How-To Geek

Buying a sports car usually means accepting one painful reality: depreciation. Most performance cars lose value quickly, especially once newer and faster models arrive. While practical cars like the Toyota Corolla are famous for holding their value well, enthusiast cars typically sit on the opposite end of the spectrum.

When Volvo launched the first-generation XC90 at the 2002 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, it was, as the Scandinavian automaker described it, the most flexible vehicle they had ever designed. While its contemporaries were often truck-based and arguably cumbersome, the XC90 rode on a car-based platform that felt like a sedan (one of the tag lines was “drives like a car, but loads like a wagon”).

You can program without programming tools, and integrated development environments (IDEs) are popular among developers. I take a different approach. I treat my Linux system, with its array of programming tools, as an IDE in itself.

I've been using Google Messages since it launched in 2014 and replaced the old Android messaging app. Despite having it on my phone for so long, it took me a while to discover everything it could do. I missed these features for a long time, and if you're only using the app for basic messaging, you might have too.

Everyone in tech has heard of the 3-2-1 backup rule. It's the kind of advice that gets repeated so often it starts to feel like background noise, the digital equivalent of "eat your vegetables." It's simple, it works, and it has saved countless people from catastrophic data loss.

I'm mostly a Roku and media PC user, so my Fire TV sticks aren't my primary setup. Still, I've got two Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max devices in the house, and after digging into what my Roku boxes were collecting, it felt worth taking a closer look at what Amazon was doing on its side.

People think of Motorola phones as having clean, minimal software similar to Google’s, but there’s more than meets the eye. You’ll find a surprising number of gestures exclusive to Motorola phones, and they’re very useful.

NAS units are great. They're small, energy-efficient, and easy to get running right out of the box. If the only thing you want is a backup solution for your files, and you're not picky about cost, they're a good option. However, if you want a real homelab, you're much better off picking up some secondhand components instead—your machine will be more powerful, and you'll learn more in the process.

When you had to wait for a mechanical hard drive to load your operating system and applications, fast start-up made sense. Today, however, Fast Start-up isn't worth the trouble. I've seen it cause all sorts of strange problems that were difficult to narrow down.

Walk into any showroom today, sit inside any car, and you are likely greeted by a massive glass touchscreen—or two, or even three. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking at an EV, a hybrid, or a traditional internal combustion vehicle: touchscreens have taken over.

Most people open Notion, create a few pages to jot down notes, feel good about it—and never go any further. I did the same for longer than I’d like to admit. However, you aren’t really using Notion unless you’re using databases—that’s when you truly see what the app is capable of. This piece walks you through what databases are, how they work, and the system I built around them that genuinely changed my workflow.

I've always loved messing around with smart home tech and have a lot of it in my home. However, if I could go back in time, there's one decision that I made early on that I would do differently.

Did you know that Amazon Prime Video has the second most subscribers among streaming services? Prime Video has more than 200 million subscribers, which is second to Netflix's 325 million. Prime Video might not have as many prestige plays compared to HBO Max and Hulu, but it does have its fair share of hits. The two that instantly come to mind are The Boys and Reacher, two action series that have dominated Prime Video’s streaming charts.

These days, mesh Wi-Fi networks are both common and affordable. Anyone who wants the power and convenience of mesh technology can have it, but it hasn't been this way for long. In 2016, Google showed the way when it came to how mesh could and should work, and in many ways no one has really done it better since.

I try to avoid Google apps wherever possible, which increasingly means seeking out alternatives to the most basic apps whenever I buy a new Android phone. Fortunately, there's a single open source app suite that is a one-stop-shop for app replacements: Fossify.

I'm not currently a KDE user—I prefer GNOME, but I'm happy to give kudos where kudos are due. I've used KDE on and off over the years, and Dolphin remains the cream of the Linux file manager crop. GNOME Files serves me well, but Dolphin shows me how my file manager could serve me better.

Are you a new homeowner or aspiring DIYer looking to invest in a few good tools while making smart choices? If so, there's one Ryobi tool I bought for projects and home improvement that is not only the best value, but really made things start clicking.

When I first built my homelab, I did what most people do—I put everything on one machine. My NAS, my services, my containers—all of it running on the same box. It made sense at the time: why buy two machines when one can do the job? But eventually, I started to see the issues this supposed “optimization” introduced. Here are the three main reasons I decided to separate my NAS from my homelab.

You may not think of your PC or as a a smart home sensor, but there's a significant amount it can tell you. Your computer knows when you're active, when you're idle, when you're using a particular app, or even when you're on a video call. You can use that information to create some very useful automations in Home Assistant.

I've never assumed any one tool can do everything, and neither should you. These are like apples and oranges, so picking something like Claude over Gemini or Codex isn't something I recommend. These AIs are trying to do the same thing, but they are done in very separate ways. You should be using those strengths to make your own apps better. I used them together to make a calculator in under 10 minutes, and it did exactly what I needed.