Almost five years with Windows 11, and Microsoft has made several changes to the Start menu. But the core usability problems never got fixed. The oversized layout, the Recommended section taking up valuable space, and the lack of meaningful customization made it feel oddly limited on a desktop PC. In the past, I tried living with it; I even tried several native tweaks like registry edits and Group Policy workarounds, but those still felt like a patchwork, not an actual solution.

While I try to do as much as possible to protect my privacy on my Android smartphone, I always have lingering concerns about what information apps may access, especially in the age of AI. There are plenty of privacy settings you can tweak, but these menus have also become difficult to navigate.

The 2021 Kindle Paperwhite has never been cheaper. | Photo: Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge If you like to read by the pool or at the beach, the 2021 Kindle Paperwhite remains one of the best e-readers available despite its age. That’s because, unlike Amazon’s latest entry-level Kindle, the last-gen Paperwhite is waterproof. And now through June 14th (or while supplies last), it’s on sale at Woot with ads, 16GB of storage, and a 90-day Woot warranty for $99.99, which is $40 off its original price.2021 Kindle Paperwhite (with ads)Where to Buy: $139.99 $99.99 at WootDespite being a few years old, Amazon’s last-gen Paperwhite offers nearly all the features that make the current model our favorite e-reader for those who primarily read Kindle books. It features a sharp 300ppi display and an adjustable warm front light, which makes reading at night more comfortable. Battery life is also excellent, often allowing you to eke out months of use on a single charge before you need to top it off via USB-C. The latest Paperwhite offers slightly better performance, battery life, and a slightly larger seven-inch display, but it also costs $159.99. Unless those upgrades matter to you, the older model remains a terrific value. The 2021 model is still snappy enough for most uses, and its 6.8-inch display remains spacious, especially compared to the base Kindle. Read our 2021 Kindle Paperwhite review.

Running a network-attached storage (NAS) device on the LAN is a great way to start self-hosting content. Whether you're planning to save money by cancelling various streaming services, wish to take control of your own data and cease relying on cloud storage, or simply want somewhere to stash some backups, it can be difficult to resist the urge to run everything on the NAS. The problem with prebuilt turnkey enclosures of today is that they're powerful enough to run multiple services, allowing you to create your own streaming platform, collaboration suite, and more with the click of a few buttons.

Many people rightly believe that panicking about SSD lifespan is pointless, since most PCs will never write enough data to a drive to exhaust its endurance. If you check your SSD's health with CrystalDiskInfo or a first-party tool, you'll probably see "Good" or "Normal" under "Drive Health." You'll probably see the same status for years, irrespective of what's going on physically with the NAND flash on your drive. SSD health is just a percentage that tells you how much of the drive's rated lifespan has been exhausted. It doesn't account for serious read/write errors or physical degradation of the SSD's cells. Even an SSD with 99% or 95% health could have encountered uncorrectable errors, at which point it should not be trusted with your data anymore. A deeper look at your drive's S.M.A.R.T. data will tell you if you need to start preparing for the last rites.

Playing Windows games on an Android phone has gone from being a novelty to something people can actually do in approximately two short years, and most of that movement has come about as a result of a single tool: Winlator. Winlator stacks Wine on top of x86/x86_64 translation layers like Box86 and Box64, with forks increasingly experimenting with components like Proton builds, FEXCore, Mesa Turnip, DXVK, and VKD3D. It turns a modern smartphone (typically Snapdragon-based) into something that can plausibly boot a PC game.

A decade ago, Nintendo made a big splash into the world of mobile gaming with a new Super Mario platformer directed by none other than Shigeru Miyamoto. But even though the game proved popular, it wasn't the success the company had hoped for. Over the ensuing years Nintendo has slowly retreated from smartphone gaming, with the exception of a handful of apps and some legacy games. Which is what made it so surprising this week when Nintendo launched Pictonico. It's a bizarre and playful mobile game that channels the best of WarioWare, but I have zero idea how it fits into Nintendo's current strategy.Much like WarioWare, Pictonico (which, I a …Read the full story at The Verge.

Before even trying Gemini’s Daily Brief, I thought it wasn’t going to be much. I thought it would give me a general overview of my tasks, or at least some random news. Guilty as charged for not giving it enough credit. It showed me more than I expected, gave me details that made me think, “Where did it get that from?”, and even offered an additional option for something on my to-do list. Now, it’s something I open every day.

Buying a GPU always used to feel like an investment, and a long-term one, at that. You'd spend good money on a GPU, and it would carry you through years of new releases without making you feel like you were falling behind every six months. In fact, I'm willing to wager that the average gamer had just one graphics card that varied them through their teens, but today, things couldn't be more different.

Microsoft is launching a revamped version of Microsoft 365 Copilot, offering a cleaner design that the company claims loads twice as fast. As part of this update, Copilot will provide more reliable and structured responses that are easier to scan, according to Microsoft.The redesign, which is rolling out across desktop and mobile devices, comes with a feature Microsoft calls "progressive disclosure." That means Copilot will present you with tools and controls based on your prompt, instead of showing a bunch of options at once. You can now format your text directly inside Copilot's upgraded prompt box as well, which will expand to fit every …Read the full story at The Verge.

While Claude's been around for a little less than ChatGPT, you wouldn't really know it from its fanbase alone. It went from a somewhat niche tool only developers were following to a tool every other person is leaning on. Suddenly, everyone is using Claude and Claude Code to automate their workflow, ship the gazillion product ideas they've always had, and generally do more than they ever thought they could on their own. Claude Code is one of Anthropic's flagship products, and while that too once only found traction within a developer's workflow, it's now creeping into the workflows of designers, founders, marketers, and plenty of people who'd never call themselves engineers.

Modern charging bricks are little computers of their own, packed with circuitry to protect your devices from issues while charging. If you stick to reputable brands, they should be of good enough quality, and that's partly why we haven't done any charger reviews for a while.