It's really awkward when you're writing an image to a storage device, and the progress bar seemingly stops. This goes double when the writer doesn't give you any feedback on what it's doing. Is the write process still going? Is it just churning through a particularly large chunk of the image? Or has things come to a stop? If I try to X out of the process, will it corrupt stuff? It's not a great feeling.

Small footprint. Speedy performance. | Image: The Verge Happy Saturday, folks! This week, Best Buy kicked off its so-called “Winter Sale,” introducing a whole host of price cuts that range from not-so-good to legitimately great, at least for this time of year. We’ll be publishing many of the highlights in a dedicated news post tomorrow, though, per usual, not all of this week’s best deals revolve around Best Buy. Apple’s M4 Mac Mini, for instance, is receiving a $100 discount at Amazon and B&H Photo, while LG’s 65-inch C5 OLED TV is on sale at eBay for a little over a grand. There are also steep savings to be had on 45W power banks, the Beats Fit Pro, and more, so let’s dive in. Mac Mini with M4Where to Buy: $599 $499 at Amazon (256GB) $599 $499 at B&H Photo (256GB) $799 $689 at Amazon (512GB)If you want a Mac and your budget is less than $500, your only real option — aside from going the refurbished route or picking up a model that’s several generations old — is Apple’s latest Mac Mini. Thankfully, the desktop machine makes for a truly excellent daily driver, one that’s currently on sale at Amazon and B&H Photo with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage starting at $499 ($100), which is just $20 shy of its Black Friday low and about $30 less than its best price to date.For most people, the 2024 Mac Mini is a far better (and more economical) choice than the latest Mac Studio. The tiny, M4-powered machine is an excellent value, even at full price, with three Thunderbolt 4 (USB 4) ports, a gigabit ethernet jack, a 3.5mm audio input, and an HDMI port. Its 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU provide fast, consistent performance for a wide range of tasks; however, keep in mind that you’ll need to bring your own display, keyboard, and mouse.Read our full Mac Mini (2024) review.Iniu Carry P51L-E2 Power Bank 45W 20000mAhWhere to Buy: $36.99 $18.86 at Amazon (at checkout)Last year, we saw a spate of power bank recalls, including those from both Anker and ESR. I replaced one of my aging Anker models during that time with Iniu’s excellent Carry P51L-E2, which is on sale at Amazon for a new low of $18.86 (about $21 off) at checkout.The 20,000mAh power bank isn’t particularly fancy, though it does output up to 45W of power and features a built-in, braided USB-C cable that doubles as a lanyard. You also get an extra USB-C and USB-A port, allowing you to juice your phone, tablet, a pair of wireless earbuds, and other small electronics at the same time. Now, if only Iniu could have packed the extra battery capacity into a charger as compact and colorful as the like-minded Pocket Rocket P50. C’est la vie.LG C5 OLED TV (65-inch)Where to Buy: $2699.99 $1197.59 at eBay (with code FAVEFINDS20)Arguably the best TV deal you can find this weekend would be on the 65-inch Bravia 8 II, which is still hovering around $2,398 (over $1,000 off) at multiple retailers, including Amazon. But not everyone has that kind of money to throw around on an OLED panel, which makes the current discount on LG’s C5 more appealing. Now through January 20th, you can pick up LG’s 65-inch OLED TV at eBay for $1,197.59 ($1,502 off) when you use code FAVEFINDS20 at checkout.Like prior models in the C Series, the C5 is all about value. The 4K set delivers the deep black levels and contrast for which OLEDs are known, and it features LG’s AI Picture Pro, which analyzes what you’re watching and adjusts brightness, resolution, and other settings to improve clarity. It also features a bevy of gaming-friendly features, including a 120Hz refresh rate, support for AMD FreeSync Premium and Nvidia G-Sync, and four HDMI 2.1 ports, allowing you to play current-gen titles in 4K at up to 120fps. It’s rounded out with HDR10 and Dolby Vision support, further enhancing color and contrast.Beats Fit ProWhere to Buy: $199.95 $89.99 at WootHaving now used both the Beats Fit Pro and the new Powerbeats Fit as part of my weekly workout regimen, I can tell you with absolute certainty that there’s little difference between the two — well, other than the fact that the Powerbeats Fit retail for $199.95 and the last-gen Beats Fit Pro are on sale at Woot in select colors for $89.99 ($110 off) through January 31st. Beats’ latest workout earbuds also feature a smaller charging case and more flexible wing tips, I guess, but with the Fit Pro, you’re still getting solid noise cancellation, good sound, and all the Apple ecosystem tricks you’d expect for less than half the price.Read our full Beats Fit Pro review.More ways to save this weekendElgato’s Stream Deck Plus is matching its all-time low at Amazon, Best Buy, and B&H Photo, where you can pick it up for $159.99 ($40 off) for a limited time. Like the standard Stream Deck, the Plus model comes with a slew of large, programmable LCD keys — eight, in this case — which you can use to automate a variety of tasks on your computer or control various smart home devices. The Plus comes with a few neat add-ons, though, specifically four knobs for making finer adjustments and a narrow touchscreen at the bottom for viewing tidbits of information at a glance. Read our review.If you’re a modern gamer with a soft spot for the Sega Genesis, 8BitDo’s M30 Bluetooth Controller is down to an all-time low of $20.98 ($4 off) at Amazon as part of an ongoing lightning deal. The inexpensive, retro-styled gamepad sports a similar layout to Sega’s iconic controller, only it comes with Bluetooth, 20 hours of battery life, and built-in buttons for quick access to the homescreen and snapping screenshots. It also works with a handful of platforms, including the Nintendo Switch, Windows, Mac, and Android.Speaking of gaming, Steam’s weeklong Detective Fest is set to wind down at 1PM ET on Monday, January 19th. That means that this weekend is one of your last chances to pick up a copy of The Case of the Golden Idol ($8.99), Disco Elysium ($9.99), The Séance of Blake Manor ($14.99), Strange Horticulture ($6.39), or 2025 GOTY contender, Blue Prince ($19.79), at a steep discount.

