I've been playing around a lot with ESP32 devices and ESPHome, which has already enabled me to build a silly device that allows me to turn on my PC by simply slapping my table. I have a whole assortment of sensors that I've been playing around with to get to grips with ESPHome, and I've built an ESP32-powered LCD panel controlled by a button, a temperature sensor, and an RGB LED. I set up some other devices too to get comfortable with YAML and ESP32 deployment, and I loved the capabilities it had unlocked for my smart home. In my research, I came across the ESP32 "Cheap Yellow Display", otherwise known as the ESP32 CYD.

Earlier this month, Microsoft’s Family Safety feature, primarily used by parents and schools as a set of parental controls and filters, started randomly blocking Google’s Chrome browser from opening on Windows. The first reports surfaced on June 3rd, with some Chrome users noticing the browser kept closing or wouldn’t open.Microsoft has introduced a bug into Family Safety that specifically targets the Chrome browser and prevents it from functioning on Windows. “Our team has investigated these reports and determined the cause of this behavior,” says Chrome support manager Ellen T. “For some users, Chrome is unable to run when Microsoft Family Safety is enabled.”Other browsers like Firefox or Opera appear to be unaffected, and some users have even found that renaming Chrome.exe to Chrome1.exe works around this issue. Schools or parents who have enabled Family Safety as part of a Microsoft 365 subscription can also disable the “filter inappropriate websites” setting in Family Safety to get Chrome up and running again, but this does leave children able to access any website.It’s unclear when Microsoft will fix the issue, which has been ongoing for more than two weeks. We reached out to Microsoft to comment on this problem earlier this week, but at the time of publication, the company hasn’t responded.“We’ve not heard anything from Microsoft about a fix being rolled out,” wrote a Chromium engineer in a bug tracking thread on June 10th. “They have provided guidance to users who contact them about how to get Chrome working again, but I wouldn’t think that would have a large effect.”Microsoft has a habit of doing weird things on Windows to steer people away from using Chrome. While this Family Safety issue is likely an innocent bug, Microsoft has used prompts, fake AI answers, malware-like popups, and even a poll injected on Google’s Chrome download page to try and sway people to switch to its Edge browser. Earlier this year, Microsoft even used Bing to trick people into thinking they were on Google.

Astro Bot is filled with whimsy and silliness that makes you want to pay attention to the details. But in a presentation at this year's Game Developers Conference, director Nicolas Doucet shared one particular aspect of Astro the robot that I hadn't noticed but blew me away.Doucet talked about how Team Asobi worked hard to give the game a good tempo with things like enemy placement and how you can interact with Astro's spaceship with the DualSense's gyro controls on loading screens. One thing that kept the momentum going was Astro himself and how he shows his impatience. Doucet showed a video of one idle animation where Astro is hopping up and down on his feet and pointing forward, almost like a little kid that's demanding you go to the playground. It's adorable - and was added "very, very late" in development, Doucet says when I chat with him a few weeks after the presentation. While a lot of games have characters simply breathing or looking left to right while they're idle, Team Asobi thought that it could do something a little more fun. Since the game is about rescuing characters, the team started to tie the animations to the idea of looking around, Doucet says. The team ev …Read the full story at The Verge.

Meta is announcing its next pair of smart glasses with Oakley. The limited-edition Oakley Meta HSTN (pronounced “how-stuhn”) model costs $499 and is available for preorder starting July 11th. Other Oakley models with Meta’s tech will be available starting at $399 later this summer. Like the existing Meta Ray-Ban glasses, the Oakley model features a front-facing camera, along with open-ear speakers and microphones that are built into the frame. After they are paired with a phone, the glasses can be used to listen to music or podcasts, conduct phone calls, or chat with Meta AI. By utilizing the onboard camera and microphones, Meta AI can also answer questions about what someone is seeing and even translate languages. Given the Oakley design, Meta is positioning these new glasses as being geared towards athletes. They have an IPX4 water resistance rating and offer double the battery life of the Meta Ray-Bans, providing 8 hours of use, along with a charging case that can power them for up to 48 hours. The built-in camera now shoots in 3K video, up from 1080p for the Meta Ray-Bans. The new lineup comes in five Oakley frame and lens combos, all of which are compatible with prescriptions for an extra cost. The frame colors are warm grey, black, brown smoke, and clear, with several lens options available, including transitions. The limited-edition $499 model, available for order starting July 11th, features gold accents and gold Oakley PRIZM lenses. The glasses will be on sale in the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Australia, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark.Meta recently signed a multi-year deal with EssilorLuxottica, the parent company behind Ray-Ban, Oakley, and other eyewear brands. The Meta Ray-Bans have sold over two million pairs to date, and EssilorLuxottica recently disclosed that it plans to sell 10 million smart glasses with Meta annually by 2026. “This is our first step into the performance category,” Alex Himel, Meta’s head of wearables, tells me. “There’s more to come.”View Link

