What Surrounds Us takes its title literally. You play as a circle surrounding a hole in its middle - it looks like a donut with frosting. You work together with other sentient moving circles, sometimes helping them joyfully meet with others. And you traverse a large map that's composed entirely of, you guessed it, a series of circles. But the circles everywhere aren't just an artistic choice; they underscore the game's themes about working in connection with the environment and the things around us.Despite the trippy design, What Surrounds Us has a familiar format. I kept feeling echoes of The Legend of Zelda as I trekked across three dist …Read the full story at The Verge.

Is an e-reader case as dangerous as a Glock 19? Last month, Louisville, Kentucky-based creator Luke The Maker showed off a bizarre, 3D-printed, pistol-shaped case design for the popular minimalist Xteink X4 e-reader. The X4 lies vertically atop the plastic gun's slide, with a cutout on the side to access its buttons. Though the frame was digitally modeled after a real gun, this "case" can't shoot bullets. Squeezing the trigger does nothing at all. He calls his contraption the "Gundle." In a post showing off the wacky accessory, Luke (whose last name is Blackford) can be seen flipping through Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and J.D. Sali …Read the full story at The Verge.

I have been using Android Auto for more than a year, so I thought I already knew every useful setting and shortcut it had to offer. I was wrong. A few of its most helpful features were buried inside menus I had barely explored, while others were hiding in plain sight on the dashboard.

Warner Bros. Discovery has filed suit against Amazon, accusing it of illegally poaching employees, including Pia Barlow, former senior VP for originals marketing. In the complaint, Warner says that "Amazon has chosen to ride on the coattails of other well-established Hollywood mainstays," and that it engaged in a "lawless employee shopping spree." Deadline reports that Francesca Orsi, HBO's head of drama series and films, is believed to be one of the other Amazon targets.Barlow is set to begin a new position as Amazon's head of original series marketing on August 3rd. According to Warner's suit, Barlow was under contract until October 31st …Read the full story at The Verge.

Google's Vice President of Devices and Services, Shakil Barkat, all but confirmed in an interview with 9to5 Google that its next Pixel phone would cost more than the Pixel 10. Considering the ongoing RAM supply issues due to the explosion of AI data centers, the rumored price hike is not a complete surprise. Companies from Apple to Nintendo, Microsoft to Roku, have all raised their prices in response to the soaring cost of memory. Barkat said that Google had "shielded our consumers from supply fluctuations for as long as possible," but that the "economics have fundamentally shifted and we're not immune to that." He went on to tell 9to5 tha …Read the full story at The Verge.

Overclocking is one of those hobbies where the tinkering is the point, so handing the whole thing to an AI felt a little like paying someone to eat my dessert. But I've been going deeper down the agentic rabbit hole lately, ever since I asked Claude to improve my home lab and it was wild, and after giving Claude Cowork access to my Home Assistant config, I had one question left: could it handle actual hardware, with actual consequences? So I gave it eyes and hands on my Z890 test bench through a GL.iNet Comet X KVM-over-IP, pointed it at the UEFI on my Gigabyte Z890 AORUS board with an Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus in the socket, and told it to go fast.

Oli Freke is a musician and journalist whose works have appeared in Sound on Sound, The Quietus, and Mixmag. This has included using math to explore the melodic potential of the Western 12-tone scale and deep dives on effects plug-ins. He's even written a book tracing the evolution of the synthesizer from 1963 through 1995, charting the change from analog to digital and back. His new project is Beat Gems, a coffee-table visual history of drum machines from publisher Bjooks. Like other Bjooks titles, Beat Gems is loaded with gorgeous photos, fascinating historical tidbits, and practical advice for making the most of your gear, whether it's …Read the full story at The Verge.

It has been quite a while since I upgraded my main PC, and at the heart of the current setup is a capable Ryzen 7 processor that's based on the AMD Zen 4 architecture. I planned to purchase a GPU and complete the gaming computer this year, but that plan changed.

Wi-Fi 7 router manufacturers loudly promote theoretical wireless speeds topping out at 46Gbps, and they also highlight the headline feature of ultra-wide 320MHz channels in the 6GHz band. However, these lab benchmarks are completely different from real-world home performance. The moment you step into the next room or close the door, your blazing-fast connection suddenly drops back to narrower 160MHz or 80MHz channels.

It's 2026, so it goes without saying that the majority of my life is online. Nearly all of my correspondence, whether it be email or social media, my day-to-day work, my calendar — all of it is digital. But given my career, what constitutes my "digital life" goes beyond just the basics. I rely on a suite of free software to keep everything ticking away without a hitch. Here's what I use.

Not too long ago, I avoided DLSS upscaling unless I absolutely needed the extra performance. Visually, it always felt like a compromise. The image looked softer, almost as if someone had smeared Vaseline all over my screen. But Nvidia has improved DLSS so much over the last year and a half, and with DLSS 4.5 today, the upscaled image looks just as good as native 4K. At this point, I can't really tell whether DLSS is enabled unless I check the in-game settings or look at my FPS counter.

Teenage Engineering’s OP-XY has a huge number of functions. | Photo by Terrence O’Brien / The Verge With elements from synthesizers, loopers, and effects pedals, Teenage Engineering’s devices lie somewhere between musical instrument and modern art. These grooveboxes, as they’re often called, are capable of helping you produce songs in real time from a single unit, with an eye-catching design language. A wide swath of the brand’s offerings are 30 percent off at Guitar Center when you use code TE30, at Amazon when you click the on-page coupon for whichever product you’re interested in, and B&H Photo (discount applied automatically at checkout). The terms for the Amazon coupon claim it will run through August 8th, 2026, while Guitar Center deal is listed as “limited time.”The OP-XY is one of the flagship units, which my colleague Terrence O’Brien described as a “greatest hits tour for Teenage Engineering.” Normally $2,299, the discount code brings the price down to a more palatable $1,609.30, which is a lot cheaper, but still pretty pricey for an aspiring musician. That said, it’s loaded with features for both production and live performance, and has a premium, durable build quality that reflects its price point. It’s currently sold out at Amazon, but in stock and discounted at Guitar Center and B&H Photo. Read our Teenage Engineering OP-XY review. Teenage Engineering OP-XYWhere to Buy: $2299 $1609.3 at B&H Photo $2299 $1609.3 at Guitar CenterThe model I’m most tempted by is the EP-40 Riddim, a compact sampler with a library of over 400 built-in synth settings and effects particularly well-suited for producing dub and reggae music, plus 128MB of storage for your own loops and recorded sounds. It’s a bit less intimidating for a beginner than the OP-XY, both in terms of price point and features, and its tighter genre focus may help concentrate your efforts and onboarding. Normally $329, the EP-40 is $230.30 at Amazon, Guitar Center, and B&H Photo during the promotion.Teenage Engineering EP-40 RiddimWhere to Buy: $329 $230.3 at Amazon $329 $230.3 at Guitar Center