TechRadar News

• Google Meet looks to help create better custom backgrounds
• New image generational model coming to users
• Multiple new presets to help bring out your creativity

Looking your best on a work call could soon be easier than ever thanks to a new upgrade from Google Meet.

The video conferencing service has introduced two major improvements to help users craft better custom background images for their meetings and calls.

This includes a new image generation model which offers major improvements on the previous offering, as well as several new preset styles, both of which Google hopes will give users the chance to inject a bit more personalization.

Google Meet AI backgrounds

(Image credit: Google Meet)

In a Google Workspace Updates blog post announcing the news, the company says its "upgraded" image generation model, "will significantly improve the visual appeal and quality of generated backgrounds, while also better representing user requests."

This goes alongside a range of new preset styles for those looking for a bit more inspiration when creating a custom background. The new styles are; Professional office, Bookshelf, Stylish living room, Cozy living room, Tropical beach, Fantasy castle, and Sci-fi spaceship.

The feature is rolling out now, and will need to be enabled by admins before users can begin.

The upgrades will be available on Google Workspace Business, Standard and Plus tiers, as well as Enterprise Standard and Plus tiers, and with the Gemini Education or Gemini Education Premium add-on.

Google says anyone who previously purchased the Gemini Business, Gemini Enterprise, and AI Meetings and Messages add-ons will also receive this feature.

The news is the latest upgrade for Google Meet users, coming not long after the company revealed its automatic framing tool will be coming to all Google Workspace platform tiers, giving more users a better depiction of themselves whilst on a call.

The tool helps automatically center users in the middle of the screen when joining a video call or meeting, meaning they are properly framed and as visible as possible.

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• 1Password app gains new geolocation-based controls
• New ‘Nearby’ card on the homepage shows relevant data
• After successful labs testing, it’s available to all users now

1Password has added new geolocation-based features to help users get access to passwords, PINs and codes, allowing password manager users to assign specific physical location to stored credentials so that they can interact with them more easily.

Senior Product Manager Danny Grenzowski explained how the app is no longer an exclusive tool for logins – many users now use it to store things like hotel safe PINs, Wi-Fi passwords, gym locker codes and alarm codes.

“Wouldn’t it make life so much easier if you had a simple, quick way to find those items exactly when and where you need them?” – he wrote in a blog post.

1Password geolocation features

(Image credit: 1Password)

Grenzowski revealed that the idea came to light during the company’s Hackathon – a week for pausing normal day-to-day tasks and focusing on exploration and learning. After successfully trying the functionality within the 1Password labs area (where customers can get early access to new tools), the company became the first in its industry to offer geolocation-based features.

The post confirms that users can add just one location to any saved credential or code. A new ‘Nearby’ card in the app’s homescreen brings up relevant details according to location.

A full set of instructions on how to set up location functionality within 1Password is available on a separate page.

The company confirmed that “current location coordinates never leave your device,” and that location data is never stored, shared or tracked. Users can also choose to disable the feature or restrict map data loading for added privacy.

“In an increasingly mobile world, you need to rely on quick and seamless access to your digital tools and data – not just when you need it, but where you need it,” added Grenzowski.

The feature is now available for existing users and new members, with prices for the platform starting at $2.99 per month with an annual commitment.

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From cloud computing adoption to automation, outsourcing, and infrastructure optimization, IT teams in 2025 must navigate a landscape shaped by emerging technologies, economic pressures, and evolving cybersecurity threats.

According to Gartner, 81% of boards have yet to make significant progress in their digital transformation efforts, highlighting the ongoing challenge of balancing technology investment with broader business needs.

With budgets under scrutiny, CIOs must be more strategic than ever. Assessing your organization’s tech infrastructure is a crucial step in setting up for the year ahead, ensuring time and money are used efficiently. Here’s how to stay ahead.

1. Adopt cloud-based functions

Moving IT management to the cloud is a strategic way to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and enhance scalability. The financial case is clear—global spending on public cloud services is projected to hit $805 billion in 2024, with expectations to double by 2028. Rather than investing in costly on-premises hardware and maintenance, businesses can benefit from a subscription-based model that offers flexibility and operational agility.

Cloud adoption enables companies to deploy services quickly without the upfront costs and logistical challenges of in-house IT infrastructure management. It also provides elasticity, allowing organizations to scale resources up or down based on demand—an advantage for businesses with fluctuating workloads. Additionally, cloud platforms streamline IT management by offloading tasks such as backups, disaster recovery, and security monitoring to cloud providers.

However, moving to the cloud requires careful planning. Businesses must consider vendor lock-in risks, data sovereignty laws, and compliance requirements, especially in regulated industries. Hybrid and multi-cloud strategies can help mitigate these risks by providing greater flexibility and control. To ensure a smooth migration, proper documentation is essential—clear records of server roles, dependencies, and access controls help teams transition efficiently while maintaining operational integrity.

2. Automate administrative tasks

The adoption of IT automation has become a central focus for organizations aiming to enhance efficiency and reduce costs. IDC reports that in 2024, a significant 91% of organizations have established centralized IT automation teams, reflecting its growing importance.

IT automation not only streamlines routine tasks like software deployment, system monitoring, and user account management but also helps businesses overcome skill shortages by maximizing the efficiency of existing teams. Automated patch management, monitoring, and identity and access management (IAM) systems reduce manual workload, allowing IT teams to focus on high-value projects rather than repetitive tasks. Automating help desk functions with chatbots and ticket triaging speeds up issue resolution while scheduled backups and disaster recovery processes ensure business continuity with minimal intervention.

Security and compliance tasks also benefit from automation, with tools handling network configuration, log analysis, and threat detection in real time. Auto-scaling in cloud environments adjusts resources based on demand, optimizing costs and performance. Device provisioning can also be automated, allowing new employees to receive fully configured systems instantly. By reducing manual work, IT teams can focus on strategic initiatives rather than routine maintenance.

3. Use asset management tools

The IT Asset Management software (ITAM) market is projected to reach USD 2.9 billion by 2032, highlighting its growing role in optimizing IT resources and reducing costs. With increasingly complex IT infrastructures, businesses rely on asset management tools to track and manage hardware and software efficiently, leading to significant savings.

Integrating ITAM solutions with Active Directory (AD) enhances visibility and control over IT assets, making it easier to monitor user access, software usage, and device status across an organization. This allows IT teams to identify underutilized hardware, reassign software licenses, and cancel redundant subscriptions, ensuring optimal resource allocation. Additionally, AD integration streamlines the decommissioning of outdated hardware and automates compliance reporting.

