A fire burns in a pavilion during the COP30 UN Climate Change Conference in Belém, Pará state, Brazil, on November 20th, 2025. | Photo: Getty Images "It's a wrap … Don't forget to buy an 'i survived Belém' shirt," reads the opening line of an email I got Saturday, the final day of highly anticipated United Nations climate negotiations in Belém, Brazil. The email was sent from Shravya Jain-Conti, the US climate diplomacy lead at the Global Strategic Communications Council (GSCC), who's been following these events for years. While she sometimes has tips on where to snag a cup of coffee along with her email updates to reporters, the T-shirt tip was a first as far as I've seen.I've been mulling over these negotiations since last year, mapping out potential funding opportunities to make a t …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you're preparing yourself for a GPU upgrade in the upcoming sale, think again before buying an entry-level or budget graphics card. It might be the only GPU you can afford in this market, but your investment might not give you the returns you're hoping for. Budget GPUs aren't what they used to be a few years ago. While I was able to play modern titles at 1440p on my GTX 1660 Ti back in 2019, today's lower-end GPUs are riddled with dismal performance, inadequate VRAM, and unimpressive value for money. The gaming industry moved on before budget GPUs had a chance to catch up. So, save up for a mid-range GPU, and invest in these impactful upgrades for now for a much more impactful return.

I got my NAS to work as the central location for all my data needs — it sits on the network, which allows it to connect with every device at my place. While I have it all set up to take care of backups from my Mac and Windows laptops, getting it to work with smartphones takes a bit of work. You can manage everything on your NAS’s web interface, but on phones, you need to install an array of apps to replicate the same features and capabilities. And our digital lives now increasingly live on our smartphones; I wanted to ensure everything worked smoothly.

At the start of the year, had you asked me if the new Battlefield or new Black Ops would be the better-received shooter of the year, I probably would've bet on Call of Duty. Black Ops 6 was one of the series' best games in years, and Battlefield had been struggling for over a decade. It was Activision's fight to lose, and somehow, it seems like it's doing just that.

When Windows 10 went out of support last month, I hesitantly upgraded my secondary laptop to Windows 11 because of all the security concerns. I knew I had to upgrade someday, so why not do it right away and get used to the latest iteration? Even if I had opted for the free Extended Security Updates (ESU), it was just for one year, after which I would have been forced to switch, anyway. But surprisingly, my experience with Windows 11 was completely different from what I had initially anticipated.

When the Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 series was first released, they got scalped pretty hard. It was very difficult to find a card selling for MSRP, and whenever someone found a source of sensibly-priced cards, they'd get snapped up within moments. Fortunately, those days seem to be over (touch wood), as we're now seeing the RTX 50 cards selling for what they should be going for. Add the Black Friday sales on top of that, and suddenly you have a whole range of cards selling for prices we could only dream of seeing earlier in 2025.

The Geekom A9 Max AI has been one of the biggest surprises in my home office, and Black Friday makes it even more appealing thanks to a significant price drop. This compact box replaces the noise, heat, and footprint of a traditional desktop with something far easier to manage. It is fast enough for real work, powerful enough for modern games, and quiet enough that you forget it is running. That combination makes it a great option for anyone who wants a full desktop experience without rearranging their entire workspace.

OpenAI is making it easier to plan out holiday shopping with ChatGPT’s latest feature called “shopping research.” Any shopping question in ChatGPT will trigger this new feature, which is rolling out to all ChatGPT users on free and paid plans on mobile and web, with “nearly unlimited usage” available during the holiday shopping season.Now, if you ask ChatGPT for “best TVs in bright lighting,” for example, as the company’s announcement video shows, the response will end with a button asking if you want to do additional research. This is where the “personal shopper” aspect comes in, although the blog post notes that “shopping research might make mistakes about product details like price and availability, and we encourage you to visit the merchant site for the most accurate details.” Users refine their choices by selecting their preferences during a series of questions that can be filtered based on price, intended use, and desired features, similar to the dropdown menus on most retail websites. The products it pulls up can be purchased on retailers’ websites, but OpenAI said it plans to roll out Instant Checkout, which will allow direct purchasing inside ChatGPT with participating merchants.OpenAI is not alone in trying to encourage shopping within its products. Google also recently released new AI-powered shopping features in its AI Mode, and the AI agent in Perplexity’s Comet browser will shop on your behalf, much to Amazon’s chagrin. (The trend is something The Verge’s Nilay Patel has termed “The DoorDash problem.”)According to OpenAI, it’s built on a version of GPT‑5 mini that has been refined for shopping tasks, with product recommendations from “quality sources” on the internet containing “up-to-date information like price, availability, reviews, specs, and images.” They can also take into account previous conversations with ChatGPT and user “memory” if that is turned on, along with buttons to show “more like this” or “not interested” on specific items.Pro users will see proactively recommended products packaged in “buyer’s guides” based on their past chatlogs with Pulse. “For example, if you’ve been discussing e-bikes, a future Pulse card could suggest useful accessories for you,” OpenAI wrote. 

The Department of Justice has announced a settlement with RealPage, the widely used rent-setting software that it accused of engaging in collusion to drive up rent prices by sharing previously private information from competing landlords. The settlement puts limits on RealPage’s ability to collect and use that data, and blocks it from being used to set rents.Last year, the DOJ and several other states filed an antitrust lawsuit against RealPage, claiming that the company’s rent-setting software combines data from competing landlords to provide daily rental price suggestions. “As competitor-landlords increase their rents, RealPage’s software nudges other competing landlords to increase their rents as well,” the DOJ alleged.If the court approves the DOJ’s settlement, RealPage must only use data from landlords that is 12 months or older to power its algorithm. The settlement also requires RealPage to “remove or redesign” features that discourage landlords from lowering prices or prompt landlords to match their prices with competitors. RealPage would also be barred from offering “hyperlocalized pricing” information, which Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater describes in a video on X as hiking up rents “block-by-block.” RealPage denies any wrongdoing.“RealPage was replacing competition with coordination, and renters paid the price,” Slater said. “We reached a settlement that stops RealPage from coordinating pricing with its customers.” 

I don't know about you, but I think there's something special about loading an operating system onto a brand new SBC. To me, it feels like smashing a bottle against a ship before it's launched, an official "breaking in" of new hardware. And for a while now, people have relied on Raspberry Pi's official Imager to get an operating system on their SBC.

Sure, you can go all out when buying a laptop, but it becomes more challenging to find something that hits all the right marks while also staying on a certain budget. We think this Dell 15 manages to hit the sweet spot, delivering enough power and coming in at a price that's easy to afford. At just $400, you get everything you need.

Everyone has their own preferences, but you really can't go wrong with an ultrawide monitor. While screen real estate is typically going to be the biggest benefit, the ultrawide aspect ratio is also going to allow for better use, allowing you to virtually place multiple screens side by side.