Technology

Hypersonic jet promises NYC to London in under an hour

Published

1 year ago

November 22, 2024

Hypersonic jet promises NYC to London in under an hour

Venus Aerospace, a Texas-based company, is developing a groundbreaking hypersonic jet called the Stargazer that could potentially fly from New York City to London in just under an hour, a journey that currently takes around seven hours.

This ambitious project aims to revolutionize long-distance travel and redefine the boundaries of commercial aviation.

Stargazer (Venus Aerospace)

Powering Stargazer to hypersonic heights

At the heart of the Stargazer’s capabilities is the Venus Detonation Ramjet 2,000lb Thrust Engine, or VDR2.

I’M GIVING AWAY A $500 GIFT CARD FOR THE HOLIDAYS

This innovative propulsion system combines the rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) with a ramjet, allowing the engine to operate from takeoff through hypersonic speeds without complex mechanical systems. The VDR2 is expected to reach speeds of up to Mach 6, or 3,600 miles per hour and fly at an altitude of 110,000 feet, allowing passengers to see the curvature of the Earth. The aircraft is designed to travel up to 5,000 miles.

WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)?

Stargazer (Venus Aerospace)

NEW MULTI-MISSION MILITARY WARPLANE TAKES FLIGHT

Navigating the path to hypersonic commercial flight

While the prospect of hypersonic travel is exciting, there are several challenges to overcome. The Stargazer is estimated to cost $33 million and will have a limited passenger capacity of 12. There are also potential issues with sonic booms over populated areas and regulatory hurdles in obtaining approval for commercial hypersonic flight. However, Venus Aerospace is moving swiftly to bring their vision to reality. The Stargazer is projected to be available for commercial use in the 2030s.

Stargazer (Venus Aerospace)

MONSTER PLANE COULD REPLACE TRUCKS AND TRAINS

Kurt’s key takeaways

If successful, the Stargazer could transform long-distance travel, making global cities more connected than ever before. However, it’s important to temper excitement with realism, as the road to commercial hypersonic flight will likely be long and complex. The technological advancements being made by Venus Aerospace are promising, but numerous hurdles remain before hypersonic travel becomes a reality for everyday passengers.

Would you fly on a hypersonic jet like the Stargazer, or are you hesitant about the idea of such rapid travel? Let us know by writing us at Cyberguy.com/Contact.

For more of my tech tips and security alerts, subscribe to my free CyberGuy Report Newsletter by heading to Cyberguy.com/Newsletter.

Ask Kurt a question or let us know what stories you’d like us to cover.

Follow Kurt on his social channels:

Answers to the most asked CyberGuy questions:

New from Kurt:

Try CyberGuy’s new games (crosswords, word searches, trivia and more!)

Enter CyberGuy’s $500 holiday gift card sweepstakes

KURT’S HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDES

Unbeatable Best Black Friday deals

Best gifts for: Men | Women | Kids | Teens | Pet lovers

Best deals: Laptops | Desktops | Printers

For those who love: Cooking | Coffee | Tools | Travel | Wine

Can’t go wrong with these: Gift Cards | Money-saving apps | Amazon Black Friday insider tips

Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on “FOX & Friends.” Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.

Technology

The best PS5 games from 2025

Published

8 hours ago

December 28, 2025

Press Room

In this new era of console… inclusivity? driven by Sony and mostly Microsoft bringing their exclusives to other platforms, it’s getting harder to highlight games that make a singular console shine. Indeed, the top-performing games year after year on both PlayStation and Xbox are multiplatform releases, and often the best games of the year, like 2025 GOTY winner Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, similarly launch on most everything. (Once again, like in all things, Nintendo is the exception.)

But while lists like this will probably disappear as we get deeper into the era of everything being an Xbox, Sony still seems committed to high-quality exclusives. Here are its best of 2025.

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

As software exclusivity goes the way of Sega’s console business, console makers have other ways to attract consumers to their part of the video game ecosystem. For Microsoft, it’s Game Pass; for Sony in 2025, it’s the PlayStation Portal. This year, Sony launched an update for the Portal that enables cloud streaming and making the device a must-have for PlayStation households. For $200, roughly half the price of a PS5, you essentially get a second one, able to play select games without the need to stream them from the console. The list of streamable games isn’t comprehensive, but there are over 2,000 of them, and the ability to play them on the go is a literal game changer.

Get into a discussion with true Final Fantasy sickos about the top 10 games in the franchise, and you better have a lot of time and earplugs on your hands as everyone debates entries two through 10 — because No. 1, invariably, is Final Fantasy Tactics. Having finally played the game for the first time, taking advantage of the remaster Square Enix released this year, I get it. The best video games are often timeless while also able to speak to a specific moment, and Tactics’ story is and does exactly that.

But more than narrative, Tactics’ brilliance is also in its expansive job system that grants players a facsimile of godhood that’s so much fun to wield. The arithmetician class has the ability to cast any learned spell in the game instantly and without requiring mana. To offset the class’s ruinously slow speed, pair it with white mage to create the most diabolical unit in the history of strategy RPGs. Ramza Beoulve is just a guy trying to save the world, and FFT made me believe he can because I made his ragtag band of misfits into walking nuclear weapons.

