Mini PCs can pretty much do anything you need them to do, so long as you get one that meets your needs. While you can use this one from GMKtec as a standard PC to get things done, we like to think that it has more potential as the base of your home lab, becoming a powerful hub that can handle all your data and expansion that you can throw at it.

Apple poured some good money into making F1 – a Formula 1 racing movie starring Brad Pitt – and it wants its customers to know that. To that end, many people, including some Verge staffers, noticed an unusual Apple Wallet notification this morning that’s both an advertisement and promotion for the film. The notification prompts users to save on movie tickets via Fandango with a promotional code, reading “Save on 2+ tickets to F1 The Movie with APPLEPAYTEN. Ends 6/29. While supplies last. Terms apply.” It looks like Apple’s trying to juice the film’s opening weekend by tempting users into a deal. This notification was considered an affront to many recipients, as both TechCrunch and 9to5Mac previously noted. Folks are likening it to Apple’s infamous U2 debacle in 2014 when it gifted the band’s then-new album to over 500 million iTunes accounts without a way to delete it, a promotional whoopsie that reportedly cost Apple more than $100 million. Shortly after, it released a tool that let people delete the album from their libraries. More recently, Apple sent unwanted push notifications to promote Carpool Karaoke, one of the company’s first Apple TV Plus hits.Regardless of the film’s quality, or your feelings about notifications that straddle the line of a useful deal and an ad, this is aggressively thirsty. Ads continue to not be Apple’s strongest suit in 2025. The Verge has reached out to Apple to find out more about this notification, and we’ll update this post if we hear back.

I've been using OPNsense tonnes lately, mainly as the gateway to my home lab shenanigans. Most of this has been accomplished with various virtual setups, but that has its problems that I find myself fighting more than doing any substantial work. The biggest issue I have is that the virtual network adapters frequently change assignments when I return to the VM after a while, and it has become a dealbreaker.

The Super Nintendo is one of the most important gaming consoles of all time. It wasn't just a haven for platformers and RPGs — for an entire generation of gamers, it was where they first learned the rules of sports they hadn't even played in real life yet. Whether it was football, wrestling, Formula One, or even tennis. In the 16-bit hardware of the SNES, these games made gamers live and breathe all the sports in the world.

Your SSD can overheat just like your CPU or GPU. If it's unable to dissipate enough heat, it'll suffer from reduced performance that you're very likely to notice. While most people can do without an SSD heatsink, there are some signs that might point to your SSD desperately needing one. You can spot them during your day-to-day usage or by using a third-party program to monitor your SSD temperature. And if you've just bought a Gen5 SSD, then you should use a heatsink without giving it a second thought.

The fighting game genre has an incredibly dedicated base of players who are willing to play games everywhere. No matter what type of platform it may be, if fighting games are available, players will go there and play them. Now that the Nintendo Switch 2 is finally on the market, a few big fighting games will be on it, with possibly more titles making their way over. Although games like Street Fighter 6 have been available on other platforms, that doesn't mean people will avoid picking up the game for the Switch 2, especially if they're looking for something that interests them to play on their newly purchased console. But there needs to be more than just this for the genre to really take off on the Nintendo Switch 2.

If you’ve been enjoying Hades on mobile via Netflix, you better get in those last few runs while you still can. First spotted by Engadget, and confirmed via the Netflix app, Supergiant’s Greek mythology-inspired roguelike and 21 other games are being delisted from the service next month. Several titles, like Braid, Katana Zero, and yes, Hades, were available on mobile exclusively via Netflix, meaning that when those games go, that’s potentially it for them on Android / iOS.Here’s a full list of the games leaving Netflix next month. Most games depart the service July 14th, but Hades goes a little earlier, on July 1st. (Carmen Sandiego, however, doesn’t have a confirmed date for delisting, only that it’s “leaving soon.”)Battleship Braid, Anniversary Edition Carmen Sandiego CoComelon: Play with JJ Death’s Door Diner Out: Merge Cafe Dumb Ways to Survive Ghost DetectiveHades Katana ZeroLego Legacy: Heroes UnboxedLudo KingMonument ValleyMonument Valley 2Monument Valley 3Rainbow Six: SmolRaji: An Ancient EpicSpongeBob: Bubble Pop F.U.N.TED TumblewordsThe Case of the Golden IdolThe Rise of the Golden IdolVineyard ValleyThe Verge has reached out to the developers of the games that had their mobile versions available exclusively via Netflix to ask if they had plans to distribute them as premium titles. In an email, Nigel Lowrie, a spokesperson for Devolver Digital, wrote, “We are looking at bringing games that leave services like Poinpy, Katana Zero, and Death’s Door to mobile stores as premium titles.” He also said that the developer for each of these games has its own timeline for when that will happen, but Devolver is working to get them up on mobile storefronts “as soon as possible.” Devolver Digital has some experience with this, as Exit the Gungeon, which had a mobile version available exclusively via Apple Arcade, will become a paid game on iOS and Android after it was delisted from Apple’s gaming subscription service last year.In the Discord server for Color Gray Games, the developer of the Golden Idol series, Andrejs Klavins, the games’ lead designer and programmer, wrote, “This is all recent news for us and all the practical implications have yet to be worked out.” The statement suggests that some developers were only recently told their games would be leaving the platform and not something that was necessarily pre-planned.This removal of third-party games, many of which had decent, mainstream success outside of Netflix, reflects the platform’s shifting games strategy. It has halted its acquisition spree and, in October of last year, Netflix closed the new studio it spun up to produce a multiplatform AAA game before it could release anything. In an interview with The Verge at the Game Developers Conference in March, Netflix’s new president of games, Alain Tascan, said, “We need to find our voice.” Netflix plans on streamlining its offerings to focus more on games that are tied to Netflix-owned shows, multiplayer party games, games for kids, and “mainstream” titles that have their own large fan bases. And when you look at the numbers, that strategy makes sense.According to data from Appfigures, a mobile analytics company, the most popular game on Netflix is — coming at no surprise — Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, with an estimated 37 million downloads. The next most popular, though it has less than half the downloads of San Andreas, is Squid Game: Unleashed, a tie-in game for the Netflix-produced Korean social thriller Squid Game. Those two games aren’t going anywhere for now. But if you’re a fan of any of the games above, they will be leaving soon, so try them while you can.

