When I spin up a new Home Assistant instance, there are a few add-ons I don’t wait to install. These tools make configuration easier, unlock extra features, and give me more control over how I interact with my smart home. They don’t require much setup and deliver a significant return in terms of flexibility and reliability. Whether I’m building something new or restoring from backup, these are always part of the foundation.

I consider myself lucky to have grown up in the best gaming generation, the sixth. As the world moved from DOS and NES to the PlayStation and Xbox, I had a PC as the only way to discover and play games, thanks to tech magazines and their demo CDs. What I truly miss about that time — apart from the abundance of carefree youth — is how simple gaming used to be. You plugged in a cartridge or a CD, and hoped your parents didn’t remember that you were already past your bedtime.

I love an organized desktop. There's just something about a cluttered screen that makes it harder to stay focused on the task at hand. It's like the knowledge of the clutter sits at the corner of my mind, taunting me. Or maybe I just get distracted easily.

The thermal paste that comes pre-applied on your GPU out of the factory doesn't last forever. Just like how you apply fresh thermal paste on your CPU every couple of years or so, you need to reapply the thermal paste on your GPU as well if you wish to maintain peak thermal performance. However, most people don't really do this, and that's mainly because disassembling a graphics card isn't as straightforward as unmounting a CPU cooler. More importantly, there's always the risk of potentially damaging your expensive GPU.

Creating a media server is a great way to access all the stored media content on your hard disk in a centralized manner. I have my fair share of free media, family events, and personal memories stashed in multiple hard disks and SSDs. It's tiresome to hook each of the drives to the PC or copy the media to the phone to view them, and Jellyfin sounded like a great idea to start.

I’ve tried out numerous home server operating systems and virtualization platforms over the past year. While each distro has certain useful things to bring to the table, Proxmox remains the undisputed winner for home labs, and for good reason. It offers everything from high-availability clusters and Ceph storage to native ZFS support, TurnKey LXC templates, and SDN facilities – all without charging a dime.

ESPHome has become one of my favorite tools for managing smart home devices. It gives me the ability to configure, update, and troubleshoot sensors and microcontrollers without needing to write firmware by hand. Once I saw how easily it integrates with Home Assistant and how much control it gives me, it became my go-to choice for nearly every ESP32 or ESP8266 project. Whether I'm deploying a temperature sensor or a complex multi-relay controller, ESPHome simplifies the process in ways that still surprise me.

"I want to make a big announcement," said Faryar Shirzad, the chief policy officer of Coinbase, to a nearly empty room. His words echoed across the massive hall at the Bitcoin Conference, deep in the caverns of The Venetian Expo in Las Vegas, and it wasn't apparent how many people were watching on the livestream. Then again, somebody out there may have been interested in the panelists he was interviewing, one of whom was unusual by Bitcoin Conference standards: Chris LaCivita, the political consultant who'd co-chaired Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign. "I am super proud to say it on this stage," Shirzad continued, addressing the dozens of people scattered across 5,000 chairs. "We have just become a major sponsor of the America250 effort." My jaw dropped. Coinbase, the world's largest crypto exchange, the owner of 12 percent of the world's Bitcoin supply, and listed on the S&P 500, was paying for Trump to hold a military parade.No wonder they made the announcement in an empty room. Today was "Code and Country": an entire day of MAGA-themed panels on the Nakamoto Main Stage, full of Republican legislators, White House officials, and political operatives, all of whom pr …Read the full story at The Verge.

While this most recent GPU release cycle is still largely underway, we've reached the tail end of the notable cards in both AMD and Nvidia's lineups. The release of the flagships and mid-range has come and gone, and I don't think it'd be too early to start reflecting on how everything went. MSRP, QA, and stock conversations dominated the discourse for most people, and that's understandable, considering just how many people couldn't get their hands on a card in the first place.

The Wholesome Direct is always full of cute and charming games to keep an eye on for the future. But it's also a great place to find things to play now - and that's especially true this year. The 2025 edition of the livestream showcase included a number of games that released during the show itself.So if you like what you see, there's no wait at all.Camper Van: Make it HomeFinally, a game that combines designing your own house with going on a road trip. Camper Van: Make it Home is exactly what it sounds like. On the design side, you're able to customize a tiny home camper and make it appropriately cozy, but the developers say it will also take you on "a journey of self-discovery."Fireside FeelingsThis game seems designed entirely around comfort. You play as a cute little animal and spend your time curled up around a fire, chatting with friends, and guiding the conversation as you get pulled into a bigger story.InstantsPuzzle game meets scrapbooking. Here the goal is to organize a huge cache of family photos, and as you do, discover their history and story. "Inspired by the way elders pass down family history using pictures to support their storytelling," the develope …Read the full story at The Verge.

Give the people what they want, Tim.It's early June and the vibes are decidedly off in Cupertino.The hype leading up to Apple's last two developer conferences felt much different. There was anticipation in 2023 for a potentially groundbreaking new headset. In 2024, there was a sense of urgency leading up to the company's AI announcements and whispers that Siri might actually, finally be good at something. But 2025? Well, things are different. The Vision Pro was the big announcement at that 2023 show, and it's, uh, still around. Apple has reportedly cut production due to slow sales, and you can get one at a steep discount on eBay. Maybe the price is wrong. And the big AI announcement last year? How's that going? As it stands, Apple Intelligence is stalled out. The features that Apple managed to deploy are underwhelming, and the meaty update to Siri has been delayed - maybe even for years. It sounds like the whole thing was a real fiasco inside Apple, and publicly, the company took down an ad showcasing Siri features that simply don't exist yet. Ouch.And then there's the legal stuff. In 2021, a court in California ordered Apple to let developers add links allowing customers to make purchases outside of their a …Read the full story at The Verge.

Mechanical keyboards have become increasingly common, thanks to falling prices combined with a surge in choices and an ever-improving typing experience. Compared to membrane keyboards, mechanical keyboards have a lot more going on underneath — discrete switches, extra layers of foam, plates, gaskets, stabilizers, and more. Despite many mechanical keyboards being fairly robust, you can still damage your keyboard if you tend to be careless at your desk. Not all of these habits will inflict lasting damage, but they're all enough to ruin your prized keyboard in other ways.