Meteor caught by the GOES-19 weather satellite breaking up 40 miles above the ground. | Image: CIRA On Saturday, at around 2:06 pm ET, a meteor streaked over the northeastern US and exploded north of Cape Cod Bay. The fireball was caught on camera by several people, shook houses, and can even b...
The crypto weed vape found me on 4/20, the high holiday of cannabis enthusiasts everywhere. It arrived over Slack with the thumbnail of a man exhaling a plume of vapor, the words "every hit delivers Bitcoin" emblazoned across it. It claimed to be advertising a device called Gudtrip, and I thought...
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more news about gadgets and smartphones, follow Dominic Preston. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started In 2023, the European Unio...
Despite headwinds from the current administration, automakers continue to release well-equipped EVs with bigger battery packs and increasingly faster charging speeds. For those who want to travel further between plugging in, the future is still bright, just slightly tinted. But there haven't been...
The wallpaper is the real star of the film. | Image: A24 The Kane Parsons' film Backrooms is expected to earn up to $90 million in its opening weekend after pulling down $38 million on Friday alone. That's not only above expectations, but absolutely obliterates A24's previous opening weekend re...
Cecil Baldwin is a busy man with some dope boots. | Image: Cecil Baldwin Cecil Baldwin's résumé includes appearances on Gravity Falls, narrating the documentary Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street, and performing as part of the New York Neo-Futurists theater company. But he is best known ...
Microsoft is facing criticism for its handling of zero-day exploits. Someone going by the name Nightmare Eclipse has been publicly feuding with the company, posting proof-of-concept exploit code. Some of their posts suggest that they're a disgruntled former employee. But what caught cyber securit...
Art TVs aren’t exactly known for being affordable, which is why Woot’s latest sale is notable. Now through June 26th, the retailer is discounting Samsung’s 2025 Frame TV and Hisense’s 2025 CanvasTV. The 65-inch CanvasTV is down to $779.99 ($520 off) — its best price of the year — while Samsung’s ...
You may have heard that Valve's new Steam Controller can ring like a telephone or do the Wilhelm scream. But did you know it can sing songs, too? Let me show you. Here's the new Steam Controller performing the "Ground Theme" from Super Mario Bros. 2: Here is "Still Alive" from Portal - fitting f...
The Arduboy FX-C squeezes a lot of entertainment into a thin, credit card-sized handheld. As handheld consoles continue to grow and push the limits of what you can actually hold in your hands, the Arduboy FX-C comes in a refreshingly pocketable package. It manages to squeeze the best features ...
I live in a part of Los Angeles where I feel safer bringing pepper spray on walks. The problem is, I don't always remember to bring it with me, and it's not legal to carry it everywhere I go. Pebblebee's $59.99 Halo Bluetooth tracker surprised me by being a suitable replacement because it doubles...
TikTok sellers that appear to be AI generated, in tears. | The Verge Aliyah, a light-skinned Black woman dressed in country-western gear, is struggling to sell metal buckles she handmade on TikTok. In a video for the social media platform from March, she cries to the camera and pleads for views...
A good time with old maps. | Image: Past Maps Craig Campbell walked away from the river of investor money flowing into AI to create, of all things, a website. Sure, Campbell probably could have started an AI company. He's a former engineer at Meta and an experienced tech founder who in 2022 sol...
Slots & Daggers, a low-key, fantasy-themed slot machine roguelike, was one of my favorite games last year. That may sound like a complicated description, but the game mixes ideas from deckbuilding roguelikes with slot machines to create an engrossing loop, and there's steady meta-progression that...
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang with an RTX laptop at CES 2025. | Image: Getty Images It's the world's worst kept secret that Nvidia is about to announce its own Arm-powered laptop chips at Computex this weekend, and now Microsoft, Nvidia, and Arm are all openly teasing the announcement. The Windows an...
The Pentagon awarded SpaceX a $4.16 billion contract to build missile-tracking satellites for President Donald Trump's planned "Golden Dome" defense system, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. In an announcement on Friday, the US Space Force says the sensor-equipped satellites will allow it to dete...
The Acer Nitro Blaze Link might run on Linux, but it's no Steam Deck. Acer says it's a "streaming-first handheld and companion device," like a PlayStation Portal for your PC. Announced ahead of Computex on Friday, it's launching in Q4 2026 with a 7-inch (1920 x 1200) display, Wi-Fi 6, just 1GB of...
This week, an AI training startup called Shift said it would clean New Yorkers' homes for free. It has plans to expand into other cities as well, including London, and looking around my flat, I get the appeal. But there's a catch. There's always a catch. In exchange for the cleaning, Shift want...
Microsoft has delayed its upcoming Fable reboot once again. The game was set to launch in autumn 2026, but Microsoft now says that Fable will come out in February 2027. However, it will show a "new look" at the game at its Xbox Games Showcase on June 7th. "This is year is packed with incredible...
I pondered the other day what's next for Microsoft's Surface PC lineup, and it looks like we're about to find out. Windows and Surface chief Pavan Davuluri has just teased "something new is coming for developers," complete with a mysterious image of what looks like a curved display edge. Davuluri...