My ongoing quest to turn my iPhone into one of my favorite consoles of all time has led me to a curiously named controller. GameSir's Pocket Taco is only barely pocketable, and distinctly lacking in taco fillings, but for $35, it's an excellent and easy way to turn your phone into a Game Boy-inspired handheld for playing retro games that don't require a pair of thumbsticks.Unlike the Abxylute M4 mobile controller that attaches to phones using magnets, or the Backbone Pro that sandwiches your device between a split gamepad, the Pocket Taco uses a hinged mechanism that, for lack of a better description, bites onto the bottom half of your sma …Read the full story at The Verge.

Phoebe Callas, 30, is not real, but she was an AI companion I went on a speed date with. Hopping over a pile of dirty snow, I arrived on a frigid February evening at a wine bar in midtown, a purple neon sign reading "EVA AI cafe." Inside, several people were seated at tables and booths, staring at phones. Servers milled about, placing mini potato croquettes and nonalcoholic spritzers on each table. Like many New York City bars, the majority of the patrons were on a date. Unlike every other bar, half of the dates weren't human.As I enter, I'm shown to a table tucked away in the corner with a phone stand, a phone preloaded with the EVA AI app, and a pair of wireless headphones. An EVA AI employee doesn't explain how things wor …Read the full story at The Verge.

The most striking thing about Ring's statement that it had parted ways with Flock Safety is what the home security company didn't say. There was no mention of the public backlash around ties to ICE, or any promise to address users' concerns about the company's relationships with law enforcement.In an increasingly authoritarian political climate, the threat of mass surveillance fueled by AI-powered cameras is what many people fear. Yet Ring's statement made no attempt to address this. Instead, the company claims it canceled Flock's integration with its Community Requests tool because it would "require significantly more time and resources t …Read the full story at The Verge.

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 116, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, happy National Ferris Wheel Day to all those who celebrate, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about Letterboxd and Mike Vrabel and AI influencers and daytime talk show economics, taking copious notes on Ezra Klein's terrific podcast on the state of the internet, buying just about every lamp in this excellent office tour, making Dot my main Mac calendar app, telling everyone I know how good Steal is, re-reading Tim Wu's excellent book The Master S …Read the full story at The Verge.

In an eyewitness video analyzed frame by frame by The New York Times, Alex Pretti raises one hand and holds a phone in the other. Federal agents tackle him, and one appears to find and remove a gun holstered on his hip. Then, an agent shoots - and a second follows. They appear to fire nine more shots as Pretti lies on the ground.The Trump administration has claimed Pretti was shot because of his legally carried gun - that the agents, later identified in records viewed by ProPublica as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer Raymundo Gutierrez, acted in self-defense. But the tool he was visibly holdin …Read the full story at The Verge.

While subscription-based AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude offer undeniable convenience, they come with invisible strings attached – rigid censorship, mandatory internet connectivity, and the reality that your data is fueling someone else’s machine.

There’s a playable henge of fiddles. | Image: Georgia Tech / The Verge Georgia Tech has announced the finalists in its annual Guthman Musical Instrument Competition. Every year, for the last 28 years, the school invites inventors from around the world to submit new instruments of their own design to compete for $10,000 in prizes. Past finalists have included founding members of Teenage Engineering, Artiphon, and Roli. And last year KOMA Elektronik won for their creation the Chromaplane. This year's finalists are an impressive collection of oddballs. There's Amphibian Modules, a modular synth that swaps patch cables for a dish of saltwater. The Gajveena, which combines a double bass with a traditional Indian …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you have ever hit “slice,” watched a forest of supports appear, and shrugged like it is just the price of doing business, you are not alone. Auto supports are convenient, and that convenience can quietly train you to waste filament, time, and patience. The frustrating part is that many of those supports don’t address a real problem. They are solving a default setting.

