Years ago, computing was much harder to deal with, especially when upgrading parts. One frustration was the need to reinstall Windows when switching CPUs because of a quirk of Windows's architecture that didn't go away until Windows 8's release. Yes, the tile-based Start menu might have ruffled some feathers, but the underlying changes to Windows were a net benefit. Nowadays, you don't need to reinstall your operating system after swapping CPUs. You don't even need to reinstall it when changing your motherboard or switching between manufacturers. Let's discuss why and how much better this makes computing overall.

Hugs and kisses! | Image: Cody Peterson (Each Other) Though I’d heard this XOXO festival would be the last one, many people I spoke to seemed not to believe it. I was told by previous attendees that festival organizers Andy Baio and Andy McMillan — affectionately called “the Andys” — “always say that.” But from the festival’s beginning, it also seemed clear that the Andys didn’t plan to do this forever.Anyway, this year’s XOXO felt like an Irish wake to me. It was like we had all gathered over the body of a specific period on the internet to pay our respects.XOXO began in 2012, born on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, where Baio worked. The basic idea was to celebrate “disruptive creativity” — that is, to take all the artists who make a living online and bring them together with... Continue reading…

Photo by Noam Galai/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management Taylor Swift said on Tuesday that she plans to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in November’s presidential election — and that AI-generated images circulating of herself pushed her in part to make her support public.“Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation,” Swift wrote in an Instagram post. “It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by Taylor Swift... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Google just landed a deal to capture planet-heating pollution at a huge bargain: $100 per ton of CO2, the price climate tech startups around the world are racing to achieve in order to make their technologies commercially viable.The company announced the agreement today with Holocene, a startup with an even shorter history than others in the emerging carbon removal industry that has nevertheless attracted some big-name backers. “We think it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.”If Holocene can actually pull it off — take carbon dioxide out of the air at a price far lower than competitors charging $600 per ton or more for the same service — it could prove that carbon removal technologies are ready to help in the climate fight. But it’s still... Continue reading…

The Dirigera hub and Ikea's Home smart app. | Image: Ikea Two years after announcing support, Ikea’s Dirigera hub can now be updated to act as a bridge between Ikea’s smart home devices and Matter-enabled systems. The software update builds upon early beta support by letting Ikea’s entire lineup of Zigbee-based smart home devices — like lights, blinds, controllers, air purifiers, and sensors — communicate with Matter-enabled devices from any company. Bridging support for existing devices to Matter is a small but significant step in Ikea’s plan to fully support the new smart home protocol. It’s the same tepid approach Philips Hue has taken but hopefully with better results. Other companies like Aqara have more fully embraced the standard by launching native Matter devices that don’t require... Continue reading…

Routers and switches are typically used to connect NAS, PCs, servers, SBCs, and other computing devices over a local area network. However, there are a couple of reasons why you might want to ditch a router/switch and directly interface two devices using their Ethernet ports. Perhaps you dont want other devices in the network to gain access to confidential files. Or maybe you've finally upgraded to 10GbE NICs, but are bottlenecked by the slower speeds of your switchs SFP+/RJ45 sockets. Regardless of your reasons, heres an in-depth guide on how to pair your NAS with a PC over Ethernet.

This little gadget keeps getting better and better. | Image: Flipper Devices Inc. One of our favorite hacking gadgets, the Flipper Zero, received its first major firmware update today. It includes a bunch of features the developers have been working on stabilizing for the last three years, including a big battery life boost that technically arrived with a previous update. While many of the features aren’t technically new, the entire package should make this gadget feel like a supercharged version of its former self.One of the most notable updates since launch solves one of the developers’ biggest problems: the device’s internal flash memory originally limited how many features they could add. In the past, new features were built into the firmware itself, but they eventually exceeded what the memory could handle. Last... Continue reading…

A while back, I wrote about Twinkle Tray and how it's a fantastic app for customizing the settings for your external monitor. But while that's still a great app, there are other options worth considering if you want monitor controls, with two great examples being ClickMonitorDDC and Monitorian. The latter was actually mentioned by one of our readers in the comments of the aforementioned article.

Image: The Verge Disney was ready to turn part of its feed back on for DirecTV customers tonight — but DirecTV wasn’t interested.Disney-owned ABC News is hosting tonight’s presidential debate, and Disney offered to make the channel available to DirecTV subscribers for three hours at no charge, Disney spokespeople April Carretta and Bridget Osterhaus wrote in an email this afternoon. They said Disney wanted to provide the feed “at no cost because we want all Americans to be able to view tonight’s debate at this important moment in our history.”DirecTV subscribers can still watch the debate on other networksBut DirecTV declined the offer, saying it would “cause customer confusion” when those channels quickly disappeared again. In an unsigned statement... Continue reading…

If you're anything like me, you need little notes to keep track of everything going on. A little while ago, Microsoft added some Sticky Notes to OneNote alongside the default Windows notes, with the added benefit that they played ball with Microsoft's OneNote cloud system. Now, Microsoft has updated these enhanced Sticky Notes with some handy new features, including a way to differentiate them from the default notes app.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images Less than 30 minutes into the presidential debate, former president Donald Trump brought up a viral racist lie about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio — and repeated it after fact-checkers asserted that it wasn’t true.“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs — the people that came in — they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump said in response to a question about why he asked Republican legislators to vote against a bipartisan border security bill. After Trump finished his tirade, ABC News moderator David Muir clarified that Springfield’s city manager told ABC reports of migrants eating pets were false — but Trump repeated the lie. “People on television are saying, ‘My dog was taken and... Continue reading…

The display creases are prominant at certain angles, but are barely noticable when looking at the Huawei Mate XT straight on. | Screenshot: Fixed Focus Digital Now that Huawei has officially launched the Mate XT Ultimate Design in China, demonstration videos are popping up online that reveal what the world’s first dual-folding, triple-screen phone looks like in real-world conditions.Several unboxing videos show that the Huawei Mate XT is shipped in its unfolded position, which is just 3.6mm (around 0.14 inches) thick at its thinnest point — making it slimmer than Google’s 5.1mm (around 0.2 inch) Pixel 9 Pro Fold. When fully folded, the Mate XT measures in at 12.8mm (around 0.5 inches), a smidge thicker than the Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s 10.1mm (around 0.39 inches) and the 12.1mm Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6.A hands-on review from Gizmochina shows that the display can be used to view multiple app windows... Continue reading…