How-To Geek

Are you ready for another round of weekend homelab projects to try out? This weekend, I'm showing you a unique note-taking app, how to add third-party cameras to HomeKit, and also how to keep track of your Jellyfin server's stats.

ZorinOS has been getting a lot of hype ever since Microsoft dropped support for Windows 10. Turns out the hype is justified. Linux Mint has been my go-to recommendation for Windows users, but testing ZorinOS changed my opinion.

It's not even a debate: GPUs are the most exciting component in any PC. That's been the case for years and years.

The most dedicated movie fans with cash to splash can sometimes get their hands on real movie props, but even mass-produced replicas demand a premium. With a 3D printer and a bit of spare time, you can make your own.

Public transportation can feel intimidating, especially when you're visiting a new city, exploring more efficient routes for your daily commute, or simply trying to reach your office on time before rush hour swallows you up. Thankfully, Google Maps has many public transit-focused features that can make your journey feel hassle-free and strip the stress from navigating unfamiliar routes and locations. Here are four features that you should check out now.

I get it, Raspberry Pi prices have gone through the roof, and what was once a cheap little single-board computer you could buy on a whim is now practically an investment. But, what about the cheaper alternatives?

Most people worry about outsiders breaking into their home network, but few think about what the devices already inside their home can access. While your trusted devices talking to each other is usually harmless, smart TVs are a different story: many models collect viewing habits, run outdated software, and frankly have little reason to see everything else connected to your network.

Every time your system needs to know the IP address of a domain, it uses DNS. When contacting your DNS server, it sends the domain that you’re trying to access in plain text, for anyone in the middle to see. It also means responses can easily be spoofed, so there are clear risks involved.

Windows has a way of breaking in ways that feel almost personal. What makes these issues so draining isn't that the problems are complicated; it's that the built-in tools Microsoft gives you to fix them either don't work or don't even come close to addressing what's actually wrong. I started handing these problems to Claude instead, to see if it can do more than just free up space on your Windows PC. I was surprised at how good it was at finding a reasonable solution.

In the summer of 2023, an eerie and lingering haze blanked skies all across the East Coast following a record wildfire season in Quebec. New York City's Air Quality Index reached a hazardous level of 465 as the smoke eventually drifted into cities like Boston, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. More than 350 million people were exposed to record levels of unhealthy air before it finally cleared.

It seemed like Immich came out of nowhere, but suddenly all my colleagues appear to be using it. I'm not as into self-hosting as some of them, so perhaps that's why I'm surprised, but the more I look into it, the more obvious it seems that this photo management solution is turning into a sleeper hit.

We've reached the point in the summer when all anyone can talk about is The Odyssey or Christopher Nolan's best movies. However, the streaming services have been releasing new shows to serve as counterprogramming for Nolan's epic movie. For me, the top show this week is a new Apple TV crime thriller starring Anya Taylor-Joy.

While it's convenient to pay for things with a tap of your phone, there's still a bit of a dance that you have to go through before the actual payment happens. If you use Google Wallet, there are a few tweaks you can make to save a few seconds every time you have to pay. Depending on your spending patterns, that can end up saving you quite a bit of time, and the person in line behind you will certainly appreciate it.

AI promises to make tedious work easier, but I wanted to know whether it could deliver in real Excel projects. Rather than asking Claude for formulas or snippets of code, I tested whether it could handle three types of automation: creating a workbook from scratch, building a reusable reporting system, and developing a tool that analyzes existing spreadsheets. The goal was to see how much of the work Claude could handle and where I would still need to step in.

No one likes a phone that's starting to lag, glitch, or slow down, especially when it's a fancy high-end Samsung Galaxy. No matter which phone you have, the way we use these devices all day, every day, can eventually slow things down. Fortunately, there's one easily overlooked setting that'll keep your Galaxy feeling fast and new.

I'm still a novice Linux user, but the more time I spend with it, the more I like it. What started as a way to keep an older PC useful has turned into something I genuinely enjoy using. Linux feels faster, more flexible, and far less intimidating than I expected, especially now that I've found applications that make the desktop experience feel more complete.

The best cars aren't always the ones that wow you in the showroom. They're the ones that still feel like a smart buy years after the excitement has worn off.

Long-haul flights are where sanity goes to die. Six to twelve hours can feel like an eternity, especially when the in-flight entertainment (if there is any) promises 400 titles, but somehow has nothing good. On my last transatlantic haul, my mental health survived on one thing–the movies I'd downloaded from before takeoff.

Linux users love to talk about how much faster their systems are compared to Windows, and you might wonder what kind of performance boosts they're actually talking about. I decided to do a few of my own tests to get some answers.

You no longer have to launch Gemini to have Google's AI handle some tasks. Google is rolling out connections between AI Mode in search and multiple popular services, making it possible to complete some tasks with little more than a prompt.