All posts tagged: Trick

Researchers Invented a Fake Disease to Trick AI and the Funniest Possible Thing Happened

Researchers Invented a Fake Disease to Trick AI and the Funniest Possible Thing Happened

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech In 2024, a team led by University of Gothenburg medical researcher Almira Osmanovic Thunström invented a fake disease that called “bixonimania.” The fictional skin condition, they said, was caused by staring at screens for too long and rubbing one’s eyes too much. As Nature reports, the team uploaded two fake studies (both since been taken down) about the condition to a preprint server at the time in an effort to trick large language models into thinking it was real. It didn’t take long for their ruse to take off. Within just weeks of uploading the fake studies, frontier AI models including Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT started talking about bixonimania as if it were real. Not much later, researchers found that the fake papers had even started to be cited in other peer-reviewed academic literature. The experiment highlights how profoundly AI is changing the face of human knowledge. AI slop has invaded almost every facet of the peer-review …

The USB trick that bypasses your smart TV’s 100Mbps Ethernet limit

The USB trick that bypasses your smart TV’s 100Mbps Ethernet limit

Published by skeptic

Ethernet is supposed to be the fast lane. Solid, stable, and always better than Wi-Fi. But when it comes to smart TVs, that rule doesn’t always hold up. Not because Ethernet is flawed, but because of that slow, limited Ethernet port most TVs come with. Yes, the Ethernet port on most smart TVs is only capable of handling speeds up to 100 Mbps, which is basically the bare minimum internet plan these days. So even if you’ve gone through the effort of setting up a wired connection on your TV, you might not actually be getting the speeds you’re paying for. The good news is that it’s easy to overcome this limitation. All you need to do is throw a simple USB to Ethernet adapter into the mix. Related The Surprising Device That Can Transform Your Home Internet: Here’s How It Works You don’t need to spend loads of cash to get faster internet. Wi-Fi may be faster than Ethernet on your TV The rare case where Wi-Fi wins Pankil Shah / MakeUseOfCredit: Pankil Shah / …

This simple email trick saves me from annoying marketing spam (and it’s free to do)

This simple email trick saves me from annoying marketing spam (and it’s free to do)

Published by skeptic

Kerry Wan/ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. As a Gen-Z shopping editor, I spend most of my dollars online. I’m always looking for easy ways to save with promo codes, sign-ups, memberships, and more.  I’ve also written full guides on how I’ve saved over $500 using services like Rakuten. But most importantly, after covering numerous sale events like Black Friday and Prime Day, I’ve learned how to avoid the deluge of spam that usually follows signing up for coupons or free shipping.  Also: 3 money-saving tricks I use every time I shop online – and you should too That’s why I’m sharing one of my favorite email tips that helps put marketing, ads, promotions, and other salesy emails in your rearview. This first tip is so obvious, you’ve probably never thought twice about it before. I’ve been using this shopping tip for almost a decade, and it’s still as functional as ever. Plus, it’s totally free.  How I decrease marketing clutter in my inbox So, you want to know the easiest way to …

I Love My Wife, but I’m Not Sharing AirPods With Her Again Thanks to This iPhone Trick

I Love My Wife, but I’m Not Sharing AirPods With Her Again Thanks to This iPhone Trick

Published by skeptic

When my wife and I travel, we usually watch shows and movies on our flight, but we always have to split a set of AirPods. So while one of our ears is enjoying the show, the other is forced to endure the crying baby behind us on the plane. But thanks to Apple’s Audio Sharing feature, we can enjoy a show together while using our own sets of AirPods, AirPods Pro or other headphones.  Apple introduced Audio Sharing with iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 in 2024. It allows two pairs of compatible AirPods or Beats headphones to pair with a single iPhone or iPad. So you and another person can immerse yourselves in music, movies or a TED Talk without disturbing those around you. Here’s how to share audio with another set of AirPods or Beats headphones. How to enjoy music and podcasts together  1. Open Music, Podcasts, Spotify or any similar app with your AirPods in your ears and connected to your iPhone or iPad.2. Start playing music or a Podcast.3. Open your Control …

