One of the things that I enjoy the most about running local AI models is the sense of ownership that comes with them. They're private, efficient, and becoming increasingly capable iteration after iteration while hardware requirements continue to become more modest over time. But after spending a few months with Gemma 4, I ran into a problem that needed to be addressed if I wanted to rely on it at all. I first noticed it about a week ago when I asked it to summarize some of the announcements coming out of Computex 2026, and the response, while convincing, completely hallucinated most of the details, to the point that some of the products it described simply didn't exist.

I've lost count of how many times I've tried to make Linux my daily driver, and I've lost count of how many times I've gone crawling back to Windows, leaving my Linux partition to collect dust. For one reason or another, I'd always give it a couple of weeks, and then I'd stop booting into it because of a few small annoyances that were outside of my control. Nvidia behaving badly on Wayland and a desktop that couldn't drive a 4K HDR high-refresh panel without compromises were my main gripes, and now that those things are non-issues, I'm able to use it daily and not long for Windows.

If you’re as big of a smart home aficionado as I am, you’ve probably run into gizmos that left a sour taste in your mouth. Take Belkin’s Wemo lineup, for instance. Despite the cool smart devices in this series, Belkin’s decision to discontinue the product family effectively rendered them useless to folks without dedicated Home Assistant or HomeKit setups.

Saving things for a civilization living in the year 3,000 is pretty tricky. Ensuring that whatever you're preserving manages to survive for a millennium is hard enough, but then you have the issue of telling the people of the future what, exactly, they're looking at. Ideally, you need to set up a Rosetta Stone situation, where people can reverse-engineer what you want to tell them.

If you've been paying attention to how Nvidia has been moving as a company lately, you'd be forgiven for wondering whether it still cares about gaming the way it did a few years ago. With data center revenue accounting for about 90% of the company's business, it's easy to see why many gamers feel that consumer GPUs have taken a back seat. In fact, in its most recent earnings report, Nvidia removed the gaming revenue category and merged it into "Edge Computing."

Valve has some good news and bad news about Steam Controllers. The good news: If you make a reservation for a Steam Controller, the company will now show you one of three estimates of when you'll be able to actually order your gamepad: by September 2026, by December 2026, or sometime in 2027. The bad news: Any reservations made today "indicate a 2027 date for shipping," Valve says."We have no plans to stop making Steam Controller," according to Valve. "But as we look at the current demand compared to how many we know we can make by the end of the year, we want to manage expectations as much as we can with regards to when folks can expect t …Read the full story at The Verge.

Local LLMs are moving fast. In the six or so months I've been running them on my own PC, what's actually available has changed a lot, and not always in the direction of bigger. The people building these models understand who's actually running them, which is mostly normal folks with consumer hardware, not labs or server farms.

I'm a proud owner of an old passively-cooled Radeon HD 6850. It was quite the card back in 2010, and while the series didn't completely change the game for AMD, it did enough to warrant a purchase by a few gamers, myself included. Since then, AMD and Nvidia have continued to battle hard to take the top spot in the GPU market. A large part of this is driver maturity. The HD 6850 may be almost two decades old at this point, but it's still receiving driver updates, along with countless other older AMD GPUs.

You can stream Sinners and other recent Oscar winners for less with HBO Max's sale. | Image: Warner Bros. Pictures The easiest way to save on a streaming service is often to pay for a year upfront, which HBO Max is currently making a lot cheaper. Through July 15, 2026, new and returning subscribers can get 28 percent off any of HBO Max’s yearly plans, bringing the ad-supported tier down to $78.99 ($31 off) per year, the Standard plan to $132.99 ($52 off) per year, and the Premium tier to $164.99 per year ($65 off). That’s up to 40 percent less than paying month to month.HBO MaxWhere to Buy: $109.99 $78.99 at HBO Max (annual, basic) $184.99 $132.99 at HBO Max (annual, standard) $229.99 $164.99 at HBO Max (annual, premium)All three plans include access to HBO Max’s extensive library of movies and TV shows, including films from Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Studios, A24, Studio Ghibli, and Turner Classic Movies. Subscribers can also stream recent Oscar winners and nominees like titles like Sinners, One Battle After Another, and Marty Supreme, alongside other HBO Max originals. On the TV side, you’ll also get access to popular series like The Pitt, Hacks, Euphoria, and Heated Rivalry, as well as longtime favorites such as Game of Thrones, Friends, and The Big Bang Theory. The biggest differences come down to features. The ad-supported Basic plan lets you stream on up to two devices simultaneously, while the Standard plan lets you download up to 30 shows and movies  for offline viewing. It also includes access to live sports from the likes of the MLB, U.S Soccer, college football, NHL, and more. The Premium tier lets you stream on up to four devices at once, supports 4K and Dolby Atmos, and increases offline downloads to 100 titles.

You don’t need a Game Boy Camera or a GB Operator dock to use Epilogue’s new Flashback app. | Image: Epilogue The $50 GB Operator is an accessory that lets you connect, play, and authenticate Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance cartridges on PCs and other devices. Now it's getting some new functionality for the Game Boy Camera. After turning the Game Boy Camera into a charmingly awful desktop webcam two years ago, device-maker Epilogue has just released an iOS/Android mobile app so you can take photos while the Game Boy accessory is connected to your smartphone through the GB Operator.The Game Boy Camera was a terrible camera even by 1998 standards when it was released. It captured 0.01434-megapixel images in just four shades of gray an …Read the full story at The Verge.

Smart bulbs are an ergonomic failure because they fight legacy physical infrastructure. Smart relays actually solve home automation fatigue by modernizing the electrical circuit itself, allowing legacy physical toggles and advanced local automations to live in absolute harmony, completely offline.

Gaming on the go doesn't always need to happen on your mobile phone. Android Auto makes it possible to play some heavy hitters on your car's center console display, making full use of the larger real estate.