Sometimes, the perfect conditions for a killer Steam sale match up. Sometimes a game goes on sale because it's having a "free to play" campaign for a limited time, and sometimes a game goes on sale because it just received a huge update. However, what about a game that went on sale because it got a big update, it's having a free trial period, and it's the cheapest discount we've ever seen the game go for?

If you were around during the days of dial-up internet, first of all, I'd like to tip my hat to another tech oldie. I hope your back pain medicine is working okay. If you weren't, then you likely don't know about the sound of dial-up.

When you think of "machine learning," you probably think of GPU clusters crunching terabytes of data, or at the bare minimum, the likes of a singular humble RTX 5090 being used for data processing. But the truth is, ML doesn't have to be heavy, or even power-hungry. Enter TinyML: a branch of machine learning designed to run directly on microcontrollers like the ESP32.

Keep burning through your video generation allowance on Sora? No problem, OpenAI now lets you buy extra credits to make even more AI videos. That’s good, because the company says it expects to reduce free allowances at some point in the future.Bill Peebles, who leads the Sora team at OpenAI, said the video platform’s economics are “currently completely unsustainable.” Power users “clearly” aren’t satisfied with the number of free generations they get each day — 100 for users of the higher-end Pro model and 30 for everyone else — so Peebles said OpenAI is going to let creators “get as much usage as they want to pay for.”Ten extra video generations will cost $4, according to Sora’s listing on Apple App Store, though the number of credits used per video depends on “length, resolution, and other factors,” according to OpenAI’s support page. If you hit your free limit, an option will come up to buy more through the App Store. Credits last for 12 months, and if you want to you can also use them on OpenAI’s coding platform Codex. Peebles warned people are going to start hitting that limit sooner in the future. “Eventually we will need to bring the free gens down to accommodate growth,” he said. “In the meantime, enjoy the crazy usage limits.” He didn’t provide details but said OpenAI will “be transparent as it happens.” The decision to charge for video gens comes amid a broader push to monetize and scale Sora and cultivate what OpenAI hopes is an emerging AI-powered creator economy. OpenAI has been steadily adding features to achieve this, such as clip stitching and leaderboards for popular videos and cameos, its legally contentious term for a feature that lets users create deepfake avatars of themselves, others, and original characters, which other creators can use in their own videos. Sora’s going to pilot monetization for creators “soon,” Peebles said, imagining a “world where rightsholders have the option to charge extra for cameos of beloved characters and people.” The feature has been expected for some time, particularly given the company’s efforts to move on from its original hands-off approach to copyright and likeness, which flooded the platform with questionable depictions of fictional characters like Pikachu and SpongeBob and “disrespectful” deepfake videos of public figures like Martin Luther King Jr.

It used to cost a small fortune to buy anything made by Alienware, but now, you can pick up some excellent hardware for a price that's really unbelievable if you can manage to find it on sale. That's the case with this 27-inch gaming monitor that manages to deliver on all levels, while also being relatively affordable.

While the average desktop user probably doesn't need PCIe 5.0, let alone PCIe 6.0 or 7.0, there is one place where even those interconnect speeds aren't enough. The servers that power generative AI, and other high-performance computing workloads need fast lanes between memory, other peripherals, and the CPU, and PCIe isn't enough on its own.

When most people think of Trello, they picture agile sprint boards and team collaboration sessions. I used to think the same way until I realized I was overcomplicating my personal productivity with a scattered mix of apps.

One of the central tenets of my productivity workflow is that the fewer times I have to switch between app windows, the better. I've been replacing my desktop apps with Terminal-based ones, including being able to browse and watch YouTube from the command line, and it's made my workflow more streamlined.

As a student, AI has been most helpful for me in my study sessions. Before everyone comes at me, I don’t mean using AI to cheat my way through exams or have it solve entire assignments for me. Instead, I mean using it as what it’s meant to be: a tool that simply helps me understand things better. I use AI tools to break down complex topics that I didn't quite understand during class, give me quick explanations before an exam, test my understanding of concepts I've already studied, and more.

The Task Manager isn’t managing its tasks. | Image: Tom Warren / The Verge If you’re a Windows 11 user who frequently uses the Task Manager tool, you should probably avoid Microsoft’s latest OS update. Reddit users and my colleague Tom Warren are reporting that a bug in the optional Windows 11 KB5067036 update is causing Task Manager to duplicate itself when they attempt to close the app, impacting computer performance.The bug is breaking the “X” button to quit Task Manager, preventing the app from shutting down and instead keeping it running in the background. Repeated attempts to open and close the app result in multiple instances that can eat up your CPU and RAM resources.According to the KB5067036 change log notes, the update includes a fix for Task Manager that resolves some apps not being grouped with their processes, but mentions no other Task Manager changes. Microsoft hasn’t acknowledged this new bug at the time of writing, and the KB5067036 log still says that the company “is not currently aware of any issues with this update.”We have reached out to Microsoft for further information.Thankfully, Windows Latest and Reddit user BNSoul have found a temporary workaround. Individual Task Manager instances can be closed by selecting the “End task” button on the app instead of clicking the “X” button, or users can run taskkill /im taskmgr.exe /f in the Windows 11 Command Prompt to shut down all of the Task Manager instances simultaneously.

There are some really stellar examples out there of games that don't need to be graphically intense to be good. A ton of the cool low-poly PS1-esque games come to mind, for example. However, nothing proves that a game can be good and still run on a potato than West of Loathing, where the art style is stick figures. Yeah, you won't need a 5090 for this one.

While Microsoft has done its best to make an impact in the handheld world, we've seen evidence time and time again that the best thing people can do with their brand-new Windows 11 handheld is to, well...uninstall Windows 11. From there, you have a few choices, such as grabbing SteamOS and slapping it on your device. However, if you're a big fan of Fedora Linux, you also have the option of grabbing Bazzite.