One night in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, a felting artisan ended her day with a prayer. May our partners have good health. May they be ambitious, and successful, and may their businesses grow. The next morning, sisters-in-law Chinara Makashova and Nazgul Esenbaeva, and the people they worked with awoke to what seemed like a miracle: Shopify orders. So many Shopify orders. They got to work. It felt like everything was falling into place: The company they had built from scratch was exporting felted slippers and artisan products to wholesale partners around the globe. And with help from USAID’s green business initiative in Central Asia, they were expanding their production abilities — and finally building their own modern, direct-to-consumer web store: one with the payment processing and data security infrastructure to help them reach customers directly. But just as their new ecommerce infrastructure was coming together, the USAID funding vanished around the world — leaving them with a $35,000 funding gap. In so many places, the internet makes building a retail business easy — but in the world’s most land-locked country, with a banking system bogged down by sanctions against o …Read the full story at The Verge.

The Nintendo Switch 2 has entered the ring, possibly complicating your decision of which handheld to buy this year. While Nintendo’s new console, which comes out on June 5th, may seem similar to handheld gaming PCs like the Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally, there’s a lot that sets them apart. Everything like how you buy and play games, their control methods, how powerful they are, and how you can expand their storage makes them different. Unique doesn’t always mean “good,” by the way.While tech-savvy folks likely understand the key differences between each of the major handhelds, possibly enough to establish a preference, some could use a hand breaking things down. That’s exactly what I’m going to do here, specifically comparing the Switch 2 to the Asus ROG Ally and the Ally X, two of the most popular handheld gaming PCs that aren’t a Steam Deck (in small part because they’re easy to buy at Best Buy). I’ve already compared the Switch 2 to Valve’s console, so my focus here is exclusively on Asus’ consoles that have a dedicated fanbase and some great specs.Pricing and availabilityAs mentioned, the Switch 2 will launch on June 5th. Preorders were initially s …Read the full story at The Verge.

Like every other gamer in the world, I fell in love with gaming because of the stories it told, the worlds it let me escape into, the characters it made me love and hate, and the sheer magic of being at the center of it all. However, when it comes to games, it’s never just the main plot lines and central narratives that do the heavy lifting. It’s often the side quests that breathe life into the world, giving it texture, depth, and a human heartbeat.

By the time Apple releases M5-powered iPads, using iPadOS may feel closer to working on a Mac, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in today’s Power On newsletter. It won’t be macOS running on a tablet, but he writes that the changes will be significant enough to make people who want such a thing happy.Updates to iPadOS coming this year will be focused “on productivity, multitasking and app window management — with an eye on the device operating more like a Mac,” according to Gurman. He says these changes are due “about a year” after the release of the M4 iPad Pro, a fantastic tablet with far more power than its software demands. Gurman’s report doesn’t give any indication of what Apple’s updated multitasking will look like, and it’s best to reserve any excitement until we see more. Back in 2022, Apple added Stage Manager to iPadOS 16, a feature that enables windowing and also groups app windows together in a dock-like collection on the side of the display. It might have seemed like an exciting change if you wanted to be able to ditch your MacBook, but what shipped felt too half-hearted to be a useful step in the direction of a proper desktop operating …Read the full story at The Verge.

A carryall you can take anywhere.I remember the day: a sinewy bicycle messenger skillfully weaved through honking automobiles and came to a stop at the traffic light in front of me. But instead of dropping a foot, he balanced high above his fixed-gear pedals for nearly a minute, his crossbody bag bulging against the urgent deliveries within. That was ‘90s San Francisco, when anyone could tap into that free-wheelin’ zeitgeist by wearing a messenger bag — only conformist dorks wore backpacks.Switzerland-based Freitag got its start in 1993 with messenger bags, and it’s keeping that spirit alive with its latest, the F685 Henry. It’s heavy, water resistant, and incredibly durable because it’s made from worn seatbelts, recycled plastic bottles, and used tarps that act as walls on European trucks. That means no two Freitag bags are identical in a world of mass-produced homogeny.Ironically, Freitag bags are built to last despite being made from trash. A Freitag messenger bag that I purchased almost 20 years ago is still my go-to for errands around town. I expect the same longevity from the Henry, which I’ve been testing as an all-purpose gear bag for the last few weeks. That makes its $330 price point a …Read the full story at The Verge.

Do you remember the Oddworld series? If you don't, or you were too young to remember, it was an excellent series that began as a 2D platformer on the PlayStation, then moved into the 3D space, including an FPS spinoff. As you can tell by the name, the Oddworld series is definitely up there in the creativity and strangeness, creating a world that I've never seen replicated in any other game since the PlayStation 1 era. So, when I saw that you can snag every single game in the Oddworld series for one dollar, I knew I had to shout it out.

Do you hear that noise? That's the sound of the entire US tech industry collectively sighing in relief. After initially imposing a 125% tariff on all Chinese imports, the US government has now agreed to allow electronics to arrive on American soil without paying extra as an exception to the rule. As it turns out, if Apple had the heat applied to it for a little longer, it would have suffered severe setbacks unlike anything seen since the pandemic days.

I'm usually the first one to advise people to maximize FPS per dollar and build a balanced gaming PC. While that means buying only those components that directly affect the performance of your PC, I'm also someone who appreciates esthetics and convenience in PC building. You might not need an expensive motherboard, but it comes with definite benefits that extend beyond performance. Spending on a good-looking case or graphics card isn't mandatory, but it sure feels great.

Using Linux in 2025 is more viable than you may think. Although the operating system (OS) has powered much of the world's servers for decades, it remains a severely unpopular choice for desktop and laptop systems. This is largely down to game and app support on Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS, which have traditionally offered superior experiences to Linux. That's no longer the case, and many Linux distributions (distros) are more polished than commercial operating systems. If you're coming from Windows, here are a few things that will surprise you to learn about Linux.

The downside of working primarily at a computer is that, at any given time, you have a whole universe of distractions available to you. It would be wonderful if we could all just focus on the task at hand at all times, but I'm sure I'm not alone in falling for temptation more often than I should. Whether it's YouTube or some online forums where I can geek out about Nintendo, it can be hard to stay on task.

Raspberry Pis and Home Assistant are a match made in heaven. The former is great at sensing the world around it and collecting data, and the latter is amazing at taking in data, making decisions, and outputting information to better control a smart home. Put them together, and you have a tag team system that keeps an eye out for stimuli and decides what to do next with that information.

From a private cloud, 3D printer management hub, and other practical projects to borderline unhinged creations like a bare-metal Windows 11 installation and a (barebones) Steam gaming machine, there’s no shortage of ideas you can bring to life with your Raspberry Pi. But if you want to enhance your quality of life, you’ll have an absolute blast putting automation projects together with your Raspberry Pi. So, here’s a byte-sized list of ways you can turn your Raspberry Pi SBC into an automation behemoth.