Ask a PC builder whether they care about performance or looks, and they'll probably answer "both." Building a PC that looks unique, however, is easier said than done. Since everyone usually builds with the same overused components, it's hard to craft a PC that stands out. You either end up creating the same fish tank PC as countless others, or an understated black or white-themed build with no RGB.

Image: Laura Normand / The Verge Donald Trump has launched a new meme coin, according to posts from his X and Truth Social accounts last night. The posts, which have come just days before Trump’s inauguration, were initially met with suspicion by many that his accounts had been hacked.Skeptics highlighted by Decrypt last night pointed to several red flags, such as that the millions of dollars seeding the project came from Binance and Gate, which only serve overseas customers. The coin’s website credits the project to the same group behind Trump’s NFTs, as noted by Cointelegraph, which reports that sources close to Trump’s family confirmed the announcements’ legitimacy. Both posts remain up as of this morning. Screenshot: X Trump’s official X account announced a new meme coin on Friday. The idea that Trump would debut a meme coin is no big surprise, given his multiple NFT collections and his introduction of a crypto platform last year. He has made cryptocurrency a big part of his new agenda and has assembled a crypto and AI-focused tech policy team led by “crypto czar” David Sacks. Trump also plans to issue an executive order naming crypto a “national imperative or priority” after he’s inaugurated next week, Bloomberg reported ahead of the weekend.

Photo by NASA / Isaac Watson Canoo announced yesterday it is ceasing operations “immediately” and that it has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in Delaware. The EV startup estimates in its filing that its assets are worth $126 million and that it owes over $164 million to its creditors, TechCrunch noted yesterday.Now, the US will appoint “a Bankruptcy Trustee to oversee the liquidation of the Company’s assets and the distribution of proceeds to creditors,” Canoo writes. The company says it chose to file after failing to get support from either the US Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office or foreign investors. Canoo had signaled its dire situation last month when it idled its Oklahoma operations and put its employees on a “mandatory unpaid break.” Before that, it had lost a steady stream of executives, including all of its founders.“We are truly disappointed that things turned out as they did,” Canoo chairman and CEO Tony Aquila said in the announcement before thanking various government and business entities Canoo has dealt with. Those dealings have included producing shuttles for NASA’s Artemis crew and an agreement to build 4,500 electric delivery vans for Walmart.

