A smart home can be an exciting project, but it can also feel overwhelming when you are just getting started. Newcomers often assume they need a small but powerful PC to get everything running smoothly. That instinct makes sense because the dashboards, automations, and integrations can look pretty complex. Once you dive in, though, you quickly learn that a Raspberry Pi is a far better place to begin.

As if the variety of server components, mini-PCs, SBCs, and other paraphernalia you can use for a home server wasn’t diverse enough, you also get a plethora of operating systems and virtualization platforms to choose from. Depending on your hardware, certain tools like Harvester and ESXi may remain out of reach, while others would require a handful of tweaks to run on budget-friendly rigs.

Docker lets you create containers that work as individual entities, and you can manage multiple containers inside a single Docker installation. While you can create and use as many self-hosted app containers as you wish, the hardware resources are always limited. I have a spare old laptop with just 4GB DDR3 memory, and it serves as a good machine to run some of my essential self-hosted services.

The computing landscape is shifting towards lower-powered processors that give better efficiency while still providing enough compute power for advanced tasks. But if you wanted to use Arm-based devices in your home lab, the only real options were SBCs like the Raspberry Pi.

Getting started with 3D printing can feel overwhelming, especially when you are learning new software and trying to make your first successful prints. Free tools can make a massive difference by removing guesswork and giving beginners the support they need during those early stages. These tools help you understand your printer, find reliable models, monitor prints safely, and troubleshoot problems without spending a dime. They also make the learning process more enjoyable, which is important when every successful print boosts your confidence.

If one game has dominated more conversations than anything else in 2025, it's definitely Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 from Sandfall Interactive. As the awards season draws near, the discourse about the game has lingered among those looking to debate which games were the best of the year. But one topic that has constantly put everyone at odds is whether Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is an indie game or not. The controversy comes from it being nominated for various indie honors at events like The Game Awards, which many feel is not right. And the real cause of that is because everyone can't decide whether Sandfall Interactive's title is a true indie game compared to the rest of the competition.

Most Photoshop replacements make big promises but collapse as soon as you push them past the basics. Affinity’s new app isn’t like that. It’s the exact same thing as Affinity Photo, one of the top photo and graphics editors out there, just repackaged. You’re getting all the same tools, layout, and flow that everyone already trusts. Except, it’s free now.

As a kid, I always wondered why Microsoft had titles on Xbox but not Windows, and vice versa. It just made sense to me that the company would release games on both systems, because it's all the same company at the end of the day.

Throughout 2025, fantastic games of varying shapes, sizes, and genres occupied our time and attention. At the end of the year, the most unforgettable experiences rise to the top and emerge as frontrunners for our favorite game of the year. After deliberation, XDA's Gaming team — Jakejames Lugo, Samarveer Singh, and I — settled on our top ten video games of 2025.

I hit my breaking point using Notion again with a client who insisted on sticking to it. Not because it's bad — it's genuinely powerful — but because they were paying for features I'd touch maybe twice a year. Worse, every time I opened a database-heavy page, I'd watch the loading spinner for what felt like an eternity.

It's been the better part of a decade since I designed and built my last custom liquid cooled PC. I've still got it, in a box in the garage, as a reminder of projects that weren't always fully completed, hard-learned skills, and a community I'm still part of to this day. Just because I have no inclination to make my own custom PCs, I still love seeing what the newcomers to the scene are making, and the easier access to CNC machining, 3D printing, and other manufacturing tools has pushed the field forward.

A startup called Operation Bluebird is trying to reclaim Twitter's branding, as reported earlier by Ars Technica and Reuters. Last week, Operation Bluebird filed a petition that asks the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to cancel X Corp.'s ownership of the "Twitter" and "Tweet" trademarks, claiming they've been "abandoned" by the Elon Musk-owned company.Operation Bluebird is led by founder Michael Peroff, an Illinois trademark and brand protection attorney, along with Stephen Coates, a trademark attorney who worked as Twitter's associate director of trademarks, domain names, and marketing from 2014 to 2016. The startup also filed a t …Read the full story at The Verge.