I tracked down the Bosch 100 Series fridge at CES. It’s the company’s first to support the Matter standard, enabling local connectivity to any smart home ecosystem. | Photo by Eelco Lammertink for The Verge Home appliance manufacturer Bosch is showing off its first Matter-enabled appliance on the show floor at CES this week. The 100 Series Frech Door Bottom Mount Refrigerator launched in November and should be available to buy in the US this spring. The fridge retails for $2,500 and has a chip on board that supports Matter. A firmware update to the smart home standard will come this summer, says Eelco Lammertink of BSH, which owns Bosch, Siemens, Thermador, and Gaggenau.The 100 series is the sister product to the Matter-enabled Siemens XXL Fridge I spotted at IFA in Berlin last November. That built-in model will come to the European market on a similar timeline. Lammertink tells me BSH plans to bring Matter to all its appliances across its Bosch, Siemens, and Thermador lines, starting with refrigerators this year, one more appliance category next year, and three in 2026. Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge This Bosch fridge will work with Samsung SmartThings and Amazon Alexa this year. Bosch was demoing the integrations at CES via a SmartThings map view on the screen behind it and an Echo Show on the table. The 100 Series will support Matter 1.3, allowing you to control the temperature remotely and receive notifications from the fridge on your smart home platform of choice. That way, a smart speaker can announce when the door has been left open, if you want. While many smart fridges already have these features, with Matter, the connection between the appliance and the ecosystem becomes local — making it faster and more secure. Currently, only Samsung SmartThings and Home Assistant support appliances in Matter, but Lammertink tells me that Amazon will support them this year. There is no word on Google Home or Apple Home yet.Lammertink says the plan is to bring energy reporting and energy management capabilities to the fridge. This would enable it to be part of a Matter-enabled whole home energy management system. Sadly, he said they won't be updating existing appliances to Matter (bad news for my Thermoador range and dishwasher.) “The challenges are too big,” he said. “We just can't risk bricking your fridge.”

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Washington state is suing T-Mobile for allegedly failing to address cybersecurity vulnerabilities that enabled a hacker to expose the personal data of 79 million people nationwide. The consumer protection lawsuit filed by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson on Monday stems from a cyberattack that began in March 2021 and went unnoticed until T-Mobile disclosed the breach in August.The filing asserts that T-Mobile failed to address certain security vulnerabilities that the company was aware of “for years,” and did not properly notify more than two million Washington residents who were impacted by the breach. The lawsuit accuses T-Mobile of downplaying the severity of the breach, which exposed the personal information of current, former, and prospective customers — including their names, phone numbers, physical addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and driver’s license / ID numbers.The notifications that T-Mobile issued about the data breach violated the Consumer Protections Act by omitting key information that made it difficult for people to assess if they were at risk of identity theft or fraud, according to the filing. The lawsuit also says that T-Mobile “did not meet industry standards for cybersecurity” for years prior to the hack, and used “obvious passwords” to protect accounts that could access consumer information.“This significant data breach was entirely avoidable,” Ferguson said in a statement. “T-Mobile had years to fix key vulnerabilities in its cybersecurity systems — and it failed.”This isn’t the first time that Washington state has taken action against T-Mobile, with Ferguson having successfully persuaded the company to make clear the limitations of its “no-contract” wireless service plan back in 2013.Ferguson’s latest lawsuit is seeking compensation for customers impacted by the 2021 breach and a court order that would force T-Mobile to bring its cybersecurity practices in line with industry standards, alongside improving transparency and communication around future data breaches. This follows T-Mobile paying $350 million in 2022 to settle a class-action lawsuit stemming from the 2021 hack, and a further $15.75 million fine last year over an FCC investigation into its repeated cybersecurity incidents.

