You can now live your developer dream with Google’s free Gemini Code Assist access - Related to hacked, live, best, computer, not

Best budget computer speakers 2025: Solid PC audio for $100 or less

Sometimes you just want to relax and hear your music or movie’s audio without being encumbered by wearing headphones. That’s especially the case if you’re enjoying your media with friends or family. The problem is that laptop speakers just often don’t have great sound; they can sound muffled, tinny, and/or lack audio fidelity. What you need instead is a good pair of PC speakers to get the best sound from your media files.

Luckily, you don’t need to buy a complete [website] surround sound system to feel satisfied. For less than $100, you can find some affordable PC speakers that provide quality audio. It’s true that at this price point you will need to make a few compromises, but the best budget computer speakers can still offer a quality listening experience while saving you money, and that’s what we call a win-win.

Why should you trust us? Because our PC speaker reviewers have tried most of the budget speaker models on the market, so they know the ones that stand out from those that don’t quite hit the mark. Our testing criteria is also as thorough as it gets. To test each speaker, we set it up in a typical environment — on a desk in a home office — and play a variety of audio tracks while pushing a speaker system’s sound capabilities to the limit. We consider everything from how practical the design is, to the audio fidelity. We also compare and contrast models to make recommendations based on our findings.

To get insight into our extensive testing process, you can read our article “How we test PC Speakers at PCWorld.”.

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You can now live your developer dream with Google’s free Gemini Code Assist access

Google has made a free version of its Gemini Code Assist tool available worldwide starting February 25. The generative AI model, previously aimed at businesses, is powered by Gemini [website] and integrates with IDEs like Visual Studio Code.

This means you can access Code Assist’s capabilities directly from the environment you’re working in. It will auto-complete code as you’re typing it, and you can also work through problems in the chat or generate code snippets.

The most interesting point about this new free version (officially dubbed “Gemini Code Assist for individuals”) is the usage limits. Every user has access to 180,000 requests a month — which is well over 5,000 per day. These are big numbers no matter how you look at it, but how many requests you get through will depend a lot on what kind of project you’re working on.

Code completions count as a request, so every time Code Assist generates a suggestion based on what you’re typing, one request is used up — whether you accept the suggestion or not. Depending on the situation, developers can write thousands of lines of code per day, so it is definitely possible to hit the limit.

However, if you’re working on something more complex or concise, you’ll be much more unlikely to reach the cap. Plus, if you know you’re going to type a bunch of code manually and you don’t want to waste your requests, you can toggle off code completion until you’re ready to use it again.

So, all things considered, the usage caps really are very high and you’ll be able to get a lot of usage from the free assistant, even if you’re a full-time developer. In a blog post, Google compares its limit to “other popular free coding assistants” with only 2,000 code completions per month — which happens to be the cap for the free version of GitHub Copilot, Google’s main competitor in this area.

Alongside all of the requests, you’ll also get a pretty large token context window. This lets you work with big files and have Gemini take all of them into context when it generates responses.

Google is also starting a public preview of “Gemini Code Assist for GitHub,” which generates free code reviews of pull requests in GitHub and points to improvements. This is intended to help teams review each other’s work more quickly and push changes more efficiently.

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If you’re not using these PC security essentials, you’re begging to be hacked

Once upon a time, you could assume you were pretty safe on the internet, so long as you were careful. But that’s changed. Through no fault of your own, your data can leak, your passwords can become compromised, and you can more easily fall prey to malware.

In 2025, you should assume online attacks are commonplace. The continued rise in use of AI is only accelerating their speed and sophistication, and that shift won’t slow.

To help, we previously outlined 10 simple security tweaks that keep you from getting hacked. But if it’s not clear what software or gear to arm yourself with overall, not to worry, the list below tells you the basics I recommend for broad protection.

As mentioned above, even if you’re careful, the potential of being exposed to phishing sites, malware, ransomware, and other threats is higher than ever. So having good antivirus software at your back is vital.

