The Star Wars franchise has been adapted into many different mediums over the decades, including a number of major video games. And while most of the video games based on Star Wars have found a great deal of success, not all of them have been good. Some games have unfortunately dragged down the reputation of the franchise with a low bar of quality that fans have joked about for a long time. Most Star Wars will pick up and support anything that has Star Wars on the label, but they aren't foolish enough to not know when something is just flat out bad. But there is a saving grace for Star Wars games that fit into this type of category.

Over the past few months, Docker has become one of my most frequently used applications, thanks to my newfound interest in self-hosting services. I've deployed several apps as Docker containers, which I now use daily as replacements for traditional software downloaded from the internet. After all, self-hosting helps me save money and ensures better privacy compared to sending my data to remote servers. While using Docker is pretty straightforward, managing multiple containers can get overwhelming — especially if you're running a home lab. Keeping track of what's happening inside containers for debugging, analyzing logs, and monitoring performance is important. Unfortunately, the Docker app falls short for this purpose.

This year’s Xperia 1 VII has been plagued by problems. CFO Lin Tao mentioned Sony’s beleaguered phone brand at the company’s recent financial results presentation, calling it “a very important business for us,” according to CNET Japan.You could have fooled me. Sony’s last two Xperia 1 flagships have skipped the US market entirely, and it appears to be pulling back in Europe too. It doesn’t even make the phones itself anymore, it axed the smaller Xperia 5 line two years ago, and so far there’s no sign of the cheaper Xperia 10 VII. Oh, and did I mention it had to halt sales of the new 1 VII and issue replacements for defective models?Once upon a time, Xperia mattered to Sony because it still held a healthy chunk of Japan’s phone market. That’s no longer true, so if Xperia really is still important, I’m not sure why.

Of all the electronic waste we generate, old computers are perhaps the most heartbreaking to discard. I've already written about plans to keep my decade-old laptop kicking for another few years using a lightweight OS, but there ought to be desktops out there bound to meet a similar fate. When they slow down or can't run the latest software, it's easy to swap out the motherboard and processor for a quick upgrade that's often cheaper than buying a new laptop with equivalent specs, all thanks to the modularity and standardization of PC hardware.

Japan doesn’t want Apple to give it the EU treatment. We might finally see the first iPhone browsers built on top of third-party engines now that Japanese regulators have taken up the issue. Apple’s malicious compliance in the EU has so far prevented Chrome, and its Blink engine, for example, from coming to iOS, but recently published guidelines related to Japan’s Smartphone Act could change that. Not only do they set a December deadline for restrictions to be lifted, but also specify that Apple can’t enforce alternative rules that make it difficult to adopt alternatives to the company’s own WebKit browser engine.According to a translation provided by the Open Web Advocacy organization, the guidelines prevent Apple from doing the following:“Imposing unreasonable technical restrictions on individual app providers while allowing them to adopt alternative browser engines, placing excessive financial burdens on individual app providers for adopting alternative browser engines, and steering smartphone users away from using individual software that incorporates alternative browser engines.”

Using software to create a "second brain" is a concept I only stumbled across a few months ago, although I have, in essence, been doing the same thing for years. Our brains are skilled at coming up with new ideas, but we have a finite amount of storage to work with. Sure, you might still remember your high school locker code, but it isn't always easy to shove more information into a space. That's where a "second brain" comes in — a way to keep notes that allow us to more easily access learned knowledge and create links between ideas.

Is that a back penis? While Microsoft was busy updating Copilot yesterday with OpenAI's new GPT-5 model, it also quietly launched Copilot 3D. It's a free-to-use feature that can transform a regular 2D image into a 3D model that can then be used in game creation, animation, 3D printing, VR / AR, and much more.Copilot 3D just needs a good clean 2D image, and you don't even need to use any text prompts. Microsoft recommends using images with a clear background or a strong separation between the subject and the background. I've been testing Copilot 3D today and found that it works better when an image has even lighting and a sense of depth, to help the AI model bet …Read the full story at The Verge.

You know, as much as I love tinkering with Raspberry Pis, I don't think I can break into one. No, not physically; I could probably snap one in half if it wouldn't fill me with despair for slaying an innocent SBC. I'm talking about the security countermeasures buried deep within the chip. Because, as fun as Raspberry Pis can be in the hands of hobbyists, they're also used in critical, industrial cases too. And the last thing a business wants is weak security in their chips.

The day before the launch of GPT-5, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman surprised employees with a message in the company's Slack."As we mentioned a few weeks ago, we have been looking at comp for our technical teams given the movement in the market," wrote Altman, according to a copy of the message that was shared with me. He announced that OpenAI would give a "special one-time award" to researchers and software engineers in a handful of orgs, including applied engineering, scaling, and safety. "We very much intend to keep increasing comp as we keep doing better and better as a company," he wrote. "But we wanted to be transparent about this one since …Read the full story at The Verge.

PlayStation Plus subscribers have a wide range of games to play on their PlayStation 5 and other PlayStation devices. Not only do they have new monthly games to download and try out, but a selection of new and classic games from the PlayStation Plus Catalog that is currently available. But exciting things are happening for the 15th anniversary of the PlayStation Plus service, as well as the release of the new season of the Twisted Metal live-action series, including new downloads for subscribers on PS5. Whether you're a fan of downloading the monthly games that get added periodically or like to explore the classics within your backlog, there's no shortage of things to do through PS Plus.

It's easy to get stuck thinking about all the cool devices that modern technology enables, but if we only talked about the flashy stuff, we'd be missing out on a lot. Even with awesome tech like Power over Ethernet (PoE), most compatible devices are fairly dull. Sure, it makes it easy to wire up your home network because you don't have to string power and data cables around, or find nearby sockets, but the devices on the other end of PoE++ setups are boring, mostly.

We've seen the prices of graphics cards get really out of hand over the past few years. The mining boom in the late 2010s really caused quite a stir, and things haven't really recovered since, especially with AI projects utilizing the new stock that's available. Of course, there are folks that want to have a good time gaming with a new card, but with stocks scarce, it's been quite a challenge to find something good for a fair price.