NZXT agrees to let customers keep their rental PCs in class-action settlement

NZXT agrees to let customers keep their rental PCs in class-action settlement

fivenewscrypto    avril 14, 2026   

PC hardware company NZXT and its billing partner, Fragile, have agreed to a $3,450,000 settlement in response to a class-action complaint regarding NZXT’s Flex PC rental program.

NZXT announced Flex in August 2024, saying that it would charge customers $59 to $169 a month to rent an NZXT gaming desktop (as of this writing, Flex prices are $79 to $279 per month). At the time, NZXT said that the PCs would be “new or like new.” Subscribers had the option to receive an upgraded rental PC every two years.

The program was met with criticism. Renting a PC can quickly become more costly than buying one, depending on the rental, and YouTube channel Gamers Nexus claimed in November 2024 that customers received less powerful components than expected and that NZXT advertised the rental PCs with inaccurate benchmark results. There was also concern about what NZXT did with customer data left on returned computers.

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Your tech support company runs scams. Stop—or disguise with more fraud?

Your tech support company runs scams. Stop—or disguise with more fraud?

fivenewscrypto    avril 14, 2026   

Michael Cotter had a problem: "Chargebacks" at his tech support company were too high. The reason for this was not hard to find; people at his company, Tech Live Connect, were scamming Cotter's fellow Americans.

The scams usually began with a pop-up message warning that a user's computer might have a virus. The pop-up then claimed to run a "scan" (which was always positive) of the computer and provided a toll-free number to call for more help. Those who called were connected to Tech Live Connect's Indian call center, where they were asked for remote access to their computers, diagnosed with fake problems, and charged hundreds of dollars to "fix" them. Call center workers often pretended to be Apple or Microsoft employees.

Defrauded people complained in droves.

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Sunrise on the Reaping teaser brings us a Second Quarter Quell

Sunrise on the Reaping teaser brings us a Second Quarter Quell

fivenewscrypto    avril 14, 2026   

The Hunger Games franchise, based on the bestselling novels by Susan Collins, has grossed over $3.4 billion at the global box office across five films and shows no sign of slowing down any time soon. Lionsgate just dropped an extended teaser for the sixth film, Sunrise on the Reaping—a sequel to 2023's Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and a prequel leading into the events of the first film, The Hunger Games (2012).

(Some spoilers for prior films in the franchise below.)

Confession: While I was a fan of the first two films, my interest in the Hunger Games franchise flagged a bit after that. It didn't help that the first prequel, Ballad, was the weakest film in the franchise, although it still raked in $349 million globally at the box office. That film told the backstory of future Panem President Coriolanus Snow (played by the late Donald Sutherland in the first four films) as a young man (Tom Blyth). Set in the earliest days of the Games, we see his gradual transformation from well-meaning mentor to a tribute named Lucy Gray (Rachel Zegler), to conniving villain willing to do pretty much anything for power.

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IBM folds to Trump anti-DEI push, admits no misconduct but pays $17M penalty

IBM folds to Trump anti-DEI push, admits no misconduct but pays $17M penalty

fivenewscrypto    avril 14, 2026   

IBM agreed to pay $17 million to the US government to resolve the Trump administration's claim that the firm's diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies discriminated against employees and job-seekers.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) touted the settlement on Friday, saying it's the first one secured under the Civil Rights Fraud Initiative launched in May 2025. The Trump administration created the program to make DEI-related complaints against government contractors fall under the False Claims Act of 1863, which imposes triple damages and a civil penalty on contractors that defraud the government.

The Justice Department alleged that IBM violated the False Claims Act by failing to comply with anti-discrimination requirements in its federal contracts, which required IBM to certify that it would not discriminate against employees or applicants. The US claims that IBM certified compliance despite maintaining practices that "discriminated against employees during employment and applicants for employment because of race, color, national origin, or sex, and failed to treat employees during employment without regard to race, color, national origin, or sex."

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Slate Auto raises $650 million as production gets closer and closer

Slate Auto raises $650 million as production gets closer and closer

fivenewscrypto    avril 14, 2026   

The electric pickup startup Slate Auto started the week well. This morning, it announced it has raised $650 million in its latest funding round.

Slate is a refreshing outlier among the aspiring new electric vehicle OEMs. Lucid debuted with an electric sedan that intended to move the game on from the Tesla Model S. Rivian said, "What if [we had] supercar suspension and a smiley face for an EV with serious off-road skills?" Both arguably succeeded. Sony Honda Mobility wanted to make the EV a true digital content hub, at least until one half of that joint venture called time—who knows how that project would have turned out, although I suspect sales would have been underwhelming.

But Slate, which got its start in 2022, is doing things differently. It's not starting sales with something near six-figures; far from it. The abolishment of the federal clean vehicle tax credit was no doubt inconvenient—with it, a sub-$20,000 starting price was possible, but even at "mid-$20,000s" the Slate Truck should match or undercut the Ford Maverick XL, currently the cheapest pickup on sale in the US.

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Meta spins up AI version of Mark Zuckerberg to engage with employees

Meta spins up AI version of Mark Zuckerberg to engage with employees

fivenewscrypto    avril 14, 2026   

Meta is building an artificial intelligence version of Mark Zuckerberg that can engage with employees in his stead, as part of a broader push to remake the Big Tech company around AI.

The $1.6 trillion group has been working on developing photorealistic, AI-powered 3D characters that users can interact with in real time, according to four people familiar with the matter.

The company recently began prioritizing a Zuckerberg AI character, three of the people said.

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To teach in the time of ChatGPT is to know pain

To teach in the time of ChatGPT is to know pain

fivenewscrypto    avril 13, 2026   

I’ve been teaching college Earth science courses as a part-time faculty member for a long time now, all while juggling other jobs. I started because it was enjoyable; no one gets into this line of work for the famously poor pay or complete lack of job security. Working with students is just one of those genuinely fulfilling experiences that is addictive enough that they ought to warn people about it.

But thanks to generative AI, it has become mostly miserable―at least in certain settings.

For the last few years, I’ve been exclusively teaching asynchronous online courses, meaning recorded videos rather than live sessions. These have always been a bit more challenging than face-to-face classes, where you have a greater ability to keep the students on track. If a student doesn’t have to show up in a room for an hour at a scheduled time and no one can see their involuntary facial expressions when they don’t understand something, the probability increases greatly that they’ll just… fall off.

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