When I was young, I studied German, History and English at Essen University in Germany. I worked in computer support for several years at the time to help other computer users when they ran into issues.
Writing started out as a passion project, as I wanted to help more users and not just the ones that I handled in support.
This lead to the founding of Ghacks Technology News in 2005. First, as a side-project, but shortly thereafter as a full-time project as the site's popularity exploded.
I sold Ghacks to Softonic some years ago, but stayed on as Editor. You can still read my articles on the site. I do publish on Betanews as well. In recent years, I started to write and publish technology books, including my latest book "Windows 11 From Beginner to Advanced", which is available on Amazon.
I'm also a freelance writer for the German publisher Gamestar.
Chipp.in is my newest project. I want to use it to talk about my book projects, sell my books directly, and write about technology, as this is what interests me.
If you use a Fire TV device by Amazon, then you know that you may install third-party Android apps on the device that are not provided via Amazon’s official App Store. This is an excellent option to install apps that you may want to use, like streaming apps or YouTube frontend clients that get rid of all the annoyances.
However, Amazon announced this year that it is going to disable certain apps on the Fire TV devices of customers without giving customers any say in the matter.
Amazon claims that it only disables apps “that are identified as using or providing access to unlicensed content”. In other words, Amazon targets apps that provide users with free access to streaming content that is restricted in some way or another.
A prime example are apps that give you access to sports streams that are not available for free. Amazon has a FAQ-website up that answers some questions that customers may have. It covers topics such as refunds (not really) to exceptions (none).
Put simple, Amazon will disable any application that it has on its list, which it keeps private. Customers should receive warnings next time they try to load an app that is on the list. The only options at this point are to close the app or to uninstall it.
Will this also affect frontends for services that get rid of advertisement? It is too early to say and even if that is not the case right now, the infrastructure is in place to add any app to the block list at any time.
Now You: do you use a streaming device or stick, like the Fire TV sticks? If so, did you install third-party apps on the device that are not offered via the official store?
The free AI ride is as good as over. Free meaning no ads in this case. The writing was on the wall: AI processing, infrastructure and upkeep are expensive and companies can only burn through a specific amount of money before investors demand a return on their investment or they run into payment issues.
ChatGPT is probably the most used AI out there. You can use it in apps or on the official website, and it is also found in many third-party apps.
Soon, ChatGPT may introduce advertisement into its Android application, reports Tibor Blaho on X. Hhe user found references to ads in the last Android beta.
Strings, such as AdTarget, SearchAd, or ApiSearchAd were discovered in the beta. While version 1.2025.329 of ChatGPT did not include any ads during tests, the existence of the strings suggests that ads are coming.
It is likely that OpenAI will limit ads to free users, which make the bulk of users right now. Turning on ads could boost the company into the upper-elite of advertising, rivaling the likes of Meta (not Google, for obvious reasons).
It is unclear how ads will look like and if they will be easily distinguishable from the AI’s output to the user’s request.
The question is, what will users do when they encounter ads in ChatGPT? Will they keep on using the software or switch to another, one that does not have ads yet? It will be interesting to see.
Ads may also lead to a credibility problem, especially if the ad highlights a product that the AI also recommended in the answer to the user.
Now You: Do you use an AI right now? If so, which and how is your experience so far? If not, why not? Feel free to leave a comment down below.
What used to be a once or twice a year occurrence has turned into the opposite. It seems that digital games sales happen every week nowadays, which has turned them from something exciting into something bland and interchangeable.
It is the same with sweets for Christmas. They used to be special, but you get them nowadays from September onward already, which removes much of the excitement surrounding them.
Gog is my preferred online shop for digital games. The main reason here is that the games do not come with DRM. While that stance keeps some games away from the platform, things do have improved in recent years.
The details:
Gog says that more than 7500 games are discounted on the platform currently.
Discounts go up to 95 percent, but that is the extreme.
I would like to highlight three excellent games that play on old and new machines. As a general rule, I recommend using a wishlist or a list locally to keep track of games that you are interested in.
Point and click, that is what you do mostly in the game. (Image source: Gog)
Lucas Arts has created a tremendous amount of excellent adventure games. My all-time favorite is Day of the Tentacle, but you can’t go wrong with Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, or the Indiana Jones games.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is a classic point and click adventure. You use the mouse to pick an action from a list of available ones and then another click to interact with objects in your inventory or the location your character is in currently.
This one follows the movie of the same name to a degree, but it includes unique locations and stages not seen in the movie. If you like the movie or adventure games, this one might be just right for you.
This a close-up, a view that you don’t play the game in. Looks nice, but not practicable at all. (Image source: Gog)
This is a real-time strategy game set in the Warhammer 40K universe. Dark, grim and war are its main ingredients. The game came out a long time ago and I played it a lot, especially the excellent Last Stand mode, which gives you control of a single hero in arena combat with two additional human players against hordes of computer opponents.
The characters gain experience while playing, which unlock new equipment for the hero that you can then equip.
Anyway, you get a solid single player campaign that you can play as well as Last Stand and Multiplayer. The latter two only with the Gog Galaxy software apparently, which is a let down unfortunately and reflected in the ratings the game has received so far on Gog.
