Microsoft has a little bit of an embarrassing situation on its hands. Its big entry into the handheld market is the ROG Xbox Ally, and its more powerful brother, the Ally X. Both of these consoles are mighty, well-made devices, but they reportedly get even better if you strip Windows off them and replace it with either SteamOS or Bazzite.

I didn't build a home lab just to run Plex and Pi-hole. I mean, that's some of the reason, but I also did it so that I could form an understanding of how things work. What better way to learn about enterprise-level IT infrastructure than to immerse yourself in it at home, where little mistakes won't lead to the boss breathing down your neck or a barrage of new help desk tickets being filed?

If you're someone who multitasks between two devices for your daily work, being efficient is extremely critical. While you can easily plug in and swap any accessories between two devices, it makes it a lot easier just to have one USB switch that can cater to both. This not only keeps things in order, but it also cuts down on downtime as well.

Most local AI users assume that a bigger model is always better than smaller models. It is always expected that more parameters equal smarter outputs. I also had similar assumptions. For a long time, 7B models felt like entry-level, and I thought of upgrading to a larger model.

For most people, it's not very exciting to talk about workstation GPUs. Many gamers may not even know that Nvidia, AMD, and Intel manufacture GPUs not meant for gaming. However, advanced users, home labbers, and professionals know the importance of enterprise GPUs, even the pre-owned models selling on eBay. These graphics cards are barely relevant for gaming compared to consumer GPUs, but even the old models still pack a punch for professional workloads and home servers. If you're after a capable yet economical GPU for your home server, a used workstation card may be way better than a consumer card, even at the same price. Enterprise GPUs are built differently and offer unique advantages that are missing even on modern consumer cards.

Sometimes you stumble upon the trifecta of a perfect DIY project: it uses popular hardware, you can hook it up to Home Assistant, and it's really impressive. They're rare, but when they do happen, they get me thinking about all the ways I could use it in my own home. That's a sign of an excellent project, if you ask me.

Tax season is here for those who reside in the US, and the deadline to file is coming quickly, set as it is for every year on April 15, 2026. For most people, it's going to be a fairly simple affair, and you'll be able to file for free using the official website. But for others, their finances could be a bit more complex, which may require some added help from third-party software.

Anthropic is making it easier to switch to its Claude AI from other chatbots with an update that brings Claude's memory feature to users on the free plan, along with a new prompt and dedicated tool for importing data from other chatbots. These upgrades could allow users who have been using rivals like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google's Gemini to quickly copy the data their preferred AI has collected on them and bring it over to Anthropic's chatbot. That way, they don't have to "start over" teaching Claude the context and history their previous chatbot already knows. The option to import and export memories from Claude has been available since O …Read the full story at The Verge.

Recently, I’ve been exploring Claude and figuring out where it actually fits into my workflow. As a freelance tech blogger, I noticed my biggest slowdown wasn’t writing but managing information. I kept searching for notes, organizing drafts, and repeatedly explaining context to AI tools. The writing itself was easy, but the workflow wasn’t.

‘Live Search’ can describe what your cameras see, not just what they’ve seen. | Image: Google Google Home chief Anish Kattukaran announced several updates to the smart home platform that fix a long list of annoyances and idiosyncrasies. There's also one noteworthy new addition: the introduction of "Live Search" for your cameras.So, instead of Gemini only knowing about things that have already happened, it now understands what it sees in your live camera feeds. That means you can ask things like, "Hey Google, is there a car in the driveway?" Live Search requires a subscription to the Advanced plan of Google Home Premium, which costs $20/month or $200/year.Gemini for Home is now also using updated models, a change that should impro …Read the full story at The Verge.

The OrangePi Neo was going to be an exciting launch for fans of both portable gaming and open-source software. It's a console that doesn't look too unlike a Steam Deck, but it runs Manjaro Linux with KDE Plasma 6 and flatpak installations. The predicted price point for this console looked very reasonable: 450$ for the 16 GB RAM version, and $550 for the 32GB model, with both of them sporting 512GB of storage space.

A Raspberry Pi makes a rough desktop the moment you ask it to behave like a modern PC. The browser feels heavier than it should, even before you start piling on extensions and tabs. Storage hiccups show up in little stutters that are easy to ignore on a faster machine, but hard to unsee once you notice them. Even simple updates can take long enough to make you wonder what else you could have done with that time.