Remember the good old days when only free AI tiers existed, and you could ask as many questions as you wanted, whenever you wanted, and AI tools weren't yet another subscription competing for space on your monthly bill? Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, that time lasted about as long as it took these companies to figure out how expensive running them actually is. What's worse than having to pay for multiple AI subscriptions is how limited even the highest-tier plans seem to be. The very same plans that once promised unlimited access now come with five-hour windows, weekly caps, and the need to ration a tool you're already paying a premium for!

After a long wait and a lot of silence, we finally have information about two of the three products Valve said it would release. The Steam Controller is now available to buy, and the Steam Machine is open for pre-orders, even if the price is a little high. However, the elusive third product, the Steam Frame, has yet to materialise. All we really know about it is that it'll be a VR setup, but not much else.

A few weeks ago, I finally set up a proper NAS within my home lab. I went the SAS route, complete with an HBA card off of eBay, and two recertified enterprise drives. I have never run SAS in my own setup before, so naturally, I was on the lookout for any potential problems with my setup, namely temperature, as I've heard that these things can run much hotter than consumer drives.

A sneaky rule change has the potential to blow up scientific research in the United States. But there's still time to fight it.On May 29th, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a 412-page proposal to revise federal financial assistance. The language is a combination of distinctly Trumpian attacks on "woke" policies and boring governmentese designed to make your eyes glaze over as quickly as possible. But under phrases like "providing further clarification on the regulatory status of the OMB requirements" is something darker - a threat to scientific research in this country, the livelihoods of thousands of scientists, and the li …Read the full story at The Verge.

Mini PCs are getting packed with hardware that feels tailor-made for a home lab experiment. Fast CPU cores, capable integrated graphics, piles of memory, and now built-in NPUs all make these little boxes feel more serious than their size suggests. So, of course, I had to ask the question that would ruin part of my afternoon: could I pass one of these NPUs through to Proxmox and turn it into a tidy little AI accelerator? It sounded useful enough to justify some tinkering, and just plausible enough to be dangerous.

For the majority of gamers, diminishing returns become severe. Moving to 8,000 Hz doesn't give you a competitive edge unless you're a professional player or gaming at an extremely high level. Instead, it just introduces a CPU processing tax for the majority as an expensive solution to a problem that the rest of the input pipeline usually dominates.

Comcast has announced plans to separate itself into two publicly traded companies, spinning off its NBCUniversal and Sky broadcasting arms. The shake up aims to protect the media conglomerate's profitable broadband and wireless brand, which will retain the "Comcast" company name, as its media and entertainment business - now collectively named "NBCUniversal" - faces increasing pressure from industry consolidation and streaming rivals.The separation is expected to take approximately a year, with Comcast shareholders owning shares in both Comcast and NBCUniversal upon completion. While current Comcast CEO Brian L. Roberts will be "actively i …Read the full story at The Verge.

When I replaced my Ryzen 9 5900X with a 5800X3D a couple of years ago, the performance improvement was obvious almost immediately. Some games, like Valorant and Battlefield 2042, were clearly CPU-limited at 1440p when I had the 5900X, often leaving my RTX 4090 sitting at around 70–80% usage. After the upgrade, both ran significantly better, with GPU usage improving across the board. It was so good that I never felt the need to ditch AM4 unless I wanted the RTX 5090.

Local AI used to ask one big question of you: what can your hardware actually take? The answer determined which models you could run, the context length you could push, and whether vision or audio were even on the table. The question still remains, but it's not as black and white anymore because smaller models keep showing up that don't really care about your specs as much.

One of the most intimidating parts of using Arch is installing it. That's not to say that's a flaw on the distro; rather, it's one of its biggest strengths, as it gives users complete control over their operating system down to the minute detail. However, for the rest of us mere mortals, it can be really challenging.

Attaching gadgets to your Home Assistant network always feels great, but there's something about making your own smart device that nothing else can replicate. When you have the power to build your own intelligence electronics, it really feels like you have no limitations. No walled gardens, no subscription fees, and no need to buy a new one when it breaks; you have total control over what happens in your smart home.

As someone who covers AI tools every single day, I'm at a funny point where I can rule out AI subscriptions as a business expense. However, if you've been keeping up with subscriptions and usage limits, you're likely well aware that the $20 tier that once got you practically unlimited usage no longer cuts it. In fact, the $20 tier is more akin to what once used to be the free tier. With just a few messages in and some heavy usage, you'll hit the 5-hour limit on these plans, and eventually the weekly limit too.