Category: 4. Technology

Advantage Solutions CEO Dave Peacock told Business Insider in January that he ends his days streaming TV series, watching sports, or reading.

“We stream a lot, as I’m a massive fan of most genres (excluding horror),” Peacock said. “Sports documentaries are some of my favorites, but I also like ‘Shrinking,’ ‘The Diplomat,’ and old comedies like ‘New Girl.’”

“Shrinking,” an Apple TV+ series that premiered in 2023, is about a grieving therapist who takes a new approach to his clients and everyone else in his life: brutal honesty. Jason Segel leads the cast alongside Jessica Williams and Harrison Ford.

Netflix debuted “The Diplomat” — starring Keri Russell, Rufus Sewell, and David Gyasi — in 2023. The political drama follows a US diplomat attempting to balance her new position as ambassador to the UK and her strained marriage.

“New Girl” aired on Fox from 2011 to 2018, but is now available on several streaming sites, like Hulu and Apple TV+. The sitcom revolves around a teacher, played by Zooey Deschanel, who moves into a Los Angeles-based loft with three men. The cast included Jake Johnson, Max Greenfield, Lamorne Morris, Hannah Simone, and Damon Wayans Jr.

TikTok is taking another step towards becoming more than just a platform for infinitely scrolling through short videos. The social media app told TechCrunch that its users will soon be able to send voice notes, images and videos in direct messages or group chats. According to a TikTok spokesperson, these features will roll out in the next few weeks.

As voice messaging has risen in popularity, TikTok will embrace the trend but is capping the length of its voice notes to one minute. For images and videos, users will be able to send up to nine images or videos, taken from their phone’s camera app or library, in a DM or group chat, according to TechCrunch. The report added that there will still be guardrails with this new chat feature, including not being able to send an image or video as the first message to another user. This new restriction adds to TikTok’s current rules that only allow registered users who are at least 16 years old to use its messaging feature. TikTok is also giving users who are older than 18 the ability to toggle on or off an existing feature that automatically detects and blocks images that have nudity in chats for users between 16 and 18 years old.

Other messaging apps like Messenger and Snapchat already allow their users to send voice notes or media, but TikTok is slowly catching up with the competition. Last year, TikTok added group chats that allow up to 32 people. More recently, TikTok took a page out of X and Meta’s book by adding the Footnotes feature in April, which works similarly to Community Notes.

Recently, I looked back at some of my articles and realized that it’s only been a little over two months since I wrote about trying Linux for the first time. In that short span of time, I’ve become a certified Linux fan, and I now find it funny to think about how I was so scared of using it before. I truly believed that using Linux would just be harder and too difficult to get used to.

I suspect that’s the case for a lot of Windows users. Everyone just assumes Linux is too hard and requires you to be some kind of IT specialist who does nothing but look at computers all day. But really, it doesn’t have to be that way. With the right choices, Linux can be very easy to use, and it doesn’t require that long to get used to.

You don’t need to be in the terminal all the time (or at all)

This is the big one

When you picture Linux, there’s a good chance you picture the command line terminal. The fact that the Windows Subsystem for Linux is based entirely around the terminal probably doesn’t help with that perception. Linux is sometimes perceived as such a niche operating system for experts that it’s hard to imagine otherwise, and I certainly thought the same. In reality, though, how much time you spend in the terminal is up to your own choices and preferences.

Linux comes in many different flavors, and sure, if you install something like Arch Linux, you’re going to need to be comfortable in the command line. But the most popular distros, like Ubuntu? Those are just as easy to get started with as Windows, and there are other great examples of this. Aurora and Bazzite are other excellent choices that don’t really require you to use the terminal at all. The entire setup process is guided with a nice UI, and once you’re on the desktop itself, everything works pretty much like it would on a Windows PC. You have an application launcher, a desktop, a file manager, and a web browser to do all the basic tasks you’d need to do on a computer.

And even if you do have something that requires you to use the terminal, it’s not like you need to do it on a daily basis. When I set up Arch Linux, I needed to have the Flatpak package manager so I could find apps through the Discover store. All it takes is one command after installing the OS, and then Flatpak is on my system forever. Now I can install all the apps I want using the app store instead of opening the terminal again.