For once, the unflappable Hideo Kojima was overwhelmed. Even close to four decades of game-making experience didn't prepare him for his biggest tribulation so far: developing Death Stranding 2: On the Beach during the covid-19 pandemic. "I thought I can't pull this off. [I can't] meet people or scan people, or shoot with people. I almost gave up. And also the staff were all remote, and I became sick as well. I thought it was just the end of the world," he says through an interpreter as part of a group interview in Sydney. "I've been creating games throughout my career, but Death Stranding 2 was the most difficult challenge."Even his initial scouting of Australia, where Death Stranding 2 is predominantly set, had to be carried out remotely via Zoom, with Kojima painstakingly directing a local contact to document the landscape on his behalf. "Looking at it from a camera and to be there is totally different, so that's disappointing."For Kojima, those experiences led to a different approach for the sequel. His own sense of isolation that arose from having to develop Death Stranding 2 with a remote team saw him reconsidering its tale - yet it's also this isolation that led to Koj …Read the full story at The Verge.

One thing's for sure — Microsoft has taken every opportunity it gets to remind Windows 10 fans that the operating system is reaching its End of Life status this October. The Redmond-based giant hasn't been subtle about it at all, and is doing everything within its power to get people to upgrade to Windows 11.

Google Earth can display a Street View timeline of certain locations, like New York’s Vessel sculpture. Google Earth will now let you look at historical imagery from Street View. The update, which comes as part of the tool’s 20th anniversary, allows you to see how a location has changed over time.Google Earth already offers the ability to switch to Street View while viewing satellite imagery, but now you can look through images captured across different years — just like you can in Google Maps. Last year, Google launched the ability to view historical satellite and aerial imagery, which was previously only available in the Earth Pro desktop app.Google is also planning to roll out a new feature that gives professional users “AI-driven insights” about the planet. That includes information about tree canopy coverage, allowing users to see where an area is more heavily shaded and which places might benefit from cooling approaches. It will also offer access to land surface temperatures, which professionals can use to see which areas of a city are hotter. These insights are rolling out in the “coming weeks.”

Home Assistant can integrate with practically everything, but most of the time, when we say "everything", really, we're usually talking about the countless brands making smart home devices. However, thanks to the massive community behind it, you really can integrate with just about everything. It's not just your smart lights, random sensors, and router that can be added to Home Assistant; it's a lot more, too.

“Paramount Plus with Showtime” has always been one of the more awkward bits of branding to come out of the streaming era, but soon subscribers will know the tier by another name.This week Paramount informed Paramount Plus subscribers that Paramount Plus with Showtime — the platform’s most expensive tier that features Showtime programming and minimal ads — will now be referred to as “Paramount Plus Premium.” The renamed tier will still cost $12.99 per month or $119.99 per year. Paramount Plus Premium will also still offer Showtime’s series and catalog of films, but it won’t feature the TV network’s name.“Since we recently introduced a sampling of Showtime programming to the Essential plan, the Premium plan name reflects the broad and diverse offerings across both plan tiers,” Paramount said in a support post about the new tier name. “Showtime programming remains an important part of Paramount+, and is still prominently represented on the service!”The clunkiness of the “Paramount Plus with Showtime” branding felt like a reflection of the rockiness that marked Showtime’s integration into Paramount Plus and the subsequent shutdown of Showtime’s standalone streaming service. Paramount executives warned employees about potential layoffs after CEO Bob Bakish first announced plans for a merger with Showtime back in 2023. Several Showtime series were cancelled or halted as a result of the deal, and by the following year, the new service had already gone through two price hikes.As strong as the Showtime brand is, “Paramount Plus Premium” is definitely a better name. That said, coming so soon after Warner Bros. Discovery’s recent decision to pivot back to HBO Max, Paramount’s latest move feels very much like a response to the competition. None of us ever called it “Max, the one to watch,” and WBD was right to stop trying to make that happen. But it’s a little wild to see Paramount downplaying its connection to one of the networks that really helped bring cable TV into its own.