How-To Geek

Sometimes, the most thoughtful holiday gift is the practical one. Electric car drivers will tell you that a reliable charging solution for their vehicle is priceless. Though electric vehicles are becoming increasingly common in the U.S., the charging infrastructure still hasn’t fully caught up. The at-home electric-vehicle charging market, in particular, has been stuck in a frustrating place, with consumers being forced to choose between durability, compatibility, performance, installation, and price.

When the holidays roll around, one festive flick is at the top of many people's to-watch lists: Home Alone. And for good reason! However, its sequel should also be a priority, seeing as it's the better choice.

We've all done it—waited until the very last minute to do our holiday shopping, thanks to the convenience of modern internet-powered shopping. Online retailers even give us little indicators to show whether an item will arrive in time for Christmas. Heck, they might even wrap it for you.

When people talk about the best used sedans, the conversation usually sticks to the usual suspects: Honda Accord, maybe a Mazda6, and a few German picks from people who haven’t paid for a water pump in years. But one car quietly flies under the radar—cushioned, unbothered by the crossover craze, and built to last.

When I built my first fully custom PC in 2017, I made several mistakes that I vowed never to repeat. Most of them were corrected in the new PC I built earlier this year—except for one. If I could turn back time, getting a different power supply is the only decision I’d change.

Gaming phones were all the rage from around 2017 to 2020—ROG Phone, Razer, Nubia, etc. The segment still exists, and one could argue they’ve never been better—so why don't people seem to care anymore?

Valve has quietly pulled the plug on the cheapest Steam Deck model. This means the entry price for the popular gaming handheld just jumped significantly. If you were holding out for the most affordable way to get into PC handheld gaming, you are officially out of luck.

Ever since I added an air quality monitor to my Home Assistant server, I’ve been intrigued by the data I’ve collected. I’m now able to build automations around these numbers, triggering alerts and appliances when certain criteria are met.

The Home Depot is one of the most popular hardware stores in the United States, offering a wide variety of tools from all the top brands. And while most people walk in and look for Stanley, Milwaukee, Ryobi, or even Craftsman hand tools, you'll be pleasantly surprised by how great Home Depot's house brand tools are in terms of quality and price point.

NotebookLM is officially moving up to Gemini 3, bringing significant upgrades to its processing power alongside the introduction of Data Tables. Google said that the ability to synthesize information into structured tables was the most requested feature by far.

Are you tired of seeing people say that you have to have a dedicated side project to be a “real” developer? That’s simply not the case. Here’s what makes a “real” developer, and you probably already meet the criteria.

The vast majority of phones feature exactly two things on the back: cameras and flash. But if you have a recent Google Pixel, there's an inconspicuous little circle next to those lenses that unlocks a weirdly specific superpower most other phones simply can’t match.

Just because you can use a Raspberry Pi as a media server doesn’t mean that you should. I’d say there are better uses for your single-board computer, especially when media server duties can be passed off to a machine that’s better-suited to video operations.

Linux taught me many things. And as it turns out, some of the lessons I've learned from Linux come in handy when using Windows. As a daily driver of both operating systems, here are six ways that Linux has made me a better Windows user.

Clean code is one of the first ideas that makes developers feel like professionals. For many developers, though, it can stop being a helpful guideline and become a trap instead. That's why you need to learn where to draw the line and recognize when it starts working against you.

Memory prices are through the roof, SSDs aren't far behind, and soon GPUs will be feeling the brunt of market forces too. If you've been saving up money to upgrade or build a PC, you may have been looking at rising prices with dismay and are probably thinking about weathering the storm.

Holiday streaming is a seasonal joy that only rolls around once a year, and I always look forward to relaxing with my collection of holiday music. I like to use YouTube Music to stream tunes during this season for many reasons, the main one being its YouTube integration.

Are you just starting out with soldering and want to practice on a few cheap and easy projects? That’s exactly where I am in my microcontroller journey, and these are the simple projects I did first to really start to hone my soldering skills.

I've been using the free tier of Google Gemini's API to generate snarky descriptions of visitors captured on my video doorbell in Home Assistant. It worked perfectly until very recently. Google has unfortunately slashed the number of free requests for many of its models, with Gemini 2.5 Flash cut down to just 20 requests per day. If you've been hit by the same problem, here's what to try instead.

This was another busy week in tech, with big updates for Home Assistant, Steam's 2025 replay going live, a revamped Jellyfin desktop app, iRobot's bankruptcy, and much more. Here are the biggest stories from this past week you might have missed.