How-To Geek

Modern cars are packed with technology. Touchscreens control everything from climate settings to drive modes, computers constantly adjust suspension and power delivery, and increasingly sophisticated driver-assistance systems are always watching what happens around you. Even the humble manual transmission is rapidly disappearing.

Netflix has plenty of new titles competing for attention every week. However, I sometimes prefer to revisit something that has already proven itself. Award-winning movies may not be everyone's favorite, but they're great to explore when I want to get out of my Netflix doomscroll.

Have you ever looked under your car's steering wheel at all the wires, fuses, and plugs? If so, you might find an odd plug called an OBD-II port. That's the same port any technician uses during a smog test, and mechanics access it to scan for check engine light errors, but that's not all it can do. You can plug several useful or weird things into that 16-pin port.

New cars have become so expensive that spending $25,000 no longer gets you much excitement. Instead of settling for a basic economy car, the used market opens the door to something far more engaging without requiring a much bigger budget. There are lightly used performance cars available for roughly the same price as a new compact sedan, combining everyday practicality with the kind of character that cheaper new cars often lack.

Unless you’re willing to settle for mid-tier hardware, it’s an unfortunate fact that phones don’t come with expandable storage anymore. As a response, external storage accessories are becoming more popular, but they lack the convenience of a built-in microSD card slot. I attempted to solve this problem with a 3D printed phone case.

If you've fired up HBO Max in the past few days, you've undoubtedly noticed the spotlight firmly focused on its new DCU series, Lanterns, and, if you're really caught up, the new season of Conan O'Brien Must Go—both of which we wrote about earlier this week. But while the superhero and traveling comedian have been distracting everyone, the streamer's documentary library—new and old—is still more than capable of entertaining you.

Gboard's Play Store privacy policy makes one thing clear: there is a lot of data collected about you. That isn't just a theoretical note, either. Researchers at Trinity College Dublin were able to decode payloads that showed Android keyboards transmitting installation IDs, hardware details, and keyboard interaction logs.

I'm not a fan of Wi-Fi—Ethernet all the way. But for some devices, it just makes no sense (or is impossible) to connect via cable, and on those devices, when Wi-Fi is sluggish, it's a massive nuisance.

Android smartphones have become so powerful that they can now run mobile games that look a lot like console games. In some cases, phones can actually run older console titles. So, if you want to experience console-grade graphics on your phone, here's a list of our favorite Android games.

If the last couple of weeks have been any indication, Netflix subscribers in the U.S. are definitely into documentaries—Conversations with a Killer: The Charles Manson Tapes and The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare are still holding court in the streamer's top 10. But don't be surprised if one of this week's newest releases (and my top pick this weekend) might just muscle its way into the mix as well.

Bluetooth trackers are one of the best modern inventions—anyone who's ever lost something and promptly recovered it thanks to a tracker will strongly agree. As someone who loses stuff on the regular, I've invested in some inexpensive Bluetooth trackers, and I've been putting them to work since acquiring them.

Whether you admire it or despise it, Windows’ style is often imitated by competitors, including some Linux distributions. A familiar look and feel can help new users adapt to a new system, and this is especially important when changing such a fundamental part of the experience as an OS.

The Toyota RAV4 is already an easy SUV to make a case for. It's practical, efficient, and built around the kind of everyday usability that families tend to value, but its biggest advantage might not show up until you've owned it for a few years.

Tap-to-pay with phones didn’t take off in the U.S. as quickly as in other countries, but it’s now available at most retailers. There’s been one massive hold-out the entire time, though: Walmart. Finally, that’s about to change, and it’s happening very soon.

Did you know that Milwaukee's M12 tool lineup has a lot more than just drills, drivers, and saws in it? I didn't either. Here are five fun tools that you'd never have expected to be part of Milwaukee's lineup.

Most people think building your own apps takes months of learning or a computer science degree. It really just takes a free weekend and a few conversations with Claude to get tools that work exactly the way you want, without ads, without subscriptions, and without features you never asked for. I've built versions of all of these myself, and the gap between what you can make for free and what you'd download from an app store isn't as big as people think.

And so begins the closing out of summer on Netflix. As the world's biggest streaming service basks in the month's standouts like Don't Say Good Luck and The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare, there's still a bit more to squeeze out of it, including Adam Scott's horror film The Whisper Man and one topping this weekend's bingeable list: the fifth season of Outer Banks.

With development boards like the ESP32-CAM and ESP32-S3 Sense, you can easily integrate a camera into your microcontroller projects. These can be useful in the home or at work, or just plain fun when integrated into more adventurous projects.

The writing has been on the wall from the moment Nvidia introduced DLSS, and then followed up with DLSS Frame Generation. The company is all-in on AI, and ever since we got frame gen, hardware upgrades have stopped being the sole focus of every new release. Instead, DLSS and Multi-Frame Generation drive the hype.

Google has been my favorite Android manufacturer for a long time. I've used Pixel phones for nearly a decade, and before that, I used Nexus phones and tablets. But that run is coming to an end. Next time I upgrade, I'll be switching over to the Samsung Galaxy side.