How do you feel about Windows 11? There's a very good chance that people will respond to that question in a variety of ways. Some people have come to love the new operating system, while others still look back at past operating systems and wish Windows 11 could draw inspiration from them.

For the past several months, Home Assistant has been my go-to platform to automate my smart home. This robust software provided me with local voice control, extensive customization options, and privacy controls. Despite packing everything, I missed the straightforward voice control in Home Assistant. I integrated an M5Stack ATOM Echo smart speaker after failing to make Amazon Echo and Apple HomePod work with Home Assistant.

The Starlink Mini satellite dish is now even better thanks to the $119 LinkPower 1 power bank from PeakDo. The battery locks securely to the back of SpaceX's smallest terminal and provides over 4.5 hours of uninterrupted Internet connectivity. The LinkPower's battery can also charge simultaneously over USB-C from your car, solar generator, or solar panel for indefinite Internet use. Then the tidy little package can be slipped into a backpack or tote for your next adventure.Starlink is a life-changing Internet service that connects people and villages too remote for towers and cables to reach. My own Starlink Mini has been critical in helpi …Read the full story at The Verge.

As a tech blogger deeply integrated into the world of self-hosted media, Jellyfin is my go-to. It smartly manages my vast collection of movies and shows. Yet, one persistent challenge remained: watching YouTube videos directly within Jellyfin. Despite YouTube being a massive content hub, there's no direct way to integrate it with Jellyfin. This gap always felt like a missing piece in my perfect media setup.

When my brother and I were building a budget gaming PC for him back in December 2020, in the thick of the pandemic, we were about to settle on a GTX 1660 Super. Just before that, however, we found a listing for a pre-owned RTX 2070 Super. The price was attractive, and frankly, better than any other listing we could find, so we decided to stretch our budget and build a seriously powerful rig instead. What followed was a series of bad luck, wrong decisions, and the lesson that you should always do your homework before buying any used component.

Hours after Microsoft revealed hacking groups affiliated with the Chinese government have been exploiting a flaw in its SharePoint software, Bloomberg News reports that the National Nuclear Security Administration has also been breached in the attacks.A single source tells Bloomberg that the department, which provides the Navy with nuclear reactors for submarines, was caught up in the zero-day vulnerability that has hit more than 50 organizations in recent days. The exploit affects on-premises versions of SharePoint, but not the SharePoint Online service that Microsoft operates as part of its Microsoft 365 cloud service.While the nuclear weapons agency has reportedly been affected by the SharePoint exploit, no sensitive or classified information has leaked according to Bloomberg. That might be because the US Department of Energy uses Microsoft 365 cloud systems for a lot of its SharePoint work. “The department was minimally impacted due to its widespread use of the Microsoft M365 cloud and very capable cybersecurity systems,” says a Department of Energy spokesperson in a statement to Bloomberg. “A very small number of systems were impacted. All impacted systems are being restored.”Microsoft has now patched all versions of SharePoint that are impacted by the zero-day exploit. The flaw allowed hackers to remotely access SharePoint servers and steal data, passwords, and even move across connected services. The exploit appears to have originated from a combination of two bugs that were presented at the Pwn2Own hacking contest in May.

The Switch 2 has been a hit among fans, and game developers have been trying to work out how to squeeze their games onto the system. We've already seen the appearance of game key cards, which are a physical medium that still requires downloading the game before you play. We've even seen people cancel their Doom preorders because the Switch 2 cartridge didn't contain the actual game.

I've always been interested in the world of amateur radio. It's like a secret world where people talk to one another using technology that only a few people have. While I've always wanted to give it a shot, I have no idea where to start.

Nextcloud is a go-to platform for many people who want to host their own cloud storage. It covers nearly everything, from file syncing and sharing to collaborative tools, including calendars, contacts, and document editing. But if you’ve used it for a while, especially on modest hardware, you’ve probably run into some of its more frustrating limits. File previews can be slow to load, remote storage integrations may not always behave as expected, and the web interface can sometimes lag, even for basic tasks like folder navigation.

The PlayStation Summer Sale is officially live, running through mid-August, although some deals might expire sooner. This massive sale is taking after the Steam Summer Sale, offering discounts across hundreds of PlayStation games. You can get small discounts on 2025 releases or deep cuts on older games. You can prepare for upcoming PS5 exclusives by picking up the previous game in the series, or just grab a title you missed out on previously. While there are hundreds of discounts to check out, we've narrowed it down to six reccomendations, including heavy discounts on some of the biggest names in gaming, and maybe a game or two you aren't familiar with.

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is a Soulslike action RPG set in feudal China, featuring grotesque monsters and fast-paced difficult combat. If that description sounds like a ton of games released in the last few years, like Black Myth: Wukong and Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, that's because it's incredibly familiar in both setting and genre. While Wuchang: Fallen Feathers has a few original ideas when it comes to combat, it is ultimately doing what FromSoftware has been doing for years, but nowhere near the same level of quality as games like Elden Ring.

Proton, the company behind the encrypted email service Proton Mail, has launched an AI assistant aimed at preserving user privacy. The new chatbot, called Lumo, can summarize documents, generate code, write emails, and more, while storing data locally on users’ devices.Proton says it will protect this information using “zero-access” encryption, which grants users an encryption key that only they can use to view their content, preventing third parties, including Proton, from accessing the information. This helps ensure that Proton can’t share user data with advertisers or governments, or use it for training large language models, Proton says.Though Lumo comes with the ability to search the web, Proton turns this feature off by default to “give users maximum privacy.” If users enable the feature, Lumo will search the web for answers using “privacy-friendly” search engines. Additionally, Proton says Lumo can analyze uploaded files, but it doesn’t save any of its information. Users can link Proton Drive files to Lumo as well, which are supposed to stay end-to-end encrypted when interacting with the chatbot.Proton positions its AI chatbot as an alternative to the ones offered by larger companies, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Meta AI, Google’s Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot. “Big Tech is using AI to supercharge the collection of sensitive user data to accelerate the world’s transition to surveillance capitalism,” Andy Yen, the CEO and founder of Proton, says in the announcement. “Our vision for Lumo is AI that puts people ahead of profits.”Lumo is powered by several open-source large language models that run on Proton’s servers in Europe, including Mistral’s Nemo, Mistral Small 3, Nvidia’s OpenHands 32B, and the Allen Institute for AI’s OLMO 2 32B model. The AI chatbot will field requests through different models depending on which is better-suited for the query. “For instance, programming-related questions are handled by OpenHands, which specializes in coding tasks,” Proton spokesperson Betsy Jones tells The Verge.You can access Lumo now by heading to lumo.proton.me, or downloading the Lumo app for iOS and Android. Users who don’t have an account with Lumo or Proton can only ask the chatbot a “limited number” of questions each week, and they won’t be able to access their chat histories. Meanwhile, users with a free account can view an encrypted chat history, upload small files, and favorite a limited number of chats. There’s also a $12.99-per-month Lumo Plus plan for access to unlimited chats, extended encrypted chat history, unlimited favorites, and the ability to upload large files.