In a market that is possibly the least affordable it has ever been (thanks to enterprise demand), it's virtually impossible to invest in traditional upgrades. Switching to a new GPU or CPU platform has been prohibitively expensive for almost a year now. People have to think twice even before expanding their NVMe storage.

When Google raised the price of the Google TV Streamer to $150, it caught many home media enthusiasts off guard. Released more than two years ago, it has received few updates, and it can be buggy. It offers a couple of features that the seven-year-old Nvidia Shield TV Pro (which also saw a price increase) doesn't, but when I thought I'd retire my Shield TV, it didn't make sense.

As is tradition, iFixit has torn open the latest iPhone and laid its parts bare on a table. It found some interesting details about how Apple might be hiding the crease on the Duo's folding screen and gave it a 5/10 repairability score. That might not seem particularly high, but it's the best score the site has given to a foldable yet. The internal screen's matte nano-texture cover doesn't just make it more readable in bright sunlight; it also helps mask the crease by scattering reflections. When looking at the display under a microscope, iFixit also found oval-shaped subpixels arranged at various angles, which the site believes are design …Read the full story at The Verge.

When you’re tinkering with ESP32 microcontrollers, choosing the right setup can make the difference between a smooth-sailing project and a barely-functional experiment. And I’m not just talking about the circuitry components, sensor modules, or other accessories, either. The very ESP32 board that you’re using for your DIY project can influence the scope of your project, and although many microcontrollers from this family have plenty of hardware similarities, their specs can differ quite a bit.

I never expected to build my own Chrome extensions. Like most people, I preferred finding a ready-made tool that solved a problem without requiring much effort. But when a few extensions I relied on ended up in the hands of new owners and turned malicious, I started questioning how much I could trust the tools in my browser. Instead of jumping from one extension to another, I decided to try something different. With Claude Code and a few detailed prompts, I built replacements tailored to my needs. The process was much easier than I expected.

In my mind, Spooky Season music comes in two distinct flavors. There are the fun, occasionally goofy songs like "The Monster Mash" and John Carpenter's "Halloween Theme." Then there is the genuinely terrifying: Throbbing Gristle, The Body, or Scott Walker's The Drift.This 2006 album from the singer-songwriter is truly upsetting. On it, Walker explores death, disease, and tragedy. But not just from some abstract perspective. There are visceral descriptions of the hanging of Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci. He sings about 9/11, his stillborn twin brother, and the Srebrenica genocide. Lyrically, it's about as dark as an album …Read the full story at The Verge.

Social media and the iPhone Duo subreddit are filled with reports of Apple's foldable failing quickly and in spectacular fashion. Some users report having the phone for only a few hours before the hinge seems to catch on something, then audibly crack and break the screen. Tellingly, the cracks all seem to happen in the same place. YouTuber CuriousHagi was able to reproduce the cracked screen during some durability testing of the iPhone Duo. Then he pulled it apart to try and find the culprit. What he found is that the Duo's hinge is quite complex, consisting of a gear-like central hinge and two different types of linking hinges. The piec …Read the full story at The Verge.

Launcher-like pinned tabs, pop-over glance view, and more make Zen my go to browser. | Image: Zen Browser I know many of you are mourning the loss of the Arc browser, and I get it. It felt like the first app in a long time to really offer a new approach to browser design. Atlassian bought the company last year and shifted its focus to developing Dia, its even more AI-focused browser. And soon enough, Arc will officially be no more, leaving dedicated users in a lurch. But I abandoned Arc quite some time ago for the Zen Browser and haven't really missed it. If you're willing to deal with some minor inconveniences, I think you'll find Zen is the Arc replacement you're looking for.Zen unabashedly rips off all the best bits of Arc. Visually, they'r …Read the full story at The Verge.

I've clicked through more "Your connection is not private" warnings than I'd like to admit, and nearly all of them came from my own homelab. The web UI for my Proxmox setup throws one, my Synology NAS throws one, and I'd trained myself to ignore both. Then Let's Encrypt announced that its certificates are getting shorter.

Between important documents, photos, videos, and work files across my computers, I have tried different backup solutions over the years.

Nvidia took the chip from its DGX Spark, put it in a Windows laptop, and called it RTX Spark. On paper, it's the local AI laptop I've wanted for years: up to 128GB of unified memory, CUDA, and a chip that was already here under a different name. I've spent the past week running models on a Lenovo Yoga 9n 2-in-1 with 64GB, along with games and other tasks.

If you use Gmail, Google Photos, and Google Drive, chances are you live within the Google ecosystem. If you own a MacBook, iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch, and have naturally gravitated toward Apple Mail, iCloud, and the rest of Apple's services, you're probably more invested in the Apple ecosystem. Similarly, if you rely on Outlook, OneDrive, OneNote, and Microsoft 365, you're likely more comfortable within Microsoft's ecosystem.