Growing up, I played through the second half of the sixth generation, the entirety of the seventh, and the early years of the eighth — arguably gaming’s golden age. But for all the incredible memories I made, there were a few games that sent my teenage self packing. Some were too scary, others had moments that outright terrified me, and more often than not, I would either hand the controller to my older brother or simply stop playing, conveniently "forgetting" that I had a game to finish.

There is no shortage of TeamViewer alternatives. If you need a free option for personal use, Chrome Remote Desktop or HelpWire are solid choices. For those who prefer open-source and self-hostable solutions, RustDesk stands out as a feature-packed option with competitive pricing. However, the best overall alternative to TeamViewer is AnyDesk. It delivers everything you need, from cross-platform availability and fast performance to strong security.

Platformer games have always been a go-to genre for gamers who love a mix of skill, challenge, and adventure. Whether you’re swinging through fiery depths, jumping across moving platforms, or fighting off waves of enemies, there's no shortage of exciting experiences to dive into on Steam. So, here’s a look at some of the most popular and exciting platformers that stand out for their creativity, gameplay mechanics, and stunning worlds.

While Zapier is usually associated with businesses and project management, you can actually use the platform to automate certain personal tasks in your daily life. This is thanks to the thousands of apps that Zapier can integrate with, allowing you to integrate your productivity apps together — as well as creating automations between your personal apps.

OpenAI has raised $40 billion in a new investment round led by SoftBank, vaulting the company to a $300 billion valuation. It’s the largest funding round for a private tech company in history, according to CNBC.OpenAI is set to receive $10 billion up front (SoftBank will invest $7.5 billion along with $2.5 billion “from an investor syndicate,“ according to Bloomberg). The remaining $30 billion is slated to arrive by year’s end, CNBC reported — but only if it officially converts into a for-profit company by then. If not, it reportedly stands to lose a quarter of the deal.The funding comes just a few months after OpenAI announced Stargate, a $500 billion joint venture with backing from SoftBank, Oracle, and the Abu Dhabi fund MGX to build out massive AI datacenters over the next four years. The company has been in a full sprint lately: On Monday, CEO Sam Altman posted that OpenAI gained 1 million users in a single hour in large part thanks to a new feature called Images in ChatGPT that went viral due to its ability to produce Studio Ghibli inspired AI art. Altman also announced on Wednesday that the company would “release a powerful new open-weight language model with reasoning in the coming months.” The funding announcement claims that ChatGPT serves 500 million people every week.Despite the explosive growth the startup has seen thanks to ChatGPT, it’s still burning a ton of cash. Bloomberg recently reported that the startup is expecting to earn $12.7 billion in revenue this year alone, which is a massive jump from the $3.7 billion it earned in annualized recurring revenue last year. Still, the report claims OpenAI doesn’t expect to be cash flow positive until 2029, when its projections predict a whopping $125 billion in revenue.OpenAI’s funding announcement emphasized the startup’s goal of building “AGI that benefits all of humanity.” Altman has been clear that it’ll take a lot to pull this all off—compute, energy, global infrastructure, and yes, a staggering amount of cash. This round, the startup claims, brings it one step closer.

Our modern, digital lives churn out terabytes and terabytes of data per day, and most of it is pretty important to us. Those photo rolls of memories with friends and family, important documents, and other files are all kept on storage drives, but what happens if a drive dies? With data recovery being time-consuming, expensive, and not always reliable, it's already too late to worry about keeping a backup copy on another device.

Rumors have been floating around about an Xbox handheld for years, but the claim started gaining traction just this month when reports said an Xbox handheld would launch this year. We just got the first taste of what that handheld might be from none other than ROG Ally X maker (and long-time Microsoft partner), Asus. Although nothing is set in stone yet, it looks like Asus will make the first Xbox-branded handheld, and given that we're seeing teasers now, it could arrive very soon.

Buying a motherboard in 2025 might not be as simple as you think. The number of unnecessary features and "AI-powered" enhancements combined with new definitions of "budget" motherboards are enough to confuse anyone. Fortunately, you don't need to worry about most of what manufacturers are peddling these days.

If you're on the hunt for a new gaming monitor, why not give Acer a try? The company has revealed two new entries to its Predator monitor series: the X32 X2, and the X27U X1. Both of them offer generous OLED screens with high refresh rates and response times, making them an excellent addition to your battlestation.

Retro-gaming rigs are some of the most popular projects for Single-Board Computers, and for good reason. Despite their pint-sized form-factor and (fairly) affordable prices, modern SBCs hide a lot of firepower under the hood. On the software side, you’ve got highly-optimized emulators and emulation distros, most of which are simple to set up even for beginners.

Valve has finally taken a big step toward making SteamOS available on more handheld gaming PCs, with Lenovo’s upcoming Legion Go 2 set to support the OS. This is a huge deal, considering how poorly Windows 11 handles the handheld form factor. However, Bazzite will still be the better option for most handhelds.

Have you tried bone-conduction headphones before? They're a little bit different than regular ones; instead of blasting audio into your ears, they send vibrations directly to your inner ear, which then translates the waves into audio that you can "hear."