Side projects usually seem like a hobby, but they can be the most powerful career launchpad available. While traditional metrics like university degrees and years of professional experience still hold weight, a well-executed side project acts as a direct, unfiltered view of your technical capabilities, your problem-solving approach, and your passion for creation.

Xfinity is completely refreshing its national video plans, introducing all-in pricing, and officially dropping annual contracts for new and existing customers. Every new package now comes standard with an included X1 4K TV box and the company’s voice remote.

Google is dramatically expanding the early access program for its new Gemini for Home voice assistant. This expands availability to millions of users and adds support for third-party speakers. This is great news for anyone who owns a non-Google smart speaker and felt left out of the initial rollout.

In a rare piece of good news for streaming subscribers, HBO Max is actually getting cheaper for certain Verizon customers who currently use the service as an add-on perk. Seeing a price cut in the streaming world is almost unheard of these days, but this price cut is rolling out now.

Google forking VS Code was a very significant change, and there weren’t many signs that this was coming. When Google, a company that has championed and contributed to open source projects like Visual Studio Code, chooses to fork the application and build its own parallel app, it demands attention.

Ring has started rolling out its AI-powered facial recognition feature, Familiar Faces, to video doorbell owners across the United States. This addition means your smart doorbell can now identify your visitors, a major step forward for personalization that also brings significant privacy concerns.

Amazon is rolling out new shopping features for its AI-powered Alexa+ assistant, most notably a price tracker that automatically purchases items when they drop to a specified price. This removes the need to constantly refresh pages waiting for a deal, because it will give you updates on changes.

Firefox 146 is rolling out, bringing a major, long-awaited display improvement for users running Linux with the Wayland compositor. The newest build now natively supports fractional scaling on Linux, which should make the rendering experience much better and snappier.

The text editor is the most critical tool in a programmer's arsenal, acting as the daily workbench, primary interface, and engine for creation. For years, Microsoft's Visual Studio Code (VS Code) has dominated, becoming the default choice for millions of developers across nearly every programming language and operating system.

Uber is making a massive play for advertising dollars by launching a new insights platform, Uber Intelligence. This is designed to sell aggregated data about where you travel and what you order for takeout directly to marketers.

DirecTV is finally making its streaming experience better for LG owners by launching a dedicated app that eliminates the need for an external set-top box. The new DirecTV app is now available for LG Smart TVs made in 2021 and newer, provided they are running on webOS 6.0 or higher software.

Driving today is all about balancing focusing on the road while trying to handle all the other things that happen when you are navigating busy streets. Waze understands that the best way to make roads safer and get the most efficiency is by letting drivers chat with the app.

NotebookLM may just be an assistant to many people, but this is just the most basic functionality. You can take advantage of its system to do whatever you want, and that means it can be a way to have fun.

Google Chrome is rolling out updates to its autofill feature, giving the browser much deeper access to the data stored in your Google Account and Google Wallet. This move means consolidating even more of your personal information under Google's umbrella.

Google just announced that it has raised the rate limits for its Antigravity development platform. However, this benefit is primarily reserved for users who pay for Google AI Pro or Ultra subscriptions. Free users still have to do the workarounds for the incredibly low limits.

Calibre just dropped version 8.16.1, and it brings a new feature that lets you ask an AI what book you should read next. This latest update builds on the AI capabilities the Calibre team has been adding over the past few months, which follows the trend of adding AI whenever possible.

Discord has finally introduced its own version of the popular annual recap feature with the rollout of Discord Checkpoint for 2025 activity. This is the first time the platform has given users a comprehensive, personalized look back at their yearly habits, and the results are interesting.

Canonical just made a massive announcement for anyone using Linux on Windows, Ubuntu Pro is now available for the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), and the best part is that it is still free for personal use. If you’re a developer or a power user who relies on WSL to get work done, this is a huge deal.

Microsoft is currently investigating a serious service issue preventing customers from downloading Microsoft 365 desktop applications directly from the service homepage. The company has tagged the problem as an "Incident," which means it’s a critical service issue with noticeable user impact.

Home Assistant is closing out the year with its 2025.12 release, bringing major quality of life improvements, an overhaul to automation building, and a new area for testing preview features. There's a lot here to give you more intuitive control over your smart homes.