Some news: The Vergecast is now a daily podcast! Starting today, we'll be posting every weekday, with even more gadgets and rankings and conversations and feelings and podcasts-within-podcasts. We're excited for all the ways this new schedule lets us tell new kinds of stories, experiment with new tech and new formats, and involve you even more in the show. (The other immediate change to know about: We'll be publishing the show in the afternoons going forward, so we can include the day's biggest news in our 90 Seconds on The Verge segment. The goal is to always be live before 4PM ET. Often well before.)As we've been preparing for our new …Read the full story at The Verge.

Going through note-taking apps is almost a hobby for me at this point. After Notion stopped being my go-to, the open-source world is where I naturally ended up. Most of them ship with at least one feature that's pretty unique and they almost always cover the same ground of future-proof and local notes. AFFiNE, Joplin, Logseq, and Simplenote have all rotated in and out of my desktop setup over the past year, and they're all pretty great.

Get ready for some gaming news. It’s officially June, which means splashy new events from PlayStation, Xbox, and gaming hype man Geoff Keighley. But this season doesn’t just feature the big tentpole shows; there will be a bunch of smaller events, too, and they might feature some promising games as well.But this year’s events are taking place at a difficult time for the industry. The prices of consoles and gaming hardware have skyrocketed, with all of the three major console players announcing price hikes and PC handheld makers jacking up hardware costs as well.Game companies also have to work around the looming giant that is Grand Theft Auto VI, which is set to launch on November 19th. That time of year is usually a very busy one as studios launch their games to get ahead of the holiday shopping season, but we could see some of the industry’s biggest games give GTA VI a wide berth.We’ll be tracking the biggest news of the June gaming events season right here. Your guide to June’s biggest gaming events Xbox and PlayStation have a lot to prove There won’t be Project Helix news at the Xbox Games Showcase. Microsoft delays Fable (again) to avoid GTA VI Lots of games to think about.

On July 1, the lifetime Plex Pass will triple in price, jumping from $250 to $750, while not providing any new noteworthy features. Anyone still on the fence about grabbing one for their own media server has until June 30th to lock in the old rate before it becomes one of the most expensive software purchases a self-hoster can make.

The internet got safer, faster, and more accessible, and one company is responsible for a disproportionate amount of that — Cloudflare. Before building my own home lab, I spent enough time around self-hosting communities that Cloudflare appeared in every other conversation. CGNAT workaround? Use Cloudflare Tunnel. Need DNS? Cloudflare has that too. SSL and DDoS protection? Enable with one click on Cloudflare.

Google's new "24/7" AI agent, Gemini Spark, can be shockingly good at doing things on your behalf. But I'm not sure it's worth the financial cost and potential privacy tradeoffs.The company gave me access to Spark last week. Google advertises Spark as an AI agent that can take on tasks and work on them in the background - even tasks that have multiple steps - allowing you to put your phone down or walk away from your computer. It also advertises at the very top of the Spark website that it's "always under your direction," that "you choose to turn it on," and that "it's designed to check with you before taking major actions." Given the moun …Read the full story at The Verge.

