Category: Laptops

• More automakers are switching to Tesla’s charging tech to offer that to their buyers.
• After all, Tesla’s charging technology and Supercharger network is a huge advantage.
• Here’s what non-Tesla drivers need to know about charging at a Tesla station.

A lot has hit the news cycle in recent months with regard to electric car drivers and where they can and can’t plug in. The key factor in all of that? Whether automakers switched to Tesla’s charging standard.

More car companies are shifting to Tesla’s charging tech in the hopes of boosting their customers’ confidence in going electric. 

Here’s what it boils down to:

If you currently drive a Tesla, you can keep charging at Tesla charging locations, which use the company’s North American Charging Standard (NACS), which has long served it well. The chargers are thinner, more lightweight and easier to wrangle than other brands. 

If you currently drive a non-Tesla EV, you have to charge at a non-Tesla charging station like that of Electrify America or EVgo — which use the Combined Charging System (CCS) — unless you stumble upon a Tesla charger already equipped with a Magic Dock adapter. For years, CCS tech dominated EVs from everyone but Tesla. 

Starting next year, if you drive a non-Tesla EV (from the automakers that have announced they’ll make the switch), you’ll be able to charge at 12,000 Supercharger locations with an adapter. That’s not all Superchargers — some (the original and V2 chargers) are not compatible with CCS, but the V3 chargers are. But by 2025, EVs from several automakers won’t even need an adaptor. Non-Tesla stations will increasingly incorporate NACS in addition to CCS.

Here’s how to charge up, depending on which EV you have: 

• Jaan Tallinn helped build Skype and is the founder of the Future of Life Institute.
• He recently warned of the risks of an AI arms race, describing theoretical anonymous “slaughterbots.”
• This year hundreds in the AI space signed an open letter calling for a pause on AI development.

“We might just be creating a world where it’s no longer safe to be outside because you might be chased down by swarms of slaughterbots.”

Those words of warning came from Jaan Tallinn, a founding engineer of Skype, in a recent video interview with Al Jazeera.

The Estonian computer programmer is a founder of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and the Future of Life Institute, two organizations dedicated to the study and mitigation of existential risks, particularly risk brought about from the development of advanced AI technologies.

Tallinn’s reference to killer robots draws from the 2017 short film, “Slaughterbots,” which was released by the Future of Life Institute as part of a campaign warning about the dangers of weaponized artificial intelligence. The film depicts a dystopian future in which the world has been overtaken by militarized killer drones powered by AI.

As AI technology develops, Tallinn is especially afraid of the implications that military use might have for the future of AI.

“Putting AI in the military makes it very hard for humanity to control AI’s trajectory, because at this point you are in a literal arms race,” Tallinn said in the interview. “When you’re in an arms race, you don’t have much maneuvering room when it comes to thinking about how to approach this new technology. You just have to go where the capabilities are and where the strategic advantage is.”

On top of that, AI warfare could make attacks very difficult to attribute, he said.

“The natural evolution for fully automated warfare,” Tallinn continued, “is swarms of miniaturized drones that anyone with money can produce and release without attribution.”

When contacted by Insider, the Future of Life Institute told Insider it agreed with Tallinn’s remarks on his fears of weaponized AI.

These fears have existed for years — the Future for Life Institute was founded almost a decade ago in 2014, quickly gaining the attention of figures like Elon Musk, who donated $10 million to the institute in 2015. But the issue has felt a lot more pressing recently, with the release of ChatGPT and other AI models available to the public, and current fears about AI taking over people’s jobs. Now AI researchers, tech moguls, celebrities, and regular people alike are worried.

Even director Christopher Nolan is warning that AI could be reaching its “Oppenheimer moment,” Insider previously reported — in other words, researchers are questioning their responsibility for developing technology that might have unintended consequences.

