Author: Press Room

There are too many LLMs to test properly. You can chat with a few, pick a favorite, and call it a day, but a model that’s great at conversation might be terrible at coding, structured output, or following an oddly specific instruction. When I need an LLM for a new task, like ranking a list and returning clean JSON, I don’t want to run the same prompt through dozens of models just to find the right one. That’s what benchmarks are supposed to help with. But unlike PC benchmarks, which anyone can run with a few clicks, LLM benchmarks usually…

We all have the same number of hours in the day, but by the time you’ve finished work, fed yourself, and sat on the sofa scrolling through pictures of what other people had for dinner, it’s normally time for bed. Is it any wonder, then, that you can’t always keep up with the latest gadget news? Well worry no more, because that is literally our job here at Stuff. You’ll still find all the biggest stories in our news section, but there’s always a few things we don’t have space to cover – which is where this round-up comes in. …

I’ve had my Roku Streambar, the soundbar-and-streamer combo Roku launched in 2020, humming under my TV since it came out. More recently, the picture flickered, the bar ran warmer than it should, and the home screen turned into a wall of apps I never open. Turns out, I was causing most of that myself. Powering your Roku stick through the TV’s USB port invites random crashes Watch for the flashing red light roku Jorge Aguilar / MakeUseOf If you’ve got a Roku Streaming Stick, it might seem like a good idea to skip using the wall adapter and just plug…

Summary ChatGPT now refuses prompts to mimic specific named authors. The move is likely spurred by big copyright settlements and author lawsuits. Claude and Gemini still comply; users can describe author traits instead. OpenAI’s ChatGPT will no longer carry out prompts that request that the chatbot mimic a particular author’s style. As reported by Ars Technica, ChatGPT has begun rejecting requests to generate text in the style of living authors like Stephen King or dead authors like Charles Dickens and Ernest Hemingway. Though the chatbot refused to directly comply, it did offer to write something “with the hallmarks of atmospheric,…

Your prompt matters in determining how good an answer you’d receive from any AI model. Vague requests can put the model off and lead to underwhelming responses. Now, the answer to a good input isn’t to belabor every point — a lean prompt with a straight-to-the-point request will instead provide you with the best response. With the release of ChatGPT 5.6, OpenAI has released a guide to the best prompting practices that will help you save tokens, cost, and ultimately help you get a better answer. Related I built one ChatGPT prompt that works for absolutely any scenario This simple…

Summary HBO Max launched Shorts (TikTok-style clips) and a conversational search to simplify mobile discovery. Shorts uses AI-curated dramatic clips that tempt endless scrolling and can easily spoil big moments. Conversational search (Android) finds shows by mood or vague prompts to make picking faster. HBO Max just launched two new mobile features in the US: Shorts, which is basically a TikTok-style feed of quick highlights from their shows and movies, and a Conversational Search Tool that lets you find stuff to watch just by saying what you’re in the mood for. It’s all about making it easier to scroll, sample,…

The Apple TV show For All Mankind is one of the best science fiction shows of the past decade. It’s set in an alternate version of history where the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union never stopped, resulting in technological advancement being far ahead of schedule. We have video calls by the 1980s, electric cars are widespread by the ’90s, and we have a manned base on Mars by the early 2000s. Each season of For All Mankind skips forward in time, which gives the series a wonderful sense of scale. However, the show has lost…

How’s your brain doing? Mine’s fried. Shot. Kaput. Positively pickled. Between never-ending WhatsApp notifications and unwanted AI slop, I’m done. I can’t even relax on Reddit anymore – it’s just angry bots arguing with other bots and an algorithm that’s been sterilised beyond recognition. But I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to talk about Lego. Or, more specifically, Lego and its impact on adult mental health.  Today, it’s impossible to stroll through any Lego section without seeing shelves dedicated to intricate (and eye-wateringly expensive) models aimed squarely at grown-ups. Formula 1 cars, typewriters, cameras, bonsai trees, famous…

The annual car tax bill on my Honda S2000 is now well on the way to being £500; hardly good value considering the thousand or so miles I do on it during the summer months. I’m looking for something cheaper and the Honda Super-N might just be it. The boxy little electric car may not look like the obvious alternative to a two-seater roadster, but it offers similar levels of fun – and crucially is affordable to run. At £18,995 (given some American SUVs are more than four times the Super-N’s size, it’s unsurprisingly not sold in the US) it…

If Hamilton had an IMDB page it would be big enough to rival Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson or Zendaya (who seems to be in literally every movie released this year). Since Marlene Dietrich glanced at a hidden photo inside a Hamilton watch case in 1932’s Shanghai Express, the Lancaster, Pennsylvania-born brand (now proudly Swiss-owned) has clocked up appearances in more than 500 movies, TV shows and, more recently, video games. Nobody else comes close to the “watchmaker of filmmakers” tag, and with 14 standout appearances below, it’s easy to see why. 1. Interstellar Watch: Hamilton Khaki Field Murph Worn by:…