Windows XP has been out of support for over 12 years now. Despite that, people still run Windows XP, and many fondly remember it as one of the best Windows iterations to date. It wasn't the most secure or even the most powerful, if we look at it in present terms, but there was something unique about Windows XP that every discussion about Windows somehow circles back to. If you ask me, it was simplicity that made Windows XP a hit.

The Kane Parsons' film Backrooms is expected to earn up to $90 million in its opening weekend after pulling down $38 million on Friday alone. That's not only above expectations, but absolutely obliterates A24's previous opening weekend record of $25.5 million for Alex Garland's Civil War. It's also a better opening day than The Mandalorian and Grogu, which only pulled down $33.7 million on its way to a total $81.6 million for the weekend. That also means that Backrooms is an incredibly profitable movie, with an estimated $10 million budget. By comparison, the latest Star Wars disappointment cost $165 million and was considered affordable c …Read the full story at The Verge.

Art TVs aren’t exactly known for being affordable, which is why Woot’s latest sale is notable. Now through June 26th, the retailer is discounting Samsung’s 2025 Frame TV and Hisense’s 2025 CanvasTV. The 65-inch CanvasTV is down to $779.99 ($520 off) — its best price of the year — while Samsung’s like-minded Frame TV is on sale in multiple sizes starting at $587.99 ($312 off). If you want a bigger set, the 75-inch CanvasTV is also on sale for $1,197.99 ($1,302 off). However, note that both Hisense models come with a one-year warranty, whereas the Frame TVs only include a 90-day warranty through Woot.Hisense CanvasTV (2025)Where to Buy: $2499.99 $1197.99 at Woot (75-inch) $1299.99 $779.99 at Woot (65-inch)Samsung The Frame (2025)Where to Buy: $899.99 $587.99 at Woot (43-inch) $1247.99 $797.99 at Woot (55-inch) $1697.99 $897.99 at Woot (65-inch)Both 4K TVs deliver an excellent, art-focused experience. When my colleague John Higgins compared the two panels in November, he found that the artwork looked remarkably realistic on their matte displays, even though the Frame was brighter (661 vs. 527 nits) and handled reflections better. Hisense also includes a magnetic bezel with each purchase and, by default, access to more than 1,000 works by renowned artists such as Van Gogh and Monet. Samsung, meanwhile, charges up to $200 for its optional bezels, depending on the size, plus another $50 a year for access to its full suite of artwork.In addition to blending easily into your home decor, both the Hisense and the Frame are great for watching TV and gaming. Each offers a max 144Hz variable refresh rate (except for the 43- and 50-inch Frame models), which helps make fast-paced action movies, sports, and games look smooth. The Frame also offers four HDMI 2.1 ports instead of just two, though the CanvasTV has the leg up when it comes to software, since it runs on Google’s intuitive TV interface rather than Samsung’s clunky Tizen OS. Both sets support Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa for voice controls, though, as well as Apple AirPlay.

You may have heard that Valve's new Steam Controller can ring like a telephone or do the Wilhelm scream. But did you know it can sing songs, too? Let me show you.Here's the new Steam Controller performing the "Ground Theme" from Super Mario Bros. 2:Here is "Still Alive" from Portal - fitting for Valve hardware:I even made it play Doom: View this post on Instagram Are you wondering how the controller, which does not have a speaker, is able to make audio at all? Valve's first Steam Controller, even though it was discontinued, was a great gadget for tinkerers - someone even wrote an open-source program to make it " …Read the full story at The Verge.

Microsoft is facing criticism for its handling of zero-day exploits. Someone going by the name Nightmare Eclipse has been publicly feuding with the company, posting proof-of-concept exploit code. Some of their posts suggest that they're a disgruntled former employee. But what caught cyber security researcher Kevin Beaumont's eye was how Microsoft has responded.Microsoft suggests it plans to bring a criminal case against Nightmare Eclipse for failing to follow "proper coordination" in disclosing vulnerabilities. They also disabled Nightmare Eclipse's GitHub, GitLab, and Microsoft Security Response Center accounts disabled. As Beaumont point …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you’ve been a part of the PC master race for as long as I have, you’ve probably upgraded your gaming machine enough times to have some spare hardware lying around. Or maybe you skipped the Ship of Theseus situation altogether by replacing your entire system with a shiny new PC. Either way, if you’re not actively using your old gaming companion, there are a bunch of ways to breathe some new life into it – like turning it into a home server.

It's always exciting to wake up one day and remember a game you used to play. You download it immediately, but the joy lasts only 10 minutes until the first Game Over screen, after which you promptly forget about it. Part of that comes down to how these old games were actually meant to look. There were a lot of rough edges in older games that motion blur, pixel art, and the softness of CRT displays helped to mask. Playing them on a razor-sharp modern monitor can sometimes make them feel... sterile.

Cecil Baldwin is a busy man with some dope boots. | Image: Cecil Baldwin Cecil Baldwin's résumé includes appearances on Gravity Falls, narrating the documentary Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street, and performing as part of the New York Neo-Futurists theater company. But he is best known as the host of the podcast Welcome to Night Vale, a long-running fiction show that blends macabre Lovecraftian horror with absurdist comedy. As Cecil Palmer, the voice of Night Vale Community Radio, Baldwin keeps the people of the titular town abreast of all the goings ons with the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home and offers tips on how to best maintain their Bloodstone circles. He also cohosts Random Nu …Read the full story at The Verge.

Any smart home user knows the familiar irritation of asking a cloud-based smart speaker to turn off a desk lamp. You will find that the audio is recorded, shipped over the internet to a corporate data center, processed, and then sent back. When it fails, you get the spinning red or orange ring of doom and a robotic voice complaining about connection issues. If it succeeds, you will find that it took so much longer to turn off your desk lamp than if you had just gotten up and done it yourself.

I live in a part of Los Angeles where I feel safer bringing pepper spray on walks. The problem is, I don't always remember to bring it with me, and it's not legal to carry it everywhere I go. Pebblebee's $59.99 Halo Bluetooth tracker surprised me by being a suitable replacement because it doubles as a siren-equipped personal safety device, and I can bring it anywhere.A quick pull of its cap triggers a bunch of safety features: Its 130dB siren will sound, its LEDs will strobe, and it will automatically alert up to five trusted contacts with text messages (Pebblebee's Alert Live service shares your location for 24 hours, or as a one-time loc …Read the full story at The Verge.

I don't really need to convince you that AI tools go haywire pretty easily. You ask them a simple question, they give you an answer that answers nothing you actually asked. You ask them to tidy up your desktop, they wipe the whole thing. At a company called PocketOS, a Claude-powered coding agent casually deleted the entire production database in nine seconds when doing a routine check. When the founder asked what had happened, the agent confessed that they had guessed instead of verifying it. All that to say, an AI agent going haywire and making bad decisions is a very real concern right now.

NotebookLM has long exceeded expectations in the functionality department, making it easier to use than any other publicly available LLM with user-added guardrails to perform similarly. Although this AI tool shares the Gemini LLMs with other Gemini-branded Google utilities, its standout feature remains minimal hallucinated info in results because each notebook is limited to the sources you're supplying.