For many of us, playing video games is an inseparable part of our lives, shaping our thoughts and personalities. Sharing this source of joy with our partners, however, isn't as easy as it might seem. For a non-gamer, getting the hang of even the games that you might consider "easy" can be stressful and rage-inducing. Hence, you will probably need to ease them into the hobby with a carefully curated list of games.

During multitasking on Windows, you might be required to open several apps simultaneously and juggle between them while continuously paying attention to one particular one. Whether it’s a media player for a quick tutorial, a calculator for making calculations, the task manager for monitoring your system, or a chat window for monitoring updates, keeping an app window always on top can be highly beneficial for a proper workflow during multitasking.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge ‘We view what we are doing as a public service,’ says the cofounder of the nonprofit that millions of people are relying on to stay safe. If you live in Los Angeles, you are probably already intimately familiar with Watch Duty, the free app that shows active fires, mandatory evacuation zones, air quality indexes, wind direction, and a wealth of other information that everyone, from firefighters to regular people, have come to rely on during this week’s historic and devastating wildfires.Watch Duty is unique in the tech world in that it doesn’t care about user engagement, time spent, or ad sales. The 501(c)(3) nonprofit behind it only cares about the accuracy of the information it provides and the speed with which the service can deliver that information. The app itself has taken off, rocketing to the top of Apple’s and Google’s app stores. Over 1 million people have downloaded it over the last few days alone. The elegance of the app lies in its simplicity. It doesn’t scrape user data, show ads, require any kind of login, or track your information. Its simple tech stack and UI — most of which is maintained by volunteer engineers and reporters — has likely helped save countless lives. While Watch Duty is free to use, the app accepts tax-deductible donations and offers two tiers of membership that unlock additional features, like a firefighting flight tracker and the ability to set alerts for more than four counties.With plans to expand the service across the United States, as well as overseas and into other emergency services, Watch Duty may eventually replace some of the slower and less reliable local government alert systems for millions of people. Photo by Lokman Vural Elibol / Anadolu via Getty Images An app born from fireThe idea for Watch Duty came to cofounder John Mills while he was trying to protect his off-grid Sonoma County home from the Walbridge fire in 2020. He realized there wasn’t a single source for all the information people needed to protect themselves from the blaze, which ultimately killed 33 people and destroyed 156 homes. John and his friend David Merritt, who is Watch Duty’s cofounder and CTO, decided to build an app to help.“This came out of an idea that John had, and he talked to me about it four years ago,” Merritt tells The Verge. “We built the app in 60 days, and it was run completely by volunteers, no full-time staff. It was a side project for a lot of engineers, so the aim was to keep it as simple as possible.”Fire reporting is piecemeal at best in fire-prone areas and frequently scattered across platforms like Facebook and X, where fire departments and counties have verified pages sharing relevant updates. But increasingly, social media platforms are putting automated access for alert services behind paywalls. Governments also use a wide variety of alert systems, causing delays that can cost lives, especially in fast-moving fires like the Palisades and Eaton fires that have forced evacuations for more than 180,000 people. And sometimes, these government-run alerts are sent out mistakenly, causing mass confusion. Watch Duty simplifies all that for millions of people.“We view what we are doing as a public service,” says Merritt. “It is a utility that everyone should have, which is timely, relevant information for their safety during emergencies. Right now, it’s very scattered. Even the agencies themselves, which have the best intentions, their hands are tied by bureaucracy or contracts. We partner with government sources with a focus on firefighting.”“We view what we are doing as a public service.”One of the biggest issues around fires, in particular, is that they can move quickly and consume large swaths of land and structures in minutes. For example, the winds that drove the Palisades fire to spread to more than 10,000 acres reached 90 miles per hour on Tuesday. When minutes matter, the piecemeal alert system that Watch Duty replaces can cause delays that cost lives. “Some of the delivery systems for push notifications and text messages that government agencies use had a 15-minute delay, which is not good for fire,” says Merritt. “We shoot to have push notifications out in under a minute. Right now, 1.5 million people in LA are getting push notifications through the app. That’s a lot of messages to send out in 60 seconds. In general, people are getting it pretty much all at the same time.” Image: Watch Duty Image: Watch Duty A simple tech stackFor Watch Duty, this kind of mass communication requires reliable technology as well as a group of dedicated staff and skilled volunteers. Merritt says that Watch Duty relies on a number of corporate partners with whom it has relationships and contracts to provide its service. “We shoot to have push notifications out in under a minute.”The app is built on a mix of technology, including Google’s cloud platform, Amazon Web Services, Firebase, Fastly, and Heroku. Merritt says the app uses some AI, but only for internal routing of alerts and emails. Reporters at Watch Duty — those who listen to scanners and update the app with push notifications about everything from air drops to evacuation updates — are mostly volunteers who coordinate coverage via Slack. “All information is vetted for quality over quantity,” he says. “We have a code of conduct for reporters. For example, we never report on injuries or give specific addresses. It’s all tailored with a specific set of criteria. We don’t editorialize. We report on what we have heard on the scanners.” According to Merritt, the app has 100 percent uptime. Even though it started with volunteer engineers, the nonprofit has slowly added more full-time people. “We still have volunteers helping us, but it’s becoming more on the internal paid staff as we grow, as things get more complex, and as we have more rigorous processes,” he says.“All information is vetted for quality over quantity.”He says there are no plans to ever charge for the app or scrape user data. The approach is kind of the Field of Dreams method to building a free app that saves people’s lives: if you build it well, the funding will come. “It’s the antithesis of what a lot of tech does,” Merritt says. “We don’t want you to spend time in the app. You get information and get out. We have the option of adding more photos, but we limit those to the ones that provide different views of a fire we have been tracking. We don’t want people doom scrolling.” Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN / AFP via Getty Images Collecting information in the era of TrumpWatch Duty relies heavily on publicly available information from places like the National Weather Service and the Environmental Protection Agency. Should the incoming Trump administration decide to execute on threats to dismantle and disband the EPA (which monitors air quality) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the parent agency to the National Weather Service, such moves would impact Watch Duty’s ability to operate. Even still, Merritt is optimistic. “We will be pretty well insulated from any change to policy,” he says. “We are either buying that information ourselves already or we are happy to buy it, and we will take that cost on. The fact that we’re soon going to be covering the entire US will defray the cost of anything that shifts from a policy perspective. Our operation costs are mostly salaries. We are trying to hire really good engineers and have a really solid platform. If we need to raise a grant to buy data from the National Weather Service, then we will.”Regardless of what the next administration does, it’s clear that Watch Duty has become a critical and necessary app for those in Southern California right now. The app currently covers 22 states and plans to roll out nationwide soon. “We got 1.4 million app downloads in the last few days,” according to Merritt. “I think we have only received 60 support tickets, so that shows that something is working there. We are really just focused on the delivery of this information.”

