An old laptop may not be good enough to run your primary operating system anymore, but even an older and weaker PC can still be useful in many ways. And as a fan of gaming, of course, I found a use for mine as a new way to play my favorite retro games on a larger, but portable screen, all thanks to Batocera.

OpenAI is launching Daybreak, an AI initiative focused on detecting and patching vulnerabilities before attackers find them. Daybreak uses the Codex Security AI agent that launched in March to create a threat model based on an organization's code and focus on possible attack paths, validate likely vulnerabilities, and then automate the detection of the higher risk ones.Its launch comes just over a month after rival Anthropic announced Claude Mythos, a security-focused AI model it claimed was too dangerous to publicly release and only shared privately as a part of its own initiative, dubbed Project Glasswing. Still, that didn't stop at leas …Read the full story at The Verge.

As great as Linux can be, it's easy to look at the sheer number of desktops and distros you can use and be overwhelmed by all the differences between them. The truth is we often talk about Linux in contrast to Windows, but the latest Windows version only has one desktop paradigm, and even across versions, it doesn't tend to change that dramatically; so, having different Linux platforms be so radically different on the surface can be confusing.

If you’ve always liked the idea of the Philips Hue Go portable lamp but couldn’t justify the $100+ price tag, Govee recently released a much cheaper alternative, the Govee Table Lamp Classic, and it’s already receiving its first discount. Right now, you can pick the rechargeable smart lamp up at Amazon for $63.99 ($16 off), which makes it less than half the price of Philips’ portable smart lamp.Govee Table Lamp ClassicWhere to Buy: $79.99 at AmazonThe cordless lamp features a built-in 4,800mAh battery, which can last up to 30 hours with colored lighting enabled, though that drops to around five hours when using brighter white lighting. That’s not quite as long as the Philips Hue Go, which Philips says can last up to 48 hours on a charge, but on the flip side the Govee is brighter, delivering up to 500 lumens of brightness. It’s also lightweight enough to easily carry from room to room or bring outside, though you’ll want to be careful outdoors since it lacks the Philips Hue Go’s IP54 weather resistance rating for protection against rain and splashes.In addition, the Govee supports adjustable color temperatures ranging from a warm 2700K to a cooler 6500K, and like with many of its smart lighting products, offers a slew of fun, colorful lights effects. You can have it sync to music while you’re hosting people, or switch between different preset scenes to set the mood, many of which are organized around specific moods and themes like “romance,” holidays, and more. Through Govee’s app, you can even type in prompts describing the vibe you want and the lamp will generate matching lighting effects for you. The lamp also supports Matter, meaning you can control it through major smart home platforms.

Server dashboards are rarely one-size-fits-all. Requirements, styling, and use cases vary widely from user to user. They are either lightweight but limited, or feature-packed but heavier than the containers they monitor. In my case, I run my homelab server on a repurposed desktop, and I'm already running more than 17 Docker containers across seven services. In other words, the server was already near its limits, so a heavy, feature-packed dashboard wasn't a viable option in my case.

I spent countless hours researching the absolute best components for my dream 1440p gaming setup, meticulously cross-referencing CPU architecture, optimal VRAM capacities, and high-end motherboard power delivery systems before making my purchases. When the final package arrived and the system successfully booted on the very first try, I genuinely believed the hard work was complete, and I could finally enjoy the fruit of my labor. However, the reality of my initial gaming sessions was far less spectacular than the benchmark charts had promised. I was left deeply frustrated and questioning my expensive hardware investments.

The idea of having everything running locally has always appealed to me. I swap in a self-hosted alternative for any service that'll take one. It allows me to avoid a lot of monthly fees, it keeps my data off of third-party servers, and I don't need to rely on someone else's service being available. I tried applying this same philosophy to AI by pulling a few different models through Ollama, with the hope that it would eventually eliminate the need for cloud models like ChatGPT and Claude.

It’s no secret that AI-powered development has moved from simple autocomplete to full-scale autonomous agents. But the real question is, which popular tool survives a week of deadlines and complex refactoring?

Thinking Machines, the AI company founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, announced Monday that it's working on something called "interaction models." The idea behind interaction models, according to Thinking Machines, is that they will let people "collaborate with AI the way we naturally collaborate with each other - they continuously take in audio, video, and text, and think, respond, and act in real time."As explained by Thinking Machines:Today's models experience reality in a single thread. Until the user finishes typing or speaking, the model waits with no perception of what the user is doing or how the user is doing it. Until th …Read the full story at The Verge.

Synology is the top dog when it comes to prebuilt turnkey network-attached storage (NAS) enclosures. The company has been making connected storage solutions for more than two decades, so it knows a thing or two about what makes a compelling user experience. It's also what makes the brand's catalog of NAS easy to recommend for beginners and familiar members since they're just so easy to use. If you've never touched a NAS before, it's still possible to go from zero to hero in a matter of minutes with a Synology NAS, even if the company hasn't exactly been a beacon of hope for the NAS community recently.

The company behind the robot lawn mower that ran me over has changed its tune. Yarbo now plans to completely remove the remote backdoor access that could have let bad actors reprogram the robot over the internet. Yarbo customers will be able to decide whether that feature even gets installed in the first place, co-founder Kenneth Kohlmann pledges to The Verge.Yarbo had already promised on Friday that it would tackle many security issues head-on, closing the holes that let security researcher Andreas Makris easily hijack any of the bladed robots from the other side of the globe, while also exposing email addresses and GPS locations. But whe …Read the full story at The Verge.

I've been running local LLMs for a long time. I have a Radeon 7900 XTX in my homelab, I've benchmarked the things to death, and I've written before about benchmarks don't necessarily always reflect real-world performance. But for quick, easy queries, or anything where I wanted a fast, sharp answer to a question with some good sources, ChatGPT or Claude were tools that I'd reach for. The cloud still had a quality gap that local models were only starting to close.