There's something about retro projects and Raspberry Pis that just go hand-in-hand with one another. One of the more prevalent use-cases I've seen involves turning the SBC into a retro gaming console, as it's small enough to fit in a tiny case yet powerful enough to emulate the classics.

A Falcon 9 launched 29 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit on December 1st, 2025. | Image: SpaceX SpaceX says it has lost control of a Starlink satellite that's now falling back to Earth after suffering an anomaly. The sudden loss of communications, drop in altitude, "venting of the propulsion tank," and "release of a small number of trackable low relative velocity objects," suggests the anomaly was some kind of explosion. SpaceX says it poses no threat to the crew of the ISS and will burn up in the atmosphere "within weeks."This mishap comes a week after SpaceX reported a near miss with a Chinese satellite. On December 17, Starlink experienced an anomaly on satellite 35956, resulting in loss of communications with the vehicle at 41 …Read the full story at The Verge.

TAE Technologies’ fusion research reactor ‘Norm.’ | Photo: TAE Technologies Trump Media - yup, the parent company of Truth Social - is the latest entrant in the near century-long race to develop a nuclear fusion power plant. It announced a merger agreement with fusion company TAE Technologies on Thursday and a bold plan to break ground on the first utility-scale fusion plant some time in 2026.TAE doesn't plan to start generating power from its first plant until 2031, which is still an incredibly ambitious timeline. There will likely be a myriad of financial and regulatory issues to contend with along the way, of course. But the scientific and engineering challenges to overcome, which we'll dive into here, are also …Read the full story at The Verge.

A few days ago, Mozilla appointed a brand-new CEO, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo. As part of his big introduction, Anthony made it clear that he was very interested in exploring AI solutions for Firefox, but also made sure to mention how he understands that not everyone is keen to use LLMs in their browser, and will thus keep the process as transparent and customizable as need be.

Most of us in the Northern Hemisphere spend the holidays indoors, but you can only watch so many TikToks about cute cats and cooking hacks before the need for something a little more substantive kicks in. Choosing the right game or movie to gift is tough, though, especially if you don't have an exact read on what your friends and family like. And if you choose poorly, remember that you might also be on the hook to play or watch it with them.That's why, this year, we made it our mission to find gifts that appeal to people with diverse interests across a wide price range. If you know a Wes Anderson devotee, Criterion's lavish box set is a gr …Read the full story at The Verge.

The Christmas holiday season is a great time for those who love video games. Exchanging gifts with good friends or finding new gifts placed under a Christmas tree always has new games in the mix. Those who grew up playing video games at a young age remember what it was like to wake up on Christmas morning and unwrap a new game that could be played throughout the morning.

Thermal paste has an interesting reputation in the PC hardware space. Its application method is something that was incredibly divisive in the 2010s, but more recently, it's becoming more of an afterthought. It’s treated as both a consumable and a performance upgrade, something that supposedly dries out, degrades quickly, and quietly sabotages your CPU temperatures if you don’t stay on top of it.

Vertical GPU mounts have become an extremely popular way to display your graphics card. Pair a vertical GPU mount with a glass side panel and your PC build becomes centered around your graphics card with it being front and center. With the soaring price of graphics cards, why wouldn't you want to show off these extremely expensive PC components? Some special edition graphics cards even feature aesthetic upgrades such as RGB or prints of your favorite anime characters.

As Netflix continues to build out its gaming strategy, which has recently included a new era of TV party games, it's going to let people build avatars - with the help of a new acquisition. The company is acquiring avatar company Ready Player Me and its "cross-game avatar tech" to let players "carry their identities and fandom across games," according to Ready Player Me CEO Timmu Tõke.Netflix "doesn't have an estimate of how long it will be until avatars launch" or which games will get them first, TechCrunch reports. Terms of the deal haven't been disclosed.Ready Player Me's team of about 20 people will join Netflix. The company's service …Read the full story at The Verge.

Another year has almost passed us by, and it's time to round up the worst PC hardware launches, trends, and realities that we witnessed in the last 12 months. The year was relatively thin in terms of new products since neither Intel nor AMD released any new desktop CPU lineups. Still, we had enough drama and mayhem to last us well into the next year (and maybe even beyond that). From motherboards killing CPUs and GPUs missing crucial internals to disappointing products and worrying trends, the year had it all. While we wait for the next year to bring new products (and problems), let's nurse old wounds as we look back at the year that was.

BMX’s SolidSafe 5K in that Apple orange color. | Image: BMX A new company called BMX, founded by accessory royalty, has emerged from Kickstarter to make its SolidSafe semi-solid state power banks available to the general public. Like the Kuxiu semi-solid state power banks I've recently reviewed, BMX's promise to have twice the longevity and be safer than traditional power banks, which have been the subject of recall after recall in 2025, attracting the attention of the FAA and airlines.BMX, which stands for Better Mobile Xperience, is lead by Daniel Chin, the man who founded Sanho, the company behind those Hyper-branded batteries and accessories long adored by Apple users. Targus bought Sanho in …Read the full story at The Verge.

Ever since I've started using Linux, I've wished to be able to switch to it full-time, at least on my Windows PCs. However, there have always been some barriers in my mind — after all, not every Windows app is available for Linux. And one of the last holdouts for a while was image editing, because there really isn't a good competitor to Photoshop out there, and certainly not a free one.