We've seen DIY tinkerers make their own portable hardware plenty of times before. If you need some inspiration, just check out any cyberdeck, or that one time someone turned an Apple M4 Mac Mini into a portable computer. People just love making hardware that you can carry around with you.

As usual, 2025 was a year of deep congressional dysfunction in the US. But state legislatures were passing laws that govern everything from AI to social media to the right to repair. Many of these laws, alongside rules passed in past years, take effect in 2026 - either right now or in the coming months.As of January 1st, Americans should have the right to crypto ATM refunds in Colorado, wide-ranging electronics repairs in Colorado and Washington, and AI system transparency in California, among other things. But a last-minute court ruling offered a reprieve from one high-profile state law: Texas' App Store-based age verification rule.For …Read the full story at The Verge.

You know that feeling you get where you're in a noisy environment for so long, you get used to it? Then you moved somewhere quiet, and you realise just how much noise you've been surrounded by over the past few minutes? That's how I felt when I moved from Windows to Linux a few months ago; once I had an OS that didn't pester me every so often, I realisedjust how spoiled I was using Linux.

We spend our days repeating the same keystrokes, whether it's muting and unmuting Zoom, opening specific folders, or typing out "Best Regards" over and over again. Opting for a macro pad can give you the luxury of one-touch to complete all of these tasks. However, macro pads have a premium price barrier. The Stream Deck or other high-end mechanical macro pads can cost you over $100.

If you've ever felt that your once-snappy SSD was suspiciously slow after years of use, you might be on to something. Although SSDs don't have moving parts that can age with time, other factors can contribute to sluggish performance. Due to the way SSDs store data in NAND cells, their performance can degrade over time if you don't bother with drive upkeep. Outdated firmware and insufficient cooling can also prevent your SSD from maintaining peak performance. It's worth checking your SSD and system for the following signs before you start thinking about replacing the drive altogether.

Have you ever tried downloading Google Chrome on a new Windows machine? If you have, you'll be very familiar with all the prompts Microsoft throws at you to stop you. From a little banner ad for Edge after searching for 'Chrome' using Bing to pop-ups appearing as you navigate the 'Download Google Chrome' page, Microsoft wants to make it very clear that it has a browser, and it'd really prefer it if you used it over Chrome.

A new year is about to start, so the XDA team has been reflecting on the games that we’re looking forward to most next year. The big one, obviously, is Grand Theft Auto VI. Pushed out of 2025 and even further back into 2026 through two separate delays, we’re still eagerly awaiting what Rockstar Games has in store for us next and if it’ll live up to the lofty expectations already hoisted upon it.

As a techie, I’ve been self-hosting my tools for a while now, mostly because I like owning my data and keeping my setup simple. The more I write, the more I’ve also realized how much I prefer markdown over heavy editors and complex file formats. It keeps my writing portable, future-proof, and easy to work with anywhere.

NotebookLM is one of the most powerful tools available to us today, but it boasts a major, glaring downside: you're completely locked in to Google, and all of your data is available for review. Even though privacy is implied, it's not guaranteed. Also, Google doesn't exactly have the best track record of maintaining projects in the long-term (remember Stadia?) For writers with multi-year-long novel projects, that's not acceptable.

Wireless technology has enabled us to progress considerably within the tech space. We have powerful smartphones, laptops, and a whole manner of hardware that allows for the creation of the smart home. Although we've moved through a few standard generations now, we're still encountering issues relating to wireless communications when used with smart home devices. Most homes will have access to an ISP-provided router, the small box that comes with your broadband connection, which is tasked with handling all traffic sent through available channels.

Nothing lasts forever, so you can't really expect your PC to stay relevant beyond its realistic lifespan. PC components can become outdated due to performance leaps, new features, and efficiency improvements, among other things. That said, some components can age worse than others, and I don't mean, say, a CPU vs. a GPU. When you're buying parts for your build, you always have the choice to cheap out on some components or invest in quality, capacity, and performance in each department. The latter can drive up your budget, but it's almost always the smarter decision in the long run. Here are 6 components that you should ideally avoid when building a PC.

I self-host a lot of apps with the only goal in my mind: better productivity. My productivity stack is packed with Docker containers for everything from smart home automation to deep-work productivity. But I’ve learned the hard way that "owning your data" doesn’t mean much if the tools are too clunky to use daily.