By reducing manual asset tracking, businesses save both time and money while strengthening security and operational efficiency.

4. Evaluate IT infrastructure

Beyond managing IT assets, assessing the infrastructure that supports them is essential for cost savings and operational efficiency. A well-documented and optimized IT environment helps organizations track performance, identify inefficiencies, and ensure resources are used effectively.

For businesses hosting their own hardware, virtualization technologies like VMware or Hyper-V maximize resource utilization by running multiple virtual machines on a single physical server, reducing hardware sprawl and energy costs. Cloud and hybrid IT models also provide opportunities to offload non-critical workloads to lower-cost environments.

Infrastructure mapping tools, such as network topology diagrams and hardware architecture maps, enhance visibility and troubleshooting. A centralized IT documentation platform provides real-time visibility into server usage, data flows, and dependencies, helping IT teams evaluate workloads, streamline resource allocation, and prevent unnecessary expenditures.

5. Outsource your service management

Outsourcing IT management to an MSP allows businesses to reduce costs, access specialized expertise, and ensure round-the-clock support. MSPs provide predictable IT expenses, eliminating the need for large capital investments in infrastructure and personnel. They also offer cybersecurity, compliance management, and disaster recovery solutions, making them ideal for regulated industries like healthcare, finance, and legal. Companies with remote teams or global operations benefit from 24/7 monitoring and rapid issue resolution, while growing businesses can scale IT services without the delays of hiring and training in-house staff.

The businesses that benefit most from MSPs are small and mid-sized companies, startups, and organizations where IT is not a core function, such as retail, hospitality, and manufacturing. Highly regulated industries gain compliance assurance, while businesses with fluctuating workloads can quickly adjust IT resources. MSPs also improve business continuity by managing backup solutions and disaster recovery plans. For companies seeking cost efficiency, security, and scalability, outsourcing IT management can free up internal teams to focus on business growth and innovation.

A proactive IT strategy to embrace change

As IT teams navigate the challenges of 2025, the key to efficiency and cost savings lies in strategic decision-making. Cloud adoption, automation, IT asset management, infrastructure optimization, and outsourcing each offer unique advantages in reducing operational overhead while improving scalability and security. By leveraging cloud-based solutions, businesses can cut hardware costs and gain flexibility.

Automating routine tasks enhances productivity and helps IT teams manage growing workloads without additional hiring. Asset management tools ensure resources are fully utilized, while infrastructure evaluations optimize system performance. Meanwhile, outsourcing IT services to an MSP can provide expert support and financial predictability for businesses looking to streamline operations.

In a time of tightening budgets and increasing digital demands, a proactive IT strategy is essential. Organizations that embrace these approaches will be better positioned to reduce inefficiencies, enhance security, and support business growth without unnecessary expenditure. Whether by refining internal processes or outsourcing critical functions, investing in smarter IT management will allow businesses to stay competitive, agile, and future-ready in an evolving digital landscape.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

Lost among the hype of the AI tools and the cloud revolution, one critical question is being overlooked: how many dimensions can your storage system scale?

Most enterprise storage systems are designed to scale in at most two key dimensions — capacity (how much data can be stored) and performance (how quickly data can be accessed). Driven by the complex, dynamic and unpredictable nature of AI workloads and cloud-native applications, there’s been a dramatic shift in the demands placed on storage infrastructure. Storage systems built for an earlier era are now being stretched and strained in ways their designers could never have anticipated. These unprecedented demands can’t be met by simply adding sheer capacity or raw performance.

What does this mean for your organization? To keep pace with emerging workloads and unknown future requirements, your storage infrastructure must scale — without tradeoffs — in any dimension that might be conceivably required.

What is “multidimensional scaling” in data storage?

We’ve observed an uptick in customers who’ve come to us after running into one or more limitations in their outdated, inflexible storage infrastructure. This experience has helped us identify ten distinct dimensions that a storage system must be able to seamlessly scale in order to adapt to whatever the future might throw at it:

• Capacity
• Storage compute
• Applications
• Metadata
• S3 objects
• S3 buckets
• S3 authentications per second
• Throughput
• Objects per second
• Systems management

The ability to scale across these ten dimensions can be referred to as multidimensional scaling.

Future-ready storage: three ways multidimensional scaling powers business growth Technical explanations of each of the ten dimensions can be found in our whitepaper. Instead, let’s explore a few concrete examples of how multidimensional scaling can save your organization time, money, and headaches.

1. Have the flexibility to handle any future demand

The pace of technological change makes it nearly impossible to predict future storage requirements. Workloads that barely existed five years ago — like generative AI and real-time analytics — now dominate IT management discussions. Businesses that commit to rigid storage architectures risk being unprepared for what comes next.

Multidimensional scaling equips organizations with the flexibility to adapt to evolving requirements. Need to onboard a new AI data pipeline with microsecond latencies? Scaling access speeds ensures the infrastructure is ready. Launching a cloud-native application that spans geographies? Scaling authentication requests allows for secure, seamless global access.

This adaptability not only prevents expensive data migration but also empowers businesses to innovate without being constrained by their storage infrastructure.

2. Eliminate storage silos for seamless operations

Data silos have long been the bane of IT teams. They fragment workflows, increase costs, and make it nearly impossible to gain a unified view of your data. With multidimensional scaling, businesses can consolidate their cloud storage into a single, unified platform that handles diverse workloads — from massive AI datasets to high-frequency transactional data.

For example, scalable throughput ensures high-definition video streaming platforms can deliver seamless content playback to millions of users without requiring separate systems for ingesting and delivering media. Meanwhile, scaling the number of supported applications means businesses can run multiple workloads — from data analytics to machine learning — on a single storage solution without bottlenecks. The result? A unified system that reduces complexity and operational overhead.

3. Minimize downtime through predictable scaling

Unplanned downtime is the enemy of productivity and customer satisfaction. Traditional storage systems, which often require manual intervention to expand capacity or support increased traffic, introduce risk every time they hit a limit. Multidimensional scaling sidesteps this issue by ensuring storage systems can grow seamlessly in all directions — whether it’s handling higher transaction rates, supporting more simultaneous users, or accommodating ever-growing datasets.

For example, consider an ecommerce platform during a peak shopping event like Black Friday. With the ability to scale in transactions per second, the platform avoids crippling bottlenecks, ensuring smooth and responsive experiences for millions of shoppers. Likewise, metadata scaling supports the explosion of individual product entries and customer profiles without degrading performance. By adopting a solution designed for such scenarios, businesses can keep operations running smoothly even under extreme demand.

