I'm always in search of the perfect desk setup. It's like a never-ending quest, and I test a whole bunch of products to try and find the best combination. I use a CableMod coiled USB-C cable, a Logitech ergonomic keyboard, and a BenQ light bar but I keep Satechi products on my desk and workbench more than any other brand. They make chargers, hubs, and plenty of other tech accessories and everything is at least 25% off for Prime Big Deal Days and the brand's fall sale.

Setting up a smart home involves a maze of competing standards and the need for hubs, dongles, and multiple apps to manage everything. It's honestly exhausting, but there is a better way. No, it's not filling your home with smart speakers to interface with the apps for you, although that is one option. There's one system to rule them all, and it's called Home Assistant. Able to run as a full-fledged operating system or as a Docker container, this fantastic smart home management tool ties into thousands of other companies' APIs, so you can automate your smart home in a system you control.

There was once a time when membrane keyboards were pretty much your only option. If you could find a mechanical keyboard, it was either old or ridiculously expensive. However, it seems these days that mechanical keyboards are pretty much the norm and have all but replaced membrane keyboards.

There are several reasons you might find yourself wanting to clone your Raspberry Pi filesystem to a larger storage device. Maybe you started with a smaller microSD card and realized you need more storage. You also might want to transfer everything to your NNVMe SSD after installing it. Whatever the case, this is an easy process. In many cases, youll even be able to clone your Raspberry Pi microSD card right from the Pi itself.

There are a lot of great reasons to upgrade your router, but perhaps the most important reason is so that you can take full advantage of the internet speeds that you're paying for. And if you've thought about it but have pulled away because of the high prices, well, we think this router is going to be for you.

Image: The Verge A treaty finalized by the UK may bring about the end of the .io domain. Last week, the British government announced that it has agreed to give up ownership of the Chagos Islands, a territory in the Indian Ocean it has controlled since 1814 — relinquishing the .io domain with it.But first, let’s take a step back (and I mean far back) to see how we got here. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Chagos Islands were settled by the French in the 1700s, who brought slaves to the archipelago. In 1814, the French ceded control of the Chagos Islands and the island country of Mauritius to the British. When the British took over, the Chagos Islands remained a dependency of Mauritius.In 1965, the UK granted Mauritius its sovereignty, but... Continue reading…

Windows PCs, like the best Macs, are not immune to cybersecurity threats such as malware or phishing scams. However, Microsoft has packed in several tools to help you stay protected, including Windows Security and Microsoft Defender. Telling the two apart can be confusing because Microsoft Defender is essentially part of Windows Security, but there are also extra features available in a separate app. To help you understand, weve broken down what each app does.

Microsoft recently introduced a new version of Outlook on Windows PCs. It was designed to replace the aging Windows Mail and the classic Outlook, so it introduces a slick new design and significantly tighter cloud integrations, while combining your email and calendar into one app. It also introduces new generative AI features, including writing assist and other advanced AI features."

Affinity Designer is part of the Affinity suite trio, which also includes Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher. Serif Affinitys programs make great alternatives to Adobes three most popular software: Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. However, like the Photoshop features missing in Affinity Photo, there are plenty of Illustrator tools you cant find in Affinity Designer. That doesnt make Affinity Designer a bad tool. In fact, it offers a great interface and plenty of helpful tools for digital design. But before you make the jump, you should know what to expect from the tools and what won't be available.

The proliferation of AI throughout our daily lives is impossible to ignore. It has begun to entrench itself deep in our workflows, including everything from music playlist generation to automating tedious tasks in photo editing. The level of access we have to AI will continue to rise exponentially, and with it, academic dishonesty. I graduated from high school many moons ago, far before any LLMs existed in the eyes of the public, let alone crafty students. I can only imagine what the current teaching landscape looks like in the average tenth grade classroom, but one thing I can say for sure is that there are still plenty of TI-84s kicking around.

You don't need to spend more than $300 on a reliable network-attached storage (NAS) to store all your data and run some apps. The QNAP TS-233 is a two-bay enclosure designed for storing data from multiple devices at home. It may not have all the flashy specification highlights of other enclosures with 10Gb networking, Intel core processors, and more RAM than your desktop PC, but it holds its own when used accordingly. What sets this NAS apart from the crowd is the value. For Prime Big Deal Days, you can buy the QNAP TS-233 for just $152.

Just a few taps in Google Photos, and you can AI the crowds away. Skógafoss is a must-see, everyone said, and in a country with as much natural beauty as Iceland, that means it’s gonna be some majestic shit. The waterfall didn’t disappoint, but even on a chilly weekday in March, the place was mobbed. My photos — and c’mon, you have to take photos — were littered with tourists in puffy coats, all taking their own pictures of the falls. Not exactly the stuff you print and hang on the wall.A couple of months later, I watched a picture of the same waterfall appear onscreen at Google’s annual developer conference as the company demonstrated its new AI-powered Magic Editor. In this version, a puffy-coated tourist stood in front of the falls on a gray day. CEO Sundar Pichai talks through the edits happening... Continue reading…