Routers are essential for use at home, but most default firmware that comes with a router leaves a lot to be desired. From a lack of features or software updates, you won't really get a lot of control. However, DD-WRT or OpenWrt are two different types of custom firmware you can install on a lot of different routers. If it supports your hardware, it could be a big upgrade, and here are a few reasons why.

Illustration: The Verge Meta’s Threads is getting another feature seemingly inspired by Bluesky: curated groups of accounts that you can follow all at once. They basically sound like Meta’s take on Bluesky’s handy starter packs.Instagram boss Adam Mosseri announced Thursday that Meta is starting to test the feature, and he said that you’ll see the collections “when signing up for Threads and within the For You feed.” A “handful” of “Threads community leaders” curated and shared the current collections.People will be able to find collections built around topics like “basketball, style and fashion, food, books, pop culture, and more,” Meta spokesperson Alec Booker tells The Verge. “We’ll iterate on this feature based on learnings from the test, and hope to expand the functionality to more people soon.” Image: Meta Image: Meta Meta has upped the pace of Threads feature updates after users really started flocking to Bluesky last month — Threads introduced its own take on custom feeds just five days after announcing the feature in testing, for example.While I personally think Bluesky is the heir apparent to Twitter, Threads is still significantly larger. Meta saw 35 million Threads signups in November, but Bluesky user growth has seemingly slowed to a crawl: as I write this, Bluesky is on the cusp of surpassing 25 million users, a five million user jump from nearly a month ago.

You know, at least Microsoft tried. In June, it pushed to make Recall a keystone of the Copilot+ experience, but it received much negative feedback about privacy. The company then did the right thing and delayed the Recall rollout until it resolved all the nasty privacy issues that came with it. Now, the company is rolling Recall back out again... except it's still harvesting people's private data, even when it's explicitly told not to.

Toyota’s Urban Cruiser is a compact electric SUV coming to Europe. | Image: Toyota Toyota revealed its latest all-electric vehicle today as the Urban Cruiser compact SUV. The EV, which will be fully revealed at the Brussels Motor Show next month, is intended for the European market, first coming to the UK in the third quarter of 2025. Toyota says the wheelbase is only about 5 inches longer than the European-only Yaris Cross, making it another fun-sized electric EV slated for the continent like the recently revealed Ford Puma Gen-E or Hyundai Inster.The Urban Cruiser has clear design inspiration from last year's Urban SUV concept. It also shares its new EV platform built in conjunction with Suzuki, which announced its made-in-India E Vitara SUV last month. Toyota’s other EV, the bZ4X, also shares its EV platform with another automaker, Subaru, which has the Solterra EV. Image: Toyota Toyota Urban Cruiser features a side-by-side 10.25-inch cluster screen and a 10.1-inch infotainment system. Toyota’s Urban Cruiser has nearly match-for-match specs as the E Vitara, including a relatively small 49 kWh battery with an FWD drivetrain and a 61 kWh battery with an option for AWD. Toyota says power output can get as high as 135kW in the AWD version (with 40kW on the rear axel for “stable and secure performance on loose and slippery surfaces”) and up to 300 Nm of torque. While the official range is not announced, it’ll likely match the E Vitara’s expected 248 miles on a single charge.Additionally, the Urban Cruiser has downhill assist and trail modes for added control, and the FWD model includes a snow mode. All models come with a heat pump and include the ability to manually start preconditioning the battery to prepare for a DC fast charging session.Toyota has been slower in building and adopting EVs than other legacy manufacturers. The automaker has been focused on its outstanding hybrid technology as well as hydrogen vehicles. But the automaker isn’t done with EVs — it’s planning to have 15 EVs, including six models on a next-gen shared platform by 2026, and it just invested nearly another $1 billion in Kentucky for a paint facility to prepare for a three-row electric SUV for the US.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’ve been contemplating signing up for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate so you can play Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, you might want to head on over to Woot. Now until 1:59AM ET on December 13th, the retailer is offering a three-month subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $28.99 (about $31 off) with promo code GAMEPASS. Only customers making their first purchase on Woot are eligible, though; everyone else will have to pay $33.99 to redeem the digital code.Woot’s current promo is a terrific deal considering a month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will normally run you $19.99. After you finish playing the new Indiana Jones game, you can play dozens of other downloadable titles for both Xbox and PC, including new releases like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and older titles like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Starfield, Diablo IV, Halo Infinite, and Hi-Fi Rush. Subscribers can even stream select non-Game Pass titles they own via their TV, smartphone, tablet, and PC through a web browser. This includes Baldur’s Gate 3, Hogwarts Legacy, Balatro, and more.In addition to granting access to a wide range of games — including EA Play titles — an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription lets you take advantage of exclusive deals, online multiplayer, and other perks, some of which aren’t available on the cheaper Game Pass tiers.Other deals and discounts of noteElgato’s Stream Deck Neo is on sale for an all-time low of $79.99 ($20 off) at Amazon, Target, and Best Buy. The excellent macro controller comes with eight LCD buttons, which you can program to easily control your smart lights, pause Slack notifications, and perform a variety of other shortcuts with the press of a button. It also comes with some other handy conveniences, including a tiny info display that shows the time and a pair of capacitive buttons that let you quickly cycle through multiple pages of macros.The Onn Google TV 4K Pro is selling for $39 (about $11 off) at Walmart right now. The streaming device is a higher-end version of the excellent Onn Google TV 4K Streaming Box. It delivers even more value in some ways, though, as it functions as a smart speaker that’s compatible with Google Assistant. The 4K streaming device also adds support for Dolby Vision and Atmos, as well as Wi-Fi 6, while retaining built-in Chromecast support.Amazon is selling the Ring Wired Doorbell Pro (formerly known as the Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2) with a Chime Pro for $199.99 (about $90 off), which is $10 shy of the bundle’s best price to date. The wired Pro is one of our favorite video doorbells, one that works with Amazon Alexa and integrates well with Ring Alarm and other Ring cameras. It offers top-notch video quality and a square aspect ratio, though many features — including person alerts and the ability to save and share clips — require a premium Ring subscription plan. The Chime Pro, meanwhile, doubles as a speaker for notifications and a Wi-Fi extender, so the doorbell receives a strong signal.