The first Dragon Age roleplaying game with all of its content in a single package. Is is still an excellent game with a captivating story and so much to do.
It still irks me that EA managed to drive the franchise into the ground with consecutive titles.
If you like traditional RPGs with real-time combat that you can pause to plan and execute strategies, this one is for you.
Closing Words
These are just three of the games that I played a lot and can recommend fully. There are more, including several independent games, such as Into the Breach, FTL: Advanced Edition, or Party Hard.
Now You: Have you bought any games recently? If so, which and where? Feel free to leave a comment down below.
How many videos do you get when you open the YouTube homepage on your device? When I do open YouTube in any browser I get zero, because I have turned off the YouTube history and Google decided it would push users into signing in to an account by disabling the generic feed of videos that it was showing previously to anonymous users.
However, even if you sign in, your mileage may vary depending on device, application and the screen of the device. It is clear that Google seems to be interested in showing less and less videos on the homepage of YouTube.
Turns out, someone predicted that this would happen in early 2025 already, stating back then that YouTube would soon — in the same year — display just a single video on its homepage on his main device, a 32″ 1440p display.
Back in early 2025, YouTube showed five videos and a big ad on the homepage, a stark contrast to the 30 videos and zero ads that YouTube showed back in 2019.
When the same author opened YouTube this month on Apple TV, he was greeted with a layout that showed just two thumbnails, one of them being an ad.
So, just one video remained on the homescreen as predicted. Here is where it gets crazy: he is now predicting that Google won’t show a single video going forward on YouTube’s above the fold homepage (but likely a big ad for something).
The approach is similar to how Google turned Google Search into a vessel for delivering ads to visitors rather than sites. For some queries at least, Google shows zero organic links above the fold. Only ads, lots of them. The first organic result may show up on the second page.
Any other website would get penalized into oblivion by Google for doing so, but the same rules that Google applies to websites don’t apply to Google itself.
I’m less and less interested in YouTube because of Google’s stance of making the live of users who are not signed in miserable.
Anyway, what is your take on this and more importantly, how many ads and videos do you see on the YouTube homepage currently?
Clarke revealed several information during the company’s latest earnings call. One of them being that Dell believes that there are 500 million Windows 10 PCs out there in the world that can’t be upgraded to Windows 11 officially. While most could be upgraded by bypassing Microsoft’s artificially introduced system requirements, only a small fraction will because of the technical process that is involved and the consequences.
Another 500 million PCs that run Windows 10 can be upgraded, but have not yet. That leaves about 500 million PCs that run Windows 11 already, according to Dell.
However, this is not the only bombshell that Clarke dropped during the call. He also revealed that the transition from Windows 10 to Windows 11 is much slower than the transition from Windows 8 to Windows 10.
The transition is lagging behind, which affects Dell’s growth in the sector. Dell reported a revenue of $12.1 billion for its Client Solutions Group, which bundles commercial client and consumer PC sales. Here, Dell reported a slight uptick in commercial client revenue to $10.1 billion and a declining revenue of $2 billion in consumer PCs.
The Infrastructure Solutions Group made more than up for that though. Its revenue was $14.1 billion, which is a 24 percent increase compared to the last year and the sevenths consecutive quarter with double-digit growth. AI is the main driver of the revenue increase of this group.
To sum it up: Windows 10 users seem to hold on to their PCs, even if they could upgrade them to Windows 10. For now, PCs remain supported with security updates if ESU is enabled for the device.
Now You: Windows 10 or Windows 11, what is your preference? Or something else? Maybe you made the switch to Linux already?
WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging apps out there. One reason why more and more businesses try to establish channels on WhatsApp. Most to reach customers and sell them something.
Amazon is no exception to that. Maybe you have noticed already that you are getting ads from Amazon in WhatsApp.
Even if not, you may want to make sure that you won’t in the future. Good news is that there is an option to turn that off. It appears, however, that the feature is turned on by default. I can’t remember allowing Amazon to use WhatsApp for communication.
Here is what you need to do:
Load the Notifications website on the Amazon website of your choosing: https://www.amazon.com/preferences/cpc/homepage
Check the “Turn on WhatsApp” or “Turn off WhatsApp” button on the page.
Select “Turn off WhatsApp” to disable communication.
Note that the page may look different depending on your locale. In Germany, it was called Communication Preferences Center and it looked different from the page opened on Amazon.com.
There, you an entire section dedicated to WhatsApp Preferences.
As you can see on the screenshot. the account was set up to receive WhatsApp notifications.
To change that here, you have to uncheck one or both of the options listed on the page:
Key order updates, shipments, payments, and other account updates.
Deals and offers, recommendations, promotional events, and more.
The second option sends ads to your WhatsApp account, while the first seems to be limited to Amazon notifications about orders and such. However, if you disable both, you can check “Do not send me any notifications on WhatsApp.
Don’t forget to hit the update button to save the change.
Now You: did you see the WhatsApp preferences when checking your Amazon account? Were the settings enabled? Feel free to leave a comment down below.
