I have an old Lenovo laptop with a Ryzen 5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage, which makes it a little too capable to leave unused. So I put it to work as a central file server for my family instead of spending money on a dedicated NAS.

Microsoft is launching a second generation of its Surface Mouse next month that includes haptic feedback support. The Surface Mouse also has a customizable action button for the first time, which is primarily designed for quick access to Copilot (of course), but can be configured to work with other shortcuts from the Surface app."Its haptic feedback adds a small, purposeful physical response to the moment you usually only see on a screen: a click registering, a window snapping into place or an object aligning just right," says Brett Ostrum, corporate vice president of Surface Devices. "It is subtle by design, but noticeable within seconds …Read the full story at The Verge.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a slate of bills on Monday that could finally give communities better data - and more say - on how data centers impact their electricity bills and water supply. As data centers invade a growing number of communities across the US, they've triggered protests over how the infrastructure underpinning AI might stress power grids and local water systems. That's fueled partly by concerns about how difficult it is to see just how much electricity or water they're actually gobbling up. California's new disclosure rules won't offer a full picture, but starting next year, data center operators will have to start s …Read the full story at The Verge.

Smartphones have indeed gotten bigger, with battery capacities averaging around 4000–5000mah. This reflects an effort to meet the software demands of the Android OS, which keeps adding features to improve the user experience. However, not all smartphone models come with the largest battery capacity. My Samsung Galaxy S21 FE has a 4500 mAh battery that doesn't seem to last as long as it should. I barely get a day out of it, and then deliberately keeping the maximum charge at 85 percent for battery protection shaves a couple of hours more.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) have introduced new legislation that would ban anyone from developing artificial superintelligence - a technology the bill describes as capable of the "destruction or disempowerment of humanity," including by overthrowing the government. Under the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, AI leaders would face up to 20 years in prison for violating the law.The bill doesn't just take aim at the more powerful superintelligence, a term President Donald Trump said the US will use in place of "AI" in official documents. It would also pause the development of advanced AI systems, which lawmakers …Read the full story at The Verge.

I've used my fair share of productivity apps and integrated development environment (IDE) offerings, but I always seem to eventually switch back to Obsidian, especially for documentation and brainstorming. It's my go-to app for creating content and synchronizing data across devices, all thanks to one community plugin called LiveSync. It's such a good plugin that it allows me to save just shy of $100 each year on hosting my vaults on Obsidian's own servers. All I needed was my NAS.

Eight Sleep announced the next version of its "intelligent sleep system" designed to regulate the temperature of your bed in response to tracked health and sleep metrics like breathing and heart rate. The company calls its new Pod 6 system its "most significant hardware launch to date," and it's centered around a redesigned cooling hub that's now small enough to hide beneath most beds. The new system is cheaper than Eight Sleep's Pod 5 that launched in 2025, but is still by no means cheap.The Pod 6 is now available through Eight Sleep's online store. The Standard version ranges in price from $2,699 for a full-size mattress to $2,999 for ki …Read the full story at The Verge.

Patreon co-founder Sam Yam is joing OpenAI to lead Creator Product. | Image: The Verge OpenAI has hired three former Patreon execs to anchor its product strategy for creators. After starting the creator subscription platform 13 years ago, co-founder and technology chief Sam Yam announced on X that he's joining OpenAI to lead Creator Product. He's also bringing Patreon's former product head Drew Rowny and engineering head Shannon Ma with him on the new venture, both of whom stepped down in the past few weeks."We're going to build together with Creators at OpenAI and share early access to a new set of tools that I think will be critically valuable to Creators and their communities," Yam said in his announcement. "Pay attention …Read the full story at The Verge.

An adorable little bear that wants to help you buy things. Modern life comes with an unending, auto-populating to-do list. It never ceases to amaze me how I can be doing nothing at all, minding my own business, and suddenly something needs to be taken care of. You're telling me a tree branch fell in the backyard and now I have to figure out what to do with it? The tree just assigned me homework? Oh, our trash collection company canceled our account out of nowhere and now I have to send email about it? Repeatedly? Totally unfair.These are the things that we've been told for years that AI will help us with. We'll all have a smart virtual assistant to triage and handle the tedious tasks we'd rather …Read the full story at The Verge.

HDMI cables have a strange reputation. One day, the cable you've been using for years works perfectly. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, you start seeing tiny white sparkles, brief black screens, flickering, or the dreaded "No Signal" message. Naturally, the obvious conclusion to draw is that the cable itself has finally given up. Sometimes, it actually has, but HDMI cables don't quite "go bad" in the way most of us imagine.

Anthropic says its AI Claude has "autonomously discovered" a new enzyme system similar to machinery behind the powerful gene-editing tool Crispr. It's the first result from Anthropic's newly-launched wet lab and an early test of Claude's usefulness for science as the company prepares to go public. The company says Claude found the enzyme system after searching through a massive database of DNA sequences, adding that its scientists' involvement was limited to the initial prompt and lab work. Over 21 hours, Anthropic said nearly 950 Claude agents worked through 210 million tokens before one spotted an unusual repeating pattern in the datas …Read the full story at The Verge.

I've made no secret of my feelings toward Adobe products, especially with the ever-rising cost of Creative Cloud, but I also can't deny that Adobe is incredibly good at nearly everything it does. Premiere Pro is no exception. When it comes to video editing, few applications are as widely known or used, but it's far from the only option.