There may be a couple of other things that require you to use the terminal to properly set up the first time, but the same principle holds up. I do it once, and then I’m good to go. I don’t need to spend a lot of time in the terminal, even in one of the more difficult Linux variants like Arch.

There are plenty of apps

It’s not a desolate wasteland

Another big thing that kept me from using Linux was the fear that I would have to find subpar alternatives to my favorite apps, and maybe that was true in the past, but today, it really isn’t. For me (and most people, I imagine), the most important app on my computer is my web browser, where I do all my work and most of my time-wasting. I use Vivaldi, which isn’t exactly a niche browser, but it’s not one of the major players, either, so I didn’t think I’d be able to use it. Turns out I was, and in fact, almost every browser you can think of has a perfectly functional Linux version. Google Chrome? Check. Mozilla Firefox? Check. Even Microsoft Edge? Yes, it’s there. Opera, Brave, Zen, Tor — all these browsers and more are on Linux, with only a handful of exceptions like Opera GX or Opera Air.

And the same holds true for a lot of other essential apps. Slack has a Linux app that works perfectly fine, so I can keep talking to my colleagues. Even Beeper, which I thought would be far too small of a platform to have a dedicated Linux version, is here. I can still use all my messaging services in one app, and it works pretty much flawlessly.

There are exceptions, of course, but many of them are paid software that you probably already need a replacement for. Microsoft Office is a good example. I already didn’t want to pay for it, so I needed an alternative and used WPS Office instead, which is also available on Linux (albeit it’s admittedly not very well supported). And there are other well-known options like LibreOffice or OnlyOffice. Likewise, if you don’t want to pay for Photoshop, you probably use GIMP, and this is also available on Linux.

Many Windows features are already on Linux

Clipboard history, emoji picker, and even FancyZones

Another fear I had with switching to Linux was that not only would I be missing some third-party apps, but some of the features I love on Windows 11, too. One of my favorites is the clipboard history, which lets me see multiple items I’ve copied in the past so I can use them again, even after I’ve copied other items into the clipboard. As it turns out, some Linux distros already include this. The KDE Plasma desktop environment already has a clipboard history, and it’s even more customizable than Windows, since I can choose how many entries I want to keep and how long they should be kept. Ubuntu may not come with one out of the box, but thanks to GNOME extensions, you can easily add one that, again, works better than the one in Windows. The exact same things can be said of the emoji picker, which I also love.

Even things that aren’t exactly part of Windows can be added. One of the most important tools I have on Windows is FancyZones, which is part of the PowerToys suite. I thought I would have to miss out on it with Linux, but GNOME extensions also bring this exact feature to Linux PCs with GNOME (such as Ubuntu). And on KDE? Well, a FancyZones-like window manager is built right into the desktop environment, no extras needed. Once again, Linux does what Windows won’t.

There’s still a learning curve

But you don’t have to learn it all at once

As great as Linux is, I don’t want to oversell it as an extremely breezy experience where you’ll be completely at home as soon as you set it up. Linux isn’t Windows, and some things will be different and take some time to get used to. Some distros may use a very different app launcher, like Ubuntu, and not every distro uses the same package manager out of the box, so you may need to install Flatpak or another package manager that makes things easier for you. Plus, not every distro will have the same features I mentioned above, or the best implementation of them, and you may have to do some digging.

But the great thing is you don’t need to deal with all of these problems at once. If you want a really well-balanced operating system with a lot of these features out of the box, Aurora is a fantastic entry point. It has a good app store, easy system updates, and it uses KDE Plasma so you have the features I just mentioned, like the clipboard history and an emoji panel. All the basics will just work out of the box, and it has a very similar look and feel to Windows. Then, on your own time, you can try to learn to find even better tools and options.

Another great option is AnduinOS. This distro is based on Ubuntu and uses the GNOME desktop environment, but it comes preloaded with a bunch of GNOME extensions that really mimic the look and feel of Windows 11, and it’s fantastic. It includes features like the clipboard and emoji picker, too, and it has a great Start menu equivalent that you can customize in ways Windows would never let you. But you also don’t have to, because it feels familiar by default.

