Case fans are often ignored in favor of other PC components when building a new PC. After all, they come pre-installed on most PC cases, and just seem to work as intended. When you're buying more case fans for your PC, however, you might find it hard to differentiate between various models or sift through specs that you never cared about. This can result in hasty purchase decisions, leading to mistakes that are easily avoidable.

After half a decade fighting to keep its empire together, Google’s defenses are wearing thin.The company is facing a two-front war that could fundamentally reshape its business, and, the US Department of Justice argues, open new opportunities for its competitors. Last year a federal judge deemed Google an unlawful monopolist in the online search market, and this past week, a different judge declared it had monopolized the ad tech market, too. On Monday, it will face a new stage in that first battle: a three-week trial in Washington, DC to determine the appropriate remedies to restore competition to online search. Google has vowed to appeal both rulings, but it can’t do so until after it’s gone through remedies trials for each case, letting the DOJ argue for its breakup and other restraints. In court starting Monday, the government will make the case for forcing Google to sell its Chrome web browser, share search data with competitors, keep the government abreast of new AI investments, and end exclusionary deals with browser and phone makers.In this and the coming ad-tech remedies trial, the judges may find that less extreme measures can address the harms they believe Goo …Read the full story at The Verge.

Have you checked out LiDAR scanners yet? If you haven't, they're really handy for taking in data from an environment and reproducing it as a 3D model. If that sounds like something you'd like to try, but you're unsure where to start, allow me to introduce you to this excellent Raspberry Pi project, which guides you through the steps of creating your own LiDAR scanner.

I promise: you’ll rarely be standing still like this. | Image: LandfallHaste: Broken Worlds takes the relaxing loop of sliding down and leaping off hills from iOS classic Tiny Wings and turns it into a thrilling, high-speed, and 3D roguelike.In Haste, you play as Zoe, a girl who typically delivers letters but has found herself mysteriously transported to the new worlds you run through. When I say run, I mean it: Zoe cannons through the game.Levels are filled with rolling hills, and your goal is to leap off the upslopes and land on the downslopes. The better your landings, the more you’ll increase your speed and build a boost meter that can be used for things like a burst forward or a grappling hook.You’re incentivized to keep your speed up. The faster you complete a level, the higher grade you’ll get; higher grades give you better bonuses of things like “sparks,” which you can use to buy items.Throughout the vibrant, procedurally generated levels, you’ll also have to avoid obstacles like rocks, giant Sarlacc-like pits, and machines that shoot lasers and bullets at you. If you crash into an object, you’ll lose health and slow down. If you’re too slow, a crackling, damaging energy will sneak up behind you. If you run out of heal …Read the full story at The Verge.

It’s a familiar frustration for ridehail users: you open the Uber or Lyft app, enter your destination, and discover that your intended trip costs several times more than expected. The culprit is surge pricing, one of ridehail’s most important and controversial innovations. Customers grumble about higher fares, but Uber and Lyft executives have insisted that surge pricing benefits them by attracting additional drivers, which allows the companies to fulfill more trips and reduce wait times. That justification makes intuitive sense, but it raises an awkward question about robotaxis, which are expanding across the US, from San Jose, California, to Washington, DC. If surge pricing is intended to expand the driver pool, why is it now being used by companies with driverless vehicles?Waymo, which offers robotaxi trips in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, charges surge pricing during peak times, as did Cruise, its now-defunct competitor. Assuming a robotaxi fleet is already fully deployed, higher fares cannot expand vehicle supply in the way they could for Uber or Lyft. Instead, riders simply need to pay extra, assuming they can afford to, or search for another way to travel. …Read the full story at The Verge.

With Windows 10 approaching the end of life in a few months, Windows 11 is the only free alternative for those who want to stay in the Windows ecosystem, even though you may not like the upgrade. One of the major reasons could be some of the missing features, like the ability to move the taskbar, though Microsoft is hard at work to convince users to upgrade by adding long-requested Windows 10 features to Windows 11.

