If you're someone who uses a phone every day, you'll know how important it is to keep it topped up. The same goes for pretty much any device that relies on a charge, which is why a power bank can go a long way if you're not able to plug into an outlet. Naturally, power banks can only go so far, which is why power stations exist.

It's always nice to see a hardware company sell laptops with Linux pre-installed. Sure, there's nothing stopping you from purchasing a Windows laptop and installing Linux on it; however, you may find yourself paying more purely for the Windows license that you're not going to use. Selling Linux-ready laptops not only cuts out the setup but can also offer a cheaper alternative.

The three finalists for the World Press Photo of the year. | Image: World Press Photo We love to muse over how "real" photography is defined here at The Verge now that generative AI is so prolific, and the World Press Photo competition might have the answer. The prestigious award celebrates the best of photojournalism, where capturing reality is paramount. The winning entry for 2026 - "Separated by ICE," captured by photojournalist Carol Guzy - was announced yesterday. The harrowing photograph shows children clinging to their father after an immigration hearing. The photo had to abide by specific rules around the use of AI tools to be eligible for the competition, with the independent, nonprofit organization behind the awar …Read the full story at The Verge.

Imagine Google Street View, except you can walk around like it's a video game. Now imagine you don't need to wait for Google to come film because it's completely DIY. Insta360, the leading maker of 360-degree cameras, is now partnered with a 12-person UK startup called Splatica to help creators do just that.Last January, we wrote about Gaussian splatting, the tech that promises to someday let anyone digitally re-create chunks of the real world in photorealistic 3D. But Splatica is making it surprisingly easy to harness splats today - with nothing more than an off-the-shelf consumer 360-degree camera and a subscription service that handles …Read the full story at The Verge.

Like most of us, I've always treated my editor and terminal as two separate places, with constant back-and-forth between them. I would write code, switch to a terminal, run a script, scan the output, and go back to the editor. This is a very normal loop, but when you think about it, there is a lot of friction here.

Logically, when you look at an antenna for anything, you think that having as much height as possible would be optimal, as in theory, this provides as much coverage as possible. So you tear open the box of your shiny new router, screw the antennas into their threaded posts, and stand every single one of them bolt upright, like a row of tiny radio towers. It looks tidy and intentional, but it's actually killing your Wi-Fi performance. Vertical-only orientation is one of the most persistent Wi-Fi myths in consumer tech, and it quietly creates coverage gaps, leaves multi-antenna hardware underutilized, and causes performance issues that owners usually blame on their router, their ISP, or their walls.

Chinese AI company DeepSeek released a preview of its hotly anticipated next-generation AI model V4 on Friday, saying that the open-source model can compete with leading closed-source systems from US rivals including Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI.DeepSeek says V4 marks a major improvement over prior models, especially in coding, a capability that has become central to AI agents and helped drive the success of tools like ChatGPT Codex and Claude Code. The release is also a milestone for China's chip industry, with DeepSeek explicitly highlighting compatibility with domestic Huawei technology. The release comes a year after DeepSeek rattl …Read the full story at The Verge.

Tesla's Cybercab is now in production at the company's Gigafactory in Austin, Texas, but Elon Musk is sounding unusually cautious about the rollout. The robotaxi's start of production was announced Thursday on X, with Tesla posting a video shot from inside a steering wheel-less Cybercab as it drove out of the factory with the caption, "Purpose built for autonomy." The company made a few initial Cybercabs back in February, but continuous production only started this month. But with the company's robotaxi plans creeping along much slower than expected, many Tesla watchers are left scratching their heads about the future - especially as Mus …Read the full story at The Verge.

Home lab upgrades come in many different forms, and it's easy to justify buying new hardware. In the case of jumping to a new motherboard platform specifically, you gain a more solid upgrade path, a manufacturer warranty, and potentially better performance, depending on what you slot onto the board, of course.

Before I tried making a Slide Deck in NotebookLM, I didn’t think it would do a great job. I expected weird-looking images and cheap designs. But NotebookLM had already won me over with Audio Overviews, so I decided to give the Slide Deck a chance. The visuals looked clean, not cheap. It gave me vibrant colors, but what kept me using it wasn’t just how it looked. It was how useful the decks felt once I started clicking through them.

Even though Portal will turn 20 in October 2027, it's still a charm to play. Personally, I really love how the laboratory hardware and furniture look; after all this time, I still really want one of the radios that appear in-game. Something about it is just really pleasing to the eye.

The alien world of Saros feels like it has been touched by King Midas. The sky is golden after another impossibly frequent solar eclipse; rocks, specifically those of the precious resource Lucenite, radiate a shimmering amber. Even the body of our gruff hero Arjun Devraj (played by Rahul Kohli) is liable to turn deep, opulent yellow as he ventures further into the wilds of Carcosa. Should he die (a regular occurrence), the game cuts to stranger, more cryptic images, one of which is a double bed covered in gold silk sheets. It's a fittingly blingy aesthetic for this time when gaming has scarcely been a more gilded activity (seriously, have …Read the full story at The Verge.