Linux isn’t the boogeyman

For the longest time, I thought I would have to sacrifice a ton of my workflow to switch to Linux. Whether it was the supposed lack of apps or a fear that I would have to do everything in the terminal, I was not keen on the idea of switching over. But now, unless you have a specific use case with an app that isn’t on Linux, I strongly encourage people to give it a shot. It’s not as big of a sacrifice as you may think.

Adjuvant chemoradiation may bolster survival outcomes in patients with high-risk locally advanced gastric cancer following D2 resection vs chemotherapy alone, according to results from a randomized phase 3 trial (NCT02648841) published in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, and Physics.

After a median follow-up of 47.1 months (IQR, 20.8-64.6), 25.2% of the chemoradiation group and 34.4% of the chemotherapy group had experienced disease recurrence or death. Additionally, the 3-year disease-free survival (DFS) rates in each respective group were 70.7% vs 66.7%, and the 5-year rates were 69.4% vs 63.8% (HR, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.54-1.25; P = .35).

In postoperative treatment, DFS outcomes did not significantly improve with the addition of chemoradiation. Overall survival (OS; HR, 1.17; 95% CI, 0.74-1.87; P = .50), local recurrence-free survival (LRFS; HR, 0.59; 95% CI, 0.26-1.33; P = .20), or distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS; HR, 0.81; 95% CI, 0.51-1.28; P = .36) outcomes also did not significantly improve with chemoradiation.

In high-risk patients, defined as those with pN stage N2 disease or greater and with extraperigastric lymph node metastases, the 3-year DFS rates in the chemoradiation and chemotherapy groups were 71.0%% vs 53.0%, respectively (HR, 0.53; 95% CI, 0.29-0.97; P < .05). Significant differences were also observed between the 2 groups in this high-risk subgroup in LFRS (HR, 0.21; 95% CI, 0.05-0.94; P < .05) and DMFS (HR, 0.52; 95% CI, 0.27-1.00; P < .05).

“Our findings suggest that for patients with resectable [gastric cancer] after D2 radical gastrectomy, the addition of concurrent [chemoradiation] to adjuvant therapy did not result in further survival benefit, despite being well tolerated overall,” Xia-Xi Qiao, MD, of the Department of Radiation Oncology in the National Cancer Center and Cancer Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College in Beijing, China, wrote in the publication with study coinvestigators. “However, after further selection of patients, we…concluded that for high-risk patients, the DFS of the treatment regimen with adjuvant [chemoradiation] was significantly better than that of adjuvant chemotherapy alone. In addition, the LRFS and DMFS of high-risk patients after [chemoradiation] were also significantly improved. This finding provides evidence for better identification of patient populations that can benefit from [radiation] and personalized treatment in clinical practice.”

Investigators in the phase 3 study enrolled 315 patients with locally advanced disease following D2 resection and randomly assigned them 1:1 to receive chemotherapy (n = 157) or chemoradiation (n = 155). Patients in both groups underwent 8 cycles of S-1 (Teysuno) plus oxaliplatin in the adjuvant setting. S-1 was given orally at 40 mg to 60 mg twice daily on days 1 to 14, and oxaliplatin was given at 130 mg/m² intravenously on day 1 of each 21-day cycle.

Patients in the chemoradiation group received 4 to 6 cycles of chemotherapy as well as intensity modulated radiation therapy, comprised of 45 Gy in 25 fractions of 1.8 Gy from Monday to Friday over 5 weeks. Additionally, concurrent chemotherapy consisted of S-1 at 40 mg to 60 mg twice daily.

Patients in the chemotherapy and chemoradiation groups were primarily male (70.7% vs 72.9%) and the median age in each group was 59 years (range, 29-74) vs 57 years (range, 23-73). The primary tumor site in the respective arms was in the lower gastrointestinal tract (84.7% vs 84.1%), the most common histology subtype was diffuse (45.2% vs 51.0%), and the most common pN stage was N3 (42.7% vs 38.1%). In each arm, 99.4% vs 98.7% had 16 lymph nodes examined on study, and the median number of metastatic lymph nodes was 6 (IQR, 3-14) vs 7 (IQR, 3-12).

The primary end point of the trial was DFS. Secondary end points included OS, LRFS, DMFS, and adverse effects (AEs).

