In mid-2022, I won a PC building completion organized by Nvidia and WD, and I got the opportunity to take home the very PC I built. Except for the RTX 3080 and the WD Black SN770, I had free rein to pick whatever components I wished for, provided I stayed within the $1,800 budget. While I couldn't choose a Ryzen 7000 CPU due to a hard deadline (the Zen 4 launch was still 2 months away), I was extremely happy with the Ryzen 7 5700X.

Adobe has been the industry standard for years because few other free programs can measure up. One of those solid competitors is Photopea, which offers many similar tools with the same capabilities for free. But its true strength lies in its hidden capabilities; a handful of advanced tools that put the program on par with Photoshop. I think these tools deserve to be spotlighted.

For a whole generation of Brazilian kids, the Nintendo Entertainment System was never called that. It was the Phantom System — a console released by Brazilian electronics company Gradiente in 1989. It came in a shell originally designed for the Atari 7800, used a Sega Mega Drive controller, and played both NES and Famicom cartridges. The motherboard was reverse-engineered in-house and didn’t use any of Nintendo’s proprietary chips. It wasn’t licensed. It wasn’t official. But in Brazil, it was the NES.

Every time I see “mAh” on a consumer product, I cringe. Megahertz are starting to bruise, too. That’s because the most critical components of portable gadgets — batteries and processors — should really be measured in watts: it’s the one common spec that gives you a real idea of what your device can do.With watts, you can tell how much literal power is under the hood — how much energy is provided by your battery and how much is coursing through your chip. Watts determine whether there’s enough cooling to let that processor run free, instead of overheating and throttling prematurely. Watts can even tell you how much battery life you have left, based on the watt-hours (Wh) of battery remaining and the wattage at which your device is draining. You can do it all with elementary school math — so why aren’t watts everywhere? Consumers are regularly exposed to wattage measurements when buying light bulbs or reading their power bills. But many gadget manufacturers insist on measuring their batteries in milliamp-hours and their chip speed in megahertz or gigahertz, neither of which are a good measure of a device’s true power. The Steam Deck gaming handheld is my go-to exampl …Read the full story at The Verge.

I have always been on the hunt for the perfect digital workspace. I want to create a place where ideas seamlessly connect, information is easily retrievable, and productivity flows effortlessly. Like many, I tried countless note-taking apps and PKM systems, each promising to be the answer. Yet, something always felt missing.

I run Windows 11 on most of my devices these days because I use a few creative programs daily that don't have a Linux alternative. That wasn't always the case, though, and for many years, I dual-booted Linux and Windows on my laptop. I truly believed it was the best of both worlds, being able to switch between the two operating systems with a simple reboot, and when I had issues, I wrote them off as my incomplete knowledge or user error.

I'd be lying if I said I never wished to have an RTX 4090 (or a 4080 Super) in my gaming PC. In fact, I was sure I'd upgrade from my RTX 3080 to the RTX 5080 this year, but that dream stands ruined for now. High-end and flagship GPUs are some of the most coveted components by PC gamers, and garner the most hype because of it. It's also the reason scalpers make merry during every GPU launch, but, well, scalpers gonna scalp.

If you're looking for portable storage that's compact, rugged and lighting quick — the SanDisk Extreme portable SSD is going to be for you. This portable SSD is a fantastic piece of hardware, with a 4.6-star rating with over 75,000 reviews on Amazon. While it has a retail price that sits at $700, it can now be had for much less thanks to a $220 discount that knocks it down to just $480. This is the lowest price we've seen for this drive, so get it now while you still can.

Hard drives and SSDs have a habit of failing at inopportune moments (although when is a good time for storage to fail?), underscoring how important having a regular backup strategy is for keeping your data safe. While there are plenty of backup programs available, from specialized server backup solutions for VMs to solutions for single programs, the professional world tends to lean on open-source backup solutions.

Ask any note-taking enthusiast about their favorite app, and the name Obsidian is bound to pop up in the conversation every now and again. In addition to its vast plugin collection, Obsidian includes a ton of tools to organize your notes and customize every aspect of the note-taking app. Plus, it’s compatible with multiple backup options, so you don’t have to worry about losing access to your precious notes.

Some Google Pixel users have found that their At a Glance widget has been showing outdated weather forecasts, as reported by Android Police. But the company says in a statement to The Verge that it’s addressing the issue.According to one user on Reddit who has been dealing with the problem, “the current temperature is fairly accurate, but the expected high/low forecast hasn’t been correct in the past week.” The expected temperatures in the weather app itself were also accurate, they said.Another user on Google’s support forums said that their Pixel 8A’s lock screen was showing “the weather for the correct location, but in the morning it shows yesterday’s forecast as the temperature ‘today’ and in the evening it shows today’s forecast as the weather ‘tomorrow.’”In a statement this afternoon, Google spokesperson Matthew Flegal says that “we’re currently rolling out a fix for an issue causing outdated weather forecasts on the At a Glance widget for some Pixel users.”

We all have our favorite video game franchise that regularly gives us polished titles filled with hours of fun and unforgettable moments. But sometimes, even the most beloved series can crash and burn with just one bad release. Whether it's through poor decisions, technical disasters, or just missing the mark completely, some games have seriously damaged their franchises. From Duke Nukem Forever to Mass Effect: Andromeda, these games are reminders of how quickly things can go wrong for a gaming franchise.