The Google Pixel Watch 3, one of our favorite smartwatches for Android users, is $50 off for a limited time. | Image: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The clock is ticking if you want to save on the Pixel Watch 3, the Fitbit Charge 6, and other Google gadgets. The company kicked off the year with a solid New Year’s sale, which is set to expire at 11:59PM PT today, January 18th. Other retailers, including Amazon and Best Buy, are currently matching Google’s pricing in some instances, though we anticipate the matching promos will expire at the same time.On the smartwatch front, both the Pixel Watch 2 and the Pixel Watch 3 — the latter of which remains our favorite “Fitbit” — are down to their second-best price to date. The Wi-Fi-enabled Pixel Watch 2 is available for $199.99 ($50 off) from Google, Best Buy, and Target, while the 41mm Pixel Watch 3 starts at $299.99 ($50 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and the Google Store.Both wearables sport Google and Fitbit-powered features, including FDA-cleared EKGs, automatic workout tracking, and support for Google Assistant, Gmail, Calendar, and Wallet. However, the last-gen Pixel Watch 2 only comes in a single size — 41mm — while last year’s Pixel 3 is also available in a larger 44mm configuration.The Pixel Watch 3 features a host of other welcome improvements, too, including offline Google Maps, slightly better battery life, AI-generated workout suggestions, and deeper integration with other Google devices. You can view a Nest Doorbell or Nest Cam feed with the Pixel Watch 3, for instance, or control your Google TV directly from your wrist — neither of which is possible on the Pixel Watch 2.Read our Pixel Watch 2 and Pixel Watch 3 reviews.If you prefer a cheap fitness tracker over a smartwatch, the Fitbit Charge 6 is also on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and the Google Store for $129.95 ($30 off), which is about $30 more than its all-time low.Like its predecessor, the fitness band offers a wide range of sensors for keeping tabs on your health, along with built-in GPS and a vibrant OLED display. Unlike its predecessor, though, the Fitbit Charge 6 boasts an improved heart rate algorithm and can be paired with certain gym equipment over Bluetooth. It doesn’t support as many Google services as a Pixel Watch 3, sure, but you can take advantage of Google Wallet and turn-by-turn navigation via Google Maps.Read our Fitbit Charge 6 review.Along with fitness trackers and smartwatches, Google is discounting several pairs of wireless earbuds. Right now, you can buy the Pixel Buds Pro 2 from Amazon, Google, and Best Buy for $199 ($30 off), which remains their second-best price to date. Google is also selling them as part of a bundle with the Pixel Watch 3 for $441.99 ($58 off), or with the Fitbit Charge 6 for $130.95 ($29 off). Google’s latest set of wireless earbuds are our top choice for Pixel phone owners. They offer powerful noise cancellation and a lighter design than the previous model, which makes them more comfortable to wear. They also offer some great Google-specific perks, allowing you to directly access Google’s Gemini AI assistant and keep track of the charging case via the company’s recently improved Find My Device network. The earbuds continue to support a number of Pixel-exclusive features as well, including head tracking spatial audio. Read our Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 review.If the Pixel Buds Pro 2 are outside your budget, the Pixel Buds A-Series are also available from Amazon, Best Buy, and Google for $79.95 ($20 off), which is $20 shy of their all-time low. They don’t offer active noise cancellation or some of the more advanced features found on the Pro model, but they do deliver impressive sound for the price and a secure fit thanks to an assortment of comfortable ear tips. The last-gen earbuds also integrate well with Pixel phones and support Google Assistant for hands-free voice control.Read our Pixel Buds A-Series review.Last but not least is the Pixel Tablet, which can pick up in the 128GB configuration at Amazon, Best Buy, and the Google Store for $299 ($100 off), which is just $20 shy of its lowest price to date. You can also get the step-up 256GB model with a speaker dock for $479 ($120 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and the Google Store.It’s a shame Google reportedly canceled its next-gen Pixel tablet — after all, the original showed a lot of promise. The snappy Android tablet is great for carrying out typical tablet tasks, like video chatting and streaming, thanks in part to a sharp 11-inch display and an excellent speaker array. What makes the tablet really stand out, though, is the optional magnetic charging dock, which bolsters the tablet’s sound and turns it into an ad hoc smart display. That means you can use the tablet as a digital photo frame, check in on your Nest Doorbell feed, or control a range of smart home devices via Google Assistant.Read our Google Pixel Tablet review.

Adam Scott in Severance’s season 1 finale. | Image: Apple After a long wait, Severance is back. Season 2 premiered on Apple TV Plus on January 17th, more than two years after the first season wrapped up. The wait was particularly hard because of how the season 1 finale ended — a massive cliffhanger that would completely upend the lives of almost everyone in this sci-fi thriller. Cliffhangers are a tricky business. They can help keep viewers interested in whatever comes next, but they can also be frustrating, seeming to withhold information purely for the purpose of keeping people hooked.Severance has managed this balancing act well so far, and I had the chance to talk to some of the creative team behind the show — creator Dan Erickson, director Ben Stiller, and star Adam Scott — about how they’ve pulled it off. “Honestly it’s just sort of guessing in your mind,” Stiller tells The Verge. “You try to think about what the stakes are that we’ve established, and hopefully you’ve earned it by the end.”One of the trickiest parts for Severance, at least early on, was that the team wasn’t really sure how audiences would react. It’s a weird show that follows a group of office workers who have their brains surgically altered to separate their... Read the full story at The Verge.

x86 has been the primary architecture of PCs and servers over the last few decades, and yet, we're starting to see a tangible shift towards something different. Arm is becoming more and more commonplace, with software vendors finally building their applications for Arm platforms on Windows with the release of the Snapdragon X Elite. Plus, Apple's own shift towards Arm means that an entire segment of mainstream and professional machines are no longer using x86, too.

If you own an AMD Ryzen CPU and have done a Google search for information about RAM overclocking, speed, and stability in the last 7 years, chances are you might have come across something called the "Infinity Fabric." Usually brought into discussions to explain the somewhat unique relationship of AMD CPUs with high-speed memory, Infinity Fabric is an internal interconnect bus that forms the core of AMD's scalable CPU architecture.

