My two cats live a refreshingly low-tech lifestyle. They've never experienced a robot litter box, an automated feeder, or a GPS tracker. Noodle and Loaf live blissfully unaware of the technological trappings that surround the rest of my life. Except, that is, for the glowing neon sign that turns on whenever they go to the toilet.I can't, and won't, take responsibility for the "On Air" sign. It was my partner's idea, suggested - I thought - as a joke. That was until it turned up at the house and I realized she was all too sincere.This all started with the cats' water fountain, which has a little tech of its own. It's a simple ceramic fo …Read the full story at The Verge.

Since last year, my family moved all of our important data off of services such as Google Drive and OneDrive and turned to self-hosting instead. Many people do this to save money on cloud storage, but that doesn't necessarily mean you stop paying for cloud storage altogether.

Slack is introducing dedicated channels where teams can vibe code together with AI agents instead of jumping between different tools and conversations. The Slack Code launch includes open, project-specific code channels with dedicated user tabs, alongside features that compare coding changes and preview HTML output before the project is shipped. "With Slack Code, when you have an idea or need to build a new feature, update a web page, or fix a bug, you simply tag in a coding agent like Anthropic's Claude or Cognition's Devin, and that agent then spins up a code channel to tackle the task," Slack said in its press release. "There, everyone …Read the full story at The Verge.

Many gamers, myself included, might reminisce about the golden age of PC building when you could buy a GTX 970 for $249 or a GTX 1060 for $299. This contrasts sharply with today's reality. Modern hardware has become pretty absurd, and asking someone to identify what a mid-range GPU is can yield completely different answers.

In August, Toru Hinkle was stocking shelves at their job at Target when they noticed two customers and asked if they needed any help. The men requested a price check on an item - but even after Hinkle told them the item was $20, the customers asked for the price again and again. "After a while, I realized that I'm basically being pranked, and I noticed the glasses," Hinkle says, referring to the frames with a blinking light. They were the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, and the customers were filming. Hinkle eventually called a store manager over, but the pranksters antagonized her, too - asking the price repeatedly, deliberately misgendering Hinkle …Read the full story at The Verge.

Sennheiser announced the next version of its flagship wireless earbuds with a major redesign focusing on sustainability. The company claims the new design improves the Momentum True Wireless 5's "comfort, stability, and portability," but a more compelling reason to upgrade is that you won't have to replace them in a few years when they stop holding a charge. Both the Momentum 5 earbuds and their charging case feature user-replaceable batteries that are accessible using a compact screwdriver instead of having to hack through layers of glue.The Momentum True Wireless 5 will be available starting on September 3rd for $299.95, which is the sam …Read the full story at The Verge.

The artist, in a moment of quiet contemplation. | Photo by Elizabeth Lopatto / The Verge The pianist sits before her instrument. She carefully extends a front paw, pressing gingerly on a key. She presses again, and again. She is composing some soul music, because something terrible has happened to her: The vacuum cleaner has come out of the closet.Yes, my cat is a tortured artist. When Jeeves is moved by something that upsets her - say, I have gotten up when she was comfortable sitting in my lap - she goes to her piano and plays a brief melody. And then the piano dispenses treats. At night, she prefers to sleep on me. If I wake up to pee, disturbing her, my bathroom visit is accompanied by a moonlight serenade.She hasn't mas …Read the full story at The Verge.

The DIY community is always finding cool new ways to display things in ways they weren't originally meant to be displayed. For instance, there was that one time someone made a playable version of Doom on a volumetric display, which made the game look like it was running on a 3D hologram. Now, someone is showing off a Teensy 4.1-based project that creates videos out of four spinning LED strips, and it's probably the coolest way I've ever been Rickrolled before.

LG Display unveiled the new FLiPP panel process at IMID 2026 on August 19th. | Image: LG Display LG Display has unveiled a new OLED manufacturing method that reportedly results in panels that are brighter, longer-lasting, more efficient, and theoretically can be almost any size. This new technology is called FLiPP (FMM-Less innovative Pixel Patterning), which LG Display describes as a "dream next-generation OLED" patterning method that aims to eliminate some of the existing limitations in OLED panels.The main advantage of FLiPP is that it doesn't use a fine metal mask (FMM) like conventional RGB OLEDs, which is a metal plate with tiny holes used to stencil light-emitting materials for pixel patterning. This manufacturing process can b …Read the full story at The Verge.

When I first built my home server, I kept it running 24/7. It feels like there's an unspoken expectation that it should just be running all the time. Maybe it's because that's what comes to mind when hearing the word "server." I didn't question that notion for a few years, so my TrueNAS box was always sitting there with six spinning hard drives, even at four in the morning when it had no reason to at all.

Last year, Audi announced that it gave its all-EV-by-2033 plan the boot, and instead will offer a mix of gasoline, hybrid, and electrified propulsion. There's no doubt still some uncertainty among bigger automakers - especially those under the Volkswagen Group umbrella - when it comes to such a (now prior) commitment. Even so, what it's currently offering on the EV front is rather good, and fits into the German brand's under-the-radar fast sedan tradition quite well.I recently discovered this in the 2027 Audi S6 Sportback E-tron. A cross between a sedan and a wagon in terms of its rearward shape, there's no hulking Quattro all-wheel drive …Read the full story at The Verge.

I’ve been underutilizing Claude Code for most of the last year. Seriously, it’s been a fancy text editor that lives in my terminal and makes small changes for me while I do other things. Sure, I’ve spun up a small team of subagents, but it always felt like I was using them for little things I should have done myself. I’ve used Claude Code to manage my homelab and given other coding agents long-term memory, but most of the projects I’ve used fell short of expectations.