Information Technology

Elyse Betters Picaro/ZDNETZDNET’s key takeawaysOpenAI adds reminders to take a break. ChatGPT will also have improved functions for mental health support.The company is working with experts, including physicians and researchers. As OpenAI prepares to drop one of the biggest ChatGPT launches of the year, the company is also taking steps to make the chatbot safer and more reliable with its latest update. Also: Could Apple create an AI search engine to rival Gemini and ChatGPT? Here’s how it could succeedOn Monday, OpenAI published a blog post outlining how the company has updated or is updating the chatbot to be more helpful, providing you with better responses in times when you need support, or encouraging a break when you use it too much:We build ChatGPT to help you thrive in the ways you choose — not to hold your attention, but to help you use it well. We’re improving support for tough moments, have rolled out break reminders, and are developing better life advice, all guided by expert input.…— OpenAI (@OpenAI) August 4, 2025

New get off ChatGPT nudge If you have ever tinkered with ChatGPT, you are likely familiar with the feeling of getting lost in the conversation. Its responses are so amusing and conversational that it is easy to keep the back-and-forth volley going. This is especially true for fun tasks, such as creating an image and then modifying it to generate different renditions that meet your exact needs.  More

Windows 11 comes with its own screen capture app, the Snipping Tool. It’s perfectly serviceable for its purpose, but ShareX is better in just about every way.Like the Snipping Tool, ShareX supports various image capture methods. You can capture the entire screen, a specific window, or a certain region among other areas, as well as record videos. But what makes ShareX so much better is its powerful editing tools. With this set, the app is almost like having a mini-Photoshop at your disposal.Download: ShareXYou can add shapes, text, crop areas, slap on emoji stickers, and blur or pixelate key areas of a screenshot. Once you’ve finished, you can upload your finished content onto a variety of third-party platforms, like Google Drive and Imgur, directly. I remember using ShareX for the first time back in 2021, and it vastly improved my workflow.  More

T-Mobile / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNETZDNET’s key takeawaysT-Satellite now supports MMS on select Android devices.Send images, voice notes, and short videos via satellite.Satellite data support for optimized apps is coming October 2025.T-Mobile’s satellite service, T-Satellite, has quietly upgraded into a more capable off-grid communication tool. Originally meant to handle basic SMS, the service now supports full MMS messaging on select Android devices. Send images, voice notes, and video Your phone should automatically switch to the satellite link when it loses cell service. You’ll see the T-Mobile and SpaceX logo, which indicate a solid connection, and from there you can start texting, sending images, and recording voice notes. Our Ziff Davis sister site PCMag put MMS over T-Satellite to the test and reported that you need a clear view of the sky and shouldn’t expect tower-like speeds. Still, you can send images, audio, and even short video files in a couple of minutes. Also: How to use your iPhone’s emergency satellite features if you lose cell coverageThe new capability apparently works on compatible Samsung and Motorola handsets to start — just open your default Messages app on a supported phone, choose attach picture or attach file, and then send your JPG, GIF, voice clip, or video. Longer videos can take upward of 20 minutes to transmit, but the battery impact on your device appears modest. Satellite data for apps is coming Beyond MMS, T-Mobile has teased a broader “satellite data” feature for optimized apps. Coming in October 2025, third-party apps such as WhatsApp, AccuWeather, and X will reportedly be able to send data over Starlink. Also: T-Mobile will give you a free Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus when you trade in almost any phone – here’s how”We are also rolling out picture and voice messaging to select devices and will continue adding more in the coming months,” T-Mobile’s website reads. “Next up, we’ll deliver satellite data for optimized apps, and will continue to add more features.” More

Lyudmila Lucienne/Getty ZDNET’s key takeaways New research from Anthropic identifies model characteristics, called persona vectors.  This helps catch bad behavior without impacting performance. Still, developers don’t know enough about why models hallucinate and behave in evil ways.  Why do models hallucinate, make violent suggestions, or overly agree with users? Generally, researchers don’t really know. But […] More

