Facebook’s unloved ‘News’ tab is going away in Europe

Illustration by Alex Castro / The VergeMeta plans to “deprecate” the News tab in Facebook’s bookmarks section in the UK, France, and Germany. That’s typically been company speak for removing a feature. The changes are supposed to go into effect in early December, according to Meta. “As a company, we have to focus our time and resources on things people tell us they want to see more of on the platform, including short form video,” the company said in a press release today. This is the latest action Facebook has taken to make news a lower priority on its platform. It’s also another step toward mimicking shortform video content on TikTok. “As a company, we have to focus our time and resources on things people tell us they want to see more of on the platform, including short…

Imogen Hall
New Zealand

The Galaxy Watch 8 is finally back on sale

The Galaxy Watch 8 is the Samsung smartwatch to get if you want great features and performance at a more affordable price. You can save $40 right now, dropping the price from $300 to $260, which is one of the lowest prices we've seen in months.

Ofelia Quintanilla
Mexico

I ran a single command and found more garbage on my Windows 11 drive than Storage Sense cleaned all month

On Windows 11, Storage Sense does a decent job at what you would expect it to do in the background. Mine freed about 1.67GB just this morning, bringing its total for the past month to 10.2GB, all on the default settings that Windows 11 shipped it with without my having...

Felix Poulsen
Denmark

I wore Snap’s $2,200 smart glasses

My favorite part of wearing the Specs, Snap's new augmented reality glasses, was playing dominoes. Sitting across the table from a Snap employee wearing the same pair of chunky glasses, I could select a virtual domino with a pinch and then move my hand to drop it in place, watching...

Samuel Jordan
United States

Snap is launching a new Specs AI tool, and it’s coming to iOS and Mac

Snap is introducing "Specs Intelligence," a new AI assistant that can connect other digital accounts to help you with things like work tasks and keeping track of travel information. It seems similar to AI assistants like Meta's Muse and Gemini's Spark, though Snap is pitching Specs Intelligence as an "anticipatory...

William Garcia
Boston

Nvidia’s DLSS 5 could give my favorite old games the glow-up I’ve been waiting for

Have you ever felt nostalgic enough to fire up an old game, or perhaps you're interested in seeing what gaming used to look like back in the day? Either way, if you're using a 4K or even a 1440p screen, there's a good chance the game will look terrible. That's...

Jane Smith
Los Angeles

Valve’s Steam Machine is $1,049, but I built the same machine for less earlier this year

Valve's Steam Machine has sparked much controversy since its reveal earlier this year. After an already delayed launch, the $1,049 price tag for the base variant didn't land well; for that price, the Steam Machine's hardware configuration leaves much to be desired. Although many, myself included, were hopeful for a...

William Garcia
Boston

n8n replaced my cron job chaos, and now I actually know when things break

Most of my automations used to live in a folder of scripts triggered by cron. Cron ran them on schedule, but the folder didn’t give me an easy way to understand how everything fit together. When one of these jobs stopped working, finding the point of failure became the difficult...

Ezio David
France

I changed one channel setting in my router, and my 5GHz Wi-Fi speeds doubled instantly

Even though you're paying for fiber internet, your devices may still cap at 250 Mbps during a speed test, even when you're right next to your modern router. This isn't because the hardware is slow or because your ISP is throttling you. It might actually be because your router was...

Sophia Wilson
Atlanta

I stopped letting Windows Update h***d 20% of my SSD, and gained back real performance

When I built my current PC in 2020, I reused the 250GB Samsung 860 EVO SSD from my old PC as my Windows boot drive. At the time, it made perfect sense because it was still fairly new. Windows didn't need anywhere near 250GB on its own, and I had...

John Doe
New York

The streamers are fighting over Halloween

The Toronto International Film Festival is a place to go to see the future of film, but this year it also provided a glimpse at what is coming very soon in the realm of streaming. Four different streamers - Peacock, Netflix, Amazon, and AMC - all premiered early looks at...

Victoria Martin
France

Getting Linux onto a PS5 screeches to a halt after the hypervisor bug it relies on was reported to Sony

If you've been an avid reader of XDA news for the past few months, you'll likely remember the story of someone getting Linux running on a PS5. To get Linux running, it required manipulating a hypervisor bug, so the person who discovered it kept it secret so they could perform...

Michael Johnson
Chicago

Inside the suddenly explosive world of AI safety

On a sunny July day in Berkeley, California, the country's top AI safety researchers gathered on an unmarked floor of an unmarked building. They had come together for a "war room" to dissect the high-profile cybersecurity incident that had rocked the AI industry hours earlier. An unreleased OpenAI model had...