How-To Geek

Nvidia might have released the Shield TV Pro in 2019, but even that device isn't immune to market pressure. The company has raised the price of the Shield TV Pro to $300, a $100 hike.

Aside from being the family tech support guy, my job also has me testing a lot of software and operating systems. I end up installing a new OS every couple of weeks, whether I'm testing Linux, troubleshooting a PC, or working on one of my articles. That means I have to rely on a bootable USB tool pretty regularly.

The Star Trek universe is huge and full of different media. I've watched the shows, played the video games, read a ton of the novels (Star Trek: Titan is a personal favorite), and have even written about Trek-related songs. Since this year is the series' 60th Anniversary, I thought I'd celebrate with these tech-related StarTrek hobbies.

For over three months, I have been running 12 speed tests per day every single day. It's added up to over 1,200 tests spanning over 100 days, using nearly 2.5TB of data. What did I learn from this endeavor? Actually, way more than I imagined I would.

Losing cell service mid-drive is a big deal because it can mess with your maps, music, and a whole lot of other things, and then you're stuck looking at the screen instead of the road. Most people don't notice how much Android Auto leans on the internet until they're staring at a frozen screen somewhere outside coverage. The good news is that you can prepare and use your apps in places where you have no reception, as long as you know where to look.

Welcome to October. It's spooky season, and we have a new Halloween-themed show for you to watch this weekend. It's a dramedy involving teenage witches coming to Disney+ and Hulu. As for the non-spooky shows to watch this weekend, a new thriller starring an Academy Award-winning actress premieres on AMC+.

Mac minis with Apple Silicon are some of the best compact desktop computers on the market, but their Intel-based predecessors aren't ready for the landfill just yet. While they're too old to get new versions of macOS and too feeble to use as your main PC, they still have enough fuel in their tanks to work as home servers. Put Linux on one, start self-hosting, and you'll be able to save wads of cash you're now spending on various subscriptions.

If you've been staring at Excel all week at work, the last thing you probably want to do this weekend is open another spreadsheet. Except Excel gets surprisingly interesting when you connect it to other things. This weekend, put that idea to the test with three projects that take Excel somewhere a little different.

If smartwatches have one weakness compared to regular watches, it's their short lifespan. Most have promised only a few years of software support, and they're dependent on companion apps that can stop working at any time. But there are alternative companion apps out there that can keep your watches running longer and safeguard your privacy in the process.

Thermal printers are mostly used in retail to produce receipts, since they don’t need to be super high quality, don’t consume ink, and can print quickly. But it turns out you can adapt them for use in your own projects with a little time and an ESP32.

Samsung has a reputation for packing its Galaxy phones with a deluge of features, arguably more than any other Android phone maker, and many of them don't get the spotlight they deserve. As a result, a lot of people overlook a good chunk of their Samsung phone's features just because they aren't talked about, which is a shame because some of them can be super useful in a variety of situations. Here are five One UI features that most owners end up ignoring, but if you own a Galaxy phone, you really shouldn't.

As usual, true-crime documentaries and series pretty much dominated the September lineup across the major streaming services, but the month did have a few surprises that provided a nice break from all the murder and scandal. And while the month wasn't perhaps as solid as August, Netflix more than pulled its own weight, as did HBO Max, Prime Video, and Peacock—a couple might even make the grade for best-of-the-year lists.

While the Raspberry Pi used to rule the kingdom of low-cost homelab hardware, that arena is now dominated by thin clients. They're cheap, powerful (comparatively), and easy to find. Here's why a $50 thin client should be your first homelab purchase and not a Raspberry Pi.

I've been building Excel dashboards for years, and my method has changed almost as much as Excel itself. One day I'll build one with formulas, the next I'll use only refined PivotTables, and increasingly, I'll ask AI to do the heavy lifting. But recently, I've found myself getting into a bit of an AI prompt trap. Is it better to give it more information and direction? Should I get into a back-and-forth conversation? Or should I just keep things simple?

Termux is one of the most underrated tools you can put on your Android phone. It turns an ordinary Android phone into a capable Linux workstation without rooting or flashing anything. And these are just three Linux things you can do on your Android phone, all thanks to Termux.

Milwaukee is known for making some of the best power tools and has hundreds of products to choose from. Sure, the drills, impact wrench, and Sawzall are some of the most popular, but tons of items fall into other categories and are just as good.

Google Lens is a powerful tool, and it always has been. However, the push towards an AI-focused ecosystem has taken some core Lens features and blatantly made them worse. Artificial intelligence is meant to take burdens off the user, but in many ways, Lens has become far too bloated, loaded with AI-centric features that make its overall experience more cluttered and more complicated.

DLSS has been a game-changer. NVIDIA's decision to sacrifice space in its GPUs for dedicated AI-acceleration hardware has turned out to be a visionary move. DLSS solves a serious problem created by high-resolution flat panels and the frustration of having to target an arbitrary panel resolution because scaling methods looked awful.

The AirPods Max 2 are among the best headphones if you consider their overall feature set, and they're even status symbols. They stand out from the latest Bose or Sony headphones and are clearly a flex that shows you have $549 to spend on audio. Even so, they have limitations. They sound good enough, but they're heavy, lack gym-friendly sweat resistance, and lose some of their features if you use Android.

FogCam is a long-running project at San Francisco State University. It began in 1994 and has shown live views from different parts of the campus over the years. What makes it special is that it’s the world's oldest continuously operating webcam.