We’re often told that self-hosting is a massive technical mountain that only "experts" or "pro coders" can climb. A year ago, I decided to find out for myself. I moved my entire digital life from the big cloud platforms to my own private server, thinking my background in software engineering would be my superpower.

Although I consider AI tools overrated, there’s no denying that their reasoning capabilities make them ideal for tackling boring and monotonous tasks. Local LLMs, in particular, have started to become an important part of my self-hosted application stack, as they’re efficient enough to run in my home lab without sending data to a random company’s servers.

Some of us only switch phones when our old one breaks past the point of being usable at all, but most people like to upgrade every now and then, whether it's for a better camera, performance, or some other new feature. But when you do that, you then have to answer the question of what to do with your old phone. Do you just trade it in? Throw it out and contribute to e-waste?

There's something about a grid of lights that sets off the mind of a tinkerer. It's rare to go a week without someone grabbing an LED panel and finding some cool way to hack it, such as that one time someone stuck four of them into a matrix and had them working in unison.

Over the past two years living with an RTX 4070 Ti-powered gaming rig, I haven't made any upgrades at all. This year was supposed to be different as I had considered doubling my RAM and adding a new NVMe drive, but RAMflation got in the way. On the GPU side of things, I'd never dabbled in overclocking, mainly because I never felt the need, and my GPU came with a factory OC setting that's been turned on since day one.

A lot of the most satisfying 3D prints are not the giant, day-long marathons that dominate printer marketing and social feeds. Some of the best ones are quick, neat little victories that slide off the bed looking far more involved than they really were. That contrast is part of the fun, because a short print with a big visual payoff feels like you got away with something. These are the kinds of projects that make a printer feel instantly rewarding, especially when you want something useful, giftable, or just plain cool without dedicating an entire weekend to it.

It feels like mini PCs have finally caught up to desktops in power, but they're still missing one thing: a portable face! No matter how good your mini PC is, it will just constantly feel like it's on the back foot when compared to a laptop, thanks to the lack of display.

We love our SBCs here at XDA, but unfortunately, due to rising hardware prices, the Raspberry Pi is a bit more expensive than it used to be. The price increases across all of the Pis weren't the same, but in general, the more RAM a Pi had, the pricier it got. These increases meant the Raspberry Pi 5 8GB's price was pushed up to $125, but if you're looking to buy a board for yourself, I have some good news. Micro Center is currently knocking $35 off the asking price, meaning you can grab a board for a cool $89.99 if you're quick.

There's a version of productivity that looks impressive in screenshots and falls apart by Wednesday. I lived in that version for longer than I'd like to admit, bouncing between Notion databases I'd architect beautifully and abandon, Obsidian vaults that became their own research project, and task managers with enough features to manage a small country.

Microsoft didn't budge from its original stance on Windows 11 system requirements. Back then, Windows 10 worked, so it wasn't an issue. Its successor demanded a little more raw power and security hardware, but no one paid attention. Cut to 2026, Windows 10 is on its last legs, and Windows 11 won't run due to missing security hardware support or other official requirements. However, Microsoft's rescinding support for older devices doesn't mean your PC is obsolete.

Gamers have understandably been worried about VRAM capacities, since running out of VRAM during gaming is something no one wants to experience. Companies like Nvidia and AMD haven't exactly kept pace with the VRAM requirements of modern games, which is evident in the series of 8GB VRAM GPUs still being launched. That said, VRAM alone doesn't guarantee a great gaming experience. If your only criterion when buying a graphics card is 12GB or 16GB of VRAM, you may be setting yourself up for disappointment. Adding more VRAM to a weak GPU won't magically fix its poor performance. Similarly, your system could be limited by other bottlenecks, not your GPU's VRAM. Before making a purchase decision, do your research about not only how much VRAM you need for your favorite titles, but also the GPU performance tier you should target.

Usually, when I hear that an update to an OS is one of the biggest changes in that OS's history, I get excited for it. After all, more changes mean more stuff, and more stuff means more things to enjoy when the update finally does arrive. However, there is a time when no changes are good changes, and that's during the Linux release candidate window.