I recently purchased a 3D printer, and I've been using it to print all kinds of things relating to my smart home and my workspace. From enclosures for my smart home projects to storage baskets and even small trinkets I can give to friends and family, I've been amazed at the utility I've already derived from it in such a short space of time. Smart home projects are the biggest reason I purchased it, though, as I wanted to build enclosures for the devices that I actively use on a day-to-day basis. After all, there's nothing really "seamless" about a bare ESP32 board and some wires.

Google rolled out emoji reactions to personal Gmail accounts a little over two years ago, and I completely forgot about it until now - probably because the option is hidden within a small, smiley face icon beside the Forward button. But now, Google is bringing emoji reactions to all Workspace users by default on February 9th, reminding me of their existence (and all the times I could've replied with a "thumbs-up" instead of a full-blown message).Selecting the inconspicuous smiley face button displays a range of emoji you can use in place of a written response. If your recipient is another Gmail user, they'll see your reaction at the bottom …Read the full story at The Verge.

The "Lego Ruler". | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge We just gave the Lego Smart Brick our Best In Show award at CES 2026, and I wanted to stop by The Lego Group's suite to get a last glimpse before I left Las Vegas.To my surprise, the company showed off one more feature I didn't see during my first demo, perhaps the most impressive one should these bricks make their way to adult builders: precise distance measurement.Lego Group design manager Maarten Simons whipped out a "Lego ruler" made of standard Lego bricks divided into segments that were each 10 Lego studs, or roughly 8cm (3.15 inches) long. He attached a Smart Brick to one end of the ruler, and dragged a second Smart Brick along it …Read the full story at The Verge.

The tech moguls in happier times (at Trump’s inauguration.) Since X's users started using Grok to undress women and children using deepfake images, I have been waiting for what I assumed would be inevitable: X getting booted from Apple's and Google's app stores. The fact that it hasn't happened yet tells me something serious about Silicon Valley's leadership: Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai are spineless cowards who are terrified of Elon Musk.Here's the relevant Apple App Store developer guideline: "Apps should not include content that is offensive, insensitive, upsetting, intended to disgust, in exceptionally poor taste, or just plain creepy." Huh! How about that. They sold their principles for power …Read the full story at The Verge.

Things have been looking good for fans of the Arm architecture. Sure, the developments may not be coming in thick and fast, but they are making tangible progress, and we're finally seeing Arm devices get the love and respect they deserve. We've seen operating system developers making Arm versions of their software, and third-party companies either making an Arm-native version of their apps or using a compatibility layer to get things working.

Buddyo is a smart base designed to add AI to figurines like Funko Pops using NFC tags. AI toys, companions, and robots have been everywhere at CES this year, but among the horde of waddling plushies and light-up emoji eyes, two stood out to me. HeyMates and Buddyo are each betting that the collectible figurine boom is going to come back with an AI-powered vengeance, letting us chat to sports stars and superheroes from our desks.The core concept to both is this: Take a cutesy figurine and stick it onto a smart base with a speaker, microphone, and maybe a flashing ring of light or two. Then use an accompanying app to power a basic LLM chatbot based on the figurine, so you can talk to Albert Einstein about relativity, or Darth …Read the full story at The Verge.

I grew up using a Windows PC, became intimately familiar with macOS throughout my adolescence, and discovered Linux in my post-secondary education. Being able to use all 3 is a nice luxury, and as a result, switching operating systems is something I've grown accustomed to. I recently made the jump to using Linux full-time on my main workstation, and while it's been mostly smooth sailing, I recently rediscovered my MacBook Air as a medium to get out of the house to get some work done. Using it has made me realize that, in all honesty, (almost) everything I want out of an OS is present on macOS.

The splitR Auracast transceiver can attach to an iPhone’s MagSafe spot. One of the issues holding Auracast back from wider mainstream use is some companies' lack of support for the Bluetooth technology - Apple being a prime example. With iOS having 58 percent of the market share in North America and nearly 28 percent worldwide, a decision by Apple to enable native Auracast support would potentially put millions of Auracast devices into the world with a firmware update. As of yet, Apple has made no comment on Auracast, and I'm not hopeful that we'll get one anytime soon.But the audio technology company Atitan thinks it has the solution. It's developing a small disc-shaped transceiver - the splitR - that can att …Read the full story at The Verge.

X is suing music publishers and their trade group, the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA), accusing them of attempted coercion in their ongoing battle over licensing, as reported earlier by The Hollywood Reporter. The Elon Musk-owned platform accuses music publishers of colluding with the NMPA to "coerce X into taking licenses to musical works from the industry as a whole, denying X the benefit of competition between music publishers." In the antitrust lawsuit filed on Friday, X claims that the NMPA and music publishers "weaponized" the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) with requests to take down allegedly infringing conte …Read the full story at The Verge.

On Thursday evening in Manhattan's Financial District, hundreds of protesters braved the cold to protest US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), after an agent fatally shot a woman at close range on Wednesday.Earlier that day, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's visit to One World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan sparked protests outside the building. The day before, Noem had described Good's actions as an "act of domestic terrorism." The public video footage, in which Good appears to wave agents past her car and then begin to drive away, paints a starkly different picture.The moment when an ICE agent shot 37-yea …Read the full story at The Verge.

I've often thought about buying a mobile game controller to play emulated retro games on the go on my iPhone 17 Pro, but I've never actually picked one up because they're often bulky and cumbersome. For this type of gamepad to make sense, I need to be able to comfortably slide it in my pocket or the small bag that I often have on me.

Media streaming tools like Plex and Jellyfin are quite useful when you want a neat interface to manage and play the movies and TV shows you’ve collected over the years. With containers being universally compatible with all permutations and combinations of hardware, you can turn any ol’ system into a solid media-serving hub. That said, you wouldn’t want to go for certain devices if you’ve got a massive army of archived media.