Expansion cards are fantastic in that they are inexpensive ways to improve the versatility of a host system. This could be network-attached storage (NAS), a desktop PC, or a home lab server. Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) are particularly great for DIY servers where consumer-grade motherboards don't provide the right level of redundant array of independent disks (RAID) or enough SATA ports.

Back before every single application under the sun and every clickable item on our PCs required a constant internet connection to function, there were versions of Windows where being "online" was more of an occasional event than a permanent state of existence. Maybe you had a dial-up, or you shared one family computer. Maybe you waited until after dinner to connect so that nobody picked up the phone, but by and large, life was net-free, and it was glorious.

The conversation around VRAM as of late has felt like a moving goalpost. If you tune into tech forums long enough, owning a GPU with just 8GB of VRAM in 2026 starts to feel like you have signed up for a future of constant compromise. The assumption is quite simple, and remarkably compelling. Bigger buffers mean greater longevity, and anything less than the prescribed amount is doomed to redundancy in "a year or so". However, the year this configuration becomes obsolete is yet to arrive.

I used to throw everything at ChatGPT; research questions, brainstorming sessions, fact-checking, planning. It worked until it didn't. The moment I needed verifiable information or current data, I'd hit a wall. ChatGPT would confidently generate answers that sounded right but fell apart under scrutiny. I needed citations. I needed sources. I needed to trust what I was reading.

Every so often, I have the same dream. I'm back in high school, and I have to take an exam, usually math or history. The problem is, I've either forgotten to study for it, forgotten where the exam hall is, or forgotten when the exam is. Regardless of the problem, I end up bumbling around the school, trying to figure out how I'm going to fix this mess.

We think going with a standard pair of headphones and a standalone microphone are going to deliver the best setup possible when it comes to audio quality. Of course, that means you're often going to spend a lot more when compared to an all-in-one solution like a gaming headset.

In mid-February, the Department of Justice lost its head antitrust enforcer - just weeks before it was scheduled to argue one of the year's biggest anti-monopoly cases in court. Antitrust Division chief Gail Slater announced her departure suddenly, via a post on her personal X account. But to those who follow the agency closely, it was far from surprising. For months, leaks about the division described tensions between Slater and her team with DOJ leadership, and President Donald Trump's penchant for personal dealmaking raised questions about who would really call the antitrust shots. Over the summer, two of Slater's top deputies were fi …Read the full story at The Verge.

Self-hosting sounds great in theory, and running your own password manager, blocking ads across your entire network, and keeping your data on hardware you own instead of someone else's server are all genuinely nice benefits of it. The problem is that actually doing it usually means a lot of work, like maintaining Docker Compose files, understanding basic networking, setting up reverse proxies, and debugging things late at night on a week day when something inevitably breaks. For a lot of people, that's where the enthusiasm dies, and I totally get it.

One day your internet goes out, and suddenly you can't turn on your kitchen lights. You realize your $2,000 smart home is just a collection of expensive bricks without a ping to a server 3,000 miles away.

For most of us, "integrated graphics" still carries baggage. It brings back memories of stuttery desktop animations, YouTube videos that dropped frames, and games that refused to launch unless everything was set all the way to low (if they launched at all). iGPUs were never something you 'chose.' They were something you tolerated until you could afford any type of graphics card. That mental model, however, is outdated now.

The last few years of Xbox have been expensive. Under Phil Spencer's leadership, Microsoft has spent billions of dollars in an attempt to build an ambitious future for gaming that looks a lot like Netflix. And while its subscription service Game Pass started out as a good deal for gamers (although now not so much), that spending spree has led to catastrophic layoffs, studio closures, and confused and inconsistent messaging about what Xbox actually stands for. And with Spencer set to retire as new leadership takes charge, the future of Microsoft's gaming efforts looks increasingly unclear.Spencer announced his retirement last week, after ov …Read the full story at The Verge.

Raspberry Pi projects have a way of failing in the least dramatic, most irritating ways. It’s rarely a burned-out board or a corrupted card that ruins your afternoon. More often, it’s a cable that’s slightly wrong, slightly loose, or slightly in the way. The cheapest upgrades are the ones that keep those small frictions from piling up until you stop enjoying the project.