If you asked me to recommend an “easy” consumer 3D printer, I’d warn you first: despite countless innovations, you still can’t quite hit a button to reliably photocopy a 3D model. Buying a 3D printer is buying an entire hobby, one where — if you’re a lazy bum like me — many attempts will turn into worthless gobs of plastic.
Technology
There’s no easy 3D printer, but Bambu has won me over
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25463994/creality_bambu_Verge_Sean_Hollister_1_7.jpg?ssl=1 "There’s no easy 3D printer, but Bambu has won me over")
But if you persisted, I’d tell you my one clear choice for lazy bums: the Bambu P1P.
What, a printer from the company that recalled its newest model and whose earlier ones once went rogue? Yep — because not only did Bambu handle those incidents with rapid apologies, investigations, transparency, and even refunds, the $599 Bambu P1P is also absolutely the easiest, most reliable 3D printer I’ve used.
It makes my stalwart old Ender 3 Pro look like a hunk of junk. It makes its closest competition, the $559 Creality K1C, feel like an inferior clone. I’ve spent months testing them side by side, and I’d personally pick the Bambu every time.
Don’t get me wrong: the K1C is the better choice for some tinkerers since its full enclosure, bed, and extra fan let you print higher temperature plastics like ABS as well as ones reinforced with glass or carbon fibers. (Bambu sells the $699 P1S for that.) And I did successfully use both the P1P and a pair of Creality K1 printers to produce dozens of objects over the past year, including pegboard mounts, figurines for my kids, and these badass unofficial Nerf blasters:
With either of these printers and a little knowledge of what’s easily 3D-printable, I can (sometimes) send an entire plate full of parts to these printers and expect them to all turn out.
But if you want fewer software and filament headaches, I would absolutely point you to Bambu. And I’d recommend you steer clear of the original Creality K1 entirely — I spent months struggling with issues that were instantly fixed when I swapped for the newer K1C model.
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I took delivery of both the P1P and the original K1 last summer, and originally, I thought I’d be comparing both to the AnkerMake M5. They’re all part of a recent wave of printers promising a huge increase in speed and smarts.
But the Bambu P1P and Creality K1 series stood out as the most affordable full-size, full-featured CoreXY printers that claim you can print right out of the box — with no need to bolt together a printer frame or even tighten belts. And while you can’t “just start printing the moment your K1 arrives,” as Creality puts it, both printers are mostly prebuilt, pretuned, and ready to go 20 or 30 minutes after you cut the packing tape. You remove a few safety pieces; attach their screens, power cables, and filament roll holders; connect to your home network for updates; and then press a button for automated setup.
Each will automatically level their bed so your prints literally get off on the right foot. They tune their motors with vibrations so intense, they shake the entire surface the printers are standing on. That’s intentional — because excess movement ruins prints, and printing quickly creates more movement, they teach themselves to avoid frequencies that rattle too hard. As I alluded to before, they both have CoreXY kinematics systems that provide an incredibly speedy, stable bead of plastic without needing to sling your model back and forth on a moving bed.
But the next step is where the Bambu P1 and Creality K1 printers begin to diverge. When it’s time to stick your fishing line of consumable plastic into a Creality printer, you have to thread the needle, pushing a sharp point of plastic into a tube and through the extruder so that the hot nozzle can melt and squirt it out one tiny bead at a time.
It’s the way many 3D printers have worked for years, but it leaves a lot of room for user error. It feels imprecise: you snip your filament at an angle to get a sharp point, then largely… shove until it feels right. Then you press a button and cross your fingers that the K1C’s motorized extruder will take it from there. Or manually shove it some more and hope the filament doesn’t break inside. Or you physically remove the filament tube, like I always did with my old Ender 3, so at least you can be sure you’re pushing straight down into the extruder without binding.
It could be worse! With the original K1, the filament pathway was so jam-prone that the company wound up designing and shipping multiple replacement parts during the time I had the printer, and even then, I had some trouble. With the K1C’s completely redesigned nozzles, I’ve mostly been able to shove filament in without issue.