Computers are incredibly useful tools that make our lives easier in a multitude of ways. But as smart as they can be, they still have us doing many repetitive tasks. But that's nothing you can't fix with some helpful programs that help you automate your workflow and day-to-day tasks.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon will be winding down its Prime Try Before You Buy program, which let Prime members try on clothes before paying for them, reports The Information. It will shutter on January 31st, according to a banner at the top of the service’s landing page.Amazon spokesperson Maxine Tagay said in a statement emailed to The Verge that the company is discontinuing the service because it only worked for a “limited number of items” and customers have been “increasingly using our new AI-powered features” to decide what to buy. Tagay gave examples like Virtual Try-On AR feature that puts 3D renders of shoes from certain brands on your feet using your smartphone’s camera. She also mentioned the company’s LLM-powered “personalized size recommendations” that tweak size recommendations based on customer reviews.Prime Try Before You Buy launched in 2018 for all Prime subscribers as Amazon Wardrobe before the company later changed its name. Through it, Prime members can order up to six items, try them for seven days, then pay for what works and send back the rest — like a very basic version of Stitch Fix’s curated clothing service. But a big part of that is returns, which is something the company has been trying to cut back on.The discontinuation of Prime Try Before You Buy comes after years of cost-cutting at the company, as CNBC points out. That’s included massive layoffs and shuttering physical stores, as well as scaling back some of its efforts in the grocery industry.Here is the full statement Tagay provided to The Verge: Given the combination of Try Before You Buy only scaling to a limited number of items and customers increasingly using our new AI-powered features like virtual try-on, personalized size recommendations, review highlights, and improved size charts to make sure they find the right fit, we’re phasing out the Try Before You Buy option, effective January 31, 2025. Of course, customers will continue to enjoy fast, free shipping, with easy, free returns on our full apparel selection.

