If you plan on opening up parts of your local area network (LAN) to the outside world, you'll want to have specific measures to ensure your network is secure. Reverse proxies are a great way of allowing direct access to specific services hosted at home without making it easy for anyone to break in and start causing problems. A great feature of reverse proxies is running multiple services on the same IP address, even web server instances. Reverse proxies are rock-solid, secure, versatile, and powerful, and you should try setting one up to learn a few things about networking.

When it comes to encrypting files on your computer, there are numerous options to choose from. However, my favorite is VeraCrypt. It's an open-source, cross-platform, completely free encryption program that you can use to manage your files, with a lot of features to make things even more secure.

Image: Extremely OK Games Earthblade, the next game from the developers of Celeste, has been canceled. The fantasy-inspired game got its first trailer in late 2022, and the game would have let you explore a “free-roaming, dynamically-loading map,” Extremely OK Games’ Maddy Thorson said at the time. But the team decided to cancel the game in December after a team conflict and because of the pressure of trying to follow up on Celeste, Thorson says in a post detailing what happened.The “disagreement” was between Thorson and Noel Berry (Thorson refers to the two of them as “us”) and Pedro Medeiros over “the IP rights of Celeste,” Thorson says. “We eventually reached a resolution, but both parties also agreed in the end that we should go our separate ways,” and Medeiros is currently working on a game called Neverway. “Losing Pedro wasn’t the only factor in cancelling the game, but it did prompt us to take a serious look at whether fighting through to finish Earthblade was the right path forward,” Thorson says.The huge success of Celeste also “applied pressure on us to deliver something bigger and better with Earthblade, and that pressure is a large part of why working on it has become so exhausting,” Thorson says. “Pedro isn’t to blame for this — in fact the split with him has given us the clarity to see that we have lost our way, and the opportunity to admit defeat.”Thorson and Berry want to refocus on “smaller-scale projects” and are “prototyping again” to try and “rediscover game development in a manner closer to how we approached it at Celeste’s or TowerFall’s inception.”

Image: Royal Shakespeare Company Macbeth, William Shakespeare’s iconic play, is being reimagined as an interactive video game with a neo-noir vibe — and it’s being developed in part by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The game, titled Lili, is a “screen life thriller video game” where you’ll have access to a modern-day Lady Macbeth’s personal devices, according to a press release.“Players will be immersed in a stylized, neo-noir vision of modern Iran, where surveillance and authoritarianism are part of daily life,” the release says. “The gameplay will feature a blend of live-action cinema within an interactive game format, giving players the chance to immerse themselves in the world of Lady Macbeth and make choices that influence her destiny.” It sounds kind of like a version of Macbeth inspired by Sam Barlow’s interactive thrillers.The Royal Shakespeare Company is making the game in collaboration with iNK Stories, a New York-based indie studio and publisher that also made 1979 Revolution: Black Friday. It stars Zar Amir as “Lady Macbeth (Lili),” per the press release.Lili is set to release “later in 2025.”

I've gone back and forth between variants of Apple and Microsoft's operating systems all my life, starting with ProDOS on the Apple IIc. Since then, I've used every version of MS-DOS, Windows (yes, even Windows Me and Windows Phone), and every variant of Mac software through OS X and macOS. And while Apple's current crop of hardware is impressive, Windows 11 PCs have got my heart locked up.

Today’s digital life makes you tackle constant "storage full" warnings across devices, safeguard your data against frequent cloud breaches, and navigate a world where privacy feels like a myth. A simple way out of all these issues is to set up your own network-attached storage (NAS) server at home to take back control of your data. However, NAS units have a reputation for being too complicated to install for home users. Modern consumer NAS models are thankfully breaking that notion by requiring minimal tinkering on your part to get started.

I've said it several times now on XDA: powerful gaming PCs need cool-looking decor. You can have the mightiest CPU and GPU known to man, but if it's all crammed into a PC case that suits an office better than a battle station, it's a sad sight to see. Fortunately, Starforge is here to save us from depressing gaming PC builds with these sleek cases with exclusive decors from the Kaiju No. 8 anime series.

Microsoft is reportedly preparing to launch smaller versions of the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop in the near future, and they could be launching sooner than you think. The company had already been reported to be working on a smaller Surface Pro last year, but plans for that seemingly fell through, as the Surface Pro 11 launched in the same 13-inch size as always.

Keeping your web browsing safe when using Microsoft Edge (or any browser) is essential. While online security shouldn’t rest within your browser alone, it’s integral to your overall data privacy and security strategy. Utilizing your browser's available privacy and security settings keeps you safe and provides peace of mind. This article will examine some essential security settings you should enable in Edge right now if they aren’t already.

The world of Linux distros is chock-full of cool operating systems that bring distinctive features to the table. You've got simple and user-friendly Debian-based distros that are easy to configure even for newcomers. Then there's the bleeding-edge Arch Linux that comes with a do-it-yourself design featuring advanced customization options, though you’ll have to contend with instability issues every once in a while.

Wallpapers and theme packs are a great way to customize your Windows installation. Here at XDA, we regularly cover new Windows 10 and 11 themes that you can leverage to freshen things up on your PC, and also offer options for those who prefer more customization options through open-source applications. Up until now, Microsoft had been providing custom themes via a dedicated support website as well, but that may not be the case moving forward.

Illustration: The Verge Tumbler has finally launched Tumblr TV as a new tab at the top of its app, the company said today in a brief set of update notes spotted by TechCrunch. Tumblr TV first debuted as a GIF-finding feature in 2015, but now it includes video content as well. Screenshot: Tumblr TV According to Tumblr, “New users will have this tab enabled by default in the third position, while existing users will have it available in the Dashboard Tabs configuration, if not already enabled.”When you tap the Tumblr TV tab, you’ll see a grid of videos and GIFs. Once you tap one, you can like, comment, repost, or share it, and when you’re ready to see something else, you can swipe up to move on.In my very brief testing, it’s still very GIF-heavy despite the inclusion of video and a swipe interface similar to other short-form video apps. It could be tempting to compare Tumblr TV to TikTok, especially in light of its recent shutdown, but right now, it’s more like scrolling a group text full of GIFs.