The world of tabletop 3D printing has shed its skin of being an esoteric, expensive hobby reserved for engineers and hardcore tinkerers, even though they may be at a slight advantage. Today, getting a capable 3D printer is more accessible and affordable than ever, turning what was once a niche technology into a practical household tool. Converting spools of plastic into unique and functional parts is fun, but you can easily expand your horizons beyond the printing community's creations. I've found 3D printing particularly useful for identifying problems I face and creating bespoke solutions.

I remember crying to my parents to buy me an Xbox 360 because I couldn't wait to play Halo 3 on it, and when I was finally finished with the campaign, I realized I had nothing to do. Xbox Live cost more than a month's pocket money, and I didn't want to tell my folks that the console required more money for me to be able to play online. At the same time, my friend went with Team Blue, picking a costlier PlayStation 3, and thus becoming the de facto king in the extended friend group.

What's better than discovering a well-rated indie game you didn't know existed until today? Having that same title go on the biggest sale it has ever been on. If you, too, love the concept of excellent, cheap, and niche titles, then boy do I have the game for you. Arco on Steam has gone on sale for 50% off, and if you've never heard of it before, it has a ton of positive reviews to back it up.

No one can argue against the monitor being one of the highlights of any PC setup, but buying one without falling into marketing traps is easier said than done. Manufacturers love to market standard aspects of monitors as game-changing features, and the average user isn't savvy enough to know which monitor specs actually matter. Monitor brands can straight up lie about their products without facing any repercussions, because "hey, it's marketing, and everyone does it." So, here are some creative ways monitor manufacturers market specifications that don't mean what you think they do.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. Similarly, if the only tool you have is a 3D printer, every problem can be fixed with a 3D print. Okay, granted, you can actually own a ton of tools and still see everything as something you can fix with a spool of filament, but my point still stands.

Mini PCs tend to do well with their out-of-the-box settings, but sometimes you want to make a few tweaks for additional performance or stability. And like desktops and laptops, mini PC settings can be adjusted from the BIOS in addition to software settings changes you can make through Windows.

Interest in self-hosting seems to be picking up as more people become frustrated with the drawbacks of proprietary services and the impacts of data privacy. At the same time, there are also plenty of reasons why people don't self-host even when they have the skills to do so.

Modern AMD and Intel processors are fantastic feats of engineering, packing billions of transistors inside a tiny package. Over the decades, we've seen improvements made to the number of physical cores available for processing instructions, increased clock speeds to allow the central processing unit (CPU) to handle more instructions per cycle, and more efficient architectures to get as much performance per watt as possible. Most recent CPUs from AMD and Intel will automatically and dynamically boost depending on power and thermal constraints.

Once I got comfortable with self-hosted services, I decided to set up a home lab to play around with different apps and tools related to servers, networking, virtualization, etc. While the process was slightly intimidating initially, accompanying documentation with most services made it simple to figure things out every time something went wrong. However, things started to get confusing when the volume of tools and services increased, because it only meant more documentation, notes, processes, and steps to set them up. Don't even get me started on the terminal commands and troubleshooting methods to fix issues. I wanted something to consolidate everything in one place and simplify it for me. This was around the same time I first decided to try NotebookLM to improve my productivity.

Got friends coming over? The first thing I do is write down the Wi-Fi password on a piece of paper. You know the drill. Guests walk in, get comfortable, and the first question is invariably about the Wi-Fi password. Now, if you are like me, with a fairly complex setup of IoT devices, NAS drives, and more on the network, you'd probably hesitate about giving access to your main wireless network. If you've been prudent about network security, you'd have set up a guest network completely blocked off from all critical devices using VLANs. But not everyone does that. But if you're a homelabber like me, you've probably invested in an Unifi setup and made use of guest vouchers. But much as I love it, it's not fast, and it takes forever to get through the menus for something so basic. There's got to be a faster way.

Are your older Windows 10 machines ready for the October end-of-life support? In case you're unaware, Microsoft is stopping Windows 10's security patches on October 14th, 2024. After that date, your PC won't get any more Windows 10 updates to keep it protected unless you sign up for the extended support program.

If you've been considering upgrading the backbone of your home LAN to 2.5GbE or even to 10GbE, know one thing in advance — it's not as simple as the switch to 1GbE was. However, that upgrade wasn't particularly trouble-free either, now that I think about it, which goes to underscore how important it is to plan your network upgrade in advance.