Browser security warnings used to feel like part of the home lab experience. I’d type in an IP address, get the usual scary interstitial, click through it, and then act like that was perfectly normal because the server was mine. It was only on my network, after all, so I told myself it wasn’t a big deal. After enough times, though, that warning stopped feeling useful and started feeling like one more thing I’d trained myself to ignore.

A photo of a lightbulb glowing purple. | Photo: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The state of the smart home can be frustrating, because it is just so obvious how things ought to work. You should be able to control everything from everywhere. Your spaces should adapt to what you're doing and how you're feeling. Making your home smart shouldn't require renovating, and the smarts should be mostly invisible. All of this is, of course, incredibly hard to pull off - but the goal is pretty clear.Until now, maybe no product has come closer to nailing the smart home than Philips Hue. And on this episode of Version History, we dig into all the things Hue got right. The Verge's David Pierce and Jennifer Pattison Tuohy are joined …Read the full story at The Verge.

Over the last few years, Valve has slowly but surely been doing something I never expected to see from a PC company. With the Steam Machine, there has been a lot of talk about the new living room PC being a direct Sony or Microsoft console competitor. However, there's a far more interesting angle to look at it — the Steam Machine is now one of the most vertically integrated PCs on the market. In doing so, it becomes perhaps the only company after Apple that's doing it to this extent.

The cross stitch pattern is by NathNolu on Etsy. If you're reading an Oura Ring 5 review at The Verge, you likely fall into one of two camps: newcomers looking for a smartwatch alternative, or Oura users pondering an upgrade. In the case of the former, this is a great casual health tracker and the best smart ring on the market - but not your best choice if you really sweat the fitness details. If you fall into the latter, you don't need to upgrade.I say this because the Oura Ring 4 came out less than two years ago. The ceramic version, of which I am a big fan, came out less than a year ago. These were major updates over the Oura Ring Gen 3, both in terms of software and in terms of senso …Read the full story at The Verge.

The SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro gaming headset. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales SteelSeries has the Arctis Nova Pro Wireless gaming headset on sale for $239.99 (currently between $300 and $350 at other retailers). The Xbox version that supports a host of other platforms including PlayStation, PC, and Switch is available in both black and white. The PlayStation version, which supports the same platforms except for Xbox, is discounted in white. Both versions can also connect to mobile devices via Bluetooth.SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro WirelessThe Nova Pro Wireless gaming headset supports active noise cancellation, swappable batteries, Bluetooth support, and compatibility with PC and most consoles — including Xbox and PlayStation. This model includes a base station that makes it easy to toggle crucial sound settings. Read our review.Where to Buy: $379.99 $239.99 at SteelSeries (Xbox, black, blemished box) $379.99 $239.99 at SteelSeries (Playstation, white, blemished box) $379.99 $239.99 at SteelSeries (Xbox, white, blemished box)This isn’t your average price reduction; SteelSeries’ reason for discounting the headsets is because their packaging is damaged. It assures that the hardware inside is still unused and undamaged, and the headset includes the same one-year warranty as any of its new headsets.The Nova Pro Wireless was an impressive gaming headset when it launched four years ago — and still is — especially at this price point. It has all the features you’re probably expecting from a high-end wireless headset, like active noise cancellation for blocking out sounds, a noise-canceling microphone for clear callouts and crisp voice delivery, and Bluetooth connectivity in case you need to take a call. In addition, the slick USB base station adds a ton of unique functionality, like charging a spare batteries to minimize downtime when one dies, onboard controls for game profiles and sound mixing, and the ability to blend up to three inputs at a time (including Bluetooth).There are some things you should keep in mind if you’re thinking of picking up the Arctis Nova Pro Wireless. Our reviewers disagreed on its comfort. Neither found it uncomfortable, but both agreed that it’s heavier than other SteelSeries headsets. If you were considering the newer and more expensive Nova Pro Omni, this headset has most of the same unique features at a much more palatable price point.Read our SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro review.

My wife and son spent their weekends exploring and piecing together the mansion in Blue Prince. | Image: Courtesy of Raw Fury I've always been the gamer in the family. When my son was born nearly 11 years ago, gaming was one of the things I looked forward to sharing with him. Pulling up a chair next to me, he would watch as I played Sea of Thieves with friends, often wearing the too-big-for-his-head headset to talk with them, instructing me where to go. Now instead of him watching me play through Clair Obscur, I'm sitting next to him and he battles Calamity Ganon in Breath of the Wild. His real gaming passion for years has been Minecraft - he appreciates the rules and order, as well as the calming environment of creative mode. He also likes to meticulously stack up …Read the full story at The Verge.

Matmos are an incredibly accomplished duo between their own solo records like the masterpiece A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure and production classic Bjork records like Vespertine. But Drew Daniel, one half of Matmos, is fiendishly prolific. When he's not literally dreaming up new viral music genres, he's also putting out records under the banner of The Soft Pink Truth. Where Matmos usually focuses on a specific musical experiment - using only samples of medical procedures or building instruments out of PVC tubing - Soft Pink Truth goes wherever Daniel's whims take him. That might be a house record. It might be a bunch of black metal co …Read the full story at The Verge.

I've spent years telling myself a big OLED was the endgame for movie watching, and then a laser projector landed on my coffee table and ruined the plan. My XGIMI Titan Noir Max review covers the specific unit doing the ruining, but this piece is about the bigger argument: for movies, specifically movies, a modern laser projector beats a QLED or OLED TV. I know how that sounds coming from someone who also knows projector brightness claims get inflated, so believe me, I went into this ready to be disappointed. I wasn't.

Apple's self-driving car program never really got off the ground, but it may have been what made the company's chips the powerful AI performers they are. Early in the development of the self-driving platform, Apple realized that it would need powerful on-device AI processing. While the car processor was never finished, as Mark Gurman details in his latest Power On newsletter, it did lead to the development of the Neural Engine, the backbone of Apple's on-device AI processing. The Neural Engine made its debut with the iPhone X and the A11 Bionic. In those early days, it was primarily used for computer vision, powering FaceID, Animoji, and a …Read the full story at The Verge.

Started with just two stacks less than a year ago, and they had already grown over 20, and I was adding a few every week. The majority of them were permanent ones I used regularly, and some were experimental. And for most of them, I didn’t even remember the configuration I had done by hand in the first place because once deployed, I rarely visited them until they asked for my attention. Compose files could tell me how Docker was running it, but those files couldn’t tell me why I made those decisions in the first place.

Lorde performing at the 2026 Governors Ball. | Photo: Siegfried Anthony/Billboard via Getty Images Lorde was performing at the Real Cool Festival in Madrid on Thursday and took some time during her set to speak out against AI glasses. While she didn't specify any brands in particular, it's likely she was taking a shot at festival sponsor Ray-Ban, which has collaborated with Meta on a pair of AI smartglasses. The comments were captured in videos shared to social media. After thanking the crowd for being there and taking part in "something real," she said that it was increasingly hard to know is and isn't real, before saying "You don't know if someone is wearing sunglasses or if they're wearing those fucked up fucking… Can I just say, for …Read the full story at The Verge.

There was a time when building a PC was the most economical way to play games, because given enough time, it would nearly always offer a tangible return on your investment. Even if consoles offered better upfront value, a carefully curated list of parts would deliver more performance for the money while creating a pathway for future upgrades.