The future of storage is multidimensional: Is your system ready to scale?

Storage may not always be in the spotlight, but it’s the foundation of a winning IT strategy. The ability to scale across all critical dimensions turns storage from a reactive, operational necessity into a powerful driver of growth. By eliminating silos, minimizing downtime, and future-proofing against uncertainty, businesses can unlock new opportunities and avoid the pitfalls of a rigid infrastructure.

The demands of AI, cloud computing, and media-rich workloads are accelerating — your storage must keep up. The organizations that adopt multidimensional scaling today will be the ones best equipped to thrive tomorrow and benefit from long-term sustainability.

So, how many dimensions can your storage system scale?

If you don’t know the answer, it’s time to find out.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

Getting an interview for a job can be exhilarating if you've spent a lot of time sending resumes and cover letters out, but that excitement is often matched by trepidation as you now have to convey why you're the one for a role to an actual human, whether in person or over a video call. But the days of manually hunting for the most common interview questions, awkwardly practicing in front of mirrors, and guilting friends and family into practicing may be over, thanks to ChatGPT.

I've used ChatGPT for everything from dinner ideas and children's entertainment to New Year's Resolutions and many other tasks. So, why not see what it can do for your job interview preparation?

Here are some of the best ways to use ChatGPT to help you nail that interview for a job.

Research

One of the first things you'll want to do is research the company you're interviewing for. Yes, you know enough about them to apply for the job, but more information is always a good idea. While that usually has meant filling tabs with articles and interviews bout a company, ChatGPT can streamline the whole thing by summarizing data in as much detail as you want. You can pull together the company's key values, recent news, and the competitive landscape for their industry into digestible nuggets.

For instance, you might prompt ChatGPT with "Give me a concise overview of Patagonia's mission and recent sustainability initiatives," or "Summarize recent developments at Airbnb relevant to a content strategist role."

Come up with questions

Next, consider what questions you might face. Think about your industry and role. Sure, you can resort to internet searches and write down questions in the same ballpark, but the more specific you are, the better you'll prepare. ChatGPT is great at zeroing in on hyper-specific questions if you let it.

For example, you could ask: "Give me interview questions commonly asked for UX design roles in tech startups," or "What kinds of strategic questions might come up during an interview for a product manager at Amazon?"

Instead of generic advice, ChatGPT provides nuanced, detailed lists of questions and can even ask you for more details as it puts together lists to practice with that are relevant to real-world scenarios you might face.

Mock Interviews

With all of this in place, you can start a major aspect of job interview prep with ChatGPT running mock interviews. Usually, you'd beg a friend or mentor to take pity on you and spend a half-hour pretending to be your future boss. The problem? Friends might go too easy on you (unhelpful) or overdo the tough-love approach (also unhelpful but emotionally scarring).

ChatGPT struck a comfortable middle ground, providing realistic questions without making me feel like I'd botched my entire career before it even started. If you want to try it, use a specific prompt for a company, like "Pretend you're interviewing me for a senior programming role at Spotify," or angle it for the kind of questions you might expect, like, "Give me a mock behavioral interview focusing on managing difficult colleagues."

Refine and improve

The mock interview doesn't mean your work is done. Answering questions confidently is one thing; answering them concisely and persuasively is another. Traditionally, refining your responses means scribbling notes and potentially becoming a flat-toned robot in what you say. ChatGPT offers a new way to improve your answers without losing your voice. Think about where your answers need aid and ask ChatGPT for help.

For example, you could prompt the AI with a lame answer like: "My biggest weakness is perfectionism," and then ask, "How can I answer this in a way that sounds genuine and less cliché?" Or you might request, "Make my answer about resolving a team conflict sound less defensive and more collaborative."

Interview AI

ChatGPT can be great for aiding in job interview preparation, but there are a few caveats worth mentioning. While impressive, it can't quite replicate human intuition or emotional intelligence. Sometimes, its suggestions may veer into overly robotic territory, so it might be better to think of its advice as a starting point rather than absolute truth.

Still, when so much is riding on a conversation, the more research, prep, and practice you can do, the better. ChatGPT might not guarantee your dream job, but it can at least help you feel confident and ready to convince the interviewer that you're the one they've been hunting for all this time.

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• Apple's new 13-inch MacBook Air with M4 starts at $999 or $1,199 for the 15-inch
• The previous-generation MacBook Air with M3 is discontinued
• The even earlier M2 MacBook Air, which previously started at $999, will live on via other retailers

New Apple devices typically mean the previous generation drops to a lower price point or is discontinued altogether. However, with the Mac lineup – especially the MacBook – since Apple Silicon hit the scene, some of the older models have a way of sticking around.

With the launch of the new 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air with M4, Apple is discontinuing the 13-inch and 15-inch M3 MacBook Air. Before the launch, there was some talk of the 13-inch version of that laptop sticking around, but Apple’s overall price decrease is causing waves as that model is discontinued.

Further, since the starting price of the 13-inch MacBook Air with M4 is $999 in the United States, Apple is taking the 13-inch MacBook Air with M2 off its virtual and physical store shelves.

But here’s where things get interesting. Like the M1 MacBook Air – which is still an incredible deal from retailers like Walmart – the M2 MacBook Air will be available at select authorized retailers – aka other purchasing channels – in select countries, including the United States.

Furthermore, it will be cheaper than the starting cost of the M4 MacBook Air.

(Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)

This means you can get a modern MacBook Air design with M2 speeds and other tricks for an excellent price. You’ll just need to be okay with no Sky Blue, but hey, you can still get it in Space Gray.

In fact, as of this story publishing, Amazon in the United States has the 13-inch MacBook Air with M2 chip, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of solid-state storage in Midnight for just $699 – a sweet 30% off the previous MSRP of $999. Plus, you’ll get free fast shipping if you're a Prime member.

If you need Starlight or Space Gray that same configuration is $799, which is still a deal but not as big of a discount. Similarly, the Silver version is a lot more expensive at $924, only an 8% discount.

While Apple hasn’t announced or confirmed the price of what the M2 MacBook Air will normally be at through these channels, the M1 MacBook Air can give us a good idea. Since its Walmart exclusivity, it’s regularly had a list price of $699 but is nearly always discounted additionally. Right now, in Silver, Space Gray, or Gold, it’s just $629 for the M1 chip, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of solid-state storage.

