Stop Treating Your UPS Like a Dumb Battery: 4 UPS Settings I Use to Keep My Home Server Alive
Rich Hein explains that modern UPS units are far more capable than simple battery backups, offering real‑time power monitoring, direct computer communication, and configurable outlet priorities. By leveraging built‑in management software, users can see exact load, runtime, and battery health, enabling smarter device placement. High‑end models let critical gear stay powered longer through controlled outlet groups, while a BIOS setting can auto‑restart systems after power returns. These features transform a UPS from a safety net into an active power‑management tool for home servers and workstations.
7 Reasons You Need Smart Buttons in Your Smart Home
Smart buttons are emerging as essential physical controls for modern smart homes, offering one‑tap activation of complex routines like morning coffee, blinds, and music. They provide reliable, offline operation and can trigger different actions based on time of day, making...
This Forgotten American SUV Beats Rivals in Reliability and Safety
The 2018‑2021 Buick Encore quietly outperforms many subcompact rivals in reliability and safety. J.D. Power scores place it in the high 80s to low 90s, while the NHTSA awards a five‑star overall rating. Its modest 1.4‑liter turbo engine delivers adequate power...
Installing Apps on Windows Is Still Too Slow. This Built-In Tool Fixes It
Windows users still endure slow, manual app installations, but the built‑in WinGet package manager changes that. Introduced in 2020 and now native to Windows 10/11, WinGet lets you install, update, and remove software with a single command from a central...
This Tiny Radio Lets Me Send Texts without Wi-Fi or Cell Service
Off‑grid messaging is now feasible with inexpensive LoRa‑based devices running the open‑source Meshtastic firmware. A Lilygo T‑Echo or MakerHawk ESP32 node can be purchased for as little as $22 and, when paired with a smartphone, creates a mesh network that...
The Graphene Heat Spreader Secret: Why You Should Never Peel the Sticker Off Your NVMe SSD
Modern NVMe SSDs use a thin, graphene‑copper sticker as a built‑in heat spreader, channeling heat away from the controller and NAND chips. Removing this label not only voids the manufacturer warranty but also creates air gaps that impair thermal transfer,...
Google Fiber Just Went Live in This US City with 8 Gig Speeds
Google Fiber has begun service in Las Vegas, Nevada, offering up to 8 Gigabit speeds. The launch includes plans from 1 Gbps to 8 Gbps with symmetric download and upload rates of 8,000 Mbps. Service is currently limited to the incorporated city, with no...
This PC Upgrade Is the Weirdest Thing I've Added to Samsung SmartThings Yet
Bertel King adds a Samsung Smart Monitor M8 to his SmartThings ecosystem, turning a 32‑inch 4K display into a multifunctional hub. The monitor runs One UI on Tizen, offering TV‑style streaming, Samsung DeX desktop, and built‑in light, motion and sound...
4 Features that Make Android's Default File Manager Better than Third-Party Alternatives
Android’s built‑in file manager has evolved from a minimal utility into a competitive alternative to third‑party apps. It remains free, ad‑free, and inherits system‑level permissions, eliminating the need for additional user grants. The UI now follows modern material design and...
Bentley Turns Spanish Mountain Into Bespoke Luxury with Bentayga Artenara Edition
Bentley unveiled the 2027 Bentayga Artenara Edition, a design‑focused SUV inspired by the Gran Canaria village of Artenara and the Roque Bentayga peak. The edition bundles Mulliner’s signature double‑diamond grille and other premium features as standard, while offering eight exterior...
This Toyota Sedan Delivers Mercedes-Level Luxury without the Price
Toyota’s 2026 Crown positions itself as a near‑luxury sedan that rivals the Mercedes‑Benz E‑Class in comfort and technology while undercutting its price. The Crown starts at $48,765 and tops out at $54,990, compared with the E‑Class’s $63,900 base, and comes...
How to Sideload Apps on the Nvidia Shield TV
The Nvidia Shield TV, praised as the most powerful streaming box, can run any Android app through sideloading, bypassing Play Store limitations. Users download APK files from reputable sites like APKMirror or F‑Droid, then transfer them to the Shield using...
Apple’s Godzilla & Kong Blockbuster TV Show Immediately Becomes a Streaming Success
Apple TV+’s *Monarch: Legacy of Monsters* season 2 quickly rose to become the second‑most‑watched show on the platform in the United States, according to FlixPatrol, trailing only *Hijack* and *Shrinking*. The series introduces a new sea‑monster antagonist, Titan X, while keeping the...
The ‘Smartphone Replacement’ Is a Myth
The modern smartphone remains the universal computing device, merging camera, media, health, gaming, and web capabilities into a pocket‑sized rectangle. Since the iPhone’s debut in 2007, the core form factor—large touchscreen, portrait‑landscape orientation, and rear cameras—has stayed largely unchanged, with...
You're Storing Your 3D Printer Filament Wrong (and It's Ruining Your Prints)
Many 3D‑printer users store filament exposed to humidity, causing moisture absorption that leads to print defects. Even brand‑new spools can arrive wet, especially hygroscopic materials like PETG, nylon, and TPU. The article recommends actively drying filament with dedicated dryers or...