Earlier this year hundreds of people including Elon Musk, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, researchers at Alphabet’s AI lab DeepMind, and notable AI professors signed an open letter issued by the Future of Life Institute calling for a six-month pause on advanced AI development. (Meanwhile, Musk was quietly racing to hire and launch his own generative AI initiative to compete with OpenAI, Insider’s Kali Hays first reported, which he recently announced as xAI.)

“Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources,” the letter reads. “Unfortunately, this level of planning and management is not happening, even though recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one — not even their creators — can understand, predict, or reliably control.

• Russia is trying to make its exploding drones deadlier, according to leaked documents.
• The documents, obtained by The Washington Post, detail efforts to bolster their UAV program.
• Moscow is attempting to make a deadlier, more advanced variant of the Iran’s Shaheds.

Russia has hammered Ukraine with deadly explosive-laden one-way attack drones, relying on the Iranian-made unmanned aerial vehicles to bombard enemies on the battlefield and strike inside cities like Kyiv. Now, leaked documents show Russia plans to build its own drones and is exploring a deadlier variant able to strike autonomously.

The documents obtained by The Washington Post detail Russian efforts to bolster their UAV capabilities in Ukraine with manufacturing assistance from Iran. These include efforts to domestically build 6,000 drones by summer 2025, including new variants of the Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones much more capable than the current model.

The Post reported that as part of Russia’s secret drone project, which is conducted at a facility where workers’ passports are confiscated to keep them from leaving the country and messages use coded language, Russia is looking to develop a version of the Shaheds — or as they call them, the Geran-2s — that is more advanced and deadlier than Iran’s.

These drones would have the ability to coordinate and conduct attacks, including swarm attacks, with autonomy, presumably relying on artificial intelligence. Right now, Shahed-136s are programmed with a target before launch. 

Ukraine has also been experimenting with better drones, including AI-enabled drones that are more resistant to jamming.

The Iranian-made Shahed-136s that Russia uses are a kind of loitering munition with a range of around 1,250 miles. They operate differently than a drone despite being commonly referred to as one. Packed with an explosive payload, these weapons fill a gap between drones and cruise missiles, flying around an area before locating a target and slamming into it.

Although a single Shahed-136 may not do significant damage, a swarm has the potential to prove devastating.

Shahed-136s are also relatively cheap to develop and deploy, meaning there’s an asymmetric advantage to using the loitering munition to hit certain targets as opposed to more expensive cruise missiles, which cost millions of dollars as opposed to tens of thousands.

Russia began receiving shipments of Iranian Shahed-136s, last summer and has been using them regularly, often against civilian infrastructure in cities. If Russia is able to develop a larger, stronger arsenal, it may be able to attack more frequently with far greater numbers of these exploding drones. 

The development of a better UAV force could help Russia better supplement its limited precision guided munitions and allow them to hit harder behind enemy lines.

• In July, the volume of loans doled out from Chinese banks hit their lowest amount since 2009.
• The People’s Bank of China said new loans reached 345.9 billion yuan in July, less than half the amount expected by Bloomberg economists.
• A key measure of credit also fell well below estimates in July, per Bloomberg, signaling weak demand.

China’s economy continues to amass a range of bleak data from property and trade to manufacturing and demographics, and on Friday the People’s Bank of China reported that new lending in July fell to the lowest level since 2009. 

Chinese banks doled out 345.9 billion yuan in new loans last month, well below the 780 billion yuan economists had expected, according to a Bloomberg report and survey.

The smaller volume signals that demand for loans is deteriorating, a point further supported by July’s sharp drop-off in aggregate financing, a measure of credit.

The data release also showed mid- and long-term loans to households, a gauge for mortgages, shrank by 67.2 billion yuan, and that loans to companies also dropped month over month in July to 271.2 billion yuan.

Additionally, the People’s Bank of China said year-on-year growth of broad M2 money supply slowed to 10.7%.