Sucker Punch’s sequel to Ghost of Tsushima plays things relatively safe. It doesn’t change things up dramatically but instead polishes the experience. Which means the experience isn’t all that different from its predecessor — that means lush landscapes to explore, lots of combat techniques to learn, and, uh, plenty of hot springs to bathe in — but everything feels more finely tuned this time around. That’s especially true of the game’s tale of revenge, which is both more gripping than the original and also gives the open-world experience some much-needed structure.

The original Death Stranding was so weird that half of the fun was just wrapping your head around the experience. I’m not sure I really understood it until I was almost done (if at all). The sequel is still plenty weird, but because it builds off of the previous game, it’s also much easier to understand from the get-go. It’s still a delivery simulator where you trek across a postapocalyptic landscape to get goods and people where they’re needed. But now the setting has shifted to Australia, which means there are new environmental elements to deal with — hello, sandstorms — along with a whole new cast of weirdo characters to meet, played by everyone from Elle Fanning to George Miller.

But don’t worry; the story is still as inscrutable as ever.

Bennett Foddy sure made you feel the “walking” part of this elaborate walking simulator. In Baby Steps, your job is to walk, and you do that by controlling every move involved in taking a step, down to the fine motor details. What results is a hilarious examination of human psychology, emotional maturity, and a newfound appreciation for just how hard it is to ambulate a body with nothing more than DualSense trigger buttons.

When Lumines Arise was first announced, I made the mistake of asking, “Oh, is it a series or something?”, unfamiliar with Lumines’ days as a PSP powerhouse. My elders have never let me live that down, so I thought I’d see for myself what the game is.

Lumines Arise is Evil Dr. Tetris Effect Mean Bean Machine. Mean Bean Machine in that the game is played by globbing together matching blocks in two-by-two configurations. It’s part Tetris Effect because the game has an incredible synth / pop-house soundtrack that’s synced to the action, creating a full-body puzzle-playing experience. And evil in that the game is hard as shit. My skills as a Tetris player, limited though they are, just do not transfer to Lumines Arise. But! There is a flow state I can reach. Throughout playing, the shapes of the blocks will change from blocks, to eggs, to clocks, whatever, and I’ve found some patterns are easier to group than others. It’s interesting and fun to figure out what shapes make the game easier for me and which ones are impossible to configure.

Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.

Ash Parrish

Technology

ChatGPT’s GPT-5.2 is here, and it feels rushed

Published

9 hours ago

December 28, 2025

Press Room

ChatGPT’s GPT-5.2 is here, and it feels rushed

Can ChatGPT Really Help With Parenting?

Jenny Failla and Madison Alworth join the panel on “Fox News Saturday Night” to share their thoughts on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitting he relies on ChatGPT to help with parenting.

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has moved at an unusually fast pace in 2025. According to the company, it launched GPT-5 in August, followed by GPT-5.1 in November. Now, just weeks later, GPT-5.2 has launched with familiar claims of being the smartest and most capable ChatGPT yet.

At first glance, the rapid rollout might seem surprising. But there’s context behind it. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has reportedly called a “code red” inside the company, urging teams to move faster on improving ChatGPT. That push comes as competition heats up. Google recently released Gemini 3, which reportedly outperformed ChatGPT on several artificial intelligence benchmarks and delivered stronger image generation. At the same time, Anthropic’s Claude continues to advance quickly.

Against that backdrop, GPT-5.2 feels less like a routine upgrade and more like a strategic response. So what actually changed in GPT-5.2, and why does OpenAI say it matters?

Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy Report
Get my best tech tips, urgent security alerts and exclusive deals delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, you’ll get instant access to my Ultimate Scam Survival Guide – free when you join my CYBERGUY.COM newsletter.

AMAZON ADDS CONTROVERSIAL AI FACIAL RECOGNITION TO RING

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman looks on as he takes a lunch break, during the Federal Reserve’s Integrated Review of the Capital Framework for Large Banks Conference in Washington, D.C., July 22, 2025. (REUTERS/Ken Cedeno)

What exactly is GPT-5.2

GPT-5.2 is the newest version in OpenAI’s flagship 5-series of large language models. Like its predecessor, it includes two default variants. GPT-5.2 Instant is designed for everyday chatting and web searches. GPT-5.2 Thinking is meant for more complex tasks like long reasoning chains and multi-step problem solving. These two models are now the default for all ChatGPT users, including free users. They replace GPT-5.1 Instant and Thinking entirely. If you are using ChatGPT today, you are already using GPT-5.2, whether you realize it or not.

What OpenAI says GPT-5 brings to ChatGPT

At the same time, OpenAI continues to position GPT-5 as “expert intelligence for everyone.” The company says GPT-5 delivers stronger performance across math, science, finance, law and other complex subjects. In OpenAI’s view, ChatGPT now acts more like a team of on-demand experts than a basic chatbot. To support that claim, OpenAI points to practical examples. These include better coding help, more expressive writing support, clearer health-related explanations and improved safety and accuracy. The company showcases use cases such as generating app code, writing speeches, explaining medications and correcting mistakes in user-submitted images. In theory, GPT-5.2 builds on that same foundation. However, while OpenAI emphasizes deeper thinking and more reliable answers, those gains remain subtle for many everyday users.