At the most basic level, you should have Microsoft’s built-in Windows Security antivirus suite active. (Which it should be, so long as you haven’t messed with its settings.) These days, Microsoft’s antivirus protection can be trusted and it runs unobtrusively in the background.

Paid antivirus software like Norton 360 Deluxe (our current favorite pick for antivirus) offers an extra helping hand. It simplifies the wider branches of security defense by providing additional attributes like dark web monitoring, VPN service, and a password manager, then integrating them into a single interface.

Whether part of an antivirus suite or an independent service, a password manager is necessary to track strong, unique logins across the web. But equally critical, they can help minimize how much of your personal data is saved across the web.

For example, instead of allowing individual shopping sites to keep your credit card info or physical address on file, you can maintain privacy (and security) by storing those details in your password manager. You’ll be less at risk for basic fraud if someone gets unauthorized access to your account (no ability to use your credit card to buy things), or personalized scams based on leaked data through breaches.

The simplest choice is the password managers offered by Google or Apple, though Google has the edge due to being available on more platforms. While on the basic side, they’ve come a long way, and work well to combat the temptation of using weak passwords (or worse, reusing them).

Upgrading to an independent service like Bitwarden or Dashlane opens up more capabilities, like unrestricted password sharing, shared vaults for families, emergency access, and monitoring for compromised passwords. The two services named here are our top picks for best free password manager and best password manager, respectively, but you can check out our full recommendations for more options.

These days, you want more than just a lone password standing between you and a bad actor. Two-factor authentication (aka multi-factor authentication) adds a second checkpoint to clear before you can access an account—meaning that even if a hacker steals or deduces your password, they won’t have all the info needed to log in successfully.

If you have the option, the simple way to use 2FA is through app-generated one-time codes. They’re more secure than codes sent over text message (SMS), which have a risk of being intercepted. Authy is popular among our staff, as you can use it across multiple platforms, limit access to new devices, and restrict app access with a PIN or biometric authentication.

Google Authenticator is also another alternative, though it’s not quite so full-featured and requires a Google account to back up your codes to the cloud. For the more cautious, Aegis and Raivo allow you to store your codes locally on your device (though you’ll need to back these up, in case your phone bites the dust).

While you can store 2FA tokens in a password manager, I recommend two separate apps—just on the off chance your vault is compromised, the attacker won’t get full access to all your accounts.

Yep, what you have in your pocket (or on your desk) can be a powerful security tool. If you hate passwords and 2FA, you can use your phone or PC to log into your accounts in a different way—via passkeys.

Passkeys are fast, easy, and arguably simpler than passwords. You don’t have to memorize them—you just save the passkey to your device. Plus, they’re tied to the device you’ve stored them on, so they can’t be stolen and used by hackers the way passwords can. And all you need is biometric authentication or PIN to authorize a passkey’s use.

Mobile devices and computers alike support passkeys—you can save them to your phone, PC, or both. They’re uniquely generated per device, but you can generate as many as the website will allow.

Sadly, not every every site or service supports passkeys yet. Many major ones do, like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Best Buy, Target, etc, but integration is still rolling out across the web. So for those other sites—you’ll still want to use the combo of good password + 2FA.

You know to use unique (and strong) passwords for your accounts. But random unique user names are now a good idea, too.

If you’re on a budget, at least consider email masks for your most sensitive accounts (financial, medical, etc).

Not every website supports software-based codes for two-factor authentication. Some only support SMS codes, which aren’t as secure. (Banks are the worst offenders.) Hackers know this, which means they sometimes resort to SIM jacking to steal codes.

To lower this risk, some people only share their real phone number with valuable or sensitive services like financial and medical institutions. For everything else, they give out their Google Voice number—a service available to anyone with a personal Google account. You get a US-based phone number that you can use for calls and texts through Google’s desktop website or mobile apps. You can also forward any calls to your real number. No one knows it’s not the number issued by your cell phone carrier.

Why not do the reverse? Many banks won’t send 2FA one-time codes to a VOIP number, so Google Voice numbers don’t qualify. It’s a pity, too, since Google Voice numbers can’t be SIM jacked.

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