The holidays are a great excuse to bring something fun and personal into your home, and a Raspberry Pi makes that easier than ever. You can create decorations that respond to music, light up the room, or deliver a little seasonal magic to friends and family. These projects are affordable and easy to customize, especially if you already have a Pi sitting around from an old build. They are also a good way to give new life to hardware that might otherwise gather dust during the winter months.

It's Black Friday, so you know what that means: it's time to save some serious cash on PC hardware. If you're on the hunt for a new GPU, you'll be pleased to know that the GeForce RTX 50 series has finally come down in price after the big rush to grab them earlier this year.

A prototype BrickBoy, in my hands. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge If you're one of the nearly 3,500 Kickstarter backers paying to give your Lego Game Boy an actual screen and buttons, I have a question: did you expect those buttons to have physical switches underneath?Because the BrickBoy - not to be confused with Natalie the Nerd's Build A Boy - is not currently going with physical clicks. Instead, it glues rare earth magnets inside Lego bricks, for what will hopefully be a magical experience. This came as a surprise to me, because the BrickBoy Kickstarter, ending in three days, barely mentions magnets at all. Every one of the startup's promo image shows domed switches underneath the buttons, and star …Read the full story at The Verge.

With Black Friday in full swing, now is the perfect time to score yourself some accessories for less. If you're still using membrane keyboards and want to make the jump, or your current keyboard is looking a little worse for wear, you could do worse than grabbing the RK Royal Kludge, a very professional-looking keyboard that's perfect for getting work done. Plus with Black Friday's discount, you can pick one up with a nice 35% discount and save yourself some money.

Proxmox may be well known for its top-tier virtualization performance, FOSS nature, and native support for LXCs, but it has a ton of other features that make it stand out from the rest of the server platforms. Take its compatibility with first- and third-party tools, for example. Thanks to the talented minds at Proxmox and a supportive community of tinkerers, the PVE ecosystem is laden with handy services you can integrate with your home lab.

I've been trying to unify my smart home over the last year, which hasn't been the most straightforward task, since the devices in my household include a mix of Google Home, HomeKit, and Alexa, with a few smaller ecosystems along the way. That isn't how the smart home was sold to me all those years ago, and it never sat right with me that I needed either careful purchasing or multiple apps to make things work.

When it comes to visual quality, it's very difficult to beat an OLED. Their per-pixel control enables true HDR and stunning motion clarity, but LCD panel technology has always had one major advantage over OLED, and that's longevity. The Achilles' heel of OLED, whether it's a QD-OLED or WOLED, is burn-in, and while it is inevitable to some degree, so is degradation on all kinds of displays. OLED burn-in should no longer be a concern for the vast majority of people, and here's why.

NotebookLM is easily my most used app out of my entire productivity stack. It’s easy to use, filled with practical features I genuinely find myself relying on, and it helps speed up a lot of tasks I used to spend hours doing. And while it is an AI tool, it doesn’t feel like AI for the sake of AI, which is exactly why I love it.

