There's been a lot of expectation around Windows 12 ever since it was first believed to be coming in 2024. That excitement kind of came and went when Microsoft confirmed the 2024 update was going to be called Windows 11 version 24H2 and there wasn't as much of a break from the existing OS as some had hoped for.

Yep, we're talking about CPU bottlenecks again. The B word is one of the scariest things for the average gamer, so much so that people waste too much time on bottleneck calculators without understanding the phenomenon. Unusually high CPU usage is often shorthand for a CPU bottleneck, but this alone isn't enough to warrant panic attacks and frantic CPU upgrades. You need to realize that a few other scenarios can easily account for high CPU usage without using "CPU bottleneck" as the underlying cause.

People across the United Kingdom have been faced with a censored and partially inaccessible online landscape since the country introduced its latest digital safety rules on Friday.The Online Safety Act mandates that web service operators must use "highly effective" age verification measures to stop kids from accessing a wide range of material, on penalty of heavy fines and criminal action against senior managers. It's primarily focused on pornography and content that promotes suicide, self-harm, or eating disorders, but the scope of "priority content" also includes materials related to bullying, abusive or hateful content, and dangerous st …Read the full story at The Verge.

Tractive is offering Whistle users a free replacement pet tracker. | Image: Tractive Tractive, an Austrian company that makes smart location and activity trackers for dogs and cats, is expanding its presence in the US by acquiring a competitor, Whistle, from Mars Petcare. As a result of the acquisition, the Whistle platform is being shut down and its pet tracking devices will stop working on August 31st, 2025. Existing Whistle customers can get a free Tractive tracker as a replacement, while remaining subscriptions “will transfer to your new Tractive device,” according to the Tractive website.The free replacement devices will only be available until September 30th, 2025 and will require Whistle users to register on Tractive’s platform through its website, select a new Tractive subscription, and provide the serial number of their current Whistle tracker.Tractive is also honoring remaining Whistle plans but will be adding the remaining time to new Tractive subscriptions. According to an FAQ the company shared about the acquisition, if you have over two months remaining on an active Whistle plan, your remaining subscription time will be transferred to your new Tractive plan and you won’t be charged immediately. If there’s less than two months remaining, you’ll need to pay for a new Tractive plan at sign up but you’ll get two free months of service (no matter how much time you have left) added automatically. The company’s Basic subscription plan starts at $108 if you subscribe for just one year, but a two year plan is discounted to $144. That includes GPS location tracking, heart and respiratory rate monitoring, bark tracking, virtual fences and escape alerts, and activity and sleep monitoring. The pricier Premium plan is $120 for one year, $168 for two years, or $300 for five years and adds features like family sharing so additional people can track a pet, worldwide cellular coverage, year long location history, and the option to export the GPS data.Although remaining Whistle subscriptions are being honored, Whistle device warranties are not. When the trackers are shut down at the end of August they will no longer be supported. However, the free replacement devices that Tractive is offering will come with their own two year warranties.

On July 18th, a federal judge in Texas scheduled what will likely be the final hearing in the case of United States v. The Boeing Company. After five years of litigation, the end result can only be described as a victory for Boeing - and a permanent setback for those who hoped that the company would be held accountable for a decade of safety violations. Last year, Boeing's prospects looked far bleaker. In 2021, the Department of Justice charged the company with conspiracy to defraud the government about the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) software on the 737 MAX, which has been linked to the deaths of 346 people in t …Read the full story at The Verge.

Charging my iPhone and Apple Watch every night used to mean a tangled mess of cables draped across my nightstand. I wanted a cleaner, more organized solution, but the $40 DN40 MagSafe dock I wanted seemed like a steep price for something that didn’t even include the actual chargers. I already had the official MagSafe puck and Apple Watch cable, so why pay a premium for a piece of plastic to hold them in place?

