There's going to be a lot to celebrate for Star Wars fairly soon, with the 50th anniversary of the franchise coming up. The original Star Wars films have become iconic stories that are still heavily watched and discussed to this day. And with rumors about a new remastering for all three of the original trilogy films, it's going to be quite the celebration in a galaxy far, far away. But that also means it could be a great time for some retro gaming classics inspired by those Star Wars films to have a resurgence.

As someone who loves working on server projects, I always keep my eyes out for virtualization platforms and containerization tools – even more so when the tools are fairly obscure. Take SmartOS, for example, which offers solid Jail and VM support, and is my top choice for building Unix-like servers. Or even XCP-ng and Harvester, which are quite the underdogs in the home lab landscape.

M.2 SSDs used to be pretty affordable, but prices have risen over the past year, and even after some decent price drops, they still aren't back to where they were prior to 2023. That's why when something comes along that delivers good performance but doesn't cost an arm or a leg, it's worth highlighting so you can have a chance to upgrade your PC, laptop, or game console for less.

NotebookLM has become one of my most-used tools this year. I use it for studying, research, and as a note-taking app. I’ve also been using it in unconventional ways, such as pairing it with other apps, creating courses, “watching” YouTube videos, and turning it into a design instructor.

So, there's a Pillar of Autumn-sized elephant in the room, and that's about Halo coming to the PlayStation 5. After Forza Horizon and Gears of War, the next big 'green' exclusive coming to Sony's console is Master Chief himself. For a huge part of a newer wave of gamers, Halo: Campaign Evolved, which is coming out next year, will be their first foray into the Halo universe, so buckle up, because this one might feel different.

Look into any major CPU launch announcement, and you'll notice a similar playbook: bold graphs, flashy slides and buzzwords that promise you life-changing performance. The chip manufacturing industry continues to rely on terms like hyper-threading, boost clocksand nanometer processwhen unveiling a new processor generation-on-generation. But how relevant is this data for the average user?

The Raspberry Pi may be the most famous single-board computer, but it’s no longer the only serious option for makers. Over the years, other boards have emerged that outperform the Pi in specialized use cases, often offering better performance, connectivity, or flexibility. Some of them come from familiar names, while others are hidden gems that deserve more attention from the home lab and hobbyist communities.

One of the best aspects of PC building is that you can always reuse components from your old systems. PSUs, especially high-quality ones, can last a long time with the right care, and the same holds true for PC cabinets. Meanwhile, CPUs, graphics cards, and RAM can be repurposed in home server rigs once you arm your PC with their newer variants.

Buying a new PC case nowadays is nothing like it was a decade ago. When I first started building gaming PCs, things were a lot more straightforward, but in recent years, the market has become flooded with designs that prioritize aesthetics over practicality. I mean, I get the appeal of tempered glass panels, but prioritizing things like RGB light strips and even built-in LCD screens feels like taking things too far. I'm sure many people want their builds to stand out, and I don't blame them, but for me, performance is still king.

For PC builders and hardware enthusiasts, a warranty affords peace of mind, no matter what they plan to do with their rigs — whether it's competitive gaming with boost profiles, crypto mining, tweaking with BIOS settings to gain the maximum performance out of their system, or precariously moving their components to another cabinet.

Even though I've used Windows on every PC I have owned, I still sometimes get surprised by the hidden tools buried in layers of menus.

My adventures of building a smart home on a shoestring budget are taking an interesting turn. It turns out that I don’t need to splurge on costly smart home devices. Thanks to my colleague Adam Conway’s first-hand experience of building cheap smart home sensors with ESP32, my smart home dreams got a serious boost.