For years now, GIMP has handled resizing an image in the same way. If you, say, import a photograph you really like, shrink it, and then decide you actually want it a little bigger, you'll notice that the photo is now a blurry mess. This is because it imported the photograph as a set of pixels; when you squash it down, it removes the pixels that no longer 'fit'. Then, when you stretch it back out again, it just enlarges the pixels that remained, meaning everything looks low-quality.

There are millions of apps hosted on the Play Store, and all of them work great on your Android phone or tablet, but just a few advertise compatibility for Chromebooks, and fewer still for Android Auto (AA). It shouldn't be confused with Android Automotive OS (AAOS), which is the open-source OS that powers infotainment experiences in cars right off the factory floor. AAOS doesn't need a connection to a smartphone like AA since it runs the Play Store natively. However, AA is more widely available, easier for carmakers to throw into their products, and still offers a sizable selection of apps that benefit the user experience.

Gaming on Linux is no longer the joke it used to be. Once relegated to the world of professional use and nothing else, gaming support on the open-source operating system has been gradually growing over the past few years, and it has gotten to the point where some people claim that Linux runs their games better than Windows does.

In an ideal world, companies that design and support PC accessories would ensure that it works on every OS out there. Unfortunately, that's not always the case; sometimes a company will only support one or two different operating systems, leaving the rest to make do without.

Running AI models locally is extremely useful, but there are obvious limitations to it. Most setups are tied to just the computer that's running the model and, usually, if you switch over to another device or a tablet, you're locked out of your local AI setup. It's a problem that's plagued me for a while. I have a machine dedicated to serving up and testing local AI models, but when I want to make use of that functionality, it meant using that specific computer. If I switch over to my laptop to work from the couch, the AI tool that I relied on is obviously not available.

There are devices that are held back by the technology of their time, and that's a nice problem to have. But then, there are devices which are held back by simple economics. The latter is a much harder problem to solve.

Anthropic's Claude has been around since March 2023, just four months after OpenAI launched ChatGPT publicly. While you might not have tried it back then, all the recent OpenAI x Anthropic x Pentagon drama has pushed Claude into the spotlight like never before. It even climbed to the top free app on the App Store (overthrowing ChatGPT for the first time), and even Katy Perry shouted it out.

In September, Donald Trump claimed that "the United States is getting a tremendous fee" for brokering the TikTok deal. Now sources tell the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times that fee is expected to be in the range of $10 billion. The money is supposedly being paid by new investors, including Oracle and Silver Lake. Reports are that $2.5 billion was already paid to the Treasury when the deal closed on January 22nd. The rest will be paid out in installments.This is the latest example of the Trump administration inserting itself into private business in unprecedented ways, including taking on a 10-percent stake in Intel last August, …Read the full story at The Verge.

I used to think that every graphic or image needed to be edited to perfection, and to edit them to perfection you needed pro-level tools. Through my hobbyist editing journey, I realized there’s more to design than Photoshop. Not everything needs to be a masterpiece. Some graphics and shots just need a few simple tweaks, and there’s no need to load up a heavy editor only to adjust a couple of sliders.

When I moved from Windows to Linux in mid-2025, I thought I knew all the things I had to know before moving. Yes, I realised that Linux isn't Windows, so things like EXE files wouldn't work. Yes, I knew that not all apps would work on Linux, so I'd need to find alternatives. You know, the run-of-the-mill stuff that every Linux user tells someone wanting to move operating systems.

It would be disingenuous to say that ray tracing is a gimmick in 2026. Eight years after Nvidia first brought real-time ray tracing to consumer GPUs, the technology has certainly evolved and become a key part of modern gaming. Path tracing has brought exceptional realism to some games, and helpful tools like upscaling and frame generation have somewhat mitigated the associated performance hit. That said, the idea that ray tracing and path tracing are a must and GPU buying decisions should hinge on ray tracing performance, isn't something I agree with.

A new graphics card is usually the most impactful upgrade you can make to a gaming PC. Jumping to a GPU several generations removed from your existing one can elevate your gaming experience to new heights. For me, however, GPU upgrades have not been as revolutionary as they could have been. Whether it was due to my buying decisions, a 60Hz monitor that I used for years, or gaming at 1080p for ages, my GPU upgrades always felt par for the course. I switched from the GTX 1050 Ti to the GTX 1660 Ti, then to the RTX 3080, but even that last leap didn't feel as groundbreaking as the other upgrades on this list. Perhaps going from a hard drive to an SSD and using an OLED monitor for the first time are that much more game-changing than an FPS jump, or maybe it's just about the right upgrade at the right time.