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Ten years ago, a buyer shopping for a fun, rear-wheel drive sports car under $40,000 had some decent choices. Today, that list has shrunk, and the ones that remain have largely shifted to automatic transmissions as the standard treatment. In some cases, a manual may be offered, but only as an upgrade for enthusiasts willing to pay for it. The 2027 Subaru BRZ goes the other direction. The six-speed manual is standard. The automatic is the upgrade.

Many of us still remember the infamous Samsung Galaxy Note 7 incident, which highlighted just how volatile phone batteries can be when they fail. In that case, faulty batteries could overheat, enter thermal runaway, and in some instances catch fire. Since then, manufacturers have put a lot of effort into making modern batteries safer, and serious failures like that have become extremely rare.

While Excel is ubiquitous, I prefer Python for my data analysis. Spreadsheets are great for formatting data, but it's Python that's allowed me to build my own super calculator out of regular Python libraries. Here are my go-to Python tools

For a long time, the light on my porch was turned on based on sunset. When sunset arrived, the light would come on. While it worked okay, it was far from perfect, with the light sometimes coming on when it was still fairly bright, or not coming on despite it having gotten quite dark. Automating the light using the weather solved my problems.

If you ask Apple users why they keep buying Apple products, the answer will almost always boil down to one word: “ecosystem.” The seamless integration between Apple devices is genuinely impressive, and for many people, it’s the main reason using anything else feels like a compromise.

Terminal tools are magnetic to shell-focused users. They look cool, and we're always driven to make our workflows faster and more efficient. I have three tools you've probably never heard of, but they solve persistent niggles you've yet to fix.

Wi-Fi is endlessly convenient - I don't think that anyone's going to disagree with that. But convenience has a price, and in some cases, it's a hefty price to pay. You might be trading a stable, performant connection for an unpredictable mess when you choose Wi-Fi over Ethernet.

Excel usually warns you about obvious formula mistakes, but some of the most damaging errors never trigger an alert. From shifting cell references to hidden lookup failures, these silent bugs can skew your results while leaving your spreadsheet looking perfectly normal.

Do you think you have to always dry your filament before printing, and always store it in a dry box when not printing? What if I told you that I've never dried my filament, and it hasn't affected my print quality at all? Here's why I don't dry my 3D printing filament.

Welcome to your guide to Pips, the latest game in the New York Times catalogue.

Released in August 2025, Pips puts a unique spin on dominoes, creating a fun single-player experience that could become your next daily gaming habit.

Currently, if you're stuck, the game only offers to reveal the entire puzzle, forcing you to move on to the next difficulty level and start over. However, we have you covered! Below are piecemeal answers that will serve as hints so that you can find your way through each difficulty level.

How to play Pips

If you've ever played dominoes, you'll have a passing familiarity with how Pips is played. As we've shared in our previous hints stories for Pips, the tiles, like dominoes, are placed vertically or horizontally and connect with each other. The main difference between a traditional game of dominoes and Pips is the color-coded conditions you have to address. The touching tiles don't necessarily have to match.

SEE ALSO: Wordle today: Answer, hints for June 7, 2026

The conditions you have to meet are specific to the color-coded spaces. For example, if it provides a single number, every side of a tile in that space must add up to the number provided. It is possible — and common — for only half a tile to be within a color-coded space.

Here are common examples you'll run into across the difficulty levels:

• Number: All the pips in this space must add up to the number.

• Equal: Every domino half in this space must be the same number of pips.

• Not Equal: Every domino half in this space must have a completely different number of pips.

• Less than: Every domino half in this space must add up to less than the number.

• Greater than: Every domino half in this space must add up to more than the number.

If an area does not have any color coding, it means there are no conditions on the portions of dominoes within those spaces.

SEE ALSO: NYT Strands hints, answers for June 7, 2026 Easy difficulty hints, answers for June 7 Pips

Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 3-2, placed vertically.

Greater Than (13): Everything in this space must be greater than 13. The answer is 0-5, placed horizontally; 6-3, placed horizontally; 5-1, placed vertically.

Greater Than (0): Everything in this space must be greater than 0. The answer is 5-1, placed vertically.

Equal (2): Everything in this space must be equal to 2. The answer is 2-2, placed vertically; 3-2, placed horizontally; 2-1, placed horizontally.

