Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by STR / NurPhoto, Getty Images President-elect Donald Trump has appointed Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead what he calls the Department of Government Efficiency — yes, the acronym is DOGE — to “pave the way” for his administration to “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.” The department will somehow operate “outside of Government” and work with the White House and the Office of Management and Budget, according to the statement posted on Truth Social. Musk and Ramaswamy have until July 4th, 2026, to complete their work, the statement says.Trump had said during his presidential campaign that he would appoint Musk to head up a government efficiency commission if he was elected.... Continue reading…

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge These days, Black Friday isn’t so much a single-day shopping holiday as it is an ever-expanding, monthslong event that often begins as early as October. The 24-hour deal blitz that once was the focus of newspaper headlines and mobs outside of stores is no more, which makes knowing when and where you should be spending your cash all the more confusing.Luckily, we’re here to help. Over the next month or so, we’ll be poring through scores of presale spreadsheets and thousands upon thousands of deals to separate the real discounts from the unexciting, made-up bargains every retailer seems to hawk around the holidays. We’ll have tips on how to find the best deals and when to shop, and we’ll continue to flag the most compelling sales in the... Continue reading…

Google’s new Pixel Buds Pro 2 have already fallen to $179 ahead of the holiday. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Can’t wait until Black Friday to start your holiday shop or score a killer deal on a gadget you’ve been eyeing? You may not have to. Although Black Friday isn’t until November 29th, Best Buy, Walmart, and Target have begun rolling out their holiday discounts, many of which are available elsewhere. Some retailers will even refund you the difference if an item drops further in price later this year, meaning you don’t necessarily have to worry about shopping ahead of time.New deals are popping up weekly, so we’ve rounded up the cream of the crop below to make sorting through them easier. Current promos include steep discounts on a range of our favorite tech, too, from the Beats Solo Pro headphones and Apple’s AirTags to some of our... Continue reading…

Image: Freevee Amazon is going to shut down Freevee, its free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service. The service’s content has already been migrated over to Prime Video and new episodes of Freevee shows will be available to people who don’t pay for Prime, Deadline reports. The brand will be phased out “over the coming weeks,” Deadline says. Freevee originally launched out of Amazon-owned IMDb in 2019 as IMDb Freedive and was rebranded a few months after launch to IMDb TV and then to Freevee in 2022. The service had some of its own original content, like Bosch: Legacy and Jury Duty, Amazon also added some Prime Video content to the service starting in 2023.But Adweek reported in February that Amazon was planning to sunset the brand —... Continue reading…

AMD launched its long-awaited Ryzen 7 9800X3D a few days ago, and to no one's surprise, it obliterated every other gaming CPU on the market. Featuring AMD's second-generation 3D V-Cache, higher clock speeds, and some clever improvements in the core and cache layout, the 9800X3D comfortably took its expected spot at the top of the high-end gaming charts.

Image: Capcom The Monster Hunter franchise is bringing, well, monster hunting to your smartphone. Capcom has announced that it’s teaming up with TiMi — the studio behind games like Call of Duty: Mobile and Pokémon Unite — for a spinoff called Monster Hunter Outlanders. It’s described as an “open-world survival game” that’s playable either solo or co-op with up to four players. It sounds like Outlanders will feature the core aspects of a MonHun experience (namely, the exploring, hunting, and crafting) but with live service and social elements typical of a mobile game.MonHun has become a huge global franchise since the launch of Monster Hunter World in 2018, which went on to become Capcom’s bestselling game. Since then, there’s been a live-action movie,... Continue reading…

Pixel art is a digital art style that utilizes the blocky visuals of pixels. Pixel art is abstract and simple, using raster or vector styles in a manner that's a world away from typical uses of vector or raster imagery. Pixel art was made popular by the low-res gaming imagery of bygone eras, and it was easily created using Microsoft Paint back in the day. But there are plenty of software choices in the modern era for creating fun and interesting pixel art.

It can be hard to invest in a tablet, especially if you're someone that already has a smartphone and a laptop. But having a device that sits right in the middle of the two is an absolute must for some, as a tablet can hit a real sweet spot, providing more screen real estate than a phone but being more portable than a laptop.

In todays digital age, personal information is scattered across multiple online services, and unfortunately, data breaches are becoming increasingly common. A data breach occurs when sensitive information such as passwords, financial details, or personal identification information (PII) is accessed without permission. For individuals, the fallout can be serious ranging from financial loss and identity theft to emotional stress and reputational damage.

Its no secret that Intel has been down in the dumps for essentially all of 2024. Youd be hard-pressed to find any kind of good news surrounding the chip giant from the last 12 months. Raptor Lake was the flashpoint; the 13th and 14th Gen CPUs were degrading rapidly to the point where they were unusable, and attempts to mitigate the degradation were too little, too late.

When it comes to web browsers, you can't get around the fact that Google Chrome is far and away the most popular choice. The web has basically surrendered to Chrome's power, and almost every other browser uses the same Chromium engine to ensure that they can be compatible with most pages on the internet.

There's nothing worse than seeing some pixelated representation of yourself on screen when you're talking to friends, family, colleagues, or even potential clients when you're on a video call. If you're someone that's always holding meetings online, and wants the image quality to look substantially better, we recommend upgrading your webcam. Now, this is easier said than done, since some of the best webcams can cost over $200.