I never use my Pixel phone without these powerful open-source apps
…But as much as I appreciate Google’s hardware and native features, my daily experience with the phone relies heavily on what isn’t built by Google. Over the years, I have…
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I found out firsthand that some USB cables are too long for their own good
…When its voltage drops too low or the signal shape degrades, the receiving hardware interprets the data as unreadable or corrupted packets, discarding them and requesting a re-transmission and tanking the…
I turned my phone into a local LLM server, and it handles vision, voice, and tool calls
…Sign in to your XDA account Running a local LLM has typically required you to either have some pretty beefy hardware, or to buy dedicated hardware if you didn't have it…
I built a 10-inch ePaper dashboard for my 3D printer, and it's the best display I've ever used
…Ports USB-C Display 10.3-inch ePaper Wireless Connectivity Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Pros & Cons Looks great Easy to develop for Open hardware No ESPHome support yet reTerminal E1003 Aluminum frame Ten…
An AI agent deleted a company's entire database in 9 seconds, then confessed it 'guessed' instead of asking
…Any big company can now set up a chatbot, and we're seeing them pop up in support positions and as in-app help. These days, the big word in the AI…
Premium TVs ship with bargain-bin networking speeds, and it's getting harder to ignore
Jeff Butts May 1, 2026, 11:30 AM EDT Jeff's been involved in the IT industry since before the Internet and spent more than 20 years working in technical support, system…
I made Jellyfin remote streaming reliable without opening everything to the internet
…natively supports the codec, and have the Jellyfin server pass the raw file without any transcoding overhead. With adequate hardware, you can set up Intel QuickSync or NVIDIA NVENC for hardware transcoding…
Your home network doesn't need Pi-hole — an $8 ESP32 blocks ads just as well for a fraction of the cost
…It supports both hosts and AdBlock-style blocklist files. Aggregated lists like the one Steven Black maintains are a good starting point. The web interface lets you add only a single blocklist…
Most people never check this one router setting, and it's why their internet feels slow
…I tried switching hardware and even a couple of software tools that promised a speed boost. Nothing worked. So I went down the rabbit hole to troubleshoot my network more deeply and…
6 tiny ‘set and forget’ Docker containers I refuse to work without
…I use it for everything in my home lab and even for the remote tech support I provide to my parents. It doesn’t just check if a website is up via…