Your Local Area Network (LAN) is vital to your home and office. It's what handles all internal and outbound traffic, ensuring all clients on your side can communicate with one another, as well as billions of devices worldwide, so long as you have a router and external link. But how does one go about securing their LAN? Here are some pointers on how to not make your LAN vulnerable to outside attacks. Some involve common sense and others require you to do a little work.

Ever since personal computing became a common fixture in our lives, the PC modding scene has existed. I can think back to the heydays of LAN parties when many participants would compete to show off their modded systems, and in an era when PC cases were either beige or black, they were eye-opening. Modern PC cases are very different from those early chassis, which might have you thinking the PC modding scene has gone away. But it hasn't. It just grew up along with the manufacturers and found new ways to push the envelope on what a mod could be.

When you’re out building your home lab, the OS can matter almost as much as the hardware. However, with a deluge of operating systems designed to tackle your virtualization workloads, you might have a hard time selecting the perfect one for your home lab.

Microsoft officially pulled support for Windows 7 a long time ago, and that means those PCs don't get any features or security updates from Microsoft. Even the Windows 7 ESU program can't save you from this problem, because Microsoft ended it way back in 2023.

Whether your computer has an inbuilt mic array or you use a USB mic, audio interface, or headset, the microphone you are using will rarely suit your voice straight out of the box. When you want your voice to sound its best for recording audio or for livestreaming; knowing how to equalize or EQ your mic input is a handy skill to have. To start with, you don't need expensive software, hardware, or a deep understanding of audio, just your microphone, a free program, and a little bit of time.

When deciding on software to run on a hardware firewall, there are currently two main contenders: pfSense, which has been around for a long time, and OPNsense, which started out as a fork of pfSense. Both are fairly similar in scope and how they function underneath the GUI, so you might be wondering why you would choose one or the other. After all, if two things perform similarly, isn't it a coin toss between them? Well, strictly speaking, yes, but there are some reasons why you would want to choose one ahead of the other, especially if you have strong feelings about open-source software.

After Nvidia unleashed its 32GB 5090, all eyes have been on AMD to see what it does in response. Naturally, that means a lot of speculation around the possibility of a 32GB version of its most powerful up-and-coming card, the Radeon RX 9070. And while it was fun to dream, it seems that AMD has finally had enough and shut off further speculation with a funny response.

The New York Times has reportedly approved artificial intelligence tools that newsroom staff can use for editing copy, summarizing information, coding, and writing. The publication announced in an internal email that product and editorial staff will receive AI training, according to Semafor, and introduced a new internal AI tool called Echo for summarizing articles, briefings, and other company activity.Staff were reportedly sent new editorial guidelines detailing permitted uses for Echo and other AI tools, which encourage newsroom employees to use them to suggest edits and revisions for their work, and generate summaries, promotional copy for social media, and SEO headlines.Other examples mentioned in a mandatory training video shared with staff include using AI to develop news quizzes, quote cards, and FAQs, or suggesting what questions reporters should ask a start-up’s CEO during an interview. There are restrictions, however — the company told editorial staff that AI shouldn’t be used to draft or significantly alter an article, circumvent paywalls, input third-party copyrighted materials, or publish AI-generated images or videos without explicit labeling.It isn’t clear how much AI-edited copy The Times will allow in published articles. The outlet promised that “Times journalism will always be reported, written and edited by our expert journalists,” in a memo it released last year, and it reaffirmed that commitment to human involvement a few months later.“Generative A.I. can sometimes help with parts of our process, but the work should always be managed by and accountable to journalists,” read The Times’ generative AI principles, adopted in May 2024. “We are always responsible for what we report, however the report is created. Any use of generative A.I. in the newsroom must begin with factual information vetted by our journalists and, as with everything else we produce, must be reviewed by editors.”Alongside Echo, other AI tools apparently greenlit for use by The Times include GitHub Copilot as a programming assistant, Google Vertex AI for product development, NotebookLM, the NYT’s ChatExplorer, OpenAI’s non-ChatGPT API, and some of Amazon’s AI products. These AI tools and training guidelines are rolling out as The Times remains embroiled in a legal battle with OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that ChatGPT was trained on Times content without permission. Many other publications have also introduced AI into their newsrooms at varying scales, ranging from tools for spelling and grammar to generating entire articles.

A Raspberry Pi is a powerful yet affordable device that can handily serve as the brain for your smart home. With the right hardware, software, and setup, the Pi can control lights, security cameras, thermostats, and even automate daily routines. Instead of relying on cloud-based services, you can keep everything local for better privacy and reliability.

Who says tech fans can't be fashionable? If you're on the hunt for a purse that both shows off your enthusiasm for all things digital and you want to spend five digits on it, then boy, do I have a deal for you. A company has revealed a new line of purses that use an Nvidia H100 AI GPU as part of the design, and it's selling for a pretty penny.

Home labs are perfect for honing your skills while not destroying your home network in the process. But while you're building out your home lab's network capabilities, how do you actually ensure that the two stay separate? A dedicated firewall is what you need, whether a dedicated hardware device or a virtual one. With the right rules in place, you can keep your home network safe from your home lab experiments and still have access to the internet at large.

Illustrator is one of the best vector illustration tools, but with its hefty Adobe price tag, you might want an alternative. Most Adobe alternatives focus on raster graphics rather than vector graphics, with less opportunity for free or open-source vector design tools. Vectorpea comes from the same place as Photopea — a favorite of Photoshop alternative users — but it’s not open-source but rather ad-based and free to use from anywhere. With promising development in the tool, Vectorpea might be the next best thing for vector designs and artwork.