Self-hosting has always been a big part of how I manage my digital life. I try new self-hosted tools, swap out services, and fine-tune my setup to keep everything fast, private, and under my control. For the longest time, StirlingPDF felt irreplaceable in my productivity stack, one of those rare tools that just stayed. But then I stumbled upon BentoPDF, and everything changed. What started as a quick test turned into a complete shift in how I handle PDFs every day. The more I used it, the more I realized: this wasn’t just an alternative; it was an upgrade for my workflow.

NotebookLM is fantastic at one thing: helping you make sense of large amounts of information in a short amount of time. All I have to do is feed it my documents and weblinks, and it will summarize everything in plain language. I also use it to question my own knowledge with features like quizzes and flashcards.

TikTok has finalized the deal to sell its US business, according to reports from Axios, The Hollywood Reporter, and CNBC. They report that a memo from TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew to employees on Thursday said the deal will close on January 22nd, with Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi's MGX owning 45 percent of the company, while its China-based parent company ByteDance will hold 20 percent.The remainder of the company will be held by "affiliates of existing ByteDance investors," Axios reports. TikTok briefly went dark in the US in January as the divest-or-ban law came into effect. Throughout the year, President Donald Trump granted TikTok a s …Read the full story at The Verge.

A few days ago, Mozilla appointed a brand-new CEO, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo. As part of his big introduction, Anthony made it clear that he was very interested in exploring AI solutions for Firefox, but also made sure to mention how he understands that not everyone is keen to use LLMs in their browser, and will thus keep the process as transparent and customizable as need be.

With RAM and storage prices going through the roof, prebuilt devices are becoming more and more attractive, especially if you're looking to start a new project at an affordable price. That's where mini PCs are pretty much the best way to go right now, providing plenty of power and versatility, along with a price that's hard to ignore.

It's easy to forget about your router if everything is working fine. But upgrading occasionally can be a good idea, especially if you're looking to get added benefits like better speed and range. While there are new technologies always on the horizon, we think that going with a Wi-Fi 6E router is going to be a good middle ground.

Ever since I've started using Linux, I've wished to be able to switch to it full-time, at least on my Windows PCs. However, there have always been some barriers in my mind — after all, not every Windows app is available for Linux. And one of the last holdouts for a while was image editing, because there really isn't a good competitor to Photoshop out there, and certainly not a free one.

Graphics cards are getting more powerful, packed with fancy features like AI upscaling and ray tracing. However, as they get better, they also get more expensive, with some of the best RTX 4090 models coming in at over $2000. While the RTX 4090 delivers absolutely exceptional results, the power it provides is only potential, with so many other factors contributing to whether your graphics card can deliver its full output.

There's something about retro projects and Raspberry Pis that just go hand-in-hand with one another. One of the more prevalent use-cases I've seen involves turning the SBC into a retro gaming console, as it's small enough to fit in a tiny case yet powerful enough to emulate the classics.

Like millions around the world, I always ran ad blockers and tracking blockers within each browser. Pi-hole came and went, as well as a few other options for network-wide coverage, and still, I stuck to my guns with localized management. That was until I revamped the home lab and started to mess around with Pi-hole. All was well until I looked at what else the OPNsense firewall could run. That's when I stumbled onto AdGuard Home.

It was very surprising seeing a new video game release that was based on the 90s action movie classic, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Luckily for me, and every other action movie fan out there, Terminator 2D: No Fate was a fun adaptation of the iconic movie that looked fantastic. Being able to play as Sarah Conor, the T-800, and John Connor through an experience that had the look and atmosphere which made the film so heavily beloved was fun and engaging. It not only gave us the best scenes in the movie, but it mixed things up with a few extra layers that made me wish we had a game like this back when the movie was first released in 1991.

A Falcon 9 launched 29 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit on December 1st, 2025. | Image: SpaceX SpaceX says it has lost control of a Starlink satellite that's now falling back to Earth after suffering an anomaly. The sudden loss of communications, drop in altitude, "venting of the propulsion tank," and "release of a small number of trackable low relative velocity objects," suggests the anomaly was some kind of explosion. SpaceX says it poses no threat to the crew of the ISS and will burn up in the atmosphere "within weeks."This mishap comes a week after SpaceX reported a near miss with a Chinese satellite. On December 17, Starlink experienced an anomaly on satellite 35956, resulting in loss of communications with the vehicle at 41 …Read the full story at The Verge.