A Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W draws so little power that it opens the door to projects you can run continuously without worrying about energy costs. It sits quietly in the background and does its job with a tiny footprint, which makes it perfect for small automations and sensors around your home. These projects show how much you can accomplish with almost no power use, and they all take advantage of the Pi Zero’s efficiency and flexibility in a meaningful way.

For decades, PC builders have used Crucial RAM sticks to power their PCs. However, as we've entered the AI era, said PC builders have been struggling to find specific components as interested parties begin hoovering up hardware to power their LLMs. At the start of the year, we saw a big GPU shortage to the point that new GeForce RTX cards were selling for ridiculous prices.

Unlike a robovac, Mirumi will never eat a sock or get stuck under furniture. | Image: Yukai Engineering Among a sea of new TVs, robovacs, and smart glasses, Yukai Engineering’s Mirumi was a unique standout at CES 2025 earlier this year. The tiny robot has no practical purpose other than looking adorable and bringing a smile to people’s faces by simulating an inquisitive personality. The company planned to release the companion bot sometime in mid-2025, but mere weeks before the year ends Mirumi is finally available for preorder through a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign.Yukai Engineering originally expected Mirumi to be priced at around $70, but a lot has happened around the world since January, and the tiny bot will actually cost about twice that. The earliest Kickstarter backers can preorder Mirumi with gray, pink, or ivory fur for 18,360 yen, or around $118 with discounts. If you drag your feet, the crowdfunding pricing will end up at 21,803 yen, or around $140, but that’s still discounted from the full retail pricing, which is expected to be $150.Following the Kickstarter there will be a bit more waiting, as Mirumi isn’t expected to ship until April 2026 at the earliest, but as with any crowdfunded product, it’s not a bad idea to brace yourself for delays.Instead of cleaning floors or mowing your lawn, Mirumi is positioned as a companion robot, but one that will benefit others more often. Using a long pair of arms the robot attaches to bag straps or handles and appears to curiously look around by turning and cocking its head from side to side.Using a distance sensor Mirumi can also detect nearby people and appear to focus its gaze and attention on them, but will also simulate the bashful response of an infant by shaking and turning its head away when someone suddenly appears or touches it. Mirumi isn’t overpacked with functionality, and that could be its biggest appeal. It just hangs out with you and quietly watches the world go by while occasionally brightening someone’s day with just a look.

It’s getting harder and harder for the Hubble and other telescopes orbiting Earth to capture pristine images thanks to the sudden surge in satellite launches. Satellite trails could mess up nearly 40 percent of images the Hubble takes and up to 96 percent of those taken by three other telescopes over the next decade, according to a study by NASA researchers published today in the journal Nature. That could jeopardize scientists’ ability to spot worrisome asteroids or discover new planets, they warn. Our view of space just gets fuzzier without efforts to limit light pollution from new megaconstellations of satellites.The scale of the problem is astounding“My career has been focused on trying to make telescopes see better … try to make the telescopes more sensitive, more precise, getting better images,” says Alejandro Borlaff, a NASA research scientist and lead author of the study. “For the first time, we found something that may actually be worse in the future.” The scale of the problem is astounding. Cheaper launch costs and the proliferation of telecommunications satellites like Starlink’s have opened up a Pandora’s box of new challenges in space. Satellite trails, which look like streaks of light, were already detected in 4.3 percent of images taken by the Hubble between 2018 and 2021. The number of satellites orbiting Earth has grown from 5,000 in 2019 to more than 15,800 today, according to the European Space Agency. That number could reach as high as 560,000 if currently planned satellite launches proceed over the next 10 years or so. Borlaff and his colleagues simulated the view that four telescopes are likely to have after all those launches. With that much crowding in space, they project that the Hubble telescope could inadvertently capture an average of 2.14 satellites per exposure. The Chinese Space Station Telescope Xuntian, one of the other telescopes included in the study that’s expected to launch next year, could see an average of 92 satellites per exposure. The Hubble is less likely to catch as many satellites in its images because of its narrower field of view. Fortunately, other powerful telescopes, including the James Webb, orbit far enough from Earth to avoid light contamination from satellites.View LinkThe issue goes beyond accidentally including a satellite (or many) among the visions of swirling nebulae, stars, and distant planets these telescopes capture. The satellites reflect light from the Sun, Moon, or Earth, which can be bright enough to obscure details that might otherwise be captured in an image were it not for that light pollution. Researchers might not be able to detect a change in the brightness of a star that could indicate that there’s an exoplanet there, Borlaff explains. “You will lose that information because a satellite passed in front of you.” Now’s the time to find solutions, he says, before there are so many satellites in orbit. Efforts to design darker, less reflective satellites have posed new problems because they tend to get hotter and shed more infrared light as a result. Researchers have also tried strategizing to take images at times and locations with a lower likelihood of satellites crossing their path, an endeavor that’s harder to do the more crowded it gets out there. It’ll take more coordination on the ground with companies and governments launching satellites, maybe by placing them in orbit lower than where the telescopes are to avoid obstructing their view or regulating where they can be deployed. “There has to be an optimal way to place constellations and space telescopes … so we can coexist in a sustainable way,” Borlaff says.

