How-To Geek

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.

Cheap tablets are popular choices for Home Assistant dashboards. You can mount them on a wall and use them to display data and controls for your smart home. Before you buy a cheap tablet, it's worth considering if your old Android phone can do a better job.

Those little Wi-Fi bars in your taskbar might make you think you have the strongest signal in town, but they measure something far narrower than speed or reliability. Here is what the meter actually reads, why full bars can still mean a sluggish connection, and how to check what your network is doing.

It's October, and there's a chill in the air. This time of year, I can always hear Jodi and Betty from SNL's classic sketch Bronx Beat in my mind saying, in their Bronx accents, "It's sweata wetha." And for Netflix viewers, that means some new movies have arrived, with more than a few thrillers and horrors to start getting you prepped for spooky season.

In 1995, Microsoft tucked a first-person, Doom-like game inside Excel 95 to credit its developers. Three decades later, the hidden Hall of Tortured Souls still runs, if you know how to get it running. Here's how to set up a virtual machine and unlock it yourself.

I’ve accumulated an embarrassing amount of old tech over the years. Cables whose purpose I’ve long forgotten, gadgets I haven’t touched in years, and assorted bits of hardware have a habit of ending up in boxes rather than the trash. When it finally comes time to clear things out, though, I’ve learned not to throw anything away before checking it with Google Lens.

Linux is an operating system that encourages you to explore and tinker. You can go from zero to power user quickly, but what makes it great for power users often puts off newbies.

Bigger doesn't always mean better, and that's especially true in the world of power tools. Most Ryobi tools come with a 2Ah or 4Ah battery in the box, and when that's not enough for the job, many will end up looking for something bigger. Sure, that massive 12Ah battery sounds nice, but there's a good chance that's the wrong upgrade for you.