But Bambu sidesteps all of that: there’s no needlepoint with a Bambu printer at all! Press a few buttons, insert uncut, flat-ended filament until you feel it being pulled away from your hand, and then, in my experience, it does the rest itself. The Bambu printer also automatically cuts off the molten bit when you’re ejecting filament, producing a nice clean-cut end I can effortlessly rewind without dragging on the printer’s internal parts. And, every single print, the Bambu purges that leftover molten filament into what owners have affectionately dubbed the “poop chute.”
The upshot: it took months before I saw my Bambu P1P jam for the first time. I’ve even had good results at times pushing old, brittle filament into Bambu printers. With the K1 and even K1C, it’s far less foolproof, as Creality makes you shove it through a filament runout sensor and a tight bend in the tubing before the extruder can grab it. I’ve broken the filament a couple of times in the K1C and many times in the original K1.
And if you do have to get inside that extruder to fix or replace parts, Bambu makes it a breeze: its magnetic cover just lifts off, and $35 buys you a complete modular hotend with heatsink, fan, heating element, and thermistor all attached — just two screws and a few easy cable pulls to swap it.
With Creality, there are five screws you have to remove at uncomfortable angles and a silicone sleeve that requires prying, and then you have to reach underneath to get at its tiny rear-facing connectors. You may even have to pull out a pair of pliers because the Creality assembly line inexplicably glues those connectors into place.
Mind you, you’re not going to be doing that every day or even every month: you generally only replace a nozzle if it wears out, gets badly jammed, or if you want to print at higher resolution for more detail or at lower resolution for more speed. For reference, I wound up replacing worn parts of my Ender 3 Pro’s hotend twice in three years after a series of messy jams.
The last reason I think Bambu is a better choice for beginners is the print bed surface itself: how easily parts adhere and detach and how easy it is to clean. The Creality K1 series ships with a smooth PEI build plate that’s theoretically better for high temperature materials and initially gave my parts an incredibly smooth face. But it can be a challenge to remove some parts unless you apply a coating of the included glue stick (the kind kids use to paste paper together), and it’s easy to add too little or too much. I wound up tearing a chunk out of my build plate after too thin a coating.
Also, without a “poop chute,” I always found the K1 and K1C dripping tiny unwanted beads of plastic that’d wind up embedded in the bottom of models unless I carefully cleaned the print bed before each use.
The P1P, meanwhile, ships with a textured PEI-covered stainless steel plate that’s almost never missed for me, no glue required. Generally, my parts are already loose by the time the bed cools. You can buy such a plate for Creality, too, though, and still be paying less than the P1P after you have both.
Not all of Creality’s K1C choices are worse for beginners! While its “AI camera” attaches to the printer at a slightly awkward angle, the timelapses it creates are much easier to monitor and download than the ones from Bambu’s camera. I appreciate the K1C’s simple twist-to-lock filament reel holder (Bambu uses screws), the USB port to load files (Bambu only gives you microSD), more reliable Wi-Fi, and of course, the large 4.3-inch color touchscreen. It’s so much easier to reprint a successful design or navigate a thumb drive when you can actually tap a picture of each design on a screen, instead of Up-Down-Left-Right navigating through Bambu’s small text-only interface.
I also like that the Creality comes with anti-vibration feet, although, out of the box, my Bambu prints had more stable lines and steady surface textures even without them. The Bambu P1P is also quieter and can completely turn off its fans when idle. I’ve often come back to the Creality K1C after a day away and found it humming loudly in my garage.
Both companies need to work on their software, but Creality’s is definitely worse. While I’m having no real major trouble with Creality’s own Creality Print desktop app for basic 3D prints in PLA and flexible TPU plastic, I had major issues printing firmer and / or transparent PETG. It’s also missing loads of features compared to rival slicer apps you’d use to prepare your models for printing. (A slicer turns a 3D shape into printable horizontal layers and spits out code that tells the printer how to form each one.)
You can use those rival slicers, but you may need to tune them for your printer yourself — some had even refused to support the K1 until Creality fulfilled obligations to open source its code. (It seems Creality has now done so.) OrcaSlicer is a popular third-party alternative that does have its own K1 profile, and it helped me print in PETG when Creality Print wouldn’t.
Creality’s mobile app, meanwhile, is gamified to the point that I want nothing to do with it. I just want a way to start and monitor prints, not earn points for printing trendy junk! I even had to turn off app notifications after I got bombarded with point earning opportunities each day, though it seems the company’s cut back on the notifications since launch.
