Not everyone manages to get their hands on a brand-new console weeks before it's released, and even fewer decide to take the time to sit down and review the product for everyone else to see. However, when it does happen, it's pretty special, not only because we get to see someone get incredibly lucky, but also because it gives us an early and unbiased insight as to what to expect when the product finally arrives in our hands.

As a journalist, I often have to sit through hours of recorded interview audio, trying to catch nuance, but mostly just transcribing it for important quotes. Sure, there are services like Otter, but outsourcing transcription can be expensive and risky, often both. File privacy is a legitimate concern, and accuracy isn't quite the best, anyway, for the amount of money these services charge. I've been looking for a tool that I can control, one that runs locally, and that can handle transcription. If it came with a few extra features, that would be even better. And that's how I came across FileWizard. This self-hosted, open-source app is astonishingly capable at wrangling files of all sorts, and just as easy to get up and running. Here's why FileWizard is a great choice not just for journalists, but for anyone in search of an easy transcription tool.

Single Board Computers (SBCs), like the Raspberry Pi, are known for being affordable, but they aren't obviously immune to global market forces. However, since they're already low-cost, the price increase remains modest as compared to higher-end electronic products, as seen with some Raspberry Pi models.

Developers have gotten really creative with roguelikes. Ever since Slay the Spire made a huge splash by popularizing the card-based roguelike system, other developers have taken the opportunity to put their own spin on the genre.

iOS 18.6 has been a turning point. The Epic Games Store has seen an uptick in downloads since the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) prompted Apple to streamline its process for installing third-party app marketplaces, according to a new blog published by Epic. Stats shared by the gaming software giant on Wednesday show the drop-off rate for Epic Games Store installations on iOS has gone from 65 percent down to around 25 percent following the release of iOS 18.6 in July.The “updated user experience” for installing alternative app marketplaces was introduced in iOS 18.6 following the EU commission raising concerns in April that “Apple makes it overly burdensome and confusing for end users to install apps when using such alternative app distribution channels.”“They’ve reduced the install flow from 15 steps to 6, eliminating their former scare screen and its misleading message, and eliminated a dead-end that left the user stranded in iOS Settings,” said Epic. “For the first time, we are starting to see iOS users install the Epic Games Store with a success rate approaching Windows users and Apple’s own Mac users.”Epic says there are still improvements to be made, however, alleging that Apple’s anticompetitive behavior towards third-party app stores continues to violate the DMA, and is pushing developers to distribute fewer games through the Epic Games Store on iOS compared to Android. Epic also called out Google’s 12-step installation process on Android, saying its  “deceptive user interface sabotages Epic Games Store install attempts on Android” more than 50 percent of the time.

Roland TR-1000 Rhythm Creator Roland has largely decided sit out the analog synth renaissance of the last decade. But it’s (belatedly) making amends for that error with the launch of the TR-1000 Rhythm Generator. Unlike previous instruments that tried to cash in on Roland’s long legacy through digital technologies like its Zen-Core engine, Analogue Circuit Behavior (ACB) modeling, and Roland Cloud subscription service, the TR-1000 embraces the true analog sound of iconic Roland machines like the TR-808 and TR-909, Unlike other TR instruments from Roland over the last several years that simply invoke the branding, the TR-1000 actually recreates 16 analog sound circuits from the 808 and the 909 while adding plenty of modern sound-shaping and sequencing conveniences. It pairs those authentic analog voices with digital ACB sound, FM percussion, PCM samples, and more. The TR-1000 even has extensive sampling tools for time stretching loops and chopping up drum breaks. In short, if there is a way to make a percussive sound, Roland has crammed it into this very serious looking (and very expensive) gray box.Roland decided to lean even further into the analog world here, by including a stereo analog filter and drive section for adding grit and creating buildups. There are also a ton of knobs, buttons, and faders on the front that suggest made the TR-1000 will require less diving through arcane menus than your typical modern Roland instrument. While it does have some performance-friendly features, its substantial bulk seems best suited to a desk in a recording studio.All of these luxuries will set you back quite a bit — $2,699.99 to be exact, which means the TR-1000 isn’t for casual hobbyists. Still, that’s about half of what a functioning TR-808 or TR-909 will cost you on the vintage market so, maybe the TR-1000 is actually a bargain?

One of my favorite parts about GTA 5 is the radio stations. You spend a lot of time in a vehicle, so it makes sense that Rockstar put a ton of time and effort into crafting some really memorable stations with some equally banging tunes.

