Photo by Owen Grove / The Verge Google is rolling out an update that’ll let you adjust the brightness levels of its newest Nest Learning Thermostat, fixing a key issue that made it difficult to read, according to Android Authority.The Nest Learning Thermostat (4th gen) is Google’s biggest redesign of the smart thermostat since it launched in 2011. Released in August, one of the thermostat’s major new features was the 2.7-inch display, which was double the size of its predecessor and more customizable. For example, you can have the main display be a clock or show the weather or indoor temperature. As you get closer, it can then transition to display the humidity, outdoor temperature, or even the outdoor air quality index score.There was one huge drawback, though: o... Continue reading…

There's a lot of development going on in the AI space right now, but a lot of that development is in ways that typical consumers may not care about. However, a lot of what Arm is doing in the space right now is some of the most interesting developments out there that consumers should care about, as it's being designed in a way to safeguard privacy and be useful.

Hundreds of thousands of people rely on Discord to talk to one another, but not everyone knows that the popular messaging app does not use end-to-end encryption (E2EE) to keep their data safe. This level of encryption is popular among messaging apps to stop prying eyes from reading your messages, but Discord didn't seem too pressed to add encoding to your media. Now, the company has finally added encryption to calls and messages, meaning that all of those memes you posted in the general chat are now safe from malicious agents.

Image: Warner Bros. Pictures It may have been delayed until next year, but at least we now have our first look at Mickey 17. The debut trailer for the sci-fi film — which is helmed by Parasite director Bong Joon-ho and stars Robert Pattinson as Mickey Barnes — premiered Tuesday evening. According to the trailer’s description, Barnes “has found himself in the extraordinary circumstance of working for an employer who demands the ultimate commitment to the job… to die, for a living.” The movie is based on the novel Mickey 7 by Edward Ashton, about “a disposable employee on a human expedition sent to colonize the ice world Niflheim.” The book follows the seventh incarnation of the titular Mickey, but it appears in the movie he dies quite a few more times. In addition... Continue reading…

I'm a big gamer, and I always have been. One of my favorite consoles of all time is the Nintendo 3DS, thanks to its great OS and its backward compatibility with the excellent catalog of Nintendo DS games. The system got better with time as well, thanks to the work the community put into modding it and developing an incredible modding scene. While the device is officially end of life with all of its wireless services shut, I'd argue that the Nintendo 3DS is still a better system today than pretty much all of the gaming handhelds out there.

If you aren't intrigued by the Steam Deck OLED, the consensus is that the Asus ROG Ally is the great PC gaming handheld you should buy instead. It has more power than any other handheld on the market, and generally performs well. Some of the device's flaws have been fixed on the Asus ROG Ally X, which is the absolute best Windows gaming handheld money can buy.

Ambulances rush wounded people to a hospital in the southern Lebanese city of Saida on September 17th. | Photo by Mahmoud Zayyat / AFP via Getty Images Thousands of people have reportedly been injured by exploding pagers across Lebanon and Syria. Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said nine people, including a child, have been killed, and around 2,800 others have been injured, as reported by Lebanese state media agency NNA.Later Tuesday evening, the New York Times reported:Israel carried out its operation against Hezbollah on Tuesday by hiding explosive material within a new batch of Taiwanese-made pagers imported into Lebanon, according to American and other officials briefed on the operation.Reuters reports, based on information from a “senior Lebanese security source and another source,” that this spring, Hezbollah imported 5,000 pagers that were supposedly from Gold Apollo,... Continue reading…

Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge iOS 18 has a new feature that lets you wirelessly restore an iPhone 16 using another iPhone or an iPad, 9to5Mac reports. 9to5Mac says it was able to simulate the new recovery method. “Essentially, when the iPhone 16 enters Recovery Mode for some reason, users can simply place it next to another iPhone or iPad to start the firmware recovery,” according to 9to5Mac. “The other device will download a new iOS firmware and transfer it to the bricked device.”Apparently, any device on iOS 18 can do the restoration, but only the iPhone 16 lineup of phones can actually be restored using this method. You can already use an iPhone to wirelessly restore an Apple Watch or an Apple TV, so it’s nice to see a similar feature come to the iPhone, too.i... Continue reading…

When you want to play games on the go, a gaming laptop (or even a top-tier tablet) is a natural choice, but gaming handhelds are getting increasingly popular. Asus' updated ROG Ally X is bringing some key upgrades to the table, while MSI's Claw is an interesting Intel-powered machine. To help you decide between the two, we've put together the ultimate Asus ROG Ally X and MSI Claw comparison.

Backup by BioLite doesn’t require an electrician to install it. | Image: BioLite Instead of wiring into a home’s breaker box, the Backup by BioLite home backup power solution relies on thin battery panels that can fit behind appliances to keep them running for days at a time. It’s built around two 1.5kWh lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4, or LFP) batteries, the Backup Core and Backup Extend. Like any uninterruptible power supply, the Backup Core keeps itself perpetually charged from a wall outlet while power is available, then switches to keep whatever’s plugged into it running during a power outage.If you need more backup power, up to five Backup Extend units can be connected to a Backup Core unit to expand the total capacity to 9kWh, and you don’t need a contractor or electrician to install any of it. BioLite’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge It’s been nearly six years since we warned you that ads were coming for your pause button and 18 months since Google revealed that YouTube would serve them up, too. Now, YouTube confirms advertisers can broadly target your paused screentime: “As we’ve seen both strong advertiser and strong viewer response, we’ve since widely rolled out Pause ads to all advertisers,” YouTube comms manager Oluwa Falodun confirms to The Verge.Technically, YouTube started piloting pause ads in 2023 with a limited selection of advertisers, but Google chief business officer Philipp Schindler revealed this April that they were unsurprisingly a big hit with ad firms and lucrative for Google. Last week, Redditors started posting that the pause ads seemed to be... Continue reading…

The iPhone 16 Pro Max is one of the harder smartphones I've had to review in recent years, because most of what the Apple marketing focused on this year Apple Intelligence is not quite ready. Consumers who pick up the new iPhones in a few days will find that Apple's take on generative artificial intelligence is not actually in the phone yet. Instead, they'll have to wait until October to get a software update which gives them some (but still not all) of the announced AI features; and that's if they don't live in the EU and China, whose strict regulatory government bodies have not yet confirmed if Apple Intelligence will be allowed.