The big miss on bank lending, too, suggests that policymakers’ still have their work cut out for them as far as monetary policy. On Tuesday, the People’s Bank of China cut several interest rates in a bid to boost the economy, following a similar move in June.

Weak credit growth adds to the red flags on China’s economy that are piling up.

Housing market data out Wednesday showed prices for new homes declined for the second consecutive month, with 49 of the measured 70 cities reporting month-over-month dips.

Industrial output rose 3.7% in July from a year ago, slowing from June’s 4.4% pace. Retail sales growth cooled to 2.5% from 3.1%.

And consumer prices dropped annually in July for the first time in two years, joining producer prices in deflation territory.

“Deflation means the real value of debt goes up,” David Dollar, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute’s China center, told Insider in a recent interview. “High inflation we know is bad, but it does help manage debt burdens over time. Deflation does the opposite.”

• The average US president has been charged with 1.9 felonies.
• The fact is a result of former President Donald Trump being a statistical outlier: he alone has been charged with 91 felonies.
• He’s officially become the “Spiders Georg” of world leaders.

Forty-five men have been elected president of the United States. Before Donald Trump, the average number felonies charged per president was zero. Following Monday night’s indictment, that number now stands at 1.9.

Trump has been charged with a whopping 91 felonies total across four indictments, two federal and one each in Georgia and New York.

He faces charges around allegations he paid off an adult film star, mishandled classified documents at his Mar-A-Lago residence, and tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Trump has become an unfortunate statistical outlier in the nation’s 247-year history, comparable only to “Spiders Georg,” a fictional person dreamed up by a Tumblr user who “lives in cave & eats over 10,000 [spiders] each day” and is solely responsible for upping the average number of spiders eaten by each person per year.

Despite the litany of felony charges levied against him, Trump is comfortably in the lead in GOP presidential primary polling. According to an average of national polls deemed “major” by FiveThirtyEight, Trump currently draws in an average of 52.7% support, nearly 38 percentage points ahead of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who’s in second place.

• Former second lady Karen Pence said that she “never felt afraid” while at the Capitol on January 6.
• “I really felt like we just had such a peace and God’s presence,” she recently told ABC News.
• Karen Pence said her role as second lady prepared her for the precautions she took that day.

Throughout the chaos of the January 6, 2021, riot at the United States Capitol, countless lawmakers spoke of the fear that they felt as the invading mob sought to halt the certification of now-President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.

As many lawmakers and aides sought refuge in offices and conference rooms in the Capitol complex, seeking to shield themselves from the raucous rioters just feet away, then-Vice President Mike Pence and then-second lady Karen Pence were moved from the Senate chamber to the vice president’s ceremonial office before being whisked away to an underground Capitol loading dock.

But throughout that harrowing day, Karen Pence in an interview with ABC News said that she “never” feared for her life and remarked that she felt “God’s presence” despite the uncertainty that filled the air. Many of the rioters infamously chanted “Hang Mike Pence” as they protested her husband’s role in certifying Biden’s win.

“I just was discussing this with someone here in Iowa a few minutes ago, I never felt afraid,” the former second lady told ABC News anchor Linsey Davis. “I really felt like we just had such a peace and God’s presence. And just a sense of purpose and determination that I don’t think any of us in the whole group – all the staff and everyone with us — I don’t think any of us felt fear. I think we felt like a sense of resolve.”

When Davis asked Karen Pence about her drawing the curtains in the ceremonial office, the former second lady attributed it to “conditioning” from being in the public eye.

“I think once you become, you know, second lady, life changed a lot for us,” she said. “In fact, during the transition, we rented a home near DC. And I remember walking in that home the first day — and Secret Service had put a butcher block paper, you know, all over the windows — and you couldn’t even see outside.”

“Every time we traveled, they would have bulletproof glass in every hotel room. So it’s a conditioning thing that I just knew,” she continued. “Whenever you’re in a situation where someone might be able to shoot through the window, just close the drapes. That was my thinking at the time was like, ‘Wait a minute. Things are starting to happen out there. Let’s close the drapes.’”