Buying a pre-assembled gaming desktop makes sense for some. It can save you time and money, too, compared to buying PC components piecemeal. If you’re weighing your options, consider some Presidents Day offers on iBuyPower’s pre-built desktops, including the $1,899 RDY Element 9 Pro R07 and the $2,099.99 Slate — both of which are stocked with high-end AMD processors and GPUs that can tear through most games at 1440p with fast frame rates. They also come with 32GB of DDR5 RAM and 2TB of storage, along with a mouse and keyboard.Digging into the Element 9 Pro R07, it features AMD’s Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor, a Radeon 9070 XT graphics card with 16GB of VRAM (roughly on-par with the Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti), 32GB of DDR6 6000MHz RAM, and a 2TB NVMe SSD built into the Asus B650EM Max Gaming motherboard. It ships in iBuyPower’s Element 9 Pro case, which has tempered glass on the front and one side, and features a 360mm RGB liquid cooling system. The system includes an 850W power supply, a wired mouse, and a keyboard, plus a three-year labor warranty and two years of parts coverage. The GPU will be shipped uninstalled, so that’s the only component you’ll need to insert with iBuyPower’s instructions. Normally $2,149, you can currently get it for $1,899 at iBuyPower when you use coupon code STARS at checkout.iBuyPower Element 9 Pro R07 gaming desktopWhere to Buy: $2349 $1899 at iBuyPower (with code STARS)The Slate has slightly different specs, some that are improved over the Element above and some that are a bit below what it provides. The biggest highlight is that the Slate features AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor, which edges out the 7800X3D in performance (although both are very capable CPUs). It also features an AMD Radeon 9070 XT graphics card, 32GB of DDR5 RAM at 5,200MHz instead of 6,000MHz, and a 2TB NVMe SSD. Like the R07, it includes a wired keyboard and mouse to get you started, along with a 750W power supply, a liquid cooling system, and a one-year warranty. It’s available for $2,099.99 at Best Buy.iBuyPower Slate gaming desktopWhere to Buy: $2099.99 at Best Buy

We’re huge fans here at XDA of repurposing older hardware for new tasks and keeping components in service for as long as possible. There’s something deeply satisfying about squeezing extra life out of a system that many people would write off as obsolete. I often find myself looking around my home lab and wider home ecosystem, asking a simple question: what’s the quickest and cheapest upgrade? More often than not, the answer is storage.

Monday, February 16th, is Presidents Day, and there are plenty of good deals happening on tech in the run-up to the holiday. Even if you don’t snag any huge upgrades, though, you likely already own multiple gadgets that you need to recharge each and every day. It would sure be nice to be able to charge two devices at once, and you can do just that with Anker’s braided, two-headed USB-C cable — which is available from Amazon or Anker in black or white for $15.99 ($4 off).Anker 2-in-1 USB C to USB C Cable 140W (six-foot)Where to Buy: $19.99 $15.99 at Amazon (black) $19.99 $15.99 at Amazon (white) $19.99 $15.99 at Anker (with code WS7DV2LASIFH)The six-foot cable’s usefulness speaks for itself, but I’ve been surprised by how much of a game-changer it’s been for me at home. My wife and I stow our laptops and iPad Air near an outlet, and it’s nice not to have to argue over who gets to charge their gadget first. We can plug the two ends of the cable into the devices we deem most important to charge throughout the day. It also supports 140W passthrough to a single device, if you have a wall adapter that can push that much juice, and automatically allocates power to the device that needs it most.

Colonialism is not merely about occupying nations. It's a project of mass violence, part of which involves total erasure and the widespread theft of some of the most culturally significant artifacts in the world. Even today, colonizing nations proudly display stolen artifacts, acting as peacocking robbers under the guise of tourism. See, for example, the British Museum's continual hold of the Egyptian Rosetta Stone, the so-called Benin Bronzes, and the Ethiopian Maqdala collection. Colonized nations have sought to reclaim their stolen culture.But what happens when kind requests and diplomatic maneuvers are not only insufficient but undeser …Read the full story at The Verge.