With Windows 10 losing support in October, people are looking for a way to protect their PCs from threats. If you ask Microsoft for a solution, it'll be very pleased to tell you that you should just get rid of all that hardware and buy a new Windows 11 PC. However, it's not the only thing you can do by a long shot; in fact, one can easily argue that this route is the most wasteful. If your PC runs just fine, why throw it out just because Microsoft wants you to?

“Make me a fit that’s athleisure but elevated.” The kids are always saying this.Android's new design language looks extremely… Gen Z.That much is obvious from the concept images in the leaked blog post that surfaced today (published by Google, as it tends to do). While the theme is customizable, Google highlighted pink, purple, and coral throughout the interface. It's a decidedly younger, bubblier, and more fun design that screams "look at all this fresh paint!" and less "choose from one of these six popular shades of blue." Google's blog also confirms the push toward youth appeal. Fine; freshening up the interface every once in a while is a good and necessary pursuit. Aside from the inherent cringe factor when a group of designers tries to quantify youth appeal in bar graphs labeled "Coolness attributes," I can't shake the feeling that none of this matters much against Android's biggest hurdle in addressing the younger demographic: the iPhone. Android is the most popular mobile operating system in the world. But here in the US, Apple owns a solid majority of all phones sold. The numbers skew even more heavily toward iOS when you look at younger demographics. A 2025 survey from investment bank Piper Sandler reports that 88 percent of teenagers polled own …Read the full story at The Verge.

When the Steam Deck launched in 2022, it took gamers by surprise, delivering an affordable, handheld PC that could run a huge chunk of your Steam library. Naturally, in 2025, fans are eagerly awaiting more details about the Steam Deck 2. But for me?

The old Reddit layout sometimes looks a bit outdated, but it’s beloved by many Reddit users, including me. I’ve worried for some time that Reddit would eventually pull the plug on it in favor of the newer and more modern interface, but based on a recent post from Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, it doesn’t sound like that’s going to happen anytime soon.As part of a larger post published Monday about “Reddit’s next chapter,” which we saw via TechCrunch, Huffman, who goes by the username spez, snuck in what looked like heart-stopping news for us oldheads right at the end.“Sunsetting old.reddit: old.reddit is the version of Reddit that we built back in the mid-2000s,“ Huffman said. ”It doesn’t scale, it’s impossible to develop on, and it’s ugly af. We will be shutting it down at the end of the month.”But, apparently, that was just a joke. (A bold move, given outcry to other Reddit-related shutdowns.) “Just kidding,” he said. “I don’t know why I say stuff like this. We’ll figure out how to work around it and keep it online as long as people are using it.”The post covers many other actual planned changes to the platform, including that “core product improvements” like making it easier to make subreddits and “evolving r/popular” are in the works. Reddit also wants to shift the primary role of moderators from “policing to community cultivation,” in part with “better tools – especially more AI-driven automation,” he said.Huffman acknowledged that “unwelcome AI in communities is a serious concern” and that it’s the worry he hears most from users and mods. But he believes that “Reddit works because it’s human” and said that “our focus is, and always will be, on keeping Reddit a trusted place for human conversation.”Reddit is going to ask for a bit more identifying information from its users, too. Here’s Huffman’s description of what will happen:To keep Reddit human and to meet evolving regulatory requirements, we are going to need a little more information. Specifically, we will need to know whether you are a human, and in some locations, if you are an adult. But we never want to know your name or who you are. The way we will do this is by working with various third-party services that can provide us with the essential information and nothing else. No solution is perfect — including the status quo — but we will do our best to preserve both the humanness and anonymity of Reddit. On Wednesday, Reddit also shared details about improvements it’s making to Reddit Chat, including the ability to add users to an allowlist. The company announced in March that it would be replacing user PMs with Chat.

The name "Clippy" invokes one of two moods. Either you never met him and you're ambivalent towards his name, or you went through the ordeal of using him as your Office assistant back in 1997. If you're of the former camp, Clippy was a little animated "friend" that took the form of a paperclip that tried to be as helpful as possible. He was, essentially, the personification of every annoying Windows pop-up you've ever had, constantly interjecting with ideas or thoughts until you turned him off.

The Trump administration is moving to shut down the Energy Star program, which saves homeowners an average of $450 a year. “If you wanted to raise families’ energy bills, getting rid of the Energy Star label would be a pretty good way,” says Steven Nadel of the American Council for Energy Efficiency. The program, which started in 1992, provides basic information about how much energy an appliance uses. Without it, your next large appliance purchase could end up costing you more money than you bargained for. Buying Energy Star-rated products can also qualify you for rebates on appliances as well as tax credits of up to $3,200 annually.Sources in the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees Energy Star, say that Trump administration officials told them the program will be shuttered, according to reports from CNN and The Washington Post.Molly Vaseliou, EPA Associate Administrator for Public Affairs, confirmed to The Verge via email that the agency is going through the “next phase of organizational improvements” to “better provide clean air, water, and land for all Americans.”Vaseliou shared a PDF showing a future organizational chart with the Office of Transportation & Air Quality and the Office of Radiation & Indoor Air Quality eliminated. Vaseliou did not respond to questions about Energy Star specifically, but the program falls under these departments.Energy Star is a private-public partnership set up by the first Bush administration in 1992 to help consumers and businesses save money by reducing their energy use, while conserving natural resources. Over that time, it’s saved more than $500 billion in energy costs.“For just $32 million a year, Energy Star helps American families save over $40 billion in annual energy costs,” Paula Glover, president of the nonprofit Alliance to Save Energy, told CNN. “That’s a return of $350 for every federal dollar invested.” 

