Amidst the ever-surging price of RAM, it's easy to overlook the relatively smaller (but still impactful) price increases for other components. Notably, the price of older midrange CPUs, like the Ryzen 5 5600X, has gone up, as demand for DDR4-compatible CPUs increases. Where you could once get this chip in the ~$120 range, it's now increased in price up to $170.

I confess I don’t turn off my main PC that often, but the times I have over the last year have felt like a struggle. It’s set to shut down when I press the power button because I don’t use hibernate or sleep on my desktop. But I’ve pressed the button and wondered whether my PSU or front-panel connector was failing, since the fans kept spinning even as my peripherals and screen went dead. The only thing that got it back was a ten-second press of the power button for a hard reset, and that’s not my intended behavior.

I've been spending some time with two DGX Sparks recently, with DeepSeek V4 Flash, a 284-billion-parameter model, being my go-to model of choice running across both of them. They're connected over a ConnectX-7 cable with 128 GB of unified memory each, and can push anywhere from 30 to 50 tokens per second most of the time.

Website design is my passion. Without thinking, I scribbled over what I'd just written. It's what I would have done if I was writing with pen and paper. But I didn't have a pen in my hand; my canvas was an LCD and the letters on my page were just pixels. Score one point to the TCL Note A1.TCL's Note A1 Nxtpaper tablet (its full government name) is supposed to make you forget that you're using a tablet. It has one of the company's signature low-glare matte displays and ships with a stylus. The pen's haptics even mimic the scratching of a pencil on paper.On the software side, the A1 takes a lot of cues from the Remarkable tablet. Instead of a typical Android home scr …Read the full story at The Verge.

Sometimes, if we're really lucky, we get to see the exact moment a huge part of our lives first got its legs. The good news is, if something started on the internet, there's a very good chance we have it logged somewhere. Such is the case with the Usenet post that Linus Torvalds made to announce the existence of Linux, and 35 years later to the day, the "just a hobby" OS would become a powerful force in the open-source world.

Alabama's attorney general issued a subpoena to OpenAI on Monday as part of an investigation into how one of its AI agents escaped a supposedly secure testing environment and autonomously hacked another company last month. The investigation seeks to determine whether OpenAI's safety practices violated state consumer protection laws and pose a risk to Alabama citizens, the AG's office said in a statement. "This AI lab leak showed that Alabamians' and Americans' worst fears about artificial intelligence are not just theoretical," said Attorney General Steve Marshall. "Our investigation seeks to uncover the facts and address hard truths abo …Read the full story at The Verge.

Cursed BIOS. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge When a company's software update turns your computer into a useless brick, should fixes be free? Framework, the modular computer startup, apparently thinks so. But it's not clear that computing giant Lenovo will go that far.Three weeks after a Redditor presented a nearly $300 repair bill for their handheld gaming PC - among other reports of damage and high repair bills - the company is breaking its silence. It says, in short: try holding down the power button longer, and if that fails, contact customer support.Here's the statement Lenovo provided to The Verge, via communications director Jeff Witt:Lenovo is aware that some Legion Go d …Read the full story at The Verge.

Motion Assist as found in Android 17’s settings. | Image: Android Authority (cropped by The Verge) Google is rolling out a new Android feature that's been proven to reduce, or even eliminate, motion sickness when using a phone inside a moving vehicle. Dubbed Motion Assist by Google, it's very similar to Apple's Motion Cues, first introduced in 2024. The Android 17 feature appears to be rolling out in phases, with some Pixel phones getting it first, according to Android Authority. The science behind these magic dots is sound, and addresses the motion sickness felt when staring at a static display while the inner ear feels the car turning, braking, and accelerating. Motion Assist taps into your device's accelerometer and gyroscope to plac …Read the full story at The Verge.

Wi-Fi routers are a set-and-forget kind of networking hardware. At least it has been in mine. I have been using a TP-Link Archer C6 for ages. After configuring it, I only opened the admin dashboard a few times just to change the Wi-Fi password.

The current EV market is flush with variety. I've driven single-motor economy-minded machines, dual-motor EVs with all-wheel drive, tri-motor vehicles that dial up the performance stakes, and even wild quad-motor performance cars, like the Rimac Nevera.But this is the first time I've ever driven a five-motor EV, one with the agility and speed to turn a 360 even more smoothly than an electric G-Wagon. It also makes quick work of terrible turf.This is, of course, a lawn mower, and it only uses two of those motors to drive the wheels. The other three turn a trio of blades that cut a 54-inch-wide swath in a single pass. It also promises four …Read the full story at The Verge.

Handing an app permission to browse, write files, and execute on your behalf is powerful, but there's a whole category of work that I think you shouldn't give to a cloud-based agent. Basically, I feel like if you wouldn't send it in a DM or post it on social media, then it's probably best left on your machine, such as bank statements, contracts, or health info. Every big agentic cowork tool right now, Claude Code, Antigravity, Codex, etc. ships all that context off to servers out of your control.

A few times now, the LibreOffice blog has been a platform for people to argue that Microsoft's practices with Office 365 are detrimental to the development of productivity apps. Now, a new post has been uploaded that specifically targets the Office suite's Ribbon that goes across the top of the window. While it may be fine for intermediate users, it argues, it leaves beginners and power users wanting more, something that LibreOffice is working toward fixing.