Microsoft is starting to comply with the UK’s Online Safety Act by prompting Xbox players to verify their age today. The prompts will be shown to Xbox players who indicate they’re over the age of 18 and will be shown when you sign into an Xbox account in the UK. Microsoft says it’s also exploring bringing similar age verification tools to other countries in the future.To power the age verification in the UK, Microsoft is partnering with Yoti, which is one of the services that hasn’t fallen victim to the Death Stranding photo mode bypass. While the age verification checks are optional right now, they will become a requirement to access a variety of Xbox services in early 2026, when additional parts of the UK’s Online Safety Act come into force.“Starting early next year, age verification will be required for these players in the UK to retain full access to social features on Xbox, such as voice or text communication and game invites,” explains Kim Kunes, vice president of gaming trust and safety at Xbox. If you don’t verify your age between now and early next year, social features “will become limited to friends only” until the age verification process has been completed.“Whether a player verifies their age will not affect any previous purchases, entitlements, gameplay history, achievements, or the ability to play and purchase games, however we encourage players to verify their age via this one-time process now to avoid uninterrupted use of social features on Xbox in the future,” Kunes says.While this is limited to Xbox players in the UK right now, Kunes says, “We expect to roll out age verification processes to more regions in the future.” Microsoft isn’t revealing which other regions will get similar age verification requirements, but Kunes does note that “these methods may look different across regions and experiences.”If you’re in the UK, then you can verify your age for your Xbox account online through Microsoft, where you can use a selfie, a scan of your passport or driver’s license, a credit card check, or a mobile number.

You can point your phone camera at Sam to pass age checks. Enforcement of the UK's new online safety rules started on Friday, forcing a variety of platforms to roll out mandatory age verification tools for Brits. We already know that the age-gating checks are easy to bypass with a VPN, but what we didn't know is that the face scanning tools used by platforms like Reddit and Discord can also be easily bypassed with Death Stranding's photo mode.Dany Sterkhov alerted the world to the Death Stranding bypass on Friday morning, and gamers have been using the photo mode and Sam Bridges to trick face scanning tools into accepting them as an adult all weekend. All you have to do is point your phone at your …Read the full story at The Verge.

The Game of the Year (GOTY) title has been handed out by multiple award shows over the past two decades. But in 2014, whether you love it or hate it, the Game Awards became the main stage where we crown the year’s best. For this list, we’re only focusing on winners from The Game Awards. Sure, there are other major ceremonies, such as the Golden Joystick Awards and the BAFTAs, as well as a variety of indie outlets, but they often crown very different champions.

Mini PCs are all the rage right now. I know our João Carrasqueira loves using them as a desktop PC replacement, and they have their uses in an office setting, but they can also be excellent for gaming and even creating a home lab. I currently use a GMKtek mini PC as a retro gaming machine for the big screen with Steam loaded and some lighter multiplayer games ready to go. It's brilliant, and the same goes for using one as a network-attached storage (NAS). Although most mini PCs only have limited storage options, they can prove great for building a DIY NAS with external storage.

Another San Diego Comic-Con has come and gone, and while there were no explosive reveals like last year's surprise appearance of Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom, there were quite a few interesting developments. That includes several Star Trek spinoffs, a new sci-fi show on Apple TV Plus, trailers for everything from Peacemaker to Gen V, and a surprising amount of Stephen King.Here's everything notable that you might have missed.Meet Pavi, the new AvatarWe've got our first look at Nickelodeon's newest entry in the animated Avatar franchise, and while Seven Havens doesn't have a firm release date just yet, we now know that Pavi (the new …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you have a Windows computer, chances are that OneDrive is your preferred cloud storage platform. Since it's integrated tightly with Windows, OneDrive makes it easy to sync your files, create backups of important data, and access them natively on all Windows PCs signed in with the same Microsoft account. Moreover, lots of businesses across the globe use Microsoft's work apps, like Outlook, Teams, OneNote, etc. OneDrive syncs with all of them, too, connecting all the services seamlessly. While using OneDrive is definitely convenient, it comes with its own set of flaws. For starters, it's not free. You need to pay for storage, and the costs can be rather high, depending on your requirements. Then, there's the risk of storing your files on a remote server. Owing to this, I started looking for a solution that could solve both these problems.