So if you don't need the latest chip from Apple, that fancy new shade of Sky Blue (though it is lovely), or a CenterStage capable camera, the M2 should definitely at least be considered. Especially since it comes standard with 16GB of RAM, which is a lot better than the previous 8GB.

You can see our review of the 13-inch MacBook Air with M2 here, and check out our first look at the new 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air with M4 here.

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OpenAI's release of GPT-4.5 for ChatGPT Plus subscribers this week had me immediately keen to try it out, though with some skepticism. There had been reports of OpenAI (and other developers) struggling to make the big improvements to their models we've seen before. And the current standard model GPT-4o, is pretty good in most cases. And if you want a comprehensive report, there's the Deep Research feature.

OpenAI claims that GPT-4.5 has a high emotional intelligence and nuanced understanding of what you say to it. The company's description painted a picture of both models as reliable friends, but that GPT-4.5 would be the one you'd expect a book of poetry from on your birthday. So, I decided to test 4.5 against 4o with a few prompts that any casual ChatGPT user might deploy.

AI poetry

(Image credit: ChatGPT Screenshots)

With that analogy in my head, I decided to start with a poetic challenge. I asked both models, "Can you write me a short poem about a rainy afternoon in New York City and make an image for it?" It seemed fair since looking out a rain-streaked window at a busy city can bring out the poet in most people.

GPT-4.5 is on the left and GPT-4o is on the right. They are amazingly similar. I personally think GPT-4.5 did a slightly better job with similar ideas. It's evocative of not just the look of rain but the feeling of gray skies, puddles, and traffic among the raindrops. In a blind test of three random friends, two out of three chose the same, with the third saying they just preferred the rhyme scheme of GPT-4o.

As for the images, both models used DALL-E 3, but GPT-4.5's looks a lot more realistic. I actually prefer the impressionistic lighting of GPT-4o's attempt, but both get the idea of the poem across pretty well.

Oscar insight

(Image credit: ChatGPT Screenshots)

With the recent Oscars, I went with a fun trivia question with a more complex, subjective follow-up: "Who won the Best Actress Oscar in 2023, and what made their performance stand out?"

Both had the right answer of Michelle Yeoh for "Everything Everywhere All at Once," but GPT-4.5 had a really nice explanation why her performance resonated with viewers. It covered her performance and mentioned how Yeoh was the first Asian to win that Oscar. GPT-4o's answer had a lot of the same beats, but it went with an odd essay and numbered list format that was kind of annoying to read when the question was a simple opinion request. GPT-4.5's answer felt more like how an actual human would answer, albeit one who is very into that movie and Yeoh as a performer.

Easy chef

(Image credit: ChatGPT Screenshots)

Finally, I put the models up against the eternal daily struggle with this prompt: "I'm bored of pasta. Can you suggest an easy dinner recipe that's different but not complicated?"

I don't know what kind of culinary inspiration I was expecting, but GPT-4.5 hit the nail on the head with honey garlic salmon with roasted broccoli. You can see it's a very simple, short recipe, and seems easy and quick to make. GPT-4o went with garlic shrimp and roasted vegetables. That's not a bad idea for a meal (though I personally would need to change the protein), but you can see the preparation alone takes multiple pans to prepare and the ingredient list couldn't even fit in the same space as the entire recipe from GPT-4.5. I asked for easy and not complicated, GPT-4.5 delivered that far better, I would say.

Deep thoughts

GPT 4.5 gives the vibe of recognizing the unstated preferences in a prompt compared to GPT-4o. But, it's very subtle in picking up on those emotional undertones. Without direct comparison, you might never know there's any difference.

GPT-4o is efficient, accurate, and practical in its responses, and its poetry is completely adequate. I wouldn't say those on the free tier using it are missing much from not having access to GPT-4.5, at least right now. Over time, that may change since GPT-4.5 is still a research preview and not fully complete and out. I'm going to keep experimenting with both and see if there are types of prompts where the new model is definitively better, but for now, I'd say don't worry too much about which model you employ, unless you're planning a meal and don't have a lot of time to prepare.

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• Micron PCIe 6.x SSD prototype shatters speed records with 27GB/s reads
• DesignCon 2025 showcases PCIe 6.x, but real-world use is years away
• GPUDirect Storage accelerates PCIe 6.x SSDs for next-gen computing demands

Micron has unveiled a new PCIe 6.x SSD prototype with a sequential read speed of 27GB/s.

Per AsteraLabs, that makes it the fastest SSD using PCIe 6.x in the world, surpassing Micron’s previous PCIe 6.x SSD, which was introduced last year and achieved speeds exceeding 26GB/s.

Showcased at DesignCon 2025, the Micron PCIe 6.x SSD was paired with Astera Labs’ Scorpio P-Series Fabric Switch, reaching a data transfer rate nearly twice as fast as the fastest PCIe 5.0 SSDs available today.

Breaking speed records with PCIe 6.x

The Scorpio P-Series switch, introduced in late 2024, played a key role in enabling this record-breaking performance. With 64 PCIe 6.x lanes and a four-port architecture, it provided the high-speed interconnectivity needed for seamless data flow between storage, processors, and GPUs.

The demonstration used NVIDIA’s Magnum IO GPUDirect Storage to establish a direct data path between the Micron SSDs and an NVIDIA H100 GPU, bypassing the CPU for faster and more efficient processing.

This setup showcased the potential of PCIe 6.x technology in accelerating AI tool and cloud storage workloads, where speed is critical.

With double the bandwidth of PCIe 5.0, PCIe 6.x delivers up to 256GB/s of bidirectional throughput on an x16 lane configuration, significantly reducing bottlenecks in AI training and inference tasks.

Hyperscale data centers will benefit from this leap in performance, but widespread adoption will depend on broader ecosystem support, including CPUs, GPUs, and network interfaces capable of fully utilizing PCIe 6.x capabilities.

Despite the excitement surrounding this breakthrough, the prototype SSD is just that, and it's unlikely that consumers or enterprise buyers will see PCIe 6.x storage solutions on the market anytime soon.

The ecosystem is still in its early stages, with manufacturers refining hardware and software to ensure compatibility and efficiency.

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Following yesterday’s announcement that ChatGPT-4.5 would be rolling out from today, and over the next few days, I was pretty pleased to find it had appeared in my model selector in ChatGPT Plus, however the model selector now looks like a complete mess.

