I remember when "gaming" and "Linux" were words that never gelled well in a sentence together. It was pretty much Windows or bust if you wanted to play games. There were some valiant efforts to get Linux users gaming, but it was mostly when (or if) a developer made a version that worked on Linux. If they didn't, you were out of luck.

iPhone repair kit (2022)Texas moved closer to becoming the next state with a right to repair law on the books, as the state Senate unanimously voted 31 – 0 to finalize HB 2963 this weekend. It would require manufacturers to make spare parts, manuals, and necessary tools available for equipment sold or used in the country’s second most populated state. As more states have passed right to repair laws, we’ve seen repair options and information becoming more widely available nationwide from companies like Apple and Samsung. If the bill is signed into law by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, that will add another significant market with these requirements in place. A press release from the United States Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), which has pushed for repairability laws nationwide, noted that this would make Texas the ninth state with a right to repair rule, and the seventh with a version that includes consumer electronics. It follows New York, Colorado, Minnesota, California, Oregon, Maine, and most recently, Washington, and would be the first state on the list with a Republican-controlled government.“More repair means less waste. Texas produces some 621,000 tons of electronic waste per year, which creates an expensive and toxic mess. Now, thanks to this bipartisan win, Texans can fix that,” said Environment Texas executive director Luke Metzger.

I'm a massive fan of Nintendo in general, and the Nintendo Switch generation has been the most engaged I've ever been with video games. It should come as no surprise, then, that the Nintendo Switch 2 is something I'm looking forward to with a ton of anticipation.

I’ve been an Adobe Creative Cloud subscriber for over a decade, and even owned disk versions of Photoshop and Lightroom before Creative Cloud existed. My entire adult life has been lived alongside Adobe. But after huge injections of AI overhaul, untrustworthy price increases, feature changes, and a realization of my use case, it’s time for me to leave Adobe behind. Some people avoid Adobe from the start, and some migrate to fantastic alternative creative tools. It’s a struggle for me to leave, but these reasons are finally becoming too important to ignore.

I’ve been a Windows user for decades, and have used the OS series for most of my workloads, be it gaming, testing new hardware, or even writing articles such as this one. However, I’m not too fond of burdening my daily driver with too many apps, especially when said applications lie on the coding side. Conflicting packers are a hundred times more annoying to troubleshoot on Windows than on Linux, and I’d rather not pollute my system with a barrage of packages and dependencies.

When I first got into NAS systems, I used to obsess over processor speeds, RAM, hardware transcoding, and whether the interface had all the bells and whistles as some of the alternatives offered. Dual Ethernet ports for aggregation, maybe even PCIe expansion to add a 10GbE card, were some of my more recent obsessions. But over time, I realized none of that really mattered as much as one thing: whether I could actually expand my storage down the line. Because, as anyone who stores a lot of data will tell you, it creeps up on you fast. One minute you’re backing up a few photos, and the next you’re hoarding 4K videos, photos, music, and a whole lot of data. And the primary purpose of a NAS is to serve up storage. Everything else, including the ability to work as a server, is effectively secondary.

Microsoft’s changes in response to the Digital Markets Act already included allowing Windows machines in the regions it covers to uninstall Edge and remove Bing results from Windows search, but now the list is growing in some meaningful ways. New features announced Monday for Microsoft Windows users in the European Economic Area (the EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway) include the option to uninstall the Microsoft Store and avoid extra nags or prompts asking them to set Microsoft Edge as the default browser unless they choose to open it.That last one is one I’d like to have readily available in the United States, and according to Microsoft, it’s already live in the EEA, starting with Edge version 137.0.3296.52 that rolled out on May 29th.Additionally, setting a different browser, like Chrome, Firefox, Brave, or something else, will pin it to the taskbar unless the user chooses not to. While setting a different browser default already attaches it to a few link and file types like https and .html, now users in the EEA will see it apply to more types like “read,” ftp, and .svg. The default browser changes are live for some users in the beta channel and are set to roll out widely on Windows 10 and Windows 11 in July.Microsoft also explained that even after removing the Store app from Start and Settings, “Apps installed and distributed from the Microsoft Store will continue to get updates,” and it can always be reinstalled. Other changes mentioned include automatically enabling third-party apps to add their web search results in Windows Search upon installation, and the option to move search providers around based on user preference. With updates rolling out in “early June,” the Microsoft Bing app, as well as the Widgets Board and Lock Screen, will open web content with the default browser instead.

No one can prepare you for how chaotic the process of writing a novel can get. I had notes scattered in a dozen places and half-formed ideas in every note app I've ever downloaded. It was time to find a tool that would keep everything organized in one place and keep my workflow streamlined.

Russian Governor Igor Ivanovich Kobzev shares an image of the strike’s aftermath in the Irkutsk region. | Image: TelegramUkraine launched a surprise attack on Russia that targeted more than 40 of the country's military aircraft on Sunday. The mission, called Operation Spiderweb, involved sending 117 drones over Russia's borders and into several of its airfields. It was the Ukrainian military's longest-ranged attack yet, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but it also pulls back the curtain on an elaborate campaign to put raw footage of the strike in front of a global audience.Within just hours, three videos of the strike spread from Ukraine's federal security agency to a journalist based in the country, later spilling into social media and news outlets worldwide. The videos appear to be filmed from the perspective of a drone, complete with an overlay of information about the drone's telemetry.In one video, the drone flies over an airfield, passing clouds of dark gray smoke billowing from multiple warplanes. Another clip apparently captures the moment a plane explodes into a tower of flames. The third shows a drone descending toward an aircraft, with the video suddenly freezing and displaying the message "Warning no data" upon reaching the plane. The Ukrainian government would later repor …Read the full story at The Verge.

Ever since the Digital Markets Act (DMA) went into effect in the European Union (EU), nearly all the big tech giants (which the European Commission refers to as "gatekeepers") have made some changes to comply with EU regulations. The list of tech giants includes Microsoft too, which made changes like allowing users located within the European Union to uninstall Microsoft Edge, Bing, and OneDrive from Windows 11 devices. The company also announced that data collected from third-party apps on Windows 11 PCs won’t be used to give Microsoft an unfair advantage over competing developers.

I've been a fan of mechanical keyboards for over four years now. Ever since I moved from a Cooler Master membrane keyboard to a cheap mechanical keyboard, I knew I was never going back. A single keyboard turned into over a dozen, but there was one type of keyboard I ignored for a long time — low-profile keyboards. I loved the distinctive sound and feel of mechanical keyboards, and didn't want to sacrifice them by going low-profile.

Many PC components and peripherals can be overclocked, allowing them to operate beyond their factory settings. It's more common for CPUs and graphics cards, but overclocking gaming monitors is also pretty common. Sometimes this is done at the factory, as displays sold at a 144Hz refresh rate often use panels with a 120Hz native refresh rate.