Gen 5 SSDs are everywhere in 2026, and it's hard to resist upgrading to one, especially once you see their advertised speeds. When a drive promises roughly twice the speed of PCIe 4.0 drives on its spec sheet, it immediately makes you wonder whether your current PCIe 3.0 NVMe is outdated. That's how most upgrade decisions start. But the problem here is that you're assuming performance from theoretical numbers, not how your PC actually behaves under regular workloads.

It’s finally the end of the line for the 1st generation Amazon Kindle. | Image: Amazon Amazon has announced that starting on May 20th, 2026, Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fire devices released in 2012 and earlier will "no longer be able to purchase, borrow, or download new content via the Kindle Store," Amazon spokesperson Jackie Burke wrote in an email to The Verge. Users will still be able to read books already downloaded to their devices and can access their accounts and Kindle purchases through the Kindle mobile app, Kindle for Web, and newer devices. If the older devices are deregistered or factory reset, users won't be able to re-register them after the May deadline.The complete list of affected devices goes all the way …Read the full story at The Verge.

The Kindle revolutionized how we purchase and consume books, and Amazon did an excellent job of maintaining even its earlier e-reader models. Right now, you can still download and purchase new books on the first-ever Kindle, which came out close to 20 years ago.

One of the biggest benefits of Flatpaks is how it puts apps into a container. It allows apps to ship with all of their dependencies and keeps them from altering your system files to install themselves, which are fantastic benefits; however, I'd argue the best reason to use Flatpaks is the privacy and security angle. You can control what a Flatpak can and cannot do through apps such as Flatseal, so your apps can't access files or devices if you don't want them to.

It’s not every day you find a decent pair of wireless earbuds with active noise cancellation, a transparency mode, and app support for less than $20, which is why the current lighting deal on the CMF Buds 2A stands out. Now through 11:15PM ET today, April 7th, Nothing’s budget earbuds are available on Amazon in all three colors for just $19.99 ($29 off), which matches their lowest price to date.Nothing CMF Buds 2AWhere to Buy: $49 $19.99 at Amazon (black) $49 $19.99 at Amazon (white) $49 $19.99 at Amazon (orange)For the price, the Buds 2A cover the basics and then some. They deliver decent (albeit somewhat tinny) sound and 42 decibels of noise cancellation, along with an IP54 rating and a useful transparency mode for staying aware of your surroundings. They also provide a commendable eight hours of battery life per charge with ANC disabled — or up to 35.5 with the included charging case — and feature four onboard mics that leverage Nothing’s noise reduction tech, which helps boost voice call quality. I wouldn’t say voice clarity is their strong suit, though, again, they’re a $20 pair of earbuds.Like the rest of Nothing’s entry-level earbuds, the 2A also work with the Nothing X app, adding a level of flexibility that’s hard to find at this price. With the app, you can tweak EQ settings, adjust the bass response, switch between ANC modes, or quickly enable multi-device pairing. There’s even a “find my earbuds” feature if you lose them, and you can assign a gesture to trigger your phone’s virtual assistant on the fly, whether that’s Siri or Google Assistant. On top of that, if you’re using a Nothing or CMF phone, you can use your voice to access ChatGPT directly through the earbuds.

When I replaced my RTX 3090 with a 4090, I expected my frame rates to improve significantly across the board, especially since various benchmarks suggested it was up to 70% faster at 4K and up to 50% faster at 1440p. That kind of jump should've made my RTX 4090 perfect for both AAA and competitive gaming. But that's not what I experienced. I wasn't getting anywhere near the numbers I saw on benchmarks. Sure, games did run better, but just not to the extent early reviews made it seem.

Most off-the-shelf smart buttons use tiny surface-mounted tactile switches. They are hollow, plasticky, and lack the mechanical satisfaction of a real interaction that a switch typically provides you with. There's also a major latency issue, as battery-powered Wi-Fi buttons have to wake up and connect to the AP, and then send a command. That one- to two-second delay makes you wonder if you actually pressed it.

PC hardware has made notable leaps over the past few generations, and many processors now come with fairly capable integrated GPUs (iGPUs). These jumps may have made old computers less capable of handling heavy workloads, but they aren't completely useless.

It’s frustrating to discover your home server or key network service has been offline for hours, only noticing after a complaint or when you need it most. Since our home labs and networks are becoming increasingly complex, ‘hoping for the best’ isn’t a strategy.

Some of the coolest ESP32 projects I've seen involve hooking up the microcontroller to a niche sensor and seeing if it makes for a good project. Sometimes they don't work, and sometimes people discover something that revolutionises how we use these chips.

With RAM and storage prices going through the roof, an all-in-one solution like a mini PC can actually be worth looking at if you're trying to grab a new PC for a more affordable price. Of course, it's not going to be for everyone, with some claiming that it isn't a full desktop replacement, but I like to think that mini PCs work for most people, especially if you're buying one with more power under the hood.

Gaming on Linux has come a long way. Valve's Proton compatibility layer and the Steam Deck have done more for Linux gaming in the last few years than the previous two decades of community effort combined, and we've reached a point where the vast majority of single-player PC games run on Linux without much fuss. ProtonDB data suggests practically every Windows game works in some form on Linux now, and for a lot of people, that's more than enough to make the switch.