Real-time ray tracing arrived on consumer GPUs as an optional add-on that you could switch on if your graphics card had the necessary hardware. While seemingly gimmicky at first, the technology evolved as better hardware and implementation helped promote its visual benefits. The performance overhead, however, is still not digestible for the vast majority of gamers. Turning ray tracing off used to be the go-to tip to "boost" framerates, but even that option is disappearing in the latest titles. Ray tracing hardware never kept pace the way it needed to, leaving the eye candy accessible only to a small percentage of users.

Uptime Kuma is one of those tools that quietly becomes essential once you start self-hosting more than a couple of services. It provides a clean dashboard, actionable alerts, and a quick way to see whether the things you care about are responding. The trouble starts when your setup shifts from a few static services to a swarm of containers that change weekly. Suddenly, each new container requires an additional trip to the Uptime Kuma interface to add a monitor manually. That is precisely the kind of repetitive task that makes people put off monitoring until something breaks.

Amazon has announced the first cast member of its God of War live-action adaptation on Prime Video. Ryan Hurst, known for his work as Opie in Sons of Anarchy and Beta in The Walking Dead, will play the titular God of War, Kratos. Though the casting might come as a bit of a disappointment to the fans hopeful that Christopher Judge, Kratos' award-winning voice actor in the games, might have been tapped for the role in some fashion, Hurst has familiarity with series. He voiced Thor in God of War: Ragnarok and earned a BAFTA nomination for the performance.Amazon originally announced the God of War series in 2022 in collaboration with PlayStati …Read the full story at The Verge.

There are a lot of great reasons to upgrade to a mechanical keyboard. So if you've been looking to improve your typing experience without spending a lot of money, now's going to be a good time. This mechanical keyboard by Logitech is simple, reliable, and affordable. Although it's built primarily for gamers, it can still be used for everyday use without any issues. And while it used to be affordable at just $80, it's now an absolute steal at just $40.

If you've been looking for a large-screen laptop that isn't going to cost you a lot of money, then the Dell 16 is going to be it. Not only are you getting a large display, but the power is there too, thanks to Intel's Core 7 150U processor that's paired with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage.

BMW teased its forthcoming all-electric M-series performance sedan today, promising that the quad-motor M3 sports car would feature specs that are truly next level when it arrives in 2027. The M3 will have four electric motors and simulated gear shifting, a feature that is quickly becoming a must-have for electrified sports cars. BMW says the setup unlocks the benefits of both rear and all-wheel drive, with the ability to decouple the front axle.Four motors, though, is a bit of an outlier in the performance world. Tri-motors, sure, you can find plenty, like Tesla Model S Plaid and Lucid Air Sapphire. But four motors are bit a rarer: the …Read the full story at The Verge.

I'm not a huge fan of Windows 11, how it looks and feels, or the features it comes with. Fortunately, for everything Microsoft doesn't do, there are individuals and groups out there who have worked hard at making it a reality. And one such group is Ramen Software.

I’ve spent a lot of time testing the latest "revolutionary" productivity apps. But lately, I’ve realized that the shiniest tools aren't always the best. Instead, I’ve been moving my workflow toward open-source software. There is a huge benefit to using tools that focus on speed and user control rather than monthly subscriptions and forced updates. While everyone else is busy learning complex new interfaces, I’ve stuck to the classic that just works: Notepad++. It’s open-source, lightweight, and surprisingly powerful. Here is why this "old-school" tool still beats the modern competition.

Following its announcement at CES 2026, Nvidia's DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution is now available to Nvidia app users. The update first released in beta last week.

If you were born on or after the turn of the millennium, there's a good chance you never saw a game that had to ship with more than one disk included. For instance, the classic Final Fantasy VII for the PS1 had to ship with three CDs just to fit all of the game into one product. Once you had finished a whole disk of content, the game would ask you to pop the CD out and put the next one in.

OneNote has been the reliable place where great ideas, meeting minutes, and web clippings go live, but often end up forgotten. I often stare at my large notebook and OneDrive library, knowing the answer is buried somewhere in a subpage or in a Word document from three months ago, but lacking the time to dig it out.

For the longest time, a "good" gaming setup, for me, meant raw horsepower and nothing else. I spent my teens dead set on building a "dream gaming setup" that was nothing but the best, and I've lived with a high-end gaming PC and a PS5 for a while now. Over time, I've come to realize that while performance and power absolutely matter, living with both a PC and a PS5 on the same desk taught me something far more important: friction is the real enemy.