Microsoft Defender has come a long way since its inception. When it first arrived on our PCs, it was full of holes, and people would always recommend downloading a third-party antivirus over using it. However, Microsoft stuck to its guns, and it eventually created something perfectly fine for regular internet use. Now, people of all walks of life had a mighty antivirus up and running the moment Windows booted, which was a huge win for cybersecurity.

Many people rightly believe that panicking about SSD lifespan is pointless, since most PCs will never write enough data to a drive to exhaust its endurance. If you check your SSD's health with CrystalDiskInfo or a first-party tool, you'll probably see "Good" or "Normal" under "Drive Health." You'll probably see the same status for years, irrespective of what's going on physically with the NAND flash on your drive. SSD health is just a percentage that tells you how much of the drive's rated lifespan has been exhausted. It doesn't account for serious read/write errors or physical degradation of the SSD's cells. Even an SSD with 99% or 95% health could have encountered uncorrectable errors, at which point it should not be trusted with your data anymore. A deeper look at your drive's S.M.A.R.T. data will tell you if you need to start preparing for the last rites.

While I try to do as much as possible to protect my privacy on my Android smartphone, I always have lingering concerns about what information apps may access, especially in the age of AI. There are plenty of privacy settings you can tweak, but these menus have also become difficult to navigate.

Before even trying Gemini’s Daily Brief, I thought it wasn’t going to be much. I thought it would give me a general overview of my tasks, or at least some random news. Guilty as charged for not giving it enough credit. It showed me more than I expected, gave me details that made me think, “Where did it get that from?”, and even offered an additional option for something on my to-do list. Now, it’s something I open every day.

AI subscriptions are starting to pile up fast. One month it’s ChatGPT Plus, the next it’s Claude Pro, then Gemini Advanced looks tempting, and suddenly testing models feels less like curiosity and more like managing a tiny streaming bundle for robots. I don’t mind paying for software that earns its spot, but I do mind paying monthly just to find out whether something fits my workflow. That’s where OpenRouter feels refreshingly practical.

A decade ago, Nintendo made a big splash into the world of mobile gaming with a new Super Mario platformer directed by none other than Shigeru Miyamoto. But even though the game proved popular, it wasn't the success the company had hoped for. Over the ensuing years Nintendo has slowly retreated from smartphone gaming, with the exception of a handful of apps and some legacy games. Which is what made it so surprising this week when Nintendo launched Pictonico. It's a bizarre and playful mobile game that channels the best of WarioWare, but I have zero idea how it fits into Nintendo's current strategy.Much like WarioWare, Pictonico (which, I a …Read the full story at The Verge.

It explained the process of how it made these edits beautifully, I’m just not terribly impressed by the results. | Images by Jess Weatherbed / The Verge AI image tools rarely make me feel like I'm part of the creative process. They are, after all, mostly designed so that people with no design experience can type in a few words and get back a usable result. So I was pleasantly surprised by Adobe's latest take on an AI image assistant: It's a bot designed to take away some busywork, while still granting you creative control.Unlike AI generators that are specifically designed to make and edit images or video, Adobe's Firefly AI Assistant, which I've been testing in beta, is more like a multitasking middleman that can operate Adobe's design apps for you. On its website, Adobe says that you can …Read the full story at The Verge.

Almost five years with Windows 11, and Microsoft has made several changes to the Start menu. But the core usability problems never got fixed. The oversized layout, the Recommended section taking up valuable space, and the lack of meaningful customization made it feel oddly limited on a desktop PC. In the past, I tried living with it; I even tried several native tweaks like registry edits and Group Policy workarounds, but those still felt like a patchwork, not an actual solution.

Buying a GPU always used to feel like an investment, and a long-term one, at that. You'd spend good money on a GPU, and it would carry you through years of new releases without making you feel like you were falling behind every six months. In fact, I'm willing to wager that the average gamer had just one graphics card that varied them through their teens, but today, things couldn't be more different.

It feels like every time I open a browser tab or boot up a casual game, my PC fan suddenly spins up to 100% like a jet engine taking off, only to drop to a whisper two seconds later. The constant acoustic revving is driving me insane, and it's more common than you think.

New Glenn rocket explodes at Launch Complex 36 on Thursday night in Florida. | Image: Spaceflight Now While Blue Origin investigates the root cause behind last night's spectacular explosion of its New Glenn rocket, it's already clear that this will be a major setback for NASA's Moon base plans and Amazon's fledgling Leo space internet constellation.The incident occurred at about 9PM at Blue Origin's Florida launch site during a hot-fire test, where seven engines in the booster stage are lit while keeping the 322-foot-tall rocket fixed to the launchpad. The explosion and ensuing fireball severely damaged the only launchpad Blue Origin has for its New Glenn rocket. Here's our video of the explosion at Launch Complex 36. It happened about …Read the full story at The Verge.

Modern charging bricks are little computers of their own, packed with circuitry to protect your devices from issues while charging. If you stick to reputable brands, they should be of good enough quality, and that's partly why we haven't done any charger reviews for a while.