How-To Geek

If you’re like me, you’re subscribed to many streaming websites, and one of those happens to be Amazon Prime. There are plenty of great shows on Amazon Prime, but one I love dearly and have had for many years is Invincible.

Cloud AI is powerful but not private. Local AI is private but less powerful. That trade-off is real, and trying to pick one over the other is the wrong framework. A better use of your time is to find tasks that require privacy, but not as much model intelligence, and then have local AI models automate them for you. Here are three such tasks that I’ve automated using on-device LLMs.

Power tools are a very personal purchase for a lot of people, and maybe even a sensitive subject. Just like tools in general, there's a lot of personal preference, brand loyalty, and most importantly myths that influence what people use.

The Adobe Suite is a mainstay of creatives everywhere, and one of the most common apps is Adobe Premiere—the video-editing software. However, I've switched to an open-source alternative, and I don't regret it for a moment.

If you've shopped for storage in the last few years, you've probably noticed the 2.5-inch hard drive quietly fading from the shelves. NVMe SSDs are tiny, fast, and increasingly affordable. The 3.5-inch drives still rule the desktop and NAS world. And yet, somehow, the humble 2.5-inch HDD keeps showing up.

I love having an Amazon Fire TV Stick, but the lag used to be a real problem. Initially, it felt like a great purchase because of the convenience and value, but over time, every click of the remote felt slower. The home screen felt heavy, menus lagged behind input, and trying to jump between Netflix and Disney+ was a test of my patience.

Homelabs are a fun, worthwhile hobby for many of us, but you don't always need to invest hundreds or thousands of dollars into your setup. I try to think of it as more of a sandbox where I’m making things, learning, and experimenting with hardware and software.

You probably know that GitHub isn't your only option for code management, but you're probably not aware about the many alternatives we have out there. One alternative that's currently gaining momentum is Codeberg, but what is it about?

One of the things I use the terminal for on Windows, in both PowerShell and WSL, is for running basic network diagnostics. Here are the commands I use most frequently.

Used mini PCs are an excellent solution if you need a dedicated Plex server. CPUs have been more than powerful enough to do the job for years, so there's no need to splash out cash for something new.

One of Google Maps' most recent features has become one of my most used ones on the navigation app, and for good reason. Ask Maps, an AI conversational feature, is now personalizing and simplifying navigation to a great extent.

If you’ve been using Obsidian for a while, you’ve probably seen Canvas in the sidebar and dismissed it as a whiteboard gimmick. That reaction makes sense—an infinite blank space with no obvious starting point isn’t exactly inviting. But Canvas isn’t a whiteboard—it’s where you go when your notes can’t hold the thought you’re trying to work through. Once that clicks, you’ll wonder how you have been thinking without using Obsidian Canvas.

There are plenty of good reasons to buy a new Honda Civic Type R. It’s quick, seriously fun to drive, and has a look that stands out in all the right ways.

Like many of you, I'm no stranger to Windows breaking itself after an update or otherwise ruining my day, but since I expect it to fail I tend to have backups and mitigations in place, so at worst it's annoying. As long as you don't use it for anything mission-critical, you're OK.

Linux Mint is a stable, reliable, and user-friendly Linux distro that provides a smooth transition for Windows users coming to Linux. But despite giving it several honest tries, I just don't seem to like it. Here's why Linux Mint and I just don't click, despite its objective merits.

It's no secret that Milwaukee has a solid reputation and is one of the best power tool brands on the market, but that doesn't mean everything with its red-and-white logo is worth buying. Milwaukee makes a wide variety of tools, which is one of its strengths, but that also means some tools completely miss the mark or leave a little to be desired.

Competitive gaming has evolved far beyond flashy shooters and fantasy worlds. Some of the most surprisingly intense e-sports scenes are built around software you probably used at work today. Here are some of the biggest ones.

3D printers have brought us closer to the world of Star Trek replicators, but we are still far away from sci-fi machines that can make anything at the press of a button. No single 3D printer is good at everything in equal measure.

I've been building PCs for something around 20 years, and seeing as it's a major hobby for me, I like to lurk around various PC building communities or talk to other PC owners. And one of the things that I see most often is worrying about the expensive stuff. Makes sense: if you spend over $1,000 on a GPU, you want to keep it safe.

Smart home forums are full of posts from people showing off the incredible dashboards that they've created, often displayed on wall-mounted tablets. While these dashboards can show you a lot of information about your smart home, there are many ways in which a simple E-Ink dashboard is a better option.