It's been a busy few months Amazon's Fire TV line. The e-commerce giant recently released the Fire TV Stick 4K Select and its new Vega OS operating system in an effort to curb the piracy that's rampant on the platform, alongside a refreshed Fire TV Stick line and a revamped mobile app.

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.

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.

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 launch of an AI image editing feature on xAI’s Grok has caused chaos on X after it was used to generate a flood of nonconsensual sexualized deepfakes. As Hayden Field wrote, “screenshots show Grok complying with requests to put real women in lingerie and make them spread their legs, and to put small children in bikinis.”UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the deepfakes “disgusting,” saying, “X need[s] to get their act together and get this material down. And we will take action on this because it’s simply not tolerable.” X has slightly restricted the feature by requiring a paid subscription to generate images by tagging Grok on X, but the AI image editor remains freely available otherwise. No, Grok hasn’t paywalled its deepfake image feature UK Prime Minister says ‘we will take action’ on Grok’s disgusting deepfakes Europe demands X retain documents amid Grok’s undressing spree. X’s deepfake machine is infuriating policymakers around the globe Grok is undressing children — can the law stop it? Grok is undressing anyone, including minors

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.

Whenever you build a new PC, you need to decide which components you'll carry over to the next build, and which ones stay behind. While power supplies, storage drives, CPU coolers, and cases can often be used for 2–3 successive builds, other parts often rot in your drawer for years. Hoarding old components for "just in case" DIY projects erodes their value until it's too late to sell them and get back some of your investment. Retaining older components is understandable if you're a tinkerer or regularly repurpose old hardware. However, if you know you'll just sit with your old PC parts for years, it's best to sell them while you still have takers.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.