Synth historian Oli Freke will spend big on a good bicycle

Oli Freke is a musician and journalist whose works have appeared in Sound on Sound, The Quietus, and Mixmag. This has included using math to explore the melodic potential of the Western 12-tone scale and deep dives on effects plug-ins. He’s even written a book tracing the evolution of the synthesizer from 1963 through 1995, charting the change from a***og to digital and back. His new project is Beat Gems, a coffee-table visual history of drum machines from publisher Bjooks. Like other Bjooks t**les, Beat Gems is loaded with gorgeous photos, fascinating historical tidbits, and practical advice for making the most of your gear, whether it’s …Read the full story at The Verge.

Darryl Harvey
Australia

A Windows 11 service you never asked for is making your laptop run warmer and die sooner

Have you ever wondered why your laptop is running warmer than you'd like? You might think it is just the hardware struggling to run the apps you are using. But it is also Windows itself that is causing it — even on high-performance systems.

Olivia Miller
Seattle

Someone made a system that loads their Steam games using floppy disks, and it’s pretty genius

As everyone debates Sony's recent decision to go digital-only, people have been finding fun ways to turn their Steam library into a physical form. We've already seen someone turn SSDs into Game Boy cartridges that load a game when plugged in, which was pretty wild by itself. Now, someone has...

Adriana Cano
Spain

That old tablet in your drawer is the smart home dashboard you keep meaning to buy

Having smart devices in your home can make life a lot easier, but once you have a few, you may start wishing you had a dedicated device to control them. And there are some devices out there that sell themselves as just that — dashboards for your smart home.

Daniel Martinez
Dallas

Elon Musk’s attempt at an AI Wikipedia hasn’t been updated in months

xAI's Grokipedia, an online encyclopedia with AI-generated articles that Elon Musk once promised would be a "massive improvement" over Wikipedia, apparently hasn't been updated since April 24th, according to a report from Lawfare. "As far as we can tell, no entry has changed in more than three months," Lawfare said....

John Doe
New York

After a week in Zed, I couldn’t go back to how slow Cursor had become

I prefer Cursor over VS Code because it is more agentic, and its $20 subscription gives me generous usage limits that let me get actual work done. I am comparing Cursor with VS Code because both are based on the Electron framework and are similar in speed and performance. They...

Allie Lee
United Kingdom

4 Android widgets I use every day on my Pixel that aren’t from Google

When you buy a new Pixel phone, you are likely — or even pushed — to install and/or use preinstalled Google apps and widgets. However, there are several widgets that I use nearly every day that are not created by Google. In many cases, they work better than the typical...

Jane Smith
Los Angeles

Someone built a Steam Machine face plate that lets you stick your Steam Controller onto it

Valve has been pretty open about what people do with the faceplate of their Steam Machines. In fact, it made the designs for an e-ink front display open-source so you can make your own at home. Now, someone has made their own faceplate that can hold a Steam Controller in...

Daniel Martinez
Dallas

The empty PCIe slots in your PC can do more than hold a graphics card

When I built my first PC, I figured the PCIe slot was useless outside of plugging a graphics card, and I went my merry way after tossing my pixel-pushing companion into the rig. Unfortunately, this trend continued for longer than I’d like to admit, until I ran into a situation...

Clara Girard
France

My decade with Synology is over — a networking company just proved there’s a better way to build a NAS

For years, Synology was the safe bet for home NAS enclosures. And like many of you, I went with the safe bet for the best part of a decade. But things change, and my home storage needs changed. It’s not even because Synology became actively hostile to users, although that’s...

Sophia Wilson
Atlanta

Nintendo beats earnings thanks to US tariff refunds it won’t share with gamers

Nintendo has smashed its first-quarter earnings estimates for the fiscal year, bolstered by strong games sales and US tariff refunds, though its customers likely won't receive anything from the latter. In its latest financial results, Nintendo reports that operating profits soared to 142.5 billion yen (about $902 million) between April...

Jane Smith
Los Angeles

Sony proves it’s not reversing its decision as warnings about physical discs appear on new PS5s

After Sony revealed that it would ramp down disc production in 2028, gamers began making their voices heard. The idea was that, if they showed enough support, Sony might rethink its strategy and roll back its decision. Unfortunately for fans of physical libraries, it seems that Sony has already doubled...

William Garcia
Boston

OpenAI says Apple’s trade secrets lawsuit is ‘rotten to its core’

OpenAI has asked a federal judge to toss out Apple's landmark lawsuit accusing the ChatGPT maker of stealing trade secrets, describing the allegations as "meritless." In a motion filed yesterday to dismiss the complaint, OpenAI says that Apple is mischaracterizing both the actions of the AI startup's employees as theft,...