Karen Pence praised the Secret Service members who were with her family that day, calling them “phenomenal,” as they informed her, the then-vice president, and their daughter, Charlotte, that they would have to move to a new location from the ceremonial office.

“It was clear pretty early on that we might need to vacate that room and go somewhere else,” she told Davis.

In the former vice president’s 2022 memoir, “So Help Me God,” he also recounted his sense of spirituality as he endured the ordeal with his family.

“I have often told our three children that the safest place in the world is to be in the center of God’s will,” the former vice president wrote in his book. “I knew in my heart that we were where we were supposed to be, doing what we were supposed to be doing I felt resolve and at peace informed by my upbringing in Indiana, my faith, my family, a lifetime of service and lifelong love of the Constitution.”

The Pences eventually remained at the Capitol until January 7, 2021, when the certification of Biden’s victory concluded in the early morning hours.

As a 2024 Republican presidential candidate, Pence has not shied away from his role on January 6, as he has stood by his decision to reject former President Donald Trump’s entreaties to overturn the 2020 presidential results.

“I know I did the right thing,” he told the Christian Broadcasting Network in a 2021 interview.

Pence remains far behind Trump in polls of the Republican presidential field, but he’ll likely have to opportunity to jostle with his onetime boss at the first GOP debate later this month should the ex-president participate in the event.

• Educators are still trying to figure out what to do about OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
• While some professors have embraced it as a tool, others are finding ways to fight its use.
• Some are opting for written exams and personal essays to cut down on cheating.

The growing number of students using the AI program ChatGPT as a shortcut in their coursework has led some college professors to reconsider their lesson plans for the upcoming fall semester.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is advancing every day. The chatbot achieved the highest score on an AP Biology exam and passed a freshman year at Harvard with a 3.34 GPA.

Since its launch, teachers, administrators, and students have questioned AI’s role in education. While some schools chose to outright ban the use of ChatGPT, others are exploring ways it can be a tool for learning.

As summer break comes to a close, some college professors are now searching for ways to fight the use of generative AI, making their exams “ChatGPT-proof,” Fortune reported.

“Asking students questions like, ‘Tell me in three sentences what is the Krebs cycle in chemistry?’ That’s not going to work anymore, because ChatGPT will spit out a perfectly fine answer to that question,” Bill Hart-Davidson, associate dean at Michigan State University’s College of Arts and Letters, told Fortune.

Concerned professors told Insider they plan to go back to handwritten assignments and oral exams to avoid the use of generative AI.

“I’m planning on going medieval on the students and going all the way back to oral exams,” Christopher Bartel, a philosophy professor at Appalachian State University, told Insider in January. “They can AI generate text all day long in their notes if they want, but if they have to be able to speak it, that’s a different thing.”

A Canadian writing professor told Fox News that he plans to make assignments more personalized in an effort to cut down the use of ChatGPT on essays.

Meanwhile, ChatGPT usage dropped almost 10% from May to June, and some techies believe it’s because most students went on summer break. If students are the main users of the program, experts think it could mean trouble for OpenAI.

“If it’s school kids, that’s a real yellow-red flag on the size of the prize,” internet analyst Mark Shmulik told Insider. “This idea that if the ChatGPT drop-off is due to students on summer break, that implies a narrower audience and fewer use cases.”

• Gabriel Bogner, a startup founder, took his pet Great Dane on a flight from LA to New York.
• The 27-year-old’s dog was deemed too large to fit in a crate in the cargo hold.
• He said passengers were “gobsmacked” at the sight of Darwin on the flight, per The New York Post.

A startup founder surprised passengers when he boarded an American Airlines flight from Los Angeles to New York with his Great Dane dog, the New York Post reported.

Gabriel Bogner paid for a row of seats on the flight for himself and his dog, Darwin, the outlet reported.

