I've spent years treating VLC as the default answer to one of the simplest things a PC can: play a video. I've installed it on every machine I've ever owned, and it has earned that right by opening almost anything I've ever thrown at it, without giving me much reason to look elsewhere. However, when it comes to power users, we always want more from both our hardware and software, and I realized that by using VLC alone, I was leaving far more on the table than I thought.

For over a year, my home lab and NAS were a single mini PC, and I loved it. It was how I learned the basics of both NAS systems and self-hosting servers, and it unlocked a world of possibilities for my home.

It seems like Adobe Acrobat has been the default PDF viewer and editor for so long that most people don't give it second thought. I still keep the mobile app on my phone because it's informally required for some of my documents, but I've stopped paying for any of Adobe's products - I just don't think it's worth it when there are free options that give you the same stuff.

Amazon and Best Buy have the TCL QM7L mini-LED TV on sale for as low as $797.99 for the 55-inch model, a $200 discount from the usual price. We spotted scaling discounts on larger sizes as well, although Amazon already listed low stock on the 65-inch version. While OLED televisions are great for deep black levels and great contrast, their high price point may be off-putting to some buyers. Mini-LED TVs like this TCL are a more wallet-friendly option, and have high brightness while also supporting features like Quantum Dots for vivid colors.TCL QM7LWhere to Buy: $997.99 $797.99 at Amazon (55-inch) $1499.99 $899.99 at Best Buy (65-inch)The QM7L also includes the features you’d expect from a premium television. The 144Hz refresh rate is supported by Variable Refresh Rate to reduce tearing and input lag while gaming, with HDR and Dolby Vision support for great image quality and contrast. The screens have Google TV onboard, with support for AirPlay 2 in case you want to stream from an Apple device.Other deals to considerStar Trek fans can pick up the Picard Legacy Collection on Blu-Ray for $137.49 from Amazon, a thirty percent discount from the normal price. This 54-disc set covers the entirety of Patrick Stewart’s legendary role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, including all seven seasons of The Next Generation, the four movies that accompanied the series, and all three seasons of Picard.The 5,000mAh Anker MagGo power bank is on sale for $29.99 (usually $49.95) at Amazon. This MagSafe-compatible battery pack charges devices for up to 15W wireless charging, or 20W through the USB-C port. Woot has the Belkin Thunderbolt 3 Dock Pro on sale for $64.99, a 64 percent discount from its usual price of $179.99, and you can save an extra 25 percent by using code WOOTDOCK at checkout. This dock has a healthy selection of ports, including five USB-A, two Thunderbolt 3, and DisplayPort 1.4, giving laptops with limited connectivity access to plenty of peripherals and an extra screen.

Windows Patch Tuesdays, of late, haven't been the most reliable, but once every new update is installed and the PC finally restarts, there's one screen that greets everyone — the one that says "Getting things ready." I've spent enough time staring at that screen to know what it means: absolutely nothing useful. There's no percentage bar, no estimate for completion, or any indication of whether my PC is actually working while Windows apparently "gets things ready."

I'm always looking for ways to squeeze more out of my Claude Code subscription without constantly running into its usage limits. A little while ago, that led me to experiment with Claude Code's effort setting. Dropping it from High to Medium ended up cutting my output token usage by 45% across five different tests, without any obvious drop in the quality of the results.

Asha Sharma. | Image: The Verge, Microsoft According to Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, Project Helix, which she announced in March as a codename for Microsoft's "next generation console" - phrasing that seemingly implied a singular device - will actually be a "family" of devices.""We've been hard at work on a great next generation and a great family of devices for Helix, and we'll share more soon," Sharma told BBC News. She shared the answer after being asked if Helix will be a discless console. She didn't answer that, but this week Microsoft announced a program for digitizing your physical games.In 2025, Microsoft and AMD announced a "strategic multi-year partnership" to work together on …Read the full story at The Verge.

I've printed enough benchies and Pikachu figurines in my time with 3D printers. Fun as those are, they ultimately serve no purpose. That's not to say I've not printed anything useful with my 3D printer. The things that have stuck around on my desk are very different in nature. These objects solve daily annoyances and have become an essential part of my setup.

I do most of my work on a Mac Mini, and in many ways, I like macOS more than Windows 11. However, while you can argue back and forth on various topics, there's one area where Windows still comes out so far ahead that it's not even a fair comparison: gaming.

Although there’s a lot of overlap between home servers and Network-Attached Storage rigs, I keep my Proxmox experimentation nodes and TrueNAS backup systems separate for the most part. Sure, I may occasionally deploy OpenMediaVault on a Proxmox node just to tinker with cool features released in newer updates, but when it comes to storing backups or archiving old media, I stick to a separate TrueNAS machine that routinely syncs essential files with another remote rig armed with the same distro.

Google is now automatically expanding its AI search summaries at the top of the results page for some searches, as reported by Search Engine Roundtable. The change, when it kicks in, pushes the typical list of links from a search much farther down Google's results page; instead of seeing part of an AI Overview with a "Show more" button you can click, you'll Google will show a full AI Overview at the top of your search, an "Ask anything" box under that, and then the list of links. It can lead to a lot of scrolling.It's unclear exactly what Google's criteria is for the auto-expanding AI Overviews. Before writing this story, I was seeing them …Read the full story at The Verge.

Ever since I caught the self-hosting bug a year ago, I've spent enough time tinkering with Jellyfin to realize that its biggest improvements are not buried deep in its settings. Of course, it's impossible not to notice that using a self-hosted media server feels different from simply opening an app and pressing play. However, small hiccups are the name of the game when it comes to free and open-source software.