Tesla has begun sending out invitations for its highly anticipated robotaxi service, but there’s one significant caveat: it’s installing a “safety monitor” in the front passenger seat, as previously reported by Electrek. The invites, which were sent to Tesla influencers and investors, say the human monitor will “accompany you on your trip” when rides begin on June 22nd — a move that’s at odds with Elon Musk’s promise of fully unsupervised rides.Details about Tesla’s robotaxi service have been slim in the weeks leading up to its launch, but Musk said in January that the company would launch its “unsupervised” robotaxi service with “no one in the car” this summer. Musk expanded on this in an April earnings call, saying the 10 to 20 Model Y vehicles would be remotely operated in the event of an emergency.Tesla’s invitation outlines some requirements for robotaxi rides, including that riders must request service between 6AM and 12AM within a geofenced area, “excluding airports.” It adds that “service may be limited or unavailable in inclement weather,” which is often a challenge for autonomous vehicles. Invitees can bring one additional guest 18 or older.Over the past couple of months, Tesla has faced pressure from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which has asked the EV-maker for more information about “the ability of Tesla’s system to react appropriately to reduced roadway visibility conditions.” Texas lawmakers have requested that Tesla delay its robotaxi launch until a revision to the state’s autonomous driving law takes effect in September. It will require robotaxi services to get authorization from the Department of Motor Vehicles before operating without a human driver.

Your webcam works hard to capture a live feed and work some digital magic to take what it sees and shares it with a video recorder or meeting software. Like any peripheral or PC component, the webcam won't last forever. There will come a time when you need to replace it with a better model or one that will offer better reliability with new parts. Instead of throwing the old one away, you can repurpose it for other uses. Here's how I've used an old webcam inside my smart home.

Just because my Intel-based MacBook won’t get the latest version of macOS after Tahoe doesn't mean it's time to retire it. These machines still have plenty of life left in them, especially with a little creativity and the right software. Whether you want to breathe new life into your laptop or dedicate it to a specific purpose, there are many ways I’ve found to keep my older MacBook functional long after official support ends.

No one wants their GPU performing below its potential. You don't want your CPU bottlenecking your GPU, or some other component holding it back. Many users still overclock their GPUs to extract some extra performance, but there are some lesser-known settings you can tweak to improve your FPS and the overall quality of your gaming experience. I always use these settings to ensure I'm not leaving performance on the table. Most of what I share here will be relevant to Nvidia GPUs, but you can easily find counterparts for everything for your AMD or Intel GPU.

Join any Zoom call, walk into any lecture hall, or watch any YouTube video, and listen carefully. Past the content and inside the linguistic patterns, you'll find the creeping uniformity of AI voice. Words like "prowess" and "tapestry," which are favored by ChatGPT, are creeping into our vocabulary, while words like "bolster," "unearth," and "nuance," words less favored by ChatGPT, have declined in use. Researchers are already documenting shifts in the way we speak and communicate as a result of ChatGPT - and they see this linguistic influence accelerating into something much larger.In the 18 months after ChatGPT was released, speakers used words like "meticulous," "delve," "realm," and "adept" up to 51 percent more frequently than in the three years prior, according to researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, who analyzed close to 280,000 YouTube videos from academic channels. The researchers ruled out other possible change points before ChatGPT's release and confirmed these words align with those the model favors, as established in an earlier study comparing 10,000 human- and AI-edited texts. The speakers don't realize their language is changing. That's e …Read the full story at The Verge.

The idea behind Trump Mobile is relatively straightforward. It's easy to launch a mobile carrier these days, and it can be extremely lucrative - just ask Ryan Reynolds! You should know, though, that Trump Mobile is a pretty bad deal. And the network's supposed flagship phone? We're willing to bet that this $500, made-in-America, coming-soon device will end up being hardly any of those things. If it exists at all.On this episode of The Vergecast, Nilay's off doing business meetings or whatever, so David and Jake are joined by The Verge's Dominic Preston to talk about all things Trump Mobile. They talk about the phones that resemble the Trump Mobile T1 Phone 8002, and whether any of them are a good deal in 2025. They talk about the rise in MVNOs, the many ways you can define "made in the USA," and whether there's an inkling of a good thing behind this obvious grift of a product.View LinkSubscribe: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Pocket Casts | MoreAfter that, David and Jake talk through some big news in the TV world: namely, that TV is dying faster than anyone expected. They discuss the ongoing rise of both Netflix and YouTube, the underrated success of FAST networks, an …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you're switching from a Windows PC to a Mac, you'll realize that most MacBooks have a base storage of 256 GB. Unlike Windows laptops that have 512 GB or even 1 TB SSDs on mid-range and flagship laptops, Apple charges a hefty amount to upgrade to the next storage tier—resulting in most consumers opting for the base storage to save a few hundred dollars. Now, you can get around the issue of low storage by getting an external SSD for cheap. However, you would also want to keep some part of the internal storage free. What makes it slightly difficult on the base model is the way macOS handles data.

Though all Windows laptops ship with Microsoft’s very own browser, Edge, installed, the first thing most people usually do on it is search for an installation link for Google Chrome. Ultimately, it’s no secret that the vast majority of Windows users rely on Chrome instead of Edge.