As much as people say they love the stories of video games these days, even more would say they love the action that comes from them. Whether it's fighting hordes of enemies to save the world in Doom: The Dark Ages, or grappling with a personal quest for revenge in Ghost of Yotei, it's the action of it all that kept everyone engaged. And 2025 was filled with a lot of great action games that everyone should play when they have the time.

Most people buy AIO coolers these days, especially for higher-end CPUs that tend to run hot while gaming. They're so popular that you almost expect them in the PC builds you see on Reddit or YouTube. There's no doubt that an AIO makes your build look cleaner and more aesthetic, and the large radiator instantly gives the impression of a powerful cooling system. It surely feels like the right choice for any expensive gaming rig, but is it always the better option for cooling your CPU? Not quite.

I've been a dungeon master for over a decade, and in that time, I've run games in every format imaginable: on forums, tabletop pen and paper with a lot of miniatures, and then once COVID hit, on Roll20. In all that time, I tracked progression and character stats in a lot of different ways. Now? I use Obsidian, and I only wish I'd found it sooner. While Roll20 does boast a few similar features, it's nothing compared to the depth I can achieve with a dedicated Obsidian vault.

For me, Ventoy is both a blessing and a curse. It's brilliant because it allows me to have a USB stick loaded to the gills with different Linux ISOs that I can boot into at the drop of a hat. However, it's also horrible because my distro-hopping brain uses it as the perfect excuse to consider swapping what system I have on my PC every week. In a way, it makes swapping OSes so easy that it enables my bad habits.

Video games have also included a few dominant genres that are always relevant and popular among players. Shooters are a foundational aspect of modern gaming, especially for those who like to go online and play with others around the world. There's just something fun about locking in to a target with an arsenal of powerful weaponry that never gets old. And between big games with a massive number of players to match up with, to remasters of iconic classics from a bygone era, there was plenty to shoot in 2025.

If you've never done it before, building your first PC can be a little overwhelming, even a tad annoying. Maybe you're switching from consoles, or getting a custom PC after years of using pre-built rigs. As a first-time builder, there are things no one tells you about PC building, no matter how much you research or how many YouTube tutorials you watch. While the learning curve isn't exactly steep, there are numerous skills you should ideally have a handle on before you embark on your first build. The alternative is to learn on the go, and I can't promise that it will be smooth or uneventful.

Switching operating systems is exciting enough for enthusiasts like me, but a pain for the everyday user. As computers became more powerful, operating systems started packing more tools and robust security, all of which complemented the growth. However, the old hardware lagged behind, failing to run these modern operating systems. Windows 7 and 10 used to be my go-to operating systems for reviving old PCs, but I never thought Linux distributions would surpass them completely. Unlike Windows, this distro targets low-end systems that barely have resources to spare and don't have room for a hardware upgrade.

A local LLM isn’t really something I planned on setting up. But after reading some of my colleagues' experiences with setting up theirs, I wanted to give it a go myself. The privacy and offline benefits of running a large language model on your own machine are also quite appealing. I’ve actually recently used NotebookLM to help me learn the ropes of self-hosting, so I considered using it for my first local LLM setup, but went with Perplexity instead.

Most PC upgrades sound exciting, futuristic, and even flat-out essential — that is, until you install them. A few minutes later, realization dawns upon you as you notice that nothing has really changed besides a couple of singular digit changes to your benchmark tests. In a market where every other component is marketed as "next-gen", it's surprisingly easy to spend money on hardware that looks powerful on paper but adds practically nothing to real-world performance.

ESP32-based devices come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, but one of the most powerful you can buy at the moment combines an ESP32-P4 and an ESP32-C6. The ESP32-P4 is the most powerful ESP32 you can get, but it's aimed at Human Machine Interface devices especially, packing things like H.264 codec support, way more PSRAM, and more storage. It doesn't support wireless technologies, though, though, and bolting on an ESP32-C6 gives it the ability to communicate over a Secure Digital Input Output (SDIO) bridge and leverage that hardware for Wi-Fi capabilities instead. And with that extra power, you can build and deploy the ESP Brookesia Phone project.

While self-hosting certain services is one of the best choices I've made in 2025, my time spent deploying different containers has also given me a lot more hands-on knowledge of the practice.

Notepad has come a long way over the years, establishing itself as a trusted staple for Windows users. It changed little, remained simple and fast, and offered a user-friendly experience. But things changed quickly. When users began replacing Notepad and switching to alternatives, Microsoft, in the past few years, added a slew of features to Notepad to streamline the experience, with "Autocorrect" and "Spellcheck" being the most talked about introductions.