Google Docs was my go-to writing tool for years. I used it for everything from article drafts and checklists to full-blown project planning. It worked well enough, but over time, I grew frustrated with the clutter, the reliance on internet access, and the growing list of features I didn’t need. What I really wanted was a more focused writing environment that put me in control of my work.

You know, we have a ton of games where you play as someone causing havoc, but we rarely spend a thought towards those who have to clean it up afterwards. Well, maybe not if you play GTA, because you'll see the police and the fire service turn up, but you're still not playing as them.

The day before the launch of GPT-5, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman surprised employees with a message in the company's Slack."As we mentioned a few weeks ago, we have been looking at comp for our technical teams given the movement in the market," wrote Altman, according to a copy of the message that was shared with me. He announced that OpenAI would give a "special one-time award" to researchers and software engineers in a handful of orgs, including applied engineering, scaling, and safety. "We very much intend to keep increasing comp as we keep doing better and better as a company," he wrote. "But we wanted to be transparent about this one since …Read the full story at The Verge.

Japan doesn’t want Apple to give it the EU treatment. We might finally see the first iPhone browsers built on top of third-party engines now that Japanese regulators have taken up the issue. Apple’s malicious compliance in the EU has so far prevented Chrome, and its Blink engine, for example, from coming to iOS, but recently published guidelines related to Japan’s Smartphone Act could change that. Not only do they set a December deadline for restrictions to be lifted, but also specify that Apple can’t enforce alternative rules that make it difficult to adopt alternatives to the company’s own WebKit browser engine.According to a translation provided by the Open Web Advocacy organization, the guidelines prevent Apple from doing the following:“Imposing unreasonable technical restrictions on individual app providers while allowing them to adopt alternative browser engines, placing excessive financial burdens on individual app providers for adopting alternative browser engines, and steering smartphone users away from using individual software that incorporates alternative browser engines.”

Summer's almost over, which means back-to-school sales are in full swing. If you're looking for an affordable large-screen laptop with plenty of power, this one from HP is going to be the one to go with. While it's normally priced at $630, it's now $300 off at Best Buy, dropping it down to just $330. This is a fantastic price for this laptop, which makes it a very good time to pick one up.

Corsair's updated Scimitar Wireless Elite SE mouse is a pretty standard gaming mouse designed for MMORPG players with additional buttons positioned on the thumb rest. Having used Razer's Naga V2 over the last several years, I'm pretty familiar with MMO mice. While there are often some trade-offs between one MMO mouse and another, a lot of things are the same. They're usually 12-14-button programmable mice, with low-latency and high DPI for added sensitivity.

Over the past few months, Docker has become one of my most frequently used applications, thanks to my newfound interest in self-hosting services. I've deployed several apps as Docker containers, which I now use daily as replacements for traditional software downloaded from the internet. After all, self-hosting helps me save money and ensures better privacy compared to sending my data to remote servers. While using Docker is pretty straightforward, managing multiple containers can get overwhelming — especially if you're running a home lab. Keeping track of what's happening inside containers for debugging, analyzing logs, and monitoring performance is important. Unfortunately, the Docker app falls short for this purpose.

Most network-attached storage (NAS) enclosures you can buy from brands like Synology and Asustor come with an Intel CPU and integrated graphics (iGPU). These are similar to what you'd find on a consumer-grade AMD Ryzen or Intel Core processor. The iGPU is not designed for 4K gaming, but rather offloading much of the work from the CPU itself for transcoding and other tasks a GPU can handle. It's a powerful addition to the tool arsenal and is a feature often sought out by those purchasing prebuilt enclosures. Do you need a discrete GPU for NAS? Probably not, even if it's a DIY system.

Using software to create a "second brain" is a concept I only stumbled across a few months ago, although I have, in essence, been doing the same thing for years. Our brains are skilled at coming up with new ideas, but we have a finite amount of storage to work with. Sure, you might still remember your high school locker code, but it isn't always easy to shove more information into a space. That's where a "second brain" comes in — a way to keep notes that allow us to more easily access learned knowledge and create links between ideas.

You know, as much as I love tinkering with Raspberry Pis, I don't think I can break into one. No, not physically; I could probably snap one in half if it wouldn't fill me with despair for slaying an innocent SBC. I'm talking about the security countermeasures buried deep within the chip. Because, as fun as Raspberry Pis can be in the hands of hobbyists, they're also used in critical, industrial cases too. And the last thing a business wants is weak security in their chips.

The Star Wars franchise has been adapted into many different mediums over the decades, including a number of major video games. And while most of the video games based on Star Wars have found a great deal of success, not all of them have been good. Some games have unfortunately dragged down the reputation of the franchise with a low bar of quality that fans have joked about for a long time. Most Star Wars will pick up and support anything that has Star Wars on the label, but they aren't foolish enough to not know when something is just flat out bad. But there is a saving grace for Star Wars games that fit into this type of category.

Of all the electronic waste we generate, old computers are perhaps the most heartbreaking to discard. I've already written about plans to keep my decade-old laptop kicking for another few years using a lightweight OS, but there ought to be desktops out there bound to meet a similar fate. When they slow down or can't run the latest software, it's easy to swap out the motherboard and processor for a quick upgrade that's often cheaper than buying a new laptop with equivalent specs, all thanks to the modularity and standardization of PC hardware.