Waymo announced a $16 billion investment round aimed at bringing its robotaxi business to more US cities, as well as some overseas markets. The funding round was led by Dragoneer Investment Group, a "crossover" firm known for investing in late-stage tech companies before they go public. Waymo's co-CEOs said in a blog post they would use some of the money to buy more vehicles to grow its fleets size, a crucial step as it seeks to launch in at least 20 new cities in 2026. The company currently operates more than 2,500 robotaxis in six US cities. The new funding values Waymo at $126 billion. Waymo's latest funding round attracted several ne …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you ask a Windows power-user which Notepad replacement they use, there's a good chance they'll bring up Notepad++. It has been a staple app for years now and has solidified itself as a trustworthy alternative to Microsoft's own software.

For the past year and a half, I've been doing most of the legwork for my partner after having built her a gaming PC of her own. A lot of the time, introducing her to games she should've grown up playing includes getting them to run and smoothing over the rough edges. The process has only made one thing clearer to me: PC gaming and console gaming are fundamentally different worlds.

Raspberry Pi devices get their fair share of criticism, but one of their biggest strengths is that they cost only a fraction of a conventional server or a desktop. The pricing is one of the main reasons why many users who don't need heavy workloads prefer building a Pi cluster to buying conventional hardware.

Before you assume I've finally snapped based on the headline, hear me out. At some point, while trapped in a Wi-Fi dead-zone, I had what can only be described as a questionable idea to "boost" my router's signal, inspired by a rather convincing YouTube short that I looked up minutes later.

When you picture a virtual reality headset user, you're probably not picturing someone like Sherry Dickson. At 69, the snowy-haired, retired elementary school teacher hops into her Meta Quest headset five days a week, for roughly 60 to 90 minutes at a time. She's not attending live concerts or watching immersive films. Dickson, a fitness buff since Jane Fonda workout videos in the '80s, largely uses her headset for one reason - to play Supernatural, a VR fitness game with a huge, loyal fan base and a tight-knit community. Supernatural isn't dead, but it might as well be. A few weeks ago, Meta shut down three VR studios as part of broader l …Read the full story at The Verge.

I've been covering the technology industry for various websites for over 16 years now, and in that time, I've amassed a sprawling collection of countless cables. Whether it's HDMI cords, Lightning cables, USB-C cables, or proprietary chargers for gadgets that I'm not sure I even have anymore (you can never get rid of those — just in case), I'm drowning in cords. Then there's my crowded desk setup that includes a MacBook Pro, a monitor, a PlayStation 5, an Xbox Series X, a Mac mini, and a gaming PC, just to name some of the devices.

Since Windows 11's release back in 2021, Microsoft has committed to an annual feature update cadence, meaning PCs running Windows 11 get one "big" feature update every year, usually around late September to mid-October. These updates have been labeled as version 22H2, 23H2, and so on, due to them releasing in the second half of the year.

While most motherboards have pre-installed M.2 heatsinks these days, users without one should not rush to buy one. SSD heatsinks weren't always as common as they are today. People were using their Gen3 and Gen4 NVMe drives without heatsinks for years before marketing and motherboard designs changed everyone's minds. Conventional wisdom about SSD heatsinks still revolves around thermal throttling instead of drive longevity, overblowing a problem most users don't have. Unless you have a PCIe 5.0 SSD in your system running especially hot, you will be just fine without a heatsink. All you need is a PC with decent airflow and a drive that's not being choked by adjacent components.

I didn't need a smarter task manager. I needed one that could keep up with how my brain actually sounds when it's overwhelmed. That's the thought I had standing in my kitchen at 7:30 AM, mentally juggling a client deadline, a dentist appointment I kept forgetting to book, and the growing suspicion that I'd promised my roommates I'd pick up groceries. Three thoughts, all urgent, all evaporating faster than I could unlock my phone and open Todoist to type them out.

I've tried my fair share of note-taking and planning tools, but I tend to lean on a whiteboard for brainstorming. Unfortunately, whiteboards take up space. Space which I don't have in my study. But lately, I've been looking for solutions to build a digital whiteboard. Yes, I'm aware of Excalidraw integrations for Obsidian. However, I wanted something simpler and standalone since most of my whiteboarding is ephemeral and not something I need to hold on to for the long term.

I don't think I've ever met someone who got into making a home server and started out with a full-tower ATX case or a NAS enclosure. It always begins with repurposed desktops, old laptops about to be taken to pasture, or leftover office machines. However, what almost always happens is that those home servers begin accumulating responsibility. One drive becomes three, and three becomes six. Suddenly, this box in the corner isn't just the "Plex box" anymore, and it begins holding backups, personal data, family photos, documents, and things you'd genuinely be upset if you lost.