What's better than a party game? A party game you can play both online and locally, of course. No matter if your friends are on your sofa or are "so-fa" away from you, you can still play a round whenever you like.

Apple TV dropped the Plus because everyone was already doing it, according to Cue. We have some new insight into Apple’s muddled rebrand of Apple TV Plus to Apple TV, courtesy of an interview with the company’s senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue. Speaking on The Town podcast, Cue said that no consultants were involved, and that it was a collective decision to drop the “Plus” from the streaming service because everyone was already calling it Apple TV.The Plus was included in the original name because that’s what Apple uses to distinguish the paid versions of its free services, such as iCloud Plus and News Plus. “We stayed consistent because of it, but we all called it Apple TV, and we said, given where we are today, it’s a great time to do it, so let’s just do it,” said Cue.Cue also brushed off concerns that the rebrand might create confusion between the streaming service, Apple TV hardware, and the Apple TV app. “Our hardware is called Apple TV 4K for your TV. I think that’s fine, and the app is called Apple TV,” Cue said. “It’s been called Apple TV on our third-party products as well, so I don’t think that’ll be a problem at all.”

When I first started building my smart home, I did what most people do: I bought a bunch of off-the-shelf smart devices, installed their apps, and connected them to my network. Some of them I've had for years, but as time went on, I realized I don't truly "own" these devices. From lights to smart plugs and even voice assistants, I endeavored to replace them with my own alternatives... or at the very least, take back control of them.

There was a time when budget CPUs felt truly special. Getting most of the performance of a high-end CPU at a fraction of the price allowed countless PC builders to get started on their PC journey. Today, however, "budget" CPUs remain so only in name. The value has been eroding every year, innovative features are only found on high-end chips, and even APUs don't offer the value they used to anymore — it increasingly feels like the budget segment is scheduled for deletion pretty soon.

This week, we're finally getting gaming handhelds with Xbox branding. Microsoft and Asus partnered to create and release the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X, which are Steam Deck-like handhelds with a tailor-made version of Windows 11 for on-the-go PC gaming. And while no first-party Xbox games come out on the exact same day as these handhelds, the general launch window lineup is fairly strong.

An airplane takes off from Reagan National Airport on the ninth day of the federal government shutdown on October 9th, 2025 in Arlington, Virginia. | Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images In May, The Verge reported that the US aviation system was so fragile that "the smallest disruption can throw the entire system into chaos." That disruption arrived on October 1st, when the federal government shut down over a budget dispute. Chaos has indeed ensued. More than 6,000 flights are being delayed every day, nearly twice the historical average for October according to Department of Transportation statistics. The TSA has warned of longer security lines at airports and has stopped updating real-time checkpoint information on its MyTSA app. Some major airports have even been forced to operate without air traffic control for hours at …Read the full story at The Verge.

The Word concepts next to the final icon on the right. Microsoft is busy rolling out new curvy and colorful new Office icons, and now it’s revealing a set of design concepts it experimented with before finalizing these new icons. Some of the concepts are radically different from what Microsoft is shipping, with design explorations for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that more closely resemble the Office for Mac icons of the past.The Word concept icons (above) include a notepad-like experiment and different ways to visualize stacks of paper, or documents. Microsoft experimented with making the Word lettering the key part of the icon, and also versions where the lettering blends in or is totally absent. Microsoft eventually settled on a design that has three horizontal bars instead of four, and it’s using versions of the icon with and without lettering.Microsoft focuses heavily on the use of cells in its existing and new Excel icons, and the concept ones rarely diverge from this. I really like the X icon though, but the rest look similar to what Microsoft landed on for the final icon.PowerPoint has always been about slides, and Microsoft experimented with a variety of ways of visualizing that for its latest PowerPoint icon. A couple of concepts focus on the lettering, turning into a ribbon-like P or a P letter with a pie chart hanging off of it. The final icon design is a lot more tame though, with a slightly more rounded and colorful take on the current PowerPoint icon.All of Microsoft’s new Office icons — including new Teams, OneDrive, Outlook, and OneNote designs — are starting to roll out across Windows and iOS at the moment. Microsoft appears to be using the versions with letters in Windows, but for iOS it’s opting for icons without the distinctive letters.What do you think? Are there any concept versions you prefer over the final designs Microsoft picked?

