I find something weirdly captivating about tech products that come with transparent cases that let you see the works inside. We all know that there are all sorts of chips and wires in there that make the product do what it does, but unless we plan to break the thing open (and void the warranty), those items are usually hidden. If you also find this kind of thing fascinating, then Sharge’s charging gear might be right up your alley — and you may want to try out the Shargeek 170 Power Bank, which is currently available from Amazon (for Prime members) and Sharge for $99, a savings of a $100.The Shargeek 170 doesn’t just look good, either. It features a 24,000mAh battery, 170W maximum output, and can charge three devices simultaneously via a pair of 140W USB-C ports and a single USB-A port. Meanwhile, a smart display keeps you up to date on recharging time and percentage, along with the Shargeek’s current output and input. The Verge’s Sean Hollister saw it at CES last year, and thought it looked “pretty sweet.” You might, too.More sales to play and clean withA real classic, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is now available, and if you’ve always wanted to try out the 20-year-old game — but were reluctant to use an old game on new tech — now is your chance. The remastered version features overhauled graphics optimized for modern hardware and includes both the Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles expansions. And it’s on sale at Fanatical: you can get the Standard PC version for $41.49 (about $9 off), while the Deluxe edition — which comes with new quests, a digital artbook, and a soundtrack app —  can be had for $49.79 ($10 off).Let me be really honest here: I tend to eat at my desk a lot. That’s why my keyboard — and desktop — is often littered with crumbs, and why I could probably use something like the Hoto Compressed Air Capsule. The handheld vacuum cleaner provides 15,000Pa of suction power and includes five attachments, allowing it to handle crumbs, dust, and other detritus in tight corners. It can even be used to clean your coffee grinder! It’s now on sale at Amazon for $57.99 ($52 off), which, although not as low as its recent price of $31, is still a reasonable drop.If you’re in the market for the latest iPad with Apple’s A16 chip, the 11-inch base configuration is matching its all-time low of $319.99 at Amazon in blue and yellow, down around $29 from its usual price of $349. If color is important to you, you can also get it in silver for $327 and in pink for $339. Read our review.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra is one of the phones being updated to One UI 7 now.Samsung is once again deploying its One UI 7 update to last year’s flagship Galaxy phones, with users worldwide reporting availability. The Android 15 update had begun rolling out earlier this month, only to pause for a week while Samsung rushed to patch a critical bug.Android Authority reports that Galaxy S24 series, Z Fold 6, and Z Flip 6 owners around the world, including the US, have once again begun receiving the update to the latest version of Samsung’s mobile operating system. Using the CheckFirm app we’ve verified that the update is already available to T-Mobile users in the US, while SammyFans reports that Verizon is also issuing the update now.One UI 7 began rolling out on April 7th, with the first US users getting the update three days later, but Samsung was forced to put a halt to the update program last week after a string of complaints from early updaters in South Korea who couldn’t unlock their phones. Samsung never officially confirmed the bug, but did acknowledge that the One UI 7 schedule was “being updated to ensure the best possible experience.”Samsung’s take on Android 15 was already later than expected, with developer access to the Google OS beginning in September 2024. While the Galaxy S25 phones and the latest Galaxy A-series models shipped with One UI 7, it’s taken until this month for older phones to receive the update. The next devices scheduled to receive it include the S23 series, the S24 FE and S23 FE, the Fold 5 and Flip 5, and the Tab S10 and Tab S9 lines.

Remember the viral cat meme that covers pop songs in only meows while slapping an instrument? Well, that Bongo Cat, created by StrayRogue, has now inspired one of Steam’s most popular idle games of the same name. Released for free on March 5, 2025, Bongo Cat has quickly climbed to the top of the Steam charts, cresting into the top 5 active players by late April 2025. So a lot of people are ‘playing’ Bongo Cat, but why?

For a few months, I've resisted the Proxmox craze that has taken over a few of my XDA colleagues, but the truth is, Proxmox is a very interesting platform with some cool capabilities. It's basically a server for all your virtual machines and containers that can run all different kinds of services, and that's pretty cool.