With all the fantastic Black Friday deals available, it’s easy to overlook Sony’s ongoing PlayStation 5 sale, which is why we’re flagging it again. In case you missed it, all three PS5 models are steeply discounted until December 18th. The PS5 Digital Edition (slim) is still available from GameStop and Sony for around $399 ($100 off) — its lowest price of the year — while the standard PS5 (slim) is going for around $449 ($100 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart. And if you want a more powerful console, the PS5 Pro is now available at Amazon, Target, and Walmart for around $649 ($100 off), matching its best price to date. PlayStation 5 Digital Edition (slim)Where to Buy: $499 $399 at PlayStation Direct $499 $399.99 at GameStopPlayStation 5 (slim)Where to Buy: $549.99 $449.99 at Amazon $549.99 $449 at Walmart $549.99 $449.99 at Best BuyIf you’re wondering what the main differences are, the standard PS5 features a built-in disc drive, which the cheaper PS5 Digital Edition lacks. That means you can play physical games or Blu-rays without needing to spend an extra $79.99 on Sony’s external disc drive. Other than that, though, they’re pretty similar, with each offering 1TB of internal storage, which you can expand with a heatsink-equipped drive.PlayStation 5 ProWhere to Buy: $749 $648.99 at Amazon $749 $649 at Walmart $749 $649.99 at TargetThe PS5 Pro, meanwhile, is for those who want the best console experience available. It steps things up with twice the storage (2TB), though, like the PS5 Digital Edition, it lacks an internal disc drive. Its most significant features are under the hood: a 62 percent faster GPU, improved ray tracing, Wi-Fi 7 support, and AI-powered upscaling. These all allow some games to run at higher frame rates so visuals look even better, particularly on “PS5 Pro Enhanced” titles. That said, the difference isn’t always dramatic in real-world play. Our reviewer only noticed real improvements when sitting within 10 feet of his TV, and only some games — Final Fantasy VII Rebirth in particular — ended up looking exceptionally crisp and defined.Read our PS5 Pro and PS5 slim reviews.Other PlayStation Black Friday dealsIn addition to consoles, Sony’s Black Friday sale also includes a range of great accessories, from the PlayStation Portal to the DualSense Edge controller. We’ve highlighted some of our favorites below.PlayStation PortalThe PlayStation Portal is a handheld that allows you to stream games from your PS5 over the same network, or the cloud for certain titles if you have a PS Premium Plus subscription. The Portal has an 8-inch 1080p display with a 60Hz refresh rate, serviceable speakers, and a long-lasting battery. It also supports DualSense features, including haptic feedback and motion sensing. Read our review. Where to Buy: $199.99 $178.99 at Amazon $199.99 $179 at Walmart $199.99 $179.99 at Best BuyPlayStation DualSense ControllerSony’s wireless PS5 controller has roughly the same button and joystick layout as the PS2’s gamepad, but with haptic sensors, a built-in speaker, gyroscope, accelerometer, and touchpad for an even more immersive gameplay experience. The controller is also compatible with MacOS and Windows, so you can use the wireless controller to play computer games. Read our review.Where to Buy: $74.99 $54.99 at Amazon $74.99 $54.99 at Best Buy $74.99 $54 at WalmartSony DualSense EdgeSony’s pro-style controller, the DualSense Edge, might suffer from shorter battery life than the standard DualSense model, but it features great software integration with the PlayStation 5 and plenty of customizable components. Read our review.Where to Buy: $199.99 $159.99 at Amazon $199.99 $169.99 at Best Buy $199.99 $169.99 at PlayStation DirectPulse Explore Wireless EarbudsThe Pulse Explore Wireless Earbuds provide lossless, ultra-low-latency audio when connected to a PS5, and sounded very clear in our tests. They also support Sony’s 3D audio technology for a more immersive experience. When you’re done playing games, you can pair them to your phone or other devices over Bluetooth. Read our hands on.Where to Buy: $199.99 $169 at Amazon $199.99 $169.99 at Best Buy $199.99 $169 at WalmartPlayStation Pulse EliteSony’s PlayStation Pulse Elite is an over-ear headset with a retractable boom mic. It’s designed to filter out background noise, deliver low latency and lossless audio, and work with the PlayStation Portal or the PlayStation 5, PC, and Mac via the PlayStation Link USB adapter. Where to Buy: $149.99 $129 at Amazon $149.99 $129 at Walmart $149.99 $129.99 at GameStopPlayStation VR2 Horizon Call of The Mountain BundleThe PSVR 2 offers PC-quality VR on a console, and it’s currently bundled with one of its best games: Horizon: Call of the Mountain. The headset can run at up to 120Hz with a resolution of 2000 x 2040 per eye, and has a pair of built-in headphones — though you can plug your own into its 3.5mm audio jack, or connect wireless headphones by plugging wireless dongle into the PS5. Read our review.Where to Buy: $399.99 $299 at Amazon $399.99 $299.99 at Best BuyPDP Riffmaster for PlayStation 5PDP’s Riffmaster is a wireless guitar accessory compatible with Rock Band 4 and Fortnite: Festival. It has two sets of color-coded buttons you can press to hit notes as they appear on the screen, a built-in 3.5mm audio jack for connecting headphones, and an analog stick to help you easily navigate through each game’s menus. Where to Buy: $149.99 $109.99 at Amazon $149.99 $109.99 at Best Buy $149.99 $109.99 at GameStopSony DualSense Wireless ControllerThe DualSense is the first-party controller Sony designed for the PlayStation 5. It features adaptive triggers, a built-in microphone, and haptic feedback technologies. Read our review.Where to Buy: $74.99 $54.99 at Amazon $74.99 $54.99 at Best Buy $74.99 $54.99 at Target

With the rise of smartphones pairing up with cars, there's a good chance you already depend on Android Auto to play music or find your way around. However, what if you want to make things wireless? That way, you don't need to fumble around with any wires; just get in the car, and you're ready to go.

Black Friday is the day that a handful of us at The Verge have been preparing months for, in part because it’s happening earlier and earlier. We’ve already lifted the curtain on deals — hundreds of them — including some that we couldn’t tell you about before today, and we have a one-stop shop for everything we’ve published so far. There’s a lot of prep work that goes into pulling this off every year, so instead of making Black Friday a one-way stream of information like usual, we’re hosting an AMA for subscribers.Do you want a personalized deal pick so that you don’t have to sort through the chaos? I’ll give you some options. Or, perhaps you want to ask questions about our process, or about the deals landscape in general. Those are just some idea starters. Whatever it is you want to ask, ask away. I’ll start answering questions later today at 1PM ET.

I avoided Obsidian for a long time because every tutorial made it look like rocket science. Plugins, YAML frontmatter, templates, custom CSS — everyone seemed to be building elaborate knowledge management systems while I just wanted to use a simple tool to plan a single project. Then I learned that Obsidian's core linking feature is powerful enough to map an entire project without any of that complexity. No plugins, no templates, just five connected notes and the graph view to see it all come together.