2025-01-30 22:25:13
The smart home holds so much promise. It can make life more convenient with lights that turn on as you walk in a room, doors that unlock as you approach, and robots that clean your floors. It can also make your home safer, more energy efficient, and even a little more fun. (Have you tried asking Alexa to beam you up?)
But for all its benefits, the smart home can be complicated, confusing, and occasionally maddening. It’s also hard to keep up with all the changes. New gadgets are arriving daily, new features come to old products, and there are so many different ways to turn on a smart light bulb.
If you need a guide, that’s what I’m here for.
Here, I’ll be posting the latest smart home reviews, guides, news, and opinions on everything happening in the connected home. Follow this page to stay updated on what Apple, Amazon, Samsung, Google, and Home Assistant and the rest are doing with their smart home platforms. I’ll keep you in the loop on all the newest technologies — including Matter, Thread, Sidewalk, UWB — as well as the old favorites. And, of course, I’ll cover all the news on the latest gadgets and the biggest releases around tech for your home.
2025-01-30 22:21:52
One month into the year and Netflix is ready to detail its plans for 2025 — or at least, some of them. In a now-annual tradition, the streamer has outlined some of its biggest releases across film, television, and gaming.
And while plenty of the listed titles were already known, there are also some pleasant surprises. The movie lineup looks particularly strong, with Wake Up Dead Man — the next Knives Out mystery, following Glass Onion — and Guillermo del Toro’s take on Frankenstein both due out later this year. Meanwhile, some of the streamer’s most important properties are coming to an end with the final seasons of both Stranger Things (which still doesn’t have a premiere date) and Squid Game (which now does).
And while Stranger Things is ending, its creators, the Duffer brothers, did detail two projects they will have coming to Netflix in 2026: The Boroughs and Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen. (They also hinted that there are some Stranger Things spinoffs in the works, without getting into detail.)
As for what to expect this year, here are the highlights:
While the lineup of (announced) games coming to Netflix is fairly small, there are two notable highlights: a mobile version of WWE 2K this fall to go along with the new deal between the two, and more Netflix Stories games (Netflix’s branding for interactive fiction) based on series like Ginny & Georgia, Sweet Magnolias, Love Is Blind, and Outer Banks.
2025-01-30 22:09:44
While Nvidia’s RTX 50-series graphics cards weren’t the zaniest devices at CES 2025, they stole the show with their promised groundbreaking performance breakthroughs. The RTX 5070, in particular, made headlines as a card that can supposedly rival an RTX 4090 for just $549. We later learned it uses DLSS 4’s AI-powered multi frame generation to achieve that in supported titles, but that’s a welcome compromise for those who can’t find room in their budget for the beefier 4K-ready GPUs that are on sale right now — including the $999.99 RTX 5080 and the $1,999.99 RTX 5090.
Those premium cards are capable of greater raw performance, however. In our RTX 5080 review, we found it’s only about 15 percent faster than the RTX 4080 it’s replacing. Meanwhile, the benchmarks we ran for our RTX 5090 review averaged 28 percent better frame rates compared to the RTX 4090 for 4K games running at their highest settings with no frame generation help. That’s still impressive given the Founder’s Edition is small enough that it will fit inside a small form factor PC case. No matter which you’re after, you’ll be exceedingly satisfied if you’re upgrading from an RTX 30-series card or older.
Between resellers and the forewarned scarcity that’s soured past launches, you’ll likely need a good game plan to secure a 50-series GPU early on. If you weren’t already in line at a brick-and-mortar location ahead of time, it might be a little too late to find day one stock judging by the encampments that have spawned. But there’s still hope if you’ll let us guide you on where to try purchasing one online.
Use a hardwired computer
It’s typically faster to use a desktop or a laptop to click around and input whatever information you need. If you can, use a computer with an ethernet connection to ensure nothing interferes with your network. Bonus points if you use an ultrawide or multiple monitors to view several browser windows at once.
Keep your smartphone and tablet handy
Some retailers may implement a wait queue. You can use your smartphone, tablet, or another secondary device to try and get a faster queue time. It can also serve as a failsafe between refreshes if one of the sites slows to a crawl on your desktop. That said, your smartphone should only be a last result to using a PC, as you don’t want to waste time juggling multiple tabs and apps or tapping away at tiny input fields.
Create accounts at every retailer
The last thing you’ll want to be doing when the floodgates open on January 30th is fiddling with passwords and a deluge of confirmation emails. Make sure you have an account with each retailer that’s expected to carry the graphics cards, and do so ahead of launch.
Add payment and shipping info in advance
If possible, you’ll also want to add your shipping and billing details in advance. This way, you’ll only have to worry about adding the GPU to your cart and completing the final checkout steps.
Sign up for stock notifications
Both Best Buy and Nvidia allow you to sign up to be notified when the GPUs become available. B&H Photo actually requires you to sign up in advance if you want to order one. Be sure to sign up for alerts on each variant of the 5080 or 5090 that you’re planning to buy.
Check the websites early and often
You don’t want to rely solely on email notifications for stock alerts, as they’re often delayed and you risk missing your chance. Be sure to load up tabs for each retailer shortly before their listings go live, and then practice hitting that refresh button as fast as humanely possible.
As of writing, Best Buy is the only third-party retailer with listings for the Founders Editions of the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090, and Nvidia will sell them, too. That said, there are multiple options from a variety of manufacturers across all retailers, including MSI, Asus, Gigabyte, Zotac, and more. Keep reading for details on each retailer’s current plans.
