In the PC hardware timeline, even 5 years seems like ages ago. After all, 2020 was the year when we were grappling with the GPU crisis, the RTX 30 series had just launched, and the Ryzen 7 5800X3D didn't exist. If you built a gaming PC during that year, you might be tempted to go for a platform upgrade or at least a few component upgrades. Hold your horses, however, because I'm here to tell you that your PC has more life left in it than you think. Assuming you built a mid-range to high-end machine in 2020, your 5-year-old PC isn't really "old" yet.

Ryan Norbauer in his garage / workshop. | Photo: Taeha Kim / Norbauer & Co.The term "endgame," among keyboard enthusiasts, is sort of a running gag. Endgame is when you finally dial in your perfect layout, case, features, switches, and keycaps, so you can stop noodling around with parts and get on with whatever it is you actually use the keyboard for - work, presumably. Then a few months later you see something shiny and start over.In the search for endgame, most of us have to compromise somewhere - usually time or money. Sometimes the thing you're looking for just doesn't exist. But what if you didn't have to compromise? What if you had the time, the patience, the creative vision, and the cash to create your endgame keyboard from scratch? And I mean really from scratch, from the cable to the switches and stabilizers.This is how you get the Seneca, the first keyboard from Norbauer & Co. It has a plasma-oxide-finished milled aluminum chassis, a solid brass switchplate, custom capacitive switches, the best stabilizers in the world (also custom), spherical-profile keycaps with appropriately retro-looking centered legends, zero backlighting, and a completely flat typing angle.It weighs seven pounds and costs $3,600. You might have some questions, l …Read the full story at The Verge.

Lots of us may have old and dated tech lying around at home. Instead of letting them occupy space in the closet, it's best to repurpose them into something useful. That's exactly what I thought of when I found my dad's old laptop in the drawer. Ideally, I would have considered converting it into a home server or even the base for a home lab. But since it was my dad's laptop, I thought of restoring it in a way that he finds useful. He's an avid reader and has been eyeing a Kindle for the longest time. That made me wonder — what if I convert his old laptop into an e-reader, so he can download as many books as he wants and read them on a large display?

Home Assistant is a powerful tool that you can use to link up countless services in a way to take back control of your smart home and build it the way you like. It's not for everyone, but there's a massive community supporting it that consistently makes it easier to do various different things. It has complete voice assistant support, and I've built my own voice pipeline, for free, so that I control exactly how it runs and how it responds.

The Pro Controller for the original Nintendo Switch was quietly one of the better first-party controllers you could get, not just for Switch but across the board. It boasted grips and an incredible battery life, making it one of my favorite controllers to use. The Pro Controller 2 has traded in the grips for a matte black finish, some of the smoothest video game controller sticks I've ever felt, and back buttons for true gamers. Not only does it feel like a massive upgrade compared to the first version, but some of the additional features on the Switch 2, like button mapping and saving controller setups, make this a must-have for Switch 2 owners.

The tablet market is dominated by two brands, Apple and Samsung, with a few niche devices from other brands accounting for the remainder. However, the market position of the two giants has allowed them to increase prices without significantly improving the user experience. And that's left plenty of space for upstart OnePlus to bring its vision of what an Android tablet should be.

A trusted note-taking app has become a crucial part of my memory and thought process. When Google announced NotebookLM, a new AI-powered notebook, I started to wonder: Is this another contender in the crowded space of digital note-taking? The answer, refreshingly, is no. NotebookLM isn’t designed to take on the likes of OneNote, Evernote, or Notion. Instead, it’s engineered to be a powerful partner that integrates with my existing notes to unlock deeper understanding and accelerate my research in no time.

When I first upgraded from a standard 60Hz monitor to a 144Hz panel, I was immediately blown away by the smoothness, responsiveness, and overall immersion. Besides the competitive advantage I experienced in popular games like Fortnite, Overwatch, and Counter-Strike, I was impressed by the buttery smooth animations and cursor movement in Windows. So, I started chasing monitors with higher refresh rates mainly for competitive gaming. However, the upgrade from 144Hz to 240Hz and 360Hz wasn't as impressive as I thought it would be. Yes, I did notice improvements, but they weren't significant enough to justify the premium price tags.

The best, and most expensive, thing I’ve ever typed on. | Photo by Nathan Edwards / The VergeSome people can tell great wine from okay wine. They go on wine tastings, take wine tours. They tend to spend more money on wine than most. I am not one of those people. I can tell wine from vinegar if you show me the bottle. I am just a little bit obsessed with keyboards, though. I have spent the past couple of months typing on the Seneca, a fully custom capacitive keyboard that starts at $3,600 and might be the best computer keyboard ever built. I've also made a bunch of other people type on it - folks whose attitude toward keyboards is a little more utilitarian. My wife uses a mechanical keyboard because I put it on her desk; if I took it away, she would go back to her $30 Logitech membrane keyboard with no complaints. I put the Seneca on her desk. She said it was fine. I took it away. She went back to her other keyboard.The more normal you are about keyboards, the less impressive the Seneca is. I am not normal about keyboards, and the Seneca is goddamn incredible.The Seneca is the first luxury keyboard from Norbauer & Co, a company that would like to be for keyboards what Leica is to cameras, Porsche is to cars, or Hermés is to handbags and scarves. The thing that's …Read the full story at The Verge.

Smarthomes are supposed to make life simpler, but for many users, the convenience comes with hidden costs. Be it subscriptions, outages or, simply, privacy concerns. Cloud-based services are the go-to for most, but they’re not the only way to run a smart home.

I'm no stranger to automation as I have a variety of tasks I automate with Zapier and IFTTT. I've enjoyed using these platforms because I could easily configure tasks without needing coding knowledge. However, there are drawbacks due to the limitations of free plans.

If you are a Windows user and hesitant to use Apple’s iCloud feature, don’t be. You might think that because they are different operating systems, using iCloud on Windows is difficult or a headache. The truth is, it’s a cloud service like OneDrive, Google Drive, Proton Drive, or others. There are different ways in which it is beneficial to me. I have an iPhone, so it’s useful since I take a lot of photos and screenshots. I’m also a Windows user, so iCloud is an efficient way to sync photos and files I create, making them accessible across devices. Once it’s set up, I sync pictures to the built-in Photos app and access them from File Explorer.