If you've looked online for a microphone, there's a pretty good chance you've come across the Blue Yeti. The brand has been around for some time, and was bought out by Logitech just a few years back. The Yeti is a versatile microphone that's easy to use, which is why it's so popular. It has a retail price of $140, which is on the more expensive side, but you can now get a 46% discount from Woot, which drops it down to a more reasonable $76.

Over the past few years, Microsoft has been steadily working to deprecate the Control Panel, moving key functionalities to the more modern Settings app. While I am all for user-centric changes, this transition from Control Panel to Settings misses the mark in many ways.

Rockstar Games, the developer of Grand Theft Auto VI, fired between 30 to 40 employees on Thursday, as previously reported by Bloomberg. According to the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB), all of the employees fired were part of a private trade union Discord chat and were either already union members or attempting to organize a union at Rockstar. “Rockstar has just carried out the most blatant and ruthless act of union busting in the history of the games industry,” IWGB president Alex Marshall said in a statement provided to The Verge. Alan Lewis, head of global corporate communications at Rockstar parent company Take-Two Interactive, responded, telling The Verge the firings were “for gross misconduct, and for no other reason,” without elaborating further. The firings were spread out across Rockstar offices in the UK and Canada. They come just seven months ahead of the release of Grand Theft Auto VI. The game’s launch was originally scheduled for this fall, but a few months ago, Rockstar delayed its release until May 26th, 2026, saying, “We hope you understand that we need this extra time to deliver at the level of quality you expect and deserve.” Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) president Alex Marshall:“Rockstar has just carried out the most blatant and ruthless act of union busting in the history of the games industry. This flagrant contempt for the law and for the lives of the workers who bring in their billions is an insult to their fans and the global industry. Despite this calculated attack on workers organising for a collective voice and to improve their difficult working conditions, the Rockstar Union remains undeterred. They will keep organising for respect and better conditions whilst continuing to pour their blood, sweat and creativity into games that are loved by millions.The IWGB will pursue every legal claim possible to ensure our members are reinstated and receive interim relief.”Alan Lewis, head of global corporate communications at Take-Two Interactive:“We strive to make the world’s best entertainment properties by giving our best-in-class creative teams positive work environments and ongoing career opportunities. Our culture is focused on teamwork, excellence, and kindness. Rockstar Games terminated a small number of individuals for gross misconduct, and for no other reason. As always, we fully support Rockstar’s ambitions and approach.”

If you have a home lab, you probably think first about servers, networking gear, and SBCs. Those are all great tools, but they live mostly in the digital world. A basic Arduino board, like the Uno or Nano, adds something different. It connects software logic to real-world results in a way that feels tangible, immediate, and creative. Once you start using one, it quickly becomes a core part of your tinkering toolkit.

Windows or "Windoze", as people lovingly call it, is no stranger to weird problems that crop up one fine day without rhyme or reason. Perhaps one of the weirdest issues I have ever faced on my Windows PC has been my Ethernet speed randomly dropping from 200Mbps to 100Mbps. This unfortunate halving of my internet speeds has stumped me for 3 years, and I've tried multiple fixes to no avail. I had almost given up when a 9-year-old forum post finally gave me the solution — bizarrely, it was a quick SSD tweak that fixed everything.

If you're looking for a new USB-C charger, there's a pretty good chance you're not looking at one from Apple. However, the brand makes some pretty good accessories, with its chargers offering reliable power that's perfect for high-power devices like laptops, tablets, and some phones.

There is a lot of home networking advice that involves purchasing “prosumer” or enterprise-level networking gear to maximize your network, and while yes, you can buy that gear for discounted rates, it’ll still cost you. The truth is, you don’t need prosumer gear or even the newest equipment to build a high-functioning network.

Once again, it's Halloween, and over the past two weeks, I haven't run out of some great recommendations if horror games are your kind of experience. You could prefer co-op horror games, single-player, nerve-wracking experiences, or even if horror isn't your cup of tea, you could just stick to thrill-leaning games. Or you could just play one single game that offers all three of these in one neat offering.

If Tiny11 has taught me anything, it's that I have a huge appreciation for people who can cut down an operating system to a portion of its original size. Granted, that usually involves lopping off some features (although one can argue that the services that do hit the cutting room floor aren't ones that people using the OS wanted in the first place), but the concept is there, and it's very cool to see.

Local voice assistants have a lot of appeal in the world of secure smart homes, but they often come with limitations. If you’re using a tool like Home Assistant to manage your smart home, you can typically install add-ons for speech-to-text (like Whisper) and text-to-speech (like Piper) and configure a voice pipeline. Plus, you can integrate your own smart speakers to work with. Home Assistant also recently rolled out the Home Assistant Preview Edition, a work-in-progress $69 voice assistant that allows you to manage your connected devices with voice commands. It doesn’t quite have the expertise that Amazon’s Alexa has in handling commands, and as with all local voice assistants, you’ll have to control the responses.

Like most people, I use YouTube for educational and entertainment purposes nearly every day, and I’ve learned a lot thanks to it. Most of the software I use today I actually learned by watching YouTube tutorials. The problem with learning from YouTube is that it gets overwhelming fast. Playlists help me sort the mess a little, and some creators also put out structured courses that you can watch from start to finish. But I tend to get off track quite easily because, for one, my attention span. But also, not every piece of content will apply to my learning style or current situation.

No matter how things go topsy-turvy in Windows, you always have the trusted Task Manager to bail you out. However, what if the Task Manager itself starts bugging out? Well, it turns out the answer to a malfunctioning Task Manager is to apply a second Task Manager to it.