How-To Geek

If you've ever thought about building your own smart home devices, you may have been put off by learning how microcontrollers work or writing complicated code. I've built several smart home devices using ESP32 boards, and thanks to ESPHome, I haven't had to write a single line of code to get them working.

Scammers might be using ever-more sophisticated tricks, but your phone will soon have a better chance at spotting those ploys. Google is rolling out a string of upgrades to Android scam detection that can thwart more advanced schemes.

Fast internet is pretty much a basic necessity these days, and if you don't have it, it'll cause you grief every single day. Sometimes, the fix is getting a better plan, but you should always do the troubleshooting work first to make sure that's really what you need.

E-Ink displays are pretty magical. They require power to form an image on the screen, but once it's been formed, it doesn't need any additional power for that image to remain in place. I wanted to take advantage of this and turn my Kindle into a calendar that I barely need to charge.

Modern generative AI is like a force of nature, it seems. Sometimes it does things that are good for us, like solving a 50-year-old grand challenge in protein folding. Other times, it might be bad for us, such as the environmental issues around data centers, or how it can supercharge malware.