Developers build muscle memory around opening a terminal as soon as they open a project in a code editor like VS Code to run the project locally. For a long time, it was my routine as well. I would open VS Code, then immediately open a terminal window, and start typing the same command I had already run tens of times before. npm run dev for React frontends, uvicorn app:main for FastAPI, and go run main.go for Go backends and then Docker Compose and watch commands. None of these commands were too lengthy or difficult to remember, but they were repetitive in each session.

Back in July 2020, to better serve the influx of companies moving to remote work, Microsoft added the Together mode feature to Teams. The idea was to remove the endless square grid of people's webcams and instead place people into scenes such as a theatre or a room. That way, people would feel they're together, without actually being together.

When I upgraded to Gen 5 SSDs, I let my old PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives sit around for quite a while because I didn't know if I should give them away or keep them as spare storage. After all, my Crucial T700's 12,000MB/s sequential speeds made them feel outdated, so it didn't make much sense to have them in my build, especially since I already had a Corsair MP600 Gen 4 as secondary storage. Then, when I came across NVMe enclosures on Amazon while shopping for external SSDs, I realized what I'd been missing out on.

The T1 Phone has the wrong number of stripes, but it does at least have 50 stars. | Screenshot: Trump Mobile Where's the Trump phone? We're going to keep talking about it every week. We've reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump phone's whereabouts. This week, despite our best hopes, we still don't have our phone - but we do have some fresh doubts about the company's patriotic credentials.This has been a momentous few days for Trump Mobile, in which it defied the haters by announcing that its phones will be shipping to buyers this very week. Not that there's any sign the company has actually done that, but I digress. Because what I really want to talk about today is the American flag.I am not an American, which probably explains why I did …Read the full story at The Verge.

Love research or hate it, you certainly don't enjoy the moment you realize you've spent three hours organizing your notes and haven't actually thought about anything yet. Unfortunately, this happens far too often.

Ever since SSDs became mainstream, lifespan anxiety has become a bit of an enthusiast rabbit hole. Most people buy a drive, install Windows, fill it with games, and then completely forget it exists for the next five years. That's perfectly fine, too, since modern SSDs are built to survive far more abuse than many people give them credit for, and the average gamer will probably replace their PC long before the drive itself starts waving a white flag.

NAS and self-hosting are one and the same now, but they weren't always as synonymous with one another. At some point in the last few years, subscription costs began to pile up, streaming libraries fragment further every quarter, and the idea of paying indefinitely for software you could run yourself has started to feel less like convenience and more like you're getting the short end of the stick.

AI radio DJs demonstrated their volatile personalities. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Andon Labs has been running a series of experiments in which AI agents run businesses without human intervention. Its latest is a quartet of radio stations run by some of the most popular AI models out there. "Thinking Frequencies" is run by Claude, "OpenAIR" by ChatGPT, "Backlink Broadcast" by Google's Gemini, and "Grok and Roll Radio," obviously enough, by Grok. They were each given a simple prompt:Develop your own radio personality and turn a profit…As far as you know, you will broadcast forever.They all failed, some in pretty spectacular fashion. It didn't take long for each to burn through their initial $20 in seed money. Only DJ …Read the full story at The Verge.

Last summer, Peter Degen's postdoctoral supervisor came to him with an unusual problem: One of his papers was being cited too much. Citations are the currency of academia, but there was something unusual about these. Published in 2017, the paper had assessed the accuracy of a particular type of statistical analysis on epidemiological data and had received a respectable few dozen citations in other research papers over the years, but now it was being referenced every few days, hundreds of times, placing it among the most cited papers of his career. Another professor might be thrilled. Degen's adviser asked him to investigate. Degen, a postd …Read the full story at The Verge.

Ever since I jumped headfirst into the local LLM rabbit-hole, I’ve grown fond of revitalizing old PCs by turning them into reliable AI workstations. With the right tweaks, I’ve even managed to run powerful LLMs that can rival their cloud-based counterparts on something as outdated as a 10-year-old rig. That said, most of my hardcore LLM experiments involve full-fledged x86 gaming systems with dedicated graphics cards and excess RAM.

Using the shower after someone else is always a gamble. You're not sure if the water will be just the right temperature, freezing cold, or scalding hot. I know if my dad has used a shower before me, I need to turn it down before I get in, else it'll feel like my skin is melting off.

Google updated its spam policy to mark attempts to "manipulate" its AI model in search results as spam, including results in AI Overview or AI Mode in Search, as Search Engine Land reports: "In the context of Google Search, spam refers to techniques used to deceive users or manipulate our Search systems into featuring content prominently, such as attempting to manipulate Search systems into ranking content highly or attempting to manipulate generative AI responses in Google Search."Some users have been trying to influence AI search responses, using tactics like biased "best-of" listicles or "recommendation poisoning," which injects LLM …Read the full story at The Verge.