Tag Archives: how-to-and-advice

Every coffee preparation method has little tricks, secrets, pitfalls, and different ways to end up with a cup of something you're not super happy with. Espresso has more of those than most, I'd say. Many things can impact the quality of the shots you pull from your espresso machine, and …

Microsoft is continually adding new features to Windows, but the recent announcement of a tool called Recall has raised a few eyebrows: It's designed to work like browsing history does in your web browser, but for everything on your PC. Whenever you need to retrace your steps on the Windows …

Paying professionals to do services for you, whether it's lawn work, styling your hair, or doing your taxes, can develop into long-term business relationships. You may get to know the person behind the work. Over time, there can be a familiarity and loyalty that makes it hard when you decide …

I might be old-fashioned, but I like listening to albums. Spotify seems to always be fighting me on this. I like experiencing a collection of songs all at once, played in the order chosen by the artist. I especially like doing this when I discover a new artist: I want …

There's no avoiding it: Your desktop or laptop computer isn't going to last forever. Eventually the time will come when you need to abandon it—responsibly disposing of it along the way, of course—and upgrade to a new machine. But maybe you're not quite at that stage yet. Maybe you need …

I sleep on a lot of bedding. It comes with the territory when you test bed sheets and comforters for a living. I've slept on everything from bamboo and silk to plain-weave cotton, but there's a term I've seen quite often in bedding materials that I didn't know much about: …

Every web browser has what's called a cache: a temporary storage space for web pages that syncs online content to your computer or mobile device. This syncing is designed to help websites load up faster and put less strain on your internet bandwidth. It's a good idea, and it works …

Windows 11, by default, shows you a bunch of "news" articles when you click the widget icon, the thing on the left-hand side of the taskbar that usually shows you the weather. This block of news articles was, until recently, next to impossible to disable. I am not exaggerating when …

As you've no doubt noticed, tech companies are pushing artificial intelligence into as many of their products as they can at a ferocious rate. One of the newest AI-powered features to make its way to Android phones is called Circle to Search. Here's the idea: There's something on your phone …

Let’s say you just searched Google to learn more about this new AI Overview feature that everyone’s talking about. If your query triggers an AI Overview—and not every query will—then you might see an AI-generated summary of this very article at the top of your results. These new AI Overviews …