But while Bambu’s slicer is great and its app doesn’t have the same annoyances, I’m not entirely sure I can trust the company’s cloud. One month after the company’s very good apology for its rogue printer incident, I had a similar issue. I went out to the garage one morning to find a model I’d printed directly from its cloud half-finished, stuck to my nozzle, with a second halfway printed copy of the model on the floor.
I’ve tried to print a few other models from its new MakerWorld, a place where you can supposedly find one-click prints validated to work on Bambu’s specific printers, no slicing or tweaks necessary, but one became a huge hunk of worthless plastic because it actually wasn’t validated. I guess I could always go with a private LAN-only connection to the printer instead of using the cloud.
It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see from here to an even easier 3D printing future. Bambu’s new A1 series printers now have completely tool-less hotend swaps — just pop the pieces off. The company’s working on new sensors that can detect when your filament tangles while it’s still on the roll, something that occasionally trips up every 3D printer I’ve yet used. I’ve also yet to see a 3D printer company ship their printers with a dry box to keep moisture out of their filament, but Creality does sell them separately, and it’s definitely something they could do to get us closer to that push-button, get-object future!
(I’m not saying you should buy an A1: I had more jams and lower-quality results with an A1 Mini than my P1P, the filament tangle detection still doesn’t work, and many things I print are too big for its bed. I haven’t gotten to test the full-size A1 since its recall.)
The biggest way 3D printers will earn trust, though, is if companies like Creality and Bambu stop shipping them before they’re ready. I can’t believe the terrible state the original Creality K1 first shipped in, and if you lurk in the right places on Reddit and Discord, you’ll hear veterans say that the Bambu P1P shipped with early issues, too. And I’ve read plenty of testimonials from Bambu customers who, like me with the Creality K1, were expected to open up their printers to fix broken things instead of sending them in for service. It’s a good reminder that these are hobbyist devices, not consumer products, even as these companies talk about democratizing 3D printing for everyone.
No matter which printer you’re eyeing, I strongly recommend steering clear of ones that have just launched. Wait for early adopters to iron things out! But if you’re itching to get printing, I’m pretty happy with the nearly two-year-old P1P.
Photography by Sean Hollister / The Verge
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Amazon has slowly been teasing out casting details for its live-action adaptation of God of War, and now we have our first look at the show. It’s a single image but a notable one showing protagonist Kratos and his son Atreus. The characters are played by Ryan Hurst and Callum Vinson, respectively, and they look relatively close to their video game counterparts.
There aren’t a lot of other details about the show just yet, but this is Amazon’s official description:
The God of War series storyline follows father and son Kratos and Atreus as they embark on a journey to spread the ashes of their wife and mother, Faye. Through their adventures, Kratos tries to teach his son to be a better god, while Atreus tries to teach his father how to be a better human.
That sounds a lot like the recent soft reboot of the franchise, which started with 2018’s God of War and continued through Ragnarök in 2022. For the Amazon series, Ronald D. Moore, best-known for his work on For All Mankind and Battlestar Galactica, will serve as showrunner. The rest of the cast includes: Mandy Patinkin (Odin), Ed Skrein (Baldur), Max Parker (Heimdall), Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (Thor), Teresa Palmer (Sif), Alastair Duncan (Mimir), Jeff Gulka (Sindri), and Danny Woodburn (Brok).
While production is underway on the God of War series, there’s no word on when it might start streaming.
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Your web browser may feel like a safe place, especially when you install helpful tools that promise to make your life easier. But security researchers have uncovered a dangerous campaign in which more than 300,000 people installed Chrome extensions pretending to be artificial intelligence (AI) assistants. Instead of helping, these fake tools secretly collect sensitive information like your emails, passwords and browsing activity.
They used familiar names like ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Assistant. If you use Chrome and have installed any AI-related extension, your personal information may already be exposed. Even worse, some of these malicious extensions are still available today, putting more people at risk without their knowing.