I love my MacBook Air for its portability and long battery life, but when I need serious work done, I know it's far from the most powerful computer. For that, I depend on my powerful Mac Studio. But, obviously, I can't travel with a Mac Studio. It's likely you've run into the same issue as me. Sitting at a cafe, or even in another country, you might want to access your home computer. Except, setting it up properly for remote access is an exercise in frustration, dealing with routers, ports, and VPNs. Sure, tools like RustDeskhave made remote desktop access simpler and more privacy-friendly. But it's not the only game in town. Lately, I've been using another self-hosted remote desktop tool called Getscreen.me, and it takes everything good about RustDesk and makes it even more polished and accessible.

Do you feel that? That's the stirring of a feature Microsoft tried really hard to make work decades ago, but never quite got to launch. For years, we thought the company had forgotten about it, but now, it's dropping hints that it's ready for a round two. And while Microsoft hasn't confirmed what it is, I have a sneaking feeling what it's planning, and we'll find out for sure this coming Thursday.

I'll go out on a limb here: if you have an RTX 30 or RX 6000 series GPU, you're probably considering a GPU upgrade. PC gamers have this unquenchable thirst for new hardware, mostly GPUs, that's renewed each time a new product generation arrives. Granted, your old GPU might look tame in comparison, but if it can still run the latest games at decent framerates, you might want to look at a monitor upgrade instead. A large population of gamers still ignores the importance of a capable display. Here are some signs your monitor has overstayed its welcome, and you should save for a new gaming monitor instead of a GPU.

NotebookLM is one of the few generative AI tools that has really impressed me, but this doesn't mean that it doesn't have flaws. There's a lot it does better than its competitors, including letting you set the sources you want to use.

London’s iconic black cabs could soon face a new rival: Waymo. The Alphabet-owned company said today it intends to launch a fully driverless robotaxi service in London, starting in 2026 — marking its first effort to expand internationally. The UK currently doesn’t have any fully driverless vehicles on the road. The government has said it will start piloting fully driverless ridehail services in spring 2026, though a fuller rollout of self-driving taxis won’t come until the Automated Vehicles Act of 2024 fully takes effect in late 2027.Waymo says it will start deploying supervised robotaxis, with safety drivers behind the wheel, for data collection in London in the next few weeks. When it launches its commercial service next year, its fully driverless robotaxis will be available through Waymo’s own ridehail app. The vehicles will be maintained by a company called Moove, which provides fleet services, as well as a range of financial products for mobility companies. (Moove is also managing Waymo’s fleets in Phoenix, Austin, and soon Miami.)The government has said it will start piloting fully driverless ridehail services in spring 2026.Waymo has been eyeing London for a while now. Last month, The Telegraph reported that the company had begun advertising for staff in the UK capitol, including a “fleet readiness lead” and various engineers. Waymo says it has “strong ties” in the UK, citing its engineering hubs in London and Oxford. These hubs include teams advancing large-scale, closed-loop simulation, “a gold standard development method for fully autonomous driving technology,” the company says in a blog post. London won’t be the first overseas city to see Waymo’s distinctively driverless Jaguar SUVs. The company recently sent two dozen vehicles to Tokyo for a small trial, though it has yet to commit to launching a service there. When it launches, Waymo is sure to find plenty of competition in London. Uber has said it is working with UK-based autonomous driving startup Wayve on testing some driverless cars in the city next year. Wayve may have a leg up, given its home-grown status. To be sure, Waymo tests its vehicles in lots of cities where it may or may not launch a commercial service. It does this to see how well its vehicles adapt to new cities after having driven tens of millions of miles in its core markets of San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. Ideally, the company is trying to get to a point where it can bring its vehicles to a new city and launch a robotaxi with a minimal amount of testing as a preamble.