This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more news about gadgets and smartphones, follow Dominic Preston. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.How it startedIn 2023, the European Union agreed on two landmark pieces of legislation mandating how portable tech products with batteries must be designed, aiming to improve longevity, repairability, and recyclability. Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/1670 came into force last year and applies specifically to smartphones and tablets, while Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 takes effect next year …Read the full story at The Verge.

As people are getting their hands on the Steam Controller, they're discovering that it's better at making sounds than a controller has any right being. First, people discovered that the Steam Controller played the Wilhelm scream whenever it was dropped. Now, someone has made a program that allows the Steam Controller to play entire songs through its vibration motors alone, and you can try it too if you like.

By default, Amazon locks your device down to its curated ecosystem. This means you miss out on powerful media players, custom launchers, and niche streaming tools.

When I used Windows, Paint.net was my go-to app when I needed an image editor that was more powerful than Paint, but didn't need all the bells and whistles that GIMP or Photoshop had. Despite this, I was always peeved that you couldn't actually download Paint.net from the website 'Paint.net'. You had to go to the GetPaint.net website instead, which always felt weird.

Despite headwinds from the current administration, automakers continue to release well-equipped EVs with bigger battery packs and increasingly faster charging speeds. For those who want to travel further between plugging in, the future is still bright, just slightly tinted.But there haven't been many sedans starting around or below $50,000, as crossover SUVs have largely taken up this territory. Now, Mercedes-Benz has released its CLA compact sedan which ticks every box above for the 2026 and 2027 model year, and throws in pleasant interior amenities and fun driving character for good measure. What's insideThe CLA w …Read the full story at The Verge.

Unlike cloud-based AI models, locally-hosted large language models are infamous for their sky-high system requirements, with the more powerful ones requiring plenty of tensor cores and ample VRAM. Although I’d argue that with MoE offloading, Mixture of Experts models can run even on ancient systems, you’ll still need a discrete graphics card to run these bulky LLMs.

While people have settled on the desktop OS they want the most, the fight for the king of the handhelds still wages on. Right now, we have two major competitors in the world of portable PC devices: SteamOS and Windows 11. Microsoft had a headstart with non-Steam Deck devices, but Valve eventually began taking the fight outside of its territory by releasing SteamOS for people to use on whatever handheld they like. Now, Valve is working on making SteamOS work better on other devices, and the new update adds control support for some well-known handhelds.

It's always a fun time keeping tabs on the development of a Linux kernel, distro, or desktop environment. If the next version is a long way away from releasing, you can satiate your excitement by checking out all the cool new features that are getting added on a weekly basis. As the release date nears, the developers move away from adding features and move toward bug fixes, which aren't nearly as exciting, but it does mean it will release soon.

My entry into self-hosting was never going to run through a terminal, so LM Studio's one-click install and clean GUI is what got me running local models, and it's been my default ever since. But the longer I lean on local AI, the more I run into things LM Studio either doesn't do or makes me set up by hand. That's what pushed me toward llama.cpp recently, and although it does have a GUI, you still need the terminal to launch it.

If you take a look at the modern handheld landscape with devices like the ROG Ally X, the Lenovo Legion Go, and the MSI Claw, the numbers are just jaw-dropping, with 8-core CPUs, 24GB of DDR5 RAM, and massive screens. On paper, these devices absolutely annihilate the Steam Deck's aging custom APU, but in practice you plug them in, boot up a game, and watch the battery drain 1% every minute while the fans shriek like a server rack.

I'm no stranger to building PCs. As a matter of fact, I've either built a rig from the ground up or purchased a laptop every second year since 2015 for a variety of reasons, either for myself, or for friends and family. The dynamics of a purchase have always been the same. You buy the best you can afford, for the features that you care about.

It’s easy to get caught up in the LLM race. For a while, my monthly credit card statement read like a lineup of premium AI subscriptions: ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, and Microsoft 365 Premium with Copilot.