Image: Samar Haddad / The Verge Guess the artist, win five bucks. Whether you’re a random person on the streets of New York, an A-list celebrity, or the sitting Vice President of the United States, that’s the pitch behind one of the most fun music shows on social media. You show up, you get some headphones and a microphone, and you hope you know what song is playing. The show is called Track Star, and it’s hosted by Jack Coyne. On this episode of The Vergecast, the first in our three-part miniseries about the future of music, Coyne joins the show to tell us the story of Track Star. We talk about the show’s beginnings as a trivia show about New York called Public Opinion, how Coyne and his co-creators figured out the show’s structure and pace, how he thinks about his... Continue reading…

Image: David Pierce / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 59, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, so psyched you found us, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I’ve been reading about HotWired and DRAM and Mike Solana, watching The Diplomat, jamming to Dua Lipa’s Tiny Desk concert, trying Smashing for news reading and cool-stuff discovery, testing my bandwidth caps downloading Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, and listening to all six hours of the Acquired Meta episode.I also have for you some interesting new AI search products, some new Apple gear, a couple of documentaries to watch this weekend, a calendar app for Windows, and much more.Oh, and thanks to everyone... Continue reading…

Most self-respecting tech reviewers will tell you that specs and features never tell the whole story of a device. The bleeding edge processors, highest-resolution displays, and buzzworthy features rarely give you a full indication of what the device is like to use every day.

If you move regularly, or are savvy about changing your internet provider for the best deal, you'll quickly end up with a pile of outdated ISP routers or outdated consumer routers that you're simply no longer using. These routers are often fully functional, but the integrated, software-locked nature of the hardware means that every time you want to upgrade to the newest set of features, be it Wi-Fi 6 or 5GHz, the old one goes on the scrap heap. You may feel a bit guilty having this throwaway, cheap hardware piling up either around your house or going unceremoniously into the bin.

While Microsoft Excel is commonly associated with complex calculations and data analysis, it offers a wide range of applications which can enable you to fly through your academic years. With the help of pre-designed templates, even those with limited Excel experience can easily leverage its functionalities.

Activists gather in New York City in August 2024. | Photo: Luis Yañez Joe Biden raised hopes that the US would finally plan for climate-displaced migrants. Today, it’s still a glaring hole in climate and immigration policy. Continue reading…

This, but blasting demons. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge What do John Deere tractors, Ikea smart bulbs, Lego bricks, and the MacBook Pro Touch Bar have in common? They can all run Doom, and naturally, so can Nintendo’s adorable Alarmo alarm clock. It was only a matter of time before someone pulled that off, but what I didn’t expect was that when it happened, it would be playable.That’s exactly what hacker GaryOberNicht, who recently figured out how to run custom firmware on the Alarmo, did in a video posted to Mastodon and their X account yesterday. In it, they play by turning or pressing the mushroom-shaped blob on top of the Alarmo to move and pressing the other buttons to shoot or open doors. Here, have a look:Gary said it’s “possible to load the shareware version of Doom entirely from... Continue reading…

Although AMD was the first to release a 64-bit desktop CPU in 2003, the company lagged behind Intel in the semiconductor industry for years. However, things took a U-turn when AMD announced the original Ryzen lineup in 2017. While AMD has a slightly more streamlined CPU lineup compared to Intel overall, the companys naming scheme still remains confusing at first glance. If you are in the market for an AMD-powered Windows laptop or a desktop CPU, make sure that you understand AMDs naming scheme to decide on an ideal processor for your workflow.

Welcome to The Drive, a weekly column looking at some wacky, interesting, cool, and pivotal things within the tech space! Curated by PC Hardware Lead Editor Richard Edmonds through almost two decades covering the sector. Think something should be covered? Hit me up at [email protected]!

Bottlenecking can be a scary word for novice PC builders, conjuring visions of crippled performance and abnormal PC behavior in their minds. However, avoiding bottlenecks when building a gaming PC isn't complicated. The key is to build a balanced PC by not cheaping out where it matters the most.

Tim Stevens My favorite feature of the new $420,000, all-electric Rolls-Royce Spectre isn’t the cosseting ride quality or the illuminated stars embedded in the headliner of the insanely ornate interior. It isn’t the 577 horsepower or the 266 miles of range. It’s neither the “yes, that’s the spot” massaging seats nor the curbside presence of that upright, chromed front grille. It isn’t even the aerodynamically refined yet classically styled Spirit of Ecstasy statuette perched atop.My favorite feature of the Spectre is the sound it makes. As an EV, it doesn’t really make any engine sound on its own. It’s a rolling cocoon made inherently anti-acoustic thanks to the tireless work of some surely big-eared scientists. So, to inject a little more life... Continue reading…

Tech enthusiasts know that finding ways to keep aging hardware out of the landfill is great for the environment even if your daily-driver Mac or PC is in need of an upgrade. That's easier said than done, though. I found a way to buy an old iMac for under $100 for use as an external monitor, until disaster struck. Amid the chaos of my apartment move, I shattered the 2012 iMac's display, and that left me seriously puzzled as to what to do with it. I couldn't fix it, because I could buy two more iMacs for the price of a replacement screen.