My living room media setup started with a simple goal. I wanted my movies and television shows on hardware I controlled, with one clean interface instead of a pile of streaming apps that each remembered different watch histories.

If you thought Microsoft's Azure CTO should have better things to do than getting classic FPS Doom to run in MS Paint, you'd be very wrong.

There was a time when HDMI 2.1 ports were extremely rare, but even today, the ones on most gaming monitors aren't delivering the features they're supposed to. An HDMI 2.1 port should support not just 48 Gbps bandwidth, but also features such as eARC, ALLM, dynamic HDR, and more. In reality, manufacturers can implement just one of these features and market "HDMI 2.1" to move units.

Anyone who has ever built a Jellyfin server eventually reaches the same crossroads — a couple of friends start streaming remotely, and someone tries to play a file on a device that can't handle the original video format. That's what makes the "effortless" server start sweating, and you instinctively think of plugging in a faster Ryzen processor, a newer motherboard, and maybe even a memory upgrade. Those upgrades aren't nearly as easy as they once were, but they were still mistakes I almost ended up making.

Lately, my workflow revolves around AI tools much more than it used to. I'm constantly copying prompts, AI responses, code snippets, research, and links while switching between my desktop, laptop, and phone. My clipboard manager still does a good job of remembering everything I copy, but that's no longer my biggest problem. These days, I need that content to be available wherever I'm working next. After looking for a better solution, I came across OctoClip. It combines clipboard syncing with simple file transfers, which turned out to be a much better fit for the way I work today.

Driven by demand for AI capacity, AMD's data center revenue more than doubled year-over-year in its latest earnings report, reaching $6.7 billion. That's up from $5.8 billion in Q1, and jumping 107 percent from the $3.2 billion it reported for the same period a year ago. During Tuesday's earnings call, AMD CEO Lisa Su said the company expects "data center segment revenue to more than double year-over-year in 2027," as well. At the same time, AMD's gaming revenue fell 31 percent compared to last year, to $779 million, as price hikes and component shortages slowed sales for the Xbox Series X / S, PS5, and Valve's Steam Deck. On a call after …Read the full story at The Verge.

I bought the new Steam Controller with the expectation that it'd be the last gamepad I'd ever need, and the hardware makes a great case for that. While there are controllers out there that combine a couple of the elements of what Valve has done, none of them have full parity with the Steam Controller. The trackpads are great, the gyro is really solid, and the traditional gamepad elements like the buttons and joysticks are as good as it gets.

You can link more devices with one phone number on Signal now, including an Android phone or iPhone. Signal already supported linking PCs and iPads, but not additional phones. When you link a device on Signal, you can check and respond to new messages across all of your linked devices. You can also choose whether or not to transfer an end-to-end encrypted copy of your previous messages to each newly linked device to mitigate the risk of devices that might be shared, lost, or compromised.The update is rolling out now with Signal version 8.20 on Android and version 8.22 for iPhone / iPad. Signal also says it has made "significant interface …Read the full story at The Verge.

Document chat is a non-negotiable part of most of my workflows these days. Yes, NotebookLM still holds the crown in this department, but only when I'm getting serious with coursework. For all of my other documents, I default to my daily AI, Claude. However, Claude is still a cloud tool at the end of the day, which means there are certain docs I don't feel comfortable just handing over.

If you're looking to move away from cable clutter, Bluetooth is one way to go. You can use the technology to connect vital accessories, transfer files, listen to audio, and more. If you have an older PC or laptop, there's a pretty good chance it might need a Bluetooth upgrade. This Ugreen Bluetooth 5.4 USB dongle is the perfect solution, and costs just $7 right now thanks to a 33% discount on Amazon.

In less than a week, Spider-Man: Brand New Day raked in $1 billion worldwide and had the biggest box office opening weekend in Hollywood history. The feature has been a reminder of why Sony is probably never going to give up the Spider-Man film rights, and highlighted how Marvel Studios was smart to strike a deal to bring the character into its own films. But as successful as Brand New Day has been, the larger MCU has been stuck in a confounding slump for the past few years. And while this latest Spider-Man movie was truly excellent, it's not necessarily a sign that Marvel has figured out how to get things back on track.Though Brand New Da …Read the full story at The Verge.

SpaceX's AI revenue grew more than three times to $2.6 billion from the year before, mostly because of deals that the company made to provide compute to other AI companies, according to SpaceX's quarterly earnings. The AI division, which the company said in its documents to go public was the source of most of its value, lost $1.5 billion this quarter, slightly less than in the same quarter last year.SpaceX made deals with Anthropic in May and Google in June to provide compute to the other two AI companies, putting it in competition with other neoclouds such as CoreWeave. The increased presence in AI is also driving the company to spend mor …Read the full story at The Verge.