Image: The Verge Xbox chief Phil Spencer has been dropping hints about an Xbox handheld for months, but what about Windows handheld gaming PCs? Jason Ronald, Microsoft’s VP of “Next Generation,” tells The Verge that we should expect to see the Windows handheld gaming experience change within this calendar year. Ronald was a roundtable panelist this evening at an AMD and Lenovo event titled “The Future of Gaming Handhelds,” which was mostly a coming-out party for Lenovo’s new Legion Go S. But he did hint on stage that Microsoft plans to bring the Xbox experience to Windows PCs, rather than the other way around — and expanded on that considerably after we caught up with him later.“We’ve been really innovating for a long time in the console space, and as we partner across the industry it’s really about how do we bring those innovations that we’ve incubated and developed in the console space and bring them to PC and bring them to the handheld gaming space,” said Ronald. After we caught up with him after the event, he confirmed that Microsoft is looking at combining Xbox and Windows experiences together — and that we should see changes this very year, rather than needing to wait for an Xbox handheld that might still be years away. Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge Microsoft’s Jason Ronald speaks at the Lenovo/AMD event, flanked by Valve SteamOS designer Pierre-Loup Griffais (left) and AMD chief gaming architect Frank Azor (middle right). “I would say it’s bringing the best of Xbox and Windows together, because we have spent the last 20 years building a world-class operating system, but it’s really locked to the console,” says Ronald. “What we’re doing is we’re really focused on how do we bring those experiences for both players and developers to the broader Windows ecosystem.”Right now, Windows sucks on handhelds, to put it rather bluntly, to the point that a community-created fork of Valve’s SteamOS experience can be a far better way to pick up and play games. Ronald is clearly aware of the issues. “We’re focused on really simplifying that and making it much more like a console experience. Our goal is to put the player and their library at the center of the experience and not all the [Windows] work that you have to do today.”Microsoft has done compact modes for Xbox apps on Windows that are focused on improving the handheld experience, but it’s a lot like putting lipstick on a pig instead of addressing the core experience. “I think we’ll have a lot more to share later this year,” teases Ronald. “I think it’s going to be a journey and I think you’ll see a lot of investments over time that you’re starting to see already, but we’ll have a lot more to share later this year.” Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Microsoft has made several Xbox apps more handheld-friendly over the past year. How Microsoft goes about this merging of Xbox and Windows will be key, but it doesn’t sound like the company is suddenly going to port a custom Xbox operating system to Windows. It sounds more like Microsoft wants to make Windows all up better at gaming with an Xbox experience on top so the pesky desktop, notifications, and legacy of Windows is hidden away. “I think, at the end of the day, our goal is to make Windows great for gaming on any device,” says Ronald. “The reality is the Xbox operating system is built on top of Windows. So there’s a lot of infrastructure that we built in the console space that we can bring to the PC space and really deliver that premium gaming experience on any device.”Specifically, Microsoft has to tackle a lot of the very basics of making Windows more friendly to controllers and getting that Xbox experience to really drive things instead of the taskbar, Start menu, and other elements. “There’s just certain things in Windows that were not designed for if you don’t have a keyboard and mouse, like thumbstick support or joypads and stuff like that,” Ronald admits. “There’s fundamental interaction models that we’re working on to make sure that regardless of the operating system details it feels very natively like a gaming-centric device and a gaming-centric experience.”Ronald says the goal is to put an Xbox experience at the center — “not the Windows desktop that you have today.”

At one point or another, you may have noticed that Windows labels your Wi-Fi networks as either private or public networks in the Wi-Fi settings. In fact, by default, they're all public networks, even if you're using it at home.

Even if you’ve been using ComfyUI for a while, you’re bound to discover something that seems simple in hindsight, but you just never noticed. I’ve been using ComfyUI for almost two years now, and I still remember how overwhelming it was to open someone else’s workflow — dozens of nodes, hundreds of parameters, and all that spaghetti everywhere.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang holding the Project Digits computer on stage at CES 2025. | Photo by Artur Widak / Anadolu via Getty Images It’s long been rumored that Nvidia is planning to break into the consumer CPU market in 2025, and we may have already had our first look at its new processor.On Monday at CES, the company unveiled Project Digits, a $3,000 personal AI supercomputer powered by a new GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip. Reuters reports that yesterday Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang hinted to investors and analysts that there are bigger plans for the Arm-based CPU within that chip, co-developed with MediaTek.“You know, obviously we have plans,” Huang said during an investor presentation, referring to the new 20-core desktop CPU, but that he would “wait to tell you” what they are.Co-developer MediaTek has its own ambitions though, and Huang suggested that it may also bring the CPU to market, independent of Nvidia. “Now they could provide that to us, and they could keep that for themselves and serve the market. And so it was a great win-win,” Huang said. Image: Nvidia Nvidia’s Project Digits AI computer, featuring a new 20-core Arm CPU. Project Digits itself isn’t a mass-market product, costing $3,000 and running on a custom Linux system designed specifically for AI developers. But Nvidia’s consumer CPU ambitions have been rumored since October 2023, when Reuters reported that the company, alongside rival AMD, was working on Arm-based chips to launch in 2025.Qualcomm has currently cornered the market on Arm-based CPUs for Windows PCs, boosted by last year’s launch of the Snapdragon X Elite processors. Those chips provided the sort of performance and power efficiency previously only available with Apple’s MacBooks, and put real pressure on Intel and AMD’s x86 systems.2024 was the year that Windows on Arm finally achieved its potential, and with increased competition from Nvidia and others, 2025 could mark a turning point in the battle between x86 and Arm.