In the chemoradiation and chemotherapy groups, respectively, 69.5% and 65.6% of patients experienced acute toxicities, with events grade 3 or 4 in severity occurring in 18.5% and 26.1%. No significant differences between the groups were observed in any-grade or grade 3/4 toxicities.

The most common AEs in the investigational and control arms included leukopenia (52.3% vs 38.2%), anorexia (43.7% vs 47.1%), nausea and vomiting (41.7% vs 47.1%), thrombocytopenia (34.4% vs 31.2%), and body weight loss (15.2% vs 47.8%). The most common grade 3 or 4 AEs included leukopenia (7.9% vs 9.6%), thrombocytopenia (7.3% vs 9.3%), and nausea and vomiting (5.3% vs 7.0%).

Reference

Qiao X-X, Jiang H-G, Tang Y, et al. Long-term prognostic analysis of chemoradiation therapy versus chemotherapy after D2 Resection for high-risk gastric cancer: results from a prospective randomized control study. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys. 2025;123(1):238-248. doi:10.1016/j.ijrobp.2025.03.044

NEED TO KNOW

• Certain Google users’ data may be at risk after a recent breach

• Hackers attacked the tech giant’s Salesforce database, which stores and manages customer data for businesses

• Google recommends using a passkey — like a fingerprint or face scan — for maximum account security

After a data breach at Google, certain users’ information may be at risk.

Hackers have breached the tech giant’s Salesforce database, which stores and manages customer data for businesses, per Forbes. However, this doesn’t mean that the average Google user should panic: Google Cloud and Gmail data were not affected, per the outlet.

The breach only involved “a limited set of basic business contact information used to communicate with potential advertisers,” per a statement from Google provided to the tech publication PC World.

This means that while some information, like customer and company names, was leaked, personal passwords were not, per the outlet.

Regardless, Google encourages all users to stay up-to-date with password protection, especially due to a surge in new AI-fueled hacking campaigns, as Forbes previously reported in June.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Google recommends that users use passkeys — which utilize biometric data like fingerprints and facial scans — to maintain optimal account security. Passkeys are recommended over 2]-factor authentication, which was the previous gold standard in device security.

“Passkeys provide the strongest protection against threats like phishing. Once you create a passkey, you can use it to easily sign in to your Google Account, as well as some third-party apps or services, and to verify it’s you when you make sensitive changes,” per Google Account Help.

“Unlike passwords, passkeys can only exist on your devices. They can’t be written down or accidentally given to a bad actor,” Google added.

The PEOPLE Puzzler crossword is here! How quickly can you solve it? Play now!

PEOPLE reached out to Google for comment on Saturday, Aug. 30, but did not receive an immediate response.

Read the original article on People

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.

EA has just released the final hardware requirements for Battlefield 6 (BF6), with the initial minimum and recommended specifications remaining largely unchanged. Nevertheless, the game’s developers have just released the minimum, recommended, and ultra settings requirements for the game’s gear.

You can still play BF6 even if you have ancient hardware, as the minimum requirement for 1080p@30 (Low) is just an Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 2600 paired with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060, an AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT, or an Intel Arc A380 — budget-friendly CPUs and GPUs that are at least three years old by now. It also reduced the minimum storage requirement from 75 GB to 55 GB, primarily due to its fragmented installation feature.

This means that your old gaming PC should be good enough to run it at the lowest settings. Or if the one you have doesn’t cut it anymore, you can find great deals on the used marketplace to upgrade your rig just enough to play BF6.

Should you have a more powerful gaming computer that hits the title’s recommended hardware, you can get a smoother gaming experience with a higher resolution. You can achieve 1440p@60 (High) or 1080p@80+ (Low) with the following gear: an RTX 3060 Ti, RX 6700 XT, or B580 for the GPU, and an Intel Core i7-10700 or AMD Ryzen 7 3700X for the CPU.

Although these specs are a bit newer, they’re still on the mainstream spectrum of PC hardware, meaning you don’t have to spend a fortune to play the game at high quality. But if you want to level up your computer for better eye candy, you should do so right now, as Intel is giving away a copy of the game for every eligible purchase of some of its CPUS and GPUs.

Finally, those who have a high-end gaming rig can crank up the quality for maximum immersion. BF6 supports 4K@60 (Ultra) and 1440p@144 (High) resolutions if you have an RTX 4080 or RX 7900 XTX GPU paired with an Intel Core i9-12900K or Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor. You also need at least 16 GB of dual-channel RAM (32 GB for Ultra settings), which is what most Steam gamers have on their systems.

