Using a dedicated network video recorder (NVR) is an easy way to get a home surveillance system up and running with minimal fuss. Depending on the brand you opt for when buying the cameras, it's possible to purchase a package that includes some IP cameras as well as the NVR to ensure maximum compatibility, but you can also mix and match depending on support and what the NVR can work with.

Saving your data to a portable drive is a solid way to back up anything important that you don't want to lose. But for those that want a little more control, while also still having the versatility of what the cloud has to offer, a NAS is going to be the way to go. This one from Ugreen is an easy one to recommend, mainly because its price is just so good, dropping to $467 for a limited time.

Setting up and managing a home lab has been fun so far. Self-hosted apps like Home Assistant,NextCloud, Immich, Jellyfin, and others would work well — until they became unresponsive. I wanted these apps to be responsive and consistently accessible both within my home network and remotely, using Tailscale or a VPN.

Open-world games are a dime a dozen, and while the idea of being able to 'go anywhere, do anything' was once incredible, it's been a couple of generations since we've gotten used to them. Today, one could argue that we've got too many open-world maps, with way too many fetch quests and points of interest to go check out for XP. Still, there are a few that are a cut above the rest, because their devs took the time out to make those open-world maps special.

In the race to accelerate AI on everyday devices, the industry has long relied on two workhorses: GPUs, with their raw parallel power, and NPUs (Neural Processing Units), designed for specialized neural network tasks. Both come with flaws, though. GPUs have a latency and power overhead for short, spiky workloads (like a voice assistant processing a quick query, or an AI-powered device search), and NPUs, while efficient, are fragmented across vendors and force developers to account for a lot of different hardware. That's why I find Arm's alternative option intriguing, and honestly, outright better than a pure NPU reliance.

As I primarily write about different software and platforms, I use multiple computers running on various operating systems. My primary laptop is a Mac. I have a gaming desktop running on Windows, and a server-grade mini PC on which I recently installed Ubuntu to get a taste of Linux. The Mac and the Windows desktop are my most-used computers, since I use the PC when I'm at home, and the MacBook when traveling. Every time I switch between the two platforms, there are features I miss on both of them. Owing to this, I've brought several macOS features onto Windows and vice versa over the past few months. One of them is Spotlight Search.

I grew up in the 2000s, so it might be a surprising statement when I say that much of my introduction to the internet, technology, and gaming came from Internet Relay Chat, also known as IRC. As a kid, I had no idea that IRC was already an incredibly important piece of internet history. It dates back to the 1980s, predating the World Wide Web itself, and was the brainchild of a Finnish student named Jarkko Oikarinen. As it turns out, real-time group chats were in existence years before web browsers and AOL existed, and decades before Discord, Slack, or WhatsApp.

I've used my fair share of PCs, and having to hop between them or reset them every now and then often means I have to reinstall a lot of the things I'm used to. Some things are more essential than others, though, and they'll be the first things I install on a new PC before I get deep into properly using it. I have a handful of relatively light tools that I always need on my PCs when I plan to use them frequently.

You can take a quick look around the internet, but there's a pretty good chance you won't find a 2TB portable SSD at this price. Lexar is pretty well-known and trusted brand, which makes this promotion even better. B&H Photo Video is now offering a discount on SSD which brings it down to just $100 for the next few hours. A special $20 discount will be automatically applied to the cart, so be quick, and save big.

Back when Copilot was still just a plan in Microsoft's eyes, its CEO, Satya Nadella, said that he wanted the AI assistant to become the next Start menu. We saw the beginnings of this concept when the Copilot key arrived on our laptops, although Microsoft has since let us rebind it (as did KDE on Linux).

It’s less noticeable than a thinner profile or trick camera lenses, but Apple is pointing out another upgrade in the iPhone 17 family of phones that it says is part of “the most significant upgrade to memory safety in the history of consumer operating systems.” Explicitly targeting the spyware industry that produces exploits for tools like Pegasus to hack on targeted devices, a series of changes in Apple’s chips, OS, and development tools are part of what it calls Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE).With the introduction of the iPhone 17 lineup and iPhone Air, we’re excited to deliver Memory Integrity Enforcement: the industry’s first ever, comprehensive, always-on memory-safety protection covering key attack surfaces — including the kernel and over 70 userland processes — built on the Enhanced Memory Tagging Extension (EMTE) and supported by secure typed allocators and tag confidentiality protections.The approach is similar to what we’ve seen from Microsoft’s introduction of memory integrity security features for Windows 11, as well as a series of changes that have arrived to prevent speculative-execution vulnerabilities like Spectre. Apple’s blog post also mentions efforts by ARM with the Memory Tagging Extension (MTE) to fight memory bugs, which is supported on Google’s Pixel phones starting with the Pixel 8 series and enabled for supported apps if you turn on Advanced Protection. 🔺iPhone models announced today include Memory Integrity Enforcement, the culmination of an unprecedented design and engineering effort that we believe represents the most significant upgrade to memory safety in the history of consumer operating systems. https://t.co/ule9gaXzc1— Ivan Krstić (@radian) September 9, 2025Apple says its implementation goes a step further, with the ability to protect all users by default and by designing its A19 and A19 Pro chips for enhanced security, while still adding memory safety changes for older hardware that doesn’t support the new memory tagging features. The company also says its new mitigation for Spectre V1 leaks works with “virtually zero CPU cost” — as performance hits have been an issue for memory integrity and other security features — with all of the changes making “mercenary spyware” even more expensive to develop. The folks behind the security-focused GrapheneOS project acknowledged the “major security improvements” that will help iPhone security in a post on X, but also said they had issues with the presentation and how it portrayed iOS security versus features like MTE, already released for Android. We’ll learn more about how much has changed once these updates reach devices and attackers take their turn trying to crack open the iPhone 17 and iPhone Air’s security.

iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 users are getting another year of free access to satellite connectivity features, according to a footnote on Apple’s newsroom posts for the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro. “The free trial will be extended for iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 users who have activated their device in a country that supports Apple’s satellite features prior to 12 a.m. PT on September 9, 2025,” Apple says.Apple originally launched its Emergency SOS service via satellite shortly after it released the iPhone 14 lineup in November 2022, and at the time, Apple said the feature would be free for the first two years. (The feature is still free for two years after activation on iPhone 14 models and newer.) But in 2023, Apple added an additional free year for existing iPhone 14 users, meaning that the deadline to potentially start paying for the earliest adopters would be November 2025. Now, it appears that deadline has been bumped to November 2026.With iOS 18 last year, Apple expanded its satellite messaging features to let you text friends or family when you’re off the grid. Today, Apple also announced that the new Apple Watch Ultra 3 will have satellite connectivity features.