These Homelab Uptime Tricks Made My Home Assistant Setup Virtually Unstoppable
The article outlines practical homelab techniques to keep a Home Assistant smart‑home hub running reliably. It recommends using an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) for the server, router and Zigbee coordinators, and automating graceful shutdowns. It also advises monitoring critical services...
Passkeys Were Supposed to Replace Passwords, but They're Failing for the Most Predictable Reason
Passkeys, a public‑private key pair paired with biometric verification, were heralded as the successor to passwords, yet most users remain unaware of how they work. Websites often present the option without clear guidance, and many keep passwords as a fallback,...
Stop Trusting Windows Drive Alerts: How to Pull Your SSD's Raw NVMe Error Log with Smartctl
Windows drive alerts often mask underlying SSD issues, but NVMe drives maintain a detailed error information log separate from SMART metrics. Using the open‑source Smartmontools suite, Windows users can retrieve this raw log with smartctl commands, provided the drive is...
Your Accounts Aren't as Safe as You Think: The Danger of SMS 2FA
SMS‑based two‑factor authentication remains widely used but is increasingly exposed to SIM‑swap attacks and smishing phishing. Attackers exploit social engineering to hijack phone numbers, intercepting one‑time codes and compromising accounts. The article recommends replacing SMS 2FA with authenticator apps that...
I'm Itching to Replay Classic Games with This Emulator Add-On
RetroAchievements adds a trophy system to roughly 10,000 classic games, offering over half a million achievements that work through the RetroArch emulator. By pairing the service with EmuDeck, users can transform a Steam Deck or similar handheld into a portable retro‑gaming...
3 Ways the Windows Task Manager Is Lying to You
Windows Task Manager is a convenient, built‑in diagnostic tool, but its percentages simplify complex system behavior. CPU usage is shown as an averaged figure across all cores, masking single‑core spikes. Memory usage includes cached and standby data that can be...
Home Assistant 2026.3 Has Arrived: Here’s What’s New
Home Assistant 2026.3 has rolled out, bringing a suite of automation refinements, new wake‑word support for Android, and expanded device integrations. The release adds "Continue on error" in the automation editor and lets robot vacuums clean specific mapped areas via...
Jellyfin, the Open-Source Media Server, Just Got Better on Roku TVs
Jellyfin released version 3.1.6 for Roku TVs, introducing full native support for Dolby Vision, HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG. The update also adds optional direct‑play for anamorphic video, though it remains disabled by default. Compatibility requires Jellyfin server 10.9 or newer,...
5 Custom ROMs that Prove Android Used to Be More Fun
The article revisits five landmark Android custom ROMs—CyanogenMod, Paranoid Android, CrDroid, Resurrection Remix, and the LineageOS fork—highlighting how they once turned Android devices into highly customizable platforms. It details each ROM's signature features, from CyanogenMod’s bloat‑free experience to Paranoid Android’s...
Premium Android Tablets Make a Comeback with Lenovo's Idea Tab Pro and Legion Tab
Lenovo unveiled two premium Android tablets at Mobile World Congress: the Idea Tab Pro Gen 2 and the Legion Tab Gen 5. The Idea Tab Pro Gen 2 features a 13‑inch 3.5K LCD with a 144 Hz refresh rate, Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset, up to 12 GB RAM and 512 GB...
The H2testw Reality Check: How to Expose Fake microSD Cards Before They Corrupt Your Data
MicroSD cards are popular low‑cost storage, but many counterfeit units falsely advertise larger capacities, leading to silent data loss. These fakes appear functional until data exceeds the real memory, causing overwrites or corruption. A comprehensive stress test that writes across...
These 6 Self-Hostable Apps Are Working Overtime on My Raspberry Pi
The piece outlines six lightweight, self‑hostable applications that run continuously on a Raspberry Pi, demonstrating how the low‑cost board can serve as a functional home‑lab server. It covers Pi‑hole for network‑wide ad blocking, Joplin for note synchronization, Navidrome for personal music...
Your Phone Has a Powerful Weather Instrument Hidden Inside
Smartphones now house digital barometric sensors that measure atmospheric pressure. While the primary purpose is to refine GPS altitude calculations, the data can be repurposed for offline weather monitoring. Apps such as Barometer & Altimeter let users view real‑time pressure readings and...
433MHz Is the Smart Home Technology You Forgot About
433 MHz radio frequency, long‑standing in consumer RF controls, is resurfacing as a low‑cost smart‑home bridge option. It delivers up to 300 ft range and penetrates walls better than 2.4 GHz Wi‑Fi, but lacks mesh networking, encryption, and high bandwidth. Devices like garage‑door...
How a Failed 2011 Tablet Took Android Rooting Mainstream
The HP TouchPad, launched in 2011 with webOS, flopped, selling only about 10% of its 270,000 units. After a drastic price drop to $99, the tablet flooded the market, prompting HP to release its Android source code in 2012. This...
