If you're thinking about building a new PC, there's a pretty good chance you've thought about what kind of processor to go with. Now, if you're looking to go with a budget PC build, we think that AMD chips are the way to go, since you'll be getting pretty good bang for your buck. And right now, during Amazon's Big Spring Sale, we're seeing some steep discounts on popular CPUs, along with great motherboards as well.

As a graphic designer, photographer, or digital artist, you're probably no stranger to the world of image editing software. Among many of the options available, two giants normally stand out: Photoshop and GIMP. Both have their own strengths and weaknesses, but many people stick with the Photoshop subscription because of its intuitive interface and extensive set of features. But with just a few tweaks in GIMP, you can make it more similar to Photoshop beyond just installing PhotoGIMP. Let me show you my favorite ways to do this.

A court took action on Friday to keep the Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from shutting down a consumer watchdog agency while its court case plays out.Judge Amy Berman Jackson granted a preliminary injunction to save the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) from being further gutted while she decides whether the Trump administration has the legal authority to dismantle it in the first place. “Absent an injunction freezing the status quo – preserving the agency’s data, its operational capacity, and its workforce – there is a substantial risk that the defendants will complete the destruction of the agency completely in violation of law well before the Court can rule on the merits, and it will be impossible to rebuild,” Jackson writes.The ruling is a significant win for the federal workers’ union and groups that rely on the CFPB’s work that filed the complaint, alleging that the Trump administration is violating the separation of powers under the Constitution by trying to eliminate an agency established by Congress. They’ve warned that the efforts to wind down the agency have already left many consumers without sufficient recourse for their complaints about financial services. In recent years, the CFPB has increasingly become a check on the technology industry as tech companies grew into the financial services space. (For example, Elon Musk’s X purports to eventually become a payments service.) But as DOGE got involved at the agency, according to reporting and testimony presented before the judge, the CFPB terminated technologists — who would, obviously, be necessary staff when regulating tech companies — and placed much of its workforce on administrative leave. After CFPB Acting Director Russell Vought told agency staff on February 10th to “stand down from performing any work task,” workers testified they followed that order literally. Allegedly, this surprised the administration, with one official later clarifying that statutorily mandated work should still get done. The judge says she was “left with little confidence that the defense can be trusted to tell the truth about anything,” saying that the government’s arguments that CFPB workers were back to work have “been shown to be unreliable and inconsistent with the agency’s own contemporaneous records.” She also condemned an “eleventh hour attempt to suggest immediately before the hearing that the stop work order was not really a stop work order at all.”Jackson opens her opinion with quotes from Musk (the public face of DOGE), Vought, and President Donald Trump about their alleged intentions to eliminate the agency. For instance, Musk tweeted “CFPB RIP” on February 7th. “The CFPB has been a woke and weaponized agency against disfavored industries and individuals for a long time. This must end,” Vought said the following day. A couple days later, Trump added, “That was a very important thing to get rid of.”Essentially, the CFPB can — for now — get back to workJackson came to the conclusion that unless she takes action, “the RIF [reduction-in-force] notices that have already been prepared will go out before the ink is dry on the Court’s signature, the employees will be back on administrative leave for just thirty days before they are gone, and the defendants will pull the plug on the CFPB.” While this isn’t a final ruling, as part of issuing the injunction, Jackson says the workers’ union is likely to ultimately succeed in court on its claims.The judge orders the Trump administration to reinstate all probationary and term employees terminated since February 10th, carry out no further terminations without cause or issue any RIF notice, lift the administrative leave requirements and stop-work order, and let employees either return to an office or work remotely. She also requires that the government maintain CFPB data and records, and rescind contract termination notices sent since February 11th. Essentially, the CFPB can — for now — get back to work.Workers are cautiously celebrating. “While we are thrilled and relieved at today’s outcome, union members are under no illusion that this is the end of Trump’s lawless attacks,” CFPB Union President Cat Farman says in a statement. “Vought has already violated previous court orders by deleting data and failing to reinstate illegally fired workers. We can’t rely on judges alone to keep wannabe dictators in check. We need everyone to join the fight to save our services, unionize our workplaces, and create more good middle class jobs doing vital work that benefits working people instead of billionaires and Wall Street.”

