Cleaning your PC is a must, especially if your PC is placed in a poorly ventilated space. Besides the usual software cleaning methods, you must physically clean your PC's inside. The dust and debris build-up gradually slows down your fans, which leads to the components heating up more than usual. However, this operation might become a nightmare if you’re not doing it properly. Before starting the procedure, here’s how you can get wrong with this apparently simple task.

When you work on a long writing project, you need a companion to organize your thoughts, streamline your research, and write with focus and clarity. Here is where the magic of Scrivener comes into play. This powerful writing software is a game-changer for authors, screenwriters, students, and anyone who wants to take their writing to the next level. It essentially transforms that blank page from a source of anxiety into a canvas for creativity.

If you've been thinking about getting into streaming games, then you're going to need a few things before you get started. Hopefully, you already have a PC or game console, because you're also going to need some sort of capture device, a camera, microphone, and also good lighting. Lighting is easy to forget about, but if you really want to make things look good, then this is something you'll want to invest in.

If you're often working with images that need to be published, chances are you want to have some kind of watermark on them to verify that you're the author of them. There are plenty of ways to add watermarks to an image, and while you might think this is pretty complicated stuff that requires dedicated software, that's not necessarily the case.

Image: Summitsphere Antonblast is kind of like playing a zany Saturday morning cartoon. It’s brash, maximalist, and often, you’ll feel like you don’t actually understand what’s happening. Somehow, that chaos gels into something that actually makes sense — and, at times, is even calming.Antonblast just launched in 2024, but it looks like a long-lost side-scrolling platformer from the 16-bit era of the SNES or Sega Genesis. That’s not just due to the fantastic pixel art. There are fun touches like delightfully ’90s-era character designs and Mode 7-like effects, such as your character splatting against the screen when you die, that really make it feel like a missing classic of the era.Summitsphere, Antonblast’s developer, describes the game as a “fast-paced explosive action platformer,” and that’s a good way to summarize how it actually feels to play. It’s sort of what would happen if you put Wario, Sonic, Donkey Kong Country, Crash Bandicoot, The Ren & Stimpy Show, and Rocko’s Modern Life into a blender. Image: Summitsphere Yes, there is grinding. As Anton or Annie, you’ll charge through various enemies and obstacles in your path, sometimes turning into a literal tornado of... Read the full story at The Verge.

Look at your motherboard. Now look at me. Back at your motherboard. And back to me. Your motherboard isn't me, but what's better than this terrible rip on the Old Spice advertisement is a new motherboard. Sometimes you need to upgrade an aging board with a new and better model. Here are some signs your old motherboard may need replacing.

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge Instagram’s profile grids will display content as rectangles instead of squares as part of a change rolling out “over the weekend,” Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said in an Instagram Story on Friday.“I know some of you really like your squares. And square photos are sort of the heritage of Instagram. But at this point, most of what’s uploaded, both photos and videos, are vertical in their orientation,” Mosseri said. It’s a “bummer to overly crop them,” he added.Mosseri recognizes that the change might be a “bit of a pain,” but he thinks that it’s a “transitional” pain. “I think people will, over the long run, be excited that more of their photos and more of their videos are actually visible as intended in the profile as opposed to aggressively cropped,” Mosseri said.Mosseri’s justification is pretty similar to what he said in August when Instagram confirmed it was conducting a “limited test” of the change.Instagram also announced today that it’s adding a new spot in your Reels feed where you can see videos that your friends have liked.

Image: Paramount A law professor cited by CBS News called Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris “...so ill grounded that it comes close to being sanctionable as frivolous.” But now, the The Wall Street Journal reports that executives at CBS’ parent company, Paramount Global, have discussed settling the suit while “gaming out options to reduce friction with the incoming administration” ahead of a government review of its merger with Skydance. The paper reports that incoming FCC chairman and censor-in-chief Brendan Carr warned execs last year that presidential dissatisfaction with CBS News will make a review tougher. He’s also publicly displayed that view, saying during a Fox News interview in November, “...CBS has a transaction before the FCC. I’m pretty confident that news distortion complaint over the CBS 60 Minutes transcript is something that is likely to arise in the context of the FCC’s review of that transaction.” The lawsuit claims that in airing two differently edited versions of Harris’ response to a question about the war in Gaza, “CBS used its national platform on 60 Minutes to cross the line from the exercise of judgment in reporting to deceitful, deceptive manipulation of news.” But instead of mounting a defense of free speech against a lawsuit and Trump’s accusations that the network said were false and completely without merit, Paramount is considering following the example of Disney and tech oligarchs who will line up at the inauguration like Mark Zuckerberg. The ABC News owner agreed to pay $15 million to Trump’s presidential foundation and museum to settle a defamation lawsuit in December. Zuckerberg sharply redirected Meta’s policies to the right while meeting with Trump, reportedly “in part to mediate a lawsuit Trump brought against Facebook and Zuckerberg in 2021 over the platform’s suspension of Trump’s account after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.”

