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Verizon now offers a three-year price lock — but there’s a catch

Your plan price isn’t the whole story. Verizon is announcing a new price lock policy today, and the timing is probably no coincidence. The company is extending a three-year price guarantee on certain plans, both for new and existing customers. The announcement comes a day after President Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs , and Verizon says it’s hoping to give customers more “predictability” in the current economic environment. But the fine print leaves Verizon plenty of wiggle room. The three-year guarantee covers the base charge for your rate plan, but not fees and taxes — and you have to be on one of Verizon’s newer myPlan subscriptions to qualify. That means Verizon can still raise your monthly bill in the form of increased fees, which is what wireless carriers tend to do anyway when they want to charge more. They can also cut your monthly autopay discount in half , or persuade you to move to a pricier plan with the offer of a new phone. There are plenty of levers for companies l...
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Google’s NotebookLM can now find its own sources

Google has added a new feature to NotebookLM that lets the AI note-taking tool find its own web sources to summarize and narrate . Instead of manually uploading sources like documents or YouTube links, users can now tap the “Discover” button and simply describe the topic they want to get a better understanding of, with the tool then gathering web sources around the subject. Google says the Discover feature started rolling out on Wednesday, and will take “about a week or so” to be available to all users. NotebookLM will hunt through “hundreds of potential web sources in seconds” according to Google, analyzing the most relevant options and then presenting a list of up to ten recommendations, each with a summary explaining its relevance. Users can select which of these sources they want NotebookLM to reference, and import them to use in other features, including FAQs, Briefing Docs, and podcast-like Audio Overviews that use AI hosts to discuss a topic. Sources will be saved within N...
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Adobe launches Premiere Pro’s generative AI video extender

Adobe is updating Premiere Pro with AI-powered features that aim to provide creatives with faster and better video editing results. Version 25.2 of Premiere Pro is launching today, bringing tools for locating, translating, and extending video footage out of beta and into general availability for every user. The most notable is Generative Extend, which Adobe announced in October as one of the first tools powered by its Firefly generative AI video model . The feature allows users to extend clips by up to two seconds, providing more options for transitions or correcting unexpected movements without having to reshoot footage. Generative Extend can now generate clips in 4K quality and will extend ambient background audio — up to ten seconds for audio alone, or two when paired with video extension — though this won’t extend speech or music. Generative Extend is completely free to use for a “limited time,” according to Adobe, after which the feature will require users to spend Firefly gene...
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Samsung’s Tab S10 FE tablets arrive with a $50 price hike

Both Tab S10 FE tablets come in blue, gray, or silver. Samsung has launched the Tab S10 FE and Tab S10 FE Plus, the latest in its midrange Android tablet line, but they cost $50 more than their predecessors. For the first time neither tablet has a direct equivalent in the standard Tab S10 series . The FE is the smallest of the company’s current tablet offerings, while the FE Plus comes in a new screen size that sits in-between the S10 Plus and the S10 Ultra, meaning all four of Samsung’s Tab S10 tablets now come in different sizes.  The S10 FE packs a 10.9-inch display, which has been Samsung’s “standard” tablet screen size for some time — but since the company never released a regular Tab S10, only Plus and Ultra models, it’s the first in that size for this series. The FE Plus offers a new 13.1-inch screen, larger than the 12.4-inch S10 Plus but smaller than the 14.6-inch Ultra. Both tablets still use LCD panels, rather than OLED, and are limited to 90Hz refresh rates. D...
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Micro USB is the bane of my existence

Last year, my best friend bought me an HP Sprocket portable photo printer . This, she said, would take my journaling game to the next level. After a short demo and dozens of journaling TikToks, I was stoked. And then I unboxed the damn thing.  Another freaking Micro USB port. And right after I’d confidently gotten rid of all but one emergency Micro USB cable. USB-C debuted in 2014. The whole point was to create a universal connector that would transfer data and power quickly, while also eliminating the scourge of proprietary chargers. The first HP Sprocket came out in 2016, a time when USB-C was mainly embraced by higher-end laptops and Android smartphones. But by the time my second -edition Sprocket debuted in 2018 — the last time this little printer was updated — the standard was starting to become mainstream. It’s not just a random HP photo printer. A few weeks ago, I bought a cat nail grinder that unfortunately charges via Micro USB. I reviewed a stress calmi...
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Spec-tacular week

So much of our online and technological lives rely on standards, the sets of rules designed to make sure our favorite gadgets and services work together. At their best, they make everything work seamlessly, and we never need to worry about what’s happening behind the scenes. But at their worst, they leave us perplexed about why our new stuff just won’t work — and wondering how we could make it better. In this special issue from The Verge , we explore the way specs and protocols affect our productivity and passions — from the promise of a more efficient streaming video codec, to the power of the watt as a way to understand our gadgets, to our perpetual frustration with Micro USB. These are the ways specs and standards run our digital lives. Nintendo has moved beyond specs When will physical video games go away? How to calculate your home battery needs for the next blackout Why the watt is the most important spec in battery-powered devices from The Verge https://ift....
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How to calculate your home battery needs for the next blackout

Buying a giant battery for the next blackout or off-grid adventure can be daunting, especially when hundreds or even thousands of dollars are on the line. Get it wrong and you’ve either spent too much money for something you’ll never use or discover that you didn’t buy enough capacity to keep your most important devices running. To get it right, you need to become intimate with the watt-hour (Wh). The watt-hour is a measure of capacity, or how much electrical energy a battery stores. If you know how much power — measured in watts — your devices consume, then the Wh rating of a battery lets you quickly calculate how long those devices will run. For example, a typical LED light bulb requires about 10W to illuminate. So a 1000Wh (1kWh) battery can run that bulb for 100 hours because Wh divided by watts gives you the time. For context, the average US home consumes about 889kWh per month , or about 29.2kWh per day, according to the US Energy Information Administration. During a...
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