Ever since I started building my home lab around refurbished mini PCs, I haven’t looked back. I admit I was tempted to buy a Pi 5 8GB a few times, but held off because of the price. I even devised a plan to talk my friend into “loaning” his Pi 5 for my home lab since he was barely using it. Instead of agreeing, he got inspired by my endeavor and asked me to help him build a home lab.

OpenAI released a report breaking down how people use ChatGPT and who they are. | Image: The Verge In July, an unreleased OpenAI model broke out of a restricted environment, figured out how to get access to the internet, allowed AI agents to talk to each other using a secret "message board," and hacked into the internal systems of a different AI lab, Hugging Face. It took nearly two weeks for OpenAI to find out about any of it. Over a month later, two new reports offer nearly 130 pages of details on the incident and OpenAI's response, many of them previously unreleased. One was written by OpenAI itself, the other by two third-party AI research nonprofits, METR and Redwood Research, which OpenAI allowed to jointly investigate the inciden …Read the full story at The Verge.

OPNSense is a fantastic platform for running a secure home network. It's feature-packed, easy to use, and is powerful enough to keep all your connected clients safe from harm. That said, if there's one thing that isn't great about using OPNsense on a custom mini PC that's passively cooled and humming away in the garage, it's the lack of any glanceable information. No LEDs, no screen, nothing. That all changed when I finally started getting into ESP32 and creating my own smart home hardware. I decided to build my own, and it was cheap and easy enough.

Ayaneo's new budget line, Konkr, has been spending the summer drip-feeding reveals of the Pocket Advance before it went on sale in early August. It debuted at an early-bird price of $89 for the 3GB model and $109 for 4GB alongside a unique pitch: PS2 emulation in a Game Boy Advance-shaped shell. However, there's a pretty big problem with that: it can't really do PS2 emulation at all. What it does instead, though, is play Game Boy Advance games better than anything else at this price, on a screen that is an exact four-times match for the original hardware, just like the Ayaneo Pocket Micro had.

The motherboard has seen many changes to its form-factor over the past five years. Over the course of this time, we've seen a new, revamped rear-connector design (which, I found personally intriguing), several changes to PCIe GPU cables and power delivery, and currently, we have CAMM2 memory just beginning to challenge the DIMM slot.

Switching to a self-hosted music library has been one of the best projects I've taken on recently. However, there's one use where streaming services still win out. It's finding something I haven't heard before. Between recommendations and fresh playlists, streaming services give me something new to listen to. So, I've been looking for a way to bring similar functionality to my self-hosted setup.

Nvidia's predicting it will pull in $108 billion in revenue within just a few months. It wouldn't be the first company to rake in over $100 billion in quarterly revenue - Amazon, Apple, and Alphabet have repeatedly reached the milestone. Nvidia said in its latest earnings report that it brought in a record $96.2 billion in overall revenue in the past quarter, a jump of over $10 billion from the previous quarter. Its data center revenue alone more than doubled year-over-year to a record $89 billion, and the company's profits more than doubled to $59.7 billion. Nvidia's "edge computing" category, which includes its consumer gam …Read the full story at The Verge.

Meta just agreed to make sweeping changes for teens as part of a child safety settlement reached with attorneys general across the US. Under the agreement, Meta must apply new safeguards across Instagram and Facebook that will change how teens interact with the social media platforms, as well as restrict their use during certain times.The settlement stems from a nationwide lawsuit alleging Meta, Google, TikTok, and Snap failed to protect children and made their platforms "addictive" by design. A group of 51 US states and territories signed the agreement, including New York, New Jersey, California, Nevada, South Carolina, Washington, Illino …Read the full story at The Verge.

I like self-hosting because it lets me build tools around the way I work instead of adapting to another service's limitations. Over time, my homelab has become more than a place to experiment with Docker. It now handles several everyday tasks and helps me stay productive without constantly adding new subscriptions. I don't self-host everything, but I've found a few containers that genuinely make my workflow easier while keeping more of my data and tools under my control. These are the ones that made the biggest difference.

I’ve used Adobe Acrobat Reader for years because it has always been the obvious choice for opening PDFs. But lately, I’ve started looking for something simpler. I don’t need a full document suite every time I want to read a manual, article, or technical document. That’s how I ended up trying SumatraPDF. It is an old-school open-source alternative to Adobe Acrobat Reader that takes a very different approach. Instead of trying to match every feature Acrobat offers, it focuses on being a desktop reader. After spending some time with it, I found myself questioning how much of Acrobat’s extra functionality I actually need for everyday PDF reading.

When I tried LibreELEC on my Raspberry Pi 4, I kept coming back to it despite using an Apple TV 4K. When I did the math on what my Apple TV 4K (2nd Gen) was actually costing me, it ended up being more than the $179 I paid in 2023. Totaling the streaming subscription services, I was paying a recurring fee. When renewal notices kept piling up for services I’d forgotten I was subscribed to, I finally decided to do something about them.

The Pixel 11 in hibiscus. | Image: The Verge If you’ve been on the fence about Google’s latest Pixel phones, this might be your best chance to save some cash. Amazon is offering an extra $150 off the Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro, and Pixel 11 Pro XL when you use the coupon code PIXEL11 at checkout. While the discounted price appeared at checkout for most phone and watch combinations, it didn’t apply to the Pixel Pro Fold.That deal stacks with the introductory offer running at several retailers, where you can choose between a gift card that scales with the model of phone you’re buying, or additional credit towards a Pixel Watch 5. For example, the base model Pixel 11 would normally cost $899, but the introductory bundle, which ends on August 27th, includes a $100 gift card, and with the code, you’ll pay just $749. The Pixel 11 Pro and Pro XL bundles include either a $200 gift card, or $250 towards the cost of a Pixel Watch 5.Google Pixel 11Where to Buy: $899 at Amazon (with $100 gift card)The Pixel 11 phones added a variety of new features to Google’s first-party Android phones, most notably around the cameras. In addition to improved sensors across the lineup, the new Magic Capture feature automatically pulls photos and clips out of a video recording, letting you focus on what’s in front of you.Read our Pixel 11 and Pixel 11 Pro reviews.Other deals to considerDoom: The Dark Ages is on sale for $19.87 at Green Man Gaming, the lowest price yet for the Steam version of the game. The 2025 title adds a medieval twist to the classic Doom formula, with a more engaging story, and of course an awesome suite of weapons, including a shield that gives you more options while charging into battle. Read our review. Best Buy is selling the Scuf Valor Pro for $113.99, a significant discount from its usual price of $189.99. This wireless controller is compatible with PC, Xbox Series S/X, and Xbox One, and features TMR joysticks to prevent stick drift over time. It has a 1,000 Hz polling rate when connected to a computer for super sharp response times, and programmable paddles on the back. The Cuktech 25,000mAh 100W USB-C power bank is only $62.99 at Amazon for a limited time, 10 percent lower than the usual price. It can charge up to three devices at once, with an integrated USB-C cable, as well as USB-C and USB-A ports, with up to 100W of charging power.