Getting the most performance out of your PC is essential for everyone, especially gamers. There are plenty of tips and tricks to optimize Windows 11 for gaming; but for those not on Windows, or for Windows users who may be looking for a bit more, there are also programs out there that have been specifically designed to help. Optimizing your PC performance for gaming has never been easier and, in a lot of cases, can be done with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Over the last couple of years, audiobooks and podcasts have exploded in popularity. Whether you want to hear some words of wisdom on your commute or just prefer the convenience of narrated literature, there are thousands of unique creations from every genre imaginable that can cater to your needs.

Black Friday is one of the best times of year to buy some technology, like a TV, a new phone, or a pair of headphones, but is it the right time to buy a CPU? You can buy processors just about anywhere these days, whether it's Amazon, Best Buy, Newegg, or Micro Center, so the chance of finding some deals is definitely high on Black Friday. But are you getting the best possible price?

Opening up your local area network (LAN) to the outside world is easy, but doing it securely is a different beast. When running a custom router with OPNsense, multiple routes are available, including reverse proxies and a virtual private network (VPN). You could forward some ports and call it a day, but I'll show you some ways to configure OPNsense with a domain, VPN, and reverse proxies with some firewall rules thrown in for good measure. Once configured, you'll be accessing your LAN from anywhere in the world with a secure connection.

A still from the latest A Minecraft Movie trailer. | Screenshot: YouTube This week, I went to a theater to watch a showing of the black-and-white version of Johnny Mnemonic, starring Keanu Reeves. Old-heads like me may recall it as a bad mid-90s cyberpunk film (written by William Gibson!) about a data courier whose brain is the storage medium, but who had to have his childhood memories erased to make space for the work. I hadn’t seen it since I was a kid, and you know what? It’s still not a good movie. But if you ignore the plot holes, mostly awful acting, and terrible pacing, it’s at least very cool to look at. Also, I had totally forgotten about Ice T’s turn as J-Bone, leader of the Lo-Tek underground. It was fun enough, but it was weird to hear the theater audience erupt with applause at the end, though,... Continue reading…

Internal and external SSDs have been tumbling in price over the last few years, with great deals on 2TB SSDs available year round (and especially on Black Friday). Due to this, it has become more and more viable to keep an external drive around effectively in place of a USB stick. They may be a little smaller, but USB sticks are far more expensive per GB. The widespread adoption of USB-3/C and Thunderbolt has also given us more performance to play with, making a small external SATA SSD a sensible buy in 2024.

There are several platforms game developers can use to create those fantastic time-wasters, I mean hand-eye coordination boosters, that we all know and love. The most well-known are Unreal Engine, Unity, and Godot. But sometimes, a developer decides to go off the beaten path and build their game in something totally unexpected like Microsoft PowerPoint.

PowerShell has been out for years now, and in that time it has almost entirely eclipsed the old cmd.exe shell and become increasingly powerful. It's tightly integrated with many core functions of the Windows OS, and can help you script almost any function in Windows. PowerShell hasn't always been the most popular language (though many Windows admins swear by it), but in recent years it has been on a rampaging comeback, aided by a general push to improve developer tooling on Windows with the likes of the new Windows Terminal and WSL.

Tim Cook and then-President Donald Trump, speaking to the Press in Austin, Texas in 2019. | Photo: Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images Apple CEO Tim Cook managed to forge a personal relationship with Donald Trump during his first Presidential term that other tech firms struggled to replicate. Now, others are trying to follow his template, says a Wall Street Journal report today.Cook used direct appeals to influence Trump’s 2017 tax policy and to get him to dial back his 2019 tariffs in ways that benefitted Apple. In exchange, Trump got to look good; as the Journal points out, Cook didn’t correct Trump when claimed responsibility for Apple opening an Austin manufacturing plant that had already been around for years and wasn’t even owned by Apple.Part of Cook’s strategy was keeping things simple, according to the Journal:Instead of sending government relations... Continue reading…

Canva is an easy-to-use, browser and app-based digital marketing and content creation tool. There are some great hidden features in Canva, and it's one of the most commonly used design tools for non-professional designers. However, there are some awesome alternatives if Canva just isnt your style.

The new console will build on the Playstation Portal (pictured) which was reportedly originally intended to work as a standalone device. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge Sony is currently making a new handheld gaming console that allows users to play PlayStation 5 games anywhere. According to Bloomberg, the console is being developed to compete against Nintendo and Microsoft in the portable gaming market, and is likely “years away from launch” — if Sony decides to release it at all.Nintendo is a leading figure in the handheld gaming industry, with a next-generation successor to its popular Switch console expected to arrive next year. Microsoft is also developing its own handheld Xbox prototype, though Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has recently cautioned that the device is “a few years out.” The handheld gaming category has also benefitted from a PC-platform expansion in recent years thanks to new... Continue reading…

Storing data backups is an exercise in common sense. Having multiple copies of mission-critical data is imperative, whether it's a family photo album or essential work documents. There are several backup types to choose from, but they usually fall into two different flavors: hot and cold storage. Hot storage backup is for data you need to access regularly, and cold storage is for data you seldom need to access.