When done well, 2.5D games look really stunning. I think I started appreciating the style when Bravely Default released, and since then, people have been doing really amazing things with the tech, which is excellent, because more gorgeous mixes of old and new is just what the doctor ordered for me.

Between repairability, upgradability, and sustainability, there's plenty of reason to believe that modular designs are the future of laptops. While these might still fit in the standard clamshell or 2-in-1 form factors, modular laptops are also more customizable and can last much longer than the standard single-build designs that are still popular today.

Manually monitoring and tracking various gadgets and smart devices is quite challenging. Thankfully, Home Assistant’s integrations allow you to offload those duties and enjoy them in a more visually manageable way. While it takes more than a few clicks, these integrations have been a game-changer in helping me manage aspects of my daily life.

Adobe’s computational photography app, Project Indigo, had a bit of trouble adapting to the new square-format selfie sensor in the iPhone 17 series. For the last month or so, the app simply didn’t support Apple’s latest phones at all. Adobe was working behind the scenes to get things up and running, and posting occasional updates to the Adobe Community forums. But the company has decided to simply turn off access to the front-facing camera entirely, in order to get some version of Project Indigo out the door with iPhone 17 support.The app debuted back in June and immediately started garnering fans who preferred the softer touch it took to processing images, compared to the standard iPhone camera app. But the new sensors in the iPhone 17 series apparently threw Project Indigo for a loop. A fix in iOS 26.1 will allow Adobe to enable selfie camera support as well, but for now, iPhone 17 owners will have to make do with rear-camera support only.

Microsoft really doesn't want us making local accounts on Windows, does it? It feels like the company is finding any excuse to stop people from creating local accounts on Windows 11 so they can make people sign in with a Microsoft account instead, presumably because those are far more valuable to Microsoft due to data collection.

"Sharp Dressed Man," by ZZ Top. Hard on a good day, Medium when my friends were over, Expert once and then never ever again. That was my Guitar Hero sweet spot. And for years, it seemed like everybody had one. The plastic guitar controllers became a staple of living rooms everywhere, and the songs - from big bands, small bands, and bands that didn't even actually exist - became huge hits. Long before TikTok was the most important thing in music, getting your track on a Guitar Hero setlist could change your life forever.For this episode of Version History, we go through the whole history of Guitar Hero. The story begins in arcades in Japan, …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you're building your first PC in 2025, picking AMD's AM5 platform is a no-brainer. It's not only more affordable than ever, but also better than whatever Intel has to offer, at least for the vast majority. However, those looking to upgrade from AM4 to a brand-new AM5 system should assess whether it's the right time to make the jump. AMD's Zen 4 and Zen 5 CPUs are undoubtedly massive upgrades over the first few generations of Ryzen CPUs, but if you are on Ryzen 5000, happy with the performance, and running modern hardware elsewhere, it might be better to leave AM5 alone for now.

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 103, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, sorry everything's so expensive this week, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about gooning and Costco and protein bars and the Jonas Brothers, bingeing Nobody Wants This season two, trying to figure out how to save $4,500 for the new Rivian e-bike, telling anyone who will listen that T-Pain's still got it, learning everything I can about the Louvre heist, playing a surprising amount of Fortnite on my iPad, and shopping for Yoto Players after abou …Read the full story at The Verge.

There are only a handful of albums that I think qualify as genuinely scary. You Won't Get What You Want by Daughters, and Swans To Be Kind both immediately come to mind. But those records come with… let's say, baggage. I've Seen All I Need to See lacks some of the atmospheric spookiness of To Be Kind and the flashes of pop-tinged menace of You Won't Get What You Want, but it makes up for that with unrelenting brutality. It's not the soundtrack to a slasher film, it's the most violent scene in the bleakest horror film, rendered as blown-out drums and detuned guitar.The album opens with a reading of Douglas Dunn's The Kaleidoscope, a poem ab …Read the full story at The Verge.

Home automation is fun, but writing individual automations can get tedious pretty quickly. If you've spent any amount of time automating your home, you know things can get pretty messy. Between YAML files, making sure you've got indentations just right, and a vast collection of scripts that only you can decipher, working with Home Assistant is basically a full-time hobby. Now, look. Home Assistant is powerful, but writing automations can often feel like programming, and not everyone is up to it, or wants to learn. That's where HASSL comes in. This self-hosted tool takes the hassle out of writing automations by letting you describe them in plain English, then automatically generating complete Home Assistant packages for you. It's simple, fast, and surprisingly elegant.

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the legal morass of AI, follow Adi Robertson. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.How it started The song was called "Heart on My Sleeve," and if you didn't know better, you might guess you were hearing Drake. If you did know better, you were hearing the starting bell of a new legal and cultural battle: the fight over how AI services should be able to use people's faces and voices, and how platforms should respond.Back in 2023, the AI-generated faux-Drake track "Heart on My Sl …Read the full story at The Verge.

Zoos are cool and all, but what if you wanted to see some new, exotic animals? How about creatures that didn't even exist until you became the zookeeper? If that sounds like something you'd enjoy, you may get a kick out of Let's Build a Zoo. This cute little game with adorable sprites is currently 70% off on Steam, and while it may look like your typical management sim on the surface, trust me, it's anything but.