The AI boom has made building a competitive new PC genuinely painful. Memory and storage prices have surged to levels we haven't seen in years, and the parts that used to be afterthoughts now dominate the budget. So it feels almost contradictory to say that the same boom has made building a home server or lab easier than ever, but it truly has lowered the bar in ways that have nothing to do with price.

Apple will introduce age verification in the App Store for users in Texas starting on Thursday, June 4th. The move, as spotted by MacRumors, comes just days after a federal appeals court allowed Texas' App Store Accountability Act to go into effect while a lawsuit against it proceeds.People in Texas who are creating a new Apple account will need to verify they're over 18 using a credit card or government ID. Apple may also automatically verify users' age using the age of their account and whether they have a credit card on file.Meanwhile, users under 18 must join a Family Sharing group, where a parent or guardian will need to provide con …Read the full story at The Verge.

One of the great things about USB-C becoming so popular in all kinds of devices is that it's an incredibly capable port — plus it's more durable than the micro-USB of old — so it has enabled all kinds of accessories to be paired with modern phones. A popular option these days is to use a controller like the Backbone, which plugs into the USB-C port and lets you play console-style games in a much more comfortable way.

Chargers are an essential part of everyday life, and while I have a beefy 140W model that is my primary go-to, I don't always like to lug it around if I'm just going on a quick trip, especially if I just need to charge up my phone and other smaller accessories.

You know what they say: if you want to hide something, do it in plain sight. That’s exactly what Microsoft did with the AI Action tools in Windows 11 File Explorer. For who knows how long, I right-clicked images and somehow just ignored the AI actions menu right there. Whenever I wanted to do only some basic editing, like blurring or removing a background, I would first open the full editor and wait for it to load, only to realize I had spent more time opening the editor than doing the actual edit. Then one day, I actually took my time reading each option when I right-clicked and found the tools I would try first before opening the photo editing app.

Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp. | Bloomberg via Getty Images Just in case you were wondering, Nvidia's RTX Spark isn't supposed to be a one-off. The company is not just flirting with becoming the fifth high-profile vendor of consumer laptop chips to see if people bite. At Computex 2026 in Taipei, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang confirmed at least two additional generations of RTX Spark are already planned. The eventual goal, he said, is to build Star Trek-like computers and and Star Wars-like droids you can order around with your voice."I want to talk to my laptop! I want R2-D2!" he told analysts and investors at Computex, revealing that he started working with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella "about three years …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you've dabbled with using a Plex server at home, you already know that, since last year, Plex has locked remote streaming behind a paywall. If you don't have Plex Pass, you can no longer watch your own library from outside your home network. The reasoning for that was pretty simple. The company introduced a cheaper option for Plex Pass called the Remote Watch Pass, which, for around $3 a month, lets you stream your own content outside your home.

The $479 WiiM Bar includes a 2.1-inch touchscreen on its front. | Image: WiiM WiiM, the audio company that's challenged the idea that audiophile-level performance requires a small loan, is expanding its whole-home ecosystem with the WiiM Bar, which releases in July. Much like its other speakers and audio components, the WiiM Bar supports a bunch of streaming options and expandability at an affordable price - in this case, $479.The company's first soundbar has a 3.0.2 Atmos configuration with a total of eight drivers - three front mid-woofers, three front tweeters, and two up-firing full-range height drivers - paired with four passive radiators. That configuration can be expanded to 3.1.2 with the addition of a WiiM …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you have been searching for the ultimate OneNote alternative, the internet will probably point you toward Notion or Obsidian. But for power users who just want to capture ideas without the friction of endless setup, those platforms often miss the mark.

Following a massive Plex Pass Lifetime subscription price hike, tripling the cost to $750 from $250, the self-hosting media platform has revealed several new, questionably useful social features in what feels like an effort to justify the price increase. This feels like yet another misstep by the self-hosting streaming app.

Windows Update has always been one of those things that you tolerate instead of enjoying. Every month, Microsoft brings out a fresh batch of fixes and improvements, and every month, an increasing number of users find that the update has broken their PCs in new and unique ways. Keeping Windows secure is important, sure, but when an update either breaks a printer, or a game, or a feature that was otherwise perfectly working beforehand, the entire state of affairs doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

Remote monitoring sounded like a nice bonus when I first started taking 3D printing more seriously. It felt like one of those features made for people who leave the house, start long prints before work, and want to make sure their printer hasn't turned a 10-hour job into a plastic bird's nest. That use case is real, and I understand why it gets most of the attention. But it isn't actually the reason I've come to depend on it.