You probably know what goes into buying a new GPU. You need to know what kind of games you'll play, what resolution you'll play at, and how much you want to spend before you can make a good purchase decision. However, you should also know what not to do. While you might be focused on GPU specs, it's also critical to avoid some buying mistakes that can come back to bite you. I learned the hard way not to get bogged down by brands, variants, and unimportant specs when upgrading my graphics card. Here's why you should avoid these GPU buying mistakes.

We don't often go tit-for-tat here on XDA, but I think it's worth doing sometimes, especially when I can offer a positive perspective. There's so much negativity around, why not look on the brighter side?

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) plans on photographing every single person who leaves the US by car, an agency spokesperson told Wired. The agency says it will start using facial recognition technology at official border crossings to match all outbound travelers’ faces to their passports, visas, or other travel documents, though there’s no public timeline for when this will happen.“Although we are still working on how we would handle outbound vehicle lanes, we will ultimately expand to this area,” CBP spokesperson Jessica Turner told Wired. It’s an expansion of the agency’s current practice of photographing travelers as they enter the country and matching those photos with “all documented photos, i.e., passports, visas, green cards, etc,” the agency has on record.CBP has been working on ways to track people as they leave the US for over a decade. After two years of lab tests, CBP experimented with collecting travelers’ biometrics at airports in 2016. That year, the agency partnered with Delta Air Lines to photograph passengers boarding a Tokyo-bound flight at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. The agency’s collection of outgoing travelers’ biometric data has expanded since then. CBP currently uses “biometric facial comparison technology” to process travelers exiting the US at 57 airports, including Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta, Los Angeles International Airport, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, and John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York — some of the busiest airports in the country. The airport panopticon continues to expand.“We found that facial recognition was intuitive for people. Everybody knows how to stand in front of a camera and have his or her photo taken,” John Wagner, the deputy assistant commissioner of CBP’s office of field operations, said in an agency article promoting CBP’s biometric technologies. “Not so with iris scans and fingerprints. Every time a traveler does the process wrong, someone has to instruct him or her the right way to do it.”Collecting passengers’ fingerprints may be less intuitive than taking their pictures, but CBP does that, too. Agents stationed at airports across the country use a handheld device called Biometric Exit Mobile to take certain travelers’ fingerprints before they board their flights. Those fingerprints are then run against law enforcement databases.If CBP’s role is to process people for entry into the US, why track people on the way out? Wired notes that biometric databases could be used to monitor self-deportations. Having realized that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) lacks the resources to arrest, detain, and deport each and every one of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the US, President Donald Trump is encouraging undocumented immigrants to leave the US on their own, offering people $1,000 if they leave the country voluntarily. But CBP was devising ways to collect travelers’ photos, fingerprints, and other biometric data long before Trump took office. The agency says it collects this data to run people’s biometrics against law enforcement databases, therefore ensuring that people with criminal records are removed from the US. The agency’s promotional article touting its biometric technologies includes a “success story” involving a Polish couple who had “criminal histories with multiple identities” caught leaving the US under false names. Since DHS’s formation in the wake of the September 11th attacks, immigration enforcement has blurred the lines between criminal enforcement and national security. Every international traveler is a potential criminal or terrorist, justifying mass surveillance.Trump didn’t invent this playbook. But his mass deportation agenda is getting a helpful boost from decades of bipartisan turbocharging of the surveillance state.

The Doom series has always been gaming royalty — it’s one of the most important games that changed the medium forever. 2016’s reboot and 2020’s Doom Eternal — both fantastic FPS games and even better Doom games — reinvented and cemented the franchise’s modern identity — a breakneck, ultra-violent ballet of speed, strategy, and hellish spectacle.

Outer Wilds developer Mobius Digital is working on a new game, but it might be a very long time before we hear anything about it, the studio’s head of production tells The Verge.“It’s going to be quite awhile before we have any news or hints about our next game,” says Jackie Kreitzberg. “Likely on the order of years.” The studio also doesn’t plan to share “public development logs” in order to “preserve the mystery of the next game.”In 2021, Mobius released the Echoes of the Eye expansion for Outer Wilds, which Kreitzberg says is the game’s last. “We’re excited to make something new.”I reached out to Mobius after seeing Outer Wilds patch notes spotted by Rock Paper Shotgun that said the team is “hard at work on our next game.” But while that was the first I had heard of a new game, Kreitzberg notes that the studio confirmed it was in the works after last year’s resignations at Annapurna Interactive. Even if Mobius doesn’t want to talk about the new game, it appreciates the recent attention. “We’re thrilled that folks are excited to see what we make next and hope we don’t leave everyone hanging forever,” Kreitzberg says.

After years of Windows 11, Microsoft is finally taking a wrench to the Start menu. While not everyone dislikes it, it's definitely one of the sore spots people have when upgrading from Windows 10 to 11, given the lack of customization you have versus the older Windows version. Now, the company has broken down the reasoning behind its new Start redesign, giving everyone a sneak peek into what they can expect from it.

