This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the real-world effects of Trump's tariffs, follow Mia Sato. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.How it startedThe economists tried to warn us. From the beginning, trade policy experts cautioned that tariffs would raise consumer prices and wouldn't create the American manufacturing renaissance that the Trump administration promised. One thing that I wrote about tariffs back in February keeps popping in my head: When I asked economists and policy folks what high tariffs would actu …Read the full story at The Verge.

There is no more chaotic activity than willfully entering a grocery store without a list.I know. Some people thrive on vibes-based grocery shopping. They can come up with meals on the fly, buy what's on sale and work around that, or follow some bizarre "3-3-2-2-1" rule or whatever I'm always seeing on Instagram. I am not one of these people. But while I know a list is essential for my survival at the store, I've never been able to work out a reliable meal planning and grocery list-making system. Every week I write out a list by hand, and every week I forget something crucial. So I asked myself, as I so often do when confronted with a pro …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you're just getting started with running local LLMs, it's likely that you've been eyeing or have opted for LM Studio and Ollama. These GUI-based tools are the defaults for a reason. They make hosting and connecting to local AI models extremely easy, and it's how I supercharged my Raycast experience with AI. However, recently, I've made the decision to move to llama.cpp for my local AI setup. Yes, LM studio and Ollama offered everything I needed, including a polished interface and one-click model loading. But those conveniences come with trade-offs. From extra layers of abstraction to slower startup times, and less control over how the models actually run. Switching to llama.cpp strips all that away and gives you direct access, efficiency, and flexibility. It's now become my go-to recommendation for anyone with more than a fleeting interest in gaining more control over their local AI models, or interest in learning how they work.

The Mortal Kombat series has become one of the iconic and most legendary video game franchises of all-time. Its impact on pop-culture and significance to the gaming industry cannot be understated. From influencing future generations of fighting games in arcades, to adding phrases like "FINISH HIM" into the pop-culture zeitgeist, people love playing the Mortal Kombat games. This is why Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is a special compilation of the original games that began everything, and laid the foundation for a franchise that would continue for decades.

Note-taking is a part of modern life. Whether it's for work, study, or daily journaling, everyone needs to capture and manage their ideas. People often juggle between popular apps like Evernote and Google Keep, trying to find the perfect fit. However, the truth is, there are many great options out there built for users who demand more.

If you use a Windows 11 PC, chances are you're used to downloading your programs the same way you always have. You type the name of the program into Google, open the most legitimate-looking result, and go for it.

Asus is expected to update the ROG Ally X with the new AMD Ryzen Z2 series APUs in the near future, to match up with the recently launched ROG Xbox Ally X. Of course, Asus could simply call this future handheld the ROG Ally 2, but Asus doesn't tend to go for numerical iterations on any of its existing laptop or desktop brands, so that feels unlikely.

Lake Mungo is haunting and heartbreaking. Found footage movies are tough to pull off. For every classic like The Blair Witch Project or Rec, there are 100 movies like Slender and Megan Is Missing that are, at best, forgettable, and at worst, an affront to the very concept of cinema. My personal favorite, though, is Lake Mungo, a slow burn mockumentary with found footage elements that manages to be both creepy and emotionally wrenching. Oh, and it's gloriously concise at under an hour and a half. Lake Mungo is, first and foremost, one of the most convincingly realized mockumentary ever made. If you told someone it was a legit documentary about a supposed haunting, there's a chance …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you've got an older laptop, you're probably looking for ways to keep it living just a little bit longer. Tech prices are high thanks to the uncertainty of the US tariff situation, and prices may not be dropping any time soon. So it's hardly the best time to invest in new tech.

The Microsoft Zune is mostly just a footnote in tech history. Microsoft spent years - and vast sums of money - trying to create a true competitor to Apple's iPod, without ever coming close to actually pulling it off. The Zune was simply too little, too late.You know what's surprising about the Zune, though? Microsoft made a lot of the right bets with the Zune. The company saw - well ahead of most of the rest of the tech industry - that adding social features could make its product stickier. It understood that these pocketable devices might eventually be useful for much more than just music. And it had a bunch of interface design ideas that …Read the full story at The Verge.

As the effects of Windows 10's end-of-life date have fully taken hold, we're beginning to see shifts in how people use their PCs. While some people have stuck with Windows 10 using the extended support plan, others have either bought a new device, forced Windows 11 on their older PC, or even jumped ship to a new operating system entirely.

When PC gamers seek motherboards, they focus on numbers such as that of the M.2 slots, USB ports, or even the PCIe slots. Choosing a motherboard for your CPU means you'll be looking at many boards based on your budget and needs for features and performance. The interesting thing is: any motherboard you buy will have the same amount of currency (given it's from the same chipset) to spend: the number of PCIe lanes available.