Two decades ago, YouTube wasn’t about the elaborate long-form content pumped out by creators like MrBeast. There wasn’t any fancy lighting, sound effects, or jump cuts. The platform’s first video, “Me at the Zoo,” was uploaded to YouTube on April 23rd, 2005. It’s a mere 19 seconds long, featuring YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim standing in front of a pair of elephants at the San Diego Zoo. “Alright, so here we are, in front of the elephants,” Karim says, while glancing back at the elephants. The video offers a brief glimpse of one wrapping hay around its trunk and placing it in its mouth. “The cool thing about these guys is that they have really, really, really long um… trunks, and that’s cool,” Karim says, gesturing. He looks back at the elephants one last time. “And that’s pretty much all there is to say.” (Karim uploaded another video, titled “Rolling down a hill” on April 23rd, but it was deleted.)The next, “My Snowboarding Skillz,” was uploaded by the user “mw” the very same day. It’s the very first “fail” video uploaded to YouTube, a genre that proliferated on the platform for many years. During the grainy 10-second video clip, you can hear a vague “whooshing” sound get closer as a snowboarder slides up a ramp in a snowy ski area, only to fall just moments later. The snowboarder then picks themself up, and the video cuts off before we can see what happens next.  Just one day later, on April 24th, 2005, a user named “gp” uploaded another video: “tribute.” At just five seconds long, it’s the shortest of the bunch. It shows a person with a brown jacket standing in a nondescript hallway that looks a little like a dormitory. They jump up and balance against the walls before letting out a primal scream. Another person — presumably the one holding the camera — then says, “Very nice” as the person hops down with a thud.At the time, all three videos were a testament to YouTube’s accessibility: anyone could make a YouTube video by simply capturing a brief moment in time, no matter how mundane it may seem. Though YouTube is now filled to the brim with lengthy tutorials, video deep dives, and vlogs, things have started to come full circle — at least, to some degree.When Vine launched in 2012, it countered YouTube’s growing library of several-minute-long videos with looping clips that lasted just six seconds. The platform quickly became filled with funny clips and quick skits until it eventually shut down in 2017, making room for TikTok, which merged with the lip-syncing platform Musical.ly, to become a short-form video giant.As TikTok exploded in popularity, platforms raced to launch short-form video feeds of their own. Instagram launched Reels in 2020, while YouTube brought Shorts to the US in 2021 – despite being the platform where these short videos originated.The supplementary Shorts look like a far cry from what YouTube videos were like 20 years ago. Most of the clips that YouTube’s algorithm serves up weren’t filmed on a whim, featuring thoughtful scripts and deliberate camerawork that the average person might not know how to recreate. But even with more planning involved, many of them have that glimmer of spontaneity and a sense of connection of the first three videos uploaded to the platform. When you only have so much time, you try to cut to the heart of the matter.

With the Nintendo Switch 2 arriving on June 5, 2025, Nintendo has announced a handful of games coming to the new console, like Mario Kart WorldMario Kart World and Donkey Kong BananzaDonkey Kong Bananza, but there are years worth of releases ahead of the new console. While there are certain games that you can (reasonably) expect to show up, like a new 3D Mario or a new Animal Crossing, but some of Nintendo's less beloved series only have a chance at showing up this console generation.

Something is rotten in the Department of Justice. Three federal prosecutors told their supervisors they’d rather resign than admit to wrongdoing over their refusal to drop the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. “We will not confess wrongdoing where there was none,” Celia V. Cohen, Andrew Rohrbach and Derek Wikstrom wrote in an email obtained by the New York Times. The three prosecutors were placed on administrative leave this year after refusing DOJ officials’ order to drop the case against Adams.All three prosecutors had worked under Democratic and Republican administrations and had done their part to advance the executive branches’ priorities regardless of ideology, they wrote in the email. But the Trump administration had politicized the department to an unprecedented degree. “Now, the Department has decided that obedience supersedes all else, requiring us to abdicate our legal and ethical obligations in favor of directions from Washington,” the email read.The resignation email is the latest episode in a drama that has been playing out at the Justice Department since the start of Trump’s second term. The trouble began in February, when …Read the full story at The Verge.

