Having spent the better part of five years in the mechanical keyboard hobby, I pushed myself to try smaller keyboards in pursuit of where the compactness and efficiency gain curves intersect. I hoped to find the perfect middle ground between a full-size battleship that has a key for every imaginable function and a tiny Pain27 keyboard that has all the letters, a Spacebar, and nothing else. The world of sub-40% keyboards has always been a siren call, promising ultimate desk space savings and reduced finger travel. The philosophy is simple: move your fingers less, get more done. But as with most things in life, there's a point of diminishing returns, and I think I've found it with one seriously regrettable purchase.

If you're an avid homelabber spending a good portion of your time on self-hosted services, managing and running Docker containers, or hopping between different servers over SSH, you'll know the pain of juggling multiple terminal sessions and switching between devices. There must be a better way to do it. And while tools certainly do exist, I wanted a secure, always-accessible terminal that didn't depend on a local setup. Something I could access from my iPad or phone. That's when I came across Termix on GitHub, and it offered an incredibly elegant solution to the problem.

The idea of updating your Linux kernel can sound intimidating, especially if you're new to the ecosystem or if your experience with Linux is limited to occasional tinkering. After all, the kernel is the heart of the operating system, and touching it feels like stepping into dangerous territory. But for the vast majority of users, updating the Linux kernel is no more complicated or risky than letting Windows install its monthly security patches.

We've seen mini PCs explode in popularity over the past year or so, with plenty of models to suit nearly every need. You can grab a cheap one that's great for powering your home lab, or you can splurge a little and get something that's going to be able to handle pretty much anything you can throw at it.

Dealing with slow, laggy home Internet is the pits, and it can happen to any home network, from Multi-Gig capable connections to DSL. Even my home network slows down sometimes, and I've got 10GbE for some sections of it. But it's not all about straight-line speeds, with the general responsiveness and reliability of your network being key to a good internet experience. Those things aren't always easy to measure, but simple, quick fixes can get your slow network back to its best.

Puzzle-platformers are pretty rare in their own right, but puzzle-platformers with dark themes are one-of-a-kind. That's what makes Inside such a unique experience; it combines two genres that rarely mingle in a way that doesn't feel intrusive or strange to make a game that people still remember a decade later.

Grounded 2 launched into Early Access on July 29, 2025, and as a long-time fan of the series, I dove in at the moment it dropped. There’s a lot to love here. Obsidian and Eidos‑Montréal have evolved the micro-survival formula in meaningful ways. But as with any game still in development, it’s not without its frustrations. Here are the systems I’m most impressed by ... and the ones I’m hoping will get a second look.

Sony is currently Apple’s sole image sensor supplier. Apple is teaming up with Samsung to produce digital image sensors for future iPhone models, according to The Financial Times. This is tied to Apple’s Wednesday announcement that it is working with Samsung’s semiconductor facility in Austin, Texas, to launch “an innovative new technology for making chips, which has never been used before anywhere in the world.”The Financial Times reports that Samsung will use the advanced chip technology to produce three-layer stacked image sensors for next year’s iPhone 18 lineup, citing anonymous sources “familiar with the deal.” Sony is currently Apple’s sole supplier of image sensors, which are produced in Japan under contract with TSMC. Unlike Samsung, Sony doesn’t have a US-based chipmaking facility that would enable it to evade the incoming tariffs on chips produced outside of the US.“We remain confident that we are advanced in providing sensor technology to our customers, and we will focus on continuing further technological advancement through larger sensor size and density,” Sony said in a statement to The Financial Times.The Samsung partnership is connected to a $100 billion expansion to Apple’s American Manufacturing Program, which will now see the company invest $600 billion to bring more of its supply chain to the US. “By bringing this technology to the US first, this facility will supply chips that optimize power and performance of Apple products, including iPhone devices shipped all over the world,” Apple said in its press release.

Consoles are not very pocket-sized these days, are they?. We started off with stuff like the Game Boy range, which could slot into a pants' pockets pretty easily. Now you need a pretty deep pair of cargo pants to store a Switch 2, if you even can.

GitHub has accidentally announced OpenAI’s new range of GPT-5 models. A now-deleted GitHub blog post reveals that GPT-5, which will be available in four different versions, offers “major improvements in reasoning, code quality, and user experience.”Reddit posters noticed a new GitHub blog post announcing that GPT-5 is generally available in GitHub models, before the blog post was quickly removed. An archived version reveals that GPT-5 will have “enhanced agentic capabilities” and can handle “complex coding tasks with minimal prompting.”GPT-5 will have four model variants, according to GitHub:gpt-5: Designed for logic and multi-step tasks.gpt-5-mini: A lightweight version for cost-sensitive applications.gpt-5-nano: Optimized for speed and ideal for applications requiring low latency.gpt-5-chat: Designed for advanced, natural, multimodal, and context-aware conversations for enterprise applications.I revealed last month that OpenAI was preparing to launch GPT-5 in early August, complete with mini and nano versions that will also be available through its API. Earlier this week multiple OpenAI employees started teasing that it would be a big week, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman even teased GPT-5 over the weekend. OpenAI has all but confirmed it’s launching GPT-5 later today, with the announcement of a “LIVE5TREAM” for 10AM PT / 1PM ET. OpenAI’s GPT-5 launch comes in the same week the company also delivered two GPT-OSS open-weight models, with one small enough to run locally on a PC.

I learned about self-hosted apps and services not too long ago and loved the idea. The fact that I could host apps and services on my local home network is just the level of privacy I needed — especially when working with sensitive files. Additionally, the long-term cost savings are also worth appreciating, as I no longer pay for cloud storage. I replaced OneDrive with Nextcloud and migrated from several paid apps to free, self-hosted alternatives. Thanks to my enthusiasm, I set up my own home lab to test various hardware and software in a self-contained environment. Along with the several mistakes I made while setting up my home lab, one of them was not hosting some must-have apps. There are some programs I wish I had known when I was just starting.

With people getting a free upgrade from Windows 10 to 11, Microsoft missed out on quite a bit of revenue. While I don't have Microsoft's profit books on hand by any means, I can imagine that the company wants to find a way to get its users to pay them in some shape or form, even if it's not for Windows 11 specifically.