IT General

The Toyota RAV4 has been one of America's best-selling SUVs since the late 1990s, and for 2026, it made one of the boldest moves in its nearly 30-year history. Toyota dropped gas-only engines entirely and made every RAV4 a hybrid.

I've had a knack for repurposing Android phones for most of my life. But I never considered doing the same for old, junk computer hardware, at least until I started self-hosting and building a tiny homelab last year. Ever since I fell down this rabbit hole, my perspective on old tech in general has shifted completely. Where the old me saw "e-waste," I now see gold.

Netflix's recommendation algorithm has evolved and can be good at predicting what you'll want to watch next. The problem is that it often ends up showing the same titles, making it harder to actually discover what aligns with your unique tastes.

It's official: Microsoft is terminating future support for its popular Office 2021 suite of productivity applications, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

While the computing giant claims that your apps "may continue to function," it also warns of exposure to "serious and potentially harmful security risks" if you continue using their now unsupported software after Oct. 13, 2026, the official end date.

In all likelihood, Office 2021 will continue to work as intended for most users in most use cases, much as you can still use Office 2010 or Office 2013, provided you're willing to put up with the limitations of those iterations.

And for all the consumers concerned with owning rather than leasing their software, Office 2024 offers a "lifetime license" purchase, conferring permanent access to essential applications like Word, Powerpoint and Excel without the costly infrastructure of cloud storage or frequent, down-the-line software updates. 

Otherwise, upgrading means switching to Microsoft 365.

To learn more about the end of support for Office 2021, Microsoft has an entire post on its support section with all the details.

For a long time, I treated my smartphone like, well, a phone with just a few extra features. Sure, I could browse the internet and work on documents, but I largely relegated my mobile device to being nothing more than a phone.

I bought my first ultrawide monitor back in February 2018. It was a game changer for me. I went from two 27-inch 16:9 monitors to one 34-inch 21:9 and absolutely loved it.

The latest generation of Wi-Fi 7 routers has finally dropped to prices that make them a realistic upgrade for anyone buying a new router. If you’ve bought one recently only to find that your internet doesn’t feel noticeably faster, it’s worth going over a few things to check whether the router is actually delivering the performance you’ve paid for.

In its most recent firmware update for Beats headphones, 1B211, Apple fixed a terrifying security flaw that allowed malicious actors to potentially eavesdrop on private conversations within Bluetooth range of the brand's popular Studio Buds. 

According to reporting by Sead Fadilpašić of TechRadar, it was actually the third-party security firm ERNW and its researchers, Dennis Heinze and Frieder Steinmetz, who first discovered the vulnerability, all the way back in 2025, when it was assigned an 8.8/10 severity score. In effect, it allowed hackers to impersonate a device that had previously been connected to the headphones, not only granting them access to the microphone and headphone audio but eventually even learning some devices' call histories and contact lists.

If you own a pair of Studio Buds, is it likely you've been targeted? Thankfully, no. The same researchers who discovered the exploit told TechRadar that the degree of coordination, complexity, and planning required to execute this hack would have made it worthwhile only for very high-value targets, and, as of now, there are no reports of anyone being negatively impacted by the security vulnerability. 

It's also worth mentioning that Apple wasn't the only company caught up in this exploit. In the original report released by ERNW that identified the flaw, the security firm listed dozens of compromised devices, including those from manufacturers like Sony, JBL, and Bose, and those were just the brands that publicly listed their system suppliers, leaving potentially hundreds more devices yet to be named. In the words of the security researchers in the report, the unknown scope of the problem "creates a huge blind spot in vulnerability management due to the nature of the supply chain." 

Thankfully, Apple isn't the only company taking active measures to protect its customers. According to Ecoustics reporting back in January, both Bose and JBL have also taken steps to close off the vulnerability through firmware updates. 

With the FIFA World Cup 2026 in full swing, and fans from all over the world traveling across the United States to cheer on their home teams, beloved Sesame Street character Elmo took to X in a Team USA jersey to declare his support for the American squad. 

The explicit partisanship isn't an accident but an inside joke. Earlier this month, as the NBA's San Antonio Spurs and New York Knicks battled for a championship, Elmo expressed hope for both teams to have fun.

The social media world wasn't having it. Knicks fans, already riled up by the intensity of the series, weren't pleased.

Other brands got in on the joke. The roasting continued after the Knicks won, with at least one fan dressing in an Elmo suit to hold up an apology sign at the victory parade in New York.

Even Cookie Monster didn't hold back, saying he would teach Elmo how to pick a team.