Microsoft has a vision for Windows: to incorporate AI into the OS so it can do things on its own with minimal user input. The more fancy way of saying it, as the software giant often does, is "agentic OS." There was a huge uproar from users when the company revealed its new "agentic OS" direction for Windows, to the point that Microsoft had to provide more clarity.

Andrew Ross Sorkin and Dario Amodei speak onstage during The New York Times DealBook Summit 2025 at Jazz at Lincoln Center on December 03, 2025 in New York City. | Image: Getty This is an excerpt of Sources by Alex Heath, a newsletter about AI and the tech industry, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week.Dario Amodei took the stage at the DealBook Summit on Wednesday to throw punches without naming names.The Anthropic CEO spent a good chunk of the interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin drawing a careful line between his company's approach and that of a certain competitor. When asked about whether the AI industry is in a bubble, Amodei separated the "technological side" from the "economic side" and then twisted the knife."On the technological side, I feel really solid," he said. "On the economic side …Read the full story at The Verge.

Getting gifts from your family and friends’ wishlists is easy, but getting them something meaningful will make them grateful forever. You'd be surprised how inexpensive it is to make your own cheap smart home sensors and make someone’s life a bit easier. With an ESP32 microcontroller and ESPHome, these cheap smart home sensors can be a catalyst in making a home smarter.

Depending on your life story, you might be a Photoshop person, a GIMP enthusiast, or a Photopea evangelist. You might be using a completely different graphics tool, but one thing that might have slipped your consideration is Paint.NET. You probably heard about it, and dismissed it as "Paint++", but that couldn't be more wrong. Paint.NET is a deceptively powerful and versatile tool, and its intuitive UI makes it far more approachable than Photoshop or GIMP. Being free makes it one of the most attractive graphics tools for those who don't want the cost or complexity of other tools, and are content with an easy-to-use yet highly functional alternative.

The refurbished PC hardware market has always thrived in enthusiast circles, thanks to the constant flux in component prices. One month, a GPU costs as much as a small car; the next, it's half the price, so naturally, buying refurbished often feels like a smart shortcut to better performance for less money. And in many cases, it just is: plenty of components age gracefully and offer fantastic value the second time around.

Every year, the nominations and winners at The Game Awards are guaranteed to be the cause of discourse online. Trying to judge the best games of the year with so many opinions being thrown around is a monumental task in of itself, let alone deciding which game represents the best aspects of the entire industry. And the 2025 show is no exception, with a highly competitive group of nominees for every category. But one game was left out of the coveted Game of the Year category, despite being nominated many times for multiple awards.

If you're a Google Home and Nest smart home ecosystem user, you're likely more than a little frustrated at this point. Over the past few months, especially as Google's attention continues to turn to Gemini, smart speakers like the Nest Audio have become unresponsive and terrible at controlling smart home devices. In my house, my various Nest Audio speakers have become so bad at turning my Philips Hue lights on/off that I've considered getting rid of them entirely for Amazon's Echo smart speakers.

For as long as I can remember, I have always set up my PC using a local account. It was because I prioritized privacy over a bunch of services I didn't really need, and I didn't want Microsoft tracking my usage patterns. But that changed with Windows 11, where Microsoft made it nearly impossible. Although there are still ways to set up Windows 11 with a local account, it's more challenging than ever. On earlier iterations of the OS, you could just choose "Local Account" during setup, but now, you need to run a command which, honestly, most Windows users are unaware of. Additionally, you can switch to a local account after setup, but that isn't a common choice either.