Google didn't invent the concept of smart glasses, but it did help make them mainstream. In retrospect, 13 years after their launch, this is both a good and bad thing. Glass made a lot of people dream about new ways to use computers without staring down at screens all day. Glass also made a lot of people realize just how bad it might feel to have a world full of face computers. Which is more predictive: Glass, or Glassholes? And can you even have one without the other?For this episode of Version History, we go back in time and tell the story of Google Glass. David Pierce, Victoria Song, and tech journalist David Imel trace the product's be …Read the full story at The Verge.

In November, Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-CEO made a trip to the White House for a lengthy meeting with Donald Trump. According to Bloomberg, the two discussed a number of topics, but chief among them was Netflix’s plan to bid on Warner Bros. At the end of their conversation, Sardonos felt that “Netflix wouldn’t face immediate opposition from the White House.”This week, Netflix successfully won the bidding war for Warner, offering $82.7 billion. It’s well known that Paramount and its CEO David Ellison were eager to acquire the storied studio and its streaming assets. Ellison and his father, Larry Ellison, have close ties to the White House, and as part of their pitch to Warner, suggested that only they were in a position to overcome the regulatory hurdles of further media consolidation. Sarandos seems to have rightly believed that the Ellisons overestimated their political clout. And despite some public efforts to turn the White House against the deal, Netflix won out, for now. There is of course, still a chance that Paramount could launch a hostile takeover effort, or that the Justice Department could try and scuttle the deal — nothing is guaranteed yet. Sarandos tried to acquire Paramount before David Ellison swooped in, so snatching Warner Bros. out from under his nose is likely something of a personal victory.

If I had to come up with a list of components for an ideal home lab, I’d be at a loss. That’s because a home lab is essentially an isolated environment where you can tinker with computing projects without the fear of breaking anything important. Depending on your needs, even a mere Raspberry Pi running a bunch of containers can constitute an experimentation lab.

The PC hardware industry might shower the lion's share of hype and coverage on gaming GPUs, but workstation graphics cards are every bit as impressive, only for different workloads. If the "home labbers" among you are chasing affordable GPUs for your budget setup, you might want to look at old and used workstation GPUs instead of their gaming siblings. These cards might not feel like much in games, but they are more than capable as compute cards in home lab setups. They're not only highly affordable on the pre-owned market, but also surprisingly power-efficient. They offer the reliability that home lab users seek, and many of them can fit in any home lab setup.

If you've been anywhere near the PC hardware scene lately, you already know that things are getting grim. It's not just "GPU scalpers" levels of grim, either. I'm talking "entering an existential crisis for consumer hardware" levels of grim. Thanks to the global RAM and VRAM inflation, and companies like Micron dramatically pulling out of the consumer DRAM market because AI companies keep buying memory by the warehouse, we're now officially in full-blown RAMflation.

I recently stumbled across an image editor and viewer so small that I could email it to all my friends as a joke — and it would still be a smaller attachment than pretty much anything else I could send. The aptly-named Minimal Image Viewer is just 20.5kb in size, but is capable of handling even large, high-resolution photos with ease. It also has a lot going on under the hood. Does it compare with Photoshop or GIMP? No, not even close. But it's not meant to.

A mini PC with two Ethernet ports can transform how you handle home networking. It offers flexibility that many off-the-shelf routers cannot, and it gives tinkerers room to grow without moving to expensive commercial gear.

Year Walk. | Image: Simogo It may be hard to believe now, but the App Store was once a thriving place for inventive indie games. The ubiquity of the iPhone coupled with the relative ease of development for the platform meant that smaller studios were able to get their games in front of huge audiences, leading to a great time of experimentation that unfortunately didn't last. But if you want to relive those better days, Simogo's new collection is just the thing.You might recognize the name Simogo from more recent titles, like the noir mystery Lorelei and the Laser Eyes or the vibrant interactive pop album Sayonara Wild Hearts. Before that, though, the studio was a cr …Read the full story at The Verge.

It's easy to think about AI as a sort of existential battle between human and machine. Maybe it will be, someday, in a Skynet sort of way. But there are also lots of people trying to figure out how to use AI not as a replacement for human creativity and thinking but as a tool meant to augment those things.Sari Azout is one of those people. She's the founder of Sublime, a platform dedicated to curation, creativity, and ideas. Sublime is all about taste, which makes it slightly surprising that there's a huge amount of AI powering the way it works. But to Azout, it all makes sense.Subscribe: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Pocket Ca …Read the full story at The Verge.

Friday, the EU slapped X with a €120 million fine (about $140 million) for violating the Digital Services Act (DSA). It was the first time that a company had been hit with a penalty for running afoul of the law. Elon Musk responded with his trademark tact and professionalism by posting “Bullshit” on X in response to the announcement from the European Commission. But that wasn’t the end, because just a day later Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, accused the Commission of abusing an exploit to boost the reach of the announcement and responded by shutting down its ad account. According to Bier, the Commission had not used its ad account since 2021, but used a post format explicitly reserved for ads in its announcement of the fine against X. He claims that the Commission posted “a link that deceives users into thinking it’s a video and to artificially increase its reach.” (For the record, the post itself includes a video.)The seemingly retaliatory revocation of the European Commission’s ad account is unlikely to materially change things for either X or the EU. If, as Bier claims, the Commission has not used its ad account since 2021, holding it hostage is unlikely to give X any leverage. And, while it can appeal the decision, X is currently still on the hook for the sizable fine. Plus, it must provide details for how it plans to address the “deceptive” use of verified checkmarks in the next 60 days, or face additional penalties.We’ve reached out to the Commission for comment and will update if we hear back.

If you follow my work, you probably know that, at this point, I'm mostly using macOS and Linux computers in my daily life. My Mac Mini is my main workstation at home, but when it comes to laptops, I spend most of my time on Linux, and I love it that way.

When you're buying expensive PC components worth $1,000–$2,000, it's only natural to want to protect them from unexpected external factors. Power surges remain one such factor. They might be rare, but they can be fatal to sensitive electronics if the voltage is high enough. Grid outages, electrical storms, or other heavy devices can contribute to power surges that can permanently damage your PC. Most people use surge protectors that are built into cheap power strips, thinking they've done enough to safeguard their expensive rig. However, such surge protectors might not be enough for sustained power surges, and depending on their age, might not offer any protection at all.