HWiNFO, TestDisk, and Multiboot ISOs: How to Build the Ultimate PC Rescue Drive
Monica White outlines how to build a versatile PC rescue USB that boots on both UEFI and legacy systems. She recommends a 128 GB dual‑type flash drive, a multiboot setup with Windows 11 and Linux rescue ISOs, and essential utilities like...
Turbine Noise and Head Crashes: The Physical Limits that Killed the 15,000 RPM Hard Drive
The article explains why 15,000 RPM hard‑disk drives never achieved mainstream adoption. Extreme rotational speeds caused heat, power draw, vibration‑induced head crashes, and intolerable acoustic noise. These mechanical barriers made the drives costly and unreliable, especially compared with emerging solid‑state technology....
Everyone Says You Need a NAS for Plex—You Don't
The article debunks the common belief that a NAS is required for Plex, showing that any computer running Windows, macOS or Linux can host the media server. It cites real‑world tests on an old MacBook and a low‑end Core i3 mini‑PC...
Your Home Assistant Notifications Aren't as Private as You Think
Home Assistant’s mobile app sends push notifications through Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM), meaning the message payload is unencrypted while on Google’s servers. This applies to both Android and iOS devices, as Home Assistant cannot directly access Apple’s push service....
You Need a Separate Network to Protect Yourself From Your Smart Devices
Smart devices and IoT gadgets are rarely patched, leaving them vulnerable to malware such as Mirai. These products, from smart TVs to internet‑connected cameras, routinely harvest user data and can be hijacked to spy or launch attacks. Security experts recommend...
This One Tool Will Help You Master the Android Terminal Emulator Termux
How‑to‑Geek’s Faisal Rasool introduces "termai," a command‑line tool that embeds Google Gemini or OpenAI’s ChatGPT directly into the Android terminal emulator Termux. By typing a simple "ai" command, users can retrieve exact shell commands, generate Bash or Python scripts, and...
4 PowerShell Commands that Fix Common Windows Problems Fast
A How‑To‑Geek guide spotlights four PowerShell one‑liners that streamline common Windows maintenance tasks. The commands let users instantly audit disk usage, enumerate and uninstall Store apps, reset the network stack, and pinpoint resource‑hungry processes. By running these scripts as administrator,...
You Can't Afford DDR5 Right Now: Why Used AM4 and Last-Gen GPUs Are a Budget Goldmine
The surge in AI‑driven workloads has pushed DDR5 memory prices to three‑times their 2024 levels, making new builds prohibitively expensive. Meanwhile, the secondary market offers used DDR4 RAM, prior‑generation GPUs and AM4 Ryzen CPUs at a fraction of the cost,...
You’re Using the App Drawer on Your Android Phone Wrong
The article argues that Android’s traditional app drawer—an alphabetical grid—has become inefficient as users now install hundreds of apps. It traces the drawer’s origins to the 2008 T‑Mobile G1 and notes that its core functionality has changed little. Modern launchers...
3 Reasons I Still Can’t Switch to Linux: Where Windows Still Wins
How‑To‑Geek editor Nick Lewis argues that despite Linux’s customization and resource efficiency, Windows still outperforms it in three critical areas: built‑in biometric authentication, window management, and software ecosystem support. Windows Hello prompts users during installation, offering seamless fingerprint and facial...
Stop Buying PCs Expecting Them to Last 10 Years
Spending twice as much on a high‑end PC does not double its lifespan or performance because hardware becomes obsolete quickly. The article shows that a flagship GPU from 2017, the GTX 1080 Ti, is outclassed by a budget RTX 4060 six years later....
The 'USB-C' Label on Flash Drives Is a Trap: How Manufacturers Hide Ancient USB 2.0 Speeds
USB‑C flash drives often carry a premium price, yet many still operate at legacy USB 2.0 speeds, misleading buyers. The article stresses that only drives with genuine USB 3.2 Gen 1 or Gen 2 support deliver the advertised performance, and that capacity, NAND quality,...
5 Powerful Command Line Tricks Every Raspberry Pi Owner Should Know
Raspberry Pi owners can boost reliability and efficiency by mastering five essential command‑line tools. Monitoring temperature with vcgencmd prevents throttling, while cron automates routine scripts. htop offers real‑time insight into CPU and memory usage, and SSH enables headless remote control. Finally, nmap...
Windows 7 and Windows 8 Are Losing Their Last Web Browser
Mozilla announced that Firefox 115 will be the final version supporting Windows 7, 8, and 8.1, with security patches ending in March 2026. Microsoft stopped security updates for those OSes in January 2023, and other major browsers like Chrome, Edge, and Vivaldi have...
Google Home Fails at Things It Once Could Do, and Google Admits It
Google Home smart speakers are experiencing a noticeable decline in performance, with users reporting failures on tasks the devices previously handled reliably. A Reddit thread revealed that a user submitted at least ten feedback messages daily, prompting Google to publicly...
How I Transformed a House Into a Smart Home for My Older Parents
A caregiver retrofitted his parents' house with a smart‑home ecosystem, selecting Apple HomeKit to align with existing iOS devices. By installing smart plugs, voice‑controlled switches, cameras, and a doorbell, everyday tasks like turning on lamps or checking on health became...