Less Than (2): 2-2, placed vertically; 3-2, placed horizontally; 2-1, placed horizontally.

Medium difficulty hints, answers for June 7 Pips

Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 1-4, placed vertically; 0-2, placed vertically.

Equal (0): Everything in this space must be equal to 3. The answer is 0-0, placed horizontally.

Greater Than (2): Everything in this space must be greater than 2. The answer is 6-2, placed horizontally.

Greater Than (0): Everything in this space must be greater than 0. The answer is 2-2, placed horizontally.

Equal (4): Everything in this light blue space must be equal to 3. The answer is 1-4, placed vertically; 4-5, placed horizontally.

Number (3): Everything in this purple space must add up to 3. The answer is 6-2, placed horizontally; 1-1, placed horizontally.

Number (3): Everything in this purple space must add up to 3. The answer is 2-2, placed horizontally; 1-1, placed horizontally.

Hard difficulty hints, answers for June 7 Pips

Number (6): Everything in this purple space must add up to 6. The answer is 1-1, placed vertically; 5-3, placed horizontally.

Equal (3): Everything in this space must be equal to 3. The answer is 5-3, placed horizontally; 3-3, placed horizontally.

Number (7): Everything in this space must add up to 7. The answer is 3-3, placed horizontally; 4-3, placed horizontally.

Number (6): Everything in this space must add up to 6. The answer is 1-1, placed vertically; 5-4, placed vertically.

Equal (6): Everything in this space must be equal to 6. The answer is 6-6, placed horizontally.

Number (7): Everything in this purple space must add up to 7. The answer is 4-3, placed horizontally; 4-6, placed vertically.

Number (6): Everything in this light blue space must add up to 6. The answer is 6-2, placed vertically.

Number (6): Everything in this red space must add up to 6. The answer is 5-4, placed vertically; 2-4, placed horizontally.

Number (6): Everything in this orange space must add up to 6. The answer is 2-4, placed horizontally; 6-2, placed vertically.

Equal (6): Everything in this space must be equal to 6. The answer is 4-6, placed vertically; 6-0, placed vertically.

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Google Messages has become the de facto way that we send text messages, not just on Google Pixel phones, but on all Android phones. It's not a bad app, but Google's purpose for just about any product can be assumed to be data collection—an assumption that's been backed by outside research. Here are the privacy choices I make to minimize how much information Google or anyone else is able to gather.

If you dual-boot Windows and Linux, you've probably run into this issue before. You boot into Windows to get some work done, open File Explorer to grab a file from your Linux drive, and the drive just isn't there. It's plugged in, it's healthy, and Windows even acknowledges it in Disk Management—but the actual files are nowhere to be found.

If the movies have taught us anything, it's that the best way to protect your home from burglars when you're on vacation is to accidentally leave your young son behind. Since this is generally frowned upon, the next best option is to use the Presence Simulation component in Home Assistant, which can convincingly make your home look lived in while you're away.

Ryobi makes over 350 tools you'll love, but if you're a new homeowner or simply on a budget, certain tools are must-buys. If you already have a cordless drill and a few other items, here are six more Ryobi tools worth adding to your collection.

While many features on your Pixel phone, exclusive or not, are enabled by default, a good chunk aren't. Worse still, some handy features are not only disabled by default but also buried under a deluge of menus and rarely mentioned in Pixel promo materials, in true Google fashion.

I have many PCs in my home. Most run Windows, some run macOS, and a few run Linux, but the common thread across them all is that I typically end up on a Logitech wireless keyboard. The exception is when I'm sitting down for a longer writing session, where I prefer to use a mechanical keyboard. That's not because it's the fanciest keyboard I own. It's because it's easy, familiar, and already sitting where I need it. For a long time, I treated it like any other keyboard: press the keys, maybe use a few media controls, and move on.

Some smart home devices that demand a premium price tag, whether that’s in service of features you depend on, reliability, or to guarantee safety. Thankfully, there are plenty of opportunities to save money too.

On the one hand, it's truly impressive that Windows is backwards compatible with software that stretches back decades. In theory, you could run some apps meant for Windows 95 on Windows 11. But, backward compatibility isn't free, and it's debatable whether enough Windows users need this level of backward compatibility to justify the downsides.

