This week: parcels you didn't order, laptop prices creeping up, and a Sunday deadline for your DALL·E pictures

A Friday read on what actually happened across AI, hardware, and the web. Curated, not chased. If nothing mattered, we’d say so.

Three this week — one scam turning up on doorsteps, one thing to know before your next laptop, and one small job worth doing before the weekend’s out.

A free parcel you didn’t order isn’t a gift

A package arrives with your name on it, but you didn’t order anything. It’s usually something small and cheap — a phone case, some seeds, a keyring. Tempting to shrug and keep it, but it has a name: a brushing scam. Which? reckons it may have reached up to a million UK households. A seller has got hold of your name and address, sends you the item, and then posts a glowing five-star review in your name to boost their ratings. The parcel is real; the “review you wrote” is fake.

What this means for you: two things. First, you can legally keep unordered goods — but treat the delivery as a signal, not a freebie: your details are out there (usually from an old data breach), so it’s a good moment to change any reused passwords and keep half an eye on your accounts. Second, if the package contains a QR code — a “scan to see who sent it” or “claim your gift” — don’t scan it. That’s the actual trap: it can lead to a fake login page or a malware download. If you’re curious who sent it, the parcel isn’t worth your bank details.

Verify it yourself: Which? — brushing scams · US Postal Inspection Service

Your next laptop is likely to cost more

If a new laptop is on your list, it’s worth knowing why the prices look a little higher than they did. The research firm IDC expects average PC prices to rise by up to 8% in 2026, and some makers are warning of steeper hikes — a few are even shipping budget machines with less memory to hold the price down. The cause is a global squeeze on memory chips: the AI boom is hoovering up the same components that go into ordinary laptops, so there’s less to go round and it costs more.

What this means for you: no need to panic-buy, but the direction of travel is up, not down, for a while yet. If you were already planning to buy this year, sooner is likely cheaper than later. If your current laptop is fine, there’s no reason to rush — hold on, and don’t pay extra for more memory than you actually use (most people are comfortable on 16GB). Either way, now you know the price tags aren’t random.

Verify it yourself: Tom’s Hardware — IDC forecast · PCWorld

Made pictures in ChatGPT? Save them before Sunday

A quick one to action. This Sunday (30 August), OpenAI is retiring the old DALL·E image tool inside ChatGPT. If you ever used it to make pictures you’d like to keep, download them before then — after that, that particular tool goes away (you’ll still be able to make images with ChatGPT’s newer built-in image feature). User-made custom GPTs that generate images aren’t affected.

What this means for you: open ChatGPT, find any DALL·E images you care about, and save them to your own device today. It takes a couple of minutes. And it’s a neat reminder of a bigger habit worth keeping: the stuff you make and store in someone else’s app isn’t really yours until you’ve saved a copy — which is exactly this week’s feature, Keep your own copy.

Verify it yourself: OpenAI — ChatGPT release notes · Engadget — what’s free in ChatGPT in 2026