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Ditching Google on an Android phone isn't as hard as you might think — until you need directions. Gmail, Search, and even YouTube all have decent replacements, but Google Maps is harder to part ways with. Not many alternatives offer live traffic, accurate business info, and reliable navigation in one app. Vela Maps is trying to change that.

If you use either Plex or Jellyfin, you'll know that managing your library can take up more time than you originally expected. It's an important part of the process, though. Both apps pull in the standard metadata for your content, but it's mostly factual information and doesn't necessarily reflect how you're going to use your library.

Linux ships with hundreds of small utilities, and most people stick to a handful. Turns out, there are tons of forgotten commands that can be either slightly fun or extremely useful. Three of them, tac, shuf, and timeout, solve common problems in a single line and take seconds to learn. And they might just earn a spot in your repertoire of commands.

While the term "agentic AI" has circulated in tech and business for some time, frontier AI companies like OpenAI and Meta are now reimagining it for the masses. Imagine an AI pet with a cute name and a distinctive personality that can perform tasks on your behalf. That's essentially the idea behind OpenAI's Dots and Meta's Muse — personal AI agents designed to handle tasks for you.

Let's face it, we've all seen guides on router settings and things of that nature. Many are actually useful; sure, there are always things to optimize in nearly every network, and if something gets past you, you might be actively bottlenecking your own connection.

Fall is one of those seasons that makes staying in with a good movie feel like the better plan. And while cozy watches usually bring warm small towns, books, and sweeping romances to mind, sometimes all you really need is a simple story that helps you relax after a long day.

Google is upgrading SynthID with the SynthID Detector tool. In addition, they're expanding the media that can be detected. Now, it goes beyond Google's models to include images, videos, and audio files from OpenAI, NVIDIA, and Kakao. Google says it will soon include AI-generated media from Apple, too.

SynthID is a tool from Google that was created to help identify AI images, videos, and audio. Google's AI models embed a watermark that's invisible to the human eye within AI-generated images. SynthID can detect these watermarks and inform users that they're viewing an AI-generated or manipulated media.

SEE ALSO: Google Gemini access is changing. Free users, take note.

According to Google, the company has watermarked more than 180 billion images and videos, as well as 240,000 years' worth of audio content, since the tool launched in 2023.

To use the SynthID Detector, simply go to synthid.com and log in using your Google, Apple, or ChatGPT account. Next, upload a media file and let the tool get to work. The SynthID Detector will let you know whether it detects a SynthID watermark and whether it designates the content as AI-generated.

One important thing to note: The SynthID Detector is not an AI detection tool. It detects the watermark that certain AI models embed in AI-generated media. If you upload AI-generated content that does not have the SynthID watermark, the SynthID Detector cannot help you detect whether the media is AI or not.

Attendees of the recently concluded New York Comic Con were treated to a new trailer for the upcoming Blade Runner 2099 series airing on Prime Video.

Plot details thus far are sparse, but based on the series' logline, sometime after the events of the Blade Runner films, the city of Los Angeles now sits at the center of a post-revolutionary world in which Replicants have taken control and humans have been relegated to second-class status.

SEE ALSO: 'Blade Runner 2099' teaser: Michelle Yeoh and Hunter Schafer team up and hunt rogue replicants

Michelle Yeoh plays Olwen, an aging Replicant Blade Runner teaming up with Hunter Schafer's Cora, a human pretending to be a replicant, to track down some rogue Replicants. The trailer promises a gritty detective thriller made in the spirit of the prior entries, asking important questions about what it is to be human.

Initial fan reaction to the trailer has been overwhelmingly positive, with an emphasis on the stunning visuals, futuristic color palette, and gritty feel of the world, evoked by the industrial cityscapes and cramped public transportation. Though previous Blade Runner films have always invoked otherworldly colonies, none have spent much time exploring them, but some of the space shots here, plus a quick teaser of one of the protagonists in a space suit, offer the tantalizing possibility that we'll finally experience the full scope of the Blade Runner universe.

The series is set to premiere on Prime Video on Nov. 25, 2026.

Saturday Night Live is, as the name suggests, live television, so the occasional flubbed line comes with the territory. When a slip gets a little more colorful than network censors would like, it’s usually a guest host behind it, though the cast isn’t immune. Just ask Ego Nwodim, who once got the studio audience to say "s*it" during Weekend Update.

This week, it was host Shane Gillis. The comedian dropped an accidental f-bomb during a sketch riffing on Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham. In it, Gillis plays a son trying to protect his elderly father (Mikey Day) from Sam-I-Am (Andrew Dismukes), who won’t stop pushing food the old man doesn’t want.

"Is this some kind of money thing?" Gillis asks Sam-I-Am. "My dad’s older, he gets confused sometimes, so I don’t appreciate you being in his house asking him a million questions."

Credit where it’s due to Mikey Day for rolling the mistake into the skit. As father and son start arguing, Day calls Gillis a loser son who works at "James Johnathan's" (aka Jimmy John's) and points out that “he said a bad word.”

Programming languages like BASIC, C, Java, Pascal, and so many more exist because it's hard for humans to code in assembly language, and basically impossible to do in pure machine code. High-level programming languages are meant to be the middle road, where humans can still interpret the code, but a compiler can still make half-decent binaries that aren't too inefficient.

