Google's attempt at the stock flavor of Android found on Pixel phones has a unique charm since it is utterly devoid of bloat, perhaps except for the recently added AI bits.

When picking between AI model subscriptions, the focus is usually on what you can do with them, or how fast they can generate output, or a myriad of other benchmarks that directly compare how the model performs. And that's fine, the whole tech world is built on benchmarks as the thread that weaves between vastly different devices, software, and other services. When you're a company with one main product, it's all about finding ways to use that one thing, and making it better than the competition.

The world of cybersecurity was almost totally reshaped with the introduction of LLMs. We saw both hackers and security experts use the new tech to develop bigger and better programs to fight one another, and the battle is still escalating to this day. However, the rise of AI also created a new world of attacks where hackers are hijacking LLMs to do their bidding. OpenAI's Lockdown Mode was an answer to these attacks, but it wasn't available to everyone; at least, until today. Now, the company is allowing everyone, even Free users, to stay safe while using ChatGPT.

Square Enix has officially announced the third and final game in its Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy: Final Fantasy VII Revelation. It will release on multiple platforms simultaneously - PC, PS5, Xbox Series X / S, and Nintendo Switch 2 - in spring 2027.In footage shown onstage at Summer Game Fest Live, there was a lot to take in: You'll get to fly the Highwind airship, jump off it to land in the game's open world, play as Vincent Valentine and Cid Highwind in battle (who weren't playable in Rebirth), challenge the gigantic Weapons, and visit places from the original game, like Wutai. You'll also get to dress up your characters with armor …Read the full story at The Verge.

Single-board computers sound exciting when you try to step into the world of home labbing. They seem like a good idea because you get a tiny computer that can surprisingly run real apps for an astonishingly low price. It's one of the reasons I also got into the world of single-board computers like Raspberry Pi and Radxa. I even have many of them lying around, either serving a single purpose or running a couple of tools.

Back in 2015, the two-person studio Metanet released N++, a brutally hard 2D platformer that was a decade in the making, building off of previous releases dating back to the freeware Flash title N. At the time, cofounder Raigan Burns issued some famous last words: "We hope it's not another 10 years before we come up with a game." But now here we are, more than a decade later, and N is getting another sequel. And this time the focus is on multiplayer.The new game is called, absurdly, N Plus Infinity Times Two. Whereas N++ was meant to be the ultimate single-player version of the N concept, this game is described as "the ultimate virtual cou …Read the full story at The Verge.

Our first glimpse of the new AI Siri came all the way back at WWDC 2024. Apple has been on its back foot, AI-wise, for the past few years. But in a strange way, playing from behind might not be such a bad move.At WWDC on Monday, Apple appears to be getting ready to reintroduce us to the new Siri. Again. As a reminder, we met the new Siri in 2024 when Apple "launched" Apple Intelligence. Siri came with a new glowing border, different voice options, and the ability to punt questions to ChatGPT. The whole "Intelligence" bit of the Siri redesign was coming soon, Apple promised. It didn't. In fact, its promotion around Apple Intelligence was so misleading that the company is settling a class-action lawsuit and has t …Read the full story at The Verge.

It's easy to believe that there are only a handful of cloud storage services out there. Everyone knows about Google Drive, OneDrive, and the other big names, but there are alternatives you may be missing out on. Proton Drive is but one option, and people like using it as an alternative to the big leagues, but often complain that it's quite slow. Well, Proton has just given Drive a much-needed rewrite, and now it's faster than ever.

Before I got into the home server ecosystem, I’d only use PCIe slots to pair graphics cards to my gaming rigs and then forget about them altogether until my next PC building misadventure. But little did I know that every unoccupied PCIe slot was a free expansion header that’s as useful for home lab nodes as it is for an everyday machine. With all kinds of adapters floating out there, slotting one into a spare PCIe socket can add extra functionality to budget-friendly motherboards.

Who's afraid of the next GTA? Based on the last few days of Summer Game Fest, just about everyone. Grand Theft Auto VI hasn't been present at any of the keynote events, but its presence was felt every time a release date was announced. The month of November, when GTA VI launches, is virtually empty. The rest of the fall, meanwhile, is absolutely packed.It started at Sony's State of Play showcase on Tuesday. Even before that show, we knew that Wolverine, the next big PlayStation exclusive, would be launching on September 15th. But now it's joined by a bunch of major third-party titles: Dune: Awakening (September 22nd), Control Resonant (Sep …Read the full story at The Verge.

PC hardware brands have come and gone, and the vast majority of the time, they don't go defunct due to bad products. They die from strategy errors, mismanagement, reputations that curdle, or simply getting swallowed by a bigger fish and never resurfacing. These 5 brands in the PC space are long gone; some of which live on after being rebranded, while others are totally defunct and left behind for good.

Notion has been off my radar for a while now. The open-source and local app world is where most of my note-taking and PKM stuff lives these days, and Obsidian is the one I'd point to as my favorite out of that batch. So Notion doesn't really come up for me anymore, even though I used it heavily for a few years before all this.