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge Instagram will now let you upload Reels that are up to 3 minutes long, doubling the 90-second limit the platform had in place before, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri announced today.He credits today’s change to users’ feedback saying that the 90 seconds “is just too short.” That’s a big turnaround for Mosseri, who said in July last year that the platform wouldn’t pursue longform videos because it could compromise the platform’s “core identity to connect people with friends.” It also comes as TikTok, which started allowing 3-minute videos in 2021, is gearing up to go dark on Sunday in response to an imminent US ban. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Adam Mosseri (@mosseri)Instagram has been slow to bump the length of Reels — it’s been more than two years since it started allowing minute-and-a-half videos. The company has tested extending the limit to as much as 10 minutes but has held off on rolling that out, leaving the ability to post long videos to non-Reels posts.

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Brandon Bell, Getty Images With Donald Trump stepping back into office, advocates are warning that access to important environmental and public health datasets could be at risk.Information about climate change vanished from federal websites under Donald Trump, who has repeatedly called climate change “a hoax.” Now, federal agencies could face deep staff and budget cuts overseen by Trump cronies Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. The proposed cuts not only threaten what kind of data the government shares but also whether it can collect and organize it at all. “The funding, the people, the cultural knowledge associated with these tools and the data are just as, if not more, important than the data itself.”Federal agencies gather all kinds of data — from air quality readings to research on extreme weather events. Researchers and advocates have been scrambling to save as much data as they can, a skill they honed during Trump’s first term. Even so, relying on outdated information has its pitfalls. Gaps in government data collection or maintenance could leave city planners and community groups stuck with an incomplete picture of the risks posed by pollution and climate change in their area. “The funding, the... Read the full story at The Verge.

Building a PC is often considered to be an "adult LEGO" activity, but it can sometimes be a tad intimidating, especially for a first-time builder. Even if you manage to get a great PC parts list from a friend, subreddit, or YouTuber, you still need to assemble everything without making mistakes that could cost hundreds of dollars or more to fix.

Image: The Verge Microsoft is testing AI-powered Windows search in a new dev channel build for Windows 11 Insider testers. Announced in October, it uses semantic indexing to let users search for local files using more casual language. Like other Microsoft AI features, you’ll need a Copilot Plus PC to use it.The feature applies whether you’re using search boxes in Settings, File Explorer, or the taskbar. And you don’t need to be connected to the internet for it to work, thanks to the NPU chips on Copilot Plus computers. For now, AI search is limited to Windows settings and files with image and text formats that include JPEG, PNG, PDF, TXT, and XLS. Image: Microsoft Microsoft says that search only works for files in locations you’ve chosen to index. Users can tweak those locations using options found under Settings > Privacy & security > Searching Windows, or turn on “Enhanced” to index their whole machine. The company adds that the feature will eventually expand to include cloud data such as that stored in OneDrive.AI-powered Windows search “will gradually roll out to Windows Insiders on Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs,” Microsoft writes, with support for Intel or AMD Copilot Plus computers later. The feature will work for machines set to Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish languages. Image: Microsoft In addition to the new search, the build also includes AI writing tools offered by Click to Do, a feature that lets you choose from context-sensitive menus of options when you hold the Windows key down and left-click on your screen. Now, when you click a block of text and select Rewrite, there’s a “Refine” option that can correct grammar for you.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called TikTok’s threat to “go dark” tomorrow a “stunt,” and said there is no reason that TikTok or any other companies should take any actions under the ban before the Trump administration is sworn in Monday morning, several news outlets are reporting.“It is a stunt, and we see no reason for TikTok or other companies to take actions in the next few days before the Trump Administration takes office on Monday,” MSNBC quotes Jean-Pierre as saying. “We have laid out our position clearly and straightforwardly: actions to implement this law will fall to the next administration. So TikTok and other companies should take up any concerns with them.”The statement comes one day after TikTok threatened to go offline if the Biden administration doesn’t offer reassurance that companies like Apple and Google won’t be held liable for defying the ban, which the Supreme Court upheld yesterday. Company CEO Shou Chew also appealed to Donald Trump, saying the company is “grateful” for his support of the platform. Trump said that a “90-day extension is something that will be most likely done” during an interview with Meet The Press moderator Kristen Welker for NBC News. That followed reporting earlier this week that the incoming President plans to issue an executive order doing so. Given that the ban’s deadline is up before he’s sworn in, it’s not clear whether Trump can actually extend it. He can choose not to enforce the ban, just as Biden says he will, but that still leaves Apple and Google to decide if Trump’s word is worth the legal risk that would come with defying the ban by leaving the app available for download.