Gear Live: The Latest Tech, Gadgets, AI, and Gaming News
NVIDIA Is Selling RTX 50 GPUs at MSRP at PAX West, If You Can Find the Right Guy
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: PC / Laptop, Video Games,
The cheapest way to buy a GeForce RTX 5090 at $1,999 this weekend involves a PAX West badge, a walk through the Seattle Convention Center, and watching one Nvidia employee's X account closely enough to know which hallway he is standing in.
Nvidia is selling RTX 50-series Founders Edition cards at list price, in person, at PAX West right now. That's the RTX 5090 at $1,999, the RTX 5080 at $999, and the RTX 5070 at $549, while supplies last. That last clause is doing a lot of work.
Verbatim’s AA, AAA and 9V Batteries Charge From a USB-C Cable, No Charger Needed
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Accessories, USB, Misc. Tech,
Somewhere in your house is a drawer with loose AA batteries rolling around in it, and you have no idea which ones still work. Verbatim's answer, shown off at IFA in Berlin, is to move the charging port onto the battery itself. Plug the cell into the same cable that charges your phone and wait.
The company brought AA, AAA and 9V lithium-ion cells, all of which charge over USB-C with no dedicated charger involved. The AA and AAA packs come with a multi-connector charging cable so you can top up several at once. The AAA is worth a second look, because its USB-C port runs lengthwise along the cell instead of sitting across the end, which is about the only sane way to fit a port that size on something that skinny.
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CD Revenue Jumped 58.6% in Six Months, and K-Pop Fans Get Most of the Credit
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Features, Misc. Tech, Music,
Nobody was supposed to be buying CDs in 2026. US CD revenue hit $171.1 million in the first half of the year, up 58.6% from $107.9 million in the same six months of 2025, according to the RIAA's mid-year report. Shipments rose 45.7% to 17.5 million discs. Labels moved $312.4 million worth of CDs in all of 2025, so the format cleared more than half of last year's entire haul before July.
That is a real number and a small one. Physical formats account for 12% of US recorded music revenue. CDs on their own are under 3%. Streaming took 82% of the money, and streaming's six-month increase of $219 million was bigger than the entire CD business. Keep the scale in mind. What changed is who is buying, and that has a specific answer.
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Audacity 4.0 Looks Like a Different App, and Edits Like One Too
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Music, Software,
If you have ever cut a podcast in Audacity, you know the routine. You get a clean take, you go to slide one clip a half second to the left, and the app makes you work for it. Audacity 4.0 shipped on September 3, and it is the first version in years that seems interested in making that part easier.
This is the largest update since version 3.0 in 2021, and it changes both how Audacity looks and what it can do. It is still free, still open source, still maintained by Muse Group.
Click to continue reading Audacity 4.0 Looks Like a Different App, and Edits Like One Too
Tesla’s FSD Can Now Take the Wheel While You’re the One Driving
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Software, Transportation, Artificial Intelligence,
You're driving your Tesla. Yourself, hands on the wheel, Full Self-Driving switched off. A car ahead stops short, and the wheel turns without you.
That is what Tesla added in FSD (Supervised) v14.3.9, detailed in release notes that went out Friday afternoon. Tesla's wording: "FSD Supervised can now activate on your behalf when an imminent collision is detected and Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) may not be enough." It can also switch itself on, Tesla says, if the car decides you're heavily distracted or that you disengaged FSD by accident. The feature is called Automatic Collision Evasion, and as of Friday it was "starting to roll out shortly."
Click to continue reading Tesla’s FSD Can Now Take the Wheel While You’re the One Driving
Marvel’s Wolverine Got Livestreamed Off a Retail Disc 10 Days Early
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Video Games,
Ten days before Marvel's Wolverine goes on sale, someone was already playing it on a livestream. The copy running on his console was a retail PS5 disc, the same one that ships to everybody who preordered.
Across September 4 and 5, a streamer going by blackmisk1 ran Insomniac's game on Twitch, TikTok and Kick, claiming to be the first person to play it. He got a long way in before the takedowns caught up. Twitch removed the channel for copyright violation, and the mirrors on the other platforms came down the same way.
Click to continue reading Marvel’s Wolverine Got Livestreamed Off a Retail Disc 10 Days Early
RivianOS 2 Reaches Every R1, But Gen 1 Owners Miss the New Graphics
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Software, Transportation, Artificial Intelligence,
If you are driving a first-generation R1T or R1S, Rivian did not leave you behind. The 2026.31 update that started going out on September 4 brings RivianOS 2 to your truck too. It just will not look quite like the version running on the newer vehicles.
RivianOS 2 is the biggest rework of Rivian's in-car software since the R1 first shipped, and R1 and R2 now run on one foundation instead of two. That means Rivian builds a feature once and ships it to everyone, rather than maintaining separate versions and letting one lineup drift a year behind. Hardware still gets a vote, though, and that is where the split shows up.
Click to continue reading RivianOS 2 Reaches Every R1, But Gen 1 Owners Miss the New Graphics
Anker’s MindBase Keeps 48TB of Your Home Footage Off the Cloud
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Smart Home, Storage, Artificial Intelligence,
Anker has built a smart home hub whose main selling point is that your footage never leaves your house. MindBase, announced at IFA in Berlin on September 3, is the company's first AI home hub, and it holds up to 48TB of local, expandable storage for camera recordings, household data and family photos. No monthly fee to keep last Tuesday's doorbell clip, and no data center in Virginia sitting on video of your kitchen.
That runs against how the smart home has worked for most of the last decade, and it was the most interesting thing in a lineup of roughly 22 Anker products at the show. It's also the claim worth checking hardest, because Anker is the company that already made this exact promise once and broke it.
Click to continue reading Anker’s MindBase Keeps 48TB of Your Home Footage Off the Cloud
Gurman Says Apple Has 14 Products Coming by Early 2027, Starting Next Week
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Smartphones, Rumors,
Fourteen products between now and early 2027. That is the roadmap Bloomberg's Mark Gurman sketched out this week in Power On, rounded up Friday by MacRumors, and it would make the next five months one of the heaviest release runs Apple has ever attempted. None of it is confirmed. Gurman has a good record on Apple's plans, but a roadmap is a report, not a product page.
What Apple has actually said is small. There is an event on Wednesday, September 9, at 10am Pacific and 1pm Eastern at Apple Park, and marketing chief Greg Joswiak posted the tagline, "Surprise and shine." That is the whole official story. Everything below comes from reporting, and where the reports disagree, we say so.
Click to continue reading Gurman Says Apple Has 14 Products Coming by Early 2027, Starting Next Week
Zelda Gets a 40th Anniversary Direct Tuesday, Switch 2’s Winter Slate Lands Wednesday
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Announcements, Handhelds, Video Games,
Nintendo is running two shows next week, and the first one belongs entirely to Link. The Legend of Zelda gets a half hour to itself on Tuesday morning, then the company comes back Wednesday to talk about what you can actually buy before the end of the year.
The Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Direct airs Tuesday, September 8 at 7am PT / 10am ET and runs roughly 30 minutes. A general Nintendo Direct follows Wednesday, September 9 at the same time, running about 45 minutes and focused on Switch 2 games launching this winter. Both stream on Nintendo's YouTube and Twitch channels.