One of the best parts about being a tinkerer is that you never have to purchase a household gadget again. Sure, you need to buy the components and build it yourself, but you also free yourself from proprietary services and from having to repurchase an entire device when one component breaks. Such is the case of this cool air quality detector you can make yourself, complete with Home Assistant integration.

Consulting firm McKinsey & Company is going to ask some entry-level candidates to have a 10-minute conversation with an AI simulation of a client as part of the interview process, according to The Wall Street Journal.The AI simulation "aims to reflect 80% of the scenarios McKinsey consultants might encounter in their day-to-day work," the WSJ says, and it isn't designed to "mimic an unhinged client." The AI won't score the candidates - humans will be in the room to assess the candidates and see how well they deal with the simulated situations.The McKinsey tool will be in testing for undergrads seeking business-analyst jobs in "some" offi …Read the full story at The Verge.

The Atom couldn’t have launched at a worse time for Ledger. | Image: Ledger Ledger has announced its latest crypto-centric hardware effort, the Android-based Atom, a device that resembles a phone but is instead designed to be used alongside one. It arrives at a tricky time for Ledger, which has been forced to cease sales of some of its hardware across southeast Asia following hardware tampering in its supply chain, which has reportedly seen over $86 million worth of crypto stolen from across some users' accounts.While Ledger's previous hardware wallet signers have been compact devices, running custom software and often with E Ink displays, the Atom is the spitting image of a regular Android smartphone. In fact it …Read the full story at The Verge.

You'd expect a year of upgrades to Claude Code, Cursor, and every other vibe coding tool to show up as faster releases. According to a fresh survey of 300 engineering leaders, it mostly hasn't. 79% of them say they can produce code much faster, yet their release cycles are no faster than before.

There are plenty of ways you can write down notes and documents on your PC, and we tend to be drawn to the ones that offer more features. Fancy formatting, syncing capabilities, and others can make it appealing to opt for a more advanced editor.

Eiliko. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge There's a new digital pet in town - a cute little marshmallow of a robot that can change its cartoony expressions to match your mood. But if you or your kids talk to "Eiliko" over Wi-Fi, it'll phone home to China. Its AI companion can store literally everything you tell it on Chinese servers, where hackers can easily gain access or even hijack its personality. And the company that made it, Energize Lab, doesn't seem to care.I bought an Eiliko from Amazon on August 29th. During a 10-minute conversation on August 30th, I asked the little bot: "Do you ever tell anybody else what I'm saying?""Your secrets are safe with me," it replied.With …Read the full story at The Verge.

As an OG Kindle fan, I've built up quite a collection over the years. Most of these devices work just fine, except for the artificial gatekeeping by Amazon to limit the user experience. While reading books works as expected, accessing the store is basically not possible and, well, customization was never the Kindle's strong suit. So, I did the obvious.

The iconic blue screen of death (BSOD) has graced some of our worst Windows moments over the years —moments when your PC completely gave up. This error screen is reserved for catastrophic errors that prevent Windows from functioning normally. The OS displays the details of whichever process caused the fatal crash, and restarts itself to avoid damage to your data and hardware.

Last year, Amazon bought Bee, a relatively unknown startup with a $50 always-listening AI wearable that summarized every conversation you had. Today, the e-commerce giant is announcing two new Bee devices - and a new subscription to go with them. First is the $74.99 Bee Frontier, an updated version of the original Bee device. And coming soon is the $99.99 Bee Eclipse, a credit-card-shaped gadget that snaps magnetically onto the back of a smartphone. Both devices are framed as gadgets to help you stay present in the moment. They listen to your daily conversations and then provide summaries, transcripts, insights, and to-dos based on what ha …Read the full story at The Verge.

When it comes to budget builds, there are some compromises most users are willing to make more than others. One argument I've heard more often than others is that, if a GPU is going in the PC anyway, it's a reasonable call to buy a processor that lacks integrated graphics and spend the change elsewhere. After all, both major manufacturers of desktop processors, AMD and Intel, have F-series processors that can be bought for $15-$40 less.

Big Walk's co-op multiplayer walking adventure has proved popular since launching in August, but Xbox players have been excluded from the fun - and now the game's creators have explained why. Developer House House said in a blog post that it decided not to release Big Walk on Xbox consoles in accordance with the Palestinian-led BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement, which has called to boycott Microsoft, including products under the company's gaming division.Microsoft was named a priority BDS target in June last year over contracts it has with the Israeli military and government, with the boycott specifically calling out Xbox conso …Read the full story at The Verge.

I have been running Windows 11 on this same machine for the past 10 years, and I haven't had to wipe and reformat once. I haven't felt the need to reformat because I use it primarily for writing. I keep the system light, and my regular maintenance keeps it running like new. Some added Microsoft features have helped, but my steady system-management routine does the best job of keeping it running smoothly.