New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing Valve for "illegally promoting gambling" through the loot box systems it has built for video games like Counter-Strike 2, Team Fortress 2, and Dota 2, according to a press release. The attorney general seeks to "permanently stop Valve from promoting gambling features in its games, disgorge all ill-gotten gains, and pay fines for violating New York's laws.""This loot box model that Valve has developed - charging an individual for a chance to win something of value based on luck alone - is quintessential gambling, prohibited under New York's Constitution and Penal Law," the lawsuit says. Valve …Read the full story at The Verge.

Samsung’s Galaxy S26 phones introduce a slate of new AI-powered features, including some new photography tools. | Image: Samsung Samsung has just announced its new Galaxy S26 lineup, which includes the S26, S26 Plus, and S26 Ultra. While they aren't radical departures from last year's models, they bring a handful of notable upgrades. All three run on Qualcomm's Galaxy-centric Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, which delivers improved performance and powers a slew of new AI-based features. This includes the ability to screen unknown calls and edit photos by typing what you want changed, along with an update to Google Gemini that can carry out certain tasks in supported third-party apps, like Uber and DoorDash, on your behalf.Starting at $899.99, the S26 is the smallest and mo …Read the full story at The Verge.

For over three decades now, the cadence of Nvidia GPU releases has been as reliable as clockwork: we have gotten a new generation of silicon that pushed the bar for PC gaming every year since the '90s. From the RIVA TNT days near the end of the last century to the blistering-fast Blackwell GPUs of 2025, there has always been something new to drool over. However, 2026 seems to be the point where the timelines diverge, and PC gamers collectively get stuck in the 'wrong' one.

President Donald Trump tried to quell Americans' concerns about rising electricity costs during his State of the Union speech - and now we're learning that the deals he promised could land next week. Trump claimed that he's negotiated a "rate payer protection pledge" with major tech companies, which would see them build out or pay for new electricity generation for their data centers. Leaders from Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, xAI, Oracle and OpenAI are expected to attend a March 4th event to sign the pledge, Fox News reported today. There are very few details at this point on what the pledge entails, nor how companies would be held ac …Read the full story at The Verge.

Who doesn't like launching a new game for the first time and seeing the highest graphics settings being selected automatically? It feels like a small victory and a validation of your expensive GPU, but sticking with Ultra settings can get taxing in more ways than one. AAA games, of late, have been ramping up graphical requirements at an accelerated rate, and modern GPUs haven't been keeping up. The maximum preset may be smooth sailing at lower resolutions, but as the pixel count goes up, and ray tracing enters the fray, things can change quickly. Most gamers know that Ultra settings aren't visually that different from High settings, but the peak and average FPS aren't the only casualties. From the responsiveness and VRAM requirements to operating temps, noise levels, and power consumption, everything is impacted.

One of the tools I’ve been relying on a lot these days is my local LLM. I use mine through LM Studio, which also lets you upload documents, and it uses RAG technology to enable interaction with your files. Naturally, I started incorporating more of my notes into my local LLM workflow for learning and studying, and it turned out to be more powerful than I expected.

We often talk about $200 smart locks and $500 mesh routers, but the real magic of a smart home happens in the sub-$15 bin. The rise of Matter over Thread and inexpensive ZigBee 3.0 chips in the past few years means you no longer have to choose between cheap and reliable; you can finally have both.

Discord has been my hub for gaming-related communication for quite some time, but it's also become useful in other contexts, like forming study groups or small group chats. With their recent decision to integrate age-verification requirements globally, I've been given a choice to begin considering other options as a serious replacement, or hand over my photo ID to continue using it as I did before, and that's if their machine-learning algorithm determines I'm not of age.

For more than six decades, the Peace Corps has represented itself as an agency focused on helping underserved communities around the globe. But a new initiative, called the "Tech Corps," threatens to unravel the agency's original mission by recruiting de facto Silicon Valley salespeople to promote the biggest names in AI - many of which have ties to President Donald Trump.Established by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, the Peace Corps recruited skilled Americans interested in assisting developing countries in industries like education, healthcare, and agriculture. As noted by the Brookings Institution, the agency was created to "win the …Read the full story at The Verge.

Earlier this year at CES 2026, we saw prototype Ultra96 cables everywhere, promising 12K resolution and 480Hz refresh rates. This truly was the next step in HDMI. But in reality, your current flagship GPU, even the RTX 1590, and your high-end OLED TV are likely still using HDMI 2.1B.

The Drop Mythic Journey keyboard from 2022. | Photo by Jon Porter / The Verge The Drop store, which was acquired by gaming gear giant Corsair in 2023, was a haven for mechanical keyboard enthusiasts and audiophiles to discover and buy hard-to-find gear - sometimes at surprisingly good prices. The company will cease sales after March 25th at 11:59PM PT, which is also the cut off to redeem Drop Rewards. After March 31st, the site will be accessible for a limited time to view order history, but all retail functionality will shift to Corsair.Corsair's marketing manager Andrew Williams confirmed to The Verge that several products featured on Drop will be integrated into Corsair's site for purchase. Select others will be …Read the full story at The Verge.

Back when ESXi used to dominate the home server ecosystem, Xen was the other key player for Linux-centric setups. But with the rise of KVM, the situation is a lot different from what it used to be. These days, most folks tend to prefer KVM-powered home labs, with Hyper-V and ESXi being the other popular options. Meanwhile, Xen is no longer as popular as it used to be – to the point where you might come across folks who consider it a dead hypervisor.