He took the 140-pound Great Dane on the flight when he moved from LA to Brooklyn after he said she was deemed too big to fit into the airline’s cargo crate, per the outlet. 

In a TikTok that’s received over  17.9 million views and 2.9 million likes since it was posted at the end of May, Darwin is seen sprawled on her back in the airport before meeting the flight’s pilots.

“People were absolutely gobsmacked and shocked, but everyone was so excited to see her. I’ve never seen so many people smiling at an airport,” he told South West News Service, per The Post. 

He added that it must have been “a shocker” for people to see a “literal horse coming toward them,” The Post reported. 

During the five-hour flight, the TikTok also shows Darwin lounging across two seats next to her owner and sticking her head over the seats in front.

Bogner said airline staff joked that Darwin had got an upgrade.

He added that the trip was “smooth” and that “she was great, and the entire crew was amazing.” 

In response to the TikTok, one user commented: “I would 1000% gladly sit next to your buddy than some of these humans who remove their damn shoes!,” while others said they wished they’d been on the flight. 

Bogner, who has Crohn’s disease, said Darwin had helped him cope with his illness and that his physicians told him she qualified as a service animal, The Post reported. 

Gentle giant Darwin helps him manage his symptoms by placing her head on his stomach and accompanying him to the bathroom, Bogner said in another TikTok.

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If you’re yet to take advantage of a free Women’s World Cup live stream, you’re joining at an excellent time as the quarter-finals are underway. It’s been a tournament packed with shocks so far as the USA, Brazil, Japan, and Germany are out, and England were very lucky to make it through against Nigeria.

With hosting nation Australia still in the mix and taking on France tomorrow, we’re setting ourselves up for a Super Saturday of soccer action. Straight after that game, we’ll see England take on Columbia in the last of the quarter-final matches. We can show you how to watch all of these Women’s World Cup games online for free too, wherever you are in the world – these options will work for the semis and the final too.  

US viewers will find no free options locally as it’s a cable/Fox affair. Other nations have free Women’s World Cup live streams via local stations. The UK is the best option, as every single game will be shown for free.

To access those free live streams (links below) from outside those countries, you must use a VPN (virtual private network) to bypass geo-restrictions. These handy apps let your devices mimic various international locations of your choosing so you can carry on watching the World Cup online for free. We’ll show you how further down this page if you don’t have one already, along with extra details about various streaming options around the globe. 

VPNs aren’t just for accessing international streaming options, though. They also add a layer of security to your phone, PC, laptop, and more devices by protecting your online privacy. We’d seriously recommend using them on any public WiFi network too. But yes, we mainly use them to save a small fortune on overpriced sports streaming apps.

How to watch the Women’s World Cup live stream from anywhere 

While various countries offer free live streams, most only provide them for select games, with their own nation being the guaranteed team covered. But if you want your pick of every last match from the group stages to the final, you can’t beat the UK coverage, as all games will be streamed on the BBC iPlayer or ITVX.

So if the game you really want to watch isn’t showing in your country, don’t give up, as you too can enjoy the extensive UK coverage of every match of the Women’s World Cup live streams for free online. However, if you’re not in the UK when you try to watch, you’ll be hit by a geo-block. You can access these free live streams if you’re using a VPN to simulate your viewing device in the UK. 

Don’t have a VPN? There’s a fantastic offer right now on the best VPN we’ve tested and have been using for years for streaming and beefing up our online security. You can pick up Express VPN, save 49% on the usual price, and get three months for free. Better yet, if you’re not satisfied for any reason, there’s a hassle-free 30-day money-back guarantee.

How to watch the Women’s World Cup with a VPN

• Sign up for a VPN if you don’t have one.
• Install it on the device you’re using to watch the game.
• Turn it on and set it to a UK location.
• Go to: BBC iPlayer or ITVX.
• Sign in with a UK postcode.
• Watch the game.

