Apple's rumored push into smart home tech could include a smart home security camera that only gives users text event descriptions instead of video footage. Mark Gurman said in the first episode of the Power On podcast that the camera will be part of "a new Apple smart home ecosystem," alongside Apple's rumored smart home hub: They're also building home security products, both first-party and third-party home security products. And the biggest thing is a program called J450. And this is an offshoot and a companion product to the J490 smart home display. And these are little cameras that you can put around your house. They have very low fr …Read the full story at The Verge.

Yes, Sebulba is in the game. The podracing scene in The Phantom Menace is one of my favorite movie sequences ever. It's just so dang cool: The futuristic racers tear over treacherous Tatooine terrain while various Star Wars aliens bark at each other in incomprehensible sci-fi languages. Eventually a young Anakin Skywalker proves his mettle by clawing his way from the back of the pack to win the race, which left an impression on me when I first saw it at 10 years old. I always wished I could pilot a podracer myself. Over the past several days, I've been able to live out that dream thanks to Star Wars: Galactic Racer, which takes everything from that brilliant scene and p …Read the full story at The Verge.

San Antonio City Councilmember Ric Galvan remembers when data centers first arrived in his city in the 2000s, looking like relatively unassuming office buildings. But that's changed in recent years, as data centers have grown into massive "hyperscale" facilities spanning millions of square feet and housing the physical infrastructure for AI. There are now more than a dozen data centers in Galvan's roughly 55-square-mile district, and he expects that number to grow to around 20 over the next few years if proposed projects are completed. They're clustered along two main roads, concentrating nuisances in the same neighborhoods: traffic and tr …Read the full story at The Verge.

Every once in a while, a Windows 11 optimization guide will tell you to "clear your cache" to reclaim some storage space on your SSD or speed up your PC. It's probably one of the most repeated maintenance tip that gets passed around on tech forums as well.

One morning, you wake up, open a service, only to find it inaccessible. And when you check your Docker containers or monitoring services, everything looks fine. I have faced it many times in the past, and most recently a few weeks ago with my Nextcloud service.

We love Gunnar Optiks here at XDA. Our editor-in-chief is usually sporting a pair of their eye-saving glasses himself, and he likes to talk about them, too. So, when we heard that Gunnar Optiks was working on something you wear after you're done with work, we were immediately interested. The Ojai Vision Recovery System helps keep your eyeballs feeling fresh after a long day of staring at screens.

With the Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and the new Steam Controller now available to purchase or preorder, there's a weird hole in Valve's hardware releases: where on earth is the Steam Deck 2? While the company hasn't confirmed or denied its existence, a recent leak points to a good possibility that one is currently in the works.

Madison, a server in New York City, greets every table by asking about each diner's allergies. Lately, there have been some close calls. "Sometimes people will tell me they have a shellfish allergy, and I'll come back, and they won't ask me any questions," says Madison, who asked that her last name be withheld to protect her identity. "And they'll order a fish dish that comes with a broth that is made of shellfish." When she tells them a dish contains an allergen, she's had guests push back, saying ChatGPT disagrees. "They just want to talk to ChatGPT," Madison explains. "You're allergic to shellfish, and ChatGPT says there's no shellfish …Read the full story at The Verge.

Suno is branching out from the world of AI music, launching a new feature that generates spoken voices based on scripts or prompted descriptions. Speech is now available in public beta across Suno's web and mobile platforms, and allows you to simultaneously generate voiceovers and background music to accompany them."Music will always be at the heart of Suno and what we build. At the same time, our vision has always extended to other forms of human expression," Suno chief product officer, Jack Brody, said in the announcement. "Today, we're expanding what's possible in Suno with Speech: the first audio model that generates voice and music to …Read the full story at The Verge.

Productivity software has changed a lot over the years. Every few months, there seems to be a new app promising to organize my work, save time, or completely change how I get things done. I’ve tried plenty of those tools myself, and some have genuinely been useful. But I’ve also noticed that a few much older apps keep surviving every new wave. They may not have flashy interfaces or the latest features, but they continue to earn a spot on my PC. After using them for years, I’ve realized there is something valuable about software that simply stays useful without constantly trying to reinvent itself.

Not paying for editing software seems like the more convenient route, but that's not always the case. Sure, you don't have a bill to deal with, but you usually have to put up with the quirks and shortcomings of free editors. The easy ones let you handle the basics, but as soon as you want to animate a bit of text you're out of options. While the more complex ones either chew resources or are just hard to navigate. It's not easy finding something that sits in the middle.

When I bought my RTX 4070 Ti GPU in 2023, it was pretty much the third-best card I could buy from Nvidia. The one thing I was absolutely fawning over was the possibility of frame generation with the new GPU, which, at the time, was an exclusive feature for RTX 40 series GPUs.