It can’t be used as a speakerphone, but at $24.99, Soundcore’s new Select 4 Go Bluetooth speaker is claimed to have 20 hours of battery and can be paired for stereo sound. | Image: Soundcore Soundcore has launched another ultralight wireless speaker called the Select 4 Go. It’s priced at $24.99, making it the most affordable option in Soundcore’s current lineup of Bluetooth speakers and much cheaper than similarly sized options such as Ultimate Ears’ recently launched $79.99 Miniroll. Image: Soundcore A cutaway illustration of the Select 4 Go revealing a 1.75-inch speaker with a passive radiator next to it. The Select 4 Go pairs a 1.75-inch 5W full-range speaker driver with a passive radiator to help bolster the intensity of lower frequencies. That’s only a slightly smaller speaker than you’ll find inside the pricier Miniroll, which has a claimed 12 hours of battery life. Soundcore says the Select 4... Continue reading…

Image: Rockstar Games Grand Theft Auto V was one of the top ten most played games on Valve’s Steam Deck handheld this past week. It’s been in the top twenty for at least two years. But as of today, Valve now lists the game as “unsupported” — because developer Rockstar mysteriously broke compatibility with Valve’s handheld for its online modes. As you can see in the image above, this is the latest fight around Linux anti-cheat: like the developers of Fortnite and Roblox, Rockstar has decided not to support the Steam Deck with its new anti-cheat software for GTA Online — a game that, by all accounts, badly needed to deal with cheaters. (Outside the Steam Deck, better anti-cheat was probably a good move.)But unlike Fortnite and Roblox, Rockstar is... Continue reading…

TeamViewer is one of the go-to remote desktop applications that people know of, but it's nowhere near the best. While it was one of the first to make unattended access easy and made it possible to do remote support for friends and family members, it has since been usurped in recent years thanks to the proliferation of other remote desktop applications, including ones built into the operating system like Microsoft Remote Desktop. I used to use TeamViewer but I don't anymore, and here's what I use instead.

A screenshot from Palworld. | Image: Pocketpair Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Pocketpair, which makes the game Palworld.According to Nintendo’s press release:Nintendo Co., Ltd. (HQ: Kyoto, Minami-ku, Japan; Representative Director and President: Shuntaro Furukawa, “Nintendo” hereafter), together with The Pokémon Company, filed a patent infringement lawsuit in the Tokyo District Court against Pocketpair, Inc. (HQ: 2-10-2 Higashigotanda, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, “Defendant” hereafter) on September 18, 2024.This lawsuit seeks an injunction against infringement and compensation for damages on the grounds that Palworld, a game developed and released by the Defendant, infringes multiple patent rights.Palworld became a huge hit earlier... Continue reading…

Google Calendar on a new tab sounds kinda useful, actually. | Image: Google Google is adding a new daily calendar overview in newly opened Chrome tabs for Workspace users with easy access to schedules and video calls. That way, when you’re signed in with your organization’s account, the first thing you’ll see is your appointments and meetings, in addition to files stored in Google Drive.The new feature comes alongside several other Google Workspace updates, including new enterprise-managed site shortcuts, which let IT set up quick links to frequently used sites on the URL dropdown.Regular Chrome users could already set up site shortcuts for themselves — for instance, you could program it to bring up a site search for Reddit just by typing “red.” Now, a group policy can be applied to departments and... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge The House Committee on Energy and Commerce has advanced two high-profile child safety bills that could remake large parts of the internet: the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0). The proposed laws passed on a voice vote despite discontent over last-minute changes to KOSA, in particular, that were aimed at quelling persistent criticism. KOSA and COPPA 2.0 would give government agencies more regulatory power over tech companies with users under 18 years of age. The former imposes a “duty of care” on major social media companies, making them potentially liable for harm to underage users. The latter raises the age of enforcement for the 1998 COPPA law and adds new rules around... Continue reading…

Black and custom blasted, like my soul. It makes no sense to upgrade based on color alone. Or does it? Continue reading…

A radio device exploded in the city of Baalbek is seen as wireless communications device explosions continued for a second day across Lebanon. | Photo by Suleiman Amhaz / Anadolu via Getty Images A day after exploding pagers targeting Hezbollah members killed 12 people, including two children, and injured nearly 3,000 people in Lebanon and Syria, the attacks started again. The New York Times reports 14 people have died, along with hundreds injured in the second wave of explosions. Lebanese state media agency NNA reports they resulted from wireless devices like walkie-talkies and fingerprint analysis devices that also damaged cars and motorcycles and started fires, including one at a lithium battery store.At least one of the exploding devices on Wednesday went off in the middle of a funeral procession for several of the people killed in the previous attack, causing additional panic as people ran for safety and were asked to... Continue reading…

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge From the unbeatable Switch Pro and comfy Joy-Con alternatives to a dongle that lets you use your Xbox or PlayStation controllers with your Switch, these are the best Switch controllers you can get. Continue reading…

Image: The Verge If you’re on LinkedIn, then you should know that the social network has, without asking, opted accounts into training generative AI models. 404Media reports that LinkedIn introduced the new privacy setting and opt-out form before rolling out an updated privacy policy saying that data from the platform is being used to train AI models. As TechCrunch notes, it has since updated the policy. We may use your personal data to improve, develop, and provide products and Services, develop and train artificial intelligence (AI) models, develop, provide, and personalize our Services, and gain insights with the help of AI, automated systems, and inferences, so that our Services can be more relevant and useful to you and others.LinkedIn writes on a... Continue reading…

Despite being packed with useful features, Proxmox has a straightforward UI thats easy-to-learn even for beginners. But that doesnt mean you wont run into issues when building a home lab using this virtualization platform. Network-related problems, in particular, can rear their ugly head right after you finish installing Proxmox. Thankfully, most of these are easy to fix, and this guide will go over a myriad of solutions to help you get rid of any network issues plaguing your Proxmox server.

If you have access to computers running different operating systems, you know that switching external hard drives between them can be a pain. Windows 11 PCs use NTFS for their file system, while the best Macs use Apple File System (APFS). While there are some file formats that both operating systems can access, like ExFAT, what happens if you've got important data on a drive formatted as NTFS, but you need to access it on a Mac? Well, you might be in luck because macOS can mount and read data from NTFS drives, but it can't write any data to them without some additional work. Let's fill in the missing pieces and get NTFS support working both ways on Mac.