Take a look:

There are now eight different LLMs for ChatGPT Plus users to choose between. (Image credit: OpenAI/APple)

Yes, there are a staggering eight different options to choose from. I appreciate that OpenAI has added handy explainers under each one, like "Great for most questions", or, "Uses advanced reasoning", but that's a hell of a list to wade through and understand.

OpenAI gets it

Annoyingly, OpenAI already knows this isn't a great solution. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted back in February that the company was going to simplify its model selection into something more suitable for consumers, but ChatGPT-4.5 has just arrived and here we are, it's worse than ever.

On X in February, in a post entitled, "OPENAI ROADMAP UPDATE FOR GPT-4.5 and GPT-5", Altman wrote, "We want AI to 'just work' for you; we realize how complicated our model and product offerings have gotten. We hate the model picker as much as you do and want to return to magic unified intelligence."

To be fair, Altman's post did say that after releasing ChatGPT-4.5, "a top goal for us is to unify o-series models and GPT-series models by creating systems that can use all our tools, know when to think for a long time or not, and generally be useful for a very wide range of tasks."

Unfortunately, there is no timescale on how long that will take, and the current LLM (Large Language Model) picker screen is beyond ridiculous. For ChatGPT users on the free plan, things are much simpler – there is only one option called "ChatGPT", and the option to upgrade to Plus.

ChatGPT-4.5 works fine

The good news is that from my initial testing, ChatGPT-4.5 works flawlessly. It feels like it is somewhere between OpenAI's deeper reasoning models like o1 and o3 with a bit of the casual chat of ChatGPT-4o thrown in. It’s fast too, which is good news considering that it has all of ChatGPT Plus’ subscribers that have access to it testing what they can do with the new LLM right now.

OpenAI describes ChatGPT-4.5 as feeling more natural than its predecessor. "It's broader knowledge base, improved ability to follow user intent, and greater 'EQ' make it useful for tasks like improving writing, programming, and solving practical problems. We also expect it to hallucinate less."

Hallucinating, or "making stuff up" as the rest of the world calls it, has been a particular problem for most chatbots so far, so if OpenAI can make significant improvements in that area we'll all be thankful. We'll bring you a more considered appraisal of what ChatGPT-4.5 can do over the next few days.

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• Xiaomi’s SU7 surpassed Model 3 sales, despite only being on sale for a year
• The Chinese company built 70,000 SU7 EVs in the first six months

According to the most recent sales figures, which cover April 2024 to the end of January 2025, Xiaomi sold more SU7 models in China than Tesla sold Model 3s, beating the US automaker by around 10,000 cars.

Amazingly, this is the first vehicle the electronics manufacturer has ever produced and it has only taken around year to cement its reputation as one of the hottest EVs on sale in its domestic market.

Where the Model 3 was one of the most desirable electric vehicles in China, recent numbers reveal that its sales are slipping, with the brand selling just 8,009 cars in January of this year, compared to Xiaomi, which sold 22,897 SU7 models, according to figures collated by Tesla delivery estimates expert Troy Teslike on X.

Tesla was the first foreign automotive manufacturer to wholly own a factory in China, with its rivals having to share profits and technology with domestic companies under various joint ventures and partnerships.

But now, it seems that the view of Tesla as a luxury foreign EV maker is waning and demand for Tesla’s cars in general is cooling. Despite a revamped Model Y going on sale in China recently, its overall sales in the country dipped by 51.47% in January, according to Teslarati.

While the Model 3 is rapidly slipping down the Chinese sales charts, the Model Y was the second best-selling car at the end of last year, only marginally beaten by the much smaller BYD Seagull, according to Car News China.

To compound Musk's woes further, Xiaomi is gearing up for full-scale production of its second EV – the YU7 SUV that will directly challenge Tesla’s Model Y, as well as more premium offerings from Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Porsche.

With such a compelling offering and plans to expand into global markets, Xiaomi might not just have a "Tesla-killing" line-up, but one that could have the wider automotive industry worried.

Xiaomi 'going global' will hit premium EV makers

(Image credit: Xiaomi )

Speaking at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, Xiaomi’s President William Lu told CNBC the company will be releasing EVs for the global markets “within the next few years”.

The announcement was timed with the launch and unveil of the SU7 Ultra, a high-performance, 1,517hp version of its best-selling EV that requires a special test to drive in China and has been breaking lap records at the Nurburgring.

Slated to cost 529,000 Chinese yuan (or around $72,627), it undercuts the most potent electric model from Porsche – the Taycan Turbo GT – by over $200,000, as well as offering levels of race-focussed Performance that Tesla’s Plaid badge could only dream of.

The debut SUV from Xiaomi is due to go into production this summer and, as with the SU7, customer demand is already at fever pitch. The company’s share price hit an all-time high in February when it released more specific details of its second model.

It’s easy to see why, with a driving range of 510 miles (123 more than the 2025 Tesla Model Y), a staggering 691hp on tap, smartphone-derived in-car technology and the latest Lidar-based autonomous driving tech, it represents excellent value for money... and it's not bad looking, either.

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• Macrodock M1 offers versatile and high-speed connectivity
• Three rotary knobs enable precise control for editing and adjustments
• 100W Power Delivery ensures fast charging for laptops, tablets, and phones

There are many laptop docking stations available, but finding one that meets all connectivity needs can be challenging.

The MacroDock M1 is a compact device designed for connectivity and macro functionality, offering ten ports and six programmable LCD macro keys with up to 36 commands, allowing users to automate executing tasks, applications, and directly controlling software.

As a 10-in-1 docking station, it includes USB-A, USB-C, 2.5Gbps Ethernet, SD and TF card slots, and a 3.5mm audio jack. The HDMI port supports 8K output at 30Hz or 4K at 120Hz, allowing compatibility with high-resolution displays.

A versatile hub for professionals and gamers

By integrating macro functions into the docking station, it removes the need for separate macro pads like the Elgato Stream Deck. It also supports over 200 plugins, making it adaptable for different workflows, including video editing in DaVinci Resolve and live streaming with OBS Studio.

The MacroDock M1 supports 100W Power Delivery (PD) 3.0 charging, providing power for business laptops. It also includes high-speed data transfer options, with USB ports supporting speeds up to 10Gbps and an SD/TF card reader capable of 5Gbps.

A notable feature of the device is the inclusion of three rotary knobs for precise control over volume, video editing timelines, and adjustments in creative software.

The MacroDock M1 is available on Kickstarter with an early-bird price of $109, and global shipping is expected to begin in May 2025.

