Kill some time with these much needed distractions – The Verge

Explore the globe in field recordings

2026-09-05T17:31:34-04:00

Around the world in 80 WAVs. | Screenshot: Terrence O’Brien / The Verge

I love field recordings. I love making them. I love them when they're incorporated into my ambient music. They're great background noise for working or sleeping. But they're also great for active listening, focusing in on the fine nuances of burbling brooks or urban chaos. Earth Garden gives you a globe to explore with real field recordings taken from various locations. Earth Garden is inspired by Radio Garden (which you should also check out) except, instead of exploring the world via radio, it's environmental sounds. There are waves lapping at the shores of remote islands in the Atlantic, a chorus of crickets in Tanzania, and rainfall on …

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Vicariously hike the Appalachian in the gorgeous A Trail Tale

2026-08-31T06:11:07-04:00

Inspired by Oregon Trail, but minus the dysentery. | Screenshot: Terrence O’Brien / The Verge

I used to be an avid hiker and would try to go backpacking a few times a year. I always dreamed of thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, but life kind of got in the way. (Turns out jobs, wives, and children aren't thrilled with the idea of you disappearing for three months.) But I've been longing to reconnect with my love of the outdoors and just recently took my kids on their first camping trip. So I discovered A Trail Tale at a really opportune time. It's an interactive trail journal created by Andy Moliski with help from his brothers Adam and Alex.

The various segments of the trail are rendered in beautiful pixel art reminiscent of a '90s S …

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Doodle generative compositions in your browser with Musical Spirograph

2026-08-21T14:53:59-04:00

So pretty. | Screenshot: Terrence O’Brien / The Verge

I remember having a Spirograph as a kid and being obsessed with it. Its geometric patterns are hypnotic and gorgeous. I also love generative music composition. So bringing those two things together in a browser tab, I'm hooked. Musical Spirograph is a relatively simple concept. A set of points dash around the screen according to mathematical equations, generating hypotrochoids and epitrochoids. Those points pass through a series of concentric rings which trigger specific notes.

Honestly, that alone is fun enough, but you can customize it quite a bit. There are six different virtual rotors to pick from, you can have up to three arms drawing …

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Have a laugh at AI’s expense by roleplaying as a chatbot

2026-08-17T06:02:14-04:00

If you squint, you can just about make out the hat. | Screenshot: Terrence O’Brien / The Verge

Your AI Slop Bores Me is brilliant in its simplicity. There are two tabs: human and LARP as an AI. On one side, you enter a request. On the other, you submit an answer. But the important thing is that there's a human on both sides of the equation. Prompts can request a response as text or image, and then whoever is roleplaying as the AI gets 150 seconds to respond.

Just like a real LLM, Your AI Slop Bores Me works on a sort of token system. Requests cost credits, and to earn credits, you have to jump onto the AI side and answer some of your own. You can also just wait as you get one free request every two minutes. But, as fun as it is to dr …

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The Virtual OS Museum lets you relive over 600 operating systems right on your desktop

2026-06-07T09:46:20-04:00

Coherent and Flex OS, to Lisa and Mac OS. | Image: Virtual OS Museum

The Virtual OS Museum isn't a physical place, it's a collection of over 1,700 distinct installations of over 600 operating systems for over 250 platforms that you can download and run via emulation right on your computer. It's largely the work of one man, Andrew Warkentin, a developer and OS historian who has been slowly building his collection of OS images since 2003.

The library spans nearly the entire history of computing from 1948's Manchester Baby, the first stored computer program, to early builds of Android from 2011. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of obscure OSes in there, including countless DOS variants, MOS for the Acorn BBC Mas …

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82-0 is the best basketball game, to hell with NBA 2K

2026-07-28T13:15:35-04:00

Can you go undefeated? | Screenshot: The Verge

82-0 marries the stat nerd fun of fantasy basketball with instant gratification and a bit of dumb luck. The goal is to draft a team of players that could (theoretically) have a perfect 82-0 season.

Obviously, if you just had free rein to pick whoever you wanted from throughout history, there would be little challenge. The twist is that the site randomly selects a team and an era, and then you pick a single player. So, for example, if you pulled the Knicks and 2020s, you might pick Jalen Brunson as your point guard, then you'd get a new team and era to select your center from.

You can reshuffle the team once, and the era once, if you don' …

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