PC building is often focused on performance, and for good reason. Parts selection for a lot of enthusiasts revolves around getting the most for your money, and putting more dosh into parts like the CPU and GPU is the main way to accomplish that. Performance-per-dollar is a great way to select those parts, but what about everything else?

You're probably familiar with the Internet Protocol. After all, it's the "IP" in IPv4 and IPv6. The set of rules that routes data across networks so that it gets to the correct destination. The protocol says how to divide the data into smaller packets for transmission, and how to address them for transport, just like sending a physical packet through the mail. It's most commonly thought of in relation to the Internet and transmitting data over Ethernet or Wi-Fi, but there are many other things it gets used for.

Excel is one of the most versatile tools in data analysis and is significantly ahead of its competitors in terms of features and popularity. One of the key aspects that makes Excel versatile is that both an average person and a pro can utilize it to their advantage.

For years, clock speed ruled the roost. It was the one metric you could point to, devoid of context, to say one component was "faster" than another. It's literally right there in the name. Clock speed directly shows how quickly your components are running; how many instructions it's able to execute in a second. And yet, today, clock speed is one of the least important specs you can pay attention to.

Have you given the Mass Effect trilogy a try? If you haven't, I really recommend that you give it a shot. As much as people had complaints about how the trilogy came to an end (and honestly, I don't blame them), the series is still a stellar range that I believe everyone who's into the sci-fi genre should try at least once in their lives.

Microsoft Edge's tactics to keep people from swapping browsers are pretty well-known by now. While the browser will never explicitly block you from downloading a rival browser, it will definitely kick and stomp its feet about it and beg you to stay with Edge. It has gotten to the point where other browser developers are getting a little peeved over how Microsoft is handling things, and in early 2024, we saw Mozilla complain about how Edge badgers users when downloading a different app.

We're well into the age of remakes and remasters, and while there's a lot that could be said about how they take resources away from potential new IPs and franchises, I, for one, really appreciate a good remake. And when I say 'good remake', I'm not talking about something like Resident Evil 3, which was a shoddy excuse for one. A truly great remake must become the definitive way to play the game.

While there are many great alternatives to Adobe’s creative software tools — such as Krita being a good alternative to Photoshop — there are fewer viable alternatives to tablet-based Procreate. For on-the-go digital drawing, Procreate has dominated the market almost since its inception in 2011; however, with it only being available for iPads, it leaves a large gap in the industry for other tools to step in and provide what’s missing. Enter: Kreska. Released only in May 2025, this browser-based tool provides many similar features to Procreate, on more platforms, and totally for free.

Hit is one of the best things to come from Linus Torvalds, if you exclude Linux. This version control system is excellent for developing software and collaborating on other code and solutions. Whether you happen to be building a website or creating a new Linux distro, Git is great for version control, history, branching, and completing the project with minimal fuss. GitHub is one of the more popular platforms for hosting Git repositories and projects. It's fantastic, but it happens to be owned by Microsoft and has a limited free tier.

The console gaming scene has turned really strange in the past few years. Before, we saw three individual camps vying to compete with one another using raw processing power and exclusive titles. Now, we see Sony trying to take the home console market, Nintendo capitalizing on the handheld scene, and Microsoft throwing its arms in the air and just turning every device on the planet into an Xbox.

It seems YouTube is finally giving its TV app the AI feature that lets you skip to the most interesting parts of a video. Android Authority’s Mishaal Rahman reports that the Jump Ahead perk for YouTube Premium subscribers appeared on his Nvidia Shield TV yesterday, a feature that was previously exclusive to YouTube’s web and mobile platforms.Jump Ahead gives users an easy way to automatically get to the best bits of a video by using AI to analyze the most-watched segments that viewers typically skip to. YouTube started testing the feature last year before later releasing it for Premium subscribers on web and mobile, but those who prefer watching on the big screen — which is now the primary viewing source in the US — have been left wanting until now.Premium subscribers can activate Jump Ahead by double-tapping the fast-forward button on the video player, which then takes viewers to the next point in the video that most users view. This works differently on TVs, according to YouTube’s support page, requiring users to press the right arrow on their remote to see the next most-watched section, as indicated by a dot on the progress bar. Pressing the right arrow again will then take users to that point in the video, instead of skipping ahead by ten seconds as usual. Rahman says that a message reading “Jumping over commonly skipped section” appeared when using the feature.While YouTube’s support page confirms that Jump Ahead is now “available on Living Room,” the scale and pace of the rollout are unclear. The feature doesn’t appear to be widely available on TVs yet, and YouTube hasn’t made a launch announcement. A Reddit user has reported seeing the feature appear on their Samsung TV, however, and Android Police also spotted it on a Google TV streamer. We have asked Google for clarity on the rollout.

YouTube videos with strong profanity in the first seven seconds (words like “fuck”) are now eligible for full monetization, according to a video from Conor Kavanagh, YouTube’s head of monetization policy experience. Previously, these kinds of videos were only eligible for “limited ad revenue.”  Changes to YouTube’s inappropriate language policies have long been a sore spot for creators. In November 2022, the company began to potentially limit ad revenue if profanity was used in the first 8–15 seconds of a video. ProZD, whose real name is SungWon Cho, published a video where, after waiting 15 seconds, he called the policy change “the dumbest fucking shit I’ve ever heard.” (He later said that the video was demonetized.) YouTube adjusted its policies in March 2023, including allowing videos with profanity in the first 8–15 seconds to be eligible for ad revenue.I asked ProZD his thoughts about Tuesday’s change. “It’s about fucking time.”The company originally restricted monetization for videos with swearing at the start of videos to “align with broadcast standards,” Kavanagh says. “Advertisers expected ads on YouTube to have distance between profanity and the ad that just served.” However, “those expectations have changed,” he says, “and advertisers already have the ability to target content to their desired level of profanity.”While the only specific example of “strong” profanity Kavanagh provides is “fuck” —  he says that YouTube defines “moderate profanity” as words like “asshole” or “bitch” — “you get the idea,” he says.YouTube will continue to limit monetization if you use moderate or strong profanity in titles or thumbnails. Videos with a “high frequency” of strong profanity are also still a “violation” of YouTube’s advertiser-friendly content guidelines, Kavanagh says. “You have to pick and choose your fucks carefully.”