Before everyone and their dog had a PC and the internet at home, there was a distinct time in the early 2000s when the internet café was where it all happened. It didn't matter if I wanted to work on a school project, sneak a peek at WWE results since they only aired Raw and Smackdown a week later over in India, or beg the guy behind the counter to let me squeeze in a round of Vice City. All I knew was that those dim little rooms were the place to be.

When it comes to allocating a budget for your next rig, most PC builders focus on the pixel-pushing components like the processor and graphics card, with motherboards and RAM being the next priority. Speaking of mobos, the modern motherboard landscape is filled with loads of expensive features that turn out to be marketing gimmicks. But amid a sea of seemingly useless facilities, there are some less-discussed features that are worth the extra money.

Design work is equal parts research and execution, especially if you’re still a beginner learning the ropes. The problem is that those two steps usually live in different worlds — you gather insights in a browser tab jungle, then try to translate them into real visuals in a design software. Since Figma is my top design app, it's usually where that scattered research takes shape.

NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. | Photo: Anadolu Agency via Getty Images An exciting discovery on Mars is being overshadowed by turmoil at NASA, with budget cuts threatening to destroy a scientific legacy that has been built over decades.Yesterday, the agency shared a finding, published in Nature, of potential biosignatures identified by the Mars Perseverance rover in a 3.5 billion-year-old rock."This very well could be the clearest sign of life that we've ever found on Mars," said Transportation Secretary and Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy in a press conference.Leftover fossilsScientists involved in the research were careful to emphasize that the findings - related to unusual textural features of r …Read the full story at The Verge.

It’s easy to assume a home server wouldn't necessarily need a GPU. After all, most of the time it sits headless in a closet or rack. But when the day comes that you do need one, you’ll be glad you kept a cheap card plugged in. Over time, I’ve found that a cheap, even pre-owned GPU isn’t just a safety net. It can be a quiet workhorse that makes your entire setup more versatile.

There are two ways to connect hardware to your local area network (LAN). The first is through the use of Ethernet, which is the tried and tested method, but wireless technologies have come a long way over recent years and are now the preferred route for most people. Depending on what you plan to connect to the network, it's important to consider what you need to use the device for, which can often make wired networking the better option. It's sometimes even believed by some that wireless networking has replaced Ethernet, but that's far from the truth.

I built my current PC on the AM4 platform three years ago, just months before the launch of AM5. While waiting a few months wasn't an option then, I'm starting to feel the consequences of my decision. Don't get me wrong: I've not missed out on much during these three years. The Ryzen 7 5700X and RTX 3080 have been more than enough for most titles, but I admit that I locked myself out of CPU upgrades. Plus, I'm not even confident about upgrading the parts I can because of concerns about crippled performance.

Despite my love for virtualizing operating systems and containerizing services, I always feel a little terrified of messing around with network utilities. After all, I grew up seeing the “It’s always DNS” meme, and have had many projects thwarted by incorrectly set up network files. And as is customary for home labbers, those were errors that I only diagnosed after bringing my entire home’s Internet down.

Everyone’s favorite CEO, Warner Bros. Discovery head David Zaslav, thinks HBO Max is ripe for a price hike. Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology Conference (doesn’t that sound like a fun time?) Zaslav argued that his company’s premium output can command a premium price.“The fact that this is quality — and that’s true across our company, motion picture, TV production and and streaming quality — we all we think that gives us a chance to raise price,” he said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “We think we’re way underpriced.”The recently re-re-branded HBO Max currently starts at $9.99 per month, including ads, peaking at $20.99 per month for its premium plan, roughly in line with its rivals. If that wasn’t good news enough, Zaslav also promised that Max is “going to begin to push” on password sharing, backing up a threat from last month’s WBD earnings call to get “more aggressive” on the practice in September.

I love me a stupid-ass action movie. Something where the plot is thin while the muscles and accents on all the henchmen are thick as hell. Think Broken Arrow or Eraser - movies that were artistically and sometimes commercially terrible but nevertheless thrilling watches that you forgot about almost immediately after leaving the theater. Borderlands 4 is the video game equivalent of that movie. Is it artistically creative? No. Profound in its narrative? Nope. Innovative in its gameplay? Not really. Fun? Absolutely. And honestly, that's all you really need out of a Borderlands game.If you're new to the Borderlands series, it's a looter sho …Read the full story at The Verge.

The built-in solar panel extends the life of the dash cam’s rechargeable battery. | Image: Baseus Baseus has announced a new dash cam that can continue capturing incidents even while your vehicle is turned off. The PrimeTrip VD1 Pro includes both a rechargeable battery and a high-efficiency solar panel it uses to record incidents when motion or impacts are detected for up to 14 days while your car is parked, without draining your vehicle’s battery.It’s available now through Amazon for $169.99 (discounted to $109.99 with a coupon that expires on October 1st) and while the VD1 Pro doesn’t need to be hardwired to your vehicle’s electrical system or fuse box during installation, it’s definitely not a wireless solution. While you’re driving the main unit draws power from your vehicle’s auxiliary outlet so its 4K camera with a 170-degree wide-angle field of view can record continually, ensuring the events leading up to an incident are captured. Another cable, which you’ll need to conceal in the seams of your car’s trim panels, connects the main unit to a second 1080p rear camera with a 120-degree field of view for capturing what’s happening behind your vehicle.The VD1 Pro’s solar panel is about as small as those used on calculators so the unit remains unobtrusive, but it only generates enough power to extend the dash cam’s battery, not keep it charged indefinitely. As a result, you’ll only get up to 14 days of what Baseus calls “standby parking monitoring.” When motion around the vehicle or an impact is detected, the dash cam will wake and capture 30-second clips from the front and rear cameras up to a maximum of 20 incidents or 40 clips that are stored on a 32GB microSD card that can be upgraded. If you’re parking someplace like an underground garage where the available lighting is limited, you can expect the battery life to be reduced.Other features include continuous loop recording that will automatically overwrite the oldest videos when the microSD card gets full, and hands-free voice controls. The VD1 Pro connects to the Baseus mobile app over Wi-Fi 6 for wirelessly downloading videos from the dashcam or uploading firmware updates.

It's easy to get carried away with laptop specifications when you're looking for something new. But if there are some rules to follow, it's to buy something that has slightly better specs than what you'll need and to find that at a price that you can afford. Luckily, we've been seeing some pretty good laptop deals lately, and this OmniBook 5 from HP hits all the right marks, and is now down to just $700 for a very limited time.