While we wait for the blockbuster games of 2025 to release, it's a good time to catch up on some of the smaller games of recent years that deserve some love. None of these games need a GeForce RTX 5090 to run, which is just as well because stocks of that particular graphics card are hard to find. But perhaps more importantly, these games respect your time while still giving you a compelling reason to enjoy the art and mastery behind these short-run games that will live in your mind for much longer than they take to complete.

One of the most useful tools of any home lab is containers, which simplify the installation and maintenance of self-hosted services. Keeping a few containers up to date is fairly routine, and doesn't take long to accomplish. But once you've got a dozen or so containers, even if you're using something like Portainer to manage them, keeping them updated is a chore. It doesn't have to be though, as you can install one more container, Watchtower, which will keep an eye on your installed containers and keep them up to date for you. It's one of the best containers you should get used to, and it makes home lab life easy.

Like so many right now, I am overjoyed that the Nintendo Switch 2 is due to arrive before the end of this year. This coming March, the console will officially be 8 years old, and it has been in need of a hardware upgrade, but there's a lot more than just the hardware that needs an upgrade.

Sony's PlayStation Network has been experiencing a massive worldwide outage for nearly a day, and frustrated users (especially weekend gamers) have taken to social media to express their disappointment. At its peak, Down Detector logged over 71,000 reports around 6:43 PM ET on Friday, February 7. Despite this, Sony has yet to provide a projected restoral time, let alone fix the issue.

The worst has come true. What we all feared most about the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 sales has happened — stocks are non-existent and scalpers are having their time in the sun. Although a version of this story plays out every GPU generation, things are much more puzzling this time. Nvidia had already warned us about stock-outs days before the Jan 30 launch date, and some retailers believe stocks will remain low for the first three months.

PlayStation Network (PSN) has been experiencing a multi-hour outage that started Friday evening. According to Sony’s PSN status page, account management, gaming and social, PlayStation Video, PlayStation Store, and the PlayStation Direct website are all dealing with issues.For gaming specifically, Sony says that “you might have difficulty launching games, apps, or network features.” Sony is vowing to fix the problems “as soon as possible.”Around when I first published this article at 7:28PM ET, a colleague wasn’t able to load their purchased digital games or see their friends, trophies, or even their online status on their PS5. At about 11:45PM ET, I tried to play Fortnite on my PS5, but the game showed an error message and wouldn’t let me log in. I was able to start my digital copy of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, however.“We are aware some users might be currently experiencing issues with PSN,” Sony says in an 8:46PM ET post on the @AskPlayStation X account. We are aware some users might be currently experiencing issues with PSN.For more details: https://t.co/NJX2xGusZM— Ask PlayStation (@AskPlayStation) February 8, 2025Sony’s status website says the issues started at 7PM ET, but Downdetector shows user reports starting to come in about an hour earlier at around 6PM ET. At the peak, there were a bit less than 70,000 reports of problems on Downdetector. An r/PlayStation thread about the outage has more than 9,000 comments.Sony didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.PSN had an outage that lasted for around eight hours back in October. It dealt with a partial outage in May, too.Updates, February 7th: Added @AskPlayStation’s tweet, noted that the outage has been going on for hours, and added details about my own experiences with the outage.

This is one of those laptops that's going to be a great fit for nearly everyone. In our review of the Asus Vivobook S 15, we loved that it delivered great performance, had an excellent OLED screen, and that the device felt good in hand thanks to its construction and use of premium materials.

The Windows Forecast is a look at the future of Windows that comments on the latest news for Windows Insiders, as well as other major announcements in the Windows space each and every week. My name is João Carrasqueira, and I've been covering the world of Windows professionally since 2018. If there's something you'd like to see covered, you can reach me at [email protected]

While modern games are often highly graphically intensive and require the best graphics cards to perform optimally, there is a whole world of less demanding games that can be played directly from their website URLs. Some of these are highly inventive and require plenty of thought to beat, while some older games have been ported so that they can play straight from your browser. None of them need you to download or install anything, and the contents of this list are all free to play with minimal or no advertising on the sites they're hosted on. So, if you find you have a few minutes wherever you are, open your browser and enjoy some gaming with no strings attached.

Network monitoring is essential for determining the bandwidth used, checking for security issues, and ensuring everything runs smoothly on the network. However, buying a special network monitoring device for home users and small businesses can be expensive and use up a lot of resources.

Water water everywhere, nor any drop to drink… without a filter like this.Access to water is always a concern when heading off the grid in my van — not when I’m home in Amsterdam, a city surrounded by the stuff. That certainty changed recently when government ministers began quietly prodding citizens to stock up on emergency supplies due to an increased risk of armed conflict and other regional unpleasantries. One recommendation, of many, is to have three liters (almost one gallon) of water per person per day on hand, or 15 liters per day for my five-person household. That means 105 liters for just one week or 450 liters each month! I don’t have space for that. Who does?So, I started thinking: why not augment my emergency freshwater stores with a filtration and purification kit that can adapt to all the water sources around me? And since I’m a budding vanlifer and chronic adventurer, let’s make it portable so I can take it anywhere.I came up with this as a first-time prepper: pairing quick-connect water filters like the $42 LifeStraw sold by Camelbak with Dometic’s portable 11-liter Go water jug ($69.99) and its rechargeable Go Hydration Water Faucet ($99.99). Dirty water goes in and clean water comes out with a double-tap on the fauce …Read the full story at The Verge.

We're big proponents of "work smarter, not harder" here at XDA, and that means figuring out how to automate as much of our daily workload as possible. Whether that's using IFTTT to link different systems together, automating Excel worksheets, or using Ansible to build out your home lab, there's always a way to make long tasks easier and repeatable. While you could install multiple apps to accomplish automation tasks, there are plenty of command line tools that can abstract away complex tasks, whichever operating system you're using at the time.