I am not always the biggest puzzle game fanatic, but I must admit, some have caught my eye over the years. If you are in the mood to get your brain tested, there are a lot of puzzle games for you to jump into, especially if you have Steam. Tons of creators like to test the minds of players, so there is no shortage of different game types for you to try out if you have access to a PC. Whenever I am in the mood for a puzzle game, these are the ones I turn to, which I think are the best Steam has to offer.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has lost its appeal of a ruling in its case against Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.In 2023, the FTC requested a preliminary injunction to prevent the companies from finalizing the deal while its legal challenge to the acquisition from 2022 was in progress.“With control of Activision’s content, Microsoft would have the ability and increased incentive to withhold or degrade Activision’s content in ways that substantially lessen competition – including competition on product quality, price, and innovation,” the FTC said in its complaint.A district court judge denied the FTC’s request, and a day after that ruling, the FTC appealed. The deal was completed in October 2023, nearly two years after the acquisition was first announced.Today, an appeals court panel affirmed that denial, as reported by Reuters. In its opinion, the panel says that “given the FTC’s failure to make an adequate showing as to its likelihood of success on the merits as to any of its theories, the district court properly denied the FTC’s motion for a preliminary injunction on that basis.”The deal is still “the subject of an administrative proceeding that remains pending before the FTC,” according to today’s opinion.FTC spokesperson Vicky Graham and Microsoft spokesperson Alex Haurek declined to comment. 

A second trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI had a surprise drop this week, and it looked like it mostly focused on the story and world at the expense of gameplay. However, developer Rockstar Games says that isn’t actually the case, and that the trailer was “comprised of equal parts gameplay and cutscenes.” The fact that it’s hard to discern between the two in the trailer is an impressive achievement for the game, though obviously we’ll have to reserve judgement until we are able to actually play it.Here, you can judge for yourself:The studio also confirmed that the trailer was “captured entirely in-game from a PlayStation 5,” something that was noted in the trailer’s fine print. The game will be launching on both the PS5 and the Xbox Series X / S.The trailer — which came more than a year after the first — was released soon after news came that Grand Theft Auto VI was being delayed. Originally slated to launch this fall, the game is now due to release on May 26th, 2026. In a statement, Rockstar said that “we need this extra time to deliver at the level of quality you expect and deserve.”

Sony’s WH-1000XM5 (left) and last-gen WH-1000XM4 (right).Sony will launch a successor to its WH-1000XM5 noise cancelling headphones on May 15th, according to leaked information reported by Dealabs and Android Authority.Details of the new headphones model, called the WH-1000XM6, come from a now pulled Amazon Spain listing for the product that was first spotted by a Reddit user. The XM6 will feature an upgraded noise-canceling processor called the QN3 HD, which according to Dealabs, will be seven times faster than the QN1 chip present in Sony’s XM5. The upgrade should result in better noise cancelling and perhaps sound quality.  It also looks like it has an AI-powered six-microphone beamforming system for calls, and still comes with a headphone jack.Unfortunately the Trump administration’s tariffs seem to be affecting the price of the new XM6. Dealabs says it will launch for $449.99 in the US — $50 more expensive than the $399.99 XM5s, which our senior reviewer Chris Welch has called the best wireless headphones for most people. The XM5, however, is only slightly better at noise canceling than the XM4 that launched in 2020, so the XM6 will need a truly generational improvement to justify the higher price.

Google has announced a dedicated iPadOS version of the Gemini app. Previously, you could only run the iOS version of Gemini in compatibility mode on an iPad. Here’s some of the announcement, which Google spokesperson Elijah Lawal emailed to The Verge:With the new app, you can use the split view on the iPad to put Gemini side by side with other apps for multitasking. You can also effortlessly use powerful features like:• Gemini Live: Have natural, free-flowing conversations in over 45 languages.• Deep Research: Quickly generate reports and gather information, saving significant time.• Audio Overview: Easily process and understand audio files.• Canvas: Co-create and edit documents and code in an innovative space built for collaboration with AI.• Image and video generation: Bring your ideas to life by generating stunning, varied images and videos directly on your iPad.The dedicated iPad app is available today in all countries where Gemini is currently offered. You can download it directly from the App Store.Speaking of updated features, we’ve significantly expanded the availability of Audio Overview. Following great initial feedback, this feature, which initially launched in English for Gemini and Gemini Advanced subscribers, is now available in over 45 languages globally.According to the listing, Gemini can also now be added as a homescreen widget, and supports connecting to your Google Photos library. Google launched Gemini for iOS in November. And while it would’ve been nice for it to debut an iPad-native app at the time, the next best time, as they say, is now. And anyway, it’s not like Google is the worst offender there. 

Nintendo's Switch 2 is just around the corner, as we're approximately under a month away from the system's release. To get things in order, the Japanese company has been working hard with updates for the Switch 1 and existing Switch features to align with the hotly anticipated Switch 2. However, the user interface wasn't the only portion of the Switch that would be getting an enhancement before the Switch 2's June 5th release.