It's been a tough decade for the Need for Speed series. Between the 2015 soft reboot that became the poster child for wasted potential and the messy Payback, the EA franchise was at risk of losing its popularity. Then came 2019's NFS Heat and 2022's Unbound, which were absolutely solid. With over 100 hours in each, I can confidently state that the series needs to do more of what it did with its last two entries.

USB-C is a bit of magic. The near-universal connection can deliver power, data, or both, and that capability makes it extremely flexible. You can plug in yet another flash drive, or, lord forbid, a regular USB-C cable into a spare port. But you're really not getting the most out of it. There are a bunch of gadgets you can keep near your desk that require little more than a USB-C port to function.

Over the past few months, I've been experimenting more and more with alternatives to Windows 11, specifically trying a handful of different Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and even Arch. One thing I've realized is that I can't really make Linux my primary operating system for work because it doesn't have all the apps I need, so I've stuck to my Mac Mini for that.

Most people consider NAS boxes as just some glorified hard drives meant to transfer and hold data, but only over the network for convenience. But mine doubles, triples, quadruples as a beast that can handle so much more than just being a storage dump. It’s a little server right at my home that does things SaaS companies often charge a hefty monthly fee for. These seven services run on my NAS, not just to offer me some amazing functionality but also to save cash every single month in unnecessary subscriptions.

GPD announced the Win 5 handheld last week, which is poised to take over as the most powerful gaming handheld on the market. The GPD Win 5 keeps to the handheld tradition of going for an AMD processor, but unlike most handhelds, GPD skipped the Ryzen Z series handheld APUs and opted instead for AMD's most powerful mobile flagship processor. Yes, the Ryzen AI Max APU (code-named Strix Halo) will power GPD's upcoming handheld.

If you're in a major city, chances are pretty good that you're happy with your internet service. But if you're somewhere that's a bit more remote, well, that's when something like Starlink becomes an option. The reason why Starlink can work where others won't is because it's a satellite service. It comes from the sky, which means it can pretty much accommodate any location. It's an absolute lifesaver when other internet services aren't available.

Fixing my eroded attention span has been a journey. Brick has sort of helped. "We need to talk." Nobody likes to hear those words from their spouse. Especially when it's delivered in a grave tone as you rot on a couch in a grubby blankie, staring like a zombie while doomscrolling. "Wut?" I said, very intelligently.What came next was a compassionate but firm speech about how I was in dire need of an intervention. My attention span, my spouse said, was utterly shot to hell. They'd just asked my opinion about something happening on the TV show we were watching. I hadn't heard them. At all. Apparently, they'd repeated the question three times. Instead, I'd been engrossed in… actually, I couldn't tell you. "You have …Read the full story at The Verge.