Gaze into the orb. | Image: The Verge There are many solid Bluetooth trackers for iPhones that tap into Apple’s expansive Find My network. Some are thin, some are a bit chunkier. And, evidently, some look like tiny soccer balls. Ugreen’s FineTrack 2 glows in the dark, and it has a loud 110-decibel alarm when you need to find it. It’s just $14.99 at Amazon for Prime members (originally $19.99). Ugreen also sells it for $14.99 through its site.Ugreen FineTrack 2 Bluetooth trackerWhere to Buy: $19.99 $14.99 at Amazon (for Prime members) $19.99 $14.99 at UgreenInstead of offering replaceable coin batteries, like many trackers do at this point, the FineTrack 2 has a built-in, non-rechargeable battery that can live for up to seven years. Some may consider that a flaw, but it’ll be nice not to have to worry about replacing its battery for a long while. The ball-shaped tracker also features IP68 water and dust resistance, and includes both a short and long lanyard you can swap out at your leisure. Other deals to considerGoogle’s Pixel Buds 2A, its latest entry-level wireless earbuds, are down to $109 at Amazon, B&H Photo, and Best Buy, which is their second-best price to date. They’re stacked with more features than their 2021 predecessor (not to mention cooler colors), including active noise cancellation, transparency mode, and spatial audio. That’d be enough to make them worth the sale price, but they also feature IP54 protection against sweat, and up to 20 hours of total battery life with the charging case. At $80 more, the pricier Pixel Buds Pro 2 deliver slightly longer battery life, a wireless charging-ready case, and loud noise protection. Read our review.Here’s another deal on headphones: Bose’s first-gen QuietComfort Ultra over-ear wireless headphones are available refurbished in black for $188 (originally $449, but regularly $329 new) at eBay. Notably, Bose is the seller here, and it claims the headphones are in “pristine, like-new condition,” and will arrive in new packaging complete with all accessories. The first-gen QC Ultra headphone are still spectacular when it comes to sound quality, comfort, and for canceling out sounds. The highlight improvements of the $399.99 QC Ultra (Gen 2) include slightly more battery life per charge, lossless audio over USB-C, and an improved transparency mode. Read our review of the first-generation model.Samsung recently debuted a fleet of gaming monitors, and it’s offering perks for early adopters. One of the most affordable options is the $899.99 27-inch Odyssey G8 G80HF 5K model. If you buy it now through Samsung, you can choose either a $200 Samsung gift card to use on a future purchase, a Music Studio 5 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth speaker, or the Galaxy Buds 4 Pro wireless earbuds as your free gift. Its specs are unique compared to other 5K monitors in that it can support 5K at up to 180Hz, or swap to 1440p at 360Hz (most 5K models top out at 60Hz). Plus, its 218 pixel density matches that of the Apple Studio Display and other 5K monitors. Oddly, though, the G80HF lacks a USB-C port for easily connecting a MacBook. Read our 2026 Apple Studio Display review.

After months of speculation about whether OpenAI or Anthropic would be first in their race to IPO, Anthropic on Monday reached a key milestone: filing to kick off the process with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.The filing sets the stage for what's sure to be a massive IPO. As of its fundraise last week, Anthropic is being called the world's most valuable startup, with a post-money valuation of $965 billion. That tops the $852 billion post-money valuation of OpenAI, which is its biggest rival. Anthropic chose to submit its draft registration statement to the SEC confidentially, according to a blog post from the company, meani …Read the full story at The Verge.

Sony is sharing new details about some of its upcoming gaming-focused hardware, including pricing and August launch dates for its FlexStrike fight stick and its 27-inch monitor.The FlexStrike fight stick will be available starting August 6th - the same day as the new PlayStation-published fighting game Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls - and will cost $199.99. Preorders begin on June 12th at 10AM ET. Initially, the FlexStrike will work just on PS5, but Sony says that PC support will be rolled out sometime after launch. The stick will come with a sling carry case and a built-in rechargeable battery.Sony goes into more detail about the fight st …Read the full story at The Verge.

Valve recently sent a shockwave through the games industry with the sudden reality that overnight the Steam Deck OLED transformed from a value king recommendation into an elite luxury purchase. The 512GB model jumped to $789, and the 1TB model skyrocketed to $949. Upon announcing this news, Valve kept its public statement brief, pinning the blame on rising component costs and global logistical challenges after stock issues.

Meta's AI support chatbot helped hackers hijack Instagram accounts, as reported earlier by 404 Media. In a video shared on Telegram, a hacker shows how they could take over an account by asking Meta's chatbot to switch the email associated with someone else's profile and then reset the password.The issue, which Meta says has since been patched, cropped up around the same time Barack Obama's White House account on Instagram was hacked. On Sunday, users noticed that the @obamawhitehouse account began posting images containing Iranian propaganda. Hackers appeared to have hijacked the Instagram accounts belonging to the US Space Force Chief Ma …Read the full story at The Verge.

Setting up a new Jellyfin server always starts the same way for me. I spend hours organizing libraries, fixing metadata disasters, downloading posters online, and then realizing that the sun has set while I micromanage every part of the server. The real fun, however, comes from installing plugins that transform Jellyfin into a genuinely premium media server.