How-To Geek

You're about to have fewer EV choices in the American car market. The U.S. Department of Commerce has banned new car sales for Polestar, a Volvo spinoff, starting with the 2027 model year.

I tried using my Galaxy Watch as a sleep tracker, but it never really stuck. So, I went in the opposite direction and turned an old Google Pixel 6a into a dedicated bedside sleep companion instead. After making a few specific optimizations, it not only helped improve and stabilize my sleep schedule but also did a decent job of tracking my sleep.

Where I live, internet outages and power outages are both common, so I cannot realistically keep everything on my home server. At the same time, I still want to reliably self-host my services, so I'm keeping critical stuff on a virtual private server (or VPS for short). It took some trial and error to figure what is going where, so if you're in a similar spot, this list might help.

If you need a new Android phone but are strapped for cash, you just got a lifeline. Samsung will release the Galaxy A27 5G in the U.S. on July 14 for $349, with a few key upgrades — although there are curious downgrades that will turn off A26 owners.

Most luxury SUVs start feeling their age once the miles stack up. What once felt premium can quickly turn into rattles, wear, and a cabin that no longer feels worth the price tag.

If you've ever wondered how to reuse configuration values or how to easily inject them into your code, then I have the perfect tool for you. It's not just a JSON replacement but something more powerful that works with several config formats.

The 1980s saw a plethora of revolutionary movies, such as Aliens, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Halloween, to name a few. Thus, the decade also produced numerous oddball movies to replicate the success of those more serious cinematic productions.

There are a lot of misconceptions around the topic of PC storage, and external HDDs aren't immune to those. It might seem that they can just about live forever, but that's not entirely the case.

Home Assistant is all about automation and control of your smart home. Not every Home Assistant project needs to focus on writing automations, however. Sometimes a little work on your hardware can make your smart home even better.

Crossovers may be more efficient, easier to park, and packed with family-friendly features, but there's one thing old-school full-size SUVs still do better than almost anything else: rack up serious mileage. Built on truck-based platforms and designed for hard work, these machines were made to tow, haul, and keep going long after most vehicles start showing their age.

I have bought a lot of networking gear that promised to fix one thing or another. I've overpaid for said gear, too.

Vinyl records are one of those nostalgic technologies that everyone loves, and they've recently seen a resurgence of popularity. However, if you're looking for quality—especially if you're using a modern amplifier—there is a cheaper, better option.

Recording decent audio at home almost always means fighting some kind of background noise. Most people assume fixing this means buying a better microphone or building a quiet room, and that's not wrong, but it also isn't the whole story. Audacity has a noise reduction tool built right into it, and you don't need an extra plugin for it.

Wi-Fi is one of those convenient features we're all so familiar with that it's easy to take for granted. And over the years, the way our phones use Wi-Fi has changed quite a bit, including some features and settings that'll inevitably drain your battery. Luckily, there's one quick setting that'll eliminate that battery drain.

Many of us run some sort of smart lighting at home. Smart switches are the default choice for many setups, but in some cases, smart bulbs are either the better option or the only practical one.

I have a Motorola phone that I like to use for experiments, home lab projects, and, well, an actual phone. Lately, it runs slower than I did when I tried out for the high school track team. Anyhow, I wanted to try de-bloating it to improve the speed and performance. You might not think of Motorola phones as being bloated, but a few key changes worked great for me.

There's a meme I saw that was a little too close for comfort. It read "Marriage is basically just asking each other 'What do you want to eat?' until one of you dies." It feels like a lot of our lives are spent trying to decide what to cook, so I decided to see if I could get a local AI model to help.

Starting a smart home doesn’t have to break the bank, but some of the best upgrades you can make require a significant investment. I’d argue that they’re all worth it, and some can even save you money.

For the longest time, I treated downloads as a backup feature I'd use before, say, a flight or when my network was acting up. Obviously, streaming is more convenient, and I don't want to eat up my device's storage space by building a library for a rainy day.

I generally tend to prefer Samsung apps over Google's, so I'm not typically one of the people who consider the pre-installed Galaxy apps to be "bloatware." Still, Samsung's software isn't perfect, and there are default apps that even I feel compelled to swap out.