Some pieces in the Yxstaby collection are more obviously Xbox-inspired than others. | Image: Ikea Ikea has teamed up with Microsoft to launch a new assortment of gaming-inspired furniture and home accessories, coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the first Xbox console. The nine-piece Yxstaby collection (good luck pronouncing that) includes a TV stand, laptop stand, side table, lounge chair, and multi-functional toolbox, with standout products like a stool, cushion, decorative platter, and mirrored display box being specifically designed around recognizable Xbox controller motifs.The Yxstaby range makes it easier to "bring play into a room and tuck everything away afterwards," according to Ikea's press release, with each piece creat …Read the full story at The Verge.

The Amazon Fire TV Stick HD (2nd Gen) streaming stick is a reliable, compact, and affordable way to add streaming to your display. The retail price is $40, but you can get it 55% off on Amazon, bringing it down to $18. It's a cheap way to upgrade a TV or even a monitor.

The Garmin Fenix 9. | Image: Garmin Garmin just took the wraps off its new line of rugged Fenix 9 smartwatches, with the base model featuring an OLED display with a brightness of up to 3,000 nits, making it twice as bright as its predecessor. Starting at $999.99 for the 43mm case option, the Fenix 9 has 50 percent more RAM and an upgraded map engine, allowing for faster panning.It also comes with a scratch-resistant sapphire lens, an increased 64GB of storage, and a bunch of new software-based features, like Garmin Epic. This feature groups all the workouts you've done over several days, weeks, or months to create an "Epic" that shows your health and performance data within …Read the full story at The Verge.

It’s 2026, and any modern AI can generate code in seconds, but creating a production-ready complex application requires a different skill set. Instead of relying on benchmark numbers, I gave Claude Opus 5, GPT-5.6, and Grok 4.6 the exact same complex web development project from scratch.

The PlayStation 3 is a special console for me, and I have a lot of memories of spending long nights playing through the Uncharted series and Gran Turismo. Lately, I've been wanting to relive some of that nostalgia. Yes, I have a PlayStation 3 lying around somewhere, and yes, I have a computer fully capable of emulating the games as well, but most of my gaming these days is on the go.

Bill Gates, chair of the Gates Foundation, speaks during a 2024 conference. | Bloomberg via Getty Images Bill Gates has been reflecting a lot on AI lately, and the process has triggered a stark awakening. Once a staunch AI optimist, the Microsoft cofounder is now deeply pessimistic about what AI means for our collective future. Having been conspicuously quiet on AI issues recently, Gates is back with a nearly 6,000-word essay seeking to reclaim a central role in shaping the technology globally. Titled "The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical," Gates warns the world is not remotely ready for what is coming. Worse still, he notes, "we are not preparing for it." Gates attempts to chart a path forward, but the essay l …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you ever beat yourself up after forgetting something at home, you can take solace in the fact that you didn't forget to actually upload a game when releasing a title on Steam. After Ubisoft revealed a remake for the classic title Heroes of Might and Magic III, the company released the original version on Valve's platform. Unfortunately, anyone buying the game was given an executable that led to a Command Prompt message and nothing else.

In the span of a few hours on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would be implementing a fee of over $103,000 on H-1B visas, and news broke that the State Department plans on revoking the visas of up to 200,000 asylum seekers - which, according to The Associated Press, would be the largest mass visa revocation in US history. More than a year into President Donald Trump's second term, it's become clear that the only way Trump can get the deportation numbers he wants is by stripping legal immigrants of status. Beyond having ICE arrest, detain, and deport immigrants, the administration is pressuring noncitizens to " …Read the full story at The Verge.

Windows 11 is known for many things. It's still the standard issue for most corporate computing systems, the most familiar OS for many users, and often the first choice for anyone building or buying a new PC. However, it's also established its reputation for a growing number of unwanted features that hog system resources.

I’ve tried plenty of note-taking apps over the years, and I usually gravitated toward the ones with the longest feature lists. The more they could do, the more useful I assumed they would be. But that also meant spending more time figuring out how I wanted to use them.

On paper, e-ink displays are amazing for hanging up on a wall. They have a paper-like texture to them that lets them sit alongside posters and photos on your wall without looking too tacky. But doing so creates a problem: how do you keep it powered without having cables dangling everywhere? Well, one tinkerer got to work squeezing the Pimoroni Inky Impression driver into a Pi Pico Plus 2 W so they could run it off battery, and the source code is available for all to grab.

The memory economy has not been kind to PC builders over the past year. Those hit hardest by the DRAM crisis include the users who have been eyeing a platform jump from DDR4 to DDR5 systems, and of course, the ones who were looking to assemble a build from scratch.