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The countdown to the next Fed meeting begins. Here's what that means for your savings.

In 1980, violent clashes between government forces and pro-democracy demonstrators in the southwestern city of Gwangju created lasting scars that continue to shape South Korea to this day.

(Image credit: File)

Special educators are more likely to experience violence or aggression from students. That can make hiring a challenge, at a time when schools nationwide are struggling to fill these positions.

(Image credit: Samuel Rocha IV)

It can be hard to find the right words to say to a friend whose loved one has died. Experts share the dos and don'ts of expressing condolences.

Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, we may have spotted a galactic neighbor with all the right molecular ingredients a mere 40 light-years away.

Samsung’s Ultra phones are always pricey propositions. After all, they sit at the top of the Galaxy S line, and that’s Samsung’s top non-foldable smartphone series.

So outside of the best foldable phones there aren’t many handsets that cost much more than a Galaxy S Ultra, and the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is unlikely to be any exception to that.

But you probably guessed this phone would be expensive, the real question is exactly how much it might cost. For that, we don’t yet have a definitive answer, but thanks to leaks and previous pricing we can make some predictions.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra price predictions

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra (Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)

One thing we can say almost for certain is that the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra won’t cost any less than the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. So the best case scenario is probably it retaining the current model’s price.

That would mean a starting price of $1,299.99 / £1,249 / AU$2,199, but you can see full pricing for the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra’s various configurations in the chart below.

The prices in that chart are a best case scenario then, but there’s a high chance that the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra will actually cost more than that.

While we haven’t heard any exact prices yet, we have heard that this phone will probably use a Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. And that in itself could mean a higher price, as Qualcomm said this chipset would be more expensive than the previous model, which is used by the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Tipsters have got a bit more specific, with one saying that the Snapdragon 8 Elite costs around 20% more, and another saying this chipset is roughly $40 (around £30 / AU$60) more expensive.

In which case, if Samsung passes that price increase on to buyers, then the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra could start at more like $1,340 / £1,280 / AU$2,260. However, there are a lot of other potential variables that could affect the price too.

On the positive side, Samsung sells so many phones that it might have been able to work out a favorable deal with Qualcomm, reducing the price per unit of the chipset.

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra (Image credit: Future | Alex Walker-Todd)

But on the other hand, inflation could also push the price up, as could the various improvements we’re expecting in the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.

Indeed, we've elsewhere heard that the price to produce the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra has apparently risen by $110 (around £85 / AU$170), making a price rise "unavoidable."

Still, however much it costs you could be getting a significantly better phone for your money than you would with the Galaxy S24 Ultra. Beyond the likely presence of a far more powerful chipset, leaks also point to an upgraded ultra-wide camera, more RAM, a bigger screen, and a refined design.

So the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra specs could be quite an upgrade, and may go some way towards justifying any price increases.

Still though, this is sure to be an expensive phone, and right now if we had to guess, we’d say it’s likely to cost even more than its predecessor, albeit probably not too much more.

We should find out in January, as the Samsung Galaxy S25 series release date is rumored to be January 22.

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This review first appeared in issue 358 of PC Pro.

Asustor’s Nimbustor 4 AS5404T is a four-drive NAS enclosure aimed at demanding home users or small offices. It’s a performance-focused NAS thanks to the fairly muscular Intel Celeron N5105 processor and 4GB of RAM. At the back you’ll find two 2.5GbE ports, along with two of the NAS’s three USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 sockets – the other one is easily accessed at the front.

The NAS can mount up to four 3.5in or 2.5in SATA disks in various RAID configurations including RAID5, 6 and 10. Unusually, it also has four NVMe slots. You could configure the AS5404T with a four-SSD RAID5 volume, alongside a slower disk-based storage pool. Alternatively, you could use an SSD cache to accelerate disk performance, or compromise with one or two SSDs on cache duty and others serving as a fast volume.

This is a refreshing-looking NAS, especially if you love bright lights (Image credit: Future)

You can upgrade the enclosure’s installed RAM up to 16GB, though you’ll have to remove the 4GB it comes with. If you need to add storage, you can do so with up to three Asustor AS6004U expanders, allowing for a total 16 disks. Asustor says this NAS can hit maximum read and write speeds of 599MB/sec, but you’ll need to be using both network ports for that.

