Smart plugs are among the most useful smart home devices you can buy. You can use a smart plug to turn almost any electrical device into a smart device that can be turned on and off remotely. With the right automations, however, smart plugs can offer something even more valuable: peace of mind.

I used to see the double dash (--) in Excel spreadsheets and wonder what it did. It's an essential shortcut to force Excel to treat TRUE and FALSE as the numbers 1 and 0, meaning you can easily sum or count the results of a logical test across a range. Now I know, and I want to share this powerful trick with you.

Smartphones used to have a stronger sense of personality. In the early days, it wasn't just the hardware that left an impression—the default wallpaper was a defining feature you'd see at the launch event and every ad that followed. Here are some of the most iconic smartphone wallpapers of all time, in no particular order.

On balance, USB-C has been pretty great. I would be the last person to suggest that we should go back to the bad old days of USB-A (insofar as we've actually left it) or, even worse, micro-USB.

No one wants to be spied on. A VPN is one piece of the cyber security puzzle to help protect your personal information—and you should install it on all of your devices.

This is a PSA: Please stop abusing your SSD. Mistreating it is easier to do than it might seem. We all do it to some extent, but if you do it too much, it'll eventually backfire.

Do you often feel uncomfortable with symptoms like nausea, dizziness, or headaches when you're traveling in your car or other moving vehicles? There are some tricks you can use to look at your phone without feeling sick.

When you secure excellent components for your PC, you expect things to run smoothly. Smooth frames, fast loading times, the works. So when you've shelled out for an awesome GPU and still have game stuttering, it can be immensely frustrating, but the problem might be something less obvious.

If you buy something, you should own it. Amazon is, by far, the biggest name in the eBook market, but the company puts tight DRM restrictions on these eBooks so you can't take them outside the Kindle ecosystem.

NotebookLM may just be an assistant to many people, but this is just the most basic functionality. You can take advantage of its system to do whatever you want, and that means it can be a way to have fun.

If you're like me, you use Discord for communication all day long. Those hours of use mean Discord has the opportunity to soak up lots of data about you and your use of the app. A few settings keep the collection at bay.

A truly smart home isn’t one that you control with your voice or phone, but one that is fully automated. Presence detection is key to creating an environment that anticipates your next move, whether that’s turning on a light in a cupboard or understanding exactly who is in which room.

I've always had a soft spot for Bentley. There’s something about the leather, the wood, the deep carpets, and that quiet swagger the brand carries that just gets me. It turns even a quick grocery run into something that feels a notch above normal life.

I'm a big sports fan, and I'm always watching something on YouTube TV, whether that's the NFL, NCAAF, or NHL games. Although the interface isn't the best for finding a particular game, there's a live sports delay, and streaming can often buffer, it's still a good overall experience. However, this one setting makes things even better.

Although I've dabbled with the likes of Motorola and Samsung, a large part of my Android journey has been built around Google hardware, from the early Nexus phones onwards. We've now had 10 generations of Pixel phones, and these are the ones that really stand out for me.

You can plug some weird and wonderful things into your Raspberry Pi’s USB ports outside of the obvious mouse, keyboards, and storage devices. Here are some of the more interesting accessories you might want to get your hands on for your next project.

This was another busy week in the Linux ecosystem and wider FOSS community, with an update on the way for Linux Mint, growing Steam marketshare, and much more. Here are the biggest stories you might have missed.

The luxury SUV market is crowded with models that promise performance, comfort, and long-term dependability, but very few manage to deliver all three at once. That’s what makes this particular SUV stand out. It offers the speed and acceleration you’d expect from a modern sports car, yet pairs it with the kind of everyday usability and refinement families actually need. For buyers who want genuine excitement without sacrificing peace of mind, it hits a rare sweet spot.

TK TK Here are the biggest stories you might have missed.

Excel files often contain data we never meant to share. Saving a workbook adds metadata—like who created it and when—and we can leave personal details in comments or hidden sheets. I use one tool to find and remove this information before sharing my spreadsheets.