When I was 16 years old, I wrote my first fanfiction. It was a crossover fic where the cast from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy gave the anime dog demon Inuyasha a makeover. It was stupid and poorly written, and yet, to this very day, I remember it fondly. This is exactly what it's like playing Super Robot Wars Y - an exceedingly silly, nonsensical plot featuring characters that have no business speaking to each other all, stitched together by tactical robot action. It rules.Super Robot Wars Y was released on Nintendo Switch 2 and Steam on August 29th. For this blog, I played the demo that covers the game's first chapter with progress carr …Read the full story at The Verge.

Despite appearing rather complex at first glance, the Linux terminal is a nifty tool for most tasks, be it installing new packages or troubleshooting the most obscure errors. That said, enabling root privileges for certain actions can seem rather tedious, especially when you’re in the middle of setting up a complex app. If you’re an average user who leverages their Linux machine for everyday tasks, you might be tempted to simplify your experience by enabling root privileges for every operation.

Tired of paying for cloud storage every month, I decided to host my own instance of Nextcloud on my home network. I replaced OneDrive and Google Drive with what’s essentially a free platform that allows me to store all my files. Nextcloud is an alternative to cloud storage for those who either don’t want to pay to store their files in the cloud or are concerned about privacy. Whenever you upload something to the cloud, it’s sent to remote servers, which always involves some amount of risk. With Nextcloud and other such self-hosted instances, all your data stays completely on-device, which is a safer option if you work with sensitive information and files. The upsides may tempt you to make the switch right away. That’s exactly what I did, too, after my colleagues at XDA raved about Nextcloud.

A few years ago, artist Modern Biology became a viral sensation when he posted videos of himself controlling a modular synth with mushrooms on TikTok. Pocket Scion gives anyone similar capabilities, but without having to spend thousands of dollars on a Eurorack rig – and in a much more portable package. A core part of Modern Biology’s setup is a module called Scion from Glasgow-based Instruo. Scion turns biofeedback, whether that’s from houseplants or your own skin, into CV (control voltage) for controlling other synth modules in a larger setup. Touching two sensors to your hand or a mushroom completes a circuit, and then electrical fluctuations in that circuit can be used to trigger different notes, or change the cutoff on a filter, for instance.A little over a year ago, he approached Instruo about building something new. The fruit of that collaboration is the Pocket Scion, an affordable self-contained instrument that can turn small electrical changes from living organisms into MIDI data and create soundscapes using one of the four built-in sound engines. The Pocket Scion has a number of advanced capabilities too, including MIDI out for controlling external instruments. There’s also a companion app for Windows, macOS, and Linux that exposes sound design tools for creating your own synth patches, and can send data over Open Sound Control (OSC), which gives it control over a ton of audio and video programs like Max/MSP, Pure Data, and Unreal Engine for creating visualization or complex reactive art installations. It’s more powerful than you’d expect given its $149 price.The initial run of Pocket Scions sold out almost immediately. But you can place a preorder for when the next batch ships “early next week,” according to retailer Control Voltage.

The RVSolar System living its best vanlife. | Image: Bluetti It only took three years, but Bluetti is following EcoFlow’s lead with a fully integrated power system of its own to make vanlifers, off-grid cabins, and boats energy independent. The RVSolar System’s main advantage over bespoke systems is a relatively quick and easy installation, requiring just “30 minutes,” according to Bluetti’s announcement at IFA 2025. While it’s undoubtedly faster than installing a fully bespoke solution from Victron Energy, for example, the last time I installed EcoFlow’s comparable system, it took closer to five hours — and that was after several hours of planning, measuring, and double-checking. Thirty minutes is just the time needed to screw everything together, so there’s still a hint of truth here.Bluetti’s 48V RVSolar System is capable of 5,000W of max AC output or 1,360W DC. That’s plenty of power for everything from a roof-mounted air conditioner and induction cooktop to a 12V water pump and lighting system. It can be configured with a whopping 122kWh of Bluetti’s self-heated LFP batteries — enough for me to live and work off the grid for as long as 76 days, based upon the 1.6kWh average that I consume daily in my own van. As a bonus, Bluetti’s system also supports compatible third-party batteries, which is something EcoFlow can’t claim with its proprietary connectors.Maxing out a system with batteries will be overkill for most since these systems are designed to be easily rechargeable when out in the sticks. Batteries connected to the system can be recharged from a number of sources, including solar panels (up to 3600W), shore-power hookup (up to 5000W), a diesel generator (up to 5000W), and your vehicle’s own alternator (up to 1200W).The system is built around an RV5 Power Hub unit that houses all the devices, which typically have to be wired together separately in a bespoke installation. These include the DC-to-AC inverter to convert DC energy to AC power for the microwave or coffee machine, an MPPT solar charger to regulate solar panel input, a DC-DC charger to top up the batteries when the vehicle’s motor is running, and a DC converter to step down the voltage for 12V / 24V devices like lights, USB sockets, pumps, and modern A/C units. The kit also comes with a smart distribution panel for 8 AC and 20 DC circuits, with remote control over four of those AC circuits and six DC. You also get a wired 10.1-inch control screen that can be installed at a central location in the vehicle for remote monitoring and circuit-level control — functionality that’s replicated in the Bluetti app.The RVSolar System will be available globally on September 30th. Pricing information wasn’t available at the time of publication, but I’d expect it to be on par with Victron components, especially if it’s using third-party batteries.