Password managers are essential for most of us. We can’t remember dozens of unique passwords, yet we need them almost every day. For years, we’ve paid for password manager subscriptions because they’re convenient and let us access our passwords across all our devices.

Saturday Night Live opened this week by handing Colin Jost a promotion. Jost suited up as Pete Hegseth, the head of the newly rebranded Department of Defense War, for the cold open.

Hegseth welcomes the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln home after 10 months at sea, one of the longest naval deployments since the Vietnam War. His victory lap doesn’t go as planned. The sailors make it clear that, one, they’re not thrilled with him, and two, they have some serious questions about the Pentagon’s new “Nazi eagle” logo.

“It’s an American eagle, with a Nazi vibe,” Hegseth clarifies quickly.

James Austin Johnson, usually busy playing Trump, popped up as Health Secretary RFK Jr. for a nice change of pace. He assured the crew that the country they’d come home to is healthier than ever, give or take the handful of new viruses that have cropped up from recent food-borne illness outbreaks.

So, you have a 3D printer, but you’re not super happy with the results of your prints. Well, have no fear! Tuning your printer used to require searching for and downloading tons of models, but OrcaSlicer is here to save the day. Follow me as I walk you through all the steps you’ll need to completely dial in your printer for near-perfect prints every time.

As much as Android phone cameras have improved over the years (it's a lot), there's still only so much a small sensor can do with poor lighting. You can't just snap a photo in low light and expect it to be good. A few helpful tricks can make all the difference.

TL;DR: Target’s exclusive in-house brand, heyday, just launched a limited-edition tech collection inspired by Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters. Every item in the initial drop costs just $20 at Target stores and online.

If you are as obsessed with KPop Demon Hunters as the rest of the internet, your desk setup is about to get a massive upgrade. Target's in-house accessory brand, heyday, just launched an exclusive tech and collectibles drop for fans.

They took the vibrant world of directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans’ animated flick and slapped it onto functional gear you will use every day. The initial lineup centers on the film's star-studded lineup — from the demon-slaying K-pop trio HUNTRI/X (Rumi, Mira, and Zoey) to their rival demon boy band the Saja Boys, and even fan-favorite icons like Derpy Tiger.

SEE ALSO: K-Pop Demon Hunters collector boxes just landed at Costco: Price, promo cards, and exclusive bonuses

To top it off, every single piece in this first wave costs a flat $20, making it easy to pick up a few pieces for your dorm, bedroom, or office setup without burning a hole in your wallet.

Here's what you can snag in the $20 initial drop starting today:

• Ramen Charging Bundle — A hilarious, food-themed charging kit that disguises your everyday power cables into a quirky instant-noodle setup.

• Soda Can Speaker — A compact, portable Bluetooth speaker shaped like a soda can that looks just as good sitting on a shelf display as it sounds playing your favorite tracks.

• Light-Up Power Bank — A portable battery pack featuring glowing character artwork to keep your phone juiced up while you're out and about.

• Pat Pat Light — A cute ambient night-light you can physically tap to illuminate your desk or nightstand with soft mood lighting.

• Character Headphones — Affordable over-ear headphones styled with colorful KPop Demon Hunters character graphics and sleek designs.

Credit: heyday / Netflix / Target Credit: heyday / Netflix / Target

Target is treating this like a full-blown fandom launch, so if you are holding out for gaming gear, you won't have to wait very long. While today's drop covers all your daily charging, lighting, and audio needs, a secondary wave is officially scheduled to hit shelves and online storefronts on Nov. 8.

The second drop will pivot hard into creator tools and desktop gaming accessories, bringing keyboards, desk mats, and setup gear into the mix.

The first wave of the heyday x KPop Demon Hunters collection is available right now exclusively at Target stores nationwide and Target online. Grab your favorite $20 pieces before the most popular character designs start selling out.

In a sense, the platters of a hard drive, or the magnetic surface of a floppy disk are blank sheets. There are technical limits on where and how you can write and read binary data, but for the most part, you can arrange and manage how that data is stored however you like.

There is a difference between two operating systems having their own ways of doing things, and making something needlessly complicated. It's easy to think of Linux as "harder" than Windows, simply because you're familiar with Windows. If you were a blank slate, most things would be equally new and "hard" for you.

I've seen good routers. I've seen bad routers. I've seen routers that were just there, with nothing special about them, which might arguably be the best type of router.

Over time, I've discovered several Docker containers/apps I can't work without. FOSS apps are consistently high-quality, but some apps kick it up a notch. I loved the app so much and got to thinking about similar apps. Apps you might jokingly say "do things you wouldn't expect from a Docker container" because they're premium-level, feature-packed programs that are (usually) free, self-hostable, and containerized. Here are a few of the best ones I've found.

I bought a Galaxy Watch to track my health metrics and enjoy the convenience of having a mini smartphone on my wrist. Over time, however, I realized that my smartwatch should act as a filter, not another screen where I spend time mindlessly. Instead of focusing on health and fitness tracking, I found myself distracted by promotional app notifications, spam emails, and group chat memes.