For ages, Google Drive was my go-to for everything — work documents, photos, personal archives, even the writing projects I never finished. But somewhere along the way, the convenience began to feel like dependence. Between rising subscription costs, growing concerns about data privacy, and a newfound interest in building my own home server setup, I finally decided to jump ship.

When I am working on my Windows PC, I need apps and tools that make my workflow easier and more efficient. I am always looking for new ways to speed up file management, settings, writing, note-taking, and more. Out of the box, Windows is pretty bland, and it doesn’t have the things I need. I actually deleted many Windows inbox apps, so they are out of my way for other tools.

It's funny how we've spent years trying to cram as many features into our devices as possible, only to invent gadgets that deliberately have as few features as possible in response. However, sitting in front of a modern PC, it's easy to see why. Writing the next chapter of your book, the next page of your dissertation, or the first draft of your wedding speech suddenly gets a lot less interesting when you have social media, notifications, and system updates pinging you every few minutes.

Running Android apps on my Raspberry Pi used to be a niche curiosity, but with Waydroid, it has become a genuinely useful feature of my home setup. I've got it running on Raspberry Pi OS with Wayland enabled, and the performance is smooth enough to use regularly. Whether it's for testing apps or bridging the gap with Android-only tools, it opens up some interesting possibilities.

I wouldn't have preordered a Nintendo Switch 2 just for myself. The price is high, there's no new Smash Bros. or Metroid Prime (yet), and I've got a perfectly good original Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck that keep me plenty busy. At first, I could only justify the $450 because I write about gaming tech for The Verge.But two weeks in, I can almost justify the cost one additional way: the Switch 2 is turning out to be an upgrade for my whole family. I'm not primarily talking about hand-me-downs, though yes, you could absolutely hand your original Switch down to a kid while basking in the glory of the Switch 2's larger, faster screen. Mom and dad always get the best seats in the house, right? But no: I'm talking about how Nintendo's new features are helping me share the delight of gaming with my 8-year-old kid like never before.We bought my daughter a Switch Lite last Christmas, with Animal Crossing and Let's Go Pikachu, and that's pretty much all she played. All other gaming monopolized the living room TV, where she and her younger sister often clash over what to watch next. But two weeks ago, my eldest suddenly realized that we could now magically beam any of my old purch …Read the full story at The Verge.

Look, I get it; picking Windows as your daily driver generally isn't the best idea if customizability is your most considerable interest. That goes double for Windows 11, which has actually taken the lack of custom stuff you can do on Windows and somehow found a way to make it even worse.

The music industry's nightmare came true in 2023, and it sounded a lot like Drake. "Heart on My Sleeve," a convincingly fake duet between Drake and The Weeknd, racked up millions of streams before anyone could explain who made it or where it came from. The track didn't just go viral - it broke the illusion that anyone was in control. In the scramble to respond, a new category of infrastructure is quietly taking shape that's built not to stop generative music outright, but to make it traceable. Detection systems are being embedded across the entire music pipeline: in the tools used to train models, the platforms where songs are uploaded, the databases that license rights, and the algorithms that shape discovery. The goal isn't just to catch synthetic content after the fact. It's to identify it early, tag it with metadata, and govern how it moves through the system."If you don't build this stuff into the infrastructure, you're just going to be chasing your tail," says Matt Adell, cofounder of Musical AI. "You can't keep reacting to every new track or model - that doesn't scale. You need infrastructure that works from training through distribution."The goal isn't takedowns, b …Read the full story at The Verge.

Like many developers, I used to think of VS Code primarily as a slick code editor – great for writing, debugging, and managing projects. It’s a fantastic tool, no doubt, but my perspective shifted when I started digging into its vast ecosystem of extensions. These aren’t your everyday syntax highlighters or linters; these are powerful tools that transform VS Code into something far more versatile. Here are the hidden gems that prove VS Code is capable of so much more than just an Integrated Development Environment.

The Switch Online service has added a number of classic and beloved games to the Classics section for Nintendo Switch owners to play. Many of the games that were added were standout titles from their respective consoles. As part of the online service, being a subscriber has more value when you want to revisit older titles. Now that Nintendo 64 games are part of the Switch Online Expansion Pass, fans of Nintendo have been clamoring for some of the best games that were part of the N64 library to be included on the service.

The E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, DC. The future of the internet will be determined in one building in Washington, DC - and for six weeks, I watched it unfold.For much of this spring, the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in downtown Washington, DC, was buzzing with lawyers, reporters, and interested onlookers jostling between dimly lit courtrooms that hosted everyone from the richest men in Silicon Valley to fired federal workers and the DOGE-aligned officials who terminated them. The sprawling courthouse, with an airy atrium in the middle and long, dark halls that spring from it, is where cases involving government agencies often land, and that meant it was hosting two of the most consequential tech cases in the country, all while fielding a flurry of unprecedented lawsuits against President Donald Trump's administration.Between mid-April and late May, Judges James Boasberg and Amit Mehta respectively oversaw FTC v. Meta and US v. Google, a pair of long-running antitrust lawsuits that seek to split up two titans of Silicon Valley. Over the same period, several DC judges - including Boasberg - had a full docket of cases related to Trump's first 100 days in office, covering the administration's attempt to mass-depor …Read the full story at The Verge.

There was a time when we didn't need photorealism, 4K textures, or open-world quests to feel like superheroes. All that one needed was a rectangular controller, some patience, and that click of a NES cartridge sliding into place. Well before the era of bloated cinematic universes, these games were the be-all and end-all of superhero experiences.

There are few things more exciting to a PC hardware enthusiast than a shiny new GPU. Once every 4 or 5 years, the time comes when it's time to replace my current GPU. Games get more demanding, and just by the nature of my job, it's important I stay somewhat on the cutting edge. I want to be "up to date" as it were. But after the sheen of the new card wears off, and I've benchmarked all my games, it's hard not to feel a little twinge of buyers' remorse.