Every 'best budget GPU' list is a spec dump. This is a decision: three cards under $500, what each can actually run, and the one number — VRAM — that tells you which to buy without reading a benchmark.
Ravi Malhotra · 2h ago · 9 min
Local-AI hardware
Which card runs a model, what fits at your context length, and what it costs to rent — computed from each model's own config and live provider prices. Not opinion.
A palm-sized box that sips power and runs mid-size local models is a genuinely great story — until you ask it to process a long prompt. What the M4 Pro Mac mini is brilliant at, and the one thing it's quietly bad at.
Lena Fischer · 2h ago · 9 min
Blackwell versus the old flagship, and for once the newer card loses. The 5080's 16GB caps what you can run; the 4090's 24GB doesn't. For local models, capacity beats the spec sheet — with the measured numbers to prove it.
Ravi Malhotra · 2h ago · 9 min
Same vulnerability, two official severity scores that don't agree: Microsoft rates CVE-2026-56164 a 5.3, the National Vulnerability Database a 9.8. It's a zero-day being exploited right now. Here's who's right, and what to do.
Priya Nair · 2h ago · 7 min
If your WordPress lives on managed hosting, you were probably patched before you'd even read the news. The sites actually exposed to wp2shell share a specific setup — here's whether yours is one of them.
Priya Nair · 7h ago · 8 min
Clicking 'update' closes the door. It doesn't check whether someone already walked through it, or whether the other doors are locked. A practical, no-nonsense checklist for after a critical WordPress vulnerability.
Priya Nair · 7h ago · 9 min
Most WordPress vulnerabilities live in plugins and themes you can uninstall. A flaw in core itself — reachable on a default install with no add-ons — is a different, rarer animal. The data on why wp2shell stands out.
Priya Nair · 7h ago · 8 min
The forced auto-update push behind the wp2shell fix is a mechanism WordPress has used only a handful of times. What it is, why they broke the 'we don't touch your site' rule, and how to confirm your install actually got it.
Priya Nair · 7h ago · 8 min
While everyone patched the wp2shell core flaw, a 9.8-rated hole in a popular login plugin quietly went public with no fix available. If you run miniOrange's OAuth SSO, updating WordPress didn't save you.
Priya Nair · 7h ago · 7 min
The dual-3090 build doesn't give you double the bandwidth for chat — and the reason has nothing to do with the cards. What the measurements actually say.
Ravi Malhotra · 1d ago · 11 min
a graphics card, a games console, a $45 hobby board, a hard drive and a retro handheld all got more expensive this year for one identical reason. I've written them as six stories. they're one — and here's what I'd actually do about it.
Ravi Malhotra · 1d ago · 9 min
three price rises in five months, up to $100 on the 16GB Pi 5, and a seven-fold jump in memory costs behind all of it. I still think the cheap end of the range is the best value in computing — but the top end is a harder sell now.
Ravi Malhotra · 1d ago · 8 min
A palm-sized box that sips power and runs mid-size local models is a genuinely great story — until you ask it to process a long prompt. What the M4 Pro Mac mini is brilliant at, and the one thing it's quietly bad at.
Lena Fischer · 2h ago · 9 min
Blackwell versus the old flagship, and for once the newer card loses. The 5080's 16GB caps what you can run; the 4090's 24GB doesn't. For local models, capacity beats the spec sheet — with the measured numbers to prove it.
Ravi Malhotra · 2h ago · 9 min
The RX 7900 XTX gives you 24GB cheaper than a 3090. The catch isn't what you've heard — a llama.cpp scoreboard and an open bug report suggest its Vulkan backend beats ROCm for inference, no painful install required.
Lena Fischer · 9h ago · 9 min
Splatoon Raiders is the first spin-off the series has ever had, it's PvE rather than turf war, and it lands July 23. I've got one real worry about it, and it isn't the thing most people are complaining about.
Diego Santos · 1d ago · 7 min
3,200 jobs cut, four studios let go, Halo shipping on PlayStation, and a 2027 super-console still being funded. everyone's reading that as collapse. I've been staring at it for a week and I think it's a deliberate — and defensible — bet.
Diego Santos · 1d ago · 9 min
the storefront section is live, the hardware has cleared customs, the FCC paperwork is public. everything about Steam Frame is ready except the one number that decides whether anyone actually buys it — and I think I know why Valve is stalling.
Diego Santos · 2d ago · 8 min
the one remake fans have begged for since 1998 is real — a ground-up Ocarina of Time, Switch 2 exclusive, 'in 2026.' no gameplay, no date, no developer. the silence is doing a lot of work.
Tom Ashcroft · 2d ago · 5 min
Revelations is a 10-12 hour campaign id says is bigger than both Doom Eternal expansions combined. the part nobody's talking about: it ships with rebuilt, fully playable classic Doom 2 maps.
Tom Ashcroft · 3d ago · 5 min
Blaze put Evercade cartridges and the Super Pocket up across the UK and EU. the cause has nothing to do with retro gaming and everything to do with AI datacenters — and this is the corner of the market least able to absorb it.
Tom Ashcroft · 4d ago · 7 min
Same vulnerability, two official severity scores that don't agree: Microsoft rates CVE-2026-56164 a 5.3, the National Vulnerability Database a 9.8. It's a zero-day being exploited right now. Here's who's right, and what to do.
Priya Nair · 2h ago · 7 min
If your WordPress lives on managed hosting, you were probably patched before you'd even read the news. The sites actually exposed to wp2shell share a specific setup — here's whether yours is one of them.
Priya Nair · 7h ago · 8 min
Clicking 'update' closes the door. It doesn't check whether someone already walked through it, or whether the other doors are locked. A practical, no-nonsense checklist for after a critical WordPress vulnerability.
Priya Nair · 7h ago · 9 min
researchers found wallets still tracking your address after you hit 'revoke,' plus cross-site leaks in most of the ones they tested. nearly everyone patched fast. MetaMask basically shrugged.
Sam Okafor · 4d ago · 6 min
eight real games, real Steam store pages, real players — and crypto-draining malware baked right in. the FBI only caught the guy thanks to a trail of Uber Eats gift cards. here's the playbook, and the defense.
Sam Okafor · 5d ago · 5 min
HSBC, UBS, Citi and 14 others are now moving 'tokenized deposits' on a Swift-built ledger. it's not a coin, it's not public, and it might quietly matter more than any crypto headline this year.
Sam Okafor · 6d ago · 6 min