To say that PC building as a hobby has become more expensive would be an understatement. The RAM crisis and ballooning GPU prices that never came back down have made it outright unaffordable for some, and for others, an upgrade seems like nothing more than a mirage. If you're one of those people looking to make their first entry into PC gaming, or you're looking for an entirely fresh start from an aged-out system, I'm here to tell you that it's not all doom and gloom. It's still possible to build a very capable system for a reasonable price in 2026, it just takes some patience and a little bit of compromise. Buying everything new while staying under that budget simply isn't an option, but the good news is the used market is still quite healthy, and it's your ticket to a 4K-ready system.

You may not immediately know what an E Ink (or ePaper) screen is, but you've definitely seen one. Pretty much every e-reader, whether it's a Kindle, Kobo, Boox, or even a ReMarkable, uses the technology, which is ideal for long-term use without causing eye strain.

As summer hits its peak, Samsung's finally ready to debut its new foldables. We've been hearing rumors for a couple of weeks, but we now have the official word from the brand itself that its next Galaxy Unpacked event will take place on July 22, 2026.

Meta is launching the first AI image generation model made by its Superintelligence Labs division. The Muse Image model now powers the image-making tools across the Meta AI app, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and it's coming soon to Facebook and Messenger, according to an announcement on Tuesday.It's part of the growing Muse family of AI models that replace Meta's Llama lineup. Alexandr Wang, who Meta hired to head up its Superintelligence Labs last year, says on Threads that Muse Image is "agentic," meaning it works with its Muse Spark large language model "to reason through your prompt, search the web, and plan before it generates." Meta is al …Read the full story at The Verge.

It finally happened — Grand Theft Auto VI pre-orders finally went live, and people have been buying copies as if they'll somehow run out before launch day. I mean no shade, since I've done exactly the same thing. It also proves that the old "no gameplay, no pre-order" mantra goes completely out the window when Rockstar Games is involved. But while excitement around the game is expected, the surrounding discourse right now has been fascinating for all the wrong reasons.

In my years of building PCs and writing about consumer tech, I've built and fixed several PCs for friends and family. I've embraced the dreaded resident tech support role in my circles, and as a result, my life shares similarities with corporate system administrators now. I've seen that worried helplessness too many times when PCs won't boot and users are left helpless. So now, I show up with a single fix-all bootable USB drive packed full of powerful ISOs and diagnostic and recovery tools. This digital Swiss Army knife easily puts a Windows installation stick to shame.

After using Claude to create a gaming backlog manager and an interactive watchlist with my Instagram posts, I just had to give Claude the biggest challenge yet: cleaning up my 1,000+ video YouTube Watch Later playlist. I had created this massive playlist by religiously saving every video I thought I'd watch over almost nine years. You can probably guess that I have made little progress in terms of reducing my backlog during this time. The problem with YouTube's Watch Later playlist is that it doesn't allow deep filtering, sorting, or searching options to help me attack the backlog in a realistic manner. YouTube is one of my most-used apps, both on my phone and on the TV, so I always have new stuff to watch, meaning the Watch Later playlist is always growing. So, I had to take Claude's help to turn this chaotic watchlist into one that gave me the power to slice and dice my 9-year-long saved videos collection.

Starting on August 3rd, Netflix's streaming library will include video content from dozens of digital media brands including BuzzFeed, Condé Nast, Hearst Magazines, People Inc, and Tastemade. As reported earlier by TechCrunch, the deal includes a mix of licensed past videos and new ongoing series that would have typically been published on YouTube or other online platforms, like Architectural Digest's "Open Door" or Vanity Fair's "Lie Detector Test." As Netflix puts it, the deal will allow subscribers to watch content "from around the Internet without having to leave Netflix." The announcement follows a Bloomberg report earlier this week …Read the full story at The Verge.

Right on cue, Samsung has confirmed that its next Unpacked event will take place on July 22nd in London, United Kingdom.

My home lab is a mix of hardware, from the AMD Radeon RT 7900 XTX that runs one inference box to the Nvidia flagships that run the heftier models, and a scattering of mini PCs. Oh, and a DGX Spark sitting in the rack being weird in its own ARM64 way. I wouldn't change that mix for the world. I love each piece of hardware for different reasons, but for the longest time, they all demanded their own inference stack.

Even though Netflix is the world's most popular paid streaming service, the company has been struggling to keep viewers watching its series after their first seasons. Beef - the streamer's anthology about people locked in feuds - lost 70 percent of its viewership when it returned earlier this year. There seems to be some confusion as to why people aren't champing at the bit to dive back into once-popular projects like the live-action adaptations of Avatar: The Last Airbender and One Piece. Netflix is reportedly hard at work trying to figure out what, exactly, is prompting subscribers to jump ship in droves. But if you've spent any time payin …Read the full story at The Verge.

Even so, the privacy LED light is still hard to see. It’s on in this photo. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Amid public backlash over its smart glasses, Meta announced that it will be updating its glasses with a new feature that will disable the camera when it detects that someone has tampered with or destroyed the glasses' privacy LED light. The update is meant to address modders who have taken actions such as physically drilling into the LED light.Meta has previously tried to discourage tampering with the LED light. For example, starting with its second generation glasses, blocking the light with tape or other objects will trigger a prompt asking users to uncover the recording light. However, many modders have found various workarounds for tha …Read the full story at The Verge.