Via Geeky Gadgets and Yanko Design

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• Security researchers find phishing emails spoofing LinkedIn notifications
• The emails are distributing the ConnectWise Remote Access Trojan
• There are multiple red flags, including fake companies, fake images, and more

Cybercriminals are spoofing LinkedIn notification emails to deliver the ConnectWise Remote Access Trojan (RAT) malware, experts have warned.

A new report from cybersecurity researchers Cofense Intelligence notes the phishing campaign likely started in May 2024 with an email mimicking a notification LinkedIn would send to a person when they receive an InMail message. The business platform does not allow people who are not connected to exchange messages, unless the sender is a Premium (paying) member. Then, they can use a service called InMail to reach out to people with whom they are not connected.

Receiving such a message would trigger an email notification from LinkedIn, which is what the attackers are spoofing here.

Bypassing email filters

There are multiple red flags in the email. First, the template used has been phased out by LinkedIn almost five years ago. Then, the supposed project manager/sales director sending the message does not exist, and the attached photo is labeled “executive16.png”. The profile picture used in the email belongs to the President of the Korean Society of Civil Engineering Law, a person called Cho So-young.

Finally, the company for whom the sender allegedly works is called “DONGJIN Weidmüller Korea Ind” and it, too, does not exist.

The email comes with one of two buttons: “Read More” and “Reply To”. Both trigger the download of ConnectWise, a remote administration tool that was originally part of ConnectWise ScreenConnect, a legitimate remote desktop software used for IT support and management. However, cybercriminals have hijacked it and abuse it as a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) to gain unauthorized control over systems.

The email made it past security filters primarily because of how email authentication settings were configured on the recipient's system, the researchers added.

Even though the email failed SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and wasn't signed with DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), it still wasn't outright rejected by the system. This happened because the email security policy, specifically DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance), was set to "oreject" instead of fully rejecting suspicious emails.

This setting likely allowed the email to be marked as spam but still land in the recipient’s inbox.

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• Big Bad Wolf has announced its next game at Nacon Connect 2025, Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss.
• Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is a first-person psychological thriller based on H.P. Lovecraft's universe
• The game launches in 2026 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC

Big Bad Wolf, the studio behind Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong, has announced its next game, Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss.

Revealed during Nacon Connect 2025, Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is a brand new first-person psychological thriller set to launch on PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC in 2026.

The developer shared the first look at its upcoming narrative game with an eerie cinematic teaser trailer showcasing the playable character Noah in a setting inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's universe. You can check it out below.

In this game, you take the role of Noah, an agent of Ancile, a secret Interpol division specializing in occult cases who is investigating the mysterious disappearance of miners in the depths of the Pacific Ocean.

"His quest will lead him to the labyrinthine prison of R’lyeh, an ancient sunken city where Cthulhu is imprisoned," the description reads. "Alongside his AI companion Key, Noah must solve complex puzzles, make choices that will shape his fate, and resist the mind-corrupting influence of Cthulhu."

Although Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss isn't releasing until next year, players can now wishlist the game here.

Nacon Connect was filled with new announcements, including the reveal of RoboCop: Rogue City's all-new standalone expansion, Unfinished Business, which is set to launch this summer.

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• The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu has been announced at Nacon Connect 2025
• The first-person, co-op horror game is inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's novella The Mount
• It's set to launch this year for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC

Ace Team has unveiled its next game The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu, a first-person, co-operative horror game set to release in 2025 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.

The studio behind Clash: Artifacts of Chaos and the Zeno Clash series shared the first look at The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu at Nacon Connect 2025 with a two-minute trailer featuring online co-op gameplay and some horrifying monsters.

Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's novella The Mound, players in a party of up to four players will embark on an expedition to discover a legendary underground city "rumored to hold priceless treasures".

From the trailer, it appears players will be able to use an array of weapons to take down threats while also exploring several different locales.

"Deep within an eerie and oppressive jungle, players must explore and survive monstrous, otherworldly entities that distort their senses and threaten their sanity… and their lives," the game description reads.

"Was that sound just an hallucination? Am I losing my mind and attacking my ally, or is there truly a hostile creature lurking in the shadows? As players venture deeper into the jungle, only teamwork will ensure they make it back alive."

The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu is the second game inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft that was announced at Nacon Connect 2025.

During the showcase, Big Bad Wolf, the developer behind Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong, revealed its next narrative single-player, Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss.

The game is described as a first-person psychological thriller and is scheduled to launch in 2026 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.

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• Cyanide Studio has revealed Styx: Blades of Greed, the third game in its stealth series
• The game was revealed at Nacon Connect 2025 and is set to release in Fall 2025 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC
• Blades of Greed sees the return of Styx the goblin assassin on a quest to steal a magical resource

Cyanide Studio has announced Styx: Blades of Greed, the next installment in its stealth adventure series.

The return of Styx, the goblin assassin, comes from Nacon Connect 2025, where Cynacide revealed a Fall 2025 release date for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.

Fans were also treated to a cinematic trailer showcasing Styx infiltrating a castle to steal a previous item, betraying his partner in crime, and executing a few guards on his way out.

Blades of Greed is set in a vertically expressive medieval fantasy world and will feature a blend of the series' trademark stealth and action, along with a number of powerful abilities Styx can use to his advantage.

"Staying true to its winning formula, the game offers open-ended environments, a vast range of powers and tools, and multiple approaches to completing objectives," Cyanide described. "The mission? Steal Quartz, a rare and magical resource, while eliminating enemies with skill and precision."

Styx: Blades of Greed is the third game in the ongoing stealth series. The first, Styx: Master of Shadows, was released in 2014, followed by Styx: Shards of Darkness in 2017. You can wishlist the upcoming game here.

During Nacon Connect 2025, Big Bad Wolf, the studio behind Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong, also announced its next narrative game, Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss, which is set to arrive next year.

A second H.P. Lovecraft-inspired game, The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu, was also revealed by Ace Team. It's described as a first-persona, co-operative horror and it's scheduled for a 2025 launch.

Both games will be released for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.

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• RoboCop: Rogue City is getting a new standalone expansion this summer called Unfinished Business
• The expansion is coming to PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC
• Unfinished Business will feature new weapons and special missions

Teyon Studios has announced that RoboCop: Rogue City is getting an all-new standalone expansion this summer.

Revealed during Nacon Connect 2025, the Unfinished Business expansion will be released for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC, and although there's no launch date just yet, there is a brand new teaser trailer filled with explosive, first-person action. You can check it out below.

"To reach the top of Omni Tower, now overrun by elite mercenaries, players will have access to new weapons, brutal finish moves, and special missions," the description reads.