Besides framerates and unexpected blue screens, system temperatures are the most significant source of anxiety for PC users. The moment your CPU or GPU temperature starts creeping upwards, you are likely to panic and begin troubleshooting the root cause behind the "terrible calamity." Jokes aside, cooling your PC is essential, especially if you're running power-hungry components and demanding workloads.

I used to be a die-hard fan of OneNote. The freedom of the infinite canvas, the endless pages, the promise of seamless organization with notebooks and sections – it seemed perfect. However, as my workflow grew, Microsoft’s note-taking app started to feel limiting. The sync speeds feel hit and miss, the templates haven't seen a refresh since I was in college, and don't even get me started on clunky collaboration.

Microsoft Excel doesn’t require any introduction, does it? If you are new to Excel, it may seem overwhelming at first, but the truth is that mastering the basics is quite easy, and it can dramatically boost your efficiency. In this post, I will break down some valuable Excel tips for beginners and empower you to navigate those cells with confidence.

Anker’s latest GaN offering sports four USB ports on the bottom, which isn’t where they’re typically relocated. | Image: Anker The inventive gadgets and gizmos at CES can often define the year, but most everything that appears on the showroom floor isn’t going to be available until later in the year, if at all. Fortunately, that’s not the case with Anker’s 140W GaN charger, which is already available in black or silver for $79.99 ($10 off) when you clip the on-page coupon at Amazon or use promo code WSCPV2LBR7KR at Anker’s online storefront.Out of all the chargers to come out of CES this year, the Anker Charger (140W) easily offers one of the more refreshing designs. The wall charger is unique in that it positions all four USB ports on the underside of the device, thus reorienting its center of gravity and helping prevent it from falling out when loaded with weighty cables. Two of those ports are USB-C ports that supply up to 140W of power — letting you top off everything from a Nintendo Switch to the latest MacBook Pro — while a third USB-C port maxes out at 40W. It also features a single USB-A port limited to 33W, as well as a built-in info display for viewing temperature data and the power output for each port.More ways to save this weekendAmazon is selling its Smart Air Quality Monitor for $49.99 ($20 off), which is only $5 more than its best price to date. The compact device uses phone and voice alerts (via Echo speakers) to let you know when it detects abnormal changes in particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide, humidity, and temperature. It can even automatically trigger Alexa-enabled air purifiers, along with humidifiers and other connected devices.Samsung’s budget-friendly Galaxy Buds FE are down to $59.99 ($40 off) at Amazon, nearly matching their lowest price to date. They’re a good bet if you could care less about multipoint support and wireless charging, as they offer reliable performance, enjoyable sound, and surprisingly good noise cancellation for the price. They also sport a wing tip design, which can provide a more secure fit if you struggle with traditional in-ears. Read our review.Note: Quentyn Kennemer also contributed to this post.

Ready for a new smartphone? If so, an iPhone is always worth consideration, but top Android devices like the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and OnePlus 13 are serious contenders. Deciding on something can be tough though, so which is the better overall phone?

Wireless routers used to have a limited range. But Wi-Fi technology has come a long way since it was initially rolled out. With modern routers, the signal strength is strong and covers large areas in your home. However, there are still times when you have areas in your network with a shoddy signal or none at all. Maybe your main PC is connected via Ethernet, there's no router in place, but someone needs Wi-Fi.

Steam is a popular gaming platform with an excellent collection of games from every genre. However, not all gamers prefer Steam as their gaming medium because of issues with the Steam app or overpriced games on the platform.