Back when internet connections weren't as common in the household as they are today, Windows didn't need a Microsoft account to log in. They'd use what's called a "local account," which you set up on your Windows PC. These accounts lived on your computer and didn't require an internet connection to use. As we began getting internet in our homes, the company added the means to sign into Windows with a Microsoft account.

It’s sold as an outdoor camplight, but BougeRV’s very bright LED lantern is really a multifunctional work lamp for any place that needs an extra dose of lighting. It’s rechargeable and compact enough to serve as a long-lasting flashlight with three swiveling LED panels that can direct 3000 lumens onto your table, campsite, workspace, or engine block from a height of more than five feet thanks to its telescoping aluminum pole.I’ve found it impressively versatile and useful over the last week of testing at home, at the beach, or tooling around in my camper van. It provides warm or cold light exactly where I need it, with three levels of brightness ranging from dim to supernova.At $109.99, the BougeRV Outdoor Portable Telescopic Camping Lantern is also more capable than many of its more expensive competitors. There’s a lot to like here.At the heart of this lantern is a 57.7Wh battery that can power the lamp on its lowest setting for up to 60 hours, or about three hours when all three LED strips are set to max brightness. You can power it off USB-C from a separate external battery or wall jack if you need more time. It’s slim enough to carry in the water bottle pocke …Read the full story at The Verge.

Microsoft is starting to test Quick Machine Recovery, a feature designed to prevent incidents like last year’s Crowdstrike catastrophe. It’s rolling out in its latest Windows Insider Preview build (6120.3653) and allows IT professionals to remotely recover Windows 11 devices even if they won’t boot.Microsoft first announced Quick Machine Recovery last year as part of its Windows Resiliency Initiative, which came in direct response to the Crowdstrike outage. Last July, Crowdstrike rolled out a faulty kernel-level update that caused the Blue Screen of Death to appear across millions of Windows devices, impacting banks, airlines, TV broadcasters, and more. IT admins struggled to quickly get them back online because many needed physical access to the machines to issue a fix.But Quick Machine Recovery should at least help prevent similar outages. It prompts a device to enter the Windows Recovery Environment, where the machine can access the network and provide Microsoft with diagnostic information. Microsoft can then remotely deploy fixes via the Windows Update system.The feature is enabled by default for home users, and Windows Insiders can try it out now using a simulated environment.

Hard drives are like the forgotten teammate no one wants to play with because they're old and can't keep up with others anymore. SSDs have outclassed HDDs in speed, efficiency, and reliability, with the latter remaining useful for a select few use cases. HDDs might be nearing obsolescence for the vast majority of PC users, but the myths surrounding them refuse to die down.

Helldivers 2 remains wildly popular, commonly sitting among the most-played games on Steam. A recent update to the game is apparently causing issues for players with older CPUs, however, as reported by Eurogamer. Developer Arrowhead Studios has acknowledged the issue and says it's working on a fix, but CPUs that worked previously with the game have suddenly started crashing whenever players start a mission.

Amazon’s Big Spring Sale is happening now through Monday, March 31st, with several dozen good-to-great deals available that don’t require an Amazon Prime membership. Our main roundup has you covered with more than 100 deals on Verge-favorite gear with quite a high price ceiling. But, for this post, we wanted to provide some low-cost alternatives that, to us, are just as appealing as the pricey ones.All of these deals come from Amazon, with the exception of one that’s on Woot (which is owned by Amazon). We’ll keep our eyes out for more $30 and under candidates as we cruise through the weekend, just in case you’d rather pick up an inexpensive pair of earbuds, a security cam, or a retractable charger instead of a $1,500 robot vacuum.Update, March 28th: Verified that deals are still in effect, and added new discounts, including the JLab Go Air Pop earbuds, the Anker 525 7-in-1 charging station, and the 4K Blu-ray editions of Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, and Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Microsoft is no longer playing around when it comes to requiring every Windows 11 device be set up with an internet-connected account. In its latest Windows 11 Insider Preview, the company says it will take out a well-known bypass script that let end users skip the requirement of connecting to the internet and logging in with a Microsoft account to get through the initialization process of a new PC.As reported by Windows Central, Microsoft already requires users to connect to the internet, but there’s a way to bypass it: the bypassnro command. For those setting up computers for businesses or secondary users, or simply, on principle refuse to link their computer to a Microsoft account, the command is super simple to activate during the Windows setup process.Microsoft cites security as one reason it’s making this change:We’re removing the bypassnro.cmd script from the build to enhance security and user experience of Windows 11. This change ensures that all users exit setup with internet connectivity and a Microsoft Account.Since the bypassnro command is disabled in the latest beta build, it will likely be pushed to production versions within weeks. All hope is not yet lost, as of right now the script can be reactivated with a registry edit by opening a command prompt during the initial setup (Press Shift + F10) and running the command:reg add HKLMSOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionOOBE /v BypassNRO /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f shutdown /r /t 0″However, there’s no guarantee Microsoft will allow this additional workaround for long. There are other workarounds as well, such as using the unattended.xml automation that lets you skip the initial setup “out-of-box experience.” It’s not straightforward, though, but it makes more sense for IT departments setting up multiple computers.As of late, Microsoft has been making it harder for people to upgrade to Windows 11 while also nudging them to move on from Windows 10, which will lose support in October. The company is cracking down on the ability to install Windows 11 on older PCs that don’t support TPM 2.0, and hounding you with full-screen ads to buy a new PC. Microsoft even removed the ability to install Windows 11 with old product keys.