If you're on the hunt for a great new laptop, you've definitely got options. Whether it's a gaming laptop or a MacBook, there are many machines worth considering. The Dell XPS 14 is a top-notch choice, but Lenovo's freshly announced Slim 9i improves over the XPS in a few key ways.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images You’d think that TikTok would have a Plan B by now.It’s now clear the company never planned for a scenario in which it would lose to the Supreme Court. Maybe it couldn’t, given that the Chinese government ultimately has final say on a sale. Now, TikTok’s leaders are banking on Donald Trump to save them in a last-ditch effort that will unquestionably come with strings attached.Politically, TikTok misplayed its hand at every turn of this multi-year saga. Executives repeatedly dismissed the possibility of a ban, even going so far as to literally laugh at the idea. They were blindsided by Congress overwhelmingly agreeing on a ban. Then, they lost on appeal to the Supreme Court with only a day left before the law goes into effect. The only leverage they seemingly have left is that Trump thinks the app helped him win the election — plus their willingness to let him extract whatever pound of flesh he wants. TikTok backed itself into this corner technically, too. It spent over $1 billion on Project Texas to try and appease concerns about US data making its way to China. Amazingly, TikTok started Project Texas before the government gave its blessing, which of course never came. US... Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images TikTok says it plans to go offline on Sunday, January 19th if the Biden administration doesn’t intervene.The company confirms earlier reporting that it will be “forced to go dark” on the 19th unless the outgoing administration provides a “definitive statement” assuring its “most critical service providers” that they won’t be held liable for breaking the law. Those providers include Apple and Google, which together distribute TikTok through their app stores, and its hosting partners, which include Amazon and Oracle.TikTok’s statement follows Friday’s Supreme Court ruling that upheld the law banning the app unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, divests its ownership stake. Shortly after the Supreme Court’s ruling, TikTok CEO Shou Chew appealed to President-elect Donald Trump in a video but didn’t give any indication of what might happen when the law goes into effect at midnight on Saturday.Unfortunately for TikTok, the White House has already made clear that it intends to punt the fate of the app to Donald Trump, who has promised to save it and is set to be sworn in as president on Monday, January 20th. Trump said on Friday that he spoke with China President Xi Jinping about “balancing trade, fentanyl, TikTok, and many other subjects.”“President Biden’s position on TikTok has been clear for months, including since Congress sent a bill in overwhelming, bipartisan fashion to the President’s desk: TikTok should remain available to Americans, but simply under American ownership or other ownership that addresses the national security concerns identified by Congress in developing this law,” the White House said in a statement on Friday. “Given the sheer fact of timing, this Administration recognizes that actions to implement the law simply must fall to the next Administration, which takes office on Monday.”Meanwhile, the Department of Justice, which is tasked with enforcing the TikTok ban by fining its US service providers $5,000 per user with access to the app, has signaled that it’s still behind the ban.“Authoritarian regimes should not have unfettered access to millions of Americans’ sensitive data,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Friday. “The Court’s decision affirms that this Act protects the national security of the United States in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution.”As the ban deadline gets nearer, politicians who voted for it have started flipping by arguing that ByteDance should have more time to divest. According to The New York Times, Senator Chuck Schumer told President Biden that allowing a ban to happen would “damage his legacy.”You can read TikTok’s full statement about shutting down below:The statements issued today by both the Biden White House and the Department of Justice have failed to provide the necessary clarity and assurance to the service providers that are integral to maintaining TikTok’s availability to over 170 million Americans. Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19.

When you're using Windows 11 on a laptop and want to check how much juice you have left in the battery, how do you do it? For the longest time, I've had to mouse over the little battery icon in the taskbar, which is odd, given how, ideally, I should know just by looking at the indicator itself. Well, today is my (and your) lucky day because Microsoft is finally—finally!—adding a little percentage to the battery indicator so you can see how much is left. Took them long enough.