The PC-versus-console gaming argument has long been moot, and not to beat a dead horse, but PC gaming has always had a smug little trump card called power. Here in the world of PC gaming, paying more gets you more frame rates, sharper textures, better settings, and less compromise. Lately, however, that entire argument has started to wobble, because the cost of keeping up has turned borderline ridiculous.

Claude has quickly become my favorite AI chatbot. For some reason, it took me so long to give it a real shot, but ever since I did, I’ve been using it practically exclusively for brainstorming, research, and, of course, coding. Although Claude is currently my go-to AI chatbot, the AI productivity tool you'll always catch me obsessing over is NotebookLM.

Twisting the PlayCube angles the image without a tripod. The best all-in-one portable projector is the one that makes all the right compromises. It needs to balance image and sound quality with battery life and responsiveness in a device that's not too expensive and small enough to take anywhere. TCL's fun little PlayCube delivers the right mix to justify paying $800 for a 1080p projector in 2026.I tested the TCL PlayCube running Google TV during a two-month road trip, and then again for a few months at home. It's so small, adaptable, and enjoyable that I've had no problem setting it up at a moment's notice, day or night, anywhere I've been.TCL PlayCubeScore: 8ProsCons3 hour battery in bright …Read the full story at The Verge.

You know, I didn't realise how useful a system-wide push-to-talk system would be until I learned that it was a thing. Even if the app you're using doesn't support push-to-talk, you can just enable it within the operating system and use it no matter what software you're on. In fact, I'm a little surprised Windows doesn't have such a feature already.

During a chaotic multiday event, I found myself working anywhere. And always in a rush. At CES, I did what you're not supposed to do: I brought a pre-production laptop to use as my primary workhorse during a hectic event. The unproven rifle in question is the new Arm-based Asus Zenbook A16. It's a 16-inch laptop that weighs less than a 13-inch MacBook Air and comes with a high-end Snapdragon X2 processor. Going into CES with a Windows on Arm laptop running an unreleased processor sounds like a recipe for disaster. But to my surprise, aside from pre-production hardware glitches, I came away impressed.The Zenbook A16 that Asus sent me for early testing has a Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-94-100 chip. It's one of the flagship …Read the full story at The Verge.

While Hollywood has repeatedly tried adapting stories from Japanese manga, vanishingly few of them have been as good as Edge of Tomorrow - Warner Bros.' 2014 live-action film based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka's sci-fi light novel All You Need Is Kill. Edge of Tomorrow wasn't a one-to-one translation of All You Need Is Kill's original story or its manga adaptation by Takeshi Obata, Ryosuke Takeuchi, and Yoshitoshi Abe. The movie was more militaristic and focused on humanity rallying against an alien invasion.But Edge of Tomorrow understood that what made its source material so powerful was its imaginative exploration of what it means to be tenaci …Read the full story at The Verge.

While playing Big Hops, a new 3D platformer starring an adorable frog, I kept feeling like I was breaking the game - and, like with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, breaking it is kind of the point.In Big Hops, you play as a frog named Hop. Early on, Hop is taken away from his home, and he works to get back by collecting airship parts from a few different areas, each with its own cute animal characters and storylines. Because he's a frog, the primary way you interact with things is by slinging his tongue. You can use it to grab pots to toss and break them for coins, as a grappling hook to reach new areas, and to snag foods with s …Read the full story at The Verge.

As masked and armed men in combat armor swarmed throughout the Twin Cities, Gov. Tim Walz took to primetime television to ask Minnesotans to film ICE. The videos, he said, would "create a database of the atrocities against Minnesotans - not just to establish a record for posterity, but to bank evidence for future prosecution."While the feds besieged hospitals and school bus stops and Targets, Walz imagined a future with something akin to the Nuremberg trials. His speech emphasized the legal system and the ballot box, a promise of peaceful regime change and a process of accountability. And it was as much emotional solace for his constituent …Read the full story at The Verge.

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 112, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, I hope your home is warmer than mine right now, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about WhatsApp and Gavin Newsom and David Ellison and Andreessen Horowitz, obsessively waiting for every new episode of The Pitt, using the app Monologue to talk to my computer instead of typing to it, joyfully rewatching The Night Manager before diving into the new season, finally getting my Ikea buttons hooked up to my smart home, listening to the Halt and Catch F …Read the full story at The Verge.

It's fair to say that dipping into the world of self-hosting has been a slow learning curve for me. I've tried a fair few methods, copying files manually, running scripts and more, all accompanied with a fair amount of anxiety wondering if I'd missed a step or reused a port. Deployment, if you are not experienced, can definitely feel like a bit of a test. I've worked around that for the longest time by keeping things small. Be it sticking to easy to install services, or following tutorials. But that becomes far too limiting beyond a point, and you need to find a better way to work. For me, that better way turned out to be Ansible. Honestly, once you start using it, there's no going back. Here's why.