The first thing most of us do after building a PC is boot into the BIOS and change some settings before we even install Windows. We do that because motherboard manufacturers tend to play it safe with their default settings, which makes sense given how many different hardware configurations they need to support. After all, peak performance can't come at the cost of stability when those default settings serve as a decent starting point for just about everyone.

On Thursday, a judge ruled that the Pentagon's blacklisting of Anthropic earlier this year was unconstitutional, delivering the AI lab a win in a monthslong rollercoaster of a battle with the Trump administration. The lawsuit, filed in March in a California district court, accused the Trump administration of unlawfully retaliating against Anthropic for setting "red lines," or unacceptable military use cases of its AI technology. "The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics," Judge Rita F. Lin, a district judge in the northern district of California, wrote in the ruling …Read the full story at The Verge.

Confusion is a generally accepted side effect of mystery box shows. They slather on secrets with the promise of a satisfying payoff in the end, and sometimes the cast and crew even have a hard time following what's going on. But even by the standards of the genre, Dark Matter is extreme. Its multiversal premise, which involves a man kidnapping a version of himself from another world, can be hard to wrap your head around, and as the first season went on, things only got harder to follow. With the return of the show for season 2, I have both good and bad news: The show is more dramatic and thrilling than ever, while also being ever so much har …Read the full story at The Verge.

I love using Obsidian. This very article was written up using Obsidian notes and then an initial draft, making the app central to both my work and leisure. But like most productivity apps, even ones as feature-rich as Obsidian, struggle when it comes to using them on multiple devices. Synchronization is available via Obsidian's developer as a cloud-based subscription, but I wanted something I managed myself for free. Turns out, it's incredibly simple and takes a few minutes to get up and running.

There's something really cute about retro hardware that has been shrunk down. Even as a set piece, they can be great little reminders of how far we've come with tech. However, miniaturised gadgets that now serve another purpose are even cooler, such as this alarm clock that's based on the classic Linksys WRT-54G router.

You know the person blocking your view of the concert because their phone is swaying in the air, recording the entire thing? Get ready for the unfolded version of it.This week on The Vergecast, we dive right into the big week of Apple news. First, it's the refreshed Mac Mini and Mac Studio, as well as the new M6 and M5 Ultra chips. Apple is advertising them all as achievements in AI inference, but we're skeptical this is more than a marketing ploy for now. Then we get into the newly announced Apple event, why we're not expecting to see an iPhone 18, and whether the folding phone form factor is really good enough yet for Apple.After that, …Read the full story at The Verge.

Ever since Microsoft introduced the Phone Link app, the company has been hard at work adding as many interactions as possible between your phone and your computer. However, it doesn't quite support every potential feature that you can do with other apps and services. Fortunately, Microsoft seems to be rectifying that, as someone has spotted development code that appears to add the ability to turn off your PC with your phone.

Rockstar has officially published its "extended look" at Grand Theft Auto VI on YouTube and on its website, as promised. The in-depth preview, which "entirely" features footage captured from the PS5 version of the game, initially premiered on Netflix at 3PM ET. But because Rockstar allowed creators to post reaction videos, you've technically been able to watch the video on YouTube before the studio's official upload.The nearly 27-minute preview largely focuses more on atmosphere, protagonists Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos, and highlighting locations in the game instead of diving deep on specific game mechanics. It feels more like slices of …Read the full story at The Verge.

Apple raised the price of its streaming service for new and current subscribers on Friday, bumping it up from $12.99 per month to $14.99, Deadline and Variety are reporting. An annual subscription now costs $119, up from $99. Apple also increased the cost of its individual Apple One subscription, which includes Apple TV and Apple's other subscription services, from $19.95 per month to $21.95. According to Deadline and Variety, the price change is effective immediately, and current subscribers will be notified of it before their next bill. This price hike comes almost exactly a year after Apple last increased its Apple TV subscription fe …Read the full story at The Verge.

The unofficial version of DLSS 5 makes Jesse Faden’s features much more pronounced. | Image: gabdeg via YouTube Modders are trying out an unofficial version of Nvidia's DLSS 5 on Skyrim, Cyberpunk 2077, GTA V, and a bunch of other games after code for the AI upscaling tech appeared in an early-access build of NBA 2K27. Members of the RenoDX modding channel on Discord reportedly found a way to extract the DLSS "Neural Rendering" file and apply it to Control before it expanded to other games, as reported earlier by Notebook Check and VideoCardz.In one video, a person shows how Control protagonist Jesse Faden's facial features become more and less defined as they tweak various DLSS 5 settings enabled by the RenoDX modders. With the "Neural Uplift" sett …Read the full story at The Verge.

Adobe Acrobat has been my default PDF tool for years, but I started wondering if I was paying for far more than I actually needed. Most of my PDF work is pretty routine, so installing another heavy desktop application didn't make much sense to me.

Flatpaks are very much a "love them or hate them" kind of affair. Personally, after I used an atomic OS for a good part of half a year, I like them; they're easy to set up, come with no dependencies, and are simple to delete if you don't want them anymore. However, there is room for improvement, which is why the German Sovereign Tech Agency has just invested just over €500,000 to help it evolve into something bigger.