When you have a Windows 11 PC, keeping it in tip-top shape is important. Performance degradation is a real problem as you start to pile more and more data onto the computer, so there are steps you should take to ensure it keeps performing its best.

I have little doubt that Grand Theft Auto VI is going to be one of the biggest video game successes of all time when it launches less than a year from now. Despite that, I'm not very happy or optimistic with the current state of Rockstar Games. Any game development cycle that takes 10+ years is bound to be connected to its fair share of problems, and Rockstar has certainly succumbed to that.

I love instant cameras because of how they help me slow down and be creative without the distractions of a phone. Holding a real print also feels grounding in a screen-dominated age, which is why I think a lot of people these days are drawn to them — and why models with old-school vibes like the Polaroid Flip make such great gifts. It’s usually pricey, but today you can buy the Flip for $184.99 ($35 off) directly from Polaroid, which is its best price to date. Amazon is also selling the camera with two packs of film for $212.49 ($37 off), which marks a new low too.Polaroid FlipWhere to Buy: $219.99 $184.99 at Polaroid $219.99 $186.99 at Best Buy $249.99 $212.49 at Amazon (with 16 prints)Polaroid cameras offer the most charming, old-fashioned instant-film experience of any I’ve tested, and the Flip is no exception. It sports a classic, retro-inspired design with a flip-up lid and prints vintage-style square I-Type photos with Polaroid’s iconic white frame. Yet at the same time it’s got the perfect amount of subtle modern conveniences baked in, like Bluetooth, USB-C charging, and a beginner-friendly companion app that lets you adjust saturation and exposure.But what makes it really stand out is its picture quality, which outshines other Polaroid models in this price range. The Flip has the most powerful flash of any Polaroid camera, and paired with its unique sonar autofocus and four-lens hyperfocal system, it produces sharper, more consistently in-focus images than any model Polaroid offers at this price. You can manually tweak exposure, too, and the camera even sends warnings you when a shot is likely to be over- or underexposed. These are all features that go a long way toward reducing the number of wasted shots, which is helpful given I-Type film costs a whopping $18.99 for just eight prints.That said, the instant camera’s not for everyone. Fujifilm’s cheaper Instax Mini 12 develops prints much faster and looks more true-to-life while struggling less in low light. Still, the Flip’s dreamy, vintage aesthetic has its own appeal, especially if you prefer a more artistic, old-fashioned look.

Rohit Prasad, Amazon's SVP of AGI. This is an excerpt of Sources by Alex Heath, a newsletter about AI and the tech industry, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week.Amazon's AI chief has a message for the model benchmark obsessives: Stop looking at the leaderboards."I want real-world utility. None of these benchmarks are real," Rohit Prasad, Amazon's SVP of AGI, told me ahead of today's announcements at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas. "The only way to do real benchmarking is if everyone conforms to the same training data and the evals are completely held out. That's not what's happening. The evals are frankly getting noisy, and they're not showing the real power …Read the full story at The Verge.

We've long known that the ISP-provided router is usually junk, and you're better off buying your own if possible. It's not just that they're built to the lowest specifications, and often overheat due to the limited space for both modem and router functionality. Or that they're usually limited in how many devices you can connect to your home network at once, which wasn't a problem once upon a time, but when even your toothbrush comes with Wi-Fi, it's an issue.

If you’ve been short on storage on your PC, the latest Helldivers 2 beta update might help. The developers said Tuesday they’ve managed to cut down the PC file size for Helldivers 2 by about 85 percent, freeing up enough space for at least one or two more large games. In a post on the game’s Steam page, the developers explained that they’ve been working on slimming down the game while also adding new content:“The longer term goal has always been to bring the PC installation size much closer in line with the console versions. We are happy to report that, thanks to our partners at Nixxes, we have reached that goal much sooner than expected. By completely de-duplicating our data, we were able to reduce the PC installation size from ~154GB to ~23GB, for a total saving of ~131GB.”The reduction in file size should have a “minimal” impact on load times, “seconds at most,” the developers said. The original file size was significantly larger because the developers were duplicating game asset data to improve load times on mechanical HDDs, which they estimate about 11 percent of Helldivers 2 players are currently using. However, as the post on the update explains, the developers now know that load times in Helldivers 2 are mainly due to level generation, not loading game assets, so duplicating asset data was offering minimal benefit and impacting a small percentage of players (while making the file size larger for everyone). Anyone with the PC version of Helldivers 2 can opt in for the technical public beta on Steam to get the “slim” version of the game, which will eventually become the default version after the developers iron out any remaining issues that come up in beta testing.

