How-To Geek
I've fallen in love with the reMarkable clone you won't find in big box stores
From the moment I heard about the reMarkable E-ink writing tablet, I wanted one, but I was put off by its relatively locked-down experience. Fortunately, I've come across an alternative that's more open, and I'm quite confident I like it even more.
Your car loan might be costing you $80 extra every month. Here's how to fix it
Americans took out auto loans at some of the highest interest rates in two decades between 2022 and 2024, as the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate to a level not seen since 2001.
I use Docker for almost everything, and I'm not even a developer
Do you think Docker is only for developers? I’ve heard that saying, but it couldn’t be more wrong. I’m not a developer, and I use Docker to run dozens of services and apps in my homelab.
Your massive NVMe SSD is giving you terrible data habits
Modern SSDs are amazing, and I'm not about to pretend I want to go back to shuffling super slow disks or wrestling with ribbon cables inside a beige PC case. (Although, in all fairness, I do miss those beige PCs a lot.)
5 new movies to watch this week across Netflix, Prime Video, and more (June 29-July 5)
It's the end of June, which means movies will be departing from nearly every major streaming service. Conversely, new films will be added to make up for the loss. For our top pick, Netflix kicks things off in July with the third movie in one of its most popular franchises and features arguably its most popular star, Millie Bobby Brown.
Before you buy a new router, try this $4 upgrade first
We’ve all been there: you come home from work, take a shower, and settle in to stream a show on the kitchen TV while cooking, only for it to keep buffering despite a strong Wi-Fi signal.
You have one week to switch from Samsung Messages to Google Messages
Samsung’s long and slow transition to Google Messages is finally coming to an end. On July 6—exactly one week from today—the Samsung Messages app on Galaxy phones will officially be discontinued. It’s time to make the switch.
What is SerpApi, and how are developers using it?
Every time you search Google, Bing, or Amazon, you see a clean list of results. But under the surface, those pages contain a large amount of structured information, including rankings, product listings, reviews, featured snippets, and related questions. For developers, getting reliable access to that information in real time has traditionally meant building and maintaining complicated scraping systems.
Rocket Lab just made a deal to become the next Starlink
You might soon have a major alternative to SpaceX's Starlink and Amazon Leo (formerly Project Kuiper) for satellite broadband. Launch company Rocket Lab is buying satellite giant Iridium Communications for about $8 billion in a move that could keep you connected when you're far away from cellular networks.
Android Auto forced me to use Gemini—things got weird when I tried to make a phone call
I didn't realize Android Auto replaced Google Assistant with Gemini until I tried to make a phone call. What should have been a simple experience made me switch back to Google Assistant. It wasn't exactly horrible, but something hilarious and kind of weird happened the first time I tried calling a contact.
5 Prime Video summer movies to watch this week (June 29 - July 5)
As summer gets underway with its suffocating heat patterns, there’s no better time to sit in the air conditioning and indulge in movies with a casual, crowd-pleasing atmosphere full of adventurous escapist vibes, summer romance, and decade-specific nostalgia.
Your 2021 SSD is already obsolete—here's what actually matters now
2021 doesn't seem like that long ago, but in the world of computer technology it might as well have been a century. If you bought your storage back then, the prevailing advice was to get something between 500GB and 1TB, and that SATA was still perfectly fine, with most apps and games seeing no real benefit from the faster (but much more expensive) NVMe drives.
These 7 Python libraries are useful even if you're not a developer
Python has a huge, active ecosystem of third-party libraries for developers to use and build upon. The Python Package Index (PyPI) lists hundreds of thousands, so where on earth to begin?
The internet's best time-killer is back
StumbleUpon is back. Sort of. Although the original site shut down and became Mix back in 2018, other people have developed various randomizer-style websites to provide a similar experience.
5 uses for my Kindle that aren't reading books
I've used the same Kindle for over a decade, and since it worked fine for my needs, I never got around to jailbreaking it. When Amazon ended software support for my Kindle model, I finally took the leap. Now that it's jailbroken, I'm able to use my Kindle for so much more than just reading books.
You don't need to free up RAM on your Android phone (in fact, you shouldn't)
Over the last few years, you might have come across a common Developer Options hack that promises to free up RAM on your Android phone by limiting background processes. Or perhaps you're still using an app to clear cache and memory.
This is why I only buy fitness trackers, not smart watches
With companies continuing to release new generations of their smartwatches, one area consistently receives the most attention: fitness. Health and fitness features have become a primary focus of smartwatches in recent years, and that trend shows no signs of slowing down.
I don't trust Amazon Echo speakers anymore, so I turned mine into a Bluetooth speaker with no cloud connection
I have several Echo smart speakers in my home. Amazon has continued to make the prices of these devices relatively cheap in order to try to lock people into its smart home ecosystem. I no longer really trust my Echo speakers, so I wanted to see if I could put them to use in another way.
5 free and open-source software (FOSS) to replace Microsoft, Google, and big tech
You don't really own much of your digital life. Your files live on someone else's servers, your phone reports back to its manufacturer, and the software you rely on every day can change its terms, raise its price, or disappear whenever the company behind it decides. That's the trade most of us made without thinking about it: convenience in exchange for control.
This storage tech was supposed to be the future—here is why it failed
A little over a decade ago, SSDs began to drop in price, making them a viable storage option for consumer PCs and offering significantly faster performance than traditional HDDs.


