This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on phones and other tech outside the US, follow Dominic Preston. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.How it startedSmartphone batteries are bigger than ever, while the phones themselves are shrinking. But whether you're seeing the benefit - thin phones with big batteries - depends on where you live.The key is the introduction of silicon-carbon batteries, which make it possible to fit more battery capacity into the same size cell, as in phones like the Honor Power, whose 8,000mAh …Read the full story at The Verge.

Scarlet. Well, I was wrong, and I did manage to make it to one last day at the Toronto International Film Festival. One of the movies I wanted to see the most this year was Scarlet, the latest from Mamoru Hosoda, whose most recent film was the metaverse fairy tale Belle. Whereas that film was a reimagining of Beauty and the Beast, Scarlet is a twist on Hamlet that's full of bold, creative ideas. I mostly enjoyed it, but unfortunately it's saddled with an ending that doesn't really fit.I also managed to squeeze in two other films: a Korean revenge / heist thriller, and a Norwegian film about connecting through art. You can read my thoughts on all th …Read the full story at The Verge.

I would not call the time I'm having with Hollow Knight: Silksong "fun," and yet I'm still playing.In the depths of The Marrow, the second major area of Silksong, there's a particularly nasty midboss. I eventually beat him, but my reward wasn't a new ability, item, or a bench where I could rest and save my progress. All I got was pain, suffering, and death. In Silksong, the only way out is through, but the "through" is a tunnel lined with spikes that occasionally spew gouts of flame. I should have given up right then and there, but I have not abandoned Silksong the same way I do other unfun games. For the life of me, I couldn't figure ou …Read the full story at The Verge.

Linux distributions have always had a reputation for offering choice, sometimes to the point of overwhelming new users. Fedora itself is known for being cutting-edge, but it often requires extra setup before it feels fully ready. Ultramarine Linux builds upon that same base and smooths out the rough edges, aiming to be a system that “just works” without sacrificing Fedora’s strengths. It is a distribution that stays out of your way so you can focus on your work rather than constant tinkering.

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 97, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, hope you're having a good iPhone / back to school / it's-finally-not-hot-anymore week, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) It's so good to be back! Huge, huge thanks to Jay Peters for doing such a fabulous job here over the last couple of months, and huge thanks to all of you as always for having such good contributions and ideas. Jay will still be around these parts from time to time, too, so don't worry, your esoteric gaming recommendations aren't going anywhere.I was going …Read the full story at The Verge.

When you think about home labs, you’ll probably imagine powerful, multi-CPU setups with ungodly amounts of memory. Although enterprise-grade systems are terrific for computing projects, old systems can also double as solid workstations for your DIY ideas and self-hosting projects once you pair them with the right operating systems.

Disclosure: Penske Media Corporation is an investor in Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company.Penske Media Corporation, the publisher of Rolling Stone and The Hollywood Reporter, has become the first major American media company to sue Google over its AI summaries. The company claims that the AI Overviews that often appear at the top of search results leave users with little reason to click through to the source, hurting traffic and illegally benefitting from the work of its reporters. While Penske Media is the biggest name to take on Google over its AI Overviews, it’s not the first. Online education company Chegg sued Google in February, as did a group of independent publishers in Europe. The News / Media Alliance has also spoken out about the feature, calling it the “definition of theft” and seeking action from the DOJ. Google spokesperson José Castañeda defended the summaries to the Wall Street Journal saying, “with AI Overviews, people find search more helpful and use it more.” But Penske and other publishers say there is little reason to follow the links provided in search results and, as a result, they have seen significant drops in traffic and revenue. Penske claims in the suit that revenue from affiliate links is down by over 1/3 this year, and it attributes that directly to a drop in traffic from Google.The company also claims it’s in a tough situation. It can either block Google from indexing its content, essentially removing itself from all search results, which would further devastate its business. Or, it can continue to provide training material to Google for its AI, “adding fuel to a fire that threatens PMC’s [Penske Media Corporation] entire publishing business,” the complaint states, according to the Wall Street Journal.This is, of course, just the latest battle between AI companies and the creators of the content they harvest. Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster recently sued Perplexity, as did News Corp last year. Meanwhile Microsoft and OpenAI have found themselves in the crosshairs of the New York Times, the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and others. Google might also have a tougher time defending itself now that it’s been forced to admit that “the open web is already in rapid decline,” as it faces multiple antitrust complaints.

"Yesterday was an interesting day for the Helldivers community." That's the very obvious understatement that announced the reopening of the Helldivers gaming subreddit in the small hours of Saturday morning. On Friday it was discovered that Tyler Robinson, arrested for the alleged killing of Charlie Kirk, had inscribed messages on the casings of several bullets found at the crime scene. One of those read "Hey fascist! Catch!" accompanied by an up arrow symbol, a right arrow, and three down arrows, a reference to the code to call down the 500KG Bomb stratagem in the cooperative shooter Helldivers 2.Unsurprisingly, within minutes the officia …Read the full story at The Verge.

The release of new Star Wars video games is always an exciting time for fans of the franchise. Not only do we get new stories to follow, but we get to see other parts from a galaxy far, far away in different time periods that help build out a continuously expanding universe. However, a lot of time and energy from Lucasfilm was devoted to exploring the new High Republic era, which wasn't received as well as they hoped. Some games like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor injected aspects of The High Republic into their narrative, but it was met with a shallow reception. Despite this, it hasn't turned Star Wars fans away from the idea of new video game releases exploring different time periods.

MX Linux is one of the more distinct-looking Linux distributions that tries to make the overall operating system experience less cumbersome for the average user. If you've tinkered with Linux-based distros in the past or use one now, you probably leverage the terminal for even basic setting changes and tweaks. But it's not 2010 anymore, and simple GUI options for routine and necessary operating system actions should be more mainstream. After switching to MX Linux, I discovered many useful tools that make the OS settings and customization remarkably easy.

SATA SSDs aren't the flashiest solid state drives out there anymore. We've got M.2 flash storage that fits easily into PCIe slots on your motherboard, and that sleek SSD format is quickly taking over most of the SSD market. Most of the new SSDs you see these days are M.2 NVMe, and for good reason. NVMe storage is faster, has less latency, and has no need for messy cables.

I was ecstatic when we were finally able to make the move from Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) to Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) or "full fibre". It completely changed how we were able to use the internet and provided much-needed bandwidth for all my home labbing. Glorious 1 Gbps speeds from our selected ISP enabled us to enjoy around 80-90 MB/s worth of download speeds with a hampered 10 MB/s upload limit. Availability has been rock solid, but this wasn't the best upgrade for my home network.