Bluetooth dongles are pretty cheap devices, and nowadays, many PCs have them built in. However, as I've consolidated a number of my self-hosted services into one machine, the migration process has come across a few hiccups along the way. One of those relates to Bluetooth; the machine my Home Assistant box had previously been running on had an easily-passed through Bluetooth adapter to the Home Assistant VM, but the new server I've migrated to doesn't. That's when I realized that I could turn the Makerdiary nRF52840 MDK into a Bluetooth dongle.

The motherboard is perhaps the only PC component that involves sifting through tons of specs, reviews, and misinformation before confidently buying one. In contrast, buying a CPU, GPU, or SSD is incredibly straightforward since considerably fewer variables are involved. Out of the many motherboard features that people claim are indispensable, there are some that most gamers don't even look for. Enthusiasts and home lab users might swear by them, but they make little difference to an average gamer's experience.

Even suffused in otherworldly fog, Silent Hill F's picturesque period setting gleams with authenticity. Traditional hardwood buildings line narrow alleyways, while babbling brooks and small footpaths crisscross soaking paddy fields. The ephemera of 1960s everyday life is everywhere: glossy magazines, vintage toasters, exquisite flower arrangements. Yet beyond this moody sense of place, the details that feel most authentic in Silent Hill F are of a kind that video games rarely excel at. It's the anxiety on the faces of its teen characters as they trade barbed taunts, the outpourings of emotion scribbled onto notes passed around at school.We …Read the full story at The Verge.

When one mentions an AMD Threadripper CPU and efficiency in the same sentence, it can draw some raised eyebrows. How on earth can a 64-core beast like the Threadripper 9980X be anywhere near efficient with a TDP alone of 350W? You can expect this CPU to draw up to 400 watts of power through the socket at stock settings, but after using it in place of a few used enterprise rack servers, I've discovered it to be incredibly efficient, even compared to a few mini PCs.

The Achilles heel of the iPhone 17 Pro. The iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max appear to provide little resistance to scratches and scuffs around the sharp edges of the camera bump. Tech blogger Zack Nelson demonstrates this weakness in a durability test on his JerryRigEverything YouTube channel, explaining that the anodized aluminium layer on the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max “does not stick to corners very well” — creating a weak point in the coating. This is a known issue with the electrochemical anodizing process, so it was a design decision Apple knowingly made.“For some reason, Apple didn’t add a chamfer, fillet, or radius around the camera plateau, and I think it was intentional, so it looks cooler,” Nelson says in the video. “But that decision to look cool out of the box is going to plague everyone who owns this phone down the road.” The video shows that everyday objects, like a coin or house key carried in the same pocket as the iPhone 17 Pro, can chip away at the anodized coating around the sharp corners of the camera bump. However, that same mildly aggressive scratching on the flat surface of the camera plateau only produced dust that could be easily wiped away.Bloomberg earlier reported that demo units at Apple stores last week were already exhibiting scratches and scuffs after only a few hours on display, especially on deep blue versions of iPhone 17 Pro models and the black iPhone Air. Here’s an example of the glass back of the iPhone Air showing scratches. If you have a new iPhone in your basket, this may be your sign to also add a protective case, or live with that patina since the scratching is only a cosmetic issue.

Microsoft has started testing the ability to use video wallpapers on Windows 11. The feature has been spotted in the latest builds of Windows 11, and allows you to set video files like MP4 or MKV as your desktop wallpaper background.The videos play every time you view your desktop, much like third-party solutions like Wallpaper Engine. Microsoft previously supported video wallpapers in Windows Vista as a DreamScene feature for the Ultimate version of the operating system, but DreamScene was dropped from Windows 7.Windows DreamScene is back! Hidden in the latest Windows 11 Dev/Beta build (26×20.6690) is built in support for setting video files like .mp4 as your desktop background: pic.twitter.com/B4vdtfvqSc— phantomofearth 🌳 (@phantomofearth) September 20, 2025Video wallpapers are a highly requested feature for Windows users, and Wallpaper Engine is regularly in the top 10 most played apps and games list on Steam simply because of how many people have the app installed and running.Microsoft had been testing dynamic animated wallpapers for Windows 11 for years, and a former design even revealed exactly what they looked like earlier this year. These dynamic wallpapers were supposed to ship in 2023, but never made it into the release version of Windows 11.

Have you ever given a Far Cry game a try before? If you haven't, they're usually open-world FPS games where you're smack-dab in the middle of something terrible going on. You're usually fighting your way to try to escape whatever predicament you're in, and they're a ton of fun.

Containerization has changed how we deploy applications, but managing and monitoring them can still be a challenge. With so many services running simultaneously, it’s easy to get lost in a sea of logs and metrics. This is where Dozzle comes in. It’s a lightweight, self-hosted solution that provides a real-time look into your container logs.

Microsoft Teams may not be the best collaboration tool for many people, as its critics often prefer rivals like Slack. While Teams deserves criticism due to missing features and performance-related issues, the Redmond tech giant keeps on improving the app by closing the feature gap and introducing new ones.

Having a memory worse than a goldfish while studying a major full of memorization-heavy courses every semester isn’t exactly the best combo. Unfortunately, that’s the combination I’ve been stuck with. I've tried every study technique there is, and only one really works best for me when I'm dealing with courses where I need to retain a lot: flashcards.

The handheld gaming scene has continued to grow in strength over the past few years. Ever since the Steam Deck changed how we play our PC titles, other companies have taken their shots at making the perfect portable pal, and there are a ton of excellent Steam Deck alternatives out there for you to try out. You can pick out a budget-oriented model or splash out on a deluxe version, then equip it with either Windows 11 or SteamOS. Life's pretty good for gamers on the go.

Linux is now better than ever, offering stability and great flexibility, but one of the reasons I keep running it on my desktops is how much control it gives me over performance. It is not a black box, and with a few changes, you can tune it to match the way you actually use your machine.