Since January, people have speculated that OnePlus will be leaving the US market. Earlier this week, we heard a rumor that the company was planning on announcing its departure soon. Fast forward to today, and OnePlus has made an official statement confirming that it's leaving, though people who own a OnePlus device shouldn't worry too much.

Get ready for more AI characters in Fortnite. Developer Epic Games is going to let Fortnite creators publish experiences featuring characters with AI-powered voices starting on July 30th, and ahead of that launch, it's created 36 characters with "consistent voices and personas" that creators can use as NPCs. The characters include Fortnite staples like Agent Jonesy, Peely (the banana), Fishstick (a walking fish), and Cuddle Team Leader (who wears a pink bear mascot head).Epic tested the waters of AI characters with last year's Darth Vader NPC that was powered by James Earl Jones' voice - a collaboration that Jones' estate signed off on. Ev …Read the full story at The Verge.

When it was first introduced five years ago, Windows 11 brought a lot of new system requirements that left behind a lot of older systems. But despite the outrage caused by Microsoft's official stance, it soon became apparent that it's actually possible to install Windows 11 on these "unsupported" machines using a tool like Rufus. This remained true for a long time.

RAM and storage prices have gone through the roof, making this powerful gaming mini PC worth every single penny right now. It features an AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS and 32GB DDR5 RAM. That last detail should catch your eye because the components value alone sits at or over $350 at the moment if you buy it on its own.

Emulators with a CRT TV setting are great at showing retro games as they used to look, but they miss out on the joy of thwacking the top of your screen every time the visuals look weird. Fortunately, an ex-Sega engineer has created a Famicom (NES) emulator for macOS that requires some 'percussive maintenance' to fix visual issues, and it feels like I'm back in the 90s again.

I’ve been sitting on the fence about the Lifetime Plex Pass for months. I was waiting for Plex’s occasional discount windows to pop up so I could grab the lifetime subscription at a relatively low price. Instead, Plex announced that the lifetime Pass pricing tripled from $250 to $750, effective July 1st. The company claims that the new price “reflects the real, ongoing value” of the software.

Having long boot times might seem trivial, but when you're used to 15–30 seconds, even a minute can seem annoying. If your PC takes too long to reach the desktop after you press the power button, you'll naturally question the behavior. The problem is that many people still don't know where to look for the fix. They blame their CPU, motherboard, BIOS version, or other unrelated components instead of checking their memory settings.

Given how useful artificial intelligence can be for programmers, the open-source community is asking itself: does AI code belong in Linux? Regardless of what others believe, Linus Torvalds himself has stated AI is a tool, and is "clearly a useful one." And if you don't like it, Torvalds says you can either make your own or leave.

Call me old-school, but I prefer being able to access my photo library from files and folders on my computer much more than through a web app. Years ago, Google Photos could be linked to Google Drive, but that got killed. Later, I moved over to Immich, and once again, unless I go digging into my NAS over SMB, file access is something that I'd forgotten about. RAW file and folder access is convenient when you just want to grab an image, edit a RAW file, or upload something quickly, but increasingly, if you want to use modern self-hosted tools, the world appears to be moving away from it.

I've relied on Obsidian for years, so finding an alternative that genuinely impressed me wasn't something I expected. Every time I looked around, the same names kept coming up, but none of them offered enough to make me rethink my setup. Recently, though, I came across an app that felt refreshingly different. Instead of trying to copy Obsidian, it takes its own approach to knowledge management while staying true to the local-first philosophy I value. After spending time with it, I realized it solves several frustrations I didn't even know I had, making it the most interesting Obsidian alternative I've tried in a long time.

If you've had even a cursory glance at the PC hardware pricing over the last few months, you'll already know that times are tough for the consumer market. DRAM prices have already tripled and show little signs of rising, consumer DDR5 memory has drifted out of reach for the mid-range and budget bracket, NAND pricing is following a similar trajectory, and GPUs are experiencing their own kind of shrinkflation.

Samsung’s art TV looks right at home alongside real paintings. | Image: Samsung Samsung’s Frame is different from your average 4K TV. Its biggest selling point involves what it does when you aren’t actively using it. It can display art, turning your living room into a gallery. The Frame has bezels that make it look like — you guessed it — framed art, and its matte finish can replicate paintings more naturally than your typical glossy-coated TV.Amazon currently has the 55-inch Samsung Frame on sale for $697.99, about $200 lower than its typical price. The deal is on the 2025 model that features a 4K QLED panel, 144Hz refresh rate with variable refresh rate, and HDR10 Plus support.Samsung The Frame (2025)Where to Buy: $899.99 $697.99 at Amazon (55-inch) $899.99 $699.99 at Best Buy $1697.99 $897.99 at Woot (65-inch)The Frame connects with a single cable to its included One Connect box, which contains a bunch of inputs. The box has four HDMI ports (two that support 4K at 60Hz, one with eARC for soundbars, and one that supports 4K at 144Hz for gaming), two USB-A ports, a coaxial plug for an HD antenna, Ethernet, and optical audio. Like other art TVs, the Frame underperforms in a handful of ways that might matter to you compared to other similarly-priced TVs. Our analysis of the Frame and its competitors showed that they generally have lower maximum brightness, lackluster picture quality and color accuracy, and poorer black levels, all of which can have a negative impact on how movies, TV shows and games look. Despite its drawbacks, the Frame might be a nice compromise between dominating your living room with a TV or hanging up a painting.