Here’s my favorite email trick for cleaning up inbox clutter – automatically

Here’s my favorite email trick for cleaning up inbox clutter – automatically

Published by skeptic

MirageC/Moment/Getty Images Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. I’ve had the same email address for more than two decades. I use it for just about everything I do. That’s really convenient, but it also means my inbox is inundated with advertising, newsletters, social media updates, and other ephemera. Left unchecked, that firehose of trivial correspondence can overwhelm the useful and important stuff. The world’s two largest email providers realize this is a problem. Gmail and Outlook do some automatic mail sorting with the help of algorithms. Still, their solutions are imperfect and require constant manual intervention to train the algorithms and find the important stuff that was inadvertently demoted. Also: Best email hosting services: Expert tested and reviewed For years, I used rules and filters based on sender addresses to move less important messages out of the inbox and into custom folders. However, setting up and managing those rules is a tedious, time-consuming process. Every time a newsletter or merchant changed their sending address or used a different subdomain, I had …

I finally escaped my ISP’s DNS lock-in with this device-level trick

I finally escaped my ISP’s DNS lock-in with this device-level trick

Published by skeptic

Your ISP is your gatekeeper to the internet. Everything you do online goes through your internet service provider, be that online gaming, streaming, AI, or otherwise. That gives your ISP serious control over what you do online, let alone the fact that it can see most of what you do online. But there is a better way: a custom DNS. The problem is that some ISPs send you a router and modem and lock it down, meaning you’re completely locked to its network settings, no matter what they are. However, there is a workaround — it takes a little time, but it’s well worth doing if you want faster internet speeds and better online privacy for all of your devices. There are “levels” to DNS on your devices and router Take back control When you type a website address into your browser, your device has to translate that name into an IP address using DNS. The process starts locally. First, your system checks the hosts file, a small list of manually defined domain-to-IP mappings. If …

I stopped using Event Viewer to check failed logins after discovering this PowerShell trick

I stopped using Event Viewer to check failed logins after discovering this PowerShell trick

Published by skeptic

Your PC is where you keep everything from your personal documents and saved passwords to work files and even your financial accounts. So keeping it secure becomes necessary, especially if you use it in an office or any public setting. The good news is that Windows already helps you with this, not just by locking your PC with a PIN or password, but also by keeping a record of any failed sign-in attempts. Even better, finding this information is as easy as running a quick PowerShell command. Event Viewer can show failed sign-in attempts, but it’s too much work It has the data, just not the simplicity Event Viewer is a built-in Windows tool that logs everything that happens on your PC. From system warnings and app errors to security events like failed sign-in attempts, you can find it all here. The only thing is, the tool isn’t designed for quick answers, so you need to dig in to find what you’re looking for. To find details about failed sign-in attempts, open Event Viewer, and …

Don’t reinstall Windows to fix your problems — try this simple trick first

Don’t reinstall Windows to fix your problems — try this simple trick first

Published by skeptic

We have all been here. Your laptop starts chugging, apps take forever to open, and you are often treated with the Blue Screen of Death errors. For years, our go-to solution for fixing such problems was to simply reinstall the Windows OS and get back to our tasks. Nuking it all has been the gold-standard advice in the tech community, and we have been conditioned to believe that for every problem, a fresh start to your laptop is the best option. But let’s be honest. Reinstalling the Windows OS is not only a pain and a lengthy process, but it also requires a lot of work after the installation is finished. You have to get your files back, hunt down the license keys for the software you were using, reinstall them, reconfigure the settings to your liking, and so on. After researching, I found that reinstalling Windows is often overkill, and there is a much simpler way to fix your laptop. Related Here’s how I deep clean my Windows PC I spend one day each …

New optical trick pulls hidden quantum signals out of background noise

New optical trick pulls hidden quantum signals out of background noise

Published by Jenni Sidey

Bright background light can do more than clutter a quantum experiment. It can wash out the very features that make quantum systems useful in the first place. That is the problem a team at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique, or INRS, set out to tackle. Working with light particles called photons, the researchers built a way to sift out meaningful quantum signals even when those signals are buried under heavy optical noise. Their results, published in Science Advances, point to a simpler and more energy-efficient route for keeping quantum information intact in messy, real-world conditions. The work came from the group of Professor José Azaña, in collaboration with Professor Roberto Morandotti’s team. It was carried out by Benjamin Crockett during his PhD at the INRS Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications Research Centre. Crockett has since moved to the University of British Columbia as a Banting postdoctoral fellow. Quantum technologies depend on detecting the properties carried by single photons. That sounds manageable in a carefully controlled lab. It becomes much harder when the photon you care …