4 things that have me wary of buying Valve’s Steam Machine

I had a very similar reaction to everyone else when Valve announced their new hardware this month: cautious excitement. The Steam Controller and Frame are super cool pieces of tech in their own right, but the real star of the show, for me, was the Steam Machine. Valve have tried to make a Steam-forward living room PC in the past, but it was essentially just a small ITX PC with off-the-shelf components with branding from different system integrators. This iteration of the Steam Machine is fully Valve’s, and while their attempts at producing their own hardware have only become better with each passing release, I’m still wary of buying Steam Machine, and there are 4 main reasons for that.

William Garcia
Boston

In SpaceX’s IPO, Elon Musk is a risk factor

The SpaceX IPO is here, and it's more than just an historic public offering that could make Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire. It also reveals more ways in which Elon Musk's companies interact and overlap with each other, shuffling money around in ways that are often difficult to keep...

Rachel Burns
Australia

Meta lays off thousands of employees to offset AI investments

Meta says it needs to “offset the other investments we're making.” | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Meta has reportedly notified thousands of employees that they've been laid off as the company attempts to compensate for its hefty AI investments. In an email from Meta management shared...

Dan Fernandez
United Kingdom

I ditched Docker Desktop for native containers and everything is better

I adore Docker and its containerization ecosystem as much as the next tinkerer. Between its simple commands, Compose functionality, and massive community support, Docker is easy to pick up for beginners and reliable enough to serve veteran project-building enthusiasts. But as someone who started with Docker and moved on to...

Daniel Martinez
Dallas

‘Fuck you, Bambu’: How one private message could change the face of 3D printing

Bambu Lab makes the best, most accessible 3D printers yet, but that reputation is suddenly under siege. It all started when Paweł Jarczak received a private message from the company on Reddit asking him to delete his code. Now the 3D printing community is lining up behind Jarczak to fund...

John Doe
New York

Outlook is Microsoft’s neglected masterpiece

There was a time when Microsoft Outlook was the undisputed king of Windows productivity — a fast, feature-packed native application that handled massive enterprise workflows without breaking a sweat.

Jane Smith
Los Angeles

Roku is offering up to 90% off streaming subscriptions, but you only have until Sunday

You know, there's always a big rush from retail companies to meet the demands of popular retail days like Black Friday. But what if a company just made up a day and then began celebrating it with deals? I mean, nothing's stopping a business from announcing that today's a special...

Akseli Lehto
Finland

I spent weeks chasing a DisplayPort problem that HDMI solved in seconds

DisplayPort has largely been the primary cable PC enthusiasts reach for, and for good reason. It has better bandwidth than the HDMI of its era, native VRR before HDMI caught up, and there's no royalty funny business or weird treatment of Linux drivers. When I upgraded from my 1440p IPS...

Ragna Hem
Norway

AMD just dropped a compact AI workstation that makes discrete GPUs look outdated for running LLMs

AMD has announced the availability of the Ryzen AI Halo developer platform, powered by AI Max 300-series processors. This range of mini PCs isn't going to win awards for gaming prowess, nor are they designed as low-cost options for attaching behind workstation monitors.

Emily Brown
Houston

Someone built a fully motorized Lego WALL-E controlled by a PS4 controller, complete with a built-in taser

One of the coolest things people who build stuff can do is bring something from fiction into reality. We've seen plenty of Pip-Boys and even a fully 3D-printed wearable suit of Doomguy's armor that used in-game assets for extra accuracy. One recurring trend is when people remake robots from movies...

Deepak Beck
Netherlands

The Flipper One is finally official, but Flipper isn’t selling it yet — they’re asking for help to build it

The Flipper Zero spent the past five years becoming the kind of device that people either own and love or have a strong opinion about despite never having touched one. It packaged NFC, sub-GHz radio, infrared, RFID, and a handful of hardware interfaces into a pocket-sized microcontroller toy that became...

Michael Johnson
Chicago

Home a**istant on bare metal works great — until it becomes your entire home’s infrastructure

Before combining everything onto a few Proxmox-powered cluster nodes, I ran dedicated hardware for specific packages, be it Home Assistant and Frigate. The former was running on a compact mini PC, and by compact, I mean ridiculously small. It had an Intel chip, barely any RAM, and almost no storage,...

Jesús Nieto
Spain

You, too, can build this ESP32 ePaper device that tells your fortune

If you want to get started with both the ESP32 and ePaper displays, what better way to get accustomed to both than by a small, simple, yet endlessly fun little project? If you're on the hunt for something to make that doesn't take a ton of effort and gives you...