I gave Home Assistant access to my NAS, and it became the dashboard my smart home was missing
Ayush Pande Jun 2, 2026, 10:01 AM EDT Ayush Pande is a PC hardware and gaming writer. When he's not working on a new article, you can find him with…
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I gave my local LLM persistent context, and it finally stopped making the same mistakes
…Outside of work, you'll often find Nolen diving into a good book, writing their own stories, or playing video games. Sign in to your XDA account I've been running local…
These 3 Linux distros convinced me Windows wasn't worth keeping around anymore
…cloud sync, and telemetry and AI shadowing your every move for "optimizations". A rather welcoming aspect of Mint is the Software Manager, which handles Flatpaks proficiently, taken together with the Update Manager…
Chrome is quietly downloading a 4GB AI file without telling you, says researcher
…Once disabled the model will no longer download or update. More details in our help center article." Windows 11 PCs are also affected I haven't updated Chrome in quite some time…
I stopped using motion sensors after my smart home learned to read my PC's state
Jasmine Mannan May 30, 2026, 8:00 AM EDT Jasmine is Software and PC Hardware Author at XDA with years of tech reporting experience ranging from AI chatbots right down to gaming…
I stopped paying Heroku for my app deployments after discovering this self-hosted alternative
Ayush Pande Apr 19, 2026, 6:00 PM EDT Ayush Pande is a PC hardware and gaming writer. When he's not working on a new article, you can find him with…
ESPHome turned my junk drawer into a smart home
Jasmine Mannan May 2, 2026, 1:30 PM EDT Jasmine is Software and PC Hardware Author at XDA with years of tech reporting experience ranging from AI chatbots right down to gaming…
I kept track of every Windows 11 update that broke something this year, and the list is getting long
…For gamers specifically, the update was very grim. Owners of Nvidia GPUs specifically reported significant performance regressions after installing the update, with significant average framerate drops along with visual artifacts, shadow glitching…
Network segmentation is the smart home security step nobody talks about
…His expertise broadly covers computers, smartphones, game consoles, headphones, smart home products, browsers, and apps. Sign in to your XDA account You spend hours following guides to set up Home Assistant , ESPHome…
My Fire TV Stick is infinitely better ever since I enabled this hidden setting
…You can find his work on AndroidPolice, GuidingTech and TechWiser. Whether it’s demystifying system updates, deciphering error codes, or exploring hidden features, Parth’s prose guides readers through the binary maze…