Half-Life 2 launched on November 16, 2004, and it's hard to understate its importance for "triple-A" gaming and PC gamers' habits for purchasing and playing games. Without it, the Steam distribution platform that eventually bankrolled Valve's hardware endeavors like the Steam Deck wouldn't have succeeded, at least not to the level of being the most used online platform for PC gaming.

Image: Netflix Netflix is trying to carve a slice of the live entertainment market, and it’s enlisting help from Beyoncé to do so. The Houston-born singer will perform in her hometown on December 25th, headlining the halftime show for the Texans-Ravens NFL matchup as part of Netflix’s Christmas Gameday live show.Beyoncé’s performance will take place in the second of two NFL games that Netflix is streaming on Christmas Day, the first being between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Pittsburgh Steelers. The star is set to perform songs from Cowboy Carter live for the first time, and “is expected to bring along some special guests” that featured on the album, according to Netflix’s announcement. The games mark Netflix’s NFL streaming debut, having secured a... Continue reading…

Windows 11 is a very versatile and capable operating system, and while it works pretty well out of the box, there are many settings you can change and tweaks you can make to improve your experience with Windows 11 that much more. These may be things you don't even know about, or they may be things you forget to enable for one reason or another.

Windows 11 24H2 was a pretty positive update, but it still contains a lot of bloat that Microsoft keeps around. While the Redmond giant has never been too fond of allowing people to cut off the fat, there are third-party tools out there that can do the job for you. Tiny11 has been a staple among people who want less Windows 11 in their Windows 11, and now the developer has released a new version for 24H2.

I haven’t been able to find mine for years. | Image: Apple The Apple Lightning to 3.5mm Headphone Jack Adapter may have bitten the dust, as it’s sold out at Apple’s online store in the US and much of the world, MacRumors reports. The accessory is reportedly still available from Apple in some countries, including France, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.If it’s truly gone, then this feels like the end of an era. Apple introduced the Lightning headphone adapter in 2016 alongside the iPhone 7, when it first courageously ditched the headphone jack. The company even included it with new iPhones for a couple of generations before it stopped doing that for 2018’s iPhone XS, leaving customers to buy one themselves, pick up Lightning EarPods, or get on the AirPods train (which many of us had started... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge An Ohio man named Larry Dean Harmon will serve three years in prison and forfeit more than $400 million worth of cryptocurrency and other assets, the Department of Justice announced on Friday. Harmon was indicted in 2020 on money laundering conspiracy charges related to Helix, a darkweb cryptocurrency “mixer” service he ran.Also known as crypto “tumbling,” services like Helix are designed to hide cryptocurrency transactions — often for illegal drugs — and the identity of people involved. From 2014 to 2017, Harmon processed more than 350,000 Bitcoin (about $311 million USD at the time) in such transactions, according to the DOJ’s announcement. Harmon, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering in August 2021, will be on... Continue reading…

OneNote has been my trusty companion for jotting down meeting notes, brainstorming project ideas, and organizing my chaotic thoughts for years. But recently, Notion, with its sleek interface, block-based editor, and powerful database features, has been making headlines. Intrigued, I decided to take the plunge and replace OneNote with Notion for an entire month to see if it could truly handle my note-taking workflow.

Building a new home lab is quite exciting, and if youve got the heart of a tinkerer, youll have even more fun building (and troubleshooting) virtualization projects. However, your pleasure can quickly turn into bewilderment when you get your hands on the electricity bill. So, here are four ways you can reduce the power consumption of your server and prevent your energy bills from shooting through the roof.

Image: LG LG’s 27-inch OLED gaming monitor is one of the fastest models we’ve seen to date and it’s finally ready for preorder. The UltraGear 27GX790A (or GX7 for short) is priced at $999.99 and is built around a 480Hz panel from LG Display announced in early January with a 2560 x 1440 resolution and 0.03ms response time.The base specs of the GX7 are on par with the $1,100 InZone M10S that Sony released in September. That makes the UltraGear GX7 a smidge cheaper, but it lacks some of the performance modes and variable refresh rate features available on Sony’s offering.The UltraGear GX7 is listed as available for preorder on LG’s US website, but there’s no mention of a delivery date and it can’t yet be added to the basket for checkout. We’ve... Continue reading…

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images President-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday that intends to name Brendan Carr as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Carr, a commissioner at the FCC since 2017, has made a name for himself by threatening to use the commission’s powers to regulate speech online and over the airwaves.Carr authored Project 2025’s section on the FCC, using it to propose restrictions on social media platforms meant to bolster conservative speech. He proposed limiting the legal shield that gives websites wide latitude to host and moderate user-generated content. He also suggested putting regulations on tech companies that would limit their ability to block and prioritize that content as they choose.In the lead up to the election, Carr... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Roblox is starting to roll out some recently-announced child safety features, and the updates include some new limitations for how users under 13 can communicate on the platform. Beginning Monday, users younger than 13 won’t be able to DM players outside of games or experiences on Roblox. And they’ll need parental permission to be able to send in-game DMs — though this change won’t be fully implemented across the platform until the first quarter of 2025.The changes follow recent reports highlighting instances of Roblox failing to protect children. A big article from Bloomberg described how predators on the platform use chat to communicate with kids. And a report from Hindenburg Research described Roblox as “an X-rated pedophile... Continue reading…

Finding out where your gaming PC might be falling short is trickier than you think. Simply looking at Task Manager's report of CPU and GPU usage only gives you a limited glimpse into what might be your bottleneck, but is certainly not conclusive.