Third-party customization apps have been a key part of the Windows experience for years now. People turn to them for several reasons: they may like how it looks, they might want to add a feature that Windows doesn't include, and sometimes Microsoft makes a design decision that makes you want to throw in the towel and try something else.

I spent one Saturday afternoon testing and installing many highly rated Chrome/Edge extensions that promised to "fix" my workflow. Most were bloat. Six weren't. These six extensions solve the chaotic realities of browser-based work — tab overload, distraction spirals, clunky research flows, and reading friction — without demanding you adopt some elaborate productivity system.

A mini PC with two Ethernet ports can transform how you handle home networking. It offers flexibility that many off-the-shelf routers cannot, and it gives tinkerers room to grow without moving to expensive commercial gear.

If the RAM price inflation has taught PC gamers anything so far, it's that 2026 isn't exactly shaping up to be a buyer-friendly year. DDR5 prices have surged to the point where mid-range kits cost more than entire AM4 CPU upgrades. GPUs aren't getting any cheaper either, and the promised "new wave" of next-gen titles hasn't arrived to justify expensive rebuilds just yet. For anyone hoping to jump onto AM5 or refresh an aging rig, this year's hardware climate feels more like a tax than an upgrade cycle.

There was a period of time when PC hardware got weird. Computers were becoming commonplace in people's homes, so peripheral companies were remixing how we use our PCs in the hopes of hitting upon "the next big thing." Most of the tech would be left by the wayside, but some innovations, such as ditching the little tracking ball underneath the mouse with an LED, have stuck with us today.

In November, Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-CEO made a trip to the White House for a lengthy meeting with Donald Trump. According to Bloomberg, the two discussed a number of topics, but chief among them was Netflix’s plan to bid on Warner Bros. At the end of their conversation, Sardonos felt that “Netflix wouldn’t face immediate opposition from the White House.”This week, Netflix successfully won the bidding war for Warner, offering $82.7 billion. It’s well known that Paramount and its CEO David Ellison were eager to acquire the storied studio and its streaming assets. Ellison and his father, Larry Ellison, have close ties to the White House, and as part of their pitch to Warner, suggested that only they were in a position to overcome the regulatory hurdles of further media consolidation. Sarandos seems to have rightly believed that the Ellisons overestimated their political clout. And despite some public efforts to turn the White House against the deal, Netflix won out, for now. There is of course, still a chance that Paramount could launch a hostile takeover effort, or that the Justice Department could try and scuttle the deal — nothing is guaranteed yet. Sarandos tried to acquire Paramount before David Ellison swooped in, so snatching Warner Bros. out from under his nose is likely something of a personal victory.

A little while ago, Microsoft made the first three Zork games open-source to help preserve them. On the surface, it's a nice gesture; Zork is a key part of gaming history, and allowing people to preserve, compile, and run it on their own machines helps keep that history alive. But the more you dig into Zork, the more you realize just how monumental this game series is.

There's an argument to be made that "the real monster is trauma" has become an overused trope in modern horror. Hereditary, The Babadook, and, much less effectively, Smile, are just a few higher-profile examples. But, if you ask me, few films have deployed this trope quite as effectively as the 2020 film His House.The film follows Bol and Rial, refugees from South Sudan, played by Sope Dirisu and Wunmi Mosaku. Both deliver the kind of incredible performances that you rarely see in a genre film like this. It's part of what elevates His House above the standard "haunted by trauma" fare. Mosaku, in particular, shows the sort of nuance and scr …Read the full story at The Verge.

As my smart home setup has grown over time, the security setup has expanded to include a bunch of IP cameras, a few Raspberry Pi cameras for monitoring ongoing projects, and a few budget Wi-Fi cameras as well. But with that expansion, I've run into one annoying problem — making sure everything stays online. The cameras look fine on paper and appear to be doing their job. They respond to pings when I reach them, and the network stays connected. However, ever so often, the cameras silently drop the video stream. There's no alert, no warning, just a dead feed, and I only get to know about it if I check my cameras manually. That's obviously not ideal.

If you follow my work, you probably know that, at this point, I'm mostly using macOS and Linux computers in my daily life. My Mac Mini is my main workstation at home, but when it comes to laptops, I spend most of my time on Linux, and I love it that way.

Now that I’ve been working on home lab experiments for a while, I’ve taken a bunch of precautions to avoid catastrophic failures. From maintaining multiple standalone devices to deploying private storage servers in remote locations, I’ve even spent a lot of time and a fortune on some of these safeguards, but they’re great for my security-first philosophy and data hoarding needs.

Friday, the EU slapped X with a €120 million fine (about $140 million) for violating the Digital Services Act (DSA). It was the first time that a company had been hit with a penalty for running afoul of the law. Elon Musk responded with his trademark tact and professionalism by posting “Bullshit” on X in response to the announcement from the European Commission. But that wasn’t the end, because just a day later Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, accused the Commission of abusing an exploit to boost the reach of the announcement and responded by shutting down its ad account. According to Bier, the Commission had not used its ad account since 2021, but used a post format explicitly reserved for ads in its announcement of the fine against X. He claims that the Commission posted “a link that deceives users into thinking it’s a video and to artificially increase its reach.” (For the record, the post itself includes a video.)The seemingly retaliatory revocation of the European Commission’s ad account is unlikely to materially change things for either X or the EU. If, as Bier claims, the Commission has not used its ad account since 2021, holding it hostage is unlikely to give X any leverage. And, while it can appeal the decision, X is currently still on the hook for the sizable fine. Plus, it must provide details for how it plans to address the “deceptive” use of verified checkmarks in the next 60 days, or face additional penalties.We’ve reached out to the Commission for comment and will update if we hear back.