I don't know if you still remember, but Nvidia made a big deal about ray tracing when it launched the RTX 20-series GPUs back in 2018. The company's CEO, Jensen Huang, even said, "Computer graphics will never be the same again." At the time, a lot of us bought into that idea. The demos did make it look like the next big leap for gaming, with realistic lighting, shadows, and reflections. Then, when games started coming out with ray tracing, we quickly realized how much performance we had to compromise to get those visual improvements.

High school graduation is a time of change that might be felt more deeply by family members than by the grads themselves. While some grads may immediately embark on a career path, many continue their education and delve deeper into their studies at college. Either way, they'll be taking on more responsibility, meaning it's up to friends and relatives to figure out how to support them.Support comes in many forms, but a gift or two certainly won't hurt. Luckily, we've compiled a host of Verge-approved gift ideas spanning a wide array of interests and price points. They'll think of you when they grab their AirPods 4 to tune out distractions w …Read the full story at The Verge.

A smart TV is generally the default choice for anyone who wants a screen for casual gaming, streaming, and everything in between. Some of the upper-end options make things easier by pairing solid speakers with a good display, but the day-to-day experience doesn't tend to be dramatically different from that of a mid-range option.

I love Home Assistant, and it's become an essential part of my smart home ever since I first tried it a couple of years ago. Recently, however, I was having an issue with my home lab, where Home Assistant is installed, which was constantly being loud for reasons I couldn't understand.

For a few weeks now, we've been throwing around the term "Windows K2." On the surface, it sounds like a whole new version of Windows, but the truth is, it's a little more scaled back. A while ago, an insider claimed that Windows K2 was Microsoft's initiative to redirect attention to Windows 11's major pain points after the company awoke from a years-long Copilot stupor. We also knew that a movable Taskbar was "priority 0" as the company aimed to repair the most glaring issues first and foremost.

The Acer Nitro Blaze Link might run on Linux, but it's no Steam Deck. Acer says it's a "streaming-first handheld and companion device," like a PlayStation Portal for your PC. Announced ahead of Computex on Friday, it's launching in Q4 2026 with a 7-inch (1920 x 1200) display, Wi-Fi 6, just 1GB of LPDDR4 RAM, and 8GB of eMMC storage. That's technically not even enough RAM to run Stardew Valley, but the Blaze Link isn't meant for playing games locally. Logitech launched a similar handheld a few years ago, the Logitech G Cloud, that cost $350, included 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, and ran on Android. It was a tough sell at that price consi …Read the full story at The Verge.

Microsoft has delayed its upcoming Fable reboot once again. The game was set to launch in autumn 2026, but Microsoft now says that Fable will come out in February 2027. However, it will show a "new look" at the game at its Xbox Games Showcase on June 7th."​​This is year is packed with incredible games for XBOX players to enjoy, from Halo: Campaign Evolved, Gears of War: E-Day and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 to Control Resonant, Star Wars: Galactic Racer and Grand Theft Auto VI," Microsoft says on the Xbox account on X. "In order to plan our game launches through the holidays, in a way that works best for players, we're moving Fable to Fe …Read the full story at The Verge.

Canva and Anthropic have been working together for a while now, and if you've used the two in tandem via the Canva connector, you already know how interesting the pairing can be for ideating and generating visual designs through Claude on its chat interface. The collaboration has steadily deepened over the past few months, and the latest step might be the most consequential yet.

It looks like Microsoft and Nvidia are working on something really big.

I pondered the other day what's next for Microsoft's Surface PC lineup, and it looks like we're about to find out. Windows and Surface chief Pavan Davuluri has just teased "something new is coming for developers," complete with a mysterious image of what looks like a curved display edge.Davuluri notes that whatever is coming is "not a new OS version," so that rules out the potential for Windows 12 to be announced at Microsoft's Build developer conference next week. Separately, the Windows account on X posted a similar cryptic tweet, promising "a new era of PC" with coordinates pointing to where Computex is hosted in Taipei.Something new …Read the full story at The Verge.

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - NOVEMBER 6: U.S. Border Patrol arrests search a neighborhood for an individual they were chasing on November 6, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. U.S. Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents are in Chicago and surrounding suburbs during "Operation Midway Blitz" to enforce immigration laws. (Photo by Joshua Lott/The Washington Post via Getty Images)Washington Post) Border security czar Tom Homan keeps threatening to "flood" New York City with ICE agents. But a new investigation shows that ICE has been quietly ramping up arrests in the New York area already - and disproportionately targeting Latino neighborhoods. The City, a local nonprofit news organization, found 430 street arrests in the metropolitan area between October 2025 and mid-March. Of these, 93 percent involved Latinos, even though they only make up 66 percent of the local undocumented population. More telling: Many of those arrested weren't the intended targets at all. Agents grabbed them while looking for other people, according to court r …Read the full story at The Verge.

This week, an AI training startup called Shift said it would clean New Yorkers' homes for free. It has plans to expand into other cities as well, including London, and looking around my flat, I get the appeal. But there's a catch. There's always a catch. In exchange for the cleaning, Shift wants footage of its cleaners at work: scrubbing dishes, wiping counters, dusting tables, mopping floors. It wants everything. Video of all the boring domestic labor we'd happily outsource if we could - and that robotics companies are racing to teach machines to do so they can sell us something to do it for us.That's harder than it sounds. Unlike cha …Read the full story at The Verge.