How-To Geek

Paramount+ subscribers in the U.S. have a lot to look forward to right now. Zoe Saldaña is back running black ops in a new season of Taylor Sheridan's highly anticipated series Lioness, there are a handful of UFC bouts to tap out with, and 71 movies were added in its big August 1 dump alone.

On October 14th, 1947, U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager pushed the Bell X-1 past the speed of sound over the California desert, becoming the first pilot in history to fly faster than Mach 1. Less than two decades later, Lockheed's Skunk Works division answered with the SR-71, a reconnaissance plane built to cruise at more than three times the speed of sound.

August on Netflix has arrived, and with it comes the anticipation for a handful of marquee new original movies the streamer will be trotting out in the coming weeks, including a sci-fi horror starring Greta Lee (The Last House) and, late in the month, a chilling-looking murder thriller (The Whisper Man) starring Adam Scott and Robert de Niro.

Your work laptop might be sharing a network with everything else you own (provided you work from home sometimes, that is). That's convenient, but it also gives a computer controlled by someone else's IT department far more local access than it needs.

It is no secret that Google is trying to incorporate Gemini into all of its products and services—if an app doesn’t have it yet, it's safe to say it will. However, the company recently turned the tables on this. Instead of incorporating the AI assistant into apps, it's putting the apps into Gemini.

I was on the brink of having to spend $100 more per month for AI because I was running out of tokens faster than they were replenishing. Little did I know a single change in how I used AI would make my tokens (and money) go further.

Except for a few stragglers that are still getting updates, the world of smartphones has effectively transitioned to USB-C. This is a good thing, don't get me wrong! But it does highlight an issue with the USB-C connector itself and how it's implemented. Every time you plug a new USB-C cable into your phone, you don't actually know how well it will work. Why? Isn't it all the same? Sadly, I have the privilege of pulling back the curtain for you.

So, for some inexplicable reason, cassette tape collecting is now also a thing alongside vinyl. This time there aren't even any arguments about analog sound quality, it just seems to be a vibe but, hey, you do you!

It's the first full week of August, and Netflix has released its lineup of new shows and movies arriving in the coming weeks. As for TV, the Pogues will say goodbye in the fifth and final season of Outer Banks on August 20. One of the more exciting movies on the slate is The Whisper Man, a crime thriller starring Robert De Niro that premieres on August 28.

For anyone who wants to de-Google their phone, or at least limit how much data Google can collect on them, Google Maps is often the hardest app to replace. It's so slick and powerful that it's difficult for its rivals to match it. But I took the plunge with Magic Earth, a privacy-centric navigation app, and haven't looked back.

In the usual GPU release cycle, we're long overdue for a refresh. Nvidia's not released any new graphics cards since the RTX 50-series finished rolling out. Normally, we'd have expected to see the Super refresh at CES 2026 with a launch soon after ... so, now nearly eight months ago.

The OBD II port might seem like a convenient place to power a dash cam, especially with adapters that promise an easy, tool-free installation. But while it can work in some cases, it's generally not the best option for long-term use.

The start of a new month means major streaming services, including Netflix and HBO Max, are adding new movies to their libraries. Speaking of streamers, Netflix will be the home of my top choice of the week—a supernatural sci-fi thriller about a family stuck inside their home.

Modern cars are packed with more technology than ever before, but that doesn't always translate into better long-term ownership. As vehicles become increasingly complex, finding one built to last has become more difficult.

If you watch lots of PC-based content on platforms like YouTube or Instagram, you might have noticed that for all the rainbow-RGB that the modern PC aesthetic subjects our eyeballs to, there also seems to be these brown-and-beige components popping up everywhere.

Everybody's raving about Claude Code right now, but if you've tried it and felt like the results weren't living up to the hype, it's probably not you—it's the tooling, or lack thereof. Out of the box, Claude Code is a capable generalist with a fairly minimal feature set. You tell it to do something, and it takes a reasonable but generic stab at it. It performs dramatically better when it has specific skills and instructions for the job at hand, and that's exactly what plugins provide. Now, I've tested more than 100 Claude Code plugins and here are five that every vibe coder must install.

If you’re craving a rush of pure adrenaline, we've got some selections that will deliver the kind of edge-of-your-seat intensity that refuses to let up. From dizzying, first-person chaos to globe-spanning, pulse-pounding survival stakes, you’ll find yourself thrown headfirst into high-risk, high-reward storytelling, with a bit of nostalgia and introspection included.

For programmers, shell scripts offer a perfect combination of power and simplicity. With a simple script, you can run any program, pipe its output to another program, carry out basic logic, and store results in files. Most common tasks that you might ever repeat can be automated with ease.

I can't say I'm a big fan of Amazon, but it's hard to deny that Kindle eReaders are pretty great. Despite my feelings about the company, I have a Kindle Paperwhite. However, I don't buy any ebooks from Amazon—that's the line I draw. Thankfully, it's pretty easy to do.

Most phone automation apps want you to build routines around fixed schedules or simple triggers. That works fine, but a phone should feel a lot smarter by this point. What actually makes a phone feel smart is when it reads the situation instead of just the clock. MacroDroid can do that and other things, and there are automations that can be built around conditions that actually reflect how your day moves.