Microsoft hasn't been the most honest company with its search engine, Bing. It has done some pretty strange and somewhat shady stuff in the past to encourage people to use its search engine. In the past, the company would detect when someone used Bing to search for Google, then show a new page where Bing would mimic Google's design elements to trick people into thinking they had arrived at their intended destination. The truth is, they never left Bing; it's just Bing that looks surprisingly like Google.

You know, Microsoft is pulling the plug on Windows 10 in under a month from now. That operating system had a good 10 years of operation, but as the company shifts focus to the newer, shinier Windows 11, it has to cut off Windows 10 to free up resources. People who have signed up for the additional year of security updates will still receive the occasional patch to keep the operating system running smoothly, but in terms of bug fixes and new features, Windows 10 is complete.

We all love a good, well-written video game antagonist, don't we? A villain who is fleshed out, hard to sympathize with but easy to understand, and you can almost see how they could've been the hero in their own story. On the other hand, it is just as much fun to see a villain just be a straight-up monster who is pure evil just because that's who they are.

Ever since its inception in 2012, the Raspberry Pi lineup has ruled over the Single-Board Computer ecosystem with an iron fist, and for good reason. They are compatible with plenty of distros, compact enough to fit in any tinkerer’s arsenal, and have a lot of community resources designed to help newcomers get their feet wet with SBC projects.

For years, OneNote was my digital home. It was the trusty workhorse for every meeting note, project brainstorm, and idea dump. However, as my workflow evolved, its isolated, static nature started holding me back. After trying out Microsoft’s new Notion rival for a week, I made the risky decision to abandon my entire OneNote structure and shift completely to Microsoft Loop.

We're approaching the end of 2025, and that also means Microsoft is readying a major annual Windows update, just like it does every year. If we go by rumors, Microsoft is only a few weeks away from releasing the Windows 11 25H2 stable update for general users.

Siri’s new logo. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman Apple is testing Siri’s upcoming revamp using an internal chatbot called Veritas. The company’s struggles as it tries to keep pace in the AI race are no secret. The next-gen Siri has been delayed multiple times and the debut of Apple Intelligence was met with a tepid response. Veritas gives Apple the ability to quickly develop, test, and collect feedback on new Siri features like “search[ing] through personal data… and perform[ing] in-app actions like editing photos.“According to Gurman Veritas resembles other chatbot apps like ChatGPT and Gemini. Employees type requests, have back and forth conversations, and can even revisit old exchanges to dig deeper on a particular topic. But, at least for now, it doesn’t appear like there’s any plan to release it to consumers. (Which Gurman believes is a mistake.) Instead Apple plans to keep its internal chatbot just that, internal. Instead it’s looking increasingly likely that Apple is going to rely on Google’s Gemini for its AI-powered search.

Whenever buying new hardware, it's all too easy to get caught in the "bigger number better" mantra and lose sight of which specifications are the important ones. I'm not immune to that misstep, and when I expanded my home lab earlier this year, I was on the hunt for some NVMe SSDs to cache data for my existing NAS, and to fill the empty slots in my new all-flash NAS.

Email isn't exciting, but no one can deny that it still sits at the heart of everyday life and productivity. For open-source users, Thunderbird has been the long-standing favorite, and for good reason. It offers flexibility and control without locking you into a subscription. But Thunderbird is far from perfect. In fact, the app has a bit of a reputation for slow updates and general sluggishness. Betterbird fixes that in more ways than one.

As a freelance blogger, I'm always searching for better tools that give me more control online. Lately, I've been exploring self-hosted apps that I can run on my own computer, allowing me to avoid big companies tracking and controlling my data on my own terms. When I discovered SearXNG, a self-hosted search engine, I got an idea: what if I could use it to create my own private version of Google Alerts? The thought of receiving updates on my favorite topics directly to my phone, without anyone else knowing what I'm following, was too good to ignore. So, I decided to try and build my very own private alert system from scratch.

In the sprawling, hyper-competitive world of PC peripherals, choosing a new mouse feels like a declaration of identity more than a simple purchase. I've been branded on Discord servers by the mouse I use, and there's a clear set of features that set gaming mice apart from the ones that truly mean business. However, a good mouse, at its core, is an extension of your hand — a tool that should fade into the background, seamlessly translating your intent into action on the screen. The perfect mouse is the one that has exactly the features you need and none of the ones you don't.

Forgive me for this; I'm not 100% sure how someone goes about scalping products. I know the general gist, but when it comes to the finer ins and outs, I really have no clue. It's mainly because I have no desire to purchase a product purely to resell it to people in need for an inflated price, so I never really looked into the finer details. Didn't seem like something I wanted to study up on, you know?