When I first started exploring the internet in the late 90s, it was a different place than it is now. Wilder. Less regulated and corporatized. In those days, personal websites dominated; there was no "front page of the internet." Most users had their browsers open to their favorite, most-used sites (or their email). Fun fact: browsers were actually used for browsing back then, not just jumping between subreddits. The internet has lost some of its charm over the years, or so I believed, but it's actually just tucked away in dusty corners.

First there was Ship of Harkinian and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and next came 2ship2harkinian (clever name, right?) and Majora's Mask. Now, a GameCube and Wii classic,The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, has been given the fan-made PC port treatment.

The X300 Ultra is mostly let down by its rather dull design. A few months ago, I wrote that the telephoto camera is the only lens that matters any more, at least when it comes to Ultra-class flagships. As phones got better, cameras became where manufacturers tried to stand out. As cameras got better, telephoto lenses became the next point of focus. The most recent Ultra phones from Xiaomi, Oppo, and Huawei have all made the telephoto, above all, their selling point. Vivo's X300 Ultra is doing something different.Instead of pushing its telephoto hardware to further extremes, Vivo has mostly left it be. The company has focused its efforts on a significantly improved 35mm main camera, unique among the …Read the full story at The Verge.

Whether you're building out a home theater experience or want the best picture for your gaming PC, OLED is often cited for its color reproduction and viewing experience. And well, it is, until it isn't. Cryptic comment, I know, but it'll make sense. See, OLED is hard to manufacture reliably, and the panels that make it off the line are near-perfect.

I can’t wait for a proper full length. | Image: Blitzcat Records I've got to thank my oldest friend and concert buddy, Tim, for turning me on to this one. Ashnymph is a London band that blends post-punk melodies with Krautrock rhythms and industrial grime. Their debut EP, Childhood, drifts between dreamy vocals buried in layers of reverb and four-on-the-floor dancefloor pounding. It's a thrilling opening salvo from a band that feels on the cusp of a major breakthrough.Childhood opens with an ambient recording of someone walking down a hall (I think), and some swirling synth noise before the first song, "Island in the Sky" kicks off properly with a motorik beat and bass throb. The thin, digitally manipul …Read the full story at The Verge.

Back in December 2025, I figured I could stop my Pascal-era GTX 1080 from gathering dust by using it to host LLMs on Ollama. Despite some snags with the drivers, this experiment turned out pretty well, and its utility skyrocketed when I began pairing it with my self-hosted FOSS stack. But having spent the last couple of weeks tinkering with different providers and LLMs, I realized that 8B models weren’t the only ones I could run on my aged gaming companion. With a little bit of elbow grease, I managed to build a fully Linux-based LLM pipeline using repurposed hardware that not only frees me from the API limits on cloud models, but also ensures my private files don’t leave my local network.

I'm not going to sugarcoat it: Google's AI efforts are something I've always had a complicated relationship with. Their journey has been interesting, to say the least. They began with whatever Bard was, which eventually led to the rebrand to Gemini, and I still think their main consumer-facing AI products are still finding their footing. ChatGPT is still the default the average person reaches for when they think of AI, Claude has built its own loyal following among more technical people (and well, everyone now), and Gemini is just...there.

Substack, the once buzzy newsletter platform, is losing a new swath of writers to rival platforms most people haven't heard of. Just last month, The Ankler, one of Substack's most popular publications, left for a platform that gives it more control over its site. Others who have departed Substack within the past year voiced similar complaints and cite the platform's increased focus on social features as well as a pricing model that puts a chokehold on their business.Substack faced talent drain in 2024 linked to its platforming of Nazi newsletters, but now it's not just the platform's stance on hate speech that's driving away creators.Sea …Read the full story at The Verge.

The weekend when I made a segmented home network live using OPNsense on a mini PC, I felt genuinely proud. Separate VLANs for IoT devices, trusted machines, and guests. Solid firewall rules to safeguard my home network. Smart devices are isolated in their own subnet, away from primary machines.

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on Netflix, follow Andrew Webster. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.How it startedBoggle has become a spectator sport in my household. Everyone crowds around the TV while one of us plays, and the crowd either helps shout out words or waits patiently for their turn. There's a lot of yelling. But it's a game that my family can hop into easily, and once someone starts playing, it seems everyone slowly drifts into the room to join in. The surprising part is that the experience is ha …Read the full story at The Verge.

The desk-friendly Cricut Joy 2 comes in multiple colors. | Photo: Sheena Vasani / The Verge I've always been skeptical of products that claim to help you lead a more creative life. But one recently won me over. I've spent three weeks with the Cricut Joy 2, a smart cutting and drawing machine that made it easy for me to get back into making stickers, cards, bookmarks, and more.The small $99 gadget isn't perfect, but its capabilities and app-provided templates were just what I was looking for. Caregiving, self-criticism, and mental health struggles have made it tough to tinker and doodle like I used to, and yet the Joy 2 clicked with me. It doles out quick wins when you're in the mood to create.I've been testing the Cricut Joy 2 …Read the full story at The Verge.

It’s already raised over $700,000 on Kickstarter. | Image: Bastl Make no mistake, the Bastl Kalimba is a synthesizer, you just play it like a kalimba. Its tines don't really make much sound. There is an internal mic that you can blend in for a little acoustic spice, but it's mostly driven by the synth engine that combines physical modeling and FM. The tines are actually touch and velocity-sensitive triggers. And, while it can sound somewhat like a real kalimba, it's a lot more sonically versatile and offers features you can only find on a synth.Beyond the synth sounds that range from pluck to pads, there are also built-in effects covering basic spatial effects like delay and reverb, as well as distortio …Read the full story at The Verge.