What’s the difference between a modem and a router?

Just as the internet has evolved, so too have connection methods. Early modems relied on telephone cables and prevented users from making calls while online – and made downright iconic sounds. These old devices were slow and only supported one connected computer at a time. Nowadays, you can hook multiple PCs and several smart home devices into the network, all using one modem. Sort of. Technically, you need a modem and a router, which has led to all sorts of confusion. What’s the difference between a modem and a router? Do you need both or just one?

Thomas Liu
Canada

Grand Theft Auto VI is warping the video game release calendar

Who's afraid of the next GTA? Based on the last few days of Summer Game Fest, just about everyone. Grand Theft Auto VI hasn't been present at any of the keynote events, but its presence was felt every time a release date was announced. The month of November, when GTA...

Batur Duygulu
Turkey

These 5 long-dead PC brands shaped modern computing but nobody remembers why they disappeared

PC hardware brands have come and gone, and the vast majority of the time, they don't go defunct due to bad products. They die from strategy errors, mismanagement, reputations that curdle, or simply getting swallowed by a bigger fish and never resurfacing. These 5 brands in the PC space are...

Atiksh Prabhu
India

Old laptops are the home server upgrade nobody talks about, and they beat a Pi every time

Single-board computers sound exciting when you try to step into the world of home labbing. They seem like a good idea because you get a tiny computer that can surprisingly run real apps for an astonishingly low price. It's one of the reasons I also got into the world of...

Vincent Wong
Canada

ChatGPT just gave Free users a powerful defense against prompt injection attacks

The world of cybersecurity was almost totally reshaped with the introduction of LLMs. We saw both hackers and security experts use the new tech to develop bigger and better programs to fight one another, and the battle is still escalating to this day. However, the rise of AI also created...

Jane Smith
Los Angeles

More than a decade later, the team behind N++ is back with a multiplayer sequel

Back in 2015, the two-person studio Metanet released N++, a brutally hard 2D platformer that was a decade in the making, building off of previous releases dating back to the freeware Flash title N. At the time, cofounder Raigan Burns issued some famous last words: "We hope it's not another...

Sandra Perrin
Switzerland

Here comes new Siri again

Our first glimpse of the new AI Siri came all the way back at WWDC 2024. Apple has been on its back foot, AI-wise, for the past few years. But in a strange way, playing from behind might not be such a bad move. At WWDC on Monday, Apple appears...

Gregory Harvey
Australia

I tested an Android launcher that learns your habits and stops making you search for apps

Google's attempt at the stock flavor of Android found on Pixel phones has a unique charm since it is utterly devoid of bloat, perhaps except for the recently added AI bits.

Marian Knopf
Germany

I used my spare PCIe slot for something boring, and it became my favorite PC upgrade

Before I got into the home server ecosystem, I’d only use PCIe slots to pair graphics cards to my gaming rigs and then forget about them altogether until my next PC building misadventure. But little did I know that every unoccupied PCIe slot was a free expansion header that’s as...

Sophia Wilson
Atlanta

Proton Drive just got 3x faster, and Linux users will finally get what they’ve been asking for

It's easy to believe that there are only a handful of cloud storage services out there. Everyone knows about Google Drive, OneDrive, and the other big names, but there are alternatives you may be missing out on. Proton Drive is but one option, and people like using it as an...

Sophia Wilson
Atlanta

Obsidian Bases turned my notes into a database, and I cancelled my Notion plan

Notion has been off my radar for a while now. The open-source and local app world is where most of my note-taking and PKM stuff lives these days, and Obsidian is the one I'd point to as my favorite out of that batch. So Notion doesn't really come up for...

Gayathri Mugeraya
India

Google’s $100 AI Ultra is still overpriced, and here’s what I use instead

When picking between AI model subscriptions, the focus is usually on what you can do with them, or how fast they can generate output, or a myriad of other benchmarks that directly compare how the model performs. And that's fine, the whole tech world is built on benchmarks as the...

Emily Brown
Houston

Final Fantasy VII’s remake trilogy will conclude with Revelation

Square Enix has officially announced the third and final game in its Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy: Final Fantasy VII Revelation. It will release on multiple platforms simultaneously - PC, PS5, Xbox Series X / S, and Nintendo Switch 2 - in spring 2027. In footage shown onstage at Summer...