It feels like smart homes come with an unspoken tax of never-ending monthly subscriptions. Whether that's Ring, Nest, or even Arlo, you'll find that the services have repeatedly bumped subscription prices, locked core features like person detection behind paywalls, and degraded the experience for non-paying users.

To power its new West Texas data center, Amazon is investing in the construction of a new power plant that could be one of the largest single producers of greenhouse gases in the US, according to the New York Times. The new gas-burning plant in Pecos County, Texas has received significant investment from Amazon and, at least initially, would not be connected to the state's power grid. Instead, its 35 natural-gas turbines would primarily deliver its 7.65 gigawatts of electricity to the new data center.According to Cleanview, which tracks data centers and their associated power projects, GW Ranch received a permit from Texas allowing for the …Read the full story at The Verge.

Anyone who has read the headline is probably wondering, "why would anyone put their Steam library on a USB stick at all?", and I'd think of it as a very fair question. The answer is a little long and winding, but I promise it'll make sense.

X wants to make money on previously used handles. | Image: The Verge X is ending its controversial revenue-sharing program for content creators, which has seen numerous revisions under Elon Musk's reign. In its place, it's launching a new Original Content Rewards program on September 8th. To be eligible, creators must have at least 500 verified followers and at least 500,000 Home Timeline impressions from verified users in the last 90 days, among other requirements. Creators will then earn revenue based on "qualified impressions" on "original content."Qualified impressions are unique impressions from Premium subscribers "on the Home Timeline feed, where at least 50% of the post is visible." What qualifies a …Read the full story at The Verge.

It's no secret that XDA has a history with HP's top ultraportable range. We loved it when it was the HP Spectre, and we've loved most of what we've seen of the OmniBook rebranding so far. And this year, HP completely redesigned the OmniBook. The OmniBook Ultra is sleeker, slimmer, and stunning, and I've enjoyed most of my time with it.

I know a lot of people work inside a single Obsidian vault, but I prefer to keep certain projects separate. For example, each time I start a new novel series, I create a new vault. It isolates the project and allows me to keep everything much more streamlined. There's just one issue: I use the same set of plugins for writing a novel across every vault, and it can get tedious re-downloading those same plugins by hand each time. Extension Hub offers a solution to that problem. Think of it like Ninite, but for Obsidian. I can install a "set" of plugins with just a few clicks, saving myself the hassle of doing it all manually.

Hotel Wi-Fi has ruined enough quiet evenings for me that I stopped trusting it before I even checked in. Sometimes it works well enough, right up until the stream buffers at the worst possible moment or the captive portal decides I need to sign in again.

Undervolting your GPU is one of the safest and most effective ways to reduce its thermal output, but it is actually the side effect of undervolting that makes it appealing for those in enthusiast circles. You see, silicon has a rather obvious relationship with throughput. If you give it less voltage at the same clock speed, it draws less power for the same throughput, which means it stays cooler and boosts higher for longer.

My Kindle goes everywhere with me. As an avid reader, it's a constant companion. I'd hacked my Kindle to break out of Amazon's shackles long ago. So, recently, I decided to explore what else my Kindle could do.

I absolutely love weird apps. Especially the ones built around a single, oddly specific idea. These are the kind of project where you can tell someone made it just because they had a bizarre idea and couldn't let it go until it existed. Up until a few months ago, actually bringing such an idea to reality wasn't something just anyone could do. You needed to commit to learning how to code or find someone who already knew.

By now, you've likely had the realization that AI tools are expensive. You might've realized that by looking at the price of your growing pile of monthly subscriptions. Or the thought might've hit you when you got the polite "you've hit the limit! please come back later" message after using your favorite AI tool for what felt like five minutes.

I don't speak for everyone, but most people's very first laptop was a Windows laptop. It would barely turn on, would need to be plugged in 24/7 because the battery gave out years ago, and would wheeze its way through more than three open tabs. The reason I'm mentioning this is because that clunky old machine is where most of us met our very first browser.