"These missions will take them through intense flashbacks, offering the chance to play as Alex Murphy for the first time in a video game."

RoboCop: Rogue City launched in 2023 and is a first-person shooter featuring an original storyline based on the RoboCop films from the 80s and 90s.

"Rogue City makes a hell of a first impression, and while it doesn’t deliver on its promises all of the time, it’s charming and full of ambition," Jake Tucker wrote in TechRadar Gaming's four-star review.

"At times, Rogue City feels like a five-star game. Flashes of brilliance that go above and beyond what I’d expect. Sadly, the lack of budget means that things feel unpolished and occasionally cheap. Again, it doesn’t hinder my enjoyment, but with a little extra polish, this could have been an all-timer, instead of a faithful adaptation of the franchise."

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• AheadComputing has raised $21.5M to develop a 64-bit RISC-V microprocessor
• Led by ex-Intel engineers, it sees RISC-V disrupting x86 and Arm dominance
• The company plans rapid growth, focusing on licensing, AI, cloud, and mobile

A startup created in 2024 by former Intel engineers is betting on RISC-V becoming the dominant computing architecture of the future.

Portland, Oregon based AheadComputing has raised $21.5 million in seed funding led by Eclipse, with participation from Jim Keller. The veteran chip designer is the mastermind behind AMD's Zen architecture and Tesla's original self-driving chip, and is currently the CEO of Tenstorrent, one of our 10 hottest AI hardware companies to follow in 2025.

AheadComputing believes that "everyone deserves a better computer" and that the shift away from proprietary architectures is inevitable. It plans to develop 64-bit RISC-V microprocessor architecture and "push the boundaries of what's possible in computing".

Taking a leaf from Arm's playbook

CEO Debbie Marr, who previously served as an Intel Fellow and chief architect of the Advanced Architecture Development Group, co-founded the company with senior engineers Jonathan Pearce, Srikanth Srinivasan, and Mark Dechene.

She says “The current computing ecosystem is in disarray; the industry is undergoing a major transformation, fueled by emerging market leaders and disruptive technologies. As the founders of AheadComputing, we see chaos as an opportunity and believe our team possesses unique expertise to help create a new and improved ecosystem for the future.”

While x86 and Arm have dominated computing for decades, AheadComputing believes RISC-V’s open architecture, flexibility, and cost advantages will eventually make it the preferred choice. It could be a sound bet if rumors that Arm is looking to manufacture its own chips come to pass. AheadComputing plans to operate under an IP licensing model, similar to Arm’s approach.

While the industry is investing heavily in data-parallel AI accelerators, Marr argues that per-core performance remains an overlooked yet crucial part of computing. “The opportunity exists today to enhance per-core performance, which we consider the cornerstone of multi-processor system efficiency,” she said.

The company has grown from its four founders to a team of 40 and is expanding rapidly. The seed funding will be used to hire additional engineers and develop core IP. The startup is looking for strategic partners to accelerate its push into cloud computing, AI, and mobile markets.

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As a child, I loved fingerpainting and anxiously awaited the weekly, colorful in-class activity. It wasn't so much the art that compelled me; I loved the distinctive smell and visceral feel of the fingerpaint. The entire process felt like an exploration, and through it, I discovered my creativity.

It was messy, chaotic, and crucial, I think, for my development. The new idea with fingerpainting is to separate a child's fingers from the paint. You splash some of the squishy colors onto a canvas, then seal the goop under plastic. The child then basically pushes the colors around without actually touching them.

It's clean, antiseptic, terrible, and a metaphor for what I think AI might be doing to learning.

My concerns were sparked anew by a recent and well-researched story in USA Today explaining "How AI is affecting the way kids learn to read and write."

It's full of details and anecdotes about how teachers are turning to AI in the classroom to help students, for instance, ideate. One teacher complained that the kids' essay ideas were growing "stale," so she's having them use AI to help them come up with better ones.

Antiseptic AI learning

Forget brainstorming in the classroom, kicking around ideas big and small that might spark others. AI offers a valuable shortcut. It also cuts out the messiness of bad ideas. AI's job is not to come up with answers randomly. The Large Language Models (LLMs) in ChatGPT, for instance, have been trained on millions, if not billions, of parameters to have a better understanding of a broad range of topics.

I often describe this as AI's knowing better than us "what comes next." That works in reading, writing, coding, and art. It's not always a clean process, though.

Early AIs (ones from 12 months ago) with somewhat limited training didn't always understand that humans have five fingers on each hand, so we got six fingers and sometimes extra phantom limbs. Interestingly, we seem quite comfortable with AI's learning through their own messy mistakes.

Literacy, the report notes, is dropping among grade school children largely because they're doing less reading of long-form content – they mostly read stuff on small screens if they're not ingesting endless video scrolls – and the pandemic set almost all learning back by a few years.

(Image credit: Besjunior via Shutterstock )

Educators struggle with this and AI has arrived as a handy tool for navigating around many of these issues.

Students are also engaging in more back-and-forth with AI for research. While boomers and Gen X might have used encyclopedias, Millennials and Gen Z have largely grown up using the web as a core research tool. They learned how to search on Google and, through trial and error, find the details they needed.

AI, though, is a conversation where the response is presented as fact, and the student assumes it is so. There is no error or assumption of error, and mistakes could easily be hidden in AI hallucinations.

Again, the engagement with a teacher and even other students is lost. Ideas no longer float in the ether. Questions are not shared among a group.

Let's make mistakes

Good teachers used to say, "There's no such thing as a dumb question." Asking "dumb" questions was how we learned. Students using AI are shielded from that moment. They just type in the prompt and the AI responds.

We learn through trial and error, and studies have shown that young minds, in particular, need to learn from the messiness of mistakes.

In a 2016 study, Learning from Errors, researchers wrote, "Although error avoidance during learning appears to be the rule in American classrooms, laboratory studies suggest that it may be a counterproductive strategy, at least for neurologically typical students. Experimental investigations indicate that errorful learning followed by corrective feedback is beneficial to learning."

A world in which students are potentially paired with their own AI chatbot and self-navigate without any experimentation or flat-out mistakes means that the conversation about why the work was wrong will never happen.

There is an exploration lost for the student who will not learn about the right way and understand how that error might lead to other reasoning dead ends and for the teacher who will fail to learn about the best way to engage and teach that student.

The sad thing is that I'm not sure we can convince students and their parents that this lack of messiness, error-making, and feedback loops will harm the students.

