What does it mean when something is 'sentient'? It's a debate that has raged for years, and it's not something I can really squeeze into this article. What I can say, however, is that the creation and distribution of LLMs have added another area of discourse to the pot. When you ask Gemini a question about how to cook a chicken, or you sic Claude on your coding project, are you asking a program, or a person?

Claude Code has a reputation for being a developer tool, and that reputation keeps a lot of people away from it who'd actually get something out of it. I avoided it for months for exactly that reason. The thing nobody really spells out is that Claude Code is mostly just file access. You point it at a folder, and from then on it can read, write, and reorganize whatever lives in there. The coding part is one use case, not the whole thing.

Joby flight at JFK airport. | Image: The Verge This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on aviation, air taxis, and Wi-Fi speeds at 30,000 feet, follow Andrew J. Hawkins. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes on Sunday at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.How it startedLast year, two of the leading air taxi companies in the US, Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation, sued each other, with Joby accusing Archer of corporate espionage and Archer claiming that Joby was concealing its ties to China. Then, in February of this year, Archer filed a patent infringement suit against a different air taxi rival, Vertical A …Read the full story at The Verge.

Every Windows user finds themselves keying a shortcut, subconsciously, perhaps a dozen times a day. The common ones have become so universal that many web interfaces and desktop apps use the same commands for simple tasks such as copying, pasting, and saving. But what about the shortcuts that we use less frequently and don't always remember, or the ones we don't know about at all?

The number of hard drive bays and NVMe slots is undoubtedly the most essential aspect of a Network-Attached Storage, as you wouldn’t want to be stuck with a 2-bay NAS with limited HDD capacity if you plan to house TBs of data on your storage workstation. But I’ve often seen newcomers disregard the RAM specs when picking up a new NAS. On paper, going for more than 4GB of RAM might sound like an unnecessary investment for a storage server, especially with the memory apocalypse causing DDR5 (and even DDR4) modules to hit obscenely high prices. But if you’re planning to work with TrueNAS or other hardcore server distros that are built on ZFS, it’s a good idea to arm your backup machine with ample memory.

Windows 11 is one of the most widely used operating systems around, and for years, I've been vocal about making the most of its features. For instance, I've treated my workstation like a static appliance, relying heavily on the hibernation feature to preserve my workspace progress overnight. However, I built my current rig in 2020, and now I'm starting to worry about SSD failure rates and service life because it's still running the original Samsung 970 Evo 1TB M.2 NVMe boot drive.

I wanted to understand why so many developers treated Claude Code like a breakthrough, but my first few attempts left me underwhelmed. It could generate code, modify files, and fix obvious errors, yet none of them felt dramatically better than what I was already doing with a capable AI-powered IDE.

The 1 VIII doesn’t look much like any Xperia that’s come before. The Xperia 1 VIII marks an attempt at a step change for Sony's flagship phone line. Not only has it had an aesthetic overhaul, but Sony has also revamped the camera system, dropping the continuous optical zoom telephoto that's defined the last four generations of Xperia phone. It's not all different. Sony staples like a 3.5mm headphone jack and microSD card slot remain, and a few specific design touches, like a thick front bezel that fits stereo speakers, have stayed intact. Sony's ambitious pricing hasn't changed either: The Xperia 1 VIII isn't launching in the US, but in the UK and Europe, it starts from £1,399 / €1,499 (about $1,850), r …Read the full story at The Verge.

Steam is one of those strange examples of a service outdoing its competition by simply doing nothing and coasting on its existing good faith. We've seen other digital storefronts rise up to take it on, but none have really challenged Steam's throne. However, the one that's definitely the closest to take on Valve's offerings is the Epic Games Store.

My home lab has grown dramatically over the last few years to the point that it's become a critical part of my everyday productivity stack. What started as a simple NAS now includes a whole range of Docker containers, virtual machines, and monitoring tools. I depend on these tools daily, and as part of maintenance, I have to check logs or change configurations to ensure everything is working as I expect.

Over the last few years, my home lab has transformed from a box that I tinker with into a box that I rely on. At first, it ran some random services I'd spin up occasionally, but now it's my NAS, AI inference box, photo library, and backup server. As a result, it deserves a little bit more TLC than I have given it in recent years. I've kept the same old Corsair mid-tower case for essentially its entire lifespan, and when it was time to give it a big storage upgrade, I decided it was also time to put it in a case befitting a true home server, and it's one of the best upgrades I've ever made.

Getting your daily briefing printed out on a little piece of paper is so much more satisfying than an email. Maybe it's the fact that the paper is a tangible thing you can hold, or maybe it's just because it looks like you're getting a briefing from some kind of secret agency; either way, it's a lot cooler than receiving your daily digest digitally.