How-To Geek

I knew this day would come, but my GPU is finally struggling to run new games within its 8GB of VRAM, even at lower settings and resolutions. This is not inherently a problem, things do move on after all. But, it couldn't have happened at a worse time.

October is barreling toward us and will arrive at the end of the week, and with it comes a brand new swath of catalog movies on October 1, including all five Twilight movies, three Psycho films, The Devil Wears Prada, and a couple of great ones I'll fill you in on below, so keep reading.

Wired earbuds are suddenly trendy, and Bose wants to seize the moment by launching its Noise Cancelling Wired Earbuds. In theory, they offer the best features of true wireless earbuds without the hassles of Bluetooth connections or charging.

Ubuntu's minimum system requirements—6GB of RAM and 25GB of storage space—are modest compared to Windows, but if you're working with an older PC, even that may be too much. If you've ever tried running the current release of Ubuntu on an old netbook or Optiplex, you've experienced it first hand.

I love to drive. Driving is my safe place when I want to disconnect from the world for a while. No one asking me where something is, no one asking what’s for dinner, just me, my car, and whatever playlist I’ve decided to play for the hundredth time. So, of course, I use Google Maps more than I’d like to admit.

Adaptations are a tricky endeavor. Many filmmakers and showrunners run into problems when adapting source material from, say, a book. While it can be helpful to have a blueprint for a movie or show, adaptations create numerous problems, especially when it comes to satisfying fans loyal to the book. One minor change to the book can cause an uproar. Just ask Benioff and Weiss about how fans reacted to their decisions in Game of Thrones.

Once every hour, the Raspberry Pi sitting on my desk checks the weather and then plays a song about it. It is a bit like a cuckoo clock, except it tells me the weather instead of the time.

G2A.COM may be best known for video games, but the marketplace offers much more than gaming. Alongside games, users can find a wide range of digital software offers, often at competitive prices across different platforms.

There's no denying that using a custom DNS server is a better choice than sticking with the one provided by your ISP, but the catch is that you shouldn't opt for the first DNS provider you find positive reviews of online, or the one everyone recommends on Reddit. There's a way to test which DNS server works best for you that only takes about a minute of your time, and it'll give you better results than blindly choosing from the most popular options.

October is on the horizon, which means new movies will be hitting streaming this week. Tyler Perry's latest directorial effort and one of Christopher Nolan's underrated movies hit Netflix. Meanwhile, Ari Aster's folk-horror movie heads to Hulu.

Many self-hosted services require a powerful CPU, lots of storage, or a dedicated GPU, but many of my favorite apps don't. In fact, most of the services I run daily would run acceptably on any PC made in the last 10 to 15 years. If you want to try self-hosting but don't feel like spending a month's rent on a new PC, break out your old laptop that has been collecting dust in your closet instead—it'll do just fine.

You won't have to wait much longer to try Boox's take on a pocket eReader. The company has started taking pre-orders for the Picco ahead of an October release date, and promises to give its rival Xteink some stiff competition.

If you own some Ryobi power tools and battery packs, there's a good chance you have one of its fans. Ryobi makes all sorts of extremely useful tools to keep you cool, but the internet's favorite model is the clamp fan. Here's why, and several creative ways to use this affordable little gadget.

If you have an older iPhone lying around your house collecting dust, you may be sitting on a (digital) gold mine. Even if you moved on to the latest iPhone model, a spare phone can come in handy in unexpected ways.Any old, functioning device can be used in many different ways, so before you give up on your spare iPhone, here are a few ways in which you can repurpose it that don't involve passing it along to somebody else.

I bought my Galaxy Watch thinking it’d make me more productive. I could keep up with my messages, get reminders to move if I’d been sitting for too long, and stay accountable with all my to-dos just a wrist raise away — basically, I could stay on top of all the crucial information without having to reach for my phone and get distracted by everything happening on that big screen.

Google TV is popular, but it hasn't had an easy fight against Amazon's Fire TV and Roku devices. It's not hard to see why. Not only are there many Fire TV and Roku sets, but there's also a wider variety of devices: there's just one Google TV Streamer, but multiple Amazon and Roku media players.

A low-powered CPU can make some tasks slower, while a small disk drive means you’ll have space for fewer files. But a machine with low memory can be catastrophic: applications hanging or getting closed by the memory manager, or even the whole system coming to a halt.

There is an interesting part of the used server market that I think more homelab builders should pay attention to. Most of you probably already know that companies regularly get rid of perfectly usable enterprise hardware once it reaches the end of its supported life. The problem is that when people talk about buying retired enterprise equipment, they usually think about rack servers, workstations, CPUs, or workstation laptops. Disk shelves rarely get the same attention.

Winamp is one of the most iconic programs of the late 90s and early 2000s. Despite its long history, it has fallen by the wayside as newer, more capable programs have taken its place.

If you still have a printer, it's likely something you only use occasionally, so you haven't really been pressured to buy a new one for years now.