How-To Geek

As summer approaches, so does the excitement of watching thrilling movies that are fast-paced, easy to binge, and widely appealing. From pulse-pounding thrillers to emotionally charged dramas, exhilarating high-stakes storytelling thrives on conflict, risk, and consequence, and that’s the sandbox we’re playing in this week.

Craftsman used to have tools that could survive decades of heavy abuse, and you feel that durability the moment you pick them up. If you buy basic modern hand tools from a big box store, you already know they lack that heavy feel. They have shiny finishes and high-tooth ratchets, but the computer designs trim weight to save on manufacturing costs, leading to weak steel that breaks under pressure.

With all due respect to the new movies added on streaming last week, this week's selections blow last week's additions out of the water. Lurker on HBO Max and The Crash on Netflix were definitely highlights. However, this week is so good that those two might not have made the cut.

We’ve had multi-gig networking for several years now, but where does it actually make sense? I think that multi-gig internet is a waste of money, as most servers can’t serve you files at those speeds anyway. However, a multi-gig LAN absolutely changed how I use my homelab.

I love Gemini in Android Auto; there are so many times it is better than the old Assistant. However, there are too many issues Google did not solve before putting it in cars. It's as if the company wanted to put it in cars before making sure everything worked. Some things make me really wish I could go back to Google Assistant, especially when I need a true assistant, and not just a conversation partner. I handle most things from my phone before driving off, so I don't need the extra help on the road.

While multi-gig WAN (wide area network, your connection to the outside world) sounds great, it’s entirely unnecessary right now, at least, for getting multi-gig speeds on your LAN. A LAN is a local area network, and you can easily achieve multi-gig speeds using various other methods instead of replacing your router. In fact, replacing your router is the most expensive way to achieve 2.5GbE speeds on your LAN.

A Raspberry Pi is a decent self-hosting server if you're careful about what services you host. Unfortunately, Plex's default settings tend to be too much for even a Raspberry Pi 5 to handle.

Most people pick a browser once and never think about it again, which is how Chrome ends up with a hundred extensions, a cluttered toolbar, and a memory footprint that slows everything down. Samsung Browser on Windows is worth a serious look at because the integration between the two is genuinely useful in ways that go beyond basic bookmark syncing. Samsung Browser left Galaxy phones, and I'm so happy about it.

Fancy taking on some at-home projects to create smart gadgets without splashing too much cash? Here are 3 upgrades you can make to your tech to create a smart home, while only spending $24 on an Arduino board.

Excel automation doesn't have to mean writing macros or learning VBA. With a few built-in tools, you can make formulas expand automatically, clean up messy data, and speed through repetitive tasks in minutes. These simple tricks put your spreadsheets on autopilot.

If you have ever watched your monitor go completely dark after a routine hardware update, you already know the sinking feeling that follows. A standard driver installation finishes, the machine reboots, and instead of your desktop, you get a black screen or distorted graphics. It's easy to assume the worst, but I've come across this same issue and solved it with one of Windows' built-in repair tools.

The way Android handles notifications and Quick Settings has long been a stand-out feature. For good reason, the core functionality hasn’t changed much over the years. Recently, however, there seems to be some growing discontent with this system. I’m not happy about it.

If you're like me, you might have a bunch of retired storage devices sitting around the house. HDDs, SATA SSDs, NVMes ... Putting them to work for actual storage and backup purposes is great, but the reality is that some older SSDs are better suited to other tasks.

After Amazon announced that older Kindle models, such as my ancient Kindle 4, would lose access to new Kindle Store downloads, I decided to jailbreak it. I added the KOReader reading app and set it up so that it could display my Home Assistant dashboard, but I wondered how else I could use it. It sounded crazy, but could it work as a portable monitor?

Who would've thought that a day would come when an AI could hear your voice and speak just like you. I've used speech AI tools before, such as ElevenLabs. While those are great for voice cloning, they come with a price.

Sometimes, life is too short to sit down and watch a three-hour movie or a show with episodes that push an hour. If you've only got time for a quick Netflix fix, here are some great shows that have episodes of around half an hour or less.

As I write this, there are basically two types of CPU that matter: x86 and ARM. The former belongs to Intel and AMD, which each hold critical patents necessary to make modern PC chips. ARM belongs to, well, ARM, and you'll find that in MacBooks, phones, tablets, and more.

For most of the time I've been using Windows, voice dictation has been pretty fairly clunky. It worked as an accessibility feature or an interesting experiment, but it made for a difficult replacement compared to a mouse and keyboard. However, with the rise of AI, that has changed significantly.

When you install the Home Assistant companion app on your phone, you can allow Home Assistant to track your location. By default, you get a device tracker entity that will toggle between home and not_home based on the Home location that you set up. There are plenty of useful automations you can trigger using the location of your phone.

Most people use about 10% of Excel's actual capabilities, yet beginners often feel pressured to learn the other 90% immediately. That's a recipe for burnout. If you want to actually get work done, skip the noise, ignore the shiny distractions, and focus on the basics that make spreadsheets useful.