DIY plug-in solar gains momentum in the US

EcoFlow’s high-end, weatherproof, plug-in solar kit with integrated battery. | Image: EcoFlow This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on e-bikes, power stations, and how to work anywhere, follow Thomas Ricker. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.

How it started

With a deep breath, I took the cable seething with 800W of solar power and plugged it directly into a standard wall jack in my home. Nothing sparked, nothing smoked, and by the end of that sunny summer day, my electricity bill had dropped to nearly $0.As unnerving as it sounds to treat a common household power outlet as a power input, these DIY plug-in sol …Read the full story at The Verge.

Vanessa Russell
Australia

I replaced Spotify’s desktop app with this lightweight music player, and I forgot how fast software used to feel

I've been a heavy Spotify user for years now, and while I appreciate the desktop app (and the level of customization available to me through tools like Spicetify), there's a part of me that misses the days of Windows Media Player. Not just the visualizer, although that was a huge...

William Garcia
Boston

Your Jellyfin server doesn’t need 80TB of storage — you just need to stop h***ding 4K movies

I was called a rookie when I recently mentioned that my media server has no more than 5TB of storage. I agree that 5TB isn't a very large collection, but the idea that your media server needs double-digit terabytes of storage is flawed.

Olivia Miller
Seattle

The Google Pixel 10a drops to $424, proving you don’t need to spend $1,000 on a flagship

The Google Pixel 10a is one of the best mid-range phones you can buy right now. It's retail price of $499 is more than fair, but the discount that drops it to $424 makes it even better. This is close to the lowest price that we've seen for this phone,...

Michael Johnson
Chicago

Super Smash Bros. Melee breaks free from the GameCube with a new PC, Android, and Linux port

When it comes to retro video game decompilation ports, we've definitely been eating very well lately.

Sophia Wilson
Atlanta

I brought back the best part of the Windows Vista era with this free app

Windows Vista is an operating system that I look back on fondly for one major reason: it was among the best-looking Windows options we've ever had. The Aero design philosophy was a major part of both Windows Vista and Windows 7, though Microsoft dropped it in Windows 8 in favor...

Emily Brown
Houston

What if social media isn’t hurting kids?

Two years ago, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt released his New York Times bestseller The Anxious Generation. The book posits that the rise of social media and smartphone use is largely to blame for the prominent decline in teen mental health since 2010. It quickly became a central rallying cry of...

Krsto Katić
Serbia

I switched to Claude Code’s open-source rival and stopped worrying about rate limits

Every paid Claude plan meters usage in two ways: a rolling 5-hour window and a weekly cap across all models, and that quota is shared with Claude chat and whatever else is running on the same account. So if you're a heavy Cowork or Claude Design user in addition to...

Emily Brown
Houston

I added SSD caching to my NAS and learned why it’s not the performance fix everyone claims

A few months back before RAM prices hit the roof, I decided to add a nice little perk to my NAS. Specifically, I added in SSD caching to eke out a bit more speed, because I thought my hard drives were being the bottleneck to peak performance. My NAS handles...

William Garcia
Boston

PowerToys Workspaces solved the one thing Windows window management has always been terrible at

I've always maintained that every single tool in the PowerToys suite improves upon a distinct aspect of Windows 11, and recently I've come to realize that they do it in a way such that it becomes hard to envision going back. A few months of my experiences with Workspaces established...

رونیکا سهيلي راد
Iran

Your SSD is dying faster than it should, and these 4 habits are contributing to excessive write cycles

Storage was cheap and accessible a year ago, and I rarely thought about maintaining it. My laptop has an NVMe SSD, and I have a couple of other SATA SSDs inside SATA-to-USB enclosures. My SSD is five years old, and I've been putting as much stress on it as possible....

Britney Johnson
Ireland

Voters mostly don’t like AI and data centers, but neither party seems to have an edge

Poll data released Tuesday by the New York Times and Siena University confirms what we've already been seeing, and what politicians are responding to - AI and data centers are incredibly unpopular. Asked if they support or oppose the construction of data centers to power AI tech, 61 percent of...

Jane Smith
Los Angeles

Microsoft announces Windows and Surface event for October 7th

It's been more than two years since the last major Windows event, so Microsoft is heading to San Francisco next month to outline the future of Windows and Surface devices. At an event on October 7th, the company says it will host a "conversation on how local AI will shape...

John Doe
New York

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