Author: Press Room
Nothing is broken. And somehow, that makes it worse. Your system boots like a champ, apps open instantly, and your GPU hums along like a caffeinated penguin with a purpose. Then you plug into a modern TV or high-end monitor, and it stops short. Not dramatically, or in a way you can screenshot and complain about. Just enough to make you feel like your setup is being held back. That invisible ceiling isn’t a bug. It’s not even Linux being Linux. It’s a locked door with a legal sign on it. Related I finally learned why my TV needs HDMI…
Local LLMs are great for privacy; they run locally and require no subscription. That is, until you realize they suffer the same problems their cloud counterparts do: extremely restricted safety guardrails. Safety measures online are one thing, but if you’re running your AI model locally, bypassing them should be easy, right? Turns out, it actually is. If you’ve ever gone down the local LLM rabbit hole, you must have come across abliterated models. Local LLMs have already made cloud versions obsolete for certain tasks, and once you run them without restrictions, you’ll never look at regular models the same way.…
Even with rising prices and more ads, Netflix is still one of the best deals in streaming, in large part because it just has so much content. There’s always something fun to watch, and you’re unlikely to ever run out of ways to keep yourself entertained. That said, Netflix regularly rotates in and out licensed content. That’s good because it means Netflix is always bringing in new stuff, but it also means that not everything is available forever. In fact, there are some excellent movie and TV series about to leave the service in the next month and change, so…
Wall-mounting a TV is the absolute best. Not only does it save you floor space, done tastefully, hanging your television on a lounge or bedroom wall looks awesome. For the longest time I desperately wanted to mount all manner of TVs I’ve owned in the past, yet due to renting restrictions, it was a geeky AV dream I could never realize. Thankfully, my days of using TVs cabinets to house my large-and-in-charge OLED display are long gone. Though sadly, my fears around said tech mean I continue to use these settings to avoid OLED burn-in. The first thing I did…
While my soundbar is indisputably a massive improvement over my TV’s built-in speakers, I have noticed that, as a mid-range model, it underperforms in certain areas. However, if you have also expressed disappointment in your soundbar’s performance, the culprit may be hiding in plain sight. A soundbar that doesn’t sound as rich or powerful as expected could be down to one thing — the Bluetooth connection. While it’s incredibly convenient, the protocol simply wasn’t designed to deliver the highest possible audio quality. Its primary goal is efficient wireless transmission, not pristine sound. Why Bluetooth is the weak link Bluetooth is…
As a musician and audiophile, I tend not to cut corners on audio gear, especially when it comes to sound quality. I was therefore happy to pay the relatively high price of $200 for a pair of premium Sennheiser headphones, which have served me well over the last few years. Then a pair of $20 Soundpeats clip-on headphones landed in my lap unexpectedly. At first, I thought that these wouldn’t be of any use to me at all, as using cheap headphones would mean compromising on quality. However, in real-world usage, the cheaper pair held its ground in ways I…
The Iron Claw is a 2023 biographical sports film that arrived on Netflix in February, meaning a lot more people can now watch this depressing masterpiece. The movie is about the Von Erich wrestling dynasty, a family that was involved in pro wrestling for generations. That sounds fairly glamorous, but the Von Erichs endured so much tragedy it almost beggars belief. In fact, writer-director Sean Durkin chose to omit some of the bleakest details just so audiences could get through the film. The unbearably sad, mostly true story of the Von Erich family Iron Claw directly to your heart The…
Streaming services all try and separate themselves from one another. While the content is the main factor that differentiates them, they all have their own look and features that make them unique. The driving force will always be the content, which is what has made the streaming wars fun to observe over the years. But it has also led to comparisons about how each platform looks. If you’re like me and subscribe to too many of them, you have used them enough to know your way around them. Whether it’s Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+, Peacock, Prime Video or the hundreds…
On April 1, NASA launched Artemis II, a manned mission around the Moon designed in part to spot potential landing sites. This lays the groundwork for a future manned mission to the surface, and maybe even the building of a base sometime down the line. Just imagine: mankind living on the Moon. It’s an intoxicating idea that gets people excited about scientific progress, which is something of a rarity at a time when a lot of science news has to do with, say, artificial intelligence threatening your job, or climate change accelerating to the point where it will be all…
Do you know how much I like the PlayStation Portal? Enough to keep it for a whole four days before returning Sony’s remote streaming device. Though its DualSense-aping ergonomics are excellent, its lousy LCD screen means I couldn’t justify keeping the expensive, first-party accessory. Sending back the PS Portal has proven to be an even better decision in hindsight, after I recently discovered I could transform my Steam Deck OLED into a portable PlayStation 5. Thanks to one free piece of software that can be installed on the Linux-based handheld in a relatively straightforward fashion, my beloved portable PC can…