For six weeks, I left my ISP’s gateway in a drawer and used a white, dinner-plate-sized Cisco Aironet 2802i instead. It cost less than a large pizza. Like many home lab enthusiasts point out, old enterprise hardware can be ridiculously capable for very little money. The catch is that it’s built differently.

The Units are a band I discovered in part thanks to No Dogs in Space. During their miniseries on The Screamers (another incredible band worth checking out), they mention synthpunk.org as one of their sources. And there's no better way to get my attention than to combine two of my favorite things - punk rock and synthesizers. The site was down that day (it appears to be back up now), but I was able to access a version from July through the Wayback Machine. What greeted me was a bare-bones site with links for six bands, including The Screamers. But at the top was The Units, a band I'd never heard of and, after tracking down their 1980 record D …Read the full story at The Verge.

Yesterday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a lengthy open letter saying it was time to "pace the frontier" and slow down AI development. OpenAI's Sam Altman and Elon Musk both agreed, publicly voicing their support on X. Even Alphabet's Demis Hassabis offered tentative support for Amodei's proposal. Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, however, seem to think the AI executives are being overreactive and fear that a pause could lead to China outpacing the US in the AI race. According to the Financial Times, Trump said "Look, we're leading China in AI … and, frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI, wins."Jo …Read the full story at The Verge.

Two people were arrested in San Fransico while riding around in a Waymo robotaxi after the cab pulled over and called the cops on them. The riders were juveniles in possession of a loaded AR-style ghost gun and were taken to a juvenile hall. While the police report did not specify who was operating the autonomous car, Waymo later confirmed it was one of its vehicles to the Los Angeles Times.A spokesperson told the LA Times that a "violation of our terms of service involving a firearm" was detected. At which point the car pulled over and alerted the authorities. Earlier this year, a Waymo faked having mechanical problems to pull over when …Read the full story at The Verge.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says Apple is developing two game controllers for the iPhone and will likely sell them under the Beats brand. Rumors that Apple might enter the game controller business have circulated for some time. But last week, MacRumors reported finding two references in macOS 26.7's code to two game controllers identified as first-party devices.Despite the code being found in macOS, not iOS, Gurman says the controllers are designed for iPhones. Additionally, he says that it is Beats executives leading the charge on this product. Apple sometimes uses its subsidiary brand to experiment with new product categories and compete at …Read the full story at The Verge.

Bambu Lab currently makes some of the best and user-friendly 3D printers on the market, but its software is another story altogether. The Bambu Studio slicer and the Bambu Handy mobile app both rely on Bambu's cloud service to work, bringing in features like printing directly from MakerWorld, remote monitoring and so on. While these features are good to have, they also send data through Bambu's cloud service, creating a risk of data misuse. Adding to this, Bambu's track record with software in general has been shaky at best and outright illegal at worst, making it difficult to recommend Bambu printers despite offering one of the most polished hardware in the 3D printing space.

I got some hands-on time with the ROG Ally X20 at Gamescom 2026. I was really excited given that the marketing narrative surrounding AMD's new Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme chip promised a generational leap that handheld gamers have been waiting for since the original debuted three years ago. I feel like, after my experience, I was actually quite let down.

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on cars, data privacy, and autonomous vehicles, follow Andrew J. Hawkins. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.How it startedEarlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission issued an unprecedented penalty against General Motors: a five-year ban on selling customer data to consumer reporting agencies and third-party data brokers. For years, GM had been collecting all sorts of data on its customers - such as how often they sped or whether they drove at night - and selling it to brok …Read the full story at The Verge.

There was a time when I, like millions of others, used to believe that buying a new 4K TV is all I would need to get the best possible picture quality for my TV shows and movies. Sure, the panel quality itself varied depending on budget, but by and large, 4K quality is supposed to mean 4K, right?

A decade ago, buying software usually meant paying once and getting on with your work. Today, productivity apps increasingly work the other way around: pay every month or lose access to the features you rely on. I’ve gradually gotten used to that model, but I still notice the difference when I use something I bought years ago. One of those purchases was Plex Lifetime Pass. I paid for it once, and a decade later, I’m still using it. Looking back at that purchase has made me think about how dramatically software pricing has changed, and whether subscriptions really make more sense for products I expect to use for years.

Marvel's mishandling of its Blade reboot will likely go down as one of the studio's biggest mistakes. There was a great actor in place to play the vampire hunter (Mahershala Ali), and a promising director set to take over the reins (Bassam Tariq). In retrospect, though, the disappointing demise of Blade might not be such a bad thing, because Tariq and Ali have collaborated on something much more interesting than a superhero reboot: the powerful hitman thriller Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.That was one of five movies I was able to cram into a very hectic third day at the Toronto International Film Festival (you can see my previous re …Read the full story at The Verge.

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 143, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, new tech season is here, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been devouring every iPhone Duo video I can find, clicking on the wonderful websites nominated for this year's Tiny Awards, catching up on the excellent Onimusha: Way of the Sword, reading Wildwood ahead of the upcoming movie, watching the new Taskmaster series, coming to grips with Link's new look in the Ocarina of Time remake, and fixing the flat tire on my toddler's stroller. I'm very proud of that …Read the full story at The Verge.