Most of what I do with local LLMs is text-based work like research, brainstorming, summarization, and the occasional fact-checking. Some of the models I run have vision and that's been genuinely useful too, especially for analyzing UI screenshots and working through layout ideas, but the vision side just reads images and gives you back text, it doesn't generate anything visual.

Whether you have a smart TV or a projector, how do you know that the manufacturer's specifications are accurate? They might not be, and it doesn't have to be because the manufacturer fudged the numbers. I have a colorimeter that I use on every display that comes into my office, and that's what we're going to use to change some settings on the TV for the best picture.

As a fan of retro gaming in general and PlayStation handhelds in particular, my PlayStation Vita still gets a lot of use, but lately it's not for the reason Sony probably imagined. While a lot of my gaming happens on my PlayStation 5, my Vita still gets use for retro titles, especially PlayStation 1 games. Lately, I have added one more use case to it, which might surprise you. Yes, I am talking about media consumption.

I used to treat YouTube videos as part of my research, which I would usually forget about. They were useful, but having to open another tab, after already having too many open, and trying to remember where I saw a part with the info I wanted to review, started to feel like too much. However, once I started adding YouTube videos to my NotebookLM notebooks, they became a single place to ask questions about them, reducing my tab chaos. It didn’t replace watching the videos, especially when visuals are important, but I can say that it made my research process feel less scattered.

When spinning up a VPS or a local LXC, reaching for Ubuntu has almost become reflexive for me. It's what most tutorials assume, the server images are tuned for it, and it's what many of the internet's Linux instances already run, but you hardly see it land on an enthusiast's daily-driver desktop anymore. The preferred distros for desktop use have firmly shifted toward Arch-based flavors, Fedora, and Mint. If you've been paying attention, you'd know that this is hardly an accident, and one particular design decision explains a lot of it: Canonical's all-in bet on snap packages.

Frontend work is where AI coding tools usually expose their real personality. Almost every model can generate a working layout, wire up buttons, and make a page look decent at first glance.

Ever since AMD's AM4 showed how long a socket could last, platform longevity has been a key consideration for PC builders. After all, if you get to keep your motherboard when upgrading your CPU, you save a lot of money and effort. While AMD's AM4 and AM5 platforms have championed socket longevity, Intel has severely lagged in this regard, a gap that might disappear with Nova Lake. That said, a long-lasting socket is only as good as the motherboard quality. An entry-level or cheap motherboard might become the bottleneck long before the socket gets outdated. You don't just need CPU compatibility to make a PC last; you also need future-ready connectivity, expansion, and I/O features. And your VRMs might only prove adequate for your existing CPU, nothing more. The socket decides which CPU upgrades are possible, but the motherboard decides which upgrades are viable.

If you look at the historical Nvidia vs. AMD market share in the discrete desktop GPU space, you'll see a healthy 64–36 split back in 2018. This was before the launch of the RTX 20 series, and Nvidia was still the leader, but AMD had a very respectable 36% share of the market. Since then, AMD's share has steadily declined, standing at a mere 5% at the end of 2025. While there are many reasons people keep buying Nvidia over AMD despite the latter offering more VRAM and value per dollar, my focus here is on the objective compromises you make when going with AMD. Lower ray tracing performance is probably the first thing that gamers think about, even after the vastly improved results of the RX 90 series. However, only a handful of ray-traced titles are truly transformative, and most people prefer more FPS to better lighting, reflections, and shadows. The more visible compromises associated with an AMD GPU are linked to software maturity, ecosystem play, and compatibility with productivity programs. A gamer might not care about these factors, but it matters to consumers who value the entire infrastructure around their graphics cards.

You can't go wrong by adding a security camera to your home or office space. An extra set of eyes brings peace of mind, and it can be had for dirt cheap if you know where to look. You can always try to build your own, but we think going with an off-the-shelf solution is better for beginners.

Summer is the season of gathering. Whether you're hosting a watch party for a big game, feeding a backyard full of family, or simply trying to keep everyone hydrated through long, hot afternoons, access to clean, great-tasting water at home makes more of a difference than you'd think.

As a journalist and a business owner, I spend a lot of time in meetings. Some of these meetings are interviews, while others are discussions or client calls. Additionally, I tend to take a lot of voice notes, recording my thoughts and personal research about things that I might be working on throughout the day.

We live and breathe home lab here at XDA, but knowing where to start can be tricky. Not everyone wants bulky ex-enterprise hardware in their home, let alone the associated noise and power usage, and that's where this deal comes in. The Bosgame E5 is a mini PC with everything that we want to see in a home lab mini server, and it sips power so you can worry about what to run, not what it'll cost to run.