There’s no denying that the processor, RAM capacity, PCIe lanes, and number of drive bays are important considerations when you’re building a Network-Attached Storage server for your backup, archival, and file-sharing needs. That said, the underlying NAS also needs the right operating system to match your requirements, and as someone who has gone through different NAS-centric distros, I can confirm that there are plenty of cool options out there.

There are more AI subscriptions to keep track of now than there are useful things to say about any of them. Every model provider has three tiers and keeps releasing new products and features, all of which are locked behind specific tiers. To me, the sensible move is to just pick one subscription that fits your workflow best and making the most of the free versions of everything else. That's what I've been doing with Claude Pro since I got it.

The Linux community is full of distro creativity. Some distros are created to solve a specific problem, while others are made for fun. Back in 2009, the world bore witness to the majesty that was Hannah Montana Linux, and while it was intended as a joke, it was surprisingly functional. We even gave it a try in 2025, although getting it running after all those years was tricky.

Most Americans don't trust AI. It's proven that it doesn't know what safe toppings for pizza are. People don't even want to listen to AI music. But none of that matters for some of America's wealthy, who are turning to AI to teach their kids instead of traditional schools.Companies like Forge Prep and Alpha School are charging families tens of thousands of dollars to turn their kids into beta testers for AI tutors and "interactive project-based workshops." Unsurprisingly, Silicon Valley have been major adopters of this new model. Shaun Johnson, a San Francisco-based venture capitalist, told the Wall Street Journal that he plans to send his …Read the full story at The Verge.

NotebookLM is a phenomenal tool for studying. Its strength lies in its ability to pull information solely from the sources you give it; you never have to hunt down a weird source again. NotebookLM ensures you know exactly where the data is coming from — but that can become an issue if you provide it with the wrong information. On the other hand, Claude is better at searching and parsing information to ensure you have accurate data. I assumed that, given the limitations of NotebookLM, Claude would be a much better choice overall.

The launch of the Steam Machine has led to some fallout on the internet as the $1,049 base price was confirmed. Gamers were quick to compare the Steam Machine to the $500 PS5 and declared it a misstep from Valve. To some extent, this does feel true, as for over a grand, you could buy a next-gen console, a couple of extra gamepads, and a stack of premium software titles. However, realistically, the Steam Machine isn't a console; it's a small form factor PC. While on the surface, Valve's $1,050 pricing looks like highway robbery, comparing it against the DIY desktop landscape makes it clear that it's potentially an engineering marvel.

Ray tracing has come a long way since Nvidia first made it the headline feature of its RTX 20-series GPUs back in 2018. I don't know if you remember, but the initial impressions were mixed because you had to drop to 1080p to get better reflections or shadows, even on a flagship GPU like the RTX 2080 Ti. Gamers made it clear that the performance hit was simply not worth it, especially when the visual upgrade didn't feel dramatic. Then we got DLSS, which helped offset the FPS hit, but its early implementations looked like a blurry mess.

The good news is Valve has finally decided to release the Steam Machine. The bad news is that it costs $1,049, at which price point, most consumers are getting the raw end of the deal. This seems characteristic of consumer device pricing in the middle of the worst hardware inflation cycles in the last decade, but don't let it distract you from the fact that even $800 for the Steam Machine would have been an equally bad deal.

CarPlay is, without a doubt, one of the most-used apps on my iPhone. Every time I get in the car, CarPlay is the first thing I load up. It helps me combat my abysmal sense of direction, keeps me entertained (whether through audiobooks or with music), and makes it easy to take calls while I'm on the road. And at a glance, it seems like one of the most straightforward apps out there.

I used to assume that a 500Mbps fiber connection was all I needed to prevent other devices from ruining my online gaming sessions. After all, games like Valorant barely use a fraction of that bandwidth. Still, whenever my younger brother started downloading games on my PS5 or Steam started downloading updates on my PC, I'd suddenly notice packet loss and sharp spikes in the Network RTT graph. Even though my ping only got slightly worse, those sudden latency spikes were all it took for enemies to teleport or shots to register late at the worst possible moments.

There are various music players out there to choose from, but just because they’re popular doesn’t mean you’ll like them. That was the case for me until I came across Winamp 5.9.2, the classic desktop player. Sure, the player is almost 30 years old, but it has what I want in a music player, and for now, it’s my go-to. I can change the skin, play my music without Wi-Fi, and listen without any AI getting involved.

I'm the guy who wires MCP servers into his home lab for fun, so Microsoft's announcement of on-device agents for Windows 11 spoke to me. I'm the target audience, whether I like it or not. I've spent months using frontier and local LLM models to control my Proxmox cluster, or my DNS, or browse through my Windows Event Viewer logs.Agentic automation is my favorite use case for AI, and I believe it's the one that most people will get on board with.