When it comes to getting work done, few software suites are as prominent as Microsoft Office. The quintessential tool for office productivity, Office includes all kinds of apps to help you with different types of work, whether it's writing documents, making presentations, or processing large sets of data.

The Verge | Photo by Tom Williams via Getty Images Meta has donated $1 million to president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration fund, The Wall Street Journal reports. Zuckerberg’s team reportedly told Trump’s inaugural committee about Meta’s planned donation before Zuckerberg and Trump dined together at Mar-a-Lago in November. Before the dinner, Zuckerberg showed off Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses and gifted a pair to Trump, according to the Journal. Zuckerberg’s advisers also met with incoming White House officials, including incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. The donation marks a significant shift for Zuckerberg, who has until recently shied away from politics. Zuckerberg called Trump to congratulate him on his election victory. But he didn’t publicly endorse a candidate in 2020 — and as Meta spokespeople have repeatedly emphasized, he also didn’t endorse anyone in 2024, despite Trump’s claims that Zuckerberg called him to say there’s “no way” he could vote for a Democrat after the attempt on Trump’s life at a Pennsylvania rally. (Zuckerberg also called Trump’s reaction to the shooting “badass.”) Still, Zuckerberg has made increasingly unsubtle overtures to Trump, who has threatened the Facebook founder over the years.The dinner — and the donation — are signs that the notoriously rocky relationship between Zuckerberg and Trump is starting to soften. Trump has had it out for Zuckerberg since Facebook banned his account in the wake of the January 6th riots, and at one point said Zuckerberg should be jailed due to Facebook’s alleged interference in the 2020 election.

Remember your old friend 5G? | Image: The Verge Verizon is making good on one of the many unfulfilled promises of 5G with a new service called Enhanced Video Calling. According to the company’s website, it delivers “optimized video and sound quality on calling apps,” even in times of congestion. That may not sound exciting on its own. But under the hood, Verizon is using network slicing to boost video call performance, which is a new technology only possible on a standalone 5G network.Unlike remote robot banana surgery, network slicing is a real benefit of 5G technology that we can reasonably expect to see in more places in the next few years. Slicing lets network operators provide the right resources for certain kinds of demanding activities where a strong connection is critical. Right now, that means boosting performance for video calls, but in the future it could mean being able to prioritize the data needed to safely guide an autonomous vehicle through an intersection.The catch is that you need a standalone 5G network to pull this off, and much of the US’ 5G networks still operate on 4G cores. T-Mobile has been able to move quicker on this thanks to its Sprint acquisition, and it rolled out its first feature based on slicing this fall with a service that gives priority to first responders. Verizon has been testing slicing for the past year or so, but this is its first rollout of a consumer feature based on the technology.In order to try Enhanced Video Calling out for yourself, you have to meet a specific set of requirements. It’s available in “more than 150 metro areas” right now, with more to be added in 2025. But you also need to be on Verizon’s priciest plan, Unlimited Ultimate, which costs $90 per month for one line with autopay. And you’ll need an iPhone 14 or newer running iOS 18.2. Samsung Galaxy S23 and newer and Pixel 9 phones will be compatible too, but support for Android video calling apps on Android is arriving in 2025.If you meet the above prerequisites, you should see a setting in iOS that reads “Enhance 5G” if you go to Settings > Cellular, according to Apple’s documentation.

