It's been about three years since Volvo discontinued its plug-in hybrid XC40. The mild hybrid version remains on sale in the US and elsewhere, alongside the electric EX40. Today, Volvo announced it was bringing back the PHEV version and giving it a major facelift. When it arrives at dealerships early next year, the new XC40 will have updated exterior styling, a gut-renovated interior featuring Google's Gemini AI assistant, an enlarged infotainment screen, and a new sensor-and-software safety suite.As a hybrid, the XC40 serves as a bridge for customers who want better gas mileage but aren't ready for the pure EV lifestyle. Volvo itself need …Read the full story at The Verge.

PC parts have been exorbitantly expensive for the past few years, with no clear sign of going back down. The most feasible way to build a powerful PC on a low budget these days is to buy high-end used, old parts. While they are more affordable, there are things you may not expect when owning one.

Xbox will now publish Physint, an upcoming game from Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima, after PlayStation decided to cancel it. The unexpected swap came in a flurry of announcements from PlayStation, Xbox, Kojima Productions, and Kojima himself. Sony, which published both of Kojima Productions' previous Death Stranding games, framed it as a "difficult decision to step away from collaborating with Kojima Productions," but insisted their "relationship remains strong."Kojima put things more bluntly on his personal X account, claiming that Sony gave the studio an unexpected cancellation notice in June, and that it has spent the last three mont …Read the full story at The Verge.

You've probably heard a lot about Lossless Scaling and what it can do for older games, retro emulated titles, and games that don't support Nvidia or AMD's upscaling or frame generation technologies. By all means, it's an app that's primarily known for its frame generation layer, but part that often gets overlooked is the scaler that sits directly next to it, which can elevate how your older TV shows and movies look.

Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI, during a media tour of the Stargate AI data center. | Bloomberg via Getty Images Another researcher is challenging OpenAI about the data driving its increasingly impressive array of mathematical discoveries. Just days after a bitter row erupted over whether the company's models benefited from unpublished work, a second mathematician has come forward accusing the AI giant of unethical and "dishonest" behavior and a lack of transparency about the origins of its training data.In a series of posts on Mastodon, mathematician Andreas Thom raised concerns that interactions he and his colleagues had had with the ChatGPT chatbot before OpenAI's triumphant announcement may have contributed to its success in the field. One of the …Read the full story at The Verge.

The iPhone 18 Pro’s triple camera setup with a variable aperture in the main (bottom) camera. | Photo: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge Apple always makes a big show of the latest cameras in its phones, and the major talking point of the iPhone 18 Pro is about the new variable aperture. Both the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max have an adjustable mechanical iris in their main camera modules to let more or less light into the sensor, allowing users to shoot at f/1.48, f/1.8, f/2.8, and f/4. You can, of course, let the camera select your aperture automatically, but the manual aperture control comes along with other new pro controls allowing you to dial in shutter speeds, manual white balance, and even manual focusing.As a whole, this is a wealth of new controls for an iPhone camera …Read the full story at The Verge.

Personally, I love it when prototypes of games work their way online. Even if it's borderline unplayable, seeing the building blocks of what could have been, or what it would eventually be, is always fascinating to me. As such, when I heard that someone had dumped the ROM for a cancelled Rare game that would eventually spin off into Banjo-Kazooie, I knew I had to check it out; however, as it turns out, this move was more than just someone letting people play a cool beta.

For many people, a smart home is, on the surface, a $1,200 washing machine that requires an account to download a rinse cycle, an $800 smart coffee maker with fragile touchscreens, and connected refrigerators running outdated Android skins on a tablet linked to the door.

Nintendo always promised that the Switch 2 would support variable refresh rate (VRR) when docked, but the console launched without this key feature. A new 23.0.0 firmware update now adds VRR support to the Switch 2 when it's docked and in TV mode.VRR adjusts a display's refresh rate to match a game's frame rate, smoothing out gameplay and reducing screen tearing. It will be particularly useful for games on the Switch 2 that have an unstable frame rate, and it's a feature that the PS5 and Xbox Series S / X all support.The latest Switch 2 firmware also includes a new toggle for handheld boost mode in quick settings, as well as an update to …Read the full story at The Verge.

It’s going to take a lot more gold coins to buy the Trump Phone now. | Photo: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Bad news if you didn't lock in a Trump phone at launch: It now costs $749, a $250 increase on its price at launch. The T1 Phone itself hasn't changed.Trump Mobile didn't announce the price increase, instead quietly changing its website overnight. This wasn't a total surprise though, especially given the phone ships with an unexpectedly generous 512GB of storage and 12GB of RAM. When I spoke to two Trump Mobile executives earlier this year, they called the $499 launch pricing "introductory," and a few months later, the website itself was changed to reflect that, calling it a "promotional price." That wording is now gone.When I reviewed th …Read the full story at The Verge.

A month ago, Nintendo announced that it was shutting down the Pokémon Bank service. However, it seems not everyone was ready to let go of the Game Boy era of Pokémon just yet. Someone has figured out a way to transfer Pokémon from a GBA directly to the Switch 2, without needing Nintendo's services.

Tiling is the last thing on your mind while using your Windows PC. It’s a lesser-known concept among the majority of the user base, and the next best thing is Snap Layouts. If you’ve used any other version of OS before Windows 11, you can understand the convenience it brings. On a small screen, you rarely think about snapping two or three windows on it. But it becomes essential on a large display. Older Windows versions supported snapping, or opening two apps side-by-side with the help of arrow keys.