The Aqara Thermostat Hub W200 is a feature-rich smart thermostat that can serve as a hub for other smart home devices. I love the concept, but the project fails at fundamentals that make it hard for me to recommend.

Whether you should get a robot vacuum or a stick vacuum boils down to one question: How picky are you about cleaning?

Everyone can probably acknowledge the appeal of not lifting a finger to clean their floors. But to some, that convenience may not be worth the cringe sparked by watching a robot vacuum ignore a crumb or eat a phone charger. Despite notable upgrades in smart mapping and cleaning performance over the past half-decade, even the best robot vacuums of 2026 can't match the precision of the best cordless stick vacuums operated by, you know, an actual human with a brain.

SEE ALSO: The best way to make your Dyson stick vacuum last? Clean it regularly.

Cordless vacuums also just have the physical advantage in a lot of tricky spots. If you'd like to keep up with couch cushions, car seats, stairs, or the dusty abyss lying behind every door, a stick vacuum that can go handheld (and go outside) is the only option with that flexibility.

But to be real, your willingness to do all the cleaning yourself also matters — if you dread vacuuming by hand so much that you'll just put off doing it, your floors might actually be cleaner with a robot vacuum. I personally have both at the ready at all times and can argue for the value and practicality on either side, depending on the situation. And while the convenience of a robot vacuum is undeniable, I still reach for a cordless vacuum in more cases than not.

Other cordless vacuums I've tested

I've tested several other vacuum cleaners that didn't make the most recent cut for this list. Some, like the Shark Detect Pro with auto-empty station and LG All-in-One Cord Zero with auto-empty station, were a top recommendation at one point, but have since been overshadowed by newer, more powerful models that are a better bang for your buck.

There are also a few Dyson vacuums from years past that still garner substantial search interest, but that I no longer think are worth your money compared to what else is out there. The Dyson V8 and (seemingly discontinued) Dyson V10 that my parents have lying around have a tendency to push large debris like cat food and rocks around, and leave behind a layer of pet hair on many dark rugs. While these Dysons may have been powerhouses in the late 2010s, $300 could get you a more powerful option — maybe even automatic emptying, like with the Shark Detect Pro I just mentioned. The only upside would be that Dyson includes the motorized hair screw tool with the V8 and V10.

I also bumped the Dyson V15 Detect Submarine out of the list. The Roborock 2-in-1 cordless mop that took its place just offers a more seamless mopping system all around. The swappable wet roller head that turns the V15 Detect into a "mop" completely cuts off airflow to the dust bin of the vacuum, meaning there's no real wet suction going on. During my testing, this just pushed liquid around instead of soaking up spills, which then led to a soggy manual cleaning process that was super prone to leaks and weird smells. It just required way too much maintenance by hand, compared to the self-cleaning features of the Roborock F25 Ace Combo.

I also test robot vacuums. Are they as powerful?

I also test a ton of robot vacuums at home. While I think the convenience of robot vacuums is worth for, say, keeping up with the layer of dust and crumbs that accumulate during the work week, I have found that cordless vacuums are consistently tougher on elusive debris like pet hair or fine powders. This is especially when they've been pressed down into rug fibers or have been caked into corners.

Cordless stick vacuums are generally more powerful than robot vacuums. The upright design is optimal for airflow and has the real estate to house larger motors and more complex cyclone systems that create extra force on top of suction power alone. A robot vacuum's motor can't exceed the three or four-inch clearance that the vac needs to scoot its whole body under furniture. The motor of an upright vacuum typically lives completely separately from the vacuum head and roller brush and is thus under fewer constraints.

Physics aside, you could argue that a cordless vacuum is less likely to leave debris behind because a person is actively assessing where the suction needs to be focused. This includes tricky spots that aren't even on a robot vacuum's radar, like staircases or cars.

There are some one-to-one comparisons where a robot vacuum could be as powerful or more powerful than a stick vacuum. For instance, I've tested both the Roborock Saros 10R robot vacuum and Roborock F25 Ace cordless vacuum, and both offer 20,000 Pa suction power. But robot vacuums with that kind of power typically reside in the $1,000+ category, while it's much more affordable to hit that number with a stick vacuum. Even with identical stats on paper, the cordless vacuum would probably have a higher pickup rate over time just because the person operating it can see when more passes are necessary.