Test cricket recap: Black Caps v India day 2
Relive all the action from Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium, Pune. 
© 2024 RadioNZ 0:55am Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 launches with eyes on Game Pass
It is available straight away to subscribers of Microsoft’s Game Pass service, a first for a game this big.
© 2024 BBCWorld 0:45am Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus review: Slim, sleek, and powerful
At a glanceExpert's Rating
Pros
Cool design
Thin and lightweight
Speedy performance
Cons
No touchscreen
Expensive
Battery life isn’t great
Our Verdict
The Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus offers strong processing performance as well as a paper-thin design. However, battery life could be better and it’s missing a few premium features I expected to see given the price of this laptop.
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When it comes to premium laptops, the new Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus ticks off a lot of boxes. It’s thin and light, day-to-day performance is snappy and efficient, and the OLED display is both beautiful and big. It’s one of the Chromebook Plus models, which feature faster processors along with more RAM and storage.
Although Samsung makes quite the impression with this Chromebook, there are still a few flaws to be found. For one, it’s pretty expensive for a Chromebook, especially for one without a touchscreen. The other is the offset keyboard, which I struggled with. Nitpicks aside, I have to hand it to Samsung for creating one of the thinnest Chromebooks I’ve ever worked with. That’s no small feat!
Further reading: Best Chromebooks 2024: Best overall, best battery life, and more
Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus: Specs and features
The Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus comes in just one configuration (as far as I’m aware). Inside you’ll find an Intel Core 3 100U processor, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage. You’re also getting a 15.6 inch 1080p display, a 1080p webcam, and a 68Wh battery. It’s currently available at Samsung for $699.99. For further details, check out the specifications list below:
CPU: Intel Core 3 100U
Memory: 8GB
Graphics: Intel Graphics
Display: 15.6 inch AMOLED, 1920×1080, 60Hz (non-touch)
Storage: 256GB SSD
Webcam: 1080p
Connectivity: 1 HDMI, 2 USB-C, 1 USB-A 3.2, microSD, 1 3.5mm audio jack
Battery capacity: 68Wh
Dimensions: 225.8 x 355.4 x 11.8 mm
Weight: 2.58 pounds
MSRP: $699
The ‘Neptune Blue’ colorway is beautiful and changes depending on the lighting conditions, a bit like Princess Aurora’s changing dress in Sleeping Beauty.
Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus: Design, build quality
IDG / Ashley Biancuzzo
When I removed the Galaxy Chromebook Plus from the box it came in, I was genuinely surprised by its thinness. My colleague Michael Crider, who had the chance to look at this laptop before I got my hands on it, couldn’t help but comment on its sleekness. It weighs 2.58 pounds and measures 0.46 inches at the thickest point of the laptop. As someone who likes to work in different rooms throughout the day (I work remote, by the way!), the laptop never weighed me down or was bothersome to carry. It’s even easy enough to carry in one hand, though I don’t recommend doing that with any laptop.
The “Neptune Blue” colorway is beautiful and changes depending on the lighting conditions, a bit like Princess Aurora’s changing dress in Sleeping Beauty. In natural lighting, namely with the sun streaming in through my kitchen window, the chassis appeared dark blue like the deep ocean. But when I snapped a photo of the laptop with the flash turned on, the chassis looked more silver than blue. It’s a cool effect. I don’t believe I’ve seen such an effect on other laptops, so kudos to Samsung on that one!
Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus: Keyboard, trackpad
IDG / Ashley Biancuzzo
The offset keyboard (number pad included) took some getting used to because it’s bigger than the keyboard I use on a daily basis (my personal laptop measures 13 inches), but once I got into a groove, I was typing just fine at my usual pace. That said, the backspace key remained a point of frustration for me, as it sits right next to the number pad.
I don’t have a number pad on my personal laptop keyboard, so I kept accidentally hitting the plus and minus keys whenever I deleted a typo. The inclusion of a number pad is great if you’re into crunching numbers, but unnecessary for someone like me (who works primarily with words).
I felt the need to make use of the Quick Insert key (aka the caps key) because I’m a millennial and I’m contractually obligated to intimately know the art of the gif response. Pressing the insert key will bring up a small(ish) menu. Not only do you get quick access to gifs, but also Google Drive and Google AI, which can help you write a thank you note. It’s a neat feature, but one I didn’t use for anything aside from sending gifs and calculating a mathematical equation or two.
The trackpad is enormous and takes up a lot of space beneath the keyboard. It’s not a haptic trackpad, which vibrates, emulating the feel of physical buttons. It’s just a traditional one. I don’t have strong opinions on either traditional or haptic trackpads, so I didn’t mind it, but some folks really stand by the haptic variety. In use, the trackpad responds well to taps and swipes. In fact, I had an easier time using the trackpad than I did using the keyboard.
Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus: Display, webcam, speakers
IDG / Ashley Biancuzzo
The 1920×1080 AMOLED display is large and commanding at 15.6 inches, and the bezels are so skinny they’re barely there. The picture it produces is sharp and bursting with color, but that’s no surprise, as Samsung is known for making quality displays. When I watched Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (yes it’s available to stream already), a movie that’s chockful of dark scenes, I was surprised by the amount of detail I could see in those scenes, especially when the camera panned over Adam Maitland’s model town in the beginning.
The picture quality of this display is excellent, but I’m bummed it’s not a touchscreen. The Samsung Galaxy costs $699.99 at MSRP, which is expensive for a Chromebook, so I had higher expectations from the get-go. It’s not a massive deal-breaker, especially if you prefer a non-touch display, but it’s a little disappointing in my book. It’s marketed as a premium Chromebook, yeah? Shouldn’t Samsung have pulled out all the stops?
All Chromebook Plus models come with 1080p webcams, which is perfectly suitable for Zoom or Team meetings. When I turned on the 1080p webcam on the Samsung Galaxy, I was pleased to find that I didn’t look half-dead! I’m very fair-skinned, so I tend to absorb light and that makes me look like some pale creature from the shadows. The orange part of my sweater really popped as well. Overall, I was generally quite pleased with the webcam’s performance, though it sometimes looks darker at the edges of the frame.
As for the speakers, they’re fine but not excellent. I know that’s a lukewarm response, but laptop speakers often leave a little to be desired. Many of them are downward firing (the Samsung Galaxy included), so you lose the punchiness and clarity. That said, the speakers are serviceable when it comes to watching YouTube videos and listening to podcasts. If you’re watching a movie, I’d recommend plugging in a pair of headphones for a better audio experience.
Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus: Connectivity
IDG / Ashley Biancuzzo
The port selection is surprisingly diverse for such a thin machine. On the left side of the Samsung Galaxy, you’ll see two USB-C ports and one HDMI port. On the right side, you’ll find one USB-A port, one microSD port, and one 3.5mm audio jack. The inclusion of USB-A and HDMI is especially impressive, as the slots for them are both tall and wide. You can do a lot of useful things with this laptop like hook up to a monitor (via HDMI) or offload files and photos (via microSD).
Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus: Performance
The Intel Core 3 100U mobile processor that’s driving this machine is quick and efficient. There’s evidence of that in my day-to-day use, which includes binge watching Netflix’s Outlander, writing e-mails, browsing social media, and writing in Google Docs. I didn’t notice slow renderings or any lag when leap-frogging from one open tab to another. The processor uses the Raptor Lake-U architecture, which was first introduced in January 2024. It has a total of six cores and eight threads. Depending on what you’re doing, it’s capable of boosting up to 4.7GHz.
We ran our usual suite of browser-based Chromebook benchmarks and here are the scores:
CrXPRT 2: 170
Speedometer 2.0: 318
Basemark Web 3.0: 1335.19
Kraken: 428.7ms
Jetstream 2: 294.324
These are great scores! Based on those numbers alone, performance is comparable to the Lenovo Flex 5i Chromebook Plus, which features an Intel Core i3-1315U CPU. The Lenovo Flex 5i has a CrXPRT 2 score of 177, which is 4.1 percent faster than the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus. By the way, the CrXPRT 2 benchmark determines how fast a Chromebook handles day-to-day tasks like completing homework assignments, editing pictures, and so on. That said, the difference is marginal. I doubt you’d be able to spot the difference in performance between the two machines.
The Lenovo Flex 5i Chromebook Plus is a tiny bit faster than the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus, sure, but both offer equally strong day-to-day performance. The Samsung Galaxy is well-equipped as far as hardware is concerned.
Further reading: How we test laptops at PCWorld
Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus: Battery life
Samsung claims you can get 13 hours of battery life out of this machine, but I didn’t quite reach that number in my everyday use. The number I reached was closer to eight hours, which isn’t a poor result by any means. That said, not only do I turn up the brightness because my eyesight stinks, but I also have loads of tabs open, both of which ultimately impact the battery life. When I put the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus through CrXPRT 2’s battery benchmark, however, I got a better result.
The Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus died in about 12 hours. It’s close enough to Samsung’s original claim, but I did lower the brightness to 50 percent and turned off the keyboard’s backlighting, which may explain the jump. The Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714, on the other hand, costs about the same as the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus, performs similarly, and lasted 15.1 hours on a single charge. Do I wish for better battery life? Of course! Chromebooks are generally known for their long battery lives, so I was a bit surprised by this result. It’s not the end of the world but for a $700 Chromebook, I expected better.
Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus: Conclusion
The Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus is an exciting, if not explosive entry in the world of Chromebooks. It’s almost paper thin, making it a fantastic portable option for those who are always on-the-go, and it’s so lightweight you’ll barely notice it’s there inside your bag. While day-to-day performance is lightning fast and the unique colorway will no doubt turn heads, you’ll be in for a learning curve with the keyboard and the Quick Insert key is hardly a necessary feature. The AMOLED display, though it produces a beautiful picture, doesn’t have touch capabilities, which is a disappointment given the high price of this machine.
The Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus is a near-perfect device, but the cost ($699.99 at MSRP) is a little too high for a laptop without a touchscreen, a premium feature I’d expect to see in this price range. There’s always a fracture in the marble statue, yeah? Wait for a sale before committing to the buy button. Until then, you may want to check out the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714, which is the same price as the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus, but features a touchscreen and a 2-in-1 form factor.
© 2024 PC World 11:45pm  
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Santner, Latham have Black Caps primed for glory
NZ have a huge upper hand after two days of the second test as they aim to be the first team to beat India in a home series in 12 years.
© 2024 Stuff.co.nz 0:55am How to crack your forgotten passwords
Passwords must be complex and as long as possible so that hackers have no chance of cracking them in a short span of time. However, complicated passwords are easy to forget. Anyone who doesn’t carefully maintain and write down their passwords or store them in the database of a password manager runs the risk of suddenly no longer having access to Windows, protected files, or internet services.
Further reading: Best password managers 2024: Protect your online accounts
There are a number of tools on the internet that can read and decrypt freely readable or encrypted passwords for Windows, Office programs, or certain file formats such as PDF from configuration files or the registry. But many of these were written for older software versions and no longer work today.
Microsoft has continued to strengthen the encryption strength of its passwords over the years and other manufacturers have followed suit. That said, it’s still possible to extract stored passwords from some file types and applications. The programmer Nir Sofer offers a whole range of corresponding tools on his website www.nirsoft.net, all of which can be downloaded free of charge.
Extract saved passwords from Windows
With Credentialsfileview, you can visualize the login data saved by Windows. Among other things, the program displays the password for the Fritzbox or a NAS device.IDG
Windows remembers the password to your router or a connected NAS device and saves this data in the following folder:
C:\Users[username]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Credentials
The Nirsoft tool Credentialsfileview can read these files and display the passwords they contain.
You do not need to install the program. All you have to do is unzip the ZIP file. After starting the EXE file, an options window appears. In the top menu, select the option Decrypt Credentials files of all logged in users > Requires to run as administrator (Elevation) and click on OK.
Credentialsfileview will now show you the contents of the files. For most entries, you will hardly be able to recognize which applications they belong to. However, take a closer look at all lines where your e-mail address appears in the User Name column or where the type Domain Password appears under Entry Type.
Determining the e-mail account password
Use Mail Passview to visualize the server passwords stored in Outlook, Thunderbird and EudoraIDG
In order for a mail program to retrieve messages from your provider’s e-mail server, it must transmit a password. This data is stored in the program’s configuration files. You can use Mail Passview to display the passwords.
Simply call up the tool and it’ll automatically recognize which e-mail application you are using and look up the associated password. It also shows the address of the server, the user name, and the POP3, IMAP, and SMTP ports used. After right-clicking on the password, you can copy it directly to the clipboard with Copy Password. Mail Passview supports Outlook, Thunderbird, and Eudora, among others.
Making the PST file accessible again
Pstpassword generates three passwords that you can use to access the data in a PST file.
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Outlook stores emails, contacts, calendar data, and so on in a file with the extension .PST. To prevent other people from accessing this data, it’s protected with a password.
If you have lost this password, you can use the Pstpassword tool to generate three passwords to access the data. This sounds strange, but it actually works. This is because Outlook PST files do not save a password. Instead, the program generates a 32-bit hash value that represents the original password.
This hash value can also be achieved with a whole range of other passwords due to the weak algorithm with which Microsoft has implemented the encryption.
Make the WLAN passwords visible
Windows displays the stored Wi-Fi passwords on request, but only one at a time.
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When you connect to a Wi-Fi network, Windows automatically memorizes the name, the SSID, and the password used. As soon as you enter the range of the wireless network again later, the operating system can automatically log in again.
This function is primarily useful for notebook owners who frequently move back and forth between several locations. Thanks to this function, they are continuously connected to a WLAN and thus to the internet without having to enter the correct password each time.