Apple and Meta are the first companies to be fined for violations under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). The European Commission announced today that Apple has been served a €500 million (about $570 million) penalty after ruling that its App Store “anti-steering” practices failed to comply with DMA antitrust rules. Meta has been fined €200 million (about $230 million) following similar charges regarding Facebook and Instagram’s ‘pay or consent’ ad model. Both companies have been given 60 days to comply with the ruling, which in Apple’s case includes removing its restrictions on developers, or face the risk of periodic penalty payments. Apple has confirmed that it intends to appeal the ruling, and The New York Times reports that Meta plans to do the same.The DMA became law in May 2023, and is designed to increase competition across digital markets within the EU. Companies designated under the law as “gatekeepers” — Apple, Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, ByteDance, and Microsoft — over “core platform services” they offer must comply with rules intended to reduce anticompetitive behavior. Companies can be charged up to 10 percent of their annual global revenue for DMA violations, and up to 20 percent for repeat offenses.“Enabling free business and consumer choice is at the core of the rules laid down in the Digital Markets Act. This includes ensuring that citizens have full control over when and how their data is used online, and businesses can freely communicate with their own customers,” says Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security, and democracy. “The decisions adopted today find that both Apple and Meta have taken away this free choice from their users and are required to change their behaviour.”Apple was charged for violating DMA rules over App Store restrictions that prevented developers from promoting pricing or alternative distribution channels within their apps, or freely linking out to web pages where customers can pay or subscribe to their services. In its own compliance report, Apple says the compliance measures it has taken to open up its App Store place users and developers at greater risk, and that it will “continue to urge the European Commission to allow it to take other measures to protect its users.”The Commission says that the size of Apple’s fine “takes into account the gravity and duration of the non-compliance.” The company has also been ordered to remove the restrictions on developers linking out to and promoting other payment services.“Today’s announcements are yet another example of the European Commission unfairly targeting Apple in a series of decisions that are bad for the privacy and security of our users, bad for products, and force us to give away our technology for free,” Apple spokesperson Emma Wilson told The Verge. “We have spent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours and made dozens of changes to comply with this law, none of which our users have asked for. Despite countless meetings, the Commission continues to move the goal posts every step of the way. We will appeal and continue engaging with the Commission in service of our European customers.”Meta was charged for forcing Facebook and Instagram users to either pay a subscription fee to remove ads, or consent to having their personal data used for ad-supported versions of the platforms. To address the DMA compliance violations, Meta has allowed Facebook and Instagram users within the EU who don’t pay to remove ads to see fewer unskippable, full-screen “personalized ads.” Meta said in a compliance report published on March 6th that it has “continued to receive additional demands that go beyond what is written in the law” despite its efforts to comply with DMA requirements. “The European Commission is attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards,” says Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, in a statement. “This isn’t just about a fine; the Commission forcing us to change our business model effectively imposes a multi-billion-dollar tariff on Meta while requiring us to offer an inferior service. And by unfairly restricting personalized advertising the European Commission is also hurting European businesses and economies.”The initial compliance investigations into Apple and Meta were announced in March 2024, alongside plans to investigate Google’s parent company Alphabet over concerns regarding treating its own services more favorably in Search rankings compared to services provided by third-party rivals. Like Apple, Google is also being scrutinized over “anti-steering” practices in its app marketplace — meaning behavior that market-dominating platforms use to dissuade consumers from using alternative services.The fines announced today are below the maximum penalties of around $16 billion for Meta and $39 billion for Apple based on 2024 earnings. The Financial Times reported in January that the EU was planning to soften its regulatory practices around Big Tech following an increase in pressure from the US, with the new EU Commission that took office in December reportedly being more focused on enforcing compliance than issuing hefty fines. Today’s fines were expected in March, but were reportedly delayed over fears that the decisions would escalate ongoing trade tensions. Apple is no stranger to EU antitrust penalties, having previously been fined €1.84 billion (about $2 billion) last year over the App Store’s anti-steering practices following an antitrust lawsuit filed by Spotify — a case that predates the DMA. Meta was also fined €797.7 million (about $840 million) in November last year for giving itself unfair market advantages by linking Facebook and Marketplace, and €1.2 billion (about $1.3 billion) in 2023 for transferring the Facebook data of EU citizens to the US.These fines come as tensions are rising between European policymakers and US President Donald Trump, who has befriended deep-pocketed US tech CEOs that have likened EU fines placed against their companies to a form of taxation.

WhatsApp is launching a new “Advanced Chat Privacy” feature that aims to prevent people from taking conversations outside the app. When the setting is turned on, you can block others from exporting your chat history and automatically downloading photos and videos sent in the app.The feature will prevent people from using messages for Meta AI as well, which you can currently use to ask questions within a chat and generate images.By default, WhatsApp saves photos and videos in a chat to your phone’s local storage. It also lets you and your recipients export chats (with or without media) to your messages, email, or notes app. The Advanced Chat Privacy setting will prevent this in group and individual chats.This feature still doesn’t stop people from taking screenshots of your messages or manually downloading media from chats, WhatsApp spokesperson Zade Alsawah confirmed to The Verge. However, WhatsApp says this is its “first version” of the feature, and that it plans to add more protections down the line.“We think this feature is best used when talking with groups where you may not know everyone closely but are nevertheless sensitive in nature,” WhatsApp says in its announcement. WABetaInfo first spotted this feature earlier this month, and now it’s rolling out to the latest version of the app. You can turn on the setting by tapping the name of your chat and selecting Advanced Chat Privacy.Update, April 23rd: Added information from WhatsApp.