You may have heard that Microsoft is working on a new restore feature for Windows 11 called Point-in-time Restore.
The backup feature in a sentence: It allows Windows admins to restore the exact previous state of a Windows PC.
The main focus is to offer fast restores to a previous system state to allow the quickest recovery possible using integrated options.
The biggest different to System Restore, therefore, is that it creates a snapshot of the entire Windows system and not just some files and setting, like System Restore.
While that sounds like a great addition to Windows and could make some backup apps unnecessary, this is not the case entirely, as there are downsides to this as well.
Probably the biggest letdown is that it is capped to 72 hours. Means, it won’t help if the issue occurred before that period and was not noticed until then. Microsoft says that this is the maximum and that restore states will be deleted after being kept for the maximum.
The restore points may also be deleted in other circumstances, mostly when storage that is reserved for the restoration feature is reaching the set maximum size or when the device itself is running low on disk space.
Windows 11 creates a restore point every 24 hours by default. Here is a table that shows the main differences between Point-in-time Restore and System Restore, according to Microsoft.
Criteria
Point-in-time restore
System Restore
Configuration
System settings
Control panel
Restore point trigger
Scheduled frequency (automatic only)
Event-triggered or manual
Retention
Max 72 hours per restore point
Indefinite (subject to disk usage/cleanup)
Target scope
Full system state
System files and settings; app/user data coverage varies
Management
Will support remote management*
No modern management
Good news is that Point-in-time restore runs locally and while you do need to make sure that enough storage space is available, it could finally be a Windows feature that most Windows 11 users have nothing against.
However, it won’t replace traditional backup software, as these allow you to keep copies indefinitely, something that Point-in-time Restore does not seem to support and probably won’t ever.
If you are using Google’s Gmail email service, you may have stumbled upon Smart Features already, especially if you are using the web-version of the service. Up until recently, Smart Features did not include AI, but this changed in 2025.
Now, Google has baked its AI Gemini into the Smart Features of Gmail. Depending on where you live, Smart Features are enabled by default. Note that while Google claims that Smart Features are not turned on for user in the European Union (Japan, UK and Switzerland are the three other regions), they were in fact enabled in one of my accounts.
So, what do you get with Smart Features?
Automatic email filtering and categorisation.
Smart Compose.
Smart Reply.
Nudges (suggests emails to reply to or follow-up on)
Summary cards above emails.
Grammar, spelling, and auto-correction.
Some of these features are powered by AI nowadays and Gemini, Google’s AI, needs access to your data for the features to work. Google claims that personal data is not used for training and that everything is kept within the boundaries of the account.
However, if you prefer that Gemini does not access your emails at all, your only option is to turn of the Smart Features in Gmail.
Here is how that is done:
Load https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/general in a web browser.
Scroll down to Smart Features in Settings under General.
Remove the checkmark of the Smart Features box.
Confirm the removal.
Gmail restarts.
Smart Features should be turned off now.
Note that you may also need to click on “Manage Workspace smart feature settings”, if the account is a Google Workspace account and not just a single Gmail account.
There you can turn off Smart Features for Gmail and other Google products.
Again, when you enable the feature you do not get any auto-corrections anymore as well. That is a trade-off for some, others may use the functionality that their browser provides for that anyway.
Now You: do you use Gmail as your mail provider or another service? Black Friday might be a good option to make a switch, as plenty of deals are live already or will be offered in the coming weeks.
The number one advertisin company on the Internet seems to have found another place to show you ads. Reports are coming in that more and more users are starting to see ads in AI Mode.
AI Mode? It is a new option in Google Search that you may use to ask Google’s Gemini AI questions and get answers. The mode supports deep search functionality, which Google says is its “most advanced research tool in Google Search”.
Anyway, if you select the mode, you may now also get a good chunk of advertisement according to Bleeping Computer and several other sites and Internet users.
Earlier this year, Google started to show ads in AI Overviews. Unlike AI Mode, which users need to select actively, AI Overviews are attached to regular search results pages on Google Search.
Not all AI chats and modes show advertisement right now. However, there is a very good chance that many will in the not so distant future. These businesses can’t run on love alone and there does not seem to be enough money in selling paid memberships.
So, in the future, you will pay with your data and your eyes on ads when you use the majority of AI chats that will be still around in a year or two.
Speaking of which, if you are subscribed to a Gemini plan, you are still going to see ads in AI Mode and AI Overviews (of course), unless you use a content blocker.
If your favorite website is not responding right now, it might be because of a major Cloudflare outage. Plenty of sites use Cloudflare, for instance as a CDN or a security layer to prevent attacks or fake traffic.
As it stands right now, Cloudflare states on its Status website that it continues to work on restoring its service for its customers.
The issue started at around 11:48 UTC today when Cloudflare added the first bit of information to the status page revealing that it was experiencing issues. Two hours later, the issue is ongoing.
You can check the link above to find out when the issue is resolved. Or, you can try visiting the affected websites at a later point to find out if it is resolved.
Most websites affected by the issue should show “Internal server error” with error code 500. The image should highlight that the browser and the host is working, but that Cloudflare is having an error.
