How-To Geek

Pet hair, kitchen crumbs, and muddy footprints can make floor cleaning a daily job. A robot vacuum that cleans, mops, and even handles its own mop care can take most of that work off your hands.

External drives, like the WD Elements, are essential storage devices everyone should have to protect valuable data from crashes or theft. They're also great for storing your movie and music collections because you can take them anywhere and access the offline files without a subscription.

We all know that finding the right tool for the job is important, but sometimes it's pretty difficult amid all the outside noise, different tool ecosystems, battery platforms, and endless options scattered across store shelves. Milwaukee makes some extremely popular and common tools everyone enjoys, but it's those "sleeper" tools that are often overlooked you'll love the most.

I spend a lot of time behind a computer, and for decades Windows has been my daily driver. Mostly, that's because it's the environment I had to work in at the different companies I've worked for over the years. That said, the gap between Windows and Linux keeps getting smaller for the things I actually do every day. At this point, I can see pretty clearly that Linux can handle my regular workload and workflow without too much compromise.

Open-source is a promise, not a guarantee. And if you've been homelabbing long enough, there's a good chance that you're running some stale, unmaintained Docker containers. While these containers may be safe to use in the short term, they do pose some long-term risk (or may simply break at some point), so you should disable or replace them as soon as you can.

As much as I want to like Galaxy phones, Samsung makes some software decisions that I just don't get. This is particularly true when it comes to notifications. One of my favorite conversation features on Pixel phones is technically present on Galaxy phones, but Samsung broke it.

I got tired of randomly finding out a hard drive I thought was good wasn't actually good, so I built a tool to automatically benchmark and test my drives before I trust them with my data. Here's what I built and how you can use it to make your homelab more reliable.

Retailers are beginning to prep for the holiday shopping season, with stores like Best Buy leading the way, slashing prices and adding on massive markdowns on tons of products and gear—good news if you're looking to get your shopping done early. A fantastic strategy is to look at products that are just slightly out of season, like this massive 77-inch OLED TV from LG.

I can't count how many side projects I've killed so far. Some never even saw the light of day. Others were abandoned at the initial stage. There were many reasons, but one common reason was my fear of breaking the rules professional software engineers follow.

It's tempting to import a Chinese phone for U.S. use, and for good reason. They frequently have more powerful cameras, gigantic silicon-carbon batteries, and clever features at prices that undercut their American and Korean counterparts. I've used some myself, and it's wonderful to have even mid-range Android devices that take quality photos and last two days on a charge.

Home Assistant isn't just a great way to control your smart home locally and privately, but it can also save you money. You can use Home Assistant to replace multiple subscription services, which could save you more than $455 per year.

You know it's heading into spooky season when freaky things start happening. For starters, Ryan Phillippe has not one but two movies in the top spots on the Paramount+ U.S. movie charts. Shudder. I'm kidding, of course, but what's no joke are the 71 movies that the streaming service dropped into its catalog on October 1st, three of which are below and are well worth watching this week.

Most people know to avoid sketchy downloads or suspicious links, but they don't think twice about USB cables. People buy whatever they find at a gas station because it looks harmless. The problem is that the cable connecting your phone or laptop to power can do more than you think. Never plug in a cord you just found or know nothing about. You're still plugging in a gadget, even if it doesn't seem like one.

Every few years, the programming world converges on a handful of languages and treats them as the only serious options. JavaScript, Python, Java, C, and now Rust and Go dominate job listings, tutorials, and conference talks. That consensus is useful, but it also buries languages that solved hard problems elegantly, influenced everything that came after them, and still do useful work today. Underrated does not mean unknown. It means the gap between a language’s actual quality and the attention it receives is embarrassingly large. These five languages live in that gap.

Touchscreen laptops, like the HP Omnibook 3, are a practical way to boost your productivity and are now cheaper than ever. You can simply swipe across the display to navigate, and you don't need to worry about clunky trackpads or buying a mouse. It also has decent power under the hood to handle work or play.

Google Maps or Waze is usually the go-to choice for directions, and Waze has always been mine. I like how quickly it picks up traffic, warns me about slowdowns, and gives me a heads-up about things happening on the road. I’ve gotten into the habit of turning it on before I pull out, even when I mostly know the route.

I have spent a substantial part of my professional career working with RHEL, and it has given me a pretty good understanding of why organizations standardize on it, and I have seen the operational advantages that make companies willing to pay for it.

Tom Cruise swung for the fences with Digger. Unfortunately for Cruise and the rest of Hollywood, the risk hasn't paid off, with Digger suffering an epic opening-weekend failure at the box office.

The simple reason? It's trust. I simply, personally, don't trust Seagate as a hard drive brand anymore. Is it fair to avoid an entire brand? If you look under the hood at what a brand actually is, it might not make too much rational sense. Even my own personal philosophy has always been to judge products on their individual merits.

Two new details today from Google reveal some fine print about its Googlebook laptop platform. Several cross-device features require a phone running the latest Android 17, while app support can vary depending on the laptop’s processor. This means that the experience could vary significantly for users.