Best Buy is offering the Founders Edition versions of the Nvidia RTX 5080 and RTX 5090, plus several third-party cards. Eventually, a range of laptops and pre-built desktop PCs with the GPUs will become available. If they’re out of stock, the retailer allows you to sign up to be notified about their arrival, but you’ll want to be proactive and check the site listings early and often.
Purchasing a 50-series graphics card from Best Buy requires creating an account. If you’re lucky enough to add one to cart, you’ll be added to a queue while the system verifies your account and confirms your unit. If successful, you’ll have 10 minutes to complete the checkout process.
Newegg has a comprehensive stock of 50-series graphics cards, though many are already out of stock. There are multiple listings for customized versions of both the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 from third-party OEMs such as MSI, Asus, Gigabyte, and more. Some come factory overclocked, and most have unique shroud designs with three cooling fans — including a few with integrated liquid cooling. Many of them are much bigger than the Founder’s Edition cards, but Gigabyte has some compact options. You’ll want to make note of their dimensions and plan your build accordingly.
B&H Photo is also listing a number of those third-party RTX 5080 and 5090 cards starting at $999.99 and $1,999.99, respectively. The retailer requires you to join a waitlist, however. Purchase opportunities will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis exclusively for those who sign up to receive the stock alerts. It’s worth noting that B&H Photo is showing February availability for some cards.
Micro Center has confirmed that its initial run of RTX 50-series cards will only be available at physical retail locations, and that it will only sell third-party models. Stores opened at 9AM ET nationwide on launch day — meaning stores on the west coast in the Pacific time zone opened as early as 6AM.
You’ll want to arrive as early as possible, as units are available on a first-come, first-serve basis and require a voucher, which Micro Center employees will distribute to those in line. The retailer is also currently limiting purchases to one unit per customer.
Nvidia is also selling Founders Edition cards directly through its online store, but neither the RTX 5080 nor the RTX 5090 were available as of writing.
You should be able to find stock at several other prominent retailers, too. Amazon and Adorama have historically carried the newest GPUs at or close to launch, though neither have individual GPU listings as of writing. Adorama is currently accepting preorders for a number of prebuilt desktops with RTX 5090 cards, however.
Update, January 30th: Updated to reflect current availability for the RTX 50-series cards at several retailers.
2025-01-30 22:09:44
Nvidia’s RTX 50-series GPUs are just around the corner, with the first releases — the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 — dropping on January 30th. The RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070 will follow that with their own releases in February, but some are already getting a sneak peek at the software benefits of the GPUs through DLSS 4.
Tom Warren’s Verge review of the $1,999 RTX 5090 indicates it’s expectedly a powerhouse but not quite the generational leap that the RTX 4090 was over its own predecessor. That didn’t stop The Verge’s Sean Hollister from being impressed with the two-slot RTX 5090 Founders Edition GPU when he stuffed it into his aging small form factor PC.
Along with the 50-series GPUs comes DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation, a software trick that may be just as big of a story as the hardware itself. This latest version of DLSS uses AI to predictively generate frames, making it possible to run games at higher resolutions without taking the same frame rate hit they would without DLSS 4 turned on. Gamers who are already trying DLSS 4 out in Cyberpunk 2077 using RTX 40-series GPUs report seeing huge improvements already.
We’ll be keeping up with all the news about Nvidia’s RTX 50-series GPUs right here at The Verge.
2025-01-30 22:00:00
Nvidia is launching its next-gen RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 GPUs today, but it’s also releasing an exciting update for existing RTX GPU owners. A new GPU driver (572.16) allows you to force DLSS 4 inside games or apps that don’t currently support it, providing improved image quality and even less VRAM usage in some cases.
While DLSS 4 is debuting today in 75 games and apps, the Nvidia app now has a new override feature that will improve image quality in games that use DLSS by allowing you to switch to Nvidia’s new transformer model. This means you don’t have to wait on developers to update their games. Owners of RTX 40-series GPUs will also get access to a new frame generation model that is 40 percent faster and uses 30 percent less VRAM than the old one.
Nvidia has also updated its RTX Video Super Resolution (VSR) feature, which can upscale old blurry YouTube videos, to a new and more efficient model. It now uses 30 percent fewer GPU resources on the highest-quality setting, allowing more RTX GPUs to enable this feature. VSR will also now upscale HDR video, so if you’re watching lower-resolution HDR videos, these can now be automatically upscaled.
While existing RTX owners will get access to more efficient models, those looking to purchase RTX 50-series cards today will also be able to enable DLSS Multi Frame Generation. This new feature builds on top of Frame Generation by generating three additional frames per traditionally rendered frame.
In our RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 reviews, we found that Multi Frame Generation is a promising addition but only works well if your base frame rate after DLSS Super Resolution is applied is high. Otherwise, even if your base 30fps after Super Resolution gets boosted beyond 100fps, it will still have the input latency of a 30fps game.
You can download Nvidia’s new 572.16 drivers directly here or use the Nvidia app to get the latest release.
2025-01-30 22:00:00
It was a long three-year wait between the first seasons of Squid Game, but luckily, the finale is coming much faster. Netflix announced today that season 3 of Squid Game — which will also be the show’s last — will start streaming on June 27th.
That’s around six months after the long-awaited season 2 premiered on Netflix on December 26th of last year. The show, which has gone on to become Netflix’s biggest series, originally kicked off in 2021. There aren’t a lot of details for what viewers can expect in season 3, but Netflix did release a handful of images as part of the announcement, which show some of the survivors from last season’s bullet-soaked finale:
Of course, while the main show is ending this year, Netflix seems intent on keeping the Squid Game train moving along. So far, it has expanded the Squid Game universe with both a reality show and a multiplayer video game, and there are reports of a spinoff in the works from David Fincher.
