I’ve spent much of this year testing out new productivity and note-taking tools. And I’d say about half of them lived up to my expectations, such as AFFiNE. But with so many notes apps on my computer, things can get cluttered and scrambled very fast. It’s just not realistic to hop from app to app; you end up losing track of where all your files live, and in my case, also confuse some apps with others. So having one basic little stack of tools that I can rely on became essential for maintaining a consistent note-taking system. That’s why I settled on this plain text stack.

“BG3 players exploit children,” reads a Google AI-generated headline. | Image: Google Did you know that BG3 players exploit children? Are you aware that Qi2 slows older Pixels? If we wrote those misleading headlines, readers would rip us a new one - but Google is experimentally beginning to replace the original headlines on stories it serves with AI nonsense like that.I read a lot of my bedtime news via Google Discover, aka "swipe right on your Samsung Galaxy or Google Pixel homescreen until you see a news feed appear," and that's where these new AI headlines are beginning to show up.They're not all bad. For example, "Origami model wins prize" and "Hyundai, Kia gain share" seem fine, even if not remotely as interesting as …Read the full story at The Verge.

I have little doubt that Grand Theft Auto VI is going to be one of the biggest video game successes of all time when it launches less than a year from now. Despite that, I'm not very happy or optimistic with the current state of Rockstar Games. Any game development cycle that takes 10+ years is bound to be connected to its fair share of problems, and Rockstar has certainly succumbed to that.

The tools I rely on every day might be tools you barely touch, and I'm sure it works the other way around too. That's the special thing about software: the tools we choose typically reflect how we think and work. But even then, there are a few outliers. For instance, when most people hear the word "AI," their mind just naturally defaults to ChatGPT. It's just the way it works!

Not everyone needs a $2,500 laptop to play games while on the go. Sometimes you just want to get in some gaming sessions, and just have fun. If that's you, then I've found the perfect laptop that can get this done.

I love instant cameras because of how they help me slow down and be creative without the distractions of a phone. Holding a real print also feels grounding in a screen-dominated age, which is why I think a lot of people these days are drawn to them — and why models with old-school vibes like the Polaroid Flip make such great gifts. It’s usually pricey, but today you can buy the Flip for $184.99 ($35 off) directly from Polaroid, which is its best price to date. Amazon is also selling the camera with two packs of film for $212.49 ($37 off), which marks a new low too.Polaroid FlipWhere to Buy: $219.99 $184.99 at Polaroid $219.99 $186.99 at Best Buy $249.99 $212.49 at Amazon (with 16 prints)Polaroid cameras offer the most charming, old-fashioned instant-film experience of any I’ve tested, and the Flip is no exception. It sports a classic, retro-inspired design with a flip-up lid and prints vintage-style square I-Type photos with Polaroid’s iconic white frame. Yet at the same time it’s got the perfect amount of subtle modern conveniences baked in, like Bluetooth, USB-C charging, and a beginner-friendly companion app that lets you adjust saturation and exposure.But what makes it really stand out is its picture quality, which outshines other Polaroid models in this price range. The Flip has the most powerful flash of any Polaroid camera, and paired with its unique sonar autofocus and four-lens hyperfocal system, it produces sharper, more consistently in-focus images than any model Polaroid offers at this price. You can manually tweak exposure, too, and the camera even sends warnings you when a shot is likely to be over- or underexposed. These are all features that go a long way toward reducing the number of wasted shots, which is helpful given I-Type film costs a whopping $18.99 for just eight prints.That said, the instant camera’s not for everyone. Fujifilm’s cheaper Instax Mini 12 develops prints much faster and looks more true-to-life while struggling less in low light. Still, the Flip’s dreamy, vintage aesthetic has its own appeal, especially if you prefer a more artistic, old-fashioned look.

We've long known that the ISP-provided router is usually junk, and you're better off buying your own if possible. It's not just that they're built to the lowest specifications, and often overheat due to the limited space for both modem and router functionality. Or that they're usually limited in how many devices you can connect to your home network at once, which wasn't a problem once upon a time, but when even your toothbrush comes with Wi-Fi, it's an issue.

We dark mode users are a very particular folk. When we want a dark mode, we want a dark mode, devoid of any bright lights or anything white. If an app dares to boot into light mode, we screech and cry until we find the setting to turn on its dark mode. It's sort of like the digital version of the vampire, except we don't have any eye strain.

Indiegogo is planning to launch a new “Express Crowdfunding” campaign format that lets creators ship things while the campaign is on-going instead of forcing creators to wait until the campaign is over.Indiegogo spokesperson Maciej Kuc tells The Verge that the change was spurred by Indiegogo’s recent move to the infrastructure from its new owner, board game crowdfunding company Gamefound:Switching to an entirely new technology is always a major challenge. The technology Indiegogo is currently working on was originally created for Gamefound – a slightly more “typical” crowdfunding platform. Its core assumption was that creators run a campaign to raise funds in order to bring a product to life. The technology expected that at least two weeks would pass between the crowdfunding campaign and the pledge manager phase – the moment when orders are finalized, new ones are added, and shipping addresses are collected.One prominent example of the current system’s delays, which was reported on by Android Authority, was Ayaneo’s campaign for its new Pocket AIR Mini retro gaming handheld. Ayaneo originally planned to begin shipping the handheld by the end of November, but because of “platform policy requirements,” the company says it can’t collect addresses for shipping until December 5th. Specifically, Ayaneo says it can’t request to move the campaign into the Pledge Manager phase, where shipping addresses are collected, until December 2nd, and that request takes approximately three days to be reviewed. Shipments will now begin “around” December 10th, according to Ayaneo.Indiegogo’s new Express Crowdfunding format “should be available” in early February, Kuc says. 

A Raspberry Pi 5 might look like a simple little board, but it can transform an entire home network into something faster, safer, and far easier to manage. I discovered this when I set out to consolidate my DNS, VPN, and monitoring tools into a single low-power machine. The surprising part was that it did not take expensive hardware or complicated systems to pull it off. What I ended up with was a reliable, centralized, and quiet automation hub that made my daily internet experience noticeably smoother.

If you've been thinking about grabbing a new laptop, but don't want to spend a ton of money, these two laptops are going to be the best options to choose from. To be clear, they aren't going to be the most powerful, and they aren't going to be the latest models to hit the market.

We've all wanted to improve gaming performance at some point, and a lot of the advice we find online sounds convincing at first. I've followed some of those tips over the years, especially when I was still figuring out how different components affected real-world performance. The problem with some of the advice people keep repeating on forums is that it often oversimplifies how games actually behave on modern hardware. More often than not, you end up trying tweaks that fix nothing, or upgrading parts that weren't holding you back in the first place.