CES 2025 is buzzing with the latest hardware from NVIDIA, AMD, Lenovo, and plenty of other tech giants — all of which were expected, but unexpectedly, it's also buzzing with news about the new Nintendo Switch that's slated to arrive this year. The latest being a report from Numerama (thanks, VGC) where accessory maker Genki has potentially spilled the beans that Nintendo's next generation of hardware will arrive sometime in April 2025.

When Xbox unveiled its new generation of subscription services with Xbox Game Pass in 2017, the appeal for players was immediately apparent. Pay a monthly fee and get an ever-growing library of games right at your fingertips. Even brand-new releases from Xbox's first-party studios, at no extra cost. Like Netflix, but for games, and with limited-time promotions that made the cost of a Game Pass subscription as low as $1, Game Pass colloquially earned the title, 'the best deal in gaming.'

Image: LMVPD Nearly a week after a New Year’s Day explosion in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, local law enforcement released more information about their investigation, including what they know so far about the role of generative AI in the incident. They confirmed that the suspect, an active duty soldier in the US Army named Matthew Livelsberger, had a “possible manifesto” saved on his phone, in addition to an email to a podcaster and other letters. They also showed video evidence of him preparing for the explosion by pouring fuel onto the truck while stopped before driving to the hotel. He’d also kept a log of supposed surveillance, although the officials said he did not have a criminal record and was not being surveilled or investigated.The Las Vegas Metro Police also released several slides showing questions he’d posed to ChatGPT several days before the explosion, asking about explosives, how to detonate them, and how to detonate them with a gunshot, as well as information about where to buy guns, explosive material, and fireworks legally along his route. Asked about the queries, OpenAI spokesperson Liz Bourgeois said:We are saddened by this incident and committed to seeing AI tools used responsibly. Our models are designed to refuse harmful instructions and minimize harmful content. In this case, ChatGPT responded with information already publicly available on the internet and provided warnings against harmful or illegal activities. We’re working with law enforcement to support their investigation.The officials say they are still examining possible sources for the explosion, described as a deflagration that traveled rather slowly as opposed to a high explosives detonation that would’ve moved faster and caused more damage. While investigators say they haven’t ruled out other possibilities like an electrical short yet, an explanation that matches some of the queries and the available evidence is that the muzzle flash of a gunshot ignited fuel vapor/fireworks fuses inside the truck, which then caused a larger explosion of fireworks and other explosive materials.Trying the queries in ChatGPT today still works, however, the information he requested doesn’t appear to be restricted and could be obtained by most search methods. Still, the suspect’s use of a generative AI tool and the investigators’ ability to track those requests and present them as evidence take questions about AI chatbot guardrails, safety, and privacy out of the hypothetical realm and into our reality.

A Kanban board helps visualize all the tasks in your projects. It helps you see everything clearly, prioritize tasks, and track progress. Each task is represented by a card that moves along a path, usually labeled “To Do,” “In Progress,” and “Done.” This way, you can quickly see what’s happening, who’s doing what, and how the project is progressing.

Despite the existence of several new-age browsers like Vivaldi and Arc, and some old-school ones too, like Firefox, I've stuck to using Google Chrome for the past decade or so. A big reason for this is that Chrome has always offered a no-frills experience. Sure, it eats up more RAM than required at times, but I've largely had a pleasant experience when using Chrome. Owing to this, I've also become dependent on some native features Chrome offers. For instance, I use Chrome's built-in send-to-devices feature to create my own ecosystem with an Android and a Mac, and many extensions - including Grammarly and a VPN.

Upgrading any part of your computer setup is always a fun time. Even if you're not a gamer, getting that little bit of extra comfort or quality can go a long way toward making your experience better. It could make it easier to win games, but it could also help you get work done faster, and that's no different with computer mice.