Like most chronically online people, I keep coming across cool projects and products. That's exactly how I came across Skylight Calendar. It's a digital picture frame that doubles up as a family calendar. Sounds pretty nifty. What isn't nifty is the $300 price point of the model with a 15-inch display. But it did seem to solve a problem we faced as a family. Like most families, we've been juggling multiple calendars across phones, tablets, and laptops. Everyone has their own schedule, and then we have shared calendars for shared activities. Having access to a shared dashboard for our calendars would solve a big problem with not just glancing at our events, but also with making time for shared activities, especially if the dashboard was always visible and up to date — like the Skylight calendar. But I wasn't very comfortable paying that much for a closed ecosystem and subscription. Thing is, I already run Home Assistant and have a wall-mounted tablet that serves up Home Assistant. How hard could it be to try to build my own version?

Windows XP, nowadays, is a dangerous operating system to use. It hasn't been supported in a long, long time, and there are numerous security holes and issues with it that make it significantly easier to target and attack when compared to modern counterparts, such as Windows 11. However, there's an interesting consequence of its age that, almost paradoxically, helps prevent attacks. Because it's so old, it lacks a lot of modern Windows features... and that includes features that malware may look to take advantage of, too. That's why I installed Windows XP, and then tried to install malware on it.

If you spend any amount of time in home-lab communities or pursuing forums, you’ll notice a weird propensity to dump on Windows. Real home labs run Linux. Proxmox, TrueNAS, ESXi replacements, Docker everywhere. Windows Server, if it’s mentioned at all, is usually treated as an enterprise relic; bloated, licensed, and fundamentally wrong for “serious” tinkering.

The Steam Winter Sale is a great time to pick up new games for a great price. Many big game releases that were highly praised are often given a nice discount. But besides games that came out during 2025, the Steam sale also includes many past releases as well. And one of the best games for the PlayStation 5 made its way to Steam, and everyone can finally pick it up for cheaper.

NVMe has become the default recommendation for almost any storage discussion. It’s faster on paper, newer, and often positioned as an automatic upgrade over SATA. For desktops and laptop use, that logic absolutely holds up. For home lab use, though, the picture is much more nuanced.

We all have dealt with slow, complicated software that promises productivity but delivers frustration. But what if the secret to regaining hours every week wasn’t more features, but fewer? Over the years, I have curated a list of essential, lightweight productivity tools that slip seamlessly into my workflow.

I've been on the home server and self-hosted train long enough to know that when you're constantly experimenting with apps and services, you're tempted to opt in for larger, all-encompassing platforms that promise to do everything. NextCloud is a prime example of such an app. I understand that it's got a place and there's a reason why it's such a beloved tool in the self-hosting community, but for me, I've come to realize that more features do not always translate into a better experience. Control, privacy, flexibility are what drew me into self-hosting in the first place, and I've started preferring apps and services that come without the baggage of excess services, databases, background jobs and more things than you need.

We love Proxmox VE here at XDA, but that's not the only service the company provides. There's a backup solution for Proxmox, a datacenter management tool, and then there's the one we're talking about now — Proxmox Email Gateway. This is an essential program for the enterprise if you'll be hosting an email server to keep company data in-house.

RJ Scaringe is sitting in Rivian's Palo Alto offices, explaining why the adventure-themed EV company suddenly decided to build its own self-driving cars, when an unexpected guest glides by the window outside: Waymo. A robotaxi from the Alphabet-owned company pulls up outside the office. The passenger, an analyst from Goldman Sachs, briefly takes a selfie before climbing inside. The Rivian founder and CEO chuckles at the scene. "That's amazing," he laughs. "So perfect."The arrival of the Waymo helps clarify the challenge that lies ahead for Rivian. A few hours earlier, Scaringe was onstage in front of an audience of hundreds of investor …Read the full story at The Verge.

As someone testing out new Docker containers on the daily, both out of my interest in checking out new self-hosted services, as well as for surfacing cool new utilities here at XDA, I can have dozens of containers running simultaneously. And for the longest time, I didn't notice just how much space Docker was eating up on my SSD. Until one day, I got a low storage warning on my NAS. That didn't seem right, except it was. Docker was hoarding way more space than it really should be.

Over the years, I’ve tinkered with all sorts of home lab paraphernalia, including repurposed PCs, efficient mini-PCs, and even enterprise-grade hardware. But despite owning significantly more powerful devices, I keep coming back to my Raspberry Pi collection for low-power projects. As a result, I’ve got a couple of Single-Board Computers that I tend to use for an experiment or two, before setting them aside and forgetting about them for the next couple of weeks while I work with containers and VMs.

You've probably heard this a million times, but building a balanced PC isn't the right answer every time. Balancing the core components in every build seems sensible on the surface, but quickly falls apart in the face of real-world considerations. Gaming at 1080p involves wildly different considerations than gaming at 4K. And a PC for video editing needs to prioritize different components than one for 3D rendering. Building an intentionally lopsided PC is the best way to extract the most performance out of your budget. You don't need to build a "balanced" PC; you need to build one optimized for your needs.