Google Maps has become so deeply embedded in everyday life that most of us never think about alternatives. It handles directions, trip planning, and place searches so well that switching to something else can seem unnecessary. Still, I was curious to see how far open-source mapping software had come. Could an open-source app really compete with one of Google's most polished products? I expected to run into limitations. Instead, I discovered a navigation app that offered a surprisingly capable experience and made me rethink what I actually need from a map.

Mesh Wi-Fi seems to be the most preferred solution to address poor Wi-Fi these days. Mesh systems claim to cover your entire house in a seamless "mesh" of wireless connectivity, eliminating the dreaded dead zones. While they're perfectly capable of doing so, most people don't make the most of their mesh nodes. They continue to use wireless backhaul between the nodes and the main router, bottlenecking their Wi-Fi speeds. This is the default way of using a mesh network, but it's also the worst. Unless you have an expensive, tri-band mesh system for dedicated wireless backhaul, you can achieve maximum Wi-Fi speeds only by connecting your nodes to the router with Ethernet. This wired connection handles the backhaul traffic between the nodes and the router, while the nodes themselves are free to maintain a fast and reliable connection with your devices. You no longer need to settle for half of your Wi-Fi bandwidth just because your mesh Wi-Fi doesn't have a third band.

Windows Search has always been a hit or miss, and on a busy workday, a "miss" is the last thing you want to deal with. The search bar works well enough when you know exactly what you're looking for, but if you're trying to locate a file you half-remember, like the one you were editing last Thursday or the image file with "Xbox" somewhere in the name from a few weeks ago, you need all the luck and perseverance in the world to find it.

When you get used to the way things work in the modern day, it can be easy to forget the work and time it took to get here. We're all accustomed to certain paradigms when using a computer nowadays, like the desktop icons, taskbar, and Start menu (or equivalent), but those things weren't always a part of Windows.

In case you haven't looked at PC hardware prices in the last eight months, let me be the harbinger of bad news. When unprecedented demand from AI companies drove memory and storage prices to record levels, everyone thought that was where the crisis would end. However, even graphics cards have become way more expensive due to rapidly rising VRAM prices, which now account for the bulk of manufacturing costs. The first signs of distress were seen in the high-end and low-end segments, as manufacturers prioritized the high-margin SKUs, dealing a double blow to the market. Mid-range GPUs remained largely unscathed for many months, but they won't remain so any longer. You can already see significant price hikes for GPUs like the RTX 5070 and RX 9070 XT. It may sound counterintuitive, but for those looking to upgrade, it might be prudent to buy sooner rather than later.

It's no shocker that PC gaming has gotten a lot more expensive over the past few months. What began as a RAM crisis due to an uptick in people purchasing memory for AI purposes has caused a Domino effect that has raised the price of PC building, premade gaming rigs, and consoles. We saw prices begin to crawl up across the board, but the straw that broke the camel's back for me was the news that the Steam Deck's price was increasing from $549 to $789.

A router upgrade means the old router gets tossed in a drawer or thrown away. But I try to repurpose it. A couple of months ago, I turned my old ASUS RT-AC66U router into an access point. Later, I repositioned my main router, and then coverage stopped being an issue. Obviously, that meant sending the older router back into the drawer.

Claude Code and Cursor can be used together. You don't need to choose one over the other. I tried using only Cursor, but kept going back to Claude Code because of its capabilities. It's not just about the model. You can always use Opus or other high-end models in Cursor, but the flexibility Claude Code offers through the terminal is something you don't get from Cursor alone. I also think using Claude Code through the CLI consumes fewer credits than repeatedly using a model like Opus 4.7 inside Cursor.

Fellow Traveller, the publisher behind games like Titanium Court and 1000xResist, just wrapped up its Story-Rich Showcase, which featured a bunch of narrative-driven indie games. With more than 20 games on display, there was a lot to follow, but we've pulled together some of the most notable announcements below. You can also catch the full show on Fellow Traveller's YouTube channel.Ambrosia Sky is getting its second and final episodeAmbrosia Sky, a sci-fi game about death where you have to clean up alien fungi, will be getting its second act as a free update on August 6th. The game was originally planned to have three acts, but developer …Read the full story at The Verge.

Good ol' games? | Image: GOG GOG sent a newsletter about the game The End of the Sun on June 5th that included symbols associated with the Nazi SS. The Steam competitor issued a statement attributing the inclusion to a "series of mistakes," including miscommunication with the German QA team, inconsistent font rendering, and being understaffed during a bank holiday, among other things.The game is a fantasy title set in a universe based on Slavic mythology and culture. So GOG included Slavic runes in its email promoting the title, including the Sowilō symbol, which means "sun." According to one of GOG's multiple explanations, some platforms, including mobile phones, ren …Read the full story at The Verge.

Following Nvidia's reveal of its RTX Spark laptops, I attended an AMD and HP roundtable at Computex. A fellow reporter asked Rahul Tikoo of AMD and Jim Nottingham of HP, two Vice Presidents at their respective companies, whether they welcomed the new competitor. After all, both companies have been pitching small machines that run big AI models locally for quite a while now. And Nvidia had just tossed its own hat into the ring.

When I find myself stuck on a lengthy drive, the last thing I want to do is mess around with my in-car infotainment system.