As a public figure with an international audience, Elmo is definitely in a tough spot, but declaring that you love everyone while wearing your nation's soccer uniform is probably your best shot at minimizing the fallout.

The sky-high cost of RAM has claimed another victim: budget smartphones. The cofounder of Nothing company, Akis Evangelidis, recently took to X to announce that there will be no successor to last year's popular CMF Phone 2 Pro, a credible iPhone competitor that launched for just $279 and won plaudits up and down the tech world for its design and budget-friendly pricing. 

Nor was Evangelidis shy about naming the problem: "We were working on a successor, but with memory prices where they are right now, we can't build a phone that feels like a genuine step forward at a price that makes sense for CMF."

If you're totally oblivious about what he's alluding to, check out this series of charts from PCPartPicker, detailing the rise in RAM costs over just the last 18 months. Two standout examples: a basic 2x8GB configuration of DDR4 RAM went for about $50 in January of 2025 and now sells for over $150 in June of 2026, while a more speedy 2x16GB configuration of DDR5 RAM went for under $100 in January of 2025 and today costs close to $500!

And while RAM is the most talked-about culprit behind the price spikes, solid-state storage (SSDs), the kind used in mobile phones, high-end gaming computers, and consoles, has also shot up dramatically in price, currently priced at 20 times the equivalent hard disk drive (HDD). 

The driver of these price hikes is the AI revolution currently underway across the entire tech space, as deep-pocketed companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet (parent company of Google) are projected to spend some $700-$900 billion per year on AI-related infrastructure, growing to as much as $1.6 trillion in 2031, according to reporting from Goldman Sachs. 

Unfortunately, because chip makers and RAM suppliers are seriously constrained in their production capacity, this newfound demand has created a bidding war, with budget smartphone shoppers and trillion-dollar tech companies all competing for the same finite supply of materials. The result, at least in the near term, will be not only the abolition of budget smartphones like the CMF Phone 2 Pro, but also inevitable price hikes for compute-heavy devices like smartphones, tablets, and personal computers that are already quite expensive. Apple's outgoing CEO Tim Cook said these developments are "unavoidable."

What is a budget-savvy shopper to do in 2026? The best solution for the time being might be to hold on to your old phone, tablet, or computer for as long as possible.

There's nothing wrong with a comfort watch. It's the end of a long day, and instead of wasting hours scrolling for something to watch, you throw on a show you've seen hundreds of times. I know people who put on The Office to act as white noise while they sleep. The same goes for people who embark on rewatches of Game of Thronesor The Sopranos. Look, we've all rewatched our favorite shows. Now, it's time to find something new.

I've had solar panels for nearly ten years, after having them installed on both my current home and my previous one. There are a few reasons why I knew I wanted to invest tens of thousands of dollars into this technology, and why I've had no regrets.

I relied on full Excel charts for years, but they often felt like overkill for simple tracking. Then I discovered sparklines—and suddenly I could see trends directly inside the cells. My spreadsheets became tidier, I stopped wasting time inserting and formatting complex charts, and I didn't have to juggle floating objects.

More buyers in the U.S. want an SUV that can basically replace several vehicles at once. It has to be comfortable for commuting, practical for family life, and still feel a bit premium without going full luxury-price headache.

At this point, I have several NAS servers around my house. The best thing I ever did, though, wasn't setting up five NAS servers. It was separating the important data from replaceable data. That is when running a NAS finally clicked with me, and I wish I had done it a long time ago.

Nothing makes me feel more futuristic than tapping my smartwatch to a terminal to pay for a bag of chips. However, there’s one part of the process that has always been a bit annoying to me. Thankfully, Google Wallet on the Pixel Watch finally fixed it.

Now that I've finally jailbroken my Kindle, I can't stop thinking of things to do with it. I'd messed around with making it display various things, and I wondered if I could make it do something genuinely useful and display the feed from my video doorbell.

Just a decade ago, a home server sounded like something only serious tinkerers bothered with. Maybe it was an old desktop under a desk, a basic NAS in a cupboard, or one shared folder. For most people, it was fairly small scale, outside of those of us who were self-identified data hoarders and needed lots of space.

Summer is in full swing, which means you're likely busy with DIY projects, lawn care, and other home maintenance. The right Ryobi tool can help you finish jobs faster and easier, stay cool while you work, and get back inside to the AC. With that in mind, here are several Ryobi tools you didn't know you needed.

Microsoft introduced Secure Boot alongside Windows 8 in 2012 as a way to improve security on Windows PCs by preventing malicious software, including rootkits and bootkits, from loading into your system before the operating system even starts.