Author: The Tech Guy

When they’re not discharging sewage into rivers and the sea, or failing to fix leaks, the water companies seem poised to launch a hosepipe ban. To be fair, it’s been an extremely hot and dry summer for most of the country. If you’re one of the millions of affected households, then you don’t have to sit back and watch your garden die, as there are some legal ways to keep your plants fresh and watered. For this article, I’m focusing on established gardens; most water companies allow hosepipe watering of food crops and new plants and lawns under certain conditions.…

Meta may dominate the smart glasses zeitgeist, but it’s far from the only player — my favorite brand in the space is actually Xreal, with its range of impressive but pricey wearable-display specs. And with the launch of its new xbx brand, Xreal’s lineup now includes more budget-friendly options too.If money were no object, Xreal’s One Pro glasses are easily the crème de la crème of smart specs. Their Bose-tuned audio is impressive for such a small package, their electrochromic dimming tech is perfect for swapping between clear vision and shaded for optimal viewing conditions, and their unique optic engine…

Healthcare information technology company CareCloud is notifying at least 350,000 people that their information was stolen in a data breach. The incident involved an electronic health record environment within the CareCloud Health division, which was disrupted on March 16, 2026. CareCloud’s investigation determined that hackers accessed one of its AWS environments between March 10 and March 16, and likely exfiltrated data from it. On June 24, the investigation determined that personal, financial, and medical information was compromised in the incident, the company notes in the notification letter sent to the potentially affected individuals, a copy of which was filed with…

A solar eclipse, the Perseids, bright Venus after sunset, and a deep partial lunar eclipse highlight August’s skywatching. Aug. 5: Last Quarter Moon Aug. 12: Total solar eclipse across northern Russia, Greenland, Iceland, northern Spain, and part of Portugal; partial eclipse in parts of the U.S.; New Moon Aug. 12-13: Perseid meteor shower peak under dark skies Aug. 14-16: Venus reaches greatest eastern elongation and shines low in the west after sunset Aug. 27-28: Partial lunar eclipse visible from much of North and South America and parts of Europe and Africa A solar eclipse, one of the year’s best meteor…

The Game Boy Advance is celebrating its 25th anniversary in the US, and while Nintendo has largely chosen to honor the handheld through its Switch Online library, another company has decided to recreate the hardware itself. Chinese handheld maker Ayaneo has unveiled the Konkr Pocket Advance, a modern reinterpretation of the iconic Game Boy Advance that updates almost every part of the original while preserving the horizontal design that made Nintendo’s console so beloved. Rather than building a nostalgia piece that simply looks like the original, Ayaneo is targeting the growing retro gaming market with modern hardware. The Konkr Pocket…

Windows doesn’t slow down only because of the apps you install. Some of the drag is built in from the start. A fresh install can already have well over a hundred processes running at idle, including some background services and features you may never use. I used to assume Windows simply got slower with age until I noticed the sluggishness showing up on a fresh setup too. Now I have a short list of changes I make before anything else goes on the machine. Related You really don’t have to reinstall Windows to fix slowness — this trick works wonders…

Smartphones have been mainstream for so long that it’s hard to imagine them going away any time soon. But the tech world does not stand still, and smart glasses have been labeled as the “next frontier” for some time now. All of the big tech players are trying to carve their own space with different approaches and varying success. So we’re asking you: are you using smart glasses in your day-to-day? The least obtrusive and most popular ones are AI glasses. The Ray-Ban Meta lineup is the best example. These are smart glasses that rely exclusively on ambient computing and…

A critical vulnerability in the Azure Cosmos DB database service could have allowed attackers to compromise all databases on the service, cybersecurity outfit Wiz reports. Referred to as CosmosEscape, the security defect could have allowed an attacker to obtain a platform-wide key and retrieve the primary key of any Cosmos DB account, gaining full read and write access across the service. Armed with the key, an attacker could have listed all databases on the service, filtering them by specific organization identifiers, such as subscription and tenant IDs. “Chained together, these capabilities could have enabled precision targeting at platform scale: from…

Artificial IntelligenceOpenAI’s Hacking Debacle Comes Down to Human ErrorLily Hay Newman | Wired ($)”If the generative AI giant had followed well-known security best practices, it’s likely that its AI agent would never have escaped to the open internet and hacked multiple companies. …’A simple analysis of the actual risk has an actual simple answer,’ says longtime security and compliance consultant Davi Ottenheimer. ‘The OpenAI mistakes were dead simple.'”Artificial IntelligenceAnthropic’s New AI Model Can Identify More Software Bugs Than Ever. Microsoft Is Struggling to Fix Them Fast Enough.Renee Dudley and Doris Burke | ProPublica”Each month, the company publicly releases fixes for…

Last week’s poll asked which one of Samsung’s new foldables has caught your attention, and we have a clear winner. The Galaxy Z Fold8 is the foldable most of you would get, but there’s another consensus across your votes. Samsung’s new foldables are too expensive. With a starting price of $1,900 for the 256GB storage trim, the Fold8 is a big investment. The same applies to the Z Fold8 Ultra, which is an even steeper $2,100. The Z Flip8 is the more “affordable” entry out of the three, but it’s not exactly cheap at $1,200. Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 As…