A few years after buying Twitter for $44 billion, Elon Musk announced that his AI business xAI has acquired the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. In a tweet, he described it as an all-stock transaction, valuing xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion, including $12 billion in debt it had as part of his takeover. “This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach,” writes Musk.In response to a deal cementing about $11 billion in lost value since the 2022 sale, X CEO Linda Yaccarino posted, “The future could not be brighter.”Despite failing so far to make X an “everything app,” Musk has tied these two ventures together closely since launching xAI in the summer of 2023, saying that access to the vast trove of data from Twitter / X would give it a major advantage, and prominently placing xAI’s Grok tool within the social app. This week, Grok launched an integration beyond X, joining Telegram.The arrangement is also a reminder of a previous Musk deal combining two companies he controlled. Tesla Motors acquired SolarCity, a company with Musk as its largest individual shareholder and his cousin Lyndon Rive as CEO, for $2.6 billion in 2016 and dropped “Motors” from its name. Musk didn’t mention Tesla in the announcement, after already proclaiming “I have, like, 17 jobs” at a hastily-announced all-hands meeting for the car company last week — it’s unclear if this deal adds to or subtracts from the number.Today’s tweet also didn’t mention his ambition for the service to handle “someone’s entire financial life,” but it does repeat his claim of X as “the digital town square.”As we noted in January, xAI staffers were also X employees, with company laptops and access to its code base. Musk had also previously claimed X investors would own 25 percent of XAI, but as of January, that had not materialized for X employees with shares in the company.While X’s valuation had reportedly dropped since the 2022 takeover before recently rebounding, the value of xAI has risen along with other companies in the space like Nvidia and OpenAI, where Musk has gone from co-founder and early investor to rival and legal antagonist since walking away in 2018. The Wall Street Journal reported xAI had been valued at $50 billion in an investment round last November, more than double its $24 billion valuation during another funding round in the spring of 2024.Elon Musk:@xAI has acquired @X in an all-stock transaction. The combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45B less $12B debt).Since its founding two years ago, xAI has rapidly become one of the leading AI labs in the world, building models and data centers at unprecedented speed and scale.X is the digital town square where more than 600M active users go to find the real-time source of ground truth and, in the last two years, has been transformed into one of the most efficient companies in the world, positioning it to deliver scalable future growth.xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent. This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach. The combined company will deliver smarter, more meaningful experiences to billions of people while staying true to our core mission of seeking truth and advancing knowledge. This will allow us to build a platform that doesn’t just reflect the world but actively accelerates human progress.I would like to recognize the hardcore dedication of everyone at xAI and X that has brought us to this point. This is just the beginning.Thank you for your continued partnership and support.

The Steam Deck is a gaming handheld first and foremost, but it's a surprisingly versatile device. SteamOS is based on Arch Linux, and behind the shiny Steam-based UI is the option to enter "Desktop mode". This transforms the Steam Deck from just a regular old gaming handheld to a full-fledged computer, and you can modify the system to your heart's content. There are plenty of users out there who have switched to using their Steam Deck as their main work station when docked, and there's really no limit on what you can do with it. That's why I decided to turn mine into a home server.