The PC hardware world is in a strange, slightly absurd place right now. DRAM prices are spiraling, VRAM is suddenly a luxury, and "RAMflation" has entered the gamer lexicon like it's been here forever. We're staring at 64GB kits selling for the price of an entire console, while GPU rumors suggest that future cards might ship to board partners without memory at all, leaving AIB partners to source it themselves like we're back in the wild west of PC hardware.

You might think that monitoring your home network requires an expensive, extensive dashboard or perhaps some enterprise-grade software. I used to think the same. However, the more time I've spent running, configuring, and monitoring my home network, I've realized that's not necessarily true. While it's true that you might want something a bit more advanced if you are a network administrator, you'll be surprised by how much you can learn about what's happening on your network using tools you already have or free software that takes minutes to set up.

I've been running Docker on my home server long enough to know that once you're deep into the hobby, it can be pretty easy to lose track of everything you're running. Be it media servers, backup services, home automation, or just the odd weekend experiment, you need a better way to control these services. And like many people, for me, this solution came with Portainer. The container management service gives me a visual layer on top of Docker without forcing me into the terminal for every single task. And it's been good enough for the most part.

If you've been trying to access Steam and wondering why nothing can connect, don't worry; it's not just you. As it turns out, Steam has been experiencing some downtime this Christmas Eve, likely as everyone floods onto the Steam store to purchase last-minute Christmas presents. In fact, this is the second time the website has gone down today, as Valve struggles to keep the website afloat amidst the holiday rush.

Linux is a different operating system experience for many, and switching to it can be intimidating. Distros like Ubuntu have done a great job of simplifying the user's experience and focusing on graphical ways of doing things. Windows users aren't accustomed to CLI package management, and there's a learning curve to understanding it. I'm quite familiar with Linux, but some distros can truly test your patience. NixOS literally reworked my brain as I had to kind of relearn and adapt to the way it does things.

Unfortunately, as someone who has reviewed a whole load of gaming peripherals, I have a range of different products that make up my setup. I have a Razer mouse, a Logitech keyboard, a SteelSeries headset, and that's not the end of the list, thanks to my streaming setup and RGB mouse mat. And while all of these products are great, the countless software programs each one comes with are exhausting.

The current PC hardware landscape is unfriendly to say the least. The DRAM price hike has made building a new PC basically untenable, and many are turning to the used market to at least try and offset costs a little bit. If you've made an upgrade to your system recently, or have older RAM lying around, you might be tempted to jump into the used market to make a buck, and while I wouldn't blame anyone for that, there are other ways to use your extra RAM that don't involve selling it.

In a lengthy recent LinkedIn post, notable Microsoft engineer Galen Hunt highlighted a high-profile job opening on a team focused on replacing C++ and C code at the tech giant with a combination of Rust and AI assistance by the ambitious date of 2030. In the post, Hunt writes that his overarching goal is for a lone engineer to be able to write millions of lines of code per month.

The cartoon series Avatar: The Last Airbender is incredibly popular with people of all ages. After making a massive impact with a few seasons of television, the animated series spawned a sequel series and multiple adaptations into video games that featured many of the beloved characters and locations from the show. Fans love the concept of bending the elements into powerful attacks against enemies, while also having a deep connection to philosophical ideas from ancient times. It's a great combination for an epic story, but is also the best mixture of ingredients for an amazing fighting game, which is what Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game is set to become.

When you have a high-end GPU like the RTX 4090 or 5090, it may seem like you're supposed to play all games at native 4K resolution. After all, your card has all the horsepower needed to do so. But the thing is, chasing that resolution still comes with compromises, especially with many modern AAA titles supporting ray tracing. Although the PC community has been pushing toward 4K gaming for almost a decade now, even the most powerful GPUs can struggle at this resolution if you plan to max out all the settings.

We talk a lot about laptops here, and for most people, that means you're either using a Windows or macOS product. If you're a Windows user, but have been thinking about moving over to macOS, it's hard to say whether you're going to like it.

I thought I had reached peak productivity with Obsidian’s local-first, networked note-taking. I was wrong. By connecting Gemini to my vault, I have unlocked a level of insight that manual linking simply can’t match. From summarizing complex research to drafting a quick project plan, this AI-powered workflow hasn’t saved me time — it has upgraded my entire research process.