ICE agents hide behind masks while skulking through the halls of immigration court | Image: Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images According to the New York Times, federal agents have been told that the FBI will no longer be investigating confrontations involving ICE agents. The DHS and DOJ denied the change in policy to The Times. The reported change in guidance follows renewed scrutiny of violence by ICE agents who have killed two people in the last two weeks. The shootings in Maine and Texas were just the latest civilian deaths at the hands of ICE agents, who have attempted to intimidate witnesses following its recent spate of high-profile killings. The new guidance would end FBI investigations of assaults against DHS agents. The government has aggressively pursu …Read the full story at The Verge.

It comes with a solar panel so you don’t need to worry about charging as much during the summer. | Image: Netvue Birdfy has kicked off a midyear sale, taking up to 40 percent off a range of its smart bird feeders. One of the best deals is on Netvue’s Birdfy Feeder AI-Powered Smart Bird Feeder with Camera, which has dropped to $149.99 at Birdfy and is its second-best price to date. The bundle, which includes a solar panel and lifetime AI bird identification at no extra cost, comes with a $259.99 list price, saving you $110.Birdfy FeederWhere to Buy: $259.99 $149.99 at Birdfy (solar-powered)The feeder features a wide-angle 1080p camera with color night vision, allowing you to watch birds in clear detail day or night. It also sends real-time motion alerts to the Birdfy app, where you can watch the livefeed or short, recorded videos, as well as learn more about the birds that visit your feeder. The included AI can identify more than 6,000 bird species without requiring a subscription, and can also recognize squirrels and other animals, helping you tell what triggered an alert.The IP65-rated feeder features a large 1.5-liter seed container, so you won’t have to refill it as often. Meanwhile, the included solar panel means you likely won’t have to manually recharge the battery, so long as it receives enough sunlight. You also get local and cloud video storage options, with the company offering three months of free cloud storage.

Android Auto is supposed to make driving simpler, but its default dashboard never quite worked for me. The apps I used most were not always easy to reach, the layout felt cluttered, and I often tapped around more than I wanted while driving.

NotebookLM is the one AI tool that's been a consistent part of my stack for a long, long time. And unlike the classic AI chatbot experience most people picture, NotebookLM works differently enough that your prompting skills come into play in their own particular way. After tinkering with it for a long time (and especially in recent days, as the tool has quietly started behaving a little differently), I landed on one sentence I now add to the end of my NotebookLM prompts.

Social media has gotten increasingly annoying over the years. With AI in the picture now, it's even worse. My social feeds are filled with slop I never really asked for. My Instagram is filled with AI fruits having breakups, TikTok is filled with AI voices reading Reddit threads over Subway Surfers, and X is filled with all of it at once. With platforms like Instagram and TikTok, I can easily scroll to the next since the content that largely frustrates me is in video form, which takes a second to identify and a flick to escape. The cost of a bad recommendation is essentially about half a second.

1010Benja won’t apologize for using AI. | Image: 1010Benja / Instagram I would never go so far as to say there's no place for AI in music (I'm a fan of Holly Herndon, after all). But I generally find music made with generative AI to be offensively boring, especially the outputs of Suno. So I'm having a bit of a tough time processing the fact that I actually quite enjoy 1010Benja's "Semiramis' Dream."Benja has been unapologetic about his use of generative AI on his latest EP, Time Has Nothing To Do With What You Choose… The other three tracks can't quite hold a candle to what you find on 2024's Ten Total. But the opener "Semiramis' Dream" is infectious. It explodes out of the speakers with a jungle beat and Be …Read the full story at The Verge.

Google Keep worked as my journal app for the longest time. Whenever I wanted to capture a thought, reflect on my day, or write down something personal, I'd open Keep because it was already part of my daily workflow. It worked, but journaling always felt like an afterthought instead of a habit.

Your old PC or phone can sometimes feel like a burden lying around at home, but there are great ways to put it to good use. Whether it's an impromptu home lab or a simple dashboard for your smart home, there's quite a bit you can do with it. And that includes gaming, even if modern games are too resource-intensive to handle.

A modern tribute to electric chord organs which were basically giant harmonicas connected to a fan. | Photo: Terrence O’Brien / The Verge In 2017, I bought an old Magnus chord organ off Craigslist for $10. It's one of my favorite music gear purchases. Electric chord organs let you play full chords with just a press of a button, making them perfect for aspiring singer-songwriters or fooling around at home. But chord organs largely fell out of favor in the '80s, as digital keyboards like those from Casio grew in popularity.The Telepathic Instruments Orchid attempts to recapture some of that simple parlor instrument magic. Just like those vintage electric chord organs, the Orchid allows you to play rich chord progressions without having to master a ton of theory or complex fing …Read the full story at The Verge.

Andrew and Tristan Tate talk to the media on March 23, 2025 in Romania. | Image: Andrei Pungovschi/Getty Images The manosphere influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate were arrested Saturday in Miami by US Marshals in relation to new rape and sex trafficking charges in England. According to the Associated Press, British authorities are seeking the brothers' extradition. The new charges facing Andrew Tate include seven counts of rape, three of sex trafficking, three counts of assault, and "19 charges relating to sexual images of children and extreme 'pornography,'" according to the New York Times. Tristan Tate faces two new charges of rape, one of sexual assault, and three of sex trafficking. This is in addition to the 21 charges already announced in 2025 …Read the full story at The Verge.

I’m partial to that avocado green one. | Image: Reto Project Following the success of its $99 Kodak-branded Snapic A1, Reto Project is releasing the Kodak EC35, an even more affordable 35mm film camera for just $34.99. The EC35 certainly isn't fancy. Its 25mm acrylic lens with a fixed f/10 aperture and 1/100 shutter speed basically put it on par with a drugstore disposable. The fact that it has a manual wind and rewind only emphasizes that. And you can really lean into that disposable aesthetic thanks to its built-in automatic flash.Unlike the A1, there's no double exposure feature here or zone focusing. The EC35 is designed to require almost no thought to use. Its one special feature is the sliding …Read the full story at The Verge.

Most people install the best ISP for their home and carry on, but I ended up running two side by side on purpose. Not because the speed was low, or the ISP was unreliable — that wasn't the problem. It was to fix something else entirely — my homelab’s dependency on the internet. And my dual-WAN gateway handled both connections at once, deciding for itself which one carried what. Both ISPs had zero awareness of each other — no coordination, no shared config. The gateway decided the sessions and where the traffic went. The biggest benefit of the setup wasn't better speed; it was eliminating a single point of failure and better uptime for my homelab.