The curved Odyssey OLED G9 above the flat OLED G6 and G8. | Image: Samsung Samsung has announced a trio of new gaming monitors ahead of CES 2024. There’s the 49-inch curved ultra-wide Odyssey OLED G9 (G95SD), the 32-inch flat Odyssey OLED G8 (G80SD), and the 27-inch flat Odyssey OLED G6 (G60SD). The latter two are the first flat monitors Samsung has brought to its Odyssey lineup.Because I’m a simple man with simple wants, the Odyssey OLED G6 is the most interesting of these models to me on paper. That’s because of its frankly excessive 360Hz refresh rate, which it pairs with a 1440p resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio. Samsung Display announced the start of mass manufacturing of these super-fast OLED panels last month, and the likes of Dell and MSI also appear to be making use of them in their upcoming monitors. ... Continue reading…

Apple is famous for its "it just works" philosophy, with a wide suite of products that behave intuitively with each other and the way users expect. This execution largely depends on the company's tight ecosystem, in which iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma work as a single unit through system-level interoperability. As a result, once a customer gives in and adopts the company's hardware, software, and services, they will likely feel stuck with these devices.

Horrible. 0/10. The thing about CAPTCHAs is that they’re old enough to drink. The bots are better at them than I am. So why am I still being asked to fill them out?I am not talking about the inoffensive ones with the puzzle pieces. I am not talking, even, about matching or rotating shapes. I am talking, specifically, about the grid of insane photos — the kind of thing you may be familiar with from Google’s reCAPTCHA system. If you are looking for a measured take on why they exist or the efforts to build replacements, go read this. I am not feeling measured, although I will resentfully note that CAPTCHA exists in order to stop bots and does an okay job at it. You know how I am feeling? Furious.I was trying to buy tickets to a double-feature of Blade... Continue reading…

Apple sells a wide range of premium wireless earbuds, with the AirPods Pro 2 being the latest and, arguably, the greatest yet. And while it's easy to recommend AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max to Apple users, things get trickier in the Android department. Do these flagship buds work with non-Apple phones and devices? If so, how do you set them up exactly? Let's unpack!

In November 2023, details of a range of AMD Ryzen 8000G APUs leaked online. While we didn't have all the specifications available then, more information has surfaced showing us what these chips can do. Now, AMD Ryzen 5 8600G Hawk Point benchmarks have appeared online, and it sheds some light on how this new 8000 range will shape up.

A media server is a fantastic investment for your home theater setup. It not only provides video streaming services but also serves as a centralized hub for all your media files. Luckily, you don’t need to spend a fortune on a new media playback system. A cheap single-board computer like the Raspberry Pi is more than enough to run a lightweight media server OS. This guide will cover all the steps required to convert your spare Raspberry Pi into a full-fledged media server.

The foldable phone market is almost five years old now, and while we still can't call foldables mainstream devices, they are certainly not niche products anymore. Most of the initial concerns about foldable devices, such as durability and software, have been ironed out and are mostly non-factors — although the relatively high price is still an issue for many.

Image: Microsoft Microsoft wants 2024 to be “the year of the AI PC,” and it’s kicking things off with a significant change to the keyboard on new laptops and PCs. A new Copilot key will ship on a variety of new PCs and laptops from Microsoft’s partners, providing quick access to Microsoft’s AI-powered Windows Copilot experience straight from a keyboard button press.The Copilot key is the first big change to the Windows PC keyboard layout in nearly three decades. “Nearly 30 years ago, we introduced the Windows key to the PC keyboard that enabled people all over the world to interact with Windows,” says Yusuf Mehdi, executive vice president and consumer chief marketing officer at Microsoft. “We see this as another transformative moment in our journey with... Continue reading…

If you're using a great Linux distribution like Ubuntu, or even another Linux flavor like Linux Mint, you'll probably have to take a screenshot one time or another. Regardless of whether you want to share a part of a document or take a picture of your screen, there's more than one way you can take a screenshot on Linux, depending on which distribution you're using. The most common method is to use the Print Screen key, but you can also use the built-in Screenshot application or even a third-party tool like GIMP. More sophisticated users might also want to consider using the terminal.

The new Ultraloq Bolt Fingerprint Matter smart lock brings Matter-over-Thread support to the company’s line-up. | Image: U-Tec Smart lock manufacturer U-tec has announced the first deadbolt smart lock with a fingerprint reader to support Matter-over-Thread. A fingerprint reader is the fastest and easiest way to unlock a smart lock, and Matter-over-Thread connectivity should solve two of the biggest issues of smart locks: poor battery life and poor connectivity.With most connected locks on the market today, you get either a year of battery life but are stuck with the limited range and smart home compatibility of Bluetooth or just a few months of battery life but all the smart home connections you can eat over Wi-Fi. Thread, with its low-power mesh network, is specifically designed to help battery-operated devices last longer, and the new smart home standard... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge A new patent granted to Apple details how the company is thinking of using the Vision Pro’s external display to show what the wearer is looking at inside the device.The patent, which includes Jony Ive as an inventor, details ways an outside screen on a generic head-mounted display could be used to indicate what the wearer is seeing to people around them. While the patent isn’t specifically about the Vision Pro and its “EyeSight” display feature, it’s clear that some of the ideas here informed the features in the final headset.For example, Apple has talked publicly about how the outer screen on the Vision Pro can let outsiders see the eyes of the person wearing the headset or display a colorful pattern that indicates the wearer is fully... Continue reading…

Image: LG LG Display, a manufacturer that makes and sells displays to other companies, is showing off a new OLED display that could soon appear in high-end gaming monitors. At 27 inches, this 1440p panel pairs a speedy 0.03ms response time with a 480Hz refresh rate — making it the fastest in OLED displays so far.LG’s new screen is even better than the one in the 32-inch OLED “Dual-Hz” gaming monitor (32GS95UE) it announced in December. While this monitor similarly offers a refresh rate of up to 480Hz, you have to toggle the display down to 1080p to take advantage of that speed.It also puts LG Display on track to compete with the panel recently announced by Samsung’s display arm, which offers a slightly lower 360Hz refresh rate and a 1440p... Continue reading…