayStation. Despite being glitchy and distinctly unfinished in its original edition, Frontier became a hit in Japan and a cult classic everywhere else. It’s traditionally been divisive; you either love it or hate it. For its 2021 remaster, Square Enix has fixed much of what was broken about the original game, aside from a few fan-favorite bugs, and added a new playable character who was edited out of the original release....

There are other great uses for these tools, too, like providing data on the type of RAM you have so you buy the right upgrade or replacement, creating a list of hardware when selling a computer, keeping tabs on the temperature of your important components, and lots more. A summary page gives you brief, but very helpful information on things like the operating system, memory, graphics, and storage devices. A more detailed look at each category is organized in their respective sections....

In testing 360 Total Security, we found that it also includes a computer maintenance suite that does an excellent job of helping your computer run more efficiently. However, the antivirus application itself doesn’t perform as well as the free versions of those applications. What it does do well, however, is work with other antivirus applications. And the paid version of 360 Total Security includes some premium features you might not find, even with other paid antivirus subscriptions....

Love it or hate it, online dating is here to stay. In this article, we focus on online dating red flags you shouldn’t ignore in your quest for the perfect date. Not Everyone is Really Looking For Love Be aware, there are scammers out there. They take advantage of folks who are looking for love and will try to lure them away from dating sites and over to phishing sites and other nefarious enterprises....

Most suggestions involve upgrades such as a new head unit, premium speakers, or a subwoofer, but others focus on improving the acoustics in your car primarily by removing as much external interference as possible. Here are five of the best ways to improve the quality of the audio in your car. The fix: Install aftermarket features that meet the same dimensions and play nicely with your existing head unit. The easiest way to hear at least some improvement in car audio quality is to replace the factory speakers with higher-quality aftermarket units....

The vulnerability, recorded as CVE-2022-38392, points to the music video of Janet Jackson’s 1989 classic Rhythm Nation as bringing down a specific model of hard disks. Yet, the MITRE Corporation, which helps identify and categorize vulnerabilities in software, only recently decided to list it as an issue. Although the bug isn’t new, it came into the limelight after Microsoft principal software engineer Raymond Chen blogged about it recently. “While new systems are coming out with SSDs, older hardware and software has a way of staying around well past its prime,” Chris Goettl, VP of Product Management for security products at Ivanti, told Lifewire over email....

Acer’s ChromeBox CX13 is one of the smaller desktop computers available, but it still packs a punch in spite of its shrunken size. It comes in several configurations, with prices ranging from $280 all the way up to $900. For this review, I tested the Acer ChromeBox CX13-i38GKM2, a mid-tier model that sells for around $500. Design: Fits in your hand The CX13 is designed to disappear into its surroundings, promoting space savings and emphasis on the more tactile peripherals....

What Is an ACV File? A file with the ACV file extension is a Curves file that Adobe Photoshop uses to store custom RGB colors that have been adjusted with its built-in Curves tool. Photoshop comes installed with ACV files, stored in the program’s installation folder. You can also make your own custom ACV files or download them from the internet, and then use the Curves tool to import them into the program....

CCE is Adobe’s answer to the burgeoning category of single-serve design apps. These cheap and often free apps make it easy to create party invites, flyers, posters, or any other visual materials. They give you templates, so you don’t have to start with a blank canvas, and offer a stripped-down feature set so you can quickly achieve what you need to do. Creative Cloud Express is exactly that, only made by Adobe....

Voyager Labs is reportedly collecting social media information to create profiles that can be used to identify people who pose security risks. It’s part of a growing effort to use artificial intelligence (AI) to investigate potential criminals. But some experts say that the movement is rife with potential problems. “It’s very hard to predict human behavior,” Matthew Carr, a security researcher at Atumcell Group, told Lifewire in an email interview....

The WordPerfect word processor software uses AST files as template files, but this program is more commonly associated with WordPerfect Template files (.WPT). Another use for AST files might be for Adobe Color Separations Table files used by a few Adobe products for exporting data to the PDF format or to a different program. It looks to be an obsolete format but you can read a little more information on it in the Adobe Photoshop File Formats Specification....

Published by Comsec, a security research group from the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at ETH Zürich, the paper describes a “Rowhammer” attack that slams memory with junk data to trigger a bit flip. Comsec’s new twist on this attack, Blacksmith, can bypass protections used by DDR4 memory to guard against such attacks. “All devices that feature DRAM are likely vulnerable,” Kaveh Razavi, an assistant professor at ETH Zürich and leader of Comsec, told Lifewire in an email....

Factors to Consider Fears about losing steering wheel controls when upgrading a car stereo are largely unfounded, but this type of upgrade is more complex than most. While it is possible to implement aftermarket steering wheel audio controls with your original equipment manufacturer (OEM) hardware, it isn’t a given that any new head unit you buy will work with your steering wheel controls. In addition to buying a compatible head unit replacement, a typical installation scenario also involves the purchase and installation of the right type of steering wheel audio control adapter to facilitate communication between your factory controls and your aftermarket head unit....