How to watch the Women’s World Cup in the USA

Fox and Fox Sports 1 have the rights to the Women’s World Cup live streams in the US. So if you have those channels on your cable package, you’re all set. However, if you’re a cord-cutter and want to access these cable channels temporarily, you could opt for a service like Sling Blue or Fubo TV. Sling is usually $40 a month, but your first month is currently cut to $20, and you can cancel anytime. Fubo TV is much more expensive at $75 a month, but you can get a 7-day free trial before moving onto a rolling one-month rolling deal.

Or, if you have a VPN, you can watch for free if you hop on over to the UK and enjoy their free coverage on the BBC as described above.

Upcoming games

All times below are in Eastern time, US. Channels displayed are for US / UK.

Quarter-finals

Saturday, August 12

• Australia vs. France – 3 a.m. on FOX / ITV
• England vs. Colombia – 6:30 a.m. on FOX / ITV

Note: The use of VPNs is illegal in certain countries, and using VPNs to access region-locked streaming content might constitute a breach of the terms of use for certain services. Insider does not endorse or condone the illegal use of VPNs.

• Homeowners’ equity is the highest it’s been in 25 years, which could provide a cushion as consumer savings dwindle. 
• Wells Fargo economists say that huge price appreciation means homeowners have a lifeline they can tap. 
• Soaring home prices looks like an “underappreciated tailwind” for consumers, they said.

Decades of rising home values have created an expensive and competitive housing market — but that may be exactly what’s keeps consumers afloat as household savings dwindle and borrowing costs climb.

The Fed’s ambitious rate hiking campaign has made everything from credit card loans to mortgage payments more expensive, and that’s eating into the savings Americans built up through the pandemic.

Now, however, with inflation still above target and a recession still in the cards, home equity could provide a much-needed extra line of defense for consumers, according to Wells Fargo.

The total value of the US single-family market surpassed $40 trillion last year, and the amount of homeowner equity versus debt has trended higher for the last decade, economists Tim Quinlan and Shannon Seery explained in a note this week.  

Importantly, home values have surged while the total amount owed on mortgages has not. 

“Homeowners have more equity in their homes today than they did at any point in the 35 years between 1987 and 2022,” the economists said. “Yes, higher rates make borrowing more expensive, but a home loan generally carries far lower interest than credit card debt, especially after accounting for the tax deductibility of interest on a mortgage.”

In short: Americans can always borrow against the equity in their steadily appreciating homes, and at a lower rate than what’s offered on most other kinds of consumer debt. 

Through the Fed’s rate hiking campaign, Americans’ spending has stayed remarkably resilient, and that’s been a boon in staving off the recession that Wall Street has been forecasting over the last year.

That trend could be set to continue as the massive accumulation of home equity provides a lifeline that consumers can tap into if things get tough. 

“[T]he fact that home equity is near a multi-decade high means that there is untapped potential for consumers to rely on home equity lines of credit to sustain spending should the need arise,” the economists wrote.

Bankrate data shows that home equity lines of credit, or HELOCs, are currently carrying an average rate close to 7%. That’s well below the 20.6% interest rate applied to “all borrowers” on credit card debt for the second quarter, per central bank data. 

Home equity revolving credit balances climbed for the fourth straight quarter leading up to March 2023, which presents another factor that could help sustain consumer spending. 

To be sure, about two-thirds of household assets are tied to financial assets. But climbing home values have given real estate an outsized boost through the pandemic. Now, real estate accounts for about 25% of total household assets, and despite deteriorating savings, still-rising equity presents a potential path forward for consumers to keep spending, Quinlan and Seery said.

“Fiscal packages at the onset of the pandemic ensured that the pandemic-induced recession was not a balance sheet one for households, and the lasting effects of that have supported consumer spending even as stimulus has ceased,” the economists continued. “Increased home equity due to the rapid rise in home values and a jump in mortgage refinancing are two additional factors that may support household staying power in the years to come.”