Creators and communities everywhere take a stand against ICE
It's not surprising when the guy who's been yelling about the horrors of late-stage capitalism on Instagram for the last five years turns his ire towards ICE. But something different has been...
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It doesn’t matter if Alex Pretti had a gun
Shortly after federal agents killed Alex Pretti Saturday morning, the Department of Homeland Security began to run with the story that the dead man had been armed and dangerous. He had a gun, DHS...
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Trusting your phone to Abxylute’s mobile controller requires a big leap of faith
As a retro gaming fan, I was thrilled when Apple opened its App Store to emulators in 2024, but I've yet to find a controller that makes me want to fully embrace retro gaming on my phone. Clamp-on...
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Why won’t anyone stop ICE from masking?
Americans do not like masked secret police. There is really no other way to put it. The reasons why are manifold: accountability, trust in law enforcement, and just plain overall vibes. More...
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Sony’s first clip earbuds don’t quite hit the mark
The Sony LinkBuds Clip are the company's first clip earbuds. They follow the innovative donut-hole LinkBuds and LinkBuds Open and, like their predecessors, allow you to listen to music or...
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The great e-bike crackdown has begun
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the e-bike movement, follow Andrew J. Hawkins. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers'...
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The day of the second killing
Steven Garcia, as told to Gaby Del Valle: I was in the middle of a frozen lake when I got the notification from The Minnesota Star Tribune that there had been a shooting. I was on assignment at a...
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Microsoft handed the government encryption keys for customer data
The FBI went to Microsoft last year with a warrant, asking them to hand over keys to unlock encrypted data stored on three laptops as part of an investigation into potential fraud involving the...
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MicroSD Express cards and Anker’s travel adapter rule the deal roost this week
Welcome to the weekend, friends! We’re still in a bit of a deals lull before the Presidents Day and V-Day sales begin, the bulk of which we anticipate kicking off the first week of February....
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Gmail’s spam filter and automatic sorting are broken
Some Gmail users may have noticed that promotional emails that normally go to their own siloed tab have started flooding their inbox. Reports hit the Google forums and Reddit that messages are...
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ICE has killed another person in Minneapolis
Federal agents in Minneapolis repeatedly punched a man, forced him to the ground, and then shot him multiple times. The man was later pronounced dead. This is just the latest incident of deadly...
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Gaming’s most fun sales data is full of old and obscure games
Every month, Circana video game analyst Mat Piscatella posts fascinating data about video game sales on Bluesky, highlighting trends like November's historically bad month for game hardware and...
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Get ready for the AI ad-pocalypse
I'll confess, with no shame whatsoever, that I really love ads. Artsy ones, funny ones, weird ones, emotional ones - TV commercials were my childhood TikTok before any of us were using terms like...
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This coming-of-age adventure game made me feel a little too seen
There's a lot about Perfect Tides: Station to Station's Mara that I find relatable. Like me, she's recently moved to a place simply called "the City" from the middle of nowhere, and like me, she's...
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Get stuff done by yelling at your phone
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 113, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, please send hot cocoa to my freezing-cold house, and also you can...
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Gemini with Personal Intelligence is awfully familiar
By lots of metrics, Gemini is winning. It has raced ahead of OpenAI, become scarily good at creating convincing imagery, and even won Apple's business. So last week's news that it was enabling...
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The Loch Capsule dishwasher is small, fast, and efficient — it even sanitizes gadgets
A dishwasher is a luxury item some people can't live without. It's one of the first major kitchen devices I bought just as soon as I could afford one, and the appliance I thought I'd miss most in...
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Chromebooks train schoolkids to be loyal customers, internal Google document suggests
Internal documents revealed as part of a child safety lawsuit hint at Google's plan to "onboard kids" into its ecosystem by investing in schools. In this November 2020 presentation, Google writes...
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Leak: Nvidia is about to challenge ‘Intel Inside’ with as many as eight Arm laptops
Intel and AMD have split the Windows laptop market for years, but the x86 players may be getting outnumbered. It's not just Apple MacBooks and MediaTek-based Chromebooks using Arm chips anymore....
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Congress doesn’t seem to know if the TikTok deal complies with its law
TikTok finally closed a deal meant to bring it into compliance with the law that should have banned it a year ago, and the lawmakers who passed that law still don't seem to know what's going on....
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