Xbox has declared that Game Pass is "not for everybody" and serves a particular purpose in the gaming company's ecosystem. The CEO of Microsoft Gaming, Phil Spencer, spoke to Variety during an interview released on Tuesday (April 15) and broke down how Game Pass exists in the lives of the modern gamer.

Home Assistant is a fantastic piece of software that forms the backbone of many smart homes, including my home. With a seemingly endless number of integrations, automations, and scripts on the internet, it's difficult to find something not supported by Home Assistant in some way. However, if you install Home Assistant OS or Home Assistant Supervised, you'll also get access to "Add-ons." These are containerized applications designed to work within Home Assistant, and there are some extremely useful tools available.

I use my laptop for hours daily and push it to the limit when writing articles, running apps, or playing games. It's a workhorse for testing various productivity apps, browser extensions, and other software. I also use it as my entertainment device and home server.

Many of Logitech’s products are pricier now than they were in the recent past. In a video published this week, YouTuber Cameron Dougherty detailed increases as high as 25 percent on the company’s PC and gaming accessories, including well-known Logitech gear like the MX Master 3S mouse.I took a peek at a few Internet Archive captures of Logitech’s current offerings to confirm the YouTuber’s findings, and sure enough, prices are going up. The MX Master 3S, my favorite mouse and the one I’m using at this very moment, now costs $119.99, a $20 increase from before. And on the keyboards side, for instance, the Pro X TKL has gone up to $219.99 from $199.99 before. One keyboard Dougherty calls out, the previously $27.99 K400 Plus Wireless Touch, went up by $7 to $34.99 — a relatively small increase that, at 25 percent, is one of the higher price bumps Logitech made.Dougherty notes a few products that didn’t see price increases, including the MX Ergo mouse and the G703 gaming mouse. And according to the video, a handful of products have actually dropped in price, like the Pro X Superlight mouse, which was $159.99, but is now $149.99. Logitech doesn’t seem to have …Read the full story at The Verge.

Reading online isn't a necessity anymore, and most people see it as recreation or a deliberate choice. Students spend hours reading up on course content, staring at a screen, and when I am not writing, I'm usually reading other articles on the web. This avocation takes a toll on my health, with complications ranging from mild headaches and eye strain to worsening eyesight and a prescription that refuses to stabilize.

When I initially switched from a Windows PC to a Mac, I started using all the default apps on macOS since they were free to use and most of them offered a good set of features. However, as time passed, I started feeling locked in since a lot of the apps are limited to Apple's operating systems and platforms. This started causing compatibility issues with files exported from those apps, and also with the apps themselves, since I use an Android phone, and most of Apple's apps aren't available on the Play Store. Additionally, some default apps like Finder were just too barebones for my liking. That's when I started looking around for alternatives.

If you've seen my previous pieces, you'll know that I have a huge affection for e-ink displays. Something about them gives off a classy and stylish look that I absolutely adore, and thankfully, the Raspberry Pi community seemingly agrees with me. There have been a ton of Pi projects that use these lovely displays, and there are always more to check out every month. However, they're not always in color; they're sometimes in black and white.

I always like to have a YouTube video going on my second monitor while I work. However, when I need to bring something up on the second monitor, I'll pop the YouTube video in a picture-in-picture window so I can keep watching. The thing is, it gets annoying to continually pop the player in and out of the window, especially when YouTube will automatically create a picture-in-picture if you do the same thing on mobile with a Premium subscription.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at the White House on April 10, 2025. | Photo: Anna Moneymaker / Getty ImagesUS Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly shared details about the March 15th Yemen military strikes in another Signal chat with people who weren’t government officials, reports The New York Times. The chat included his wife and “about a dozen” others he knew personally and professionally, the outlet writes, citing conversations with four unnamed sources. The details he shared “included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen,” writes the Times, which notes the details were “essentially the same” as those shared in the Signal chat between Hegseth and other officials last month that included Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg, who was added by mistake. But in this case, according to the Times, the chat was one that Hegseth made in January before he was Defense Secretary:Unlike the chat in which The Atlantic was mistakenly included, the newly revealed one was created by Mr. Hegseth. It included his wife and about a dozen other people from his personal and professional inner circle in January, before his confirmation as defense secretary, and was named “Defense | Team Huddle,” the people familiar with the chat said. He used his private phone, rather than his government one, to access the Signal chat.The outlet’s sources told it that “Hegseth typically did not use the chat to discuss sensitive military operations and said it did not include other cabinet-level officials.” According to the Times, a US official confirmed the “informal group chat” but insisted no classified information had ever been discussed on it. The unnamed official wouldn’t comment on whether Hegseth “shared detail targeting information,” the story says.Other details about the chat mentioned by the Times include that Hegseth’s aides “had warned him a day or two before the Yemen strikes not to discuss such sensitive operational details in his Signal group chat,” and some encouraged him to move any work-related matters from the chat to his government phone, but he never did so.

Even the most seasoned PC builder started from scratch once, and at one point, there were no easy-to-follow PC building tutorials or YouTube videos to help. Enthusiasts had plenty of forums to get involved in, although navigating them as a new builder wasn't always easy. My first PC, as such, wasn't even a PC; it was an Apple IIc, in the days before PC components and their connectors were standardized. Handy tools like PCPartPicker for checking compatibility and pricing didn't come until much later, and I mostly stuck to pre-built PCs through the start of my computing journey or laptops for portability.

Like many of you, I used to feel locked into a cycle of paying for software, often for features I barely used. I decided to see just how many of my essential tools I could replace with free alternatives, and the results were astonishing. I successfully managed to reduce my monthly software expenses without sacrificing productivity or quality. Let me walk you through the exact free tools I now rely on and show you how you, too, can cancel those recurring costs and bring the monthly credit card bill down.

The internet is not the place we once knew. Every week, millions of people argue with AI bot networks and paid workers at troll farms like the Internet Research Agency, a Russian organization based in St. Petersburg, which became known for state-sponsored online influence campaigns targeting the United States and Europe. At its peak, the IRA had 300–400 employees working in shifts, generating tens of thousands of posts per month with a $1 million per month budget. During high-profile events in the 2010s, up to one in three interactions on social media were inauthentic — now, with the help of AI, it's exponentially more.