We’re not wild about this unit’s physical setup: there’s tool-less access for 3.5in disks, but the caddies release with a horrific snapping sound that had us checking to confirm we hadn’t broken the catches. The caddy clips are hard to remove, too. You’ll need a screwdriver to open the case and access the NVMe slots, but the SSDs themselves simply clip into place.

We configured the AS5404T with four 1TB hard disks in a RAID5 array and two 1TB WD Black SSDs configured as a separate RAID1 volume. Unusually among modern NAS servers, Asustor’s operating system defaults to the EXT4 file system, though Btrfs is an option. This NAS insists on synchronizing new RAID1 arrays, but at least with our SSDs the process completed within an hour.

Connected via a single 2.5GbE connection, the AS5404T got off to an impressive start.

The Nimbustor 4 provides blistering performance speeds (Image credit: Future)

It performed strongly through the ATTO disk benchmark, recording much quicker data rates than 1GbE competitors. With 16KB and 2MB file operations, it also showed a clean pair of heels to 2.5GbE rivals from QNAP. Things were far less impressive with the PCMark 10 Data Drive benchmark, however, on which the AS5404T was one of a few NAS enclosures we tested to record an inexplicably low score. We always confirm real-world data speeds with simple Windows file copies, however, and here the AS5404T was supreme, managing 85MB/sec when writing 11GB of files.

Performance was consistent when we tested its SSD storage, giving near-identical ATTO results with an SSD volume, and again when using SSD caching. Cached disk write speeds increased slightly in our file-copy test, although read speeds actually went down a little. We also recorded similar performances when we reinstalled this NAS with two Synology 4TB disks.

Asustor’s ADM operating system is certainly comprehensive (Image credit: Future)

Asustor’s ADM operating system is comprehensive and easy to use, though we did spot a couple of oddities in this test. Most significantly, the AS5404T couldn’t be browsed from either a Chromebook or our Windows 11 test PC unless we turned on SMB1, although its shares could be accessed without it – so long as we entered the drive path by name.

One of the Nimbustor’s strongest points is Asustor’s App Central, which at the time of writing offered an incredible 272 apps, spanning networking, surveillance, productivity and entertainment. If you’re chiefly interested in the latter, an HDMI port gives you a way to view multimedia content on an attached screen, but you can organize and serve photos or other media through the likes of Plex.

Don’t let this NAS server’s media talents put you off if you’re buying for business, however. With blistering performance even when configured with two disks, the AS5404T is a solid starting package for a small business with big plans. If your micro office goes macro, you can add more disks, accelerate it with SSDs, beef up the memory, and even connect another enclosure. It’s our Labs Winner.

We've also ranked the best small business servers.

In the Xinjiang region of western China, the government has rounded up and detained hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic groups, including the wife and young children of a Uyghur businessman named Abdullatif Kucar. NPR correspondent Emilly Feng follows Kucar as he desperately searches for his missing family. To listen to this series sponsor-free and support NPR, sign up for Embedded+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

This review first appeared in issue 358 of PC Pro.

As its name suggests, the Flashstor 6 is an all-flash NAS enclosure, with space for up to six NVMe SSDs. It’s aimed mostly at enthusiast use in the home, so comes with useful multimedia features such as HDMI and S/PDIF audio outputs. It’s well specified elsewhere, too, with a pair of 2.5GbE network ports, two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports and two USB-A 2 ports. The supplied 4GB of memory is upgradable to 16GB.

It doesn’t have any hard disk slots, but you could add bulk storage with up to two Asustor AS6004U expansion units, each accepting up to four 3.5in SATA drives. If six SSDs isn’t enough, for £744 inc VAT (from Amazon) you could choose the 12-slot Flashstor 12, which is otherwise broadly the same.

Most NAS enclosures offer tool-free setup, but you’ll need a screwdriver to pop off the cover here, while each NVMe just clips in. The FS6706T supports the same range of RAID formats you’d expect from any six-bay device, though we tested it using two 1TB WD Black SSDs, arranged in a RAID1 array. Asustor’s ADM software defaults to the EXT4 file system, but you can choose Btrfs.