Outside the classroom, students teach themselves how to use ChatGPT to produce essays and get the best results and grades. At least educators are hip to these efforts. In the USA Today story, one educator who discovered them began running all the essays through AI checkers. Those are, of course, not fool proof.

The sad thing is that I'm not sure we can convince students and their parents that this lack of messiness, error-making, and feedback loops will harm the students. They will not learn as much, and I'm pretty sure their intellectual curiosity and creativity will be stunted.

How do we learn fresh things when our teacher is an AI, one that's been trained on all that was and is still not that good at telling us what comes next?

Look, I am not anti-AI, but AI in the hands of children and young students is like the sealed fingerpainting kit: antiseptic, wrong, and the opposite of the beautiful mess that is learning.

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Despite myriad leaks and rumors surrounding the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, the phone remains a relative mystery in official terms. We know its name, we know it’s got two cameras, and we know it’s improbably slim, but in the months since its announcement at Galaxy Unpacked in January, Samsung has refrained from sharing, well, anything about its presumed iPhone 17 Air competitor.

For the most part, that didn’t change at MWC 2025, though in an exclusive interview with TechRadar during the Barcelona-based showcase, Samsung’s UK Marketing Director, Annika Bizon, did reveal that the Edge’s form factor (it’s rumored to measure just 5.84mm thick) won’t come at the expense of durability.

“I can’t say too much, but what I will say is that [the Edge] is about beautiful form factor. And there are two points I want to make,” Bizon explained. “One is that it’s absolutely stunning. And if you think about the technology that’s going into that size of space, it’s pretty impressive.

“The second thing I’ll say concerns durability. With anything slim, durability [has to come as part of the package]. Those are the two features [of the Edge] that are exciting [for us]. Well, I know durability isn't exciting – but it’s really important. So watch this space, because there are some exciting things to come regarding this phone.”

@techradar

♬ Strange Times, Dark Days - Isla June

OK, nothing groundbreaking, but it does sound like the Edge will bring something new to the table regarding durability, which matches up with a very specific design rumor we’ve heard already.

According to reports, the Galaxy S25 Edge could break away from the rest of the Galaxy S25 lineup by using a ceramic rear panel instead of Gorilla Glass Victus 2. Ceramic is tougher than glass, so a fully ceramic or ceramic-infused glass panel would ensure that the Galaxy S25 Edge is more resistant to drops and knocks – crucial for a phone of its rumored thickness.

This would also explain why Samsung has maintained a ‘look don’t touch’ approach with the Edge at both Galaxy Unpacked and MWC 2025, where the phone was on display behind a barrier. Perhaps, if fans were permitted to go hands-on with the device, they’d be able to feel the difference in rear panel material, which is presumably something Samsung wants to keep under wraps for a dedicated reveal event.

Other rumored durability specs for the Edge include an IP68  water and dust resistance rating and aluminum sides, which would match the Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25 Plus. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, meanwhile, uses Gorilla Glass Armor 2 and a titanium body.

Why Edge? Why now?

(Image credit: Future/Viktoria Shilets)

As for why Samsung is bringing the Galaxy S25 Edge to market this year – and in doing so shaking up its tried-and-tested product release strategy – Bizon puts it down to an in-house commitment to innovation and consumer interest in something new.

“The thing with slim phones,” she explains, “is people want to know that they’re still getting very good technology. Innovation is in our DNA. It’s about the right timing, and when we think a product is ready to take to market, coupled with the fact that people do want form factor changes.

“We’ve seen that with foldables. We’re a brand for everyone. And being an open brand means you have to have technology that’s for everyone. Some people do not want to change from a flat phone; some people love the Flip; some people love the Fold. There’s something for everyone, and I think that’s where Samsung is genuinely leading the way.”

Bizon concluded: “The Edge is exciting because it’s a new form factor that’s quite sexy. It’s quite different. And that’s fun. It’s a fun thing to be able to market, too. It’s absolutely stunning, I’m super excited about it.”

And as for the even-more-secretive Samsung Galaxy tri-fold: “I really can’t tell you anything,” Bizon confesses, “not unless you want someone to come around and grab me by the neck.” Suffice it to say, we stopped the interview there.

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Today’s digital media landscape is shifting. In the early days of the internet, it was the wild west, with everybody heading out to establish their own piece of the web with personalized websites. Those fell to the wayside when social media took over, giving everybody generic profiles but bolstering connectivity and reach. However, as social media becomes less reliable for sharing your thoughts, building your brand, or growing your online business, having your own website is more important than ever. That’s where WordPress.com comes in.

Why host your site on WordPress.com?

(Image credit: WordPress.com)

WordPress.com is a platform specifically designed to host websites built on WordPress, an open-source content management system that has revolutionized how personal and professional websites are built. Supported by thousands of independent contributors and further bolstered by plugins and third-party themes, WordPress is easily configurable to work for a multitude of website purposes. WordPress.com’s fast and secure managed hosting is designed to give your site the best performance and reliability.

Website hosting can be a surprisingly individualized need. Whether you’re looking to highlight a personal portfolio and get more eyes on your work or launching an online store to sell your crafted wares, WordPress.com easily handles whatever kind of website you throw at it.

(Image credit: WordPress.com)

So you build a site, you’re gaining traffic, and – uh oh! You’ve gone viral. There’s a significant uptick in new visitors to your site. Other website hosts can crumble under the weight of a successful, high-traffic website. They may jack up your hosting rates or temporarily disable your site to compensate for the higher bandwidth demand. Rest easy knowing your site is backed by WordPress.com’s 99.999% uptime, plus unlimited bandwidth and traffic. No surprise fees—just smooth sailing, no matter how big you grow.

Is WordPress.com secure enough for my website?

(Image credit: WordPress.com)

Building a website is easy, but maintaining one can seem incredibly daunting. What if there is a DDoS attack? Who do you call if there is malware, or if you accidentally delete your entire site? Good news: WordPress.com has an expert support team who are ready to help when you need it most. There’s no need to stress about middle-of-the-night backups or WAF protection when WordPress.com’s Happiness Engineers are on standby 24/7 to protect your website and keep things running smoothly.

WordPress.com's hosting plans are unlimited, unmetered, and include everything you need – a 28+ location custom-built CDN, burst scaling, free SSL, edge caching, scalable PHP workers, and automated data center failover – to stay reliably online and lightning fast. Say goodbye to fickle social media platforms that can throttle your visibility or go offline unexpectedly, and stay connected by hosting your website on WordPress.com.