If you've already stuffed the slots in your motherboardfull of PCIe SSDs, you might be wondering what's the best way to add more. While you could buy larger capacities and swap them out, several manufacturers make PCIe add-in cards that can add one, two, or a whole bunch of M.2 NVMe drives to your system.

I've been on a push to get as many things in my smart home controlled by open-source, self-hosted programs, which I've largely accomplished with hours of configuration in Home Assistant running in a VM on my NAS. For devices that have a Home Assistant app, it's mostly smooth sailing, and I've got voice control set up as well.

There's no shortage of choice when managing packages on Linux. The most popular option is apt, which is the default for many Debian-based distros such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint. Then there's dnf on Fedora and pacman for Arch Linux. I've extensively used apt for decades and dabbled with other options throughout the years of testing numerous Linux distros. Still, I find pacman to be the best of the bunch, thanks to its robust syntax usage, performance, and reliability. That's not to say apt and the others are bad ... but since switching to Arch on my primary rig, I'm happy sticking with pacman, although yay comes in a close second for accessing AUR.

Using a combination of Trello and Notion gets overwhelming when managing personal projects. While both are efficient tools, I began to dread the charade of switching between two apps. After trying several alternatives, I followed my colleagues' recommendation and gave Focalboard, an open-source app, a try as a personal project management tool. I self-hosted the Focalboard server for personal use since it combines calendars, to-do lists, and Kanban-style cards in a single interface. Here's my account of how Focalboard helped me replace Trello and Notion to boost my productivity.

We've seen plenty of mini PCs go on sale in the past, but if you've been holding out for one that delivers impressive power, this one from GMKtec is going to be one of the best that we've seen. It features a powerful Intel i9 processor that's paired with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage. For the most part, it is going to be able to handle anything you can throw at it. The best part is that it's now down to its lowest price yet, coming in at just $520 after a steep $200 discount.

Ask any home lab enthusiast about their setup, and you’ll probably hear them ramble about second-hand server hardware. After all, a huge number of CPU cores and tons of (ECC-compatible) memory slots go a long way in enhancing your virtualization projects. Heck, I use a dual Xeon system as my primary workstation, and even contemplated buying additional server-grade equipment as a graduation gift for myself.

A few days ago, the lovely people at Opera gave me a peek into its new product, Neon. Right now, they're hard at work getting it out of the testing phase, but I really enjoyed what I saw. They showed me the ropes and what Opera Neon's AI can do, and they even gave some examples when I asked for them. They were kind enough to give me a developer build, featuring the AI tools within the Opera Neon shell.

If you've upgraded your PC or laptop lately, you might have an extra SSD left over. It's a fairly common practice to sling it into a drawer for storage. After all, it's not going to get hurt by moving around, and you have time to figure out what to use it for. But if it's left unplugged from power for an extended time, any data you have stored on it might be at risk.

It's hard to use a Microsoft product these days and not have Copilot popping its head in to see how you're doing. While some apps aren't really enhanced with Microsoft's AI assistant, Copilot is one of the exceptions. The ability to quickly get stuff done and create formulae using English descriptions makes things a lot easier.

In the early 1990s, Nintendo and tech company Philips collaborated for game releases on an interactive CD player known as the CD-i. This business partnership came in the wake of a failed collaboration between Sony and Nintendo, which historically was the catalyst that led to the creation of the first PlayStation console. But while that was going on, Nintendo licensed some of their franchises to Philips in order to release games for the CD-i. Unfortunately, the reception of the games and the CD-i was less than stellar, which eventually culminated in the unit being discontinued by 1998. Following that, Nintendo would go on to make their own disc-based console with the Nintendo GameCube, but only after years of sticking with cartridge-based releases while their competition moved forward with putting games onto compact discs.

I've been using Nextcloud for some time. At first, it was everything I wanted: a self-hosted solution with numerous features. It has file syncing, calendars, contacts, media previews, and even collaborative document editing. It was like having my personal workspace, similar to Google Workspace.

What I love the most about the SBC and 3D printing community is how hard they go in on the mentality of "don't buy, build." If they see a product they want but it's too expensive, the cogs start turning within their heads. Give them a few days and a GitHub page, and they'll find a way to achieve the same result with a fraction of the price, with open-source plans and code, and somehow fix people's problems with the paid product.