Lucas Pope at GDC 2025.Lucas Pope, the solo creator of games like Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn, received the Pioneer Award from the annual Game Developers Choice Awards this year. It’s a major achievement that puts him in a league with industry giants like Gabe Newell, Yu Suzuki, and Roberta Williams.“Now that I’m an official pioneer, I have some requests,” he said in his brief acceptance speech. “World peace, obviously. But for this crowd, I’d be happy if you kept making the kinds of unique off-beat, experimental, creative, and especially personal games that I love.”It was similar to something Pope had said to me earlier — especially the personal part. I had asked him what advice he might have for developers just starting out. “Make something personal, make it small, release on [Itch.io]. Try to find the people who like the same things you do and then make the things you enjoy.”“I want this kind of game. I like looking at documents.”Games, for him, have always been about “making something that I want to play,” Pope said. With Papers, Please, where you have to make tough decisions while working as an immigration inspector in a fictional country, “it was, â …Read the full story at The Verge.

I was never big on organizing things in any particular order. It always felt like a chore, whether it was clothes, tools, or digital files. But having no organization means full-on panic when you actually need to find something. I ran into this problem a lot with files and folders because I had no structure or naming conventions. I’m talking about tons of “New folders,” random “image(1)” files, and a chaotic “Downloads” folder.

In competitive FPS games, every millisecond matters. The pros know this better than anyone, which is why they've been on the bleeding edge of keyboard and mouse technology for years, always pushing the boundaries of what's possible with peripherals. When such a large percentage of pro players begin to use the same keyboard, it's difficult not to notice

With over 108 million subscribers, WWE has truly colossal reach on YouTube. The company currently sits just behind PewDiePie at number 11 on the list of most-subscribed channels across the entire platform. When you’re at that level of popularity, there’s constant communication with YouTube about best practices, key viewership metrics, and the latest strategies for pulling in even more eyeballs. Last year, WWE decided to shake up (and split up) its YouTube strategy. The company introduced a new standalone channel called WWE Vault that became the new destination for classic live events, full matches, and rare archival footage — much of which fans are seeing for the very first time. For a company with a fanbase that’s never universally happy with anything, the Vault became an instant hit. Scroll down to the comments of any video, and fans heap praise upon the channel. For some, it has filled the void that was left when WWE Network went dark after WWE and Peacock announced their streaming partnership several years ago.The Vault also helps the flagship channel stay focused on modern WWE programming as the company continues to do big business with stars like Cody Rhodes, R …Read the full story at The Verge.

I wonder if this person is a better shot than most Stormtroopers. | Image: EA and DisneyStar Wars Zero Company will release sometime in 2026, according to an announcement from Disney and EA. The game’s title was revealed earlier this week.Alongside the release year, the two companies also shared a bit more information about what you can expect from the game. “In Star Wars Zero Company, players will step into the shoes of Hawks, a former Republic officer, to command an elite squad of cunning operatives through a gritty and authentic story set in the twilight of the Clone Wars,” according to a press release.You’ll be able to customize Hawks’ appearance and class, and team members you recruit can “be personalized from a range of original Star Wars character classes and species.” Your team members can also “forge bonds” to “unlock powerful combat synergies that can turn the tide of battle.”Zero Company will launch on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X / S.Bit Reactor is leading development on Zero Company alongside Respawn Entertainment and Lucasfilm Games. The game was initially announced without a title in January 2022 as part of a three-game set of Star Wars titles that Respawn would be working on. The other two games are Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and a new FPS game.

Jellyfin is quickly becoming the quintessential media server for cataloging and streaming movies, TV shows, and web series you like. It allows you to create a self-curated catalog of content you and your family enjoy. Setting up a Jellyfin server on a NAS, a computer, or even an SBC is a good idea to kick its tires. Only when you take a serious, closer look do you find enough reasons why it gets lauded as the Plex alternative.