A group of tech companies and academic institutions spent tens of thousands of dollars in the past month - likely between $17,000 and $25,000 - on an ad campaign against New York's landmark AI safety bill, which may have reached more than two million people, according to Meta's Ad Library. The landmark bill is called the RAISE Act, or the Responsible AI Safety and Education Act, and days ago, a version of it was signed by New York Governor Kathy Hochul. The closely watched law dictates that AI companies developing large models - OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google, DeepSeek, etc. - must outline safety plans and transparency rules for reporting …Read the full story at The Verge.

There are plenty of great gaming laptops out there, but if you're looking for something with plenty of power that's still relatively sleek, the Razer Blade 14 is going to be it. We didn't get a chance to review this year's model, but last year's version really blew us away.

Network upgrades don't need to cost a lot of money. We've seen quite a few people on our team upgrade their switches for just $20, and even grab some new cables too. But if you don't want to spend that much, this TP-Link switch might just be what you're looking for.

This is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers, a newsletter on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and entertainment, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week. Lowpass is taking a winter break and will be back on January 8, 2026.All I want for Christmas is to find that darn movie I've been meaning to watch. What was it called again? I could have sworn I bookmarked it somewhere…If your household is anything like mine, you might frequently run into the same issue: There's too much to watch out there, and keeping track of all the things you want to stream one day has become a nightmare. It's not that there aren't any tools for this. Th …Read the full story at The Verge.

Over the years, I've used a lot of different PDF readers, and my opinion of them is pretty bleak. Most of them suck. I have a large collection of ebooks in PDF form, but I despise reading them because of the hassle of navigating the pages and trying to read on non-user-friendly setups. I also have a sizable collection of comics and manga, but I have to have a specialized reader for those, since some PDF readers just don't work for .cbz files.

The Dometic Recon 360 Faucet pumping water out of a Dometic Go Jug through a LifeStraw water filter. As a reluctant doomsday prepper and eager vanlifer, Dometic's battery-powered Go Faucet has, for the last few years, played a central role in my bougie bug-out kit and my camping rig's water system. So it took me all of two minutes with Dometic's new Recon 360 Faucet to realize it's an upgrade in every single way that matters - and then confirmed after a week of testing it.The Recon 360 Faucet lets you pump water out of a storage container like a typical faucet in places that lack traditional plumbing, be it inside a boat, cabin, or van, or at the beach, job site, or campground. A long silicone water hose attaches to the back of the faucet …Read the full story at The Verge.

If I had to recommend a Linux distro to people who want to escape the Windows ecosystem, my first port of call is always . It's a great little operating system to cut your teeth on, and you can either distro hop into other pastures or stick with Linux Mint. There's really no wrong way to go about it.

The age-old myth that more RAM is the cure for a laggy PC has to be debunked thanks to yet another RAM shortage. While opting for more memory can positively impact your PC, if your operating system is a mess, then 64GB of RAM just gives the mess more room to breathe.

2025 was a weird year for PC hardware. There were big GPU releases by all the big players in the game, Intel continued to struggle in the desktop space while AMD furthered its lead, and AI continued to dominate headlines even where it wasn't relevant. Looking at how the landscape is currently, you wouldn't be blamed for thinking that things are pretty grim. Prices for DRAM have stayed elevated, leading to ever-increasing prices for RAM and even the rumored cancellation of entire product lines. Enthusiasts wanting to upgrade or build a new rig are truly stuck between a rock and a hard place, but I don't think all is lost. There was a lot that happened in 2025 that makes me hopeful for 2026, and these are 4 of the big trends that are responsible for that.

Remember when Guitar Hero was a huge phenomenon? While it always felt great to use the guitar controller to play your favorite tracks in-game, all those skills you ended up developing couldn't really transfer over to the real thing. Which is a shame, because if that were the case, I'd probably be pretty good at the guitar.

Did you know that some people peek at their presents before Christmas? Outrageous, I know. I mean, I'm all for a little bit of a shake, a little bit of squishing and prodding to figure out what it is, but I draw the line at flat-out peeking under the wrapping. At that point, you may as well put the gifts unwrapped underneath the tree.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. It seems there's always another PC hardware crisis around the corner. When the paper launches of the RTX 50 and RX 90 series gave way to some semblance of normalcy in the market, consumer RAM prices tripled almost overnight. The rising enterprise AI demand and the consequent shift in manufacturing priorities from consumer DRAM to HBM have left PC builders in the lurch. All upgrade plans have been delayed or canceled, and reports indicate that this latest memory crisis could stretch well into 2028. PC builders who value platform longevity might not have the luxury of building an AM5 PC for years, but AM4 is still a viable option for a budget gaming rig.