It's my final day at The Verge and Vox Media after over 13 years. And as luck should have it, I was able to wrap up my tenure here by interviewing Tom Conrad, the interim CEO of Sonos. I've covered this company more extensively than any other, and as our readers know, Sonos has been through the ringer over the last year - in a mess of its own making, to be clear. But over the last several months, Conrad, a Sonos board member since 2017, has kept the company laser-focused on a turnaround effort with frequent app improvements and bug fixes.With successful stints at Pandora, Snap, and elsewhere, Conrad has deep software roots. (Yes, he was also the chief product officer at Quibi.) So on Friday, I threw my most pressing questions at the man who clearly hopes to become the permanent CEO of Sonos. We covered some of what I know Sonos' Reddit community is likely curious about and other topics that seemed timely, and I came away encouraged about the company's odds of getting back on track.The below interview is lightly edited for length and clarity.Tom Conrad, it's great to finally meet. This week, you announced that the Symfonisk partnership with Ikea is no more. Talk about what le …Read the full story at The Verge.

I've been slowly replacing the creative tools I relied on with free and open-source alternatives. It was mainly out of exploration at first, but then canceling all my Adobe subscriptions also forced me to find better options. Now, I've finally overhauled my graphics workflow and haven't looked back.

I'll admit it; I have a soft spot for Raspberry Pi cases that look like a miniature gaming rig. Maybe it's how cool they look, and maybe it's just really cute to have a teeny-tiny case sitting on your PC like a gaming rig for mice. Either way, when I saw that Pironman was back in the Raspberry Pi case game, I knew I had to take a look.

Building a home lab is a process, and the more self-hosted services you add, the more complicated it becomes to provide security and manage them. It gets to be a headache eventually, but you can make things easier by using a reverse proxy to expose your services using human-readable URLs instead of IP and port combinations. There are plenty of options to choose from, depending if you need versatility, ease of setup and use, and how well you're versed in the command line, but Nginx Proxy Manager ticks all the boxes for most home lab users. It's got a web-based GUI, is quick to set up thanks to a Docker container, and has the option of advanced configuration if you need it down the road.

A mannequin explodes as part of a live demonstration warning consumers of fireworks hazards. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) held this educational event on June 29, 2023. | Photo by Getty ImagesOn Friday, Donald Trump abruptly removed the three sitting Democrat appointees on the five-person U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission — the independent watchdog agency that issues recalls and regulates everyday products, including consumer electronics. With no apparent cause for removal, the firings violate existing Supreme Court precedent dating back to 1935, as did Trump’s removals of the Democratic commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) back in March.The firing comes in the wake of a draft budget proposal that would have eliminated the CSPC, whose commissioners are bipartisan by law and who serve five-year terms. The proposal would have instead rolled the commission’s regulatory powers into the Department of Health and Human Services, which is led by a political appointee — presently, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.The Washington Post reported that the firings came shortly after the three Democrats on the commission — Richard Trumka, Mary Boyle and Alexander Hoehn-Saric, all Biden appointees — voted to publish safety standards for small lithium-ion batteries used in electric bikes and electric scooters, with the two Republicans voting against it. The report specifically noted that these batteries have a record of catching on fire and “resulting in at least 39 fatalities and 181 injuries nationwide.”The following Thursday, two members of DOGE appeared at the CPSC’s offices. The next day, Trumka and Boyle received letters notifying them that they were fired. Hoehn-Saric did not receive a letter, but according to The Hill, he and his staff found themselves locked out of the building. All three members released statements saying that they planned to appeal their firings to the courts and that Trump had acted illegally. The three members received support from Consumer Reports, which stated in a press release that the firings were “an appalling and lawless attack on the independence of our country’s product safety watchdog.” Rather than state a cause for removal, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt once again reiterated the White House’s position that the president “has the right to fire people within the executive branch.” In March, the president fired the Democrats serving on the Federal Trade Commission, another independent agency, in contravention of the longstanding Supreme Court precedent, Humphrey’s Executor, which limits presidential power to remove officers at independent agencies — like the FTC — that have authority delegated to them from the legislative branch. The White House has consistently asserted that the president has the power to fire anyone under him, and Trump’s Department of Justice has announced its intention to overturn Humphrey’s Executor at the Supreme Court. The new Republican chair of the FTC has also publicly backed this interpretation of the Constitution. Fired FTC commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya have since sued the administration. The Supreme Court has previously signaled a willingness to overturn its own precedent in favor of expanding executive power, but the FTC case has not yet reached the court. Humphrey’s Executor remains the law of the land for now, though that could very well change in the near future. But that only makes it all the more baffling as to why the president is, once again, illegally firing commissioners of independent agencies. 

Amazon is expanding its prescription medication business to include your pooches and pussycats. Through its Vetsource partnership announced on Thursday, Amazon says that “hundreds of prescription pet medications” will now be available for US customers to purchase via Amazon’s storefront, including treatments for fleas, ticks, and chronic conditions.Prescription pet drugs can be found by searching for the required medication in Amazon’s search bar and inputting your prescribing veterinarian’s information during checkout. The Vetsource online pet pharmacy service will then dispense and deliver medications purchased through Amazon, with shipping expected to take between two to six days.Vetsource will contact your veterinarian for approval for first-time orders, but Amazon says that refills can then “usually be processed without additional veterinarian contact” if your account has an active prescription on file. All of the pet medications provided on Amazon are FDA approved, and the company says that the selection of drugs available will be expanded over time.The selling point here, much like when Amazon first launched its human-focused online pharmacy service in 2020, is convenience. Being able to order flea, worming, and other essential pet care prescriptions alongside everyday shopping items is convenient for everyone, but especially people who have mobility issues or live in rural areas and would otherwise have to make their way to a vet’s office or pharmacy location. It also puts Amazon more in line with competing online pharmacy services like Walmart, which launched its own service for pet medications in 2019.