Usually, deciding on which monitor to get comes down to various factors. Except, that's not what I did the last time I got one. I had one overarching consideration for my purchase, and that was that it had to be OLED. It could be QD-OLED or OLED or WOLED, but it had to be self-emissive without a backlight.

As someone who uses Home Assistant all the time, one of the most challenging (but fun) aspects of the software platform is figuring out ways to integrate it into my existing hardware and software services. As I've gone further down the rabbit hole, I've found increasingly weird and interesting ways to make it work, and one of my favorites has been the implementation of a "game mode." There are two separate ways to make this work, and I combine both of them to work with both Steam and non-Steam games.

Nothing ruins an already-stressful trip to work than a traffic jam, and that goes double when you're already late. However, these days, we have a ton of technology to help us not only spot jams as they occur, but also find alternative routes around them so we can get where we have to go faster and avoid adding to an already dire situation.

Remote access tools are nothing new, but few offer the same level of control and reliability that PiKVM brings to the table. With a Raspberry Pi, a bit of DIY effort, and the right accessories, you can build a hardware-based KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) over IP solution that lets you take control of your PC as if you were sitting in front of it. That includes BIOS-level access and rebooting, not just remote desktop sessions after the OS loads. For home office users, tinkerers, or anyone who runs a headless system, it can be a game-changer.

There's a certain kind of heartbreak only '90s gamers know — the kind that comes from getting hopelessly addicted to a brutally difficult game you downloaded from a random CD that came with a magazine, only to never beat it. For me, it was Claw. A 2D platformer about a pirate cat in search of the Amulet of Nine Lives. Claw wasn't your average platformer with a basic premise, no. It was soul-crushingly difficult, and gloriously punishing.

Buying a used server motherboard, especially the dirt-cheap models, can be a great start to your home lab. You get cheap access to enterprise performance and features, and can run all the self-hosting services you'd want. And dual-CPU motherboards can power your virtualization and high-end multi-threaded workloads without you worrying about upgrading to something more powerful anytime soon. That said, the process of securing a used server board is often marred by uncertainty — make sure you do your research and know exactly what you're buying.

We're currently at an exciting time in the world of Windows users. Windows 10 falls out of support in four months' time, and we're seeing two sides try to win over the people who are still using Microsoft's older operating system. On one side, you have Microsoft, which would really prefer it if the hangers-on either upgraded to Windows 11 or purchased a new PC if their current hardware doesn't support the newest operating system. On the other side, you have the Linux community, which is tempting people with a free operating system change without the need to purchase new hardware.

Microsoft's PowerToys offers plenty of handy features, some of which are so powerful that they can replace built-in Windows functionalities. One such capability in PowerToys is the ability to instantly launch apps and commands through its Run utility or the relatively new Command Palette (also known as CmdPal), as both can launch things faster and more accurately than the Windows Start menu.

I recently tested out the Govee Table Lamp 2 Pro, which features a built-in Bluetooth speaker with audio from JBL. I lamented the lack of internet streaming capabilities for a smart speaker, given that Bluetooth audio was the only way to stream music to it. Well, I've worked out a solution, and it's surprisingly perfect, if a bit overengineered. I'm using my old phone as a proxy with a Snapcast client, which in turn routes the audio to the speaker. And it all works through Home Assistant and Music Assistant.

What started as a passion for editing and creating turned into a burden. I was getting tired of the endless subscriptions, unwanted updates, computer bloat, paywalls for basic features, and constant privacy policy changes. So I wanted an editing system that gave me more control over my workflow and projects. What I’ve built over time is a library, editing, and file management suite powered entirely by free and open-source tools. Here’s what ended up working for me…

Here's the thing: I have the memory of a goldfish but juggle a lot simultaneously. This combination is, well, a complete disaster without some kind of support system. I've tried creating to-do lists to track every single aspect of my life, using personal knowledge management tools like Notion and Obsidian, and even tried setting endless reminders on my phone. But, none of it really stuck. Everything either felt too scattered or just too overwhelming to maintain.

I've dabbled with Linux before. Of course, there's the Steam Deck and SteamOS more recently, but even as a younger tech enthusiast, I toyed around with the tools in Kali Linux and live-booted Ubuntu to see if I was capable of switching. Even after trying a handful of distros and learning some basics about Linux and how it works, I never took the plunge. I never committed to actually using Linux, and I wanted to change that. Much to my surprise, it wasn't much of a change at all.