The update starts rolling out globally in September. Google is updating user profiles for its Play Games service on Android devices to display gaming stats, achievements, and social features. The changes include a suite of new capabilities for “showcasing and tracking your game progress and stats, new ways to build your gaming community, and allowing you to tailor your profile to your liking,” according to Google’s help page.The update will be applied automatically, and starts rolling out in most global regions on September 23rd, and on October 1st for users in the EU and UK. Google is also emailing Google Play users directly to notify them about the changes. When applied, Google Play Games profiles and features will start appearing on the Google Play Store to prevent users from having to switch between apps when managing their accounts. The unified update aims to help users who make their profile information public to connect with other players and track their gaming milestones. It’s unclear what this will specifically entail, but it sounds similar to how player information, gaming history, and achievements are currently displayed on Valve’s Steam service.

When I got both a Samsung tablet and phone, I was really surprised when I copied text on one device and it automatically beamed over to the other. It made me wish that Windows had a feature like that, where I could copy text either on my PC or my Android device and have it appear on the other. I couldn't find anything that did it automatically, so I had to settle for mirroring apps that could handle it for me.

When you sign up to receive Internet service from an ISP, they'll usually provide a router and modem, or a combo unit of the two. While it will certainly get you online, it quietly leaves a few doors ajar for malicious actors, putting your security and privacy at risk. This is exceedingly common with routers provided by ISPs, but you can lock things down fairly easily with a few tweaks.

Sometimes the best piece of gear is the one that you can afford and won't break the bank. If you've been looking for a cheap gaming monitor, we think we've found one with this ASRock gaming monitor that's just $138. It's now seeing a substantial discount on its retail price, and also offers everything you could want from a gaming monitor. But be quick, this is the lowest price we've seen for this monitor.

It's only been a couple of months since I first gave Linux a serious shot on one of my PCs, and since then, I've quickly grown into a big fan of it. These days, I would rather spend more time in Linux than on Windows, but of course, there are some things that make this impossible. Missing apps like Adobe Lightroom is a significant problem, and for many people, the same sentiment applies to something like Microsoft Office.

Windows 11, the most-used consumer desktop operating system in the world, undoubtedly has its problems. Yet, despite those problems, it's the most refined version of the company's operating system, regardless of the unsavory additions that have seen many users either commit to Windows 10 for as long as possible or even make the jump to Linux instead. There's one specific aspect of Windows that has always bugged me, though, and it's Microsoft's long-standing policy of requiring drivers to be digitally signed before the operating system will load them.

Though Google announced NotebookLM as a Google Labs project under the codename Project Tailwind during Google I/O 2023, the AI research assistant only really took off once it added the Audio Overviews feature.

This Alienware gaming monitor is one that we loved, and it managed to deliver on all levels, which is why we decided to give it an impressive 9/10 score. Of course, the $900 price tag doesn't make it an easy purchase, which is why this current deal from Amazon that knocks $326 off is so important. For a limited time, you can grab this QD-OLED monitor for its lowest price, which makes it an absolute steal.

OLED monitors have been at the top of the gaming display pyramid, but that doesn't mean the technology is perfect yet. All OLED panels suffer from lower brightness levels than LCDs, burn-in is an ever-present concern, and the HDR experience is inconsistent between models. Tandem OLED was unveiled as the next big innovation in OLED technology, and we're now seeing some excellent displays from the likes of LG, MSI, and Asus. I'm excited about this next stage of OLED monitors because tandem OLED looks like a big step toward removing the imperfections of OLEDs.

The original Doom is one of those video games that helped define a genre. It was one of the pioneers in the first-person shooter category, and is still a noteworthy game to this day due to the genre it helped launch, and the franchise that spawned from its initial success. The Doom franchise is a massive catalog of games with frequent releases, including this year's Doom: The Dark Ages.

I have three separate servers at home, and while I was in the process of a migration, I had four servers in operation. All three of them are running Proxmox, though not as a cluster. That fourth server I used was a TrueNAS Scale machine that served as my introduction to home labbing, and that introductory piece now lives as a VM on one of my machines. Throughout it all, one piece of hardware has proved invaluable: my portable monitor.

Each of the three main console platforms has its own online services and versions of programs that cater to the players who frequently play games on it. But the one that ends up rewarding players the most is Xbox and its rewards program. Whether you find yourself buying many games for your Xbox Series X and PC, or simply enjoy downloading games to try out through Xbox Game Pass, gaming on Xbox can come with some nice perks. Both PlayStation and Nintendo have yet to find the right formula for balancing the time gamers spend on their services and how to keep them coming back for more. Even though I'm a big fan of all three of them, I find that the Xbox platform is the one that gives players the most for the time they put into playing the games they enjoy.