How-To Geek

In a sense, the platters of a hard drive, or the magnetic surface of a floppy disk are blank sheets. There are technical limits on where and how you can write and read binary data, but for the most part, you can arrange and manage how that data is stored however you like.

There is a difference between two operating systems having their own ways of doing things, and making something needlessly complicated. It's easy to think of Linux as "harder" than Windows, simply because you're familiar with Windows. If you were a blank slate, most things would be equally new and "hard" for you.

I've seen good routers. I've seen bad routers. I've seen routers that were just there, with nothing special about them, which might arguably be the best type of router.

Over time, I've discovered several Docker containers/apps I can't work without. FOSS apps are consistently high-quality, but some apps kick it up a notch. I loved the app so much and got to thinking about similar apps. Apps you might jokingly say "do things you wouldn't expect from a Docker container" because they're premium-level, feature-packed programs that are (usually) free, self-hostable, and containerized. Here are a few of the best ones I've found.

I bought a Galaxy Watch to track my health metrics and enjoy the convenience of having a mini smartphone on my wrist. Over time, however, I realized that my smartwatch should act as a filter, not another screen where I spend time mindlessly. Instead of focusing on health and fitness tracking, I found myself distracted by promotional app notifications, spam emails, and group chat memes.

Are you wanting to buy some power tools that are made in the USA? You'll be hard-pressed to find them among the main companies. DeWalt, however, does have a handful of power tools that are still built in the United States, though one does come with a caveat.

Whether you are a dedicated Milwaukee fan or want another Milwaukee power tool for your arsenal, you don’t have to pay full price, sales and specials run year-round. You just need to know where to find them, and many deals are set by the manufacturer.

Our phones aren't just personal computers we carry with us — they're the ones we use to control everything else, from speakers and smart home devices to portable power stations. In this world of devices we connect to our phones, there are some quirky but fun accessories you might not even know exist.

Did you know that Walmart makes power tools? Hyper Tough is Walmart's in-house brand, and like most things at Walmart, it's fairly affordable. However, many tools are overlooked, so here are four affordable Hyper Tough tools released in 2026 that you might want to add to your DIY toolkit.

Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery have merged to form Skydance. The David Ellison-led media company now owns some of the most important franchises from two legacy studios, including Game of Thrones, the DC Universe, Mission: Impossible, Yellowstone, and Dune.

If you look at your Pi-hole dashboard after a few weeks of use you'll see thousands, if not tens of thousands, of blocked queries. Yet, despite your best attempts, there are still ads playing on your TV.

Excel is a brilliant tool for managing data. You can store data, organize, analyze, and even visualize it. However, Excel is not a database, as it lacks many of the primary features a database system offers. No relational integrity, data constraints, or foreign-key support. That's where DBeaver earned a spot on my PC.

Google Pixel has a good reputation in the Android world — this is the brand you buy if you want Android as Google's designers intended. But Google's vision for Android seems increasingly at odds with what matters most to Pixel owners, and it's starting to push people away.

The Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) runs a real Linux kernel inside a lightweight virtual machine right inside your copy of Windows. It's an awesome piece of technology that lets you run Linux apps and do Linux things from within Windows with no dual-booting or any of that other malarkey.

If there's one thing that annoys me about modern internet-connected technology, it's that everything is a subscription these days. Features that should just be part of an appliance, or performed locally by an app, now depend on siphoning a few dollars from your account every month.

I hate driving in a silent car. I love having music playing, singing along to my favorite songs, and occasionally dancing in my seat at a red light (don’t judge me).

I'm just old enough to have participated in the last few years of the floppy disk era, and although I don't feel a particularly strong sense of nostalgia about floppies, I do think that they're interesting. In any case, I've recently started archiving old screen saver disks and screwing around with floppy disk cameras, and I was surprised by all of the tactile, sensory memories that my mind had chosen to bury away.

Spooky season is here, which means I'm making room on my October watch list for witches, ghosts, and characters that make for interesting stories. Netflix has plenty to choose from, whether you want a supernatural mystery with a shade of comedy or a proper horror series that haunts you for days.

Most productivity software sells you a clean interface and a recurring charge for features you could build yourself in an afternoon. I've paid for tools that promised to do a lot, and they ended up being spreadsheets. People write Excel off as old or basic, but it can do math, it saves everything, and it works offline.

I realized recently how much of my phone life quietly depends on Google. Calendar for appointments, Keep for random thoughts, Chrome for basically everything, Maps when I’m lost, and Authenticator when Google decides I need another security code. It’s convenient, sure.