There’s some real gems in there. | Photo: Terrence O’Brien / The Verge According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), CD sales exploded in the first half of 2026. A new report from the organization says 17.5 million CDs were sold in the first six months of the year, up from just 12 million during the same period in 2025. That's a jump of 45.7 percent, and 58.6 percent in dollars, which reached $171.1 million. What makes this all the more shocking is that CD sales actually shrank 22 percent from 2024 to 2025. The RIAA isn't the only one to notice the boom in CD sales. In July, research firm Luminate released a report saying that 16.3 million units were sold in the first half of 2026. It sug …Read the full story at The Verge.

I think it's safe to say that most of us know by now that chatbots aren't infallible. They can hallucinate and make mistakes, in fact, most of them even give you that very disclaimer at the bottom of the chat bar. All three of the big players have led me astray this way; they've confidently repeated outdated tool names, misremembered release dates, and hallucinated features that don't exist.

Multicolor 3D printing produces waste, and I accepted that quickly after I started using an AMS. Every filament swap pushes some plastic somewhere, and purge towers are part of the deal if I want clean transitions instead of muddy colors. What took me much longer to notice was how much filament I was wasting simply because I never questioned what the slicer was asking for. Once I started cutting those purge volumes instead of treating the defaults as untouchable, I realized I’d been throwing away enough extra plastic to put my projected annual savings into the hundreds of dollars.

Sony very recently (and controversially) announced that physical disc production will end in 2028, with future consoles from the company moving toward a digital-only model. As absurd as this decision is, it's made worse by the fact that there are currently 121 countries where PlayStation Network accounts aren't officially available, representing roughly 62% of the world.

Scripting has always been the backbone of tweaking or forcing Windows to work in a certain way. There are automation scripts, debloating scripts, app migration scripts, and many more. I've used quite a few to trim clutter on my PC or automate actions like backing up parts of a directory to an external storage device. Previously, I used Win11Debloat to wipe out all the unnecessary clutter that Microsoft loves to ship with Windows.

Around the world in 80 WAVs. | Screenshot: Terrence O’Brien / The Verge I love field recordings. I love making them. I love them when they're incorporated into my ambient music. They're great background noise for working or sleeping. But they're also great for active listening, focusing in on the fine nuances of burbling brooks or urban chaos. Earth Garden gives you a globe to explore with real field recordings taken from various locations. Earth Garden is inspired by Radio Garden (which you should also check out) except, instead of exploring the world via radio, it's environmental sounds. There are waves lapping at the shores of remote islands in the Atlantic, a chorus of crickets in Tanzania, and rainfall on …Read the full story at The Verge.

Smart TVs are a blessing and a curse. They have a ton of built-in features that let you do things you couldn't before, but the software (and hardware) can get slow quickly, and the ecosystem of apps is somewhat limited in the official app stores. For example, only the official Jellyfin client is available in the LG Content Store.

The Consumer Electronics Show has, historically, been a home to the technology that I like but would probably never buy. Ridiculously fast SSDs, enormous monitors with unrealistic refresh rates, laptops that rival my 4070 Ti Super-equipped workstation, among other massively impressive things, and this year's CES was no different.

We’re finally at a stage where you can reliably use AI transcription tools and get a usable transcript, but the result is that we now have far too many of them. With so many of them around, you’re also more likely to hand your data over to a company without knowing how it will use it. I personally do not trust emerging AI startups like Otter and Fireflies to keep my data safe, especially when these meetings include not just my data, but my clients’ as well.

I ran Nginx Proxy Manager for months and never once read my own reverse proxy config, because I couldn't. It lived in a SQLite database behind a login page, and the only way to see what my Proxmox mini PC was routing was to click through every proxy host in turn. My Home Assistant automations live in YAML I can diff. The thing in front of them was a black box.

When iOS 27 lands later this month, it will have a feature called iPhone Handoff that lets you switch between two phones using the same number. It was briefly mentioned during the WWDC keynote back in June, but there were no details at the time. Now there's a demo clip showing how to set up the feature running in Xcode 27's Device Hub. It lets you pair two iPhones, using one as your main device and the other as its "companion." Launching the feature now makes sense with the expected launch of the foldable iPhone Ultra right around the corner. People might not always want to take a chunky and extremely expensive device out with them. So Han …Read the full story at The Verge.

Andy Holloway cohosts the Fantasy Footballers podcast with his friends Jason Moore and Mike Wright. The show is one of the premier fantasy sports podcasts, netting over 2 million monthly listeners and numerous awards, including Best Sports Podcast from iHeartRadio and People's Choice at the Podcast Awards four years in a row.Holloway's goal has always been about bringing fantasy football to a wider audience, not just hardcore nerds. With the NFL season starting next week and fantasy drafts in full swing, now seemed like a great time to see how Holloway stays focused during what is probably the busiest part of the year for a serious fantasy …Read the full story at The Verge.