Jack Wallen / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNETZDNET’s key takeawaysSlackel is a user-friendly take on the otherwise challenging Slackware.There are four different desktop variations to choose from.Slackel is a great distribution for learning Linux.Slackware has been around since 1993 and has served as the foundation for many Linux distributions, such as the early iterations of SUSE. What sets Slackware apart from other Linux distributions is that it tries to be more UNIX-like than not. Slackware makes as few modifications as possible to upstream software packages, does not anticipate use cases, and provides no GUI installer.It’s that lack of a GUI installer that keeps some users from giving Slackware a try. That’s a shame, because Slackware is a remarkably stable operating system. Fortunately, there are always distributions based on Slackware, one of which is called Slackel.Slackel borrows some tools from Salix (another distribution based on Slackware) and has a user-friendly GUI installer. Slackel can be installed to an internal drive, to external media (such as USB drives), or run as a live instance. In other words, Slackel is the most Linux-like of the UNIX-like distributions. Make sense?Also: Want to save your old computer? Try one of these 8 Linux distros for freeThink of it this way: Slackel is to Slackware what Ubuntu is to Linux. This distribution aims to make what might otherwise be challenging much less so, and it succeeds.First off, the Slackel installer makes installing a Slackware-based distribution much easier. It’s a point-and-click affair, but do know this: you have to take a few extra steps, as Slackel requires you to prepare your drive first. The preparation is done outside of the installer, but Slackel does include the GParted tool, which makes this easy. You’ll first have to create an MS-DOS partition table, and then create your ext4 partition that will be used for the installation. Outside of that, the installation is as easy as any Linux installer.I hope I haven’t scared you off yet.  More

Google / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNETTwo weeks ago, Google and OpenAI touted their models’ award-winning performance at the International Math Olympiad (IMO). Now, Google is making a version of its model available to the public. Also: This one feature could make GPT-5 a true game changer (if OpenAI gets it right)On Friday, Google launched Deep Think in the Gemini app for Google Ultra subscribers, a premium subscription tier that costs $250 per year or $125 for the first three months. Although the model is a variation of the one that achieved the gold-medal standard at IMO, it is faster for everyday tasks. Internal evaluations suggested the model reaches bronze-level on the 2025 IMO benchmark. More

Jack Wallen / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNETZDNET’s key takeawaysSystem performance is key to getting the most out of Linux.There are several command line and GUI tools to make this task easy.Here you’ll learn about htop, glances, Mission Center, and more apps. Linux users are notorious for wanting to know as much information as they can about their systems and how they run. There are even apps and widgets (such as Conky) that can be installed and configured to display such information right on the desktop.Also: 5 lightweight Linux distributions that will bring your old PC back to lifeIf you want to monitor system performance on your Linux desktop, what apps should you use? Well, there are several, but not all of them are created equal. There are GUI apps and command-line apps, each of which has its pros and cons. I’m going to introduce you to the apps I prefer for this task — some GUI, some command-line based. 1. htop For the longest time, top was my tool of choice. Eventually, however, I realized that top could be a bit frustrating to use and didn’t include features like color or mouse interaction. For those features, I turn to htop, which is one of the best command-line–based system monitoring tools for Linux. Also: The Linux tool you forgot about: How Synaptic makes software installation a breezeWith htop, you can kill and filter processes, view processes in a tree view, view memory and CPU usage, sort processes by CPU usage, view tasks, system load averages and even uptime. One very handy feature is the ability to kill processes within the htop interface. You can view the process with a command like htop -p 1234, select the listed process and then press F9 to kill it. The htop tool is free to use and can be installed via your distribution’s standard repositories. More

JuSun/Getty ZDNET’s key takeaways Linux is highly secure, but you should still have a firewall. You should know if your ISP’s hardware (gateway) uses a firewall. One of the easiest Linux firewalls is UFW and its GUI sidekick, GUFW. I’ve been using Linux for nearly 30 years. Over those years, I’ve experienced only one security […] More