How-To Geek

USB-C is often touted as the universal standard for a wide range of devices, and while there's certainly more compatibility than there used to be, the reality is a lot more complicated.

Labor Day is right around the corner, and that means we can all look forward to excellent deals on all of our favorite tech, tools, and more. If you need a few more Ryobi battery packs or are gearing up for fall DIY projects, Home Depot has huge discounts you won't want to miss.

Netflix is set to flip its calendar over to September tomorrow, and with it comes a flood of new catalog movies to get into—including the Alien films, the whole Resident Evil pile, and dozens more. If you're a U.S. subscriber to the service, however, you might still be salivating over the 26-minute Grand Theft Auto VI preview or the chilling crime thriller Facing El Chapo.

Netflix is set to flip its calendar over to September tomorrow, and with it comes a flood of new catalog movies to get into—including the Alien films, the whole Resident Evil pile, and dozens more. If you're a U.S. subscriber to the service, however, you might still be salivating over the 26-minute Grand Theft Auto VI preview or the chilling crime thriller Facing El Chapo.

Claude has had SKILL.md files for a while now, and they’re one of the most useful things about it. That said, skills are only as good as the person writing them. If you describe your workflow poorly in a skill, Claude will also do the work poorly — it’s basically garbage-in, garbage-out.

Samsung Galaxy phones have a dirty secret: the official thickness measurements do not include the camera bump. Most smartphones have this same secret, but Samsung’s design choices make it a particularly annoying problem. I set out to fix it.

Windows is still the most popular desktop wos.While Linux may be obscure on the desktop, there are some prominent users already adopting it. Governments around the world are doing it to be independent or sometimes cut off from Western software. Here are some of the governments building their digital infrastructure around Linux.

Milwaukee tools are built to take a beating, but caked-on grease, sawdust, and other messes will quietly wreak havoc on your gear. You're probably thinking, "Who cleans their power tools?" but it's pretty common and more important than you think.

Did you know that a number of smart TVs come equipped with cameras? While that idea may raise privacy concerns for many people, and rightfully so, these cameras offer several neat features you can explore.

If you've ever had a long session with Claude Code or Cowork, you've probably had your context compressed before. Once that happens, Claude starts to lose track of the things you've already worked on. When you reference something in your code, like the "retry logic" section, Claude is going to have a harder time specifically finding that segment of your code. If you pay attention to what it is doing, you'll often see it run multiple commands trying to search for strings that turn up the correct portion of the code.

These days, most of us share files using methods like email or cloud storage with shareable links. While thumb drives don't seem to be going anywhere, the days of carrying one around with you wherever you go are long over.

With September starting this week, many of the major streaming services will be adding new movies. Paramount+ welcomes the latest installment of a long-running comedy franchise that hit theaters in June. At Prime Video, Gal Gadot headlines an original thriller set in London.

I've always thought a wall-mounted TV was the cleanest, highest-tier TV installation unless you move into the realm of custom cabinets that hide your TV until you're ready to watch it. I lived in a place with walls that could not take a wall mount for years, but when I moved into a more modern house, one of the first things I did was pay a professional to install our TV, mounted on the wall.

When you slice a 3D model to print, you have to make a decision about what the inside of that model will look like. Unless the designer created a custom internal structure, any open volume inside the model will be filled somehow.

Android Auto is strongly associated with cars and driving. I mean, it is right there in the name. But while navigation gets most of the attention in its interface, Android Auto is really a simple interface with large buttons, voice controls, and easy access to a few essential apps, which makes it surprisingly useful beyond the driver's seat.

The promise of passkeys was a higher level of security than passwords, stemming from the fact that you can't give away a passkey. You cannot share it, and a malicious actor cannot phish a passkey like they can a password. But a recent post by Arie Olshtein, who works for cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks, detailed a set attacks collectively nicknamed Pass-ta-key that can, in the worst case, extract all locally synced passkeys and then use them to log in to websites and do all kinds of bad things. The catch is that Pass-ta-key is possible to pull off only on Windows, and by the looks of it, only if the passkeys are managed by Google Password Manager in Chrome for Windows.

As a general rule, it makes good sense to plug your networking gear into an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). But does that mean that every single home and every single router requires that additional expense?

Gmail is arguably the most ubiquitous email service used by the majority of us, including me. It's simply because of the convenience it brings to the table—one Gmail ID for everything from email, YouTube, Maps, Drive, and every other Google product we rely on in our day-to-day life.

My Pixel used to run hot every time I plugged it in—so much that I'd pull it off the charger mid-session. Surprisingly, simply swapping the cable fixed it completely, and the reason why says a lot about how charging actually works.

Having access to a 3D printer can, at times, cloud your judgment. You start to think in terms of printing your way out of a problem, which can mean overlooking easier and more economical options.