Modern digital security relies heavily on encryption algorithms grounded in difficult math problems, which is the backbone of what’s known as public-key infrastructure (PKI). From securing websites to protecting messaging apps, PKI allows two strangers online (or a client and a server) to establish secret keys and verify identities without having met. This is achieved through asymmetric cryptography (public/private key pairs) that current computers find infeasible to break. For example, algorithms like RSA and elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC) underpin much of today's secure internet traffic, but the advent of quantum computing threatens to upend these protections.

Depending on the type of user you are, you might have never come across enterprise-grade components. I've been using pre-built and custom machines for over two decades, but still haven't felt the need to dabble in enterprise hardware. That said, enthusiasts and home lab users have a lot to gain from picking older enterprise components compared to modern consumer-grade hardware.

I've been a Windows user since I first laid hands on a keyboard, but since my childhood, I've branched out and dabbled with every operating system one could think of. Even still, most of my work and play occurs on Mac and Windows PCs, respectively. Linux was the odd one left out, and it's unfortunate because I love the idea of Linux. Open-source, ultimate customizability, and absolutely zero bloat just sounds like total bliss, but I've always delayed any kind of swap for two main reasons: comfort and compatibility.

If you spend time talking to most Linux enthusiasts, you'll get plenty of reasons why they use a particular flavor of the operating system. They'll tell you why it's better on the side of open-source software, without having their data sold for advertising purposes, and how wonderful alternatives to paid apps exist if you'd only look. I'm not going to tell you those things because, while they're not wrong, they're not my reasons for using Linux.

Home Assistant is a fantastic software package that basically hands you complete control of your smart home. With support for limitless integrations, most software can just work in a way that you can tangibly improve your life. With the advent of Large Language Models (LLMs), too, the possibilities when it comes to processing data points into something useful are endless. That's why I combined an LLM with my Home Assistant, and it's made a lot of things possible, including dynamic notifications.

You can never have enough local storage, which is why it's important to pick up SSDs, HDDs, or portable drives whenever they go on sale. With that said, this Team Group 2TB M.2 SSD with heatsink is now down to a price that can't be ignored, coming in at just $120 for a 2TB stick. This is the best price we've seen on this model all year, which makes it the perfect time to pick one up.

Setting up my home lab was one of the best projects I have undertaken, and I'm very happy to have this computer at home that can store all my documents, photos, and even media so that I can consume it at any time without relying on the internet or expensive cloud services.

When Google first unveiled NotebookLM, I will admit, I was skeptical. I thought it would be another note-taking app with a few bells and whistles, but nothing groundbreaking. After all, I have used countless similar tools over the years, and most of them have fallen short of the hype. But when Google announced NotebookLM mobile apps, I decided to give it a genuine shot.

The Nintendo GameCube is one of the most beloved home consoles. Its library of games is filled with first-party and third-party classics that people love to revisit. To many Nintendo fans, the GameCube has some of the best modern-day titles the company has ever produced. But while many GameCube games are popular among players who grew up with the console, there are a few elusive titles that have become very rare. Retro game collectors are constantly looking for these gems that are considered valuable parts of the GameCube legacy. They're just not easy to obtain like most other GameCube games.

The student-built Purdubik’s Cube set a new Guinness World Record by solving a Rubik’s Cube in just 0.103 seconds. | Photo: Matthew Patrohay / Purdue UniversityA team of Purdue University students recently set a new Guinness World Record with their custom robot that solved a Rubik's Cube in just 0.103 seconds. That was about a third of the time it took the previous record-setting bot. But the new record wasn't achieved by simply building a robot that moves faster. The students used a combination of high-speed but low-res camera systems, a cube customized for improved strength, and a special solving technique popular among human speed cubers.The Rubik's Cube-solving robot arms race kicked off in 2014, when a robot called Cubestormer 3 built with Lego Mindstorms parts and a Samsung Galaxy S4 solved the iconic puzzle in 3.253 seconds - faster than any human or robot could at the time. (The current world record for a human solving a Rubik's Cube belongs to Xuanyi Geng, who did it in just 3.05 seconds.) Over the course of a decade, engineers managed to reduce that record to just hundreds of milliseconds.Last May, engineers at Mitsubishi Electric in Japan claimed the world record with a robot that solved a cube in 0.305 seconds. The record stood for almost a year before the team from Purdue's Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer …Read the full story at The Verge.

A redundant array of independent (or inexpensive) disks (RAID) is a collection of physical drives pooled together using virtualization technology to create one or more logical units for the purpose of storing data. Unlike a drive or two inside your desktop or laptop PC, a RAID consists of two or more drives combined to create storage pools that vary in size, with redundancy built into the array. Should one (or more, depending on the RAID) drive fail, the RAID should be able to recover from it without losing data, but there are some myths surrounding RAID that you may believe.

There are plenty of ways to upgrade your painstakingly-assembled battlestation of a PC. On the software front, you could go for Lossless Scaling, MSI Afterburner, and a host of cool utilities. Meanwhile, the hardware side is governed by several neat peripherals, accessories, and components designed to enhance the functionality of your rig. This includes PCIe devices, and I don’t just mean graphics cards.