Indiegogo is planning to launch a new “Express Crowdfunding” campaign format that lets creators ship things while the campaign is on-going instead of forcing creators to wait until the campaign is over.Indiegogo spokesperson Maciej Kuc tells The Verge that the change was spurred by Indiegogo’s recent move to the infrastructure from its new owner, board game crowdfunding company Gamefound:Switching to an entirely new technology is always a major challenge. The technology Indiegogo is currently working on was originally created for Gamefound – a slightly more “typical” crowdfunding platform. Its core assumption was that creators run a campaign to raise funds in order to bring a product to life. The technology expected that at least two weeks would pass between the crowdfunding campaign and the pledge manager phase – the moment when orders are finalized, new ones are added, and shipping addresses are collected.One prominent example of the current system’s delays, which was reported on by Android Authority, was Ayaneo’s campaign for its new Pocket AIR Mini retro gaming handheld. Ayaneo originally planned to begin shipping the handheld by the end of November, but because of “platform policy requirements,” the company says it can’t collect addresses for shipping until December 5th. Specifically, Ayaneo says it can’t request to move the campaign into the Pledge Manager phase, where shipping addresses are collected, until December 2nd, and that request takes approximately three days to be reviewed. Shipments will now begin “around” December 10th, according to Ayaneo.Indiegogo’s new Express Crowdfunding format “should be available” in early February, Kuc says. 

A Raspberry Pi 5 might look like a simple little board, but it can transform an entire home network into something faster, safer, and far easier to manage. I discovered this when I set out to consolidate my DNS, VPN, and monitoring tools into a single low-power machine. The surprising part was that it did not take expensive hardware or complicated systems to pull it off. What I ended up with was a reliable, centralized, and quiet automation hub that made my daily internet experience noticeably smoother.

“BG3 players exploit children,” reads a Google AI-generated headline. | Image: Google Did you know that BG3 players exploit children? Are you aware that Qi2 slows older Pixels? If we wrote those misleading headlines, readers would rip us a new one - but Google is experimentally beginning to replace the original headlines on stories it serves with AI nonsense like that.I read a lot of my bedtime news via Google Discover, aka "swipe right on your Samsung Galaxy or Google Pixel homescreen until you see a news feed appear," and that's where these new AI headlines are beginning to show up.They're not all bad. For example, "Origami model wins prize" and "Hyundai, Kia gain share" seem fine, even if not remotely as interesting as …Read the full story at The Verge.

I’ve spent much of this year testing out new productivity and note-taking tools. And I’d say about half of them lived up to my expectations, such as AFFiNE. But with so many notes apps on my computer, things can get cluttered and scrambled very fast. It’s just not realistic to hop from app to app; you end up losing track of where all your files live, and in my case, also confuse some apps with others. So having one basic little stack of tools that I can rely on became essential for maintaining a consistent note-taking system. That’s why I settled on this plain text stack.

Not everyone needs a $2,500 laptop to play games while on the go. Sometimes you just want to get in some gaming sessions, and just have fun. If that's you, then I've found the perfect laptop that can get this done.

Hello and welcome to Regulator, a newsletter for Verge subscribers that covers the political intrigue and power struggles between Big Tech and Big Government. Subscribe here for a weekly dispatch of tech oligarchs fighting regular oligarchs.Prior to last week, only highly specialized political insiders knew the extent of David Sacks' influence in the Trump White House: tech policy hawks, lobbyists, reporters, and right-wing operatives infuriated that the billionaire venture capitalist was turning Donald Trump toward artificial intelligence and against the interests of the MAGA base. A deeply reported New York Times article published on Sun …Read the full story at The Verge.