Google's new "24/7" AI agent, Gemini Spark, can be shockingly good at doing things on your behalf. But I'm not sure it's worth the financial cost and potential privacy tradeoffs.The company gave me access to Spark last week. Google advertises Spark as an AI agent that can take on tasks and work on them in the background - even tasks that have multiple steps - allowing you to put your phone down or walk away from your computer. It also advertises at the very top of the Spark website that it's "always under your direction," that "you choose to turn it on," and that "it's designed to check with you before taking major actions." Given the moun …Read the full story at The Verge.

Nvidia's announcement that it's getting into the consumer laptop chip space with RTX Spark is huge. Apple has proved for years that Arm-based chips can perform incredibly well while also delivering great battery life - at least on the Mac. In the Windows world, performance hasn't fully matched up under Qualcomm chips, mostly in the graphics department. There's clearly still untapped potential, and Nvidia seems to be promising to deliver it.This could be Windows' moment to blow us away with a new generation of supremely capable chips, much like Apple's back in 2020, with the introduction of the M1. But why does this launch feel simultaneous …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you’re planning to travel this summer, both a Bluetooth tracker and a personal safety device can come in handy, especially if you’ll be exploring on your own. The Pebblebee Halo combines those two gadgets into one, and it’s currently on sale for $49.99 ($10 off) at Amazon, which is the best price we’ve seen. Amazon is also throwing in a fourth Halo for free when you buy three as a part of a limited time promotion.Pebblebee HaloWhere to Buy: $59.99 $49.99 at AmazonWhether you’re touring a new city or heading back to your hotel after a night out, the Halo can help in a variety of situations. Like the Pebblebee Clip 5 — our favorite AirTag and Tile alternative — the rechargeable, water-resistant tracker does a good job of accurately helping you keep tabs of bags, wallets, keys, and other valuables. It offers up to 500 feet of Bluetooth range and taps into both Apple’s Find My network and Google’s Find Hub, so you can locate items even further away.What really sets it apart is that it’s also a personal safety device. With a quick pull, you can trigger off a piercingly loud 130dB siren, bright strobe lights, and automatic location sharing with one trusted contact. If you’d like to send your real-time location to multiple contacts at once, you’ll need Pebblebee’s Alert Live subscription (which costs $24.99 a year), but the good news is the service is included free for the first year, making the Halo an even better value at this price.Read our hands-on impressions of the Pebblebee Halo.

Some news: The Vergecast is now a daily podcast! Starting today, we'll be posting every weekday, with even more gadgets and rankings and conversations and feelings and podcasts-within-podcasts. We're excited for all the ways this new schedule lets us tell new kinds of stories, experiment with new tech and new formats, and involve you even more in the show. (The other immediate change to know about: We'll be publishing the show in the afternoons going forward, so we can include the day's biggest news in our 90 Seconds on The Verge segment. The goal is to always be live before 4PM ET. Often well before.)As we've been preparing for our new …Read the full story at The Verge.

AI has become incredibly good at helping us move faster. It can brainstorm ideas, generate solutions, and expand on almost any thought within seconds. But after months of experimenting with AI for technical planning and decision-making, I started wondering whether speed was actually the right metric to optimize for.

We may just have gotten an early look at the Google Pixel Watch 5 - and from an unusual source. Randy Pitchford, the creator of the Borderlands game franchise, posted a pair of images of a watch on X, saying that his friend found it underwater while scuba diving near Saint Martin, as reported earlier by Kotaku."He noted that the reverse of the watch indicates that it is a Google Pixel 5, which has not yet been announced, let alone released," Pitchford writes. "It seems to be fine. The face indicates an empty battery, but seems to have enough reserve power to display the correct time." After putting out a call to find its owner, Pitchford s …Read the full story at The Verge.

Setting up a new Jellyfin server always starts the same way for me. I spend hours organizing libraries, fixing metadata disasters, downloading posters online, and then realizing that the sun has set while I micromanage every part of the server. The real fun, however, comes from installing plugins that transform Jellyfin into a genuinely premium media server.

Windows 11 made major changes to the Taskbar, and they weren't well-received. The centered Start button, unnecessary additions like Widget board and Copilot icons, and locking it at the bottom weren't exactly the surprises Windows users were eager for. I made peace with the Windows 11 taskbar after trying third-party apps like Explorer Patcher, which let memove it to any position.

Meta's AI support chatbot helped hackers hijack Instagram accounts, as reported earlier by 404 Media. In a video shared on Telegram, a hacker shows how they could take over an account by asking Meta's chatbot to switch the email associated with someone else's profile and then reset the password.The issue, which Meta says has since been patched, cropped up around the same time Barack Obama's White House account on Instagram was hacked. On Sunday, users noticed that the @obamawhitehouse account began posting images containing Iranian propaganda. Hackers appeared to have hijacked the Instagram accounts belonging to the US Space Force Chief Ma …Read the full story at The Verge.

Valve recently sent a shockwave through the games industry with the sudden reality that overnight the Steam Deck OLED transformed from a value king recommendation into an elite luxury purchase. The 512GB model jumped to $789, and the 1TB model skyrocketed to $949. Upon announcing this news, Valve kept its public statement brief, pinning the blame on rising component costs and global logistical challenges after stock issues.

After months of speculation about whether OpenAI or Anthropic would be first in their race to IPO, Anthropic on Monday reached a key milestone: filing to kick off the process with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.The filing sets the stage for what's sure to be a massive IPO. As of its fundraise last week, Anthropic is being called the world's most valuable startup, with a post-money valuation of $965 billion. That tops the $852 billion post-money valuation of OpenAI, which is its biggest rival. Anthropic chose to submit its draft registration statement to the SEC confidentially, according to a blog post from the company, meani …Read the full story at The Verge.

Going through note-taking apps is almost a hobby for me at this point. After Notion stopped being my go-to, the open-source world is where I naturally ended up. Most of them ship with at least one feature that's pretty unique and they almost always cover the same ground of future-proof and local notes. AFFiNE, Joplin, Logseq, and Simplenote have all rotated in and out of my desktop setup over the past year, and they're all pretty great.