In Windows, you can display the password for the WLAN you are currently connected to. To do this, open Settings in the Start menu, go to Network and Internet – Properties, scroll down, and click on View next to Show Wi-Fi security code.
In its window, Wirelesskeyview lists the Wi-Fi passwords of all wireless networks that you have logged into in the past.
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The Wirelesskeyview tool even gives you an overview of all Wi-Fi passwords stored in Windows. Simply unzip the ZIP file and run the EXE file.
Read out the Windows product key
To be able to work with Windows permanently, you need a valid product key. This is a 25-digit code that you must enter in Windows within 30 days of installation. You will receive it when you buy a license for the operating system.
You can use Produkey to determine the product key of the operating system before installing Windows on a new PC.
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If you buy a new computer and want to install Windows on it, you will need to enter the product key again. If you can no longer find the license, you can read the key from the registry of your old installation. To do this, you need a tool such as Produkey from Nirsoft. Just start the EXE file and the program will show you the product key of your Windows installation.
Display passwords stored in the browser
All three major browsers have a built-in password manager. By default, the software offers to memorize the entered code each time you enter a password and to use it automatically for subsequent logins. Of course, this password database is encrypted and protected.
Google Chrome requires you to enter your Windows password or PIN to view the passwords, Edge wants you to log in to your Microsoft account, and Opera and Firefox only reveal the stored data after you have logged in to your account. However, if you no longer know your password, you will have to proceed differently.
In this case, you can use Webbrowserpassview. The tool lists the passwords saved in the four browsers mentioned directly after opening and also states the user name used and the browser from whose password manager the data originates.
Nirsoft provides three parallel tools such as Chromepass, Passwordfox, and Operapassview, which only visualize the passwords of Chrome, Firefox, and older versions of Opera.
Download password cracker
Many malware programs specialize in installing a software agent that searches for passwords on other people’s PCs and sends them to the hacker’s computer on the internet. This can be access data for social media such as Facebook, X, LinkedIn, or for streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Spotify.
Hackers are also interested in passwords for mailing servers or product keys. They may be able to intercept further access data via third-party emails and product keys are easy to sell on the internet.
If the user downloads tools to read such data, this is recognized by anti-virus software. In this case, the download in the browser is blocked right from the start. This also applies to many Nirsoft tools, even if they are not illegal hacking tools. Please do not try to deactivate the antivirus program in order to allow the download onto your PC, as this would be dangerous. Instead, set the antivirus software to exclude your download folder from monitoring.
Temporarily remove folder protection
In every antivirus program, such as Windows Defender in this example, you can set which folders the software should not monitor.
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In Defender, click on the program’s icon in the taskbar corner or open Settings in the Start menu and then navigate to Privacy and Security – Windows Security.
Click on Virus and Threat Protection and under Virus and Threat Protection Settings, click on Manage Settings. Under Exclusions, go to Add or Remove Exclusions and select Add Exclusion in the next window. In the following window, click on Folder and enter the path to your download folder. Normally, this is C:\Users[username]\Downloads.
Defender will now allow all downloads in this folder and will not prevent you from unpacking the ZIP file or running the program. As soon as you no longer need the Nirsoft tool, you should switch the folder protection on again immediately. To do this, select the folder in Defender and click on Remove.
Bypassing the browser blocks
Sometimes the browser sounds an alarm when you download a Nirsoft tool and won’t let you download the file.
In this case, open Properties in Google Chrome via the three-dot menu and navigate to Privacy and Security – Security. In the following window, toggle No Protection and then switch back to Standard Protection after using the tool.
In Edge and Firefox, you can allow the download directly in the message about the blocking of dangerous software. The browser may also send this report: Unchecked Download Blocked.
In this case, right-click on the download link in Google Chrome and Edge and select Save Link As. In the next window, enter the folder that you had excluded from monitoring in Defender.
In Firefox, you’ll see the following message: This file contains a virus or malware. Select the right arrow and then click on Allow Download in the following window.
Switch off Defender Smartscreen warnings
With this message, Windows informs you that the software you are about to start is not listed in its database.
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Finally, the Defender Smartscreen may strike and prevent the program from running. In the harmless version, a blue-green window appears with the following message: The computer has been protected by Windows.
This means that the Windows software database does not recognize the program and therefore refuses to start it. If you are sure that the program is harmless, click on More Information – Run Anyway to start the software.
You may also see the message Malicious File on a red background. This also comes from the smart screen and indicates that it may be malware. In this case, open the lock once for harmless applications by clicking More Information and Run Anyway.
© 2024 PC World 11:45pm 
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