Local AI has advanced enough to almost feel like a life hack. You can brainstorm, analyze complex documents, generate and run complex code on your machine and derive insights that aid important decision-making, and none of it costs a dime if you've got the compute and the storage for it. It's no surprise that the local AI landscape is advancing fast, and we're almost spoilt for choice on capable open-weight models these days.

The consumer tech economy needs more DRAM manufacturers, and it needs them more urgently than perhaps at any point in its history. Anyone keeping track of the pricing trends will know that memory prices have climbed into the stratosphere on the back of AI infrastructure's relentless demand, and every consumer device that depends on RAM has traveled from inflated to unaffordable, quarter after quarter, with almost no relief in sight.

Most motherboards come with more than one M.2 slot these days, and in most builds, once the primary SSD is installed, the other slots sit empty until more storage drives are needed. Well, my current PC wasn't any different, and I had a spare slot that I rarely thought about.

I settled on AdGuard Home and encrypted DNS-over-HTTPS for my home network, thinking it was the final wall keeping my online activity from anyone watching. I even verified the queries were traveling encrypted rather than just trusting the settings panel. But that was only true during the DNS lookup. Out of curiosity, I wanted to see what happened after the DNS lookup. That's when I realized encrypted DNS solves a different problem than I thought.

Oli Freke is a musician and journalist whose works have appeared in Sound on Sound, The Quietus, and Mixmag. This has included using math to explore the melodic potential of the Western 12-tone scale and deep dives on effects plug-ins. He's even written a book tracing the evolution of the synthesizer from 1963 through 1995, charting the change from analog to digital and back. His new project is Beat Gems, a coffee-table visual history of drum machines from publisher Bjooks. Like other Bjooks titles, Beat Gems is loaded with gorgeous photos, fascinating historical tidbits, and practical advice for making the most of your gear, whether it's …Read the full story at The Verge.

Google Antigravity is one of the best tools I have used for building an app from scratch. You can give it a reasonably detailed prompt, leave it alone for a while, and return to find that most of the initial work has already been handled. Its agents can plan the build, divide the work among themselves, and verify whether everything works. For getting an idea to a functional first version, it is frighteningly good.

Teenage Engineering’s OP-XY has a huge number of functions. | Photo by Terrence O’Brien / The Verge With elements from synthesizers, loopers, and effects pedals, Teenage Engineering’s devices lie somewhere between musical instrument and modern art. These grooveboxes, as they’re often called, are capable of helping you produce songs in real time from a single unit, with an eye-catching design language. A wide swath of the brand’s offerings are 30 percent off at Guitar Center when you use code TE30, at Amazon when you click the on-page coupon for whichever product you’re interested in, and B&H Photo (discount applied automatically at checkout). The terms for the Amazon coupon claim it will run through August 8th, 2026, while Guitar Center deal is listed as “limited time.”The OP-XY is one of the flagship units, which my colleague Terrence O’Brien described as a “greatest hits tour for Teenage Engineering.” Normally $2,299, the discount code brings the price down to a more palatable $1,609.30, which is a lot cheaper, but still pretty pricey for an aspiring musician. That said, it’s loaded with features for both production and live performance, and has a premium, durable build quality that reflects its price point. It’s currently sold out at Amazon, but in stock and discounted at Guitar Center and B&H Photo. Read our Teenage Engineering OP-XY review. Teenage Engineering OP-XYWhere to Buy: $2299 $1609.3 at B&H Photo $2299 $1609.3 at Guitar CenterThe model I’m most tempted by is the EP-40 Riddim, a compact sampler with a library of over 400 built-in synth settings and effects particularly well-suited for producing dub and reggae music, plus 128MB of storage for your own loops and recorded sounds. It’s a bit less intimidating for a beginner than the OP-XY, both in terms of price point and features, and its tighter genre focus may help concentrate your efforts and onboarding. Normally $329, the EP-40 is $230.30 at Amazon, Guitar Center, and B&H Photo during the promotion.Teenage Engineering EP-40 RiddimWhere to Buy: $329 $230.3 at Amazon $329 $230.3 at Guitar Center

It's 2026, so it goes without saying that the majority of my life is online. Nearly all of my correspondence, whether it be email or social media, my day-to-day work, my calendar — all of it is digital. But given my career, what constitutes my "digital life" goes beyond just the basics. I rely on a suite of free software to keep everything ticking away without a hitch. Here's what I use.

Google's Vice President of Devices and Services, Shakil Barkat, all but confirmed in an interview with 9to5 Google that its next Pixel phone would cost more than the Pixel 10. Considering the ongoing RAM supply issues due to the explosion of AI data centers, the rumored price hike is not a complete surprise. Companies from Apple to Nintendo, Microsoft to Roku, have all raised their prices in response to the soaring cost of memory. Barkat said that Google had "shielded our consumers from supply fluctuations for as long as possible," but that the "economics have fundamentally shifted and we're not immune to that." He went on to tell 9to5 tha …Read the full story at The Verge.

It has been quite a while since I upgraded my main PC, and at the heart of the current setup is a capable Ryzen 7 processor that's based on the AMD Zen 4 architecture. I planned to purchase a GPU and complete the gaming computer this year, but that plan changed.

I have been using Android Auto for more than a year, so I thought I already knew every useful setting and shortcut it had to offer. I was wrong. A few of its most helpful features were buried inside menus I had barely explored, while others were hiding in plain sight on the dashboard.

There's no doubt that Fire TV Sticks are affordable — even the high-end models. That's great because it lets users stream content by simply plugging one into any TV and using it in unique ways wherever they go. However, there is one big annoyance that I consider the real cost of ownership of a Fire TV Stick — the home screen.