Hardening your home network is crucial to safeguard your devices from the constant scourge of malware. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to bolster the defenses of your systems, ranging from VPNs and multi-factor authentication to locally-hosted firewalls and intrusion prevention systems.

Oh boy do we love a new IP in gaming. Games that try something new, tread the road less taken, and experiment with novel designs or mechanics. Now, they might not always land, but I don't think any new IP or dev team should be judged on their first outing alone. In fact, it's the sequels that really define a series, because they come with a polish only maturity can bring, after the devs listen to feedback, expand and realize their full vision, and iron out the kinks from their previous outings.

Who doesn't like a good love story? Two people meet, they hit it off, and the next thing you know, there's cheeky banter and flirting before falling in love. As straight to the point as it might sound, that's not always the case, and there aren't a lot of 'great love stories' that the world knows because they ended well.

Home labbing sounds like a complex endeavor requiring practical knowledge and plenty of devices. You need to have an array of devices ranging from desktops, screens, single-board computers, and smart/IoT devices. I always looked at it this way, unless I dived headfirst into the scene and discovered it was quite the opposite. You don't need a high-end ring for a simple homelab setup and automation; even an old but functional smartphone can help you start out.

Subtle, it is not. Honor has launched a new flip phone today, the Magic V Flip 2, and it arrives with a sparkly special edition in partnership with fashion designer Jimmy Choo.The former Huawei subsidiary has partnered with Choo before, for last year’s V Flip, and has kept to a similar formula this year, swapping glittery green for a brilliant blue. It also comes with custom wallpapers that are somehow even less subtle than the phone itself, an engraved hinge that’s oddly insistent on using Choo’s full name and titles, and a pair of sparkling cases so you can keep the phone both safe and shiny.The phone itself looks pretty impressive, and also comes in non-Choo versions in purple, white, or gray. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip inside isn’t quite top tier, but the full-size OLED cover screen is. It’s also got a 5,500mAh battery — pretty enormous for a flip phone, thanks to compact silicon-carbon tech — and supports 80W wired charging and 50W wireless. Water- and dust-resistance caps out at IP58/59 though, so the Pixel 10 Pro Fold’s IP68 exclusivity holds for now.The V Flip 2 is available to preorder now, but only in China. If you’re hankering for a glittery flip phone but don’t live in China, there’s always Motorola’s Swarovski gem-encrusted Razr, set to launch soon. Meanwhile Honor itself has a London launch event on August 28th planned for its larger Magic V5, currently the world’s thinnest book-style foldable.

Ask home lab veterans about their motives for self-hosting services, and you’ll hear a bunch of different answers. Some tinkerers despise the privacy-intrusive nature of modern cloud platforms and deploy their own FOSS to prevent big corporations from collecting personal information. Others switch to the self-hosting landscape to stop their monthly subscriptions from piling up. You’ll also find folks who prefer the limitless customization options offered by locally-hosted apps. Then there are tinkerers like me, who do it for all these reasons (and also for the added flex).

Managing computers isn't the easiest task when you've got a bank of servers and PCs to handle. Now, I'm not running a data center, but even within my home lab, I've been looking for a simple way to keep tabs on all my machines. Over the years, I've tried out a wide range of apps to keep tabs on servers. Some are complex, some have a subscription fee that blows my humble home lab budget, and others simply didn't work for me. However, I've recently come across an open-source project called MeshCentral, which has quickly become the backbone of how I manage my personal computer and servers. Here's why.

When you're choosing a new SSD, you probably focus on the PCIe interface, transfer speeds, and price to make your decision. However, there are other important SSD specs to consider before you drop $100–$150 on an SSD. Perhaps the most important, and often overlooked, specification of these is DRAM. Being a dedicated cache memory that speeds up your SSD, DRAM can prove highly useful in certain scenarios. You should avoid DRAM-less SSDs if you have the budget for a DRAM SSD.

Amid a fierce debate about the environmental toll of artificial intelligence, Google released a new study that says its Gemini AI assistant only uses a minimal amount of water and energy for each text prompt. But experts say that the tech giant's claims are misleading. Google estimates that a median Gemini text prompt uses up about five drops of water, or 0.26 milliliters, and about as much electricity as watching TV for less than nine seconds, roughly 0.24 watt-hours (Wh), which produces around 0.03 grams of carbon dioxide emissions. Google's estimates are lower than previous research on water- and energy-intensive data centers that und …Read the full story at The Verge.

The AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT is a card that we really loved when we reviewed it. Not only does it deliver excellent performance, but it also does so at a budget price. Of course, what makes the card even better is when you can grab with a discount, which happens to be the case with Newegg dropping the XFX Swift AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT OC to $360 for a limited time.

If you're anything like me, you really only touch the BIOS if you've just put together a new system, or you're upgrading parts to an existing one. A quick tour of changing a handful of the usual settings just to get up and running, and that's it. However, lurking in the depths of your motherboard's firmware could be remnants of old troubleshooting steps, forgotten toggles, or poor default settings that are sneakily making your PC worse, and it's a good idea to go through and tie up these BIOS loose-ends.

Microsoft's PowerToys suite is home to many useful tools, and my favorites are usually the ones that help me organize my apps and windows, like FancyZones and Workspaces. However, there's quite a bit more in there for all kinds of users, and one of the more interesting ones is PowerRename.