The mini PC was always lumped in with netbooks and NUCs. They were great for getting basic work done, but as soon as you'd command one to do anything slightly more demanding, they would choke under their own weight. That's no longer the case, as modern mini PCs, even more affordable ones, come rocking more powerful Intel and AMD processors, allowing you to easily work and game on a device more compact than a box of tissues. This is how I can run Proxmox on a few mini PCs to create the ultimate low-power home lab cluster.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul might have just signed a moratorium on new AI data centers in the state, but she's not against using the technology herself. During an interview with Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast, Hochul said that her team is using "AI to analyze every single rule, regulation, [and] policy" to check for outdated legislation.Some of the antiquated laws mentioned by Hochul in the interview include a $25 fee required to take a dog hunting, or a stipulation that pregnant people need a permit to work after midnight. Hochul added that it "probably would have taken five years at the staff level" to review all of the laws in the stat …Read the full story at The Verge.

Google is giving its AI note-taking app a new name. The company announced on Thursday that NotebookLM is becoming Gemini Notebook, but will remain a standalone app even as it integrates more deeply across Gemini and Google Search.Google first revealed Gemini Notebook - then called Project Tailwind - in May 2023 before widely releasing the app just months later. Over the past few years, Google has been adding new features to the app to help organize and make sense of your notes, such as the ability to summarize them as AI podcasts, narrated slideshows, and TikTok-style clips. It recently started letting users connect their notebooks to the …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you had gathered a congregation of Linux gamers into a single room and asked them which distro they use, you'd get a pretty predictable spread of answers. Distros like CachyOS, Pop!_OS, Bazzite, and Ubuntu flavors are typically among the most popular answers, but Fedora almost never gets mentioned. It has a reputation for being a "developer's distro" that doesn't lend itself well for gaming, but the truth is, Fedora is one of the most competent bases for a gaming machine in 2026, and it's the basis for some of the more popular gaming distros today.

After installing and reinstalling apps, building the browser and file cache, and applying system updates, any OS starts to become bogged down. That is especially true for Windows on low-capacity drives. Adding RAM and an SSD to an older machine instantly improves performance. But what about adding a second SSD?

Roblox is about to let people make games with AI right inside its mobile app, which could make a platform that's already filled with content of questionable quality feel even more overloaded. The company has embraced AI with open arms, including a preview of an ambitious take on AI world models similar to Google's Project Genie, an AI foundation model that developers can use to generate 3D game assets, and an AI assistant chatbot that can help developers while they're building games. The tools announced today will make using AI for Roblox game development far more accessible, though the company is starting small at first.The new feature is …Read the full story at The Verge.

Sometimes it feels like keeping your floors clean is one of those never-ending chores, which is why it's nice to have a versatile robot vacuum take it off your hands. The Ecovacs Deebot X11 robovac / mop hybrid is designed to do just that, and it's now $699 ($400 off) at Amazon and directly from Ecovacs, which is a new low price. The Deebot X11 is the latest version of one of our former top picks for the best robot vacuum / mop. While the Matic has since taken its place in our rankings, the X11 remains an excellent option, especially at nearly half the price. It combines powerful 19,500Pa suction along with a handful of features that make …Read the full story at The Verge.

CD sales are apparently going up, reportedly thanks to fans realizing they're an affordable way to support their favorite artists. According to a new report from research firm Luminate, 16.3 million CDs were sold in the first half of 2026 in the US, a 16 percent increase year-over-year. The growth in CD sales was driven by "collection building, price accessibility, massive albums such as BTS' ARIRANG and a strong K-pop release schedule," Luminate says.Even if you remove K-pop sales from the data, CD sales still went up in the US, increasing 6.7 percent. And it appears that some people aren't even buying the CDs to listen to them, as Lumina …Read the full story at The Verge.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai | Bloomberg via Getty Images Today, the European Union ordered Google to give its AI rivals greater access to Android, the open-source operating system that powers billions of devices worldwide. The demand is hardly surprising. It may look like a defeat on paper for Google, which has spent years resisting exactly this kind of access, but it is a regulatory win. It's also a sign that Google may have outmaneuvered Apple by playing Brussels' regulatory game far more shrewdly. In one of two decisions handed down on Thursday, the European Commission - the EU's executive arm and the principal enforcer of the bloc's competition rules - said Google must give rival AI assistan …Read the full story at The Verge.

The Nvidia Shield TV Pro is closing in on seven years since its 2019 launch, which should make it an easy device to ignore when there are newer streaming boxes with fresher processors, better wireless standards, and years of software support ahead of them. Somehow, the opposite has happened: every time I look closely at the current streaming-device market, I find another reason to wonder why so many newer products still ship with compromises that Nvidia avoided years ago.

Kalshi users betting on what President Donald Trump would say during his speeches were reportedly up against tough competition: the president's teleprompter operator.ABC News reports that federal investigators believe Gabriel Perez - Trump's teleprompter operator since 2016 - used inside information to make bets on Kalshi, a major prediction market platform that allows users to bet on just about everything. One category that Kalshi offers is "mentions" markets, in which users try to predict what an individual will say during high-profile events.Perez is accused of betting on what Trump would say during more than a dozen events, including …Read the full story at The Verge.

A scene from The American Experiment, one of the Netflix titles to use generative AI | Image: Netflix Netflix says roughly 300 titles on its platform used generative AI, most of which occurred in post-production. The streaming service revealed the news in its second-quarter earnings report released on Thursday, saying it's "increasingly leveraging these tools to deliver higher quality output more quickly and at a lower cost."It also provided some examples of titles that used AI, including The American Experiment, Glory, and Brasil 70: A Saga do Tri. These shows used the technology to "create highly complex sequences," including "enhanced crowds, historical battle sequences, and worldbuilding establishing shots." During Netflix's call with …Read the full story at The Verge.