When you're looking for the best laptop for you, whether you're looking for the best gaming laptop, the best laptop to replace a desktop, or anything else, storage capacity can take the backseat as a concern over more important characteristics like CPU, GPU, RAM, and display. However, you might still want to upgrade your laptop's storage solution, be it for speed, capacity, or reliability.

Vim is one of the most popular text editors developers, coders, or system administrators use on Ubuntu and many other Linux distributions. Vim is short for Vi IMproved and is based on the original Vi editor that was popular back in the 1990s. If you want to get started with it, then we're happy to say that vim-tiny comes pre-installed with Ubuntu, but is pretty basic. A more advanced version, just regular Vim, is easy to install on Ubuntu. All that's required is to fire up a terminal and then enter a few commands to install it using the package manager.

Microsoft is deprecating Windows Mixed Reality, a feature that allows users to use dedicated headsets to navigate a special environment designed to provide a more immersive experience. It's yet another major aspect of Windows 10 that Microsoft finds itself giving up on.

Membrane keyboards? Never heard of them. Mechanical keyboards are all the rage these days, and they come in various shapes and sizes, from small 60% keyboards (or 40% if you want to go there) all the way to full-sized options. There's something for everyone. While I love how compact and useful small keyboards are, I just can’t seem to convince myself to let go of my old 104-key keyboard, and there are three good reasons for that.

Image: The Verge Elon Musk’s X platform, previously known as Twitter, mostly stopped working for more than an hour. In mobile apps, the timelines wouldn’t refresh, and on the web, a placeholder message proclaimed, “Welcome to X! This is the best place to see what’s happening in your world. Find some people and topics to follow now.” The global internet trackers at Netblocks noted a “significant international outage” that wasn’t linked to any country-level blocks or filtering.At about 1:35AM ET, shortly after this article was published, access to timelines was restored, although we haven’t heard what caused the problem.Oddly, posting to the site still worked, even if the posts disappeared after a refresh, and accounts followed with notifications... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge This is Hot Pod, The Verge’s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.Hello! Apologies for the late send, I have been buried in Hot Pod Summit prep. I promise it will be worth it! We’re putting together a great lineup for 2024. We’re still working on our invitation list — if you’re interested in attending, let us know here.This is about the time yakky media folks like myself come out with predictions for next year. Nick Quah published takes from people across the industry today for Vulture. Yesterday, The Podglomerate’s Joni Deutsch had a piece for Nieman Lab with her own predictions. I highly recommend checking out both!Today, I don’t have predictions so much as stories on which I am keeping a close... Continue reading…

Following years of hype and persistent rumors, Apple announced the Vision Pro mixed reality headset earlier this year to frenzied reactions from fans and the media alike. It was always expected to be launched sometime next year, but a new report now claims that it could hit the market by February 2024.

Macs are wonderful for computing, communicating, and entertainment. For a while, the latter didn't include gaming, but these days, playing video games on Mac is easier than ever. There are so many ways to play different games on the latest Macs, with one popular method being through the Steam storefront. The platform has been around for over two decades and has become the primary place to buy and download games to play on your computer, whether you use Windows, Linux, or Mac. It’s easy to download Steam games on a Mac, and many are affordable and often on sale via promotions. So, which are the best games for Mac on Steam? Our team weighed in to provide their picks.

Image: The Verge Valve announced a new privacy feature for the Steam client today that lets players choose whether certain games they buy and own are visible to others on the platform. According to the update announcement, starting today, Steam beta testers will be able to mark games as private to keep them, well, private.You can mark a game private from three places: your shopping cart; your game list in a web browser; or from the Steam client itself. The new privacy filter is great if you’ve been holding off on buying OnlyCans: Thirst Date for the last two years or so or you really don’t want your friends to know that you’re deeply into oddly specific simulator games. Image: Valve Beta users can now make purchases private... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has proposed new changes to the regulations it currently enforces under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), seeking to further limit the collection and use of children’s data by tech companies, especially when used for targeted advertising. “Kids must be able to play and learn online without being endlessly tracked by companies looking to hoard and monetize their personal data,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in the official announcement. According to Khan, the proposed changes would prevent companies “from outsourcing their responsibilities to parents” when it comes to managing children’s data. According to the FTC, the agency received more than 175,000 public comments in 2019 when it... Continue reading…

Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images With the holidays now just around the corner, everyone is double-checking their lists and figuring out the fastest way to get those gifts in time. Thankfully, many retailers are offering generous shipping policies for their products, with some offering free two-day shipping or even same-day delivery if you pay extra. And just in case the gift you choose isn’t quite right, many retailers are also offering extended return policies so your giftee can get something more to their liking.For your convenience, we’ve collected the current return policies for several major retailers below, highlighting which will give you a little more time to place that order or start a return. Hopefully, knowing more about how much leeway you have will help... Continue reading…

If you have opted for an Apple Watch with both Wi-Fi and cellular connection, you can enjoy so many things on the Apple Watch without needing your phone. This ranges from simple tasks like making and answering calls to replying to messages, navigating to a destination, seeing social updates, and more. But first, you need to set up this connection to get started.