One of the longest-running series in gaming history, The Legend of Zelda is a story of heroic adventures, overwhelming odds, and gameplay refinement that finds new ways to reinvent itself with each iteration. With more than 40 games under the Zelda umbrella, we took a look at the main games in the series and have narrowed down the best of the best.

Windows still has many legacy utilities you can use on your PC to complete tasks. Some are being removed or deprecated, like Paint3D, the People app, DirectAccess, and more. There is also talk of removing the classic Control Panel, but don’t expect that anytime soon. Items in the Control Panel must be migrated to the Settings app first. But I digress.

The Steam Deck is an incredibly impressive example of great hardware harmonizing with great software. It’s truly revolutionized the way we think of gaming handhelds, and part of that is thanks to its Linux gaming crusade of sorts. Valve has incentivized developers to make their games compatible with the Steam Deck, but even for those that aren’t, you can still have a great experience, depending on the game. I bet you didn’t know that you could play these 7 games on the Steam Deck.

Forget roses and chocolates – this Valentine’s Day, it’s time to think outside the box. I’m about to unlock the romantic potential of a tool you might not expect: Microsoft Excel. In this post, I will go over the tips to create a darling README sheet, develop engaging pie and line graphs, design a fun quiz or game, insert custom image charts (think Eiffel Tower), master the art of macros for hidden messages, and even password-protect your heartfelt creation with a special message.

Windows 11 is a very capable operating system that lets you do just about anything you want, but out of the box, it's not the most optimized experience to maximize your productivity. Thankfully, Windows is also a very flexible platform that can be greatly enhanced by third-party apps and even built-in customizations.

Figma has become the industry standard for UX/UI design, offering a powerful cloud-based platform where teams can collaborate on digital projects. However, its reliance on proprietary cloud storage, subscription costs, and data privacy concerns have led some designers to look for self-hosted alternatives. This is where Penpot comes in.

User experience and user interface design is prevalent throughout our modern day experience, as we access web designs from our computers and phones all day, every day. Good UX/UI designs need savvy developers to implement them into code. Penpot makes collaborative design and developer handover a total breeze. Not only does it have great design features, but it is cost-effective and has a great community of help available. Penpot is in constant open-source development, bringing it toe-to-toe with the industry’s best alternative: Figma.

Your old PC can be a useful tool for creating some seriously powerful systems and one such example is a media streaming box. Sure, your "smart" TV and dongles such as Amazon's Fire TV range are perfect for connecting to your favorite streaming services, but you could do this and a whole lot more by using a PC. With a full PC, you can also use it for playing modern games through Steam or classics using emulation. Then there's the ability to throw a few more hard drives inside the PC and create a home server. There's plenty you can do with a media streaming system.

If you've been shopping around, there's a pretty good chance that you've noticed that there's an abundance of gaming mice to choose from. It can be overwhelming for someone that's looking to purchase their first real gaming mouse, but it can be easy if you know what to look for.

So, Discord is an Electron-based app, and someone ported it to Windows 95 just because they could. Well what if I told you that someone ported Windows 95to Electron, so that you can download and run it as a standalone app? It's every bit as cursed as you may imagine, but it's also a pretty incredible technological feat, too.

Apple has reportedly been ordered by the UK government to create a backdoor that would give security officials access to users’ encrypted iCloud backups. If implemented, British security services would have access to the backups of any user worldwide, not just Brits, and Apple would not be permitted to alert users that their encryption was compromised.The Washington Post reports that the secret order, issued last month, is based on rights given under the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, also known as the Snoopers’ Charter. Officials have apparently demanded blanket access to end-to-end encrypted files uploaded by any user worldwide, rather than access to a specific account.Apple’s iCloud backups aren’t encrypted by default, but the Advanced Data Protection option was added in 2022, and must be enabled manually. It uses end-to-end encryption so that not even Apple can access encrypted files. In response to the order, Apple is expected to simply stop offering Advanced Data Protection in the UK. This wouldn’t meet the UK’s demand for access to files shared by global users, however.Apple has the right to appeal the notice on the basis of the cost of implementing it and whether the demand is proportionate to security requirements, but any appeal cannot delay implementation of the original order.The UK has reportedly served Apple a document called a technical capability notice. It’s a criminal offense to even reveal that the government has made a demand. Similarly, if Apple did cede to the UK’s demands then it apparently would not be allowed to warn users that its encrypted service is no longer fully secure.“There is no reason why the UK [government] should have the authority to decide for citizens of the world whether they can avail themselves of the proven security benefits that flow from end-to-end encryption,” Apple told the British parliament in March 2024 amidst a discussion of an amendment to the Investigatory Powers Act. It has previously pushed back against other UK attempts to legislate backdoors to encrypted communications.Security services and lawmakers in the UK have consistently pushed back against end-to-end encryption services, arguing that the technology makes it easier for terrorists and child abusers to hide from law enforcement. “End-to-end encryption cannot be allowed to hamper efforts to catch perpetrators of the most serious crimes,” a UK government spokesperson told The Guardian in 2022 after Apple first introduced end-to-end encryption.US agencies including the FBI have expressed similar fears in the past, but have more recently begun recommending encryption as a way to counter hackers linked to China. In December 2024 the NSA and FBI joined Canada, Australia, and New Zealand’s cyber security centers in recommending web traffic be “end-to-end encrypted to the maximum extent possible,” in new security best practices. UK security services didn’t join them.If Apple grants the UK government access to encrypted data, it’s likely that other countries, including the US and China, will see the opportunity to demand the same right. Apple will have to decide whether to comply, or remove its encryption service entirely. Other tech companies would almost certainly face similar requests next.Google has offered encrypted Android backups by default since 2018, and Meta also offers encrypted backups for WhatsApp users. Spokespeople for both declined to comment to The Washington Post on whether they had received governmental requests for backdoors. Google’s Ed Fernandez reiterated that the company “can’t access Android end-to-end encrypted backup data, even with a legal order,” while Meta pointed to a previous statement that no backdoors would be implemented.

Some Google Calendar users are angrily calling the company out after noticing that certain events like Pride month are no longer highlighted by default. Black History Month, Indigenous People Month, Jewish Heritage, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and Hispanic Heritage have also been removed, according to a Google product expert.One user called the move “shameful” and said that the platform is being used to “capitulate to fascism.” Over the last few years, there have been comments and media reports complaining about the presence of the notes, but now they’re gone.Google confirmed it’s made changes to the default Calendar events, but with a different explanation about when and why. Here’s Google’s explanation of what’s going on, provided by spokesperson Madison Cushman Veld:For over a decade we’ve worked with timeanddate.com to show public holidays and national observances in Google Calendar. Some years ago, the Calendar team started manually adding a broader set of cultural moments in a wide number of countries around the world. We got feedback that some other events and countries were missing — and maintaining hundreds of moments manually and consistently globally wasn’t scalable or sustainable. So in mid-2024 we returned to showing only public holidays and national observances from timeanddate.com globally, while allowing users to manually add other important moments.Timeanddate.com didn’t reply to requests for comment.