Google Pixel phones have always had excellent software, but the elephant in the room was that Google hardware has been below par for the majority of its life cycle. In fact, I'd go as far as saying Google only finally got the hardware right last year with the Pixel 8 phones. Before that, there was always a glaring, significant hardware flaw of some kind, from the second Pixel's display problems to the third Pixel's hideous notch to the Pixel 6's dim display and Pixel 7's bad thermals. And even last year, the Pixel 8 hardware was nowhere near the best, it just wasn't bad.

Image: Getty Let’s get one thing out of the way: contrary to what you may have heard, electric vehicle sales are up. I know, recent headlines suggest otherwise. Tesla sales are down. Ford is scaling back its EV rollout. General Motors is delaying an electric truck and holding back on investments in EV battery mining. And Hertz is off-loading EVs as its stock price struggles. Automakers across the board are losing millions — some are losing billions — as customer demand appears to have flatlined after an initial burst of excitement. The vibe, as they say, is grim. And yet, sales are still growing. JD Power is projecting that 1.2 million EVs will be sold in the US by the end of 2024, an increase over 1 million sold last year. That’s 9 percent of... Continue reading…

With its straightforward user interface and powerful features, Proxmox is an amazing hypervisor for newcomers as well as home lab veterans. But the difficulty gets raised a ton once you start looking into the more advanced aspects of the virtualization platform.

Image: David Pierce / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 50, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, I promise it’s not always this many expensive gadgets, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I’ve been reading about crime rings and paleontology beefs and the strange language of TikTok, watching Kevin Can F**k Himself and Trap, re-upping my Yousician subscription to get back into the guitar, doing a lot of weird stretches after spraining my finger, and trying to make the famous Levain cookies.I also have for you a bunch of new wearable gadgets, a new Star Wars game, the return of a fabulous YouTube series, and much more.Also, I still want to know: who’s your... Continue reading…

The next version of the Mac Mini may be so much smaller than this. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple’s next Mac Mini won’t have USB-A ports, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who writes in today’s Power On newsletter that the new desktops will start to hit Apple’s warehouses in September. The higher-end variant with an Apple M4 Pro chip will ship in October, he writes.The version with an M4 Pro will still cram a lot of ports, including five USB-C ports (two in the front and three in the back), an ethernet port, an HDMI port, and a headphone jack, according to Gurman’s sources. And the new Mac Mini will apparently have an internal power supply. That’s not too shabby for a computer that’s expected to be about the size of an Apple TV.Is it time to say goodbye to USB-A? Maybe. Probably. But no matter how you feel about that,... Continue reading…

The fediverse has the potential to help create enduring and interoperable social networks. But many creators and businesses rely on bigger, closed platforms because they offer direct ways to make money from their audiences, which is hard to do in the fediverse right now.Sub.club is trying to solve that. The idea is that this will let users on ActivityPub-based platforms like Mastodon easily offer paid subscriptions and premium content while taking a 6 percent cut in addition to payment processing fees. It could solve a big problem with the fediverse right now: it’s not easy to make a living on it unless you direct your followers back to existing platforms like Patreon that are closed off and require users to visit a particular site or... Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo Sure, it’s not straight-up horror as the early teasers suggested, but even still, Emio — The Smiling Man is among the darkest games Nintendo has ever made. It’s a murder mystery that doesn’t skimp on the murder and throws in an unsettling urban legend for good measure. More than that, though, it’s just a really great mystery on a platform that has steadily become an ideal home for them.Emio is actually the continuation of a decades-old franchise from Nintendo called Famicom Detective Club. Created by Metroid designer Yoshio Sakamoto, the games originally never launched outside of Japan, until a pair of surprise remakes hit the Switch in 2021. Emio is the first entirely new entry in the franchise since the late ’80s — but even still, not... Continue reading…

Intel is the source of some of the best and most trusted CPUs out there, powering both desktops and laptops in 2024. The company's processor lineup has grown significantly over the years, leaving us with several generations of processors that continue to evolve. However, the growing list of processors in Intel's stable makes it extremely hard to keep track of their names, model numbers, and suffixes.

As its name implies, PoE allows you to send both power and data to your devices over a single Ethernet cable. On paper, it may sound like a niche feature, as most servers, PCs, laptops, and NAS cant be powered via an Ethernet cable. But if your computing environment consists of smart gadgets, Power over Ethernet can go from somewhat useful to an absolute game-changer and here are four reasons why you should outfit your home lab with PoE technology.

Obsidian and Notion are two of the top note-taking and knowledge management software solutions. Thanks to their unique approach to productivity and flexibility, both platforms have gained a devoted following. While Obsidian is laser-focused on delivering a personal and interconnected knowledge base, Notion takes a different route with powerful and customizable collaborative workspaces.

Thanks to its cross-platform availability, seamless integration with Windows and other Microsoft products, support for math calculations, and a long list of features, OneNote has been an integral part of my workflow for the last few years. Understandably, I was thrilled when Microsoft revealed the integration of Copilot in OneNote to assist users in generating text, summarizing lengthy notes, creating to-do lists, and inspiring creative ideas.

Amazon’s highest-end streaming stick, which can display both artwork and widgets when idle, is down to $39.99 at multiple retailers. | Image: Amazon It’s always sad when summer comes to a close. However, on the bright side, Labor Day represents yet another long weekend — not to mention an opportunity to save on a slew of goods before the holiday shopping season kicks off in earnest. Although Labor Day isn’t until tomorrow, September 2nd, many retailers are already offering steep discounts on a range of tech, some of which rival the Prime Day deals we saw in July.Right now, for instance, Apple’s last-gen iPad is on sale for less than $200. Other Verge-approved items have also fallen to an all-time low (or close to it), including Sonos’ Era 100 speaker, Amazon’s latest Echo Spot, and the entry-level Kindle. Granted, we’ve seen many of these products go for slightly less in the past —... Continue reading…