Valve's Steam Deck appeared in early 2022 and helped relaunch the handheld gaming market with a whole new set of devices. But it's been over three years, and despite advances in the handheld gaming PC market thanks to chipmakers AMD and Intel, Valve has yet to unleash a sequel to the highly popular handheld.

Pencils down. Asking the Pixel 10 to be more than what it is feels greedy.Google's non-Pro Pixel is priced fairly at $799, which is significantly less than the $999 Pixel 10 Pro. It comes with some handy upgrades, like Qi2 charging with built-in magnets. Its AI features finally show promise. It includes a dedicated telephoto lens for the first time. It's a proper flagship and an all-around easygoing Android phone. But if I'm being greedy, then I do have one request: better cameras.The rear cameras on the Pixel 10 are totally fine. For someone who's not picky about image quality, they'd be better than fine. And maybe I'd think they were fine, too, if I …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you wanted a sense of the current relationship between the tech right and the populists, you had to be sitting in Breakout Room C on the first day of NatCon 5, the annual gathering of the MAGA right's powerhouses. At the end of the afternoon panel on the culture wars ("The Need for Heroism"), Geoffrey Miller was handed the mic and started berating one of the panelists: Shyam Sankar, the chief technology officer of Palantir, who is in charge of the company's AI efforts."I argue that the AI industry shares virtually no ideological overlap with national conservatism," Miller said, referring to the conference's core ideology. Hours ago, Mil …Read the full story at The Verge.

No Other Choice. At my second day at TIFF 2025, the longest line I saw wasn't for a movie: it was for the Criterion Closet. The space is housed in a van so that it could make it up to Toronto, and honestly, it felt a little wrong to see the outside of it after watching everyone from Michael Cera to Hideo Kojima spend time in its cramped interior digging through Blu-Rays.The line was long enough that I didn't even bother trying to get inside, which is probably a good thing since I'd just be overwhelmed anyways. Besides, standing in that line would cut into my movie time, which is already a precious resource given there are so many things to check out.If t …Read the full story at The Verge.

A screenshot from Panic’s Herdling game. | Image: Panic / Okomotive Herdling is a slow game about herding fuzzy animals through a vibrant natural world. That may not sound particularly exciting, but I found it to be a perfect game to unwind with after a stressful day.In Herdling, you play as a kid who makes friends with and shepherds large fluffy creatures called Calicorns, which kind of look like a mix of a sheep and a woolly mammoth. The Calicorns are adorable, with cute snorts and head shakes that make them feel like real animals. You'll even get opportunities to play fetch, and yes, you can pet the Calicorns. You can also name your furry friends, and the game even suggests ideas, which is why my flock …Read the full story at The Verge.

Building out a smart home can be fraught with frustration. Every device uses its own hub, and if not that, most definitely its own app. Before you know it, your smartphone is littered with ten different apps to control lights and fans. Solving this problem was my biggest motivation behind getting started with Home Assistant. Instead of juggling multiple apps and dashboards, I wanted a single spot to control everything and that's exactly what I got with Home Assistant. While Home Assistant's near-infinite flexibility allows it to be anything you want it to be, here are three smart home apps that I swapped out for Home Assistant and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Markdown notes are one of the simplest ways you can take your lists, data, and thoughts digital. It is an efficient system where plaintext formatting alone differentiates headings from list items, notes, and footnotes. However, at scale, markdown notes can quickly turn chaotic. If you're noting down the observations from experimental research, or improving something using iterative data collection, markdown is great for the hurried notes you take without losing focus, but they usually take hours of toil and editing before they're presentable as a research paper.