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Smartwatch is on sale starting at $299.99 ($50 off). If you’re looking to upgrade an older Android smartwatch, or want to give wearables a try for the first time, Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 8 is a compelling choice. It has a new design, lets you access Google’s Gemini AI from your wrist, and has a handful of new health and wellness features. It launched on July 25th, but you can already get the 40mm model on sale for $299.99 ($50 off) from Samsung. Amazon has the watch for full price, but is offering a $50 promotional credit toward a future purchase if you use the code APSUE5MBXB6Y at checkout.Samsung Galaxy Watch 8Samsung’s latest smartwatch features a new squircle design, Gemini, and some new health features like an Antioxidant Index and Running Coach.Where to Buy: $349.99 $299.99 at Samsung (40mm) $429.99 $379.99 at Samsung (44mm) $349.99 $299.99 at Amazon (40mm With Code APSUE5MBXB6Y)The Galaxy Watch 8 is squircle shaped, which may be divisive, but allows it to lay flatter and Verge reporter Victoria Song found it fit more more comfortably on her wrist in her review. The change also let Samsung make the watch thinner than the Galaxy Watch 7, and yet we still found it can still last more than a day on a charge. While it’s not a huge departure from its predecessor, it could be a good upgrade for anyone with a Galaxy Watch 5 or below, and Samsung’s new discount counteracts the $50 price increase means you’re not paying any more than the Galaxy Watch 7 cost at launch. If you’ve gotten used to Google Gemini on your smartphone or computer, the Galaxy Watch 8 will let you access it from your wrist – we created playlists, checked the weather, and have previously asked Gemini whether it’s necessary to scrub a sweet potato before peeling it. On the health and wellness side, the Galaxy Watch 8 can track steps, your heart rate, blood oxygen level, steps, and activity. If you have a Samsung Galaxy phone, you use the smartwatch to take an EKG or detect sleep apnea. A new feature called Running Coach will put you through a 12-minute run test, give you a grade from one through 10, and create a workout program based on your performance. It also includes sensors designed to detect whether you’re eating enough fruits and vegetables, but we found it can be fooled by colorful objects, including a Cheeze-It. The Galaxy Watch 8 is also available in a 44mm size, and that model is also on sale for $379.99 ($50 off) from Samsung.Three more great dealsIf you need a new wireless controller to pair with your Nintendo Switch 2, Gamesir’s Super Nova is $39.99 ($10 off) at Best Buy. The gamepad has a long list of features you might not expect given its price, including drift-resistant Hall Effect joysticks and two-stage Hall Effect triggers, a pair of customizable back buttons, removable face buttons that let you switch between an Xbox and Nintendo Switch layout, built-in gyroscope, RGB lights, and a 1000hz polling rate. It supports wireless connectivity via Bluetooth or an included 2.4GHz adapter, and can be used as a wired controller using a USB-C cable. These connectivity options make it compatible with both generations of Nintendo Switch, PC, iOS and Android devices. JBL’s Tour Pro 3 earbuds are currently around $249.95 ($80 off) at Amazon and Best Buy. I’ve tested the earbuds, and was impressed with their comfort, audio quality, active noise cancellation performance, and battery life. The buds are great on their own, but they come in a charging case with a 1.57-inch touchscreen. You can use the display to switch between listening modes, adjust your volume, and check the earbuds’ battery without reaching for your phone. The case can also be used as a USB-C audio receiver, so you can listen to music from a wired source (like an airplane’s entertainment system) on the earbuds.Want a charger with some personality? Ugreen’s Uno 30 Watt Charger is around $17.99 at Amazon and from Ugreen, an all-time low price. It has one USB-C port, which is fast enough to charge an iPhone 15’s battery from zero to 60 percent in half an hour. An LED screen on its front side shows different pixelated faces when it’s currently charging your device, and when it’s done. It’s a nice touch that lets you know when your device is ready to be unplugged at a glance, and shouldn’t  impact its performance.

While the summer doldrums have hit Washington, the MAGA influencers can never truly go on vacation, especially if they've spent their careers promising to reveal the truth about Jeffrey Epstein. Although their politicians are now in power, they're getting stonewalled, and in the absence of juicy "Epstein files" to feed to their audiences, a new maelstrom of discontent is brewing, one that implicates much more than allegations about a pedophile's sex trafficking ring. The complex rift around Donald Trump's loyalists and the diehard Epstein truthers can no longer be separated from the issue of Israel, and as days pass, vocal criticism of the I …Read the full story at The Verge.

The sudden firing of two high-ranking antitrust officials this week is signaling upheaval at an agency responsible for arguing some of the biggest tech monopoly cases in decades.Two top deputies to Department of Justice Antitrust Division chief Gail Slater were fired earlier this week for what a DOJ official would only explain as "insubordination" in an unattributed statement. Antitrust trade publication MLex reported that termination letters for Roger Alford and Bill Rinner, who also served in the first Trump administration, did not mention the reason for their firing. (Alford later posted a copy of his letter, which he said he framed and …Read the full story at The Verge.

There's no question about it. AMD's new Threadripper 9980X is insanely fast. It's so fast that I'm comfortable saying, outside the data center, you're not going to find a faster chip. That's due not only to the excellent Zen 5 architecture, which we've seen at play with chips like the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, but also its massive array of 64 cores and 128 threads. You'd assume that it would be a monster at just about any task you can throw at it, but that's not the case. Despite being $5,000, packing 64 cores, and making even flagships like the Core Ultra 9 285K look like embedded chips, the Threadripper 9980X is a pretty bad gaming CPU.

Google's NotebookLM is one of the only AI tools I open at least once every day. If you aren't familiar with what NotebookLM is, it's Google's wildly underrated research assistant. I discovered NotebookLM when Google was testing it out as an experiment in Google Labs under the codename "Project Tailwind."