How-To Geek

AI programming tools are super neat and interesting, but how useful are they, really? I found a completely new use for Codex the other day, and it's changing how I see AI programming platforms entirely.

Thanks to the TREAD Act, which became law in November 2000, every vehicle sold in the U.S. has been required to have a tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) since 2007. This potentially life-saving technology alerts drivers when tire pressure drops below the recommended threshold.

One of Google Maps' best features is not recent at all. In fact, it was introduced almost eight years ago, bringing with it the convenience that helped daily public transit commuters and drivers handle their trips with confidence.

Now that summer is here, my mom has once again started spending most of her free time in her backyard—and with that came the annual complaints about the terrible Wi-Fi coverage. It's a bigger problem than it sounds because she doesn't have a mobile data plan, so stepping outside means losing her internet connection entirely.

Spotify's recommendation system helps you discover new songs and revisit forgotten ones: right from your app's home page, you can find tracks that will find a permanent spot in your library. But this algorithm can also make it easy to end up in a boring loop of the same type of music.

Most smart home sensors are designed for use inside the house, which is where their presence is most useful. But there’s no reason the data they gather and triggers they enable can’t have utility outside, too. Here are a few all-weather examples of outdoor sensors that you might have overlooked.

Nearly 80% of respondents in an April 2026 survey from restaurant tech company Popmenu believe tipping practices have become ridiculous, with another 44% saying they tip less than they did a year ago. While pushback from consumers around tipping may have started in restaurants, bars, and coffee shops, Popmenu's data shows it has spread to grocery delivery, hotels, hair salons, and even auto repair.

While some still yearn for physical keyboards to make a comeback, I think it’s almost impossible to compete with the flexibility of virtual keyboards. Gboard is the one I always come back to, and I recently discovered a new feature that makes it even better.

Your router provides a basic list of connected devices, a speed test, and maybe a few port forwarding rules, but consumer routers are notoriously bad about giving you real control of what the devices on your network are doing. You can't usually spot a device phoning home when it is supposed to be off, or a device sending way more queries than it could possibly need.

For years, GitHub was the default place to host code. If you were starting a new project, contributing to open source, or just needed somewhere to keep a repository, GitHub was usually the obvious choice. It had an enormous community, the strongest network effect, and most of the tools developers expected were already built around it.

There are hundreds of open-source apps out there, especially now in the era of vibe coding—it is actually becoming a bit of a problem.

Alexa is the voice assistant that changed the game. Amazon made controlling your smart home with your voice accessible to everyone, but that convenience comes with a cost. Things you say to Alexa get sent to Amazon's servers and may be listened to by Amazon contractors, but Home Assistant lets you set up truly local voice control.

Before cloud storage became a thing, before anyone ever thought of keeping a NAS at home (much less an all-SSD NAS), and before many of us turned into bona fide data hoarders, plenty of businesses kept their data on cassettes small enough to disappear in a desk drawer.

Most people who buy 3D printers, myself included, mainly print models that other people make. Talented sculptors and designers who make things that are beautiful, useful, or both.

Even after years of clicking through the same menus, Photoshop still has tricks hiding in plain sight. These three features changed how I work, and I had no idea they existed.

Ryobi makes all sorts of power tools in various sizes, but did you know the brand has an entire line of small USB-C rechargeable tools for around the house? Whether you're short on space or don't want to buy huge tools, here are some tiny Ryobi tools that are still good enough for big jobs.

Passengers who refuse to wear headphones on a flight normally just get a scolding or mean glare from fellow flyers, and that's their only punishment. But now, those traveling with United Airlines may face harsher punishments than just peer judgment if you try and play audio without headphones.

Did you know that your router can function as a presence-detection sensor for your Home Assistant smart home? It’s easy enough to set up, perfect for some things, and terrible for others.Your router can detect when you leave home, but there's a catch

Most families end up scattered across three or four different cloud services without ever deciding where to be. Photos go to iCloud, documents pile up in Google Drive, the shared calendar lives somewhere else entirely, and at some point, everyone stops trusting that anything is actually backed up. I spent longer than I'd like to admit in that situation before I moved everything to a self-hosted Nextcloud server.

Tinkercad is an easy-to-use computer-aided design (CAD) app that runs in a browser, but it’s not without its limitations. That’s why I was excited to hear about SketchForge, a completely open-source alternative with a few nice extra features and a lot of promise for the future.