I gladly left the world of smart home apps and cloud service subscriptions behind. Instead, an ESP32-S3 running ESPHome quietly, locally, and reliably operates my smart home. So even when the internet connection is down, the dashboard doesn't break. It got me curious to know what my house actually does all day.

When it comes to coding and development, AI apps and cloud APIs are the default choice. Small local large language models (LLMs), or local models in general, are underestimated and dismissed as underpowered. AI coding assistants and cloud models are convenient and impressive, but there are also metered billing, external API dependencies, and privacy concerns.

Most people plug the Amazon Fire TV Stick into the TV to use the streaming apps and never look back. Usually, that plug-and-play works just fine, but did you know you can make the Fire TV Stick dance to your tunes for a smarter streaming experience?

The smartphone industry could experience a record-breaking decline in 2026 as a result of the RAM shortage stemming from memory-hungry AI giants. That's according to the latest report from the International Data Corporation (IDC), which forecasts smartphone shipments to plummet 12.9 percent this year, marking its "lowest annual shipment volume in more than a decade."At the same time, the average selling price for smartphones is set to hit new highs, with IDC predicting a 14 percent increase to a record $523. "While memory prices are projected to stabilize by mid-2027, they are unlikely to return to previous level," IDC senior researcher Na …Read the full story at The Verge.

My daily AI workflow and routine look like what most people end up with. An AI browser for deep research, and a chatbot to make sense of the information. In my case, Gemini and Perplexity fill those roles for the most part. It works, but it also involves a lot of context and tab switching just to get my hands on small snippets of information or check something quickly.

The Samsung Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus are "more of the same for more money," my colleague Allison Johnson reported this week. Now, Samsung is confirming what we previously only suspected: RAMageddon is partly to blame.Samsung's Won-Joon Choi, the COO of its mobile business, tells The Verge that the memory shortage alone made a "significant contribution" to the price. All the increasing material costs factored into the Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus costing $100 more than their predecessors this year, as did tariffs, but the memory was "significant," he tells me.The S26 does come with double the storage this year at its higher price, with 256GB ra …Read the full story at The Verge.

I used to obsess over thermal paste far more than I should have in my early years as a PC builder. Every time my CPU temperatures started creeping above 80C, my first instinct was to order a premium thermal paste like the Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut. In my head, better paste meant better heat transfer between the CPU's IHS and the cooler, which obviously meant lower temperatures. Considering high-end pastes cost only around $20, I didn't hesitate to convince myself it was money well spent.

It feels like everyone keeps telling me to build a NAS these days. After all, the benefits are significant — an always-on streaming server, a Google Photos replacement, and a local backup are a few of them. With a combination of cheap and capacious hard drives and a handful of fast SSDs, you can create a NAS that has the best of both worlds. However, if you're convinced enough to go buy an all-SSD NAS, you may want to hold off for a while. Since September last year, SSD prices have more than doubled due to the ongoing DRAM supply crunch. What's worse is that a reversal doesn't seem on the cards for two years, at least. You could consider pre-owned enterprise SSDs as a replacement while you wait for consumer SSD prices to cool down.

In January, Qualcomm hinted to The Verge that it might finally bring its powerful Arm-based Snapdragon processors to Windows gaming handhelds at the 2026 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco - just in time to challenge Nvidia's own first Arm gaming CPU and Intel's first dedicated handheld gaming chips.But plans have shifted, Qualcomm now tells me. It won't announce any updates to its Snapdragon G Series gaming chips there, nor offer the recently announced updates to the Snapdragon X line for journalists to try or benchmark. "Snapdragon X Series and Snapdragon G Series processors are pushing the PC, desktop, and handheld gaming dev …Read the full story at The Verge.

Home Assistant follows a monthly release cadence, where the first Wednesday of every month brings a new update and the last Wednesday gives us the beta for what's coming next. The March 2026 update (version 2026.3) is now in beta, and it's one of those releases where a single feature overshadows everything else: wake word detection on your phone, through the Home Assistant app, without needing to use Termux and a Wyoming Satellite.

The Federal Trade Commission is encouraging companies to adopt age verification technologies by announcing it will not enforce a children's online privacy law against certain websites that collect and use minors' personal data in order to verify their ages."Age verification technologies are some of the most child-protective technologies to emerge in decades," Christopher Mufarrige, the director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a press release. "Our statement incentivizes operators to use these innovative tools, empowering parents to protect their children online."There are certain criteria that websites need to meet in order …Read the full story at The Verge.

Magnet rings have changed my life. I grip and mount and satisfyingly snap awesome accessories on and off my phone all day. Even Samsung sells neat ones like these folding magnetic mirrors. But unlike Apple and Google, Samsung refuses to put the magnets inside the phone.Why? I asked Samsung's Won-Joon Choi, the executive in charge of both R&D and operations for Samsung's mobile business. He says the added thickness of magnets is a bad tradeoff to make, because you're just going to buy a case anyhow."About 80 or 90 percent of people are using a case, and cases with magnets are very popular these days," he tells me. @verge Double magne …Read the full story at The Verge.