The Brompton Electric G when I reviewed it last year. | Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge The Brompton Electric G folding e-bike I reviewed last year is now available to buy in the US starting at $4,950. While it looks like a regular Brompton, it’s been scaled up with 20-inch wheels and an extended wheelbase that improves the ride dramatically on all types of terrain, leaving behind the twitchiness of its 16-inch brethren. Despite this embiggening, it still folds down small enough to be taken onto a train or hoisted into the back of a car, making it ideal for multimodal commuters or as a companion vehicle for vanlifers.The US bike has been tweaked a bit from the European model, now with a top speed of 20mph from the 250W rear-hub motor, and a module on the handlebar that lets you control the power-assist level and lights. Before the controls were awkwardly positioned on top of the battery.In my experience, the Electric G lived up to Brompton’s claim that it’s “the most versatile e-bike in the world.” And now it’s even better for anyone that can afford a $5,000 e-bike.

PC cooling myths are everywhere. They spread through forums, build videos, and even manufacturer marketing, and while some of them used to make sense, they don’t always apply to modern hardware. In fact, sticking to these outdated ideas could leave your rig running hotter than it should.

Smart speakers like the Google Nest Hub or Amazon Echo are convenient, but they come with trade-offs: you sacrifice control, flexibility, and often privacy as well. As I've gone down the Home Assistant rabbit hole, I've begun to play with more open-source alternatives, starting with the Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition. Once I'd used that particular device, I realized that I didn't need to rely on commercial hardware anymore. Through the power of ESPHome and amazing hardware like those in the ReSpeaker line and a separate foray with an ESP32-powered display, I discovered how easy it was to build my own open source replacements without the compromises.

The new Bike Plus will cost $2,695. Peloton has been angling for a redemption arc ever since its status as a pandemic darling started faltering when the world reopened for business. It tried to steady the ship with a series of layoffs, a pivot to subscriptions, and a leadership shuffle. Now, Peloton's hoping to kick off a new era with the Cross Training Series, a total refresh of its product lineup consisting of a new Bike, Bike Plus, Tread, Tread Plus, and Row Plus."The impetus behind the Cross Training series is, 'Let's just give people one place to do all the strength and cardio workouts in one spot," says Nick Caldwell, Peloton's chief product officer. "We now make that …Read the full story at The Verge.

The late English writer Douglas Adams is best known as the author of the 1979 book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. But there is much more to Adams than what is written in his Wikipedia entry. Whether or not you need to know that his birth sign is Pisces or that libraries worldwide store his books under the same string of numbers — 13230702 — you can if you head to an overlooked corner of the Wikimedia Foundation called Wikidata. There, images, text, keywords, and other information related to Adams are stored both in a webpage and, for the robots among us, in formats designed for machines like JSON. Now, Wikidata is getting a new AI-friendly database that makes it easier for large language models to ingest the information. The database comes from the Wikipedia Embedding Project out of the German chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Deutschland, which oversees Wikidata. The Berlin-based team spent the past year using a large language model to turn the 19 million entries within Wikidata from clunkily structured data into vectors that capture the context and meaning around the Wikidata entry. In this vectorized format, information is best imagined like a graph with dots and interconnected lines — Adams would be connected to “human” as well as the titles of his books, Lydia Pintscher, Wikidata portfolio lead, told The Verge.While the front-end user experience will remain the same — no, Wikipedia is not becoming a chatbot, the project leaders say — the back end will become easier for AI developers to access when building, for example, their own chatbots using the data. The goal of the project is to level the playing field for AI developers outside the monied core of Big Tech, Pintscher said. Companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have the resources to vectorize Wikidata, just like Pintscher and her team did. It’s the smaller outfits that most benefit from the new access to curated data stored in the vaults of Wikidata. “Really, for me, it’s about giving them that edge up and to at least give them a chance, right?” Pintscher said. She points to Govdirectory as an example project that harnessed Wikidata’s vast data curated by volunteers for good. The platform allows users to find the social media handles and emails for public officials across the world. Most AI chatbots prioritize popular words and topics across the internet. In addition to giving Little Tech a leg up, the team hopes that easier access to Wikidata will result in AI systems that better reflect niche topics not widely represented across the internet, Pintscher said. This could be a better way to get information into ChatGPT, for instance, than “generating a ton of content and then waiting for the next time for ChatGPT to retrain, and maybe, or maybe not, taking into account what you contributed,” Pintscher said. In practice, the vectors will allow AI systems to better access the context around information in addition to the information itself, Philippe Saadé, Wikidata AI project manager, told The Verge. The team used a model from AI company Jina AI to turn Wikidata’s structured data, captured through September 18th, 2024, into vectors. IBM company DataStax currently provides the infrastructure to store the vector database to the project for free. The team is waiting for feedback from developers who use the database before updating it with information added over the last year. While the current database does not include entirely new information added in the last year, Saadé says small edits or tweaks to existing Wikidata will not diminish the database’s usefulness. “At the end of the day, the vector that we’re computing is like a general idea of an item, so if some small edit has been made on Wikidata, it’s not going to be super relevant,” he said.