There’s a games console that’s been on a lot of people’s radar recently who have been considering purchasing based on its price. Except we’re in a time where hardware costs are at an all time high. I’m of course talking about the Steam Machine. Yours for $1049 (£879) as a starting point, for a 16GB RAM machine with an 8GB VRAM graphics card and no controller. As a prior burned SteamDeck Owner that wasn’t expecting a price increase on the handheld, and sold it just days before it happened, it hasn’t come as a surprise that this console is more expensive than expected, and that the thought is echoed by pretty much everyone.

There's a phrase that encompasses when products and services start out great, but through decisions to make them better, actually end up making them worse. Or, when monetisation is required, perhaps the hidden intention from the beginning, something gets changed beyond recognition, gets featured axed, or just plain ends up a shell of it's former self. That phrase is called enshittification. Some examples include: YouTube: Before algorithms and premium upselling. Facebook: Before advertisements and engagement bait. Twitter: Before it became X and Elon Musk’s personal playground. Google: Before it became all about the overview.

There's an insane amount of acronyms used in the IT world, from Networking to Security to Software Development, but some lesser-known ones are used in the world of IT Support. After all, these guys are the ones on the front lines, often dealing with a range of issues, and a range of users to support. As such, it's unsurprising that there's a language that's used among them, often disguised within a casual conversation, or on support ticket systems. Useful? Sometimes Mildly Unprofessional? Also Sometimes But it gets the point across in a fast fashion, as support teams are often under pressure.

Now and again, I’ll see an advert for the latest mobile phone going through all its shiny new features, but one in particular, probably irrationally, bothers me a lot. They advertise a genuinely impressive camera with detailed zoom, stabilisation and clever editing features. That’s when my eyes shift from normal to suspicious. The advert shows a group of people, with an unrelated person standing in the background. Someone puts their finger over them, circles them, and suddenly they disappear. The phone fills in the space as though they were never there.

Imagine a world where you buy games, enjoy them, then keep them on a shelf to play again later. Except you can’t, because the publisher shut the game down and turned your copy into a brick. That's what the Stop Destroying Videogames Initiative set out to prevent. In a nutshell, it asked for publishers selling games in the EU to leave them in a reasonably playable state when official support ends. The initiative gathered over 1.2 million verified signatures and was formally submitted to the European Commission. The movement came off the back of Ubisoft shutting down the servers for a game called "The Crew", rendering it unplayable even in solo mode.

This topic is a spicy one, and one I’ve attempted to avoid. I don’t want to pretend I understand what it’s like to raise children online while living in a childless household. The UK will ban under-16s from certain social media platforms from spring 2027, which raises a question that affects everybody: How will the rest of us prove that we’re old enough to use them? Since July 2025, there has already been an effort to keep under-18s away from harmful and adult content, and long before that, many services and websites had their own age checks.

The collection world is a fascinating one, and one which seemingly has a ridiculous amount of money, where things no longer become "the thing" and more becomes an "investment opportunity". The latest crazy statistic? IGN reported a sealed boxed copy of Super Mario Bros. reaching $3 million at auction recently, however the Internet believes this is... and forgive the pun... a hard sell. Ironically, a YouTuber investigated this sort of thing back in August 2021, and you’ll never guess which game the video starts with. Although you can basically tell from the thumbnail:

I was casually going about my business watching an excellent comprehensive YouTube Video in the background about the hidden computers and code inside modern slot machines when the presenter casually referred to the software as “The Game” and winning and losing. A great channel to follow by the way, Dave is a font of tech knowledge that everyone can benefit from. Then my brain walked into a trap my old self had left 16 years ago. For those that might have forgotten, or those that are playing without realising (which is everybody else), here's a reminder from a much younger looking me talking about what "The Game" is:

One thing I love about the internet is the creativity of individuals. Some have gone as far as to dedicate entire domain names to questions. As a simple example, if you really want to know if it is Christmas today, rather than consulting your calendar, or maybe looking outside at your neighbours trees and lights, you can visit... Strangely enough, as of writing this post on the 13th of June, this single-serving website says "NO". Good to know. Given the simplicity and internet-of-old nature of these websites, what else is out there that's still alive today?

There's one thing that can make a game go from great to legendary. It can also make a bad game memorable for decades. In some instances, It can not be relevant to the game at all, but still burrow deep into your brain, make a nice little home, and come out to present itself while you're doing the most tedious tasks, or when you're walking around, or just... whenever. It's the music soundtrack. There's lots of games that you can probably sing the tune in your head without needing to hear it, just from reading the text, here's just a few in no particular order:

A Redditor recently spotted a line of suspiciously high-tech shopping trolleys at Morrisons in Preston, which is surprising, given most supermarket trolleys are usually found abandoned in a ditch, wedged against a kerb, or somehow three miles down the road. These, however, were neatly lined up and fitted with screens. So what exactly are they? Looking at the image, the trolleys have branding from Instacart, an American food shopping service, and also have the logo from Caper. These "Caper Carts" are a new addition announced by Morrisons UK in early 2026.

Amazon has loudly given us the heads up that Prime Day runs from 23rd to 26th June this year, for anyone with an Amazon Prime account. That means we’re about to see the usual wave of “limited time” offers, price drops, and "urgent" countdowns. As a Prime Member myself who loves a deal and has used Amazon for a very long time, it does leave me questioning whether some of these deals are actually a bargain, or just a well-designed marketing event. That can lead to buying the discount, rather than buying the item.

I come from an age where television aerials were mounted on a TV, channels required manual scanning and big bulky CRT televisions were the norm. In the UK, in my generation, we used to have 4 channels, then channel 5 was introduced in 1997. Almost 30 years later, the viewing population of live television has dropped to 67%, with less than half of 16 to 24 year olds tuning in on any given week according to the BBC last year. After the "Digital Switchover" that completed in 2012, the "classic" 5 channels on analogue TV are no longer viewable, requiring either a TV box with digital signal, or a TV that has it included.