What new features does GPT-5.2 add?

Here’s the short answer. None. GPT-5.2 does not introduce new tools, interfaces, or headline features. Instead, OpenAI describes a series of behind-the-scenes improvements that supposedly make ChatGPT faster, smarter and more capable. According to OpenAI, GPT-5.2 performs better at:

Building presentations
Completing complex projects
Creating spreadsheets
Understanding long context windows
Interpreting images
Using tools more effectively

Kurt Knutsson reviews the new features in ChatGPT-5.2. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

OpenAI also released new benchmarks showing GPT-5.2 outperforming GPT-5.1 and competing models by small margins. However, big numbers on charts do not always translate into noticeable improvements for real users.

NEW US MILITARY GENAI TOOL ‘CRITICAL FIRST STEP’ IN FUTURE OF WARFARE, SAYS EXPERT

Why testing chatbot improvements is tricky

Evaluating chatbot upgrades is harder than it sounds. Responses can vary widely even when prompts stay the same. A model might excel at one task and struggle with a nearly identical one just moments later. On top of that, OpenAI’s 5-series models already perform at or near the top of the field. When performance starts that high, meaningful gains become harder to detect. With that in mind, we tested GPT-5.2, and in most tests, it behaved almost identically to GPT-5.1.

Why benchmarks don’t tell the full story

OpenAI’s benchmarks show modest gains for GPT-5.2. That matters for researchers and developers working at scale. Still, even advanced users may struggle to see practical benefits. Other companies have delivered clearer upgrades. Google’s Gemini Nano Banana Pro model shows obvious gains in AI image generation and editing. Those improvements are easy for anyone to test and verify. By contrast, GPT-5.2’s changes feel abstract. They exist mostly on paper rather than in daily use.

What this means to you

If you pay for ChatGPT, there’s little downside to using GPT-5.2. It replaces GPT-5.1 in the model lineup and generally performs at least as well in everyday use. Free users don’t have much choice either, as model access is handled automatically. For most people, the experience feels familiar and stable.

The picture shifts slightly for programmers and those who use it for business. Early pricing details suggest GPT-5.2 may cost roughly 40 percent more per million tokens than GPT-5.1, depending on usage tier and access method. That makes testing important before committing at scale.

ChatGPT-5.2 works fine but may not feel exciting, Kurt Knutsson writes. (Michael Nguyen/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

In short, GPT-5.2 works fine. It simply may not feel exciting.

KEVIN O’LEARY WARNS CHINA ‘KICKING OUR HEINIES’ IN AI RACE AS REGULATORY ROADBLOCKS STALL US

Take my quiz: How safe is your online security?

Think your devices and data are truly protected? Take this quick quiz to see where your digital habits stand. From passwords to Wi-Fi settings, you’ll get a personalized breakdown of what you’re doing right and what needs improvement. Take my Quiz here: Cyberguy.com.

Kurt’s key takeaways

GPT-5.2 feels like a model released under pressure rather than inspiration. It performs well, stays reliable, and moves forward in measurable ways. Still, it doesn’t deliver the kind of clear progress many people expect from a new version number. OpenAI remains a leader in AI, but competition is closing in fast. As rivals roll out more noticeable improvements, small updates may no longer be enough to stand out. For now, GPT-5.2 feels less like a breakthrough and more like OpenAI holding its ground.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

Should AI companies slow down releases until improvements feel more meaningful? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com.

Technology

Samsung will debut two new wireless speakers at CES 2026

Published

21 hours ago

December 27, 2025

Press Room

Samsung will debut two new wireless speakers at CES 2026

For years, Samsung has made products that try to camouflage what they are by displaying works of art. The Frame TV is the most famous example, but the company also released the Music Frame, a speaker disguised as a picture frame, at last year’s CES. Now, instead of hiding a speaker with a piece of art, Samsung worked with designer Erwan Bouroullec to make a speaker into a piece of art.

According to Samsung, the Music Studio line of speakers, debuting at CES 2026, draw inspiration from the “timeless dot concept” found throughout music and art. As a musician, the Music Studio 5 reminds me of a fermata, the symbol meant to hold a note or silence. It has a 4-inch woofer and dual tweeters with built-in waveguide.

The larger Music Studio 7 is a 3.1.1-channel speaker that can be used on its own, in a pair for wider stereo sound, or with compatible Samsung Wi-Fi speakers, soundbars, or TVs using the company’s Q-Symphony technology. The Studio 7 is capable of playing high-resolution audio up to 24-bit/96kHz, and it and the Music Studio 5 use AI Dynamic Bass Control to extend bass response.

Sometimes these aesthetic-first speakers forget about the most important part of a speaker — its sound quality. But Samsung has done an impressive job over the past few years with its audio tuning which makes me optimistic for the Music Studio’s performance.