When I first started writing at XDA, I heard a few of my colleagues mention Docker during our weekly meetings. I had no clue what it was back then, but I was intrigued by all the different articles I saw being published on the website surrounding the app. That's when I decided to carry out some research and learn more about Docker. I won't lie, it was slightly intimidating initially, since I couldn't really find a beginner's guide to using Docker that was effective. However, I spent some time inside the app, watched a few YouTube tutorials, and had my first Docker container ready in a few hours.

The European Commission has just issued its first Digital Markets Act (DMA) fines to Apple and Meta, and now it’s telling Apple that it’s not impressed with the company’s approach to alternative app stores. The DMA originally forced Apple to begrudgingly allow alternative app stores on iOS in EU countries last year, but the fee structure imposed on developers and the daunting user installation process have led the European Commission to issue preliminary findings against Apple.“Developers wanting to use alternative app distribution channels on iOS are disincentivized from doing so as this requires them to opt for business terms which include a new fee (Apple’s Core Technology Fee),” says the European Commission. “Apple also introduced overly strict eligibility requirements, hampering developers’ ability to distribute their apps through alternative channels.”Apple’s controversial Core Technology Fee (CTF) applies to developers who want to distribute their apps on third-party app marketplaces and use alternative payment options. Apple has been forcing developers to pay 50 euro cents for each annual app install after 1 million downloads, a pricey commission particularly for smaller developers. Apple did make more developers exempt from its alternative app store tax last year, allowing developers of free apps without monetization to avoid the fee.While the CTF is an issue for the European Commission, the fiddly process of installing alternative app marketplaces and associated apps are also a concern for the Commission. “Apple makes it overly burdensome and confusing for end users to install apps when using such alternative app distribution channels,” says the European Commission in a statement. Apple has now been sent the Commission’s preliminary findings and will have time to respond to the findings before a final decision is made.The European Commission has also closed its investigation into the iPhone’s browser choice screen today, ruling that changes Apple made to iOS satisfy its antitrust obligations. The probe into Apple’s default browser choice screen was launched in March 2024, and Apple introduced several changes in iOS 17.4 to comply with DMA requirements, including opening up its system to other browser engines besides its own WebKit engine, and directly prompting users to choose their own default browser.The European Commission says a “constructive dialogue” with Apple has resulted in the ability for users in the EU to uninstall any apps, change default settings on iOS, and choose their default web browser from a choice screen.

The Sol 5 Spectra can be purchased with optional lenses that create patterned lighting effects. | Image: HarloweHarlowe’s new Sol 5 Spectra smartphone light will improve the quality of your photos and selfies or help you set a dramatic mood. It features a similar extending and swiveling design as Harlowe’s original Sol 5 light, but instead of just basic brightness and color temperature adjustments, the new Spectra adds full-color LEDs so you can select one of 36,000 different hues using either a touch panel on the back or a connected smartphone app.The Sol 5 Spectra is launching today in Asia, Europe, and Australia for $199 — a significant step up from the original’s $79 price tag. However, as a result of Trump raising tariffs on Chinese goods up to 145 percent, Harlowe is postponing the US launch of the Sol 5 Spectra. “As of today’s position with tariffs, we are optimistic that the light will release in the US this Spring,” Harlowe spokesperson Kiran Karnani told The Verge. “We are doing everything in our power not to raise our prices as a result of the tariffs.”Like the original, the Sol 5 Spectra attaches to the back of any smartphones that has a Qi2-compatible magnetic mount, or has been upgraded with the magnetic adhesive rings that Harlowe includes. The company compares its size to a compact makeup mirror, but at 1.26-inches thick and weighing 154 grams, you’re definitely going to notice the Spectra hanging off the back of your device.The light can be used while folded flat against the back of your device, providing extra illumination when shooting with your phone’s main cameras. But it also swivels and is attached to a short extending arm so the light can be repositioned to face you, improving selfies.The Spectra’s brightness, hue, and color temperature (shifting between warmer and cooler tints of white light) can be adjusted using a touch panel on the back, but it’s not a screen. If you want to be able to dial in settings with more accuracy, the Spectra uses Bluetooth to connect to Harlowe’s mobile app, which provides more precise adjustments using color wheels, sliders, and exact percentages.Its 1,000mAh battery is good for up to 90 minutes of illumination at full brightness, which is 220 lumens of light. There’s also a boost mode that temporarily doubles the brightness to 440 lumens for 30 seconds, but which will reduce the Spectra’s overall battery life.The Sol 5 Spectra Standard Kit includes a magnetically-attached frosted dome that diffuses and softens light while also completely removing blue light, which the company says “enhances the quality of light for self-portraits.”You can also opt for a more expensive $339 Sol 5 Spectra Creator Kit, which includes the frosted dome as well as two interchangeable magnetic Magic Lenses and five Magic Plates that create additional static lighting effects like patterns and textures.