Today marks the day of the latest Apple WWDC event, where they showcase a bunch of products and services, but we're a long way from the original live keynote style events from Steve Jobs. What was originally designed to be a conference for developers became an advertising platform for "What's new at Apple". Note: This post was written before WWDC 2026 / Announcements were released. It may age poorly. Today, lots of people will be anticipating what's next and lining up their hard earned cash to drop on the latest and greatest tech.

When buying a new piece of tech, or an upgrade/replacement, there’s always a dilemma that seems to come up. “Do I bin the box?” On the one hand, boxes are clutter. They take up space without paying rent or contributing to the mortgage, and in some cases they can be quite unsightly. The more tech that’s purchased, the more boxes quietly start taking over. On the other hand, they can increase the price for resale, they’re useful if the item needs to be returned, and in some cases they can actually be sold on their own once enough time has passed.

I recently had a comment on Social Media for one of my posts asking if I'd sold my account. I understand the confusion, going from complete silence for a decade to suddenly posting links to a website in 2026 with content, questions and articles every day is a big change. Also, I'm conscious that some of my content might sound like a LinkedIn post (don't get me started on those!), or with those thumbnails may seem like automated content, but it's not intentional, it's just how I write, and trust me, the thumbnails would look awful without a little help.

Although I used to be the Windows PC guy, in current days I use a Mac as my daily driver. This is more for convenience with the ecosystem of the phone, the tablet and the headphones, I still heavily use Windows and Linux elsewhere. One advantage to using this OS recently has been an influx in Typing auto-completion software. The basic idea is simple: as you type, the predicted next word appears on screen, and you hit tab to accept it. In some cases, you can keep tapping tab and it will complete the sentence you were already trying to write.

Today's question is one that can easily slip under the radar, as it's easy to forget that we live in a world full of little luxuries. Some examples include: Contactless payments Air Fryers Supermarket Delivery Parcel Tracking Dishwasher Wireless Headphones Smart Bulbs / Plugs For me, over the years I have driven a lot of miles for both work and pleasure. While things like lane assist, heated seats, heated windscreen, climate control are all nice to have, I personally would hate to give up Cruise Control. My car didn't come with cruise control, I had to effectively "retrofit" it by changing out the wheel to one that had the physical controls, and altering the software in the car so it would think that it was a model that had the feature.

Microsoft has released an experimental fork of Windows Terminal called "Intelligent Terminal", and judging by some of the early comments, it has not exactly received a standing ovation. Yep, you’ve probably guessed the new feature. Microsoft has looked at the command line and decided what it really needed was another assistant sitting beside it. Intelligent Terminal is their attempt to bring AI agent integration directly into the terminal, joining the wider race between Claude, Codex, Gemini, Copilot and every other tool currently being pushed at developers, admins and vibe coders.

There's something calming about having things stable, everything working as you'd expect it to, nothing screaming, things just ticking along. Then... Email: We're changing your policy Text: Just to let you know, this critical service won't be available this weekend Email: Notification of price increases Email: Your account that you need for something is about to expire, log in with a password you made 3 years ago App: We’ve improved the layout by moving the button you use every day Email: Important changes to your terms and conditions, hidden somewhere in this PDF…

This is a phrase I’ve heard, experienced, dreaded, been affected by, and occasionally benefited from over the years. The best time to buy a house was in your grandparents’ time. The best time to buy a used car was before Covid. The best time to buy a console was before tarriffs. The best time to buy a graphics card was before crypto. The best time to buy crypto was when a programmer paid for two Papa John’s pizzas with 10,000 bitcoin. The best time to buy stocks was when they were at an all-time low.

Over time, I've gathered a fair amount of games both on console and PC. Physical games have had a finite time before I look at them and say "have I played this in a while?" before ultimately going through the trade/sell cycle. Digital games however, are a whole different breed, because they're locked to an account, and mainly stay there... forever. Some came with bundles alongside a game I actually wanted to play. Some were an "insane deal" that I never actually played. Some are tied to memories from 15 years ago that I couldn't repeat today.

I'll jump straight into my answer to this as it's one I'd like to promptly forget. A news article popped up in my feed in the past day that gave me a kick in the teeth. 18 days prior, I decided that I no longer played my SteamDeck 1TB OLED handheld as I'd been leaning more into the Nintendo world lately, so it was time to get rid of it. It was sitting there gathering dust and seemed too good of a console to just turn into a statue. As the house is also in a "declutter" phase, that day, I took the decision to sell it.

Sometimes when I go to YouTube, I want to search something niche like "Asus <exact model name> Monitor Review" and scroll past the popular YouTubers to see what real people who have used the monitor for an extended time think. Ironically, that's when things start to get less real. The title and thumbnail look legitimate, I open the video, begin to watch and I'm met with a voice that sounds relatively human, but sometimes makes a weird error like mispronouncing a word or strange gaps between what they say. The footage looks ok, but something about it feels off, or there's too much "stock" content, As example when something is frustrating in the video, a random guy shows up being frustrated in a room, which feels like something you'd type into an AI Chatbot.

I opened TikTok today to see what's happening in the world, according to the algorithm. It went as follows: Random video about the UK Hot Weather Ad Something to do with Lego Ad Video about couples Hotel review Commissioned video, Someone trying to sell a fan Greenscreened michael jackson video with text about the heat Ad That was the first 30 seconds of me launching the app. I'm starting to think if I continue to use the app more regularly, maybe my opinion would change on Ad-Free TikTok. Probably not, but still.