My self-hosting home lab setup has evolved into a pretty major part of my home, but it's interesting to me to look back and realize how it all started and how quickly it evolved. I got into this whole idea last year when I had to set up Home Assistant for the very first time, but then this year, after seeing so many of my colleagues talk about what they can do with a NAS and what self-hosting can be used for, I wanted to level up my setup.

If you thought that high-end PC gaming is an all-exclusive club with passes issued only to those with a flagship GPU and a top-of-the-line processor, you would've been quite right 5 years ago.

ESP32 boards are great for making affordable smart devices and IoT projects. Apart from ESPHome-based projects, you need the Arduino IDE and PlatformIO to set up a full development environment for writing code and compiling it into firmware to flash. Both IDEs are great for development, but unnecessarily heavy to flash a ready-made firmware (.bin) file onto an ESP32 board.

Apple has announced the changes it's making to the iOS App Store in Japan in order to comply with recent legislation in the country. It will allow third-party app stores and payment processing options, though is introducing new commission fees for those transactions.Developers in Japan will now be able to distribute apps on alternative app stores, much like in the EU, with AltStore PAL already expecting to launch in the country before the year's end. As in Europe, Apple will collect a 5 percent commission for in-app purchases made in third-party stores.App Store apps will also now be permitted to use alternative payment options alongside …Read the full story at The Verge.

Every time the internet goes down, I always spend some time with Google Chrome's Dinosaur Game. In case you've never heard of it, it's a very simple but amusing platformer that only appears if you get a network connectivity issue in Chrome.

For the longest time, GIMP felt like the obvious choice when you wanted a powerful image editor that’s also free. I’ve been using it on and off for some time now, and while I appreciate the flexibility and depth it offers, it comes with a lot of user friction. It still doesn’t have fully-integrated non-destructive editing for all features, and the modal dialogs can make the UI feel quite scattered.

If you're tired of seeing Instagram posts with a seemingly endless list of hashtags, Instagram is making a change to stop that. In a post today, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said that the platform will now cap hashtags to five per post."While I know it can be tempting to use more, a few specific tags actually perform better than a long list of generic ones," Mosseri says on his "Instagram advice" channel. "Quality over quantity is key." Mosseri notes that hashtags do help with search, but "don't increase your reach" - instead, you should "focus on working out what kind of content resonates with your audience."Instagram has also worked to …Read the full story at The Verge.

OpenAI and Anthropic are rolling out new ways to detect underage users. As OpenAI has updated its guidelines on how ChatGPT should interact with users between the ages of 13 and 17, Anthropic is working on a new way to identify and boot users who are under 18.On Thursday, OpenAI announced that ChatGPT's Model Spec - the guidelines for how its chatbot should behave - will include four new principles for users under 18. Now, it aims to have ChatGPT "put teen safety first, even when it may conflict with other goals." That means guiding teens toward safer options when other user interests, like "maximum intellectual freedom," conflict with saf …Read the full story at The Verge.

There's no doubt that Nvidia currently leads the GPU market with almost no competition in the high-end segment, but fans often exaggerate how far behind AMD really is. As someone who has always preferred Nvidia cards, I'd say AMD's offerings deserve more credit than they usually get. Nvidia has earned its reputation over the years because of ray tracing, AI-powered features, and top-tier halo products like the RTX 4090 and 5090. However, AMD has its own strengths despite the lack of a high-end GPU to match.

The Steam Winter Sale has returned. For well over a decade now, Valve's PC gaming storefront has offered massive discounts on games around the holiday. If you've been saving money this year and waiting for the right time to buy some PC games, now is the best time to do so. For some of the sale's best deals, you'll want to look at Steam's Featured Deep Discounts page.

Few things are as satisfying as arming your home lab with cool virtual machines and containers. However, once your arsenal of virtual guests goes past a certain point, you’ll want to grab a couple of tools to make your management tasks a lot easier. A dashboard, ideally one with built-in monitoring provisions, is one such utility, as it not only helps you access your services from a centralized UI, but also keeps track of essential system metrics. And of course, a sleek interface for showing off your home lab is a part of the charm.

The way PC hardware prices are increasing every year, building a PC can quickly get out of hand. Adding a few pre-owned components to your build is a tried and tested way to keep costs under control. However, many builders are apprehensive about shopping on the used market, worried about authenticity and reliability. While buyer protection can protect you against fake or non-functioning components, some faults take time to rear their head. However, if you do your due diligence before buying used hardware, many components are safe and worth buying used. And while we're at it, I'll also list the parts that you should always buy new, if possible.