Nvidia and Apple are very different companies, but now, more than ever, they're both working off of the same playbook. Taking up the second and first slots, respectively, for the world's wealthiest companies, Nvidia and Apple enjoy the position of being the rulers of a particular market. They have a dominant position in their respective fields, and they're leveraging that position to maintain a grip on the product categories they sell.

Google has started rolling out new AI features to Gemini Live that let it “see” your screen or through your smartphone camera and answer questions about either in real-time, Google spokesperson Alex Joseph has confirmed in an email to The Verge. The features come nearly a year after Google first demonstrated the “Project Astra” work that powers them.A Reddit user said the feature showed up on their Xiaomi phone, as spotted by 9to5Google. Today, the same user posted the video below demonstrating Gemini’s new screen-reading ability. It’s one of the two features Google said in early March would “start rolling out to Gemini Advanced Subscribers as part of the Google One AI Premium plan” later in the month. The other Astra capability rolling out now is live video, which lets Gemini interpret the feed from your smartphone camera in real-time and answer questions about it. In the demonstration video below that Google published this month, a person uses the feature to ask Gemini for help deciding on a paint color to use for their freshly-glazed pottery. Google’s rollout of these features is a fresh example of the company’s big AI assistant lead as Amazon is preparing the limited early access debut of its Alexa Plus upgrade and Apple has delayed its upgraded Siri. Both are supposed to have capabilities similar to the ones Astra is starting to enable now. Meanwhile, Samsung still has Bixby, but Gemini is nevertheless the default assistant on its phones.

Microsoft is officially killing off the Remote Desktop app. It’s unfortunate since it is/was one of the easier ways to connect to your PC while on vacation. System admins also rely on it to connect to PCs and servers remotely. However, starting May 27th, 2025, the RDP app for Windows will no longer be available in the Microsoft Store. It also won’t be supported or available for installation. Instead, the company is moving RDP to the free Windows App (yes, a terrible name), which also includes other features.

Most of us spend hours on the internet daily and trust our browsers with our sensitive information. The truth is that most browsers track our online activity and use our information to create profiles about our interests, spending habits, and other personal details we'd rather keep private. They then sell our information to third parties, who'll use it for targeted advertising to get more money from us.

We live in an era where video games take nearly a decade to develop and cost more to make than some Hollywood blockbusters. With so much money and so many jobs on the line, it’s no surprise that studios play it safe, sticking to tried-and-true formulas instead of taking risks. If it isn’t a surefire hit, it’s not worth making — at least, that’s the industry mindset.

Not every console can be as iconic as the NES or sell over 150 million units like the Nintendo Switch. For every system that defines a generation, there are those who struggle to find an audience — whether due to poor timing, bad design, or decisions that doomed them from the start. Some had ambitious ideas but were held back by hardware limitations, while others never stood a chance thanks to high prices or a lack of developer support.

3D printing allows makers of all skill levels to create practical and personalized objects that can save time and effort. Whether you enjoy improving your home setup or experimenting with functional gadgets, there are many helpful tools you can easily produce with a printer. These items range from everyday conveniences to specialized aids that address unique needs. With some creativity, you can transform everyday chores into enjoyable and efficient tasks.

Steam has been around since the early 2000s, launching alongside Half-Life 2much to the chagrin of the gaming community at the time. What was seen as yet another needless DRM solution has ballooned into one of the most important pieces of software in gaming today, snowballing Valve into a powerful position capable of forcing developers as large as Activision Blizzard to comply with rules only found on Steam.

How much do you use Google Maps Timeline? For me, it's a handy way to see where I was on a given day and revisit some old memories. Well, there's a chance that some of those memories have been obliterated into nothingness, as Google has confirmed that it accidentally erased some Maps Timeline data.

Nvidia is a massive and storied company. It may make some of the best graphics cards you can buy, but Team Green has its hands in a lot of different businesses, and it's leveraged some shady tactics in those businesses in the past.

Google Maps users have recently been complaining on places like Reddit that their Timeline data — the app’s historical record of where they’ve been — had disappeared. Now, Google has confirmed that it accidentally deleted the data and that anyone who wasn’t using Google’s cloud backups is out of luck.Google spokesperson Genevieve Park provided this statement in an email to The Verge:We briefly experienced a technical issue that caused the deletion of Timeline data for some people. Nearly everyone with encrypted Timeline backups will be able to restore their data; unfortunately those who did not have backups enabled will not be able to recover lost data.In a Reddit post that Android Authority spotted, users reported getting a similar statement in an email from Google that included instructions for recovering the data for those who’d turned on the app’s cloud backup feature. To see if it’s on for you, tap your user icon in the iOS or Android Google Maps app, then “Your timeline,” and look for a cloud icon with either an arrow inside of it (on) or a line through it (off). You can tap the icon to change your backup settings.Google warned users last summer that it was switching to on-device storage for Google Maps location data. That meant you could keep track of your Maps location history without having it tracked on Google’s servers, which is great for privacy but comes with the risk of it abruptly vanishing, as Google’s “technical issue” shows. And unfortunately, while Google Maps lets you export location history data to a file, Google’s instructions for recovering Timeline data include no obvious way to reimport the data that doesn’t involve the cloud backup servers.Update March 23rd: Updated with confirmation from Google spokesperson Genevieve Park.

There are a lot of self-hosted Google Drive alternatives out there, one of the biggest being Nextcloud. Complete with Nextcloud Office which aims to replace Google's entire suite of document software, enthusiasts are spoiled for choice these days. However, one little-known alternative that I personally see as the best replacement for Google's overall suite of services (if you care about privacy more than anything else, that is) is CryptPad. It's a privacy-focused open-source end-to-end encrypted online collaboration application, and the myriad of options it has match and even surpass some of Google's own offerings.