If you've got an old CPU, you can squeeze out some extra performance by turning up its clock frequencies. However, navigating the BIOS to tweak different parameters may sound like a challenging endeavor. Thankfully, you can utilize the Ryzen Master tool to make overclocking extremely simple.

Since the onset of the pandemic in 2020, most meetings have moved to online mediums. Because online meetings save a ton of time normally spent traveling or commuting, they are both effective and efficient. While you can attend these online meetings in the comfort of your home office, it's also important to look and sound good on video calls. A blurry video or muffled audio ruins the experience for everyone on the call. It's even more critical if you're attending an online interview or a call with your boss.

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge Telefónica, one of the largest carriers in the world serving the UK, Spain, Germany, and Latin America with the O2 and Movistar networks, will begin preinstalling the Epic Games Store on every new compatible Android phone it sells — including Samsung phones. It’s part of a “long term partnership” to bring the store and smash hit Fortnite to “millions” of the carrier’s devices, according to Telefónica and Epic. It’ll be the first time the Epic Games Store is preinstalled on consumer phones, and it could be the next big step in realizing Epic’s dreams of challenging Google’s app store monopoly and increasing its cut of revenue.Last December, a federal jury unanimously sided with Epic Games in Epic v. Google, finding that Google had turned its Android app store and Google Play Billing service into an illegal monopoly. Epic originally sued in 2020, alleging that Google had “blocked” or “bribed” phonemakers and cellular carriers to keep games like Fortnite and alternative app stores from being preinstalled on phones. But now, roughly a month after Judge James Donato barred Google from any further potential blocks or bribes, one of the world’s largest carriers will begin those preinstalls, adding an entire rival game store (one that may also carry non-game apps in the future) to Google’s own.Technically, Epic only launched its Epic Games Store on mobile this past August. Previously, it wanted nearly every phonemaker and carrier to preinstall one of a couple different types of Fortnite installer apps to bring the game to their phones. It offered a variety of deals to tempt them, and Samsung, LG, OnePlus and Huawei all initially agreed to do so. But OnePlus only ever managed to do so in India, allegedly because it needed permission that Google wouldn’t grant. (Google disputes that reasoning.) LG apparently backed out because of a Google contract as well. Telefónica wasn’t one of the carriers that Google “bribed,” Epic spokesperson Natalie Muñoz confirms to The Verge, so it’s not like Judge Donato’s order is making this newly possible.In fact, Telefónica has partnered with Epic in the past. In 2020, it began letting Movistar customers in Spain tack their Fortnite purchases onto their phone bill. That year, court documents revealed Telefónica could expect to earn five percent of the proceeds from those Fortnite players as a result. Verizon and Hutchison (Three, Wind Tre) were offered similar deals, but we don’t know if they’ll now follow suit.I wonder what Samsung thinks about Telefónica preinstalling the Epic Game Store on its phones — this September, Epic sued Samsung as well.

Image: Amazon Amazon is testing a new Prime Video feature that recommends groups of content using AI rather than traditional algorithms. If you’re part of the test, you’ll see new “AI Topics” tailored to your interests, like “mind-bending sci-fi,” “fantasy quests,” or “thrilling character journeys.”Each category will have shows, movies, and linear channels that match these AI-generated labels. You can also continue refining recommendations further by selecting topics related to the category you’re looking at, which Amazon says allows you to “discover more content without hitting a dead end.” Image: Amazon Streaming services like Netflix have long used machine learning algorithms to spit out recommendations based on viewing history. But with this announcement, it seems like Prime Video is putting an extra AI spin on things — which isn’t very surprising given the hype surrounding the tech and Amazon’s own efforts to portray itself as an AI leader. For now, Amazon says AI Topics are rolling out to “select” living room devices in the US, such as the Fire TV.Last month, Prime Video also rolled out AI recaps you can use to summarize TV seasons, entire episodes, and even portions of episodes.