Gamers accustomed to AAA games with demanding specifications may be surprised by the reasonable requirements of BF6. However, since the title is part of the Call of Duty franchise and is introducing a free-to-play Battle Royale mode, the developers likely aimed to appeal to as many gamers as possible. The game is expected to launch on October 10, 2025, so if you don’t have a gaming rig capable of playing it at your desired quality, you still have some five weeks to scrounge up some cash and find the best gaming PC that you can afford.

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Labor Day weekend is here, and one of my favorite mobile accessory brands is celebrating the incoming fall season with serious savings on all their cases — including the newest fall and Halloween cases. It’s the perfect time to (pumpkin) spice up your smartphone during Casely’s Labor Day sale. There are tons of designs to choose from. 

Also: The best Labor Day deals live now 

Prices start at $30 per case; your second case is free. You can potentially snag two phone cases for $15 a piece. Shipping within the US is totally free, too. Just be sure to use the code LONGWEEKEND at checkout. 

Casely carries tons of different case sizes, styles, and phone types. You can get cases for any iPhone starting from the iPhone 6, 7, or 8, up to the latest iPhone 16 Pro Max. If you’re an Android user, don’t fret. Casely carries many Samsung Galaxy phone sizes and the Google Pixel lineup — including the newest Google Pixel 10 series, which was just launched earlier this month. 

Also: Finally, a MagSafe battery pack that doesn’t look like a brick (and it charges quick, too)

I tested my first Casely case with the Casely Power Pod in 2024 and have been a fan since. The cases are affordable yet functional, and while they aren’t the most extreme or durable cases on the market, they get the job done for most people — especially if you like to change your case often or have fun designs. 

Plus, with options like the Bold Flex + MagSafe cases, it’s just as easy (and affordable) to amp up your phone’s protection. I’ve gifted Casely cases to my mom and grandma, and they both love the floral designs that match their respective pink and blue iPhones and the added grippy protection of the Bold Flex line. 

The best part about Casely’s lineup is their cases perfectly match the Power Pod, making a seamless and fun way to charge your phone on the go without sacrificing aesthetics. The Power Pod is a MagSafe charging accessory that snaps on the back of your phone.

How I rated this deal

Everyone loves a BOGO offer, especially on something as fun and easy to swap out as phone cases. Plus, Casely has some of the most affordable yet fun case options on the market, with several versions depending on the protection you’re seeking for your smartphone. I’m a Casely user and love the Classic + MagSafe case offering. I’ll scoop up a case myself, because with prices starting at 2 for $30, why wouldn’t I? I gave this BOGO offer a 5/5 Editor’s deal rating for its affordability and many designs and styles. 

When will this deal expire?

Casely’s Labor Day sale features a countdown to the end on their website. At the time of publication, the sale ends in about 8 days, or sometime around Sept. 7, 2025. 

While many sales events feature deals for a specific length of time, deals are on a limited-time basis, making them subject to expiring anytime. ZDNET remains committed to finding, sharing, and updating the best offers to help you maximize your savings so you can feel as confident in your purchases as we feel in our recommendations. Our ZDNET team of experts constantly monitors the deals we feature to keep our stories up-to-date. If you missed out on this deal, don’t worry — we’re always sourcing new savings opportunities at ZDNET.com.

How do we rate deals at ZDNET?

We aim to deliver the most accurate advice to help you shop smarter. ZDNET offers 33 years of experience, 30 hands-on product reviewers, and 10,000 square feet of lab space to ensure we bring you the best of tech. 

In 2025, we refined our approach to deals, developing a measurable system for sharing savings with readers like you. Our editor’s deal rating badges are affixed to most of our deal content, making it easy to interpret our expertise to help you make the best purchase decision.

At the core of this approach is a percentage-off-based system to classify savings offered on top-tech products, combined with a sliding-scale system based on our team members’ expertise and several factors like frequency, brand or product recognition, and more. The result? Hand-crafted deals chosen specifically for ZDNET readers like you, fully backed by our experts. 

Also: How we rate deals at ZDNET in 2025