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More than 300,000 Chrome users installed fake AI extensions that secretly harvested sensitive data. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
What you need to know about fake AI extensions
Security researchers at browser security company LayerX discovered a large campaign involving 30 malicious Chrome extensions disguised as AI-powered assistants (via BleepingComputer). Together, these extensions were installed more than 300,000 times by unsuspecting users.
Some of the most popular extensions included names like AI Sidebar with 70,000 users, AI Assistant with 60,000 users, ChatGPT Translate with 30,000 users, and Google Gemini with 10,000 users. Another extension called Gemini AI Sidebar had 80,000 users before it was removed.
These extensions were distributed through the official Chrome Web Store, which made them appear legitimate and trustworthy. Even more concerning, researchers found that many of these extensions were connected to the same malicious server, showing they were part of a coordinated effort.
While some extensions have since been removed, others remain available. This means new users could still unknowingly install them and expose their personal data. Here’s the list of the affected extensions:
- AI Assistant
- Llama
- Gemini AI Sidebar
- AI Sidebar
- ChatGPT Sidebar
- Grok
- Asking ChatGPT
- ChatGBT
- Chat Bot GPT
- Grok Chatbot
- Chat With Gemini
- XAI
- Google Gemini
- Ask Gemini
- AI Letter Generator
- AI Message Generator
- AI Translator
- AI For Translation
- AI Cover Letter Generator
- AI Image Generator ChatGPT
- Ai Wallpaper Generator
- Ai Picture Generator
- DeepSeek Download
- AI Email Writer
- Email Generator AI
- DeepSeek Chat
- ChatGPT Picture Generator
- ChatGPT Translate
- AI GPT
- ChatGPT Translation
- ChatGPT for Gmail
FAKE AI CHAT RESULTS ARE SPREADING DANGEROUS MAC MALWARE
These malicious tools were listed in the official Chrome Web Store, making them appear legitimate and trustworthy. (LayerX)
How the fake AI Chrome extension attack works
These fake extensions pretend to offer helpful AI features, such as translating text, summarizing emails, or acting as an AI assistant. But behind the scenes, they quietly monitor what you are doing online.
Once installed, the extension gains permission to view and interact with the websites you visit. This allows it to read the contents of web pages, including login screens where you enter your username and password.
In some cases, the extensions specifically targeted Gmail. They could read your email messages directly from your browser, including emails you received and even drafts you were still writing. This means attackers could access private conversations, financial information and sensitive personal details.
The extensions then sent this information to servers controlled by the attackers. Because they loaded content remotely, the attackers could change their behavior at any time without needing to update the extension.
Some versions could also activate voice features through your browser. This could potentially capture spoken conversations near your device and send transcripts back to the attackers.
If you installed one of these extensions, attackers may already have access to extremely sensitive information. This includes your email content, login credentials, browsing habits and possibly even voice recordings.
We reached out to Google for comment, and a spokesperson told CyberGuy that the company “can confirm that the extensions from this report have all been removed from the Google Web Store.”
BROWSER EXTENSION MALWARE INFECTED 8.8M USERS IN DARKSPECTRE ATTACK
Once installed, the extensions could read emails, capture passwords, monitor browsing activity and send the data to attacker-controlled servers. (Bildquelle/ullstein bild via Getty Images)
7 ways you can protect yourself from malicious Chrome extensions
If you have ever installed an AI-related Chrome extension, taking a few simple precautions now can help protect your accounts and prevent further damage.
1) Remove any suspicious or unused browser extensions
On a Windows PC or Mac, open Chrome and type chrome://extensions into the address bar. Review every extension listed. If you see anything unfamiliar, especially AI assistants you don’t remember installing, click “Remove” immediately. Malicious extensions depend on going unnoticed. Removing them stops further data collection and cuts off the attacker’s access to your information.
2) Change your passwords
If you installed any suspicious extension, assume your passwords may be compromised. Start by changing your email password first, since email controls access to most other accounts. Then update passwords for banking, shopping and social media accounts. This prevents attackers from using stolen credentials to break into your accounts.
3) Use a password manager to create and protect strong passwords
A password manager generates unique, complex passwords for each account and stores them securely. This prevents attackers from accessing multiple accounts if one password is stolen. Password managers also alert you if your login credentials appear in known data breaches, helping you respond quickly and protect your identity. Check out the best expert-reviewed password managers of 2026 at Cyberguy.com.
