An old PC can feel useless long before its hardware actually becomes useless. I had one sitting around that I rarely touched. It wasn't that fast anymore, and I wouldn't have trusted it with demanding tasks, but throwing it away felt wasteful. As an extra Windows desktop, I simply didn't have much reason to use it. I would turn it on occasionally, browse the web, open a few files, and then leave it sitting there again. Most of the time, it was doing absolutely nothing.

I love how easy Docker makes self-hosting. I can spin up an application, connect to a database, add a few settings, and have everything running with just a handful of commands. But that simplicity also made me careless about how I handled sensitive information. As I added more containers to my server, I started noticing just how often credentials, tokens, and other secrets became part of my deployment process. Nothing had gone wrong, but I knew I was relying too much on convenience. So, I made one small change to the way I manage my credentials, passcodes, and secrets in Docker deployments. It didn't make my setup complicated, but it made me much more comfortable with it.

OpenAI says it found a solution to a major math problem that has remained unsolved for around 90 years, as reported earlier by The New York Times and Wired. In a blog post on Tuesday, OpenAI announced that it discovered a solution to the Navier-Stokes problem - which relates to the flow of liquid and gas - using an internal AI model more powerful than the newly released GPT-6 Astra alongside 10,000 concurrent agents. The Navier-Stokes problem is one of seven Millennium Prize Problems, each of which comes with a $1 million reward for solving. OpenAI says it started training the internal AI model on August 28th, which has "exhibited unpreced …Read the full story at The Verge.

It has been a very interesting time in the world of Linux, and whether that's a good thing or not depends on your stance on LLM usage. Very recently, we saw Linus Torvalds fix a bug using AI, and Debian maintainers voted to allow LLM code submissions as long as the submitter takes all of the responsibility. Now, a developer for the kernel has reported that they used an LLM to locate a nasty bottleneck bug, but it turns out the AI was a far better spotter than it was a fixer.

Sony isn't backing away from its decision to kill the video game disc in January 2028. But Sony isn't shutting down production as quickly as we thought, either. Two months after reports that Sony's last discmaking plant was already being repurposed, the company's discmaking division now says that one widely reported detail was wrong.Originally, it sounded like the division's president said the Thalgau plant would produce 90 percent fewer discs in 2028 - but the reality is it will only produce 10 percent fewer discs in 2028, an unnamed Sony DADC spokesperson told Game journalist Brian Crecente. "To clarify and avoid any misleading informa …Read the full story at The Verge.

Rivian's futuristic e-bike is delayed, and customers are not happy. Last year, Rivian's micromobility spinoff Also unveiled a new, software-controlled electric bike called the TM-B that immediately set the e-bike world ablaze. With USB-C chargeable battery, removable seat post, and software-controlled pedal-by-wire system, the TM-B set itself apart with a totally unique approach to electric bicycle design. It's not an exaggeration to say that nothing else looked like this bike. But that list of high-tech features is creating unexpected bottlenecks for Also's product team. The company had originally said customer deliveries would start in …Read the full story at The Verge.

The console situation is a little strange right now. In one corner, Sony has announced that it's phasing out physical PlayStation games, opting instead to go all-digital. In the other corner, Xbox announced a new program that allows people to assign a digital license to their account for their physical games, meaning people who own the disc get the best of both worlds. Well, it seems Microsoft's strategy is already garnering supporters, as Ubisoft has seemingly agreed to allow its games in the disc-to-digital initiative.

The retro emulation scene has evolved a lot since the mid-2000s, when I was struggling to run Nintendo DS and GameCube games on my laptop. These days, PCs are more than powerful enough to play even 3D games, and it doesn't even have to be a particularly powerful one.

As much as I'd like to be an art expert, I can't really render anything more complicated than a stick figure.

As much as I adore Proxmox, the virtualization platform’s default settings leave a lot to be desired. For one, barebones PVE servers have the enterprise-tier update repository enabled by default, which causes problems if I try to install new packages without connecting a paid license to the Proxmox hosts. As such, switching it to its community variant is something I have to do practically every time I’m done installing Proxmox VE on a new machine.

I self-host almost everything that I use. Whether they're daily utilities or side projects, I host them in my homelab or on rented VPSs. My point is that I control each one. The one odd piece in this whole chain was GitHub, where I keep my side-project codebases.

It's always a terrible feeling when you lose your phone, but you're in a quiet environment. Ringing your phone is the obvious answer, but then you blast everyone with your ringtone. But what if, instead of having your phone call out as loudly as possible, you instead had a device that quietly guided you to it? Such is this handy little device that sounds like a Geiger counter, but instead of detecting radiation, it locates your phone.