How-To Geek

Many newer Kindle models allow you to link your Kindle and Goodreads accounts so that the reading progress on your Kindle shows up in Goodreads. This was never the case for my old Kindle 4, and if you jailbreak a newer Kindle and read using KOReader, you lose the benefits of this native integration. Thankfully, I was able to use a KOReader plugin to get my reading stats to sync with Goodreads.

Netflix’s release slate ensures you never run out of something new to explore each week, and October's schedule is no exception. From foreign titles and originals to classic throwbacks, the streaming platform offers plenty, with some exciting movies landing this week.

When dealing with data corruption, you're much more likely to blame your SSD than anything else. And even if it's not your SSD, it'll be your OS or maybe even the CPU.

A website usually lives in a browser, where I navigate between pages, open images, and download files individually. On Linux, HTTPDirFS offers another way to access web content by mounting an HTTP server as a filesystem through FUSE. You can then browse the exposed resources through a file manager, much as you would browse files stored on your computer.

New TVs cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, but you'll often struggle to hear dialogue because of the tiny speakers. That's why it's worth spending a bit more on a 5.1 home theater soundbar system, like the LG S6FTR, which will bring a cinematic experience to your living room.

Google Keep is where I dump everything I need to remember. Grocery items, article ideas, errands, and random thoughts all end up in different notes. Finding anything later is a whole other problem.

Paramount has been one of the biggest names in the movie industry for a long time, and they have utilized that legacy to give us a strong streaming service with a pretty vast library. What I find so appealing about their platform is their catalog of movies, with hits from just about every era and genre ready to satisfy whatever craving I happen to have each week.

After using Bash for years on Debian, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint, when I first came across Zsh on Kali Linux, it was like a new world just opened in front of me. Syntax highlighting, command suggestions, and all the gorgeous colors made me rethink my decision to ignore the command line. I had plenty of reasons to replace Bash with Zsh.

3D printers are a fantastic tool for making basically anything you could want. This weekend, I wanted to make my house a little less annoying. So, I set out to find three things I could fix that would make my everyday life a little better, and it took me under an hour to complete.

There's nothing worse than a fluctuating network signal when you're trying to work or stream a movie. The solution is a powerful router like TP-Link's BE9700, which delivers wide coverage and fast speeds, so you won't deal with timeouts or buffering.

Driving is my stress-relief activity. I’m the kind of nerd who actually enjoys checking stats and reports, so naturally, I wanted to see what my driving looks like on paper.

NVIDIA wants the RTX Spark to be the laptop chip for running AI agents on your own machine, so I expected my $3,200 HP OmniBook Ultra 16 to run circles around a Snapdragon laptop. Instead, Hermes took one look at the 32GB RTX Spark and said every model I wanted was too big. The Zenbook A16, with 48GB of memory and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, loaded three of them in one click. It was slow, but for local AI agents, the cheaper laptop ended up actually getting the job done.

It may be a cliché, but my kids really do start asking if we're there yet about ten minutes into every road trip. One of the best ways to keep them quiet is to let them watch one of their favorite shows or movies on a tablet. Netflix has some great options that keep my kids entertained for hours.

Most of the time, I open Microsoft Edge to get something done, not to spend half an hour being chased by a giant sea monster. But the browser's built-in Surf game is an easy distraction to get hooked on. With several modes, power-ups, and a kraken on your tail, it offers more variety than Chrome's famous dinosaur game.

Ads on content and streaming platforms are increasing daily, and YouTube is no exception. I've paid for YouTube Premium for years, mostly to avoid mid-roll ads and for background playback. But recently, the official YouTube app crossed a line. Between the endless grid of distracting Shorts, community polls, and autoplaying recommended feeds, the interface has become a mess.

Windows has a habit of getting in your way just when you're trying to get something done. Whether it's an update at the wrong time or a driver that refuses to cooperate, you might be tempted to disable a security feature and call it a day. Before you do, though, there are six Windows features you should think twice about switching off.

The difference between a battery-powered sensor that runs for a few days and one that runs for a year comes down to what the board does when it's doing nothing. Most DIY projects, like weather stations, mailbox alerts, or plant monitors, spend 99% of their life idle. In those scenarios, idle draw matters far more than peak performance.

Over time, most of us have accumulated a number of inexpensive subscription services that, cumulatively, add up to a significant amount of money.

It's the final week of October, which means spooky season is coming to an end. There are plenty of horror movies to watch on Netflix, including Friday the 13th and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. This week's list of movies heading to streaming is not made up entirely of horror movies, but there are some tense thrillers, including a wild documentary on Paramount+.

As Apple gears up for its Pro and Tell event tomorrow, the brand has launched the iPad Mini. It’s the biggest overhaul the tablet has received, arriving two years after the previous model debuted in 2024. The timing is interesting—if you’ve been eyeing the new iPhone Duo that can be used as a slab phone and a tablet, the iPad Mini offers another way to get a larger display in a thinner profile without spending nearly as much.