Ever since Microsoft introduced Python in Excel, I have treated it as a ‘someday’ project. I knew Python integration was the key to unlocking better automation and deeper insights, but the transition from traditional formulas to data frames comes with a steep learning curve.

If I were to merely mention the blue-and-silver BMW M3 GTR E46 in a crowd of gamers, I'd undoubtedly hear at least half of them go 'ooh' and 'aah' excitedly, the exclamations dripping with nostalgia. Do that today for gamers born after 2010, and the reaction would be drastically different. That's because we haven't had a truly iconic hero car in racing games for far too long now, and that absence is starting to feel heavy. Movies still understand this. Brian O'Conner's orange Toyota Supra and green Mitsubishi Eclipse, Han's VeilSide Mazda RX-7, or John Wick's Mustang — these cars are extensions of character, memory, and myth.

I am extremely prone to distraction and procrastination, and that's a fatal combination for productivity. A small distraction, such as a notification or the urge to change the song I have playing in the background, can send me down a rabbit hole of diversions that make even quick tasks take significantly longer than they should. I often feel like I spend as much time fighting my own impulses as I do actually working, so I decided to do something about it. I turned my desktop into a distraction-free writing environment, and I did it all using free tools.

A NAS is often sold as a one-stop solution for everything related to storage and beyond. It is touted as a replacement for the cloud and many of the services you otherwise rely on the internet for. It feels like a superpower — a device that can not only store your files but also act as your media backup, project management software, email host, a place to run Docker containers, smart home manager, surveillance station, and whatnot.

The Raspberry Pi 5 is the first Pi that genuinely feels like a modern computer rather than a quirky little experiment. It has enough CPU power, RAM, and I/O bandwidth that you can forget about most of the old bottlenecks and just get things done. Whether you are running a desktop environment, hosting services, or juggling a handful of containers, it rarely feels out of its depth. That alone puts it in a very different category than the boards that made the Raspberry Pi name in the first place.

High-end GPUs have always been expensive, but we're in for some wild years ahead. The ongoing AI-fueled memory shortage has already skyrocketed consumer RAM prices, with storage drives following closely behind. The next component to join this PC hardware winter is the graphics card, a much sought-after entity on any gaming PC. The DRAM supply reassignment and consequent dip in production are set to make high-end graphics card ownership harder than ever. My plan to upgrade from the RTX 3080 to another high-end GPU will have to wait till we're on the other side of this years-long crisis. Till then, a mid-range GPU will have to do, not that I'm complaining much.

There's no denying that GitHub is a critical part of modern software development processes. Between repositories, issues, pull requests, documentation and releases, it covers the length and breadth of modern development processes and releases. But if you tinker a lot, of spend a lot of time coding up small utilities or, perhaps, are just learning how to code, you might be wondering if it's even worth uploading this half-baked code to a third-party server.

Valve has announced the winners of the 2025 Steam Awards and, unsurprisingly, Hollow Knight: Silksong, took home the Game of the Year honors. It was also given the "Best Game You Suck At" award, which, I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. Given the relentless fawning over Silksong since its release in September, an event that nearly brought the entire digital video game distribution system to its knees, that it would win Game of the Year felt like something of a forgone conclusion. The Best Game on Steam Deck was awarded to Hades II (an award we'd already unofficially granted it). The mechanics of Hades lend it to being played in sh …Read the full story at The Verge.

The Onero H1 is a humanoid household robot on wheels. | Image: SwitchBot SwitchBot is bringing a new household robot to CES 2026. The smart home company is launching the Onero H1, which it calls "the most accessible AI household robot." The announcement follows last year's debut of its multitasking household bot - a robot vacuum mounted to a mobile platform.SwitchBot says the Onero is a general-use humanoid robot designed to eliminate housework that can complete "everyday actions such as grasping, pushing, opening, and organizing, while learning to adapt across different tasks and home scenarios." A video the company shared ahead of the show demonstrated the Onero doing household tasks like filling a coffee m …Read the full story at The Verge.

I fondly look back to a time in hardware history when memory upgrades were simple. You bought a machine, popped open the bottom panel a few years later, installed more RAM, and added a few years to its life without much fuss or expenditure. This upgrade path, however, seems to be waning for modern devices.

You must be able to trust the NotePin S — doctors use it! Plaud has updated its compact NotePin AI recorder. The new NotePin S is almost identical to the original, except for one major difference: a button. It's joined by a new Plaud Desktop app for recording audio in online meetings, which is free to owners of any Plaud Note or NotePin.The NotePin S has the same FitBit-esque design as the 2024 original and ships with a lanyard, wristband, clip, and magnetic pin, so you can wear it just about any way you please - now all included in the box, whereas before the lanyard and wristband were sold separately. It's about the same size as the NotePin, comes in the same colors (black, purple, or silver) …Read the full story at The Verge.

Belkin has announced a new wireless display adapter that works without the need for a Wi-Fi network. The ConnectAir Wireless HDMI Display Adapter includes a USB-C transmitter you connect to devices like laptops, tablets, and phones, and an HDMI receiver that plugs into a display. You don't need to install drivers or stick to compatible apps, and Belkin says the adapter's range maxes out at 131 feet, so you can use it while crashed in a hotel room or to present through a distant projector in a conference room.The wireless adapter, which is expected to be available in "select markets" starting in Q1 2026 for $149.99, isn't as convenient as A …Read the full story at The Verge.