XDA

After adding my entire Blu-ray library to Jellyfin, physical discs feel obsolete

Patrick Hearn — Mon, 25 May 2026 15:30:22 GMT

I've recently begun revisiting my physical media library, and in the course of doing so, I've started digitizing them. While I appreciate the more limited selection that my personal library holds, I don't love swapping discs. What can I say — streaming has spoiled me, at least in that respect. But now that I've made that shift, it kind of feels pointless to keep physical discs around.

You can build a Steam Machine right now, but Valve's optimization is the part worth waiting for

Rich Edmonds — Mon, 25 May 2026 15:00:22 GMT

There's discourse currently happening surrounding the upcoming Steam Machine, the brand-new console from Valve. It's whether what is essentially a small compact PC is worth waiting for, or if it's actually better to build a custom system and run either Steam OS or Steam Big Picture. The Steam Deck revolutionized the gaming handheld market by offering an alternative to Nintendo's Switch, running Linux. It continues to sell well and performs solidly with countless titles, thanks to the huge work continuing with Proton.

Adobe Acrobat costs $15 a month, but BentoPDF does everything locally without a subscription

Abhishek Kumar Mishra — Mon, 25 May 2026 14:30:21 GMT

Browsers can view PDF files, but annotating them is an entirely different ball game. Chrome cannot do much beyond basic viewing, and Firefox has some level of annotation support by adding signatures. If you need to do anything beyond it, you can either purchase an Adobe Acrobat subscription or look for free web tools or self-hosted tools. I had some important tasks related to a PDF document of some files related to land records, and free tools couldn't do much. I purchased the Adobe Acrobat subscription for that task, but later realized that a self-hosted PDF editor is a far better option for me.

Home Assistant finally replaced Google Home when I stopped trusting the cloud with my smart home

Samir Makwana — Mon, 25 May 2026 14:00:22 GMT

I never really gave Google Home a fair shot. After picking up a Google Home Mini and a couple of smart bulbs, I tried to get them working together for a month. Then I quietly gave up on the whole smart home idea. Not because Google Home was bad, but every device needed Google’s servers to work, including the automations.

5 reasons I'm finally quitting OneNote – and what I'm replacing it with

Parth Shah — Mon, 25 May 2026 13:30:20 GMT

Microsoft OneNote has been my loyal note-taking companion for years. I mastered it, navigated its quirks, and built my entire note-taking system around it. But as my needs grew, its limitations started to affect my workflow. That's why, after much consideration, I've made the switch to UpNote.

VS Code is the best productivity app on my PC, and I barely use it for coding anymore

Korbin Brown — Mon, 25 May 2026 13:00:21 GMT

When hearing the name "Visual Studio Code," people usually think you're talking about a developer tool. It sounds like it's for programmers who write Python scripts or spend all day debugging JavaScript. That was exactly how I pictured it for years, dismissing it as an IDE that I wouldn't be interested in. I ended up downloading it one day to try my hand at coding, but slowly started using it in ways I hadn't anticipated.

My self-hosted LLMs are a lot more than just a chat replacement – here's how they boost my productivity

Ayush Pande — Mon, 25 May 2026 12:30:22 GMT

Ask hardcore ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity about their opinions on local LLMs, and you’ll hear a bunch of arguments about their performance-hogging nature, complex setup, and lack of computational prowess. However, the most common complaint is that self-hosted models aren’t capable of anything more than serving as chatbots. And truth be told, I used to think the same way before diving into the local LLM ecosystem, as my limited interactions with weaker models had left me dissatisfied with the results.

Tailscale is the only home lab change I made this year that I actually noticed

Joe Rice-Jones — Mon, 25 May 2026 12:01:22 GMT

I'll admit, when I first added Tailscale to my home lab, I was only using it for secure remote access. That's a perfectly good use for it, and likely the one most have heard about, but it's only the tip of the iceberg. Not long after, I was running it connected to every container, device, router, and pretty much everything else.

I replaced Photoshop with this free browser tool, and its AI does what Adobe charges for

Nolen Jonker — Mon, 25 May 2026 11:30:21 GMT

Adobe and I parted ways a while back, but even before that my Photoshop tab was never really the only one open, there was always some or other editor I was poking at. One of them was Pixlr, which I'd honestly forgotten about in the sea of new editors over the years. It's changed quite a bit since I first stumbled across it. Of course, the main driver for this change was AI, and it's now considered an AI editor.

I discovered most of my HDMI 2.1 cables aren't certified, and it's shockingly common

Ty Sherback — Mon, 25 May 2026 11:00:22 GMT

While troubleshooting what I thought was a DisplayPort issue with my Samsung Odyssey G8, I switched to HDMI using the cable marked "HDMI 2.1," which matches my display's spec. The panel lit up, the resolution was correct, and at first glance, nothing seemed wrong, but when I noticed the refresh rate was capped well below the panel's advertised 4K 240Hz spec, I knew the cable was at fault. Upon inspecting the rest of my HDMI cable collection, I noticed most cables I own aren't capable of the top-end of HDMI 2.1 spec, despite the fact that they came bundled with HDMI 2.1-capable devices.