(Image credit: Future)

It will come as no surprise that the FS6706T performed strongly. We tested it with a single 2.5GbE connection, over which it comfortably outpaced any NAS limited by a 1GbE connection. That said, it didn’t eclipse disk-based 2.5GbE devices, with Asustor’s own Nimbustor 4 Gen2 proving slightly quicker. As with the Nimbustor 4, this NAS was inexplicably slow on the PCMark 10 Data Drive benchmark, but made up for it with quick real-world copy times in Windows 11. It’s worth pointing out that this device might have been even faster if we’d been able to test it with a six-drive RAID5 array.

While you could use this NAS as the hub for a small business, it’s far more likely to see use as a multimedia store and server for demanding home users and gamers. It’s well suited to this role, with Asustor’s App Central offering an amazing 273 apps, spanning everything including content, download and media management, along with productivity, surveillance and streaming.

This NAS has the horsepower to transcode video content without getting bogged down, so it’s even suitable for a household with a few power users. However, its lack of disk support makes it less flexible than the Nimbustor 4 Gen2, which accepts up to four disks and four NVMe SSDs, and proved just as fast in our tests. In most cases, we’d pay the extra £80 for that.

We also rated the best software for small businesses.

Mexican soldiers and marines have seized over a ton of fentanyl pills in two raids in the north, with officials calling it the biggest catch of the synthetic opioid in the country's history.

(Image credit: Martin Urista)

One of Colombia's legendary drug lords has been released from prison and is expected to be deported. Ochoa was first indicted in the U.S. for his alleged role in the 1986 killing of a DEA informant.

(Image credit: AP)

The blackout, on Wednesday, affected the entire nation, leaving millions without electricity and forcing authorities to suspend classes and work activities indefinitely.

(Image credit: Ramon Espinosa)

With the holiday shopping season in full swing, shoppers are actively taking steps to protect their identity online.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Dec. 5.

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From how it got here to why critics are alarmed, here's what to know about the spectacular milestone for bitcoin.

(Image credit: Jon Cherry/Getty Images)

OpenAI proudly debuted ChatGPT search in October as the next stage for search engines. The company boasted that the new feature combined ChatGPT's conversational skills with the best web search tools, offering real-time information in a more useful form than any list of links. According to a recent review by Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, that celebration may have been premature. The report found ChatGPT to have a somewhat lassie-faire attitude toward accuracy, attribution, and basic reality when sourcing news stories.

What's especially notable is that the problems crop up regardless of whether a publication blocks OpenAI’s web crawlers or has an official licensing deal with OpenAI for its content. The study tested 200 quotes from 20 publications and asked ChatGPT to source them. The results were all over the place.

Sometimes, the chatbot got it right. Other times, it attributed quotes to the wrong outlet or simply made up a source. OpenAI's partners, including The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and the Axel Springer and Meredith publications, sometimes fared better, but not with any consistency.

Gambling on accuracy when asking ChatGPT about the news is not what OpenAI or its partners want. The deals were trumpeted as a way for OpenAI to support journalism while improving ChatGPT's accuracy. When ChatGPT turned to Politico, published by Axel Springer, for quotes, the person speaking was often not whom the chatbot cited.

AI news to lose

The short answer to the problem is simply ChatGPT's method of finding and digesting information. The web crawlers ChatGPT uses to access data can be performing perfectly, but the AI model underlying ChatGPT can still make mistakes and hallucinate. Licensed access to content doesn't change that basic fact.

Of course, if a publication is blocking the web crawlers, ChatGPT can slide from newshound to wolf in sheep's clothing in accuracy. Outlets employing robots.txt files to keep ChatGPT away from their content, like The New York Times, leave the AI floundering and fabricating sources instead of saying it has no answer for you. More than a third of the responses in the report fit this description. That's more than a small coding fix. Arguably worse is that if ChatGPT couldn’t access legitimate sources, it would turn to places where the same content was published without permission, perpetuating plagiarism.

Ultimately, AI misattributing quotes isn't as big a deal as the implication for journalism and AI tools like ChatGPT. OpenAI wants ChatGPT search to be where people turn for quick, reliable answers linked and cited properly. If it can’t deliver, it undermines trust in both AI and the journalism it’s summarizing. For OpenAI's partners, the revenue from their licensing deal might not be worth the lost traffic from unreliable links and citations.

So, while ChatGPT search can be a boon in a lot of activities, be sure to check those links if you want to ensure the AI isn't hallucinating answers from the internet.

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