4) Install strong antivirus software and keep it active
Good antivirus software can detect malicious browser extensions, spyware, and other hidden threats. It scans your system for suspicious activity and blocks harmful programs before they can steal your information. This adds an important layer of protection that works continuously in the background to keep your device safe. Get my picks for the best 2026 antivirus protection winners for your Windows, Mac, Android & iOS devices at Cyberguy.com.
5) Use an identity theft protection service
Identity theft protection services monitor your personal data, including email addresses, financial accounts, and Social Security numbers, for signs of misuse. If criminals try to open accounts or commit fraud using your information, you receive alerts quickly. Early detection allows you to act fast and limit financial and personal damage. See my tips and best picks on how to protect yourself from identity theft at Cyberguy.com.
6) Keep your browser and computer fully updated
Software updates fix security vulnerabilities that attackers exploit. Enable automatic updates for Chrome and your operating system so you always have the latest protections. These updates strengthen your defenses against malicious extensions and prevent attackers from taking advantage of known weaknesses.
7) Use a personal data removal service
Personal data removal services scan data broker websites that collect and sell your personal information. They help remove your data from these sites, reducing what attackers can find and use against you. Less exposed information means fewer opportunities for criminals to target you with scams, identity theft or phishing attacks.
Check out my top picks for data removal services and get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already out on the web by visiting Cyberguy.com.
Get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already out on the web: Cyberguy.com.
Kurt’s key takeaway
Even tools designed to make your life easier can become tools for cybercriminals. Malicious extensions often hide behind trusted names and convincing features, making them difficult to spot. You can significantly reduce your risk by reviewing your browser extensions regularly, removing anything suspicious and using protective tools like password managers and strong antivirus software.
Have you checked your browser extensions recently? Let us know your thoughts by writing to us at Cyberguy.com.
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Technology
Anthropic refuses Pentagon’s new terms, standing firm on lethal autonomous weapons and mass surveillance
Less than 24 hours before the deadline in an ultimatum issued by the Pentagon, Anthropic has refused the Department of Defense’s demands for unrestricted access to its AI.
It’s the culmination of a dramatic exchange of public statements, social media posts, and behind-the-scenes negotiations, coming down to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s desire to renegotiate all AI labs’ current contracts with the military. But Anthropic, so far, has refused to back down from its two current red lines: no mass surveillance of Americans, and no lethal autonomous weapons (or weapons with license to kill targets with no human oversight whatsoever). OpenAI and xAI had reportedly already agreed to the new terms, while Anthropic’s refusal had led to CEO Dario Amodei being summoned to the White House this week for a meeting with Hegseth himself, in which the Secretary reportedly issued an ultimatum to the CEO to back down by the end of business day on Friday or else.
In a statement late Thursday, Amodei wrote, “I believe deeply in the existential importance of using AI to defend the United States and other democracies, and to defeat our autocratic adversaries. Anthropic has therefore worked proactively to deploy our models to the Department of War and the intelligence community.”
He added that the company has “never raised objections to particular military operations nor attempted to limit use of our technology in an ad hoc manner” but that in a “narrow set of cases, we believe AI can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values” — going on to specifically mention mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. (Amodei mentioned that “partial autonomous weapons … are vital to the defense of democracy” and that fully autonomous weapons may eventually “prove critical for our national defense,” but that “today, frontier AI systems are simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons.” He did not rule out Anthropic acquiescing to the military’s use of fully autonomous weapons in the future but mentioned that they were not ready now.)
The Pentagon had already reportedly asked major defense contractors to assess their dependence on Anthropic’s Claude, which could be seen as the first step to designating the company a “supply chain risk” – a public threat that the Pentagon had made recently (and a classification usually reserved for threats to national security). The Pentagon was also reportedly considering invoking the Defense Production Act to make Anthropic comply.
Amodei wrote in his statement that the Pentagon’s “threats do not change our position: we cannot in good conscience accede to their request.” He also wrote that “should the Department choose to offboard Anthropic, we will work to enable a smooth transition to another provider, avoiding any disruption to ongoing military planning, operations, or other critical missions. Our models will be available on the expansive terms we have proposed for as long as required.”
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