The Windows design philosophy has typically been to include only a default set of tools with the OS, while letting third-party developers and enthusiasts build tools to add specific features. It worked well for older Windows versions, but users slowly started craving more useful tools natively. These weren’t niche use case software and would benefit most Windows users.

Well, the price of the Steam Machine has arrived, and it's not looking pretty. Valve has set the entry-level model at $1,049, and while it's easy to point the finger at the company for setting such a steep price, it claims that it was hapless against RAM suppliers.

The Amazon Fire TV Stick has been the undisputed king of affordable streaming. Because it ran on a modified version of Android, users gladly put up with a cluttered, sluggish interface in exchange for ultimate control.

Claude Code is marketed as a developer tool, but the further I get into it the more I see how much it can do for people who don't write code. File access on its own opens up a whole chunk of the productivity space that the chat interface alone can't reach, and that's where most non-coders will probably end up getting their money's worth out of it. The terminal still puts people off, I get that because that was me too, but the actual interaction is the same conversational thing. It's the same Claude just with file access. And besides, Claude Code is now in the desktop app as a GUI too, making it easier than ever.

Self-hosting a password manager is not a complicated process. I've been using Vaultwarden as a locally hosted password manager for almost a year now. It's not a traditional Docker setup that has multiple containers running alongside the password manager. Instead, I've been using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W for the task, and it's produced better results than I ever expected. Switching from LastPass to Vaultwarden was a great move for protecting my data and keeping it on a home server rather than a cloud solution. Vaultwarden is based on Bitwarden, so I didn't have to settle for a trimmed-down version that lacks features. My Raspberry Pi quietly works in a corner, serving my passwords on my home systems and remote devices.

Local AI perhaps represented the first step towards making AI use private, confidential, and independent of cloud infrastructure, but there was always a catch. In the earlier days, running capable models locally either meant owning flagship-class GPUs or accepting outputs that couldn't compete with cloud alternatives. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

FreeBSD has a reputation problem, and I’ll admit I bought into part of it before installing it as my daily driver. I expected something sturdy, serious, and maybe a little hostile to normal desktop habits. I figured I’d spend most of my time fighting the system instead of using it. What I found was much more interesting than that, because FreeBSD felt less like a punishment and more like a system with very specific priorities.

The biggest Switch 2 exclusives so far have largely been about scale. Mario Kart World introduced a wide open continent to race across, Donkey Kong Bananza let you smash basically everything around you, and Pokopia brought an expansive Minecraft-style creative experience to the Pokémon universe. Star Fox is different. A remake of a Nintendo 64 game, Star Fox is an on-rails shooter, with tightly choreographed action and spectacular set-pieces. This more linear structure has let the game's designers craft what is perhaps the best-looking game yet for the Switch 2. Considering that Star Fox is at its best when it makes you feel like you're righ …Read the full story at The Verge.

With its new pickup, Slate Auto is making a simple bet: price matters more than almost anything else. The company announced today that the American-made electric truck will start at $24,950, placing it squarely in the mid-$20,000 price range it had originally promised and making it the least expensive pickup truck and EV available today. At a time when the average new vehicle costs nearly twice that amount, Slate is pitching something that has become increasingly rare in the modern auto market: a genuinely basic new vehicle that doesn't look that way.To hit that price point, Slate stripped away features many drivers now take for granted. T …Read the full story at The Verge.

Multi-color 3D printing sounds wonderfully simple until you actually watch the printer do it. You load a few spools, assign colors in the slicer, and expect the machine to produce something that looks a little more finished than the usual single-color part. Then the preview shows you another number sitting beside the model weight, and it’s not nearly as cute as the colored preview. The printed object might use 40 grams of filament, while the purge waste quietly asks for 70 more.

A NAS can start out feeling wonderfully simple. You plug in some drives, create a few shares, point your backups at it, and suddenly your files have a proper home instead of living across random machines and external drives. It feels tidy, practical, and almost boring in the best possible way. Then you add one more service, and another, and another after that.

My Pixel 10 Pro gets hot sometimes — like really hot.