In the face of widespread backlash to the AI data center buildout throughout the US, Google is touting its efforts to minimize the environmental impact by actually increasing water for local communities. The company laid out five commitments around water use in a new blog post published Wednesday, including a goal to replenish more water than it uses at its data centers by 2030. Google also said it will invest in local water infrastructure, identify alternative water sources to power its facilities, and be transparent about its water use overall. "We're just one of dozens of players in the space," Google's global head of infrastructure a …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you have been searching for the ultimate OneNote alternative, the internet will probably point you toward Notion or Obsidian. But for power users who just want to capture ideas without the friction of endless setup, those platforms often miss the mark.

By the time the Children's Hospital closed its doors to trans patients, Sage had already stopped taking testosterone. A nonbinary high school student, they originally received treatment for the rapid onset of puberty. The changes their body experienced felt frightening and sudden. They developed PMOS, a relatively common hormonal disorder that can lead to hair growth and irregular periods. The pandemic didn't help. Too much time to focus on scrutinizing the person in the mirror while doomscrolling. Their doctor first prescribed puberty blockers to help with their PMOS symptoms - not explicitly for trans-related reasons - and eventually recom …Read the full story at The Verge.

Nanoleaf has made a name for itself by developing smart color-changing LED lighting products, including wall panels, TV mirroring, and display cases. | Image: Nanoleaf Smart lighting company Nanoleaf has been acquired by OneRobotics, the parent company of SwitchBot. In an exclusive interview with The Verge, Nanoleaf CEO Gimmy Chu says the company will remain independent and that he and his cofounder and COO, Christian Yan, will continue to run it. "Nothing is changing operationally," says Chu, adding that there are plans for product integrations between the two smart home companies. The sale, which Chu characterized as "more of a merger," will provide Nanoleaf with significant resources, including a cash infusion that will, among other things, help the company grow its team at its Toronto headquarters. I …Read the full story at The Verge.

Google Labs is probably one of the most underrated spots for finding cool experimental tools, and it doesn't get talked about nearly as much as it should. NotebookLM is technically still a Google Labs experiment, which is wild considering how mainstream it's become. Stitch is another one I covered recently, it's a vibe design tool I stumbled on while poking around the suite.

Windows 11 ballooned to nearly 30GB of install space in recent years. While 30GB is not huge, considering 1TB of storage is the default on most mid-level laptops and computers, it's hard to ignore the waste of storage space. Microsoft includes multiple OS features and elements that you won't ever launch or use, and it creates a need for more storage space with each version update. Tiny11 is a project by NTDEV, a developer who tries to shrink Windows to a more modest size by discarding less-used features, Windows components, and bloatware.

Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp. | Bloomberg via Getty Images Just in case you were wondering, Nvidia's RTX Spark isn't supposed to be a one-off. The company is not just flirting with becoming the fifth high-profile vendor of consumer laptop chips to see if people bite. At Computex 2026 in Taipei, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang confirmed at least two additional generations of RTX Spark are already planned. The eventual goal, he said, is to build Star Trek-like computers and and Star Wars-like droids you can order around with your voice."I want to talk to my laptop! I want R2-D2!" he told analysts and investors at Computex, revealing that he started working with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella "about three years …Read the full story at The Verge.

Remote monitoring sounded like a nice bonus when I first started taking 3D printing more seriously. It felt like one of those features made for people who leave the house, start long prints before work, and want to make sure their printer hasn't turned a 10-hour job into a plastic bird's nest. That use case is real, and I understand why it gets most of the attention. But it isn't actually the reason I've come to depend on it.

For years, I treated Ethernet cables as an important part of my network upgrades. Whenever I bought a new router, added a switch to my setup, or reorganized my home lab, I often found myself browsing for premium networking cables. The marketing made it seem like the logical thing to do. After all, if I'm investing in good networking hardware, why not connect everything using the best cables available?

If you've dabbled with using a Plex server at home, you already know that, since last year, Plex has locked remote streaming behind a paywall. If you don't have Plex Pass, you can no longer watch your own library from outside your home network. The reasoning for that was pretty simple. The company introduced a cheaper option for Plex Pass called the Remote Watch Pass, which, for around $3 a month, lets you stream your own content outside your home.

Considering that AI tools can tackle mind-numbingly bogus tasks, there’s no denying that they’re a godsend for productivity. But with almost every cloud-based platform charging regular subscription fees for their clanker-powered services, we’re starting to get to a point where you could end up paying hundreds of bucks to avoid hitting rate limits on coding platforms.

Following a massive Plex Pass Lifetime subscription price hike, tripling the cost to $750 from $250, the self-hosting media platform has revealed several new, questionably useful social features in what feels like an effort to justify the price increase. This feels like yet another misstep by the self-hosting streaming app.