The standard Windows 11 does the job, but requires some customization out of the box to run at its best and become more user-friendly. I usually use apps like Winhawk or PowerToys to do this, and have never tried Winaero Tweaker until now. Winaero Tweaker is a free application that provides numerous tools for customizing Windows functionality, organized into several sections for appearance, behavior, and more.

Do you have a Pi-hole set up at home? If not, they're a great way to monitor your network and prevent people from tracking you in ways you don't want them to. We love Pi-hole here at XDA, to the point where we even added two Pi-hole devices to the same network and noticed that it made things even better.

Most games build on ideas that came before, genres that have been around for ages. But every now and then, a single title does something so radically different that it spawns an entirely new genre. These five games didn’t just raise the bar; they created an entirely new one.

External GPUs have been around for decades, but despite an influx of mainstream options with the release of Thunderbolt 3 nearly a decade ago, eGPUs haven't really caught on. Despite how simple eGPUs seem as a solution — you literally plug more power into your PC — they're surprisingly complex. Different interfaces passing data over cables that weren't designed for it naturally lead to some issues when using an eGPU. You can still get great performance out of an external graphics card, but there are some common misunderstandings you need to keep in mind.

If you're in the habit of making System Restore points on Windows 11, first of all, good on you for making backups. It's always good to have something to go back to if a drive goes wrong or a system file goes missing somehow, and if you set it up just right, you can have them automatically make themselves without you even needing to lift a finger.

One of my favorite things is taking something that's not at all affiliated with tabletop roleplaying games and finding a way to shove one into it. For instance, there was that time I played D&D with ChatGPT and had a lot of fun doing so.

Home Assistant is incredibly versatile through the use of automation. It's easy to configure a few with nothing but a sensor or two and some integrations. Throw some Philips Hue bulbs, a Ring alarm system, and some smart plugs, and you've got the necessary hardware to have some fun and show off to guests who pass through the front door. Here are some ways I've been using Home Assistant automation to show off to others.

Monotype is keen for you to know what AI might do in typography. As one of the largest type design companies in the world, Monotype owns Helvetica, Futura, and Gill Sans - among 250,000 other fonts. In the typography giant's 2025 Re:Vision trends report, published in February, Monotype devotes an entire chapter to how AI will result in a reactive typography that will "leverage emotional and psychological data" to tailor itself to the reader. It might bring text into focus when you look at it and soften when your gaze drifts. It could shift typefaces depending on the time of day and light level. It could even adapt to reading speeds and emphasize the important portions of online text for greater engagement. AI, the report suggests, will make type accessible through "intelligent agents and chatbots" and let anyone generate typography regardless of training or design proficiency. How that will be deployed isn't certain, possibly as part of proprietarily trained apps. Indeed, how any of this will work remains nebulous.Monotype isn't alone in this kind of speculation. Typographers are keeping a close eye on AI as designers start to adopt tools like Midjourney for ideation and Replit …Read the full story at The Verge.

Andru Marino is an audio and video producer at The Verge. “I make videos on our YouTube / TikTok / Instagram channels, and have produced our podcasts like Vergecast, Decoder, and Why’d You Push That Button?” He also keeps a lot of notes, and his latest favorite places to keep them are the Triangle and Sidekick notebooks. I asked him about them.Where did you first hear about these notebooks?I don’t really remember when I first saw the Triangle Notebook. It was probably an Instagram ad. I had kept a link to the notebook’s website in a browser tab on my phone for a few months and kept thinking about it. When did you buy it, and what went into the decision?I bought it in April, and what really attracted me was how weird it was. Why does the notebook need to be a triangle? Oh, it opens up into a square! Wow, I love that! The main reason I use paper is to doodle, and I thought this shape would inspire me to doodle differently. And then I saw this company also made another notebook called the Sidekick that basically looks like an L when opened, so it is angled alongside your computer keyboard. That was so wacky to me. So I bought that one too. What do you like about them?This seems more like an art experiment than anything. I love objects that make you rethink how they are used. I typically have Post-it notes or a spiral notebook on my desk so I can write something down or doodle during a meeting. The Sidekick doesn’t take up a ton of space on my desk either opened or closed. The Triangle Notebook is actually great for using on your lap or other unconventional surfaces, as it is pretty sturdy and lays flat on its spine. Both notebooks also encourage me to use my handwriting more, which was a New Year’s resolution I had. View LinkIs there anything about them that you dislike, or that you think could be improved?I am not entirely sure if it makes sense to take notes on an L-shaped piece of paper, but that is just what makes the Sidekick different. The Triangle Notebook could have a few more pages in it. It is nicely bound and sort of expensive ($33), so I would like to get more use out of it. Also it is so long! I don’t know where to store it. And the pages don’t tear out very easily. I’d love to give someone a note on a weird-shaped piece of paper. Who would you recommend it to?I’d recommend the Sidekick to an artist who wants to doodle during meetings — which is why I bought this. But I can also see it working for someone who draws on a tablet and wants to briefly write down some notes about what they are working on. I don’t know who I would recommend the Triangle Notebook to besides someone who likes weird objects. I’d love to know if someone feels like they do their best work on a triangle-shaped notebook. You started this by saying you hoped these notebooks would inspire you to doodle differently. Have they?So far, no. My notes look the same mess as ever, but it has encouraged me to doodle more and write more, so that makes me happy. 

As cyber criminals get better and better hardware, we're seeing attacks that eclipse anything we've ever seen before. Direct Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are getting especially nasty, and because they deliver a measurable amount of data during the attack, cybersecurity experts have been monitoring them and seeing if they break any records. Well, one attack just took the record for the biggest DDoS attack ever, and when put into perspective, it's a stunning amount of data being transferred to one IP address.

Sometimes, you just have to 3D print something that you could otherwise buy, just for the sakes of building it. Even if the end process is a little more convoluted and takes more patience than simply finding the target product on Amazon and clicking the "Buy Now" button, you still learn a lot, get that satisfaction of making something, and have all the knowledge and equipment to repair it if something breaks.

Data collection without analysis is a waste of time. Analyzing your data is the only way to uncover fresh insights and get valuable information about the population your sample represents. Facts must be extracted after administering questionnaires, and researchers use various statistical tools and techniques when trying to do this. I prefer the easier route: SPSS. It is great for analyzing survey data, since it does not require coding or any special syntax. The point-and-click interface makes things easy; even researchers with no prior experience can quickly learn to analyze surveys with SPSS and bring out valuable facts from figures. Regardless of whether you've distributed a questionnaire virtually or physically, the same method could be employed to analyze respondents' data. In this guide, I'll show you a step-by-step process for analyzing answers obtained after administering survey questionnaires.