Technology

Are you curious about Arch Linux but scared off by the horror stories of constant breakage or the need for terminal wizardry? Wondering what’s actually true, and what’s internet folklore? Well, here are four myths about Arch Linux that you should stop believing—because they won’t stop spreading!

The latest Android flagship killers have just launched—but the U.S. is being left out of the party. These new phones are powered by the new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, along with other top-tier specs, and they're coming in at surprisingly low prices.

One of the best things about Samsung phones rarely comes up in reviews. That's Good Lock, an official customization suite that makes Galaxy phones the most customizable on the market—a tool that has supplanted the need I once had to install a custom launcher.

You may soon be able to give posts the thumbs-down on Bluesky. The Twitter dupe recently announced it would be testing a "dislike" button, aimed at improving the personalization of users' feeds.

The idea is that thumbs-downing posts you don't like will directly affect the posts you see in your feed.

Wrote Bluesky about the test feature in a blog post:

"Soon, we’ll start testing a 'dislike' option as a new feedback signal to improve personalization in Discover and other feeds. Dislikes help the system understand what kinds of posts you’d prefer to see less of. They may also lightly inform reply ranking, reducing the visibility of low-quality replies. Dislikes are private and the signal isn’t global — it mainly affects your own experience and, to an extent, others in your social neighborhood."

So, to be clear, dislikes won't be visible to the public — meaning people won't see what you dislike or how many dislikes any given post might have.

While that's not a drastic change to how Bluesky works, it could lead to an improvement for daily scrolling. Bluesky's "Discover" tab is widely ignored — or worse, hated — by its power users because it's largely filled with corny posts that racked up likes. As writer Mike Pearl noted at Gizmodo, if the dislike button were to actually filter out posts and subjects you dislike, it could prove to transform the Discover tab into something "useful and maybe even dangerously addictive."

The internet is full of bad posts, but it seems like soon you might be able to do something about it on Bluesky.

If you’re like me, you probably have a bunch of USB cables scattered around your home for different purposes, whether charging a device or transferring data. But once you have too many, they mount into a pile and become difficult to tell apart.

You can fill your home with sensors that measure things like temperature, humidity, whether you left the garage door open, and who’s at home. Valuable as these are, there’s one sensor that stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of the amount of money and hassle it can save you.

Looking for Flatpak recommendations that go beyond the usual LibreOffice and GIMP suggestions? Want to know which apps a Linux enthusiast actually uses every single day? Here are my seven must-have Flatpaks that I install on all my Linux systems!

Google Photos feels like the digital safe for tons of our most precious memories, offering what seems like endless space for our pictures and videos. It's a tool many have grown very used to, but a default setting that quietly but seriously changes the very quality of the photos and videos we trust it with.

In case you missed it, the president demolished the East Wing of the White House to make room for his ballroom. Saturday Night Live mocked President Donald Trump's "renovation" with a funny, fitting sketch featuring host Miles Teller playing both of HGTV's Property Brothers.

The show mocked Trump's penchant for gaudy decor — gold leaf is everywhere — as well as the president's decision to drastically reshape the White House during a government shutdown. It's a good bit and a subject matter the show visited often over the weekend.

Google Keep is an essential tool in my phone's arsenal. I use the app to jot down everything. From random thoughts I later turn into articles like this one, to elaborate grocery lists. Over the years, my grocery list-building skills have grown considerably; let me share them with you.

For a year or two, I treated my phone as my primary gaming console. It was all fun and games until I picked up on a few gamer-hostile trends that have gradually soiled the experience.

Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" mocked President Donald Trump's gaudy White House bathroom renovation amid the government shutdown.

"Critics of President Trump are calling him tone deaf for posting pictures of his newly renovated White House bathroom during the government shutdown," said host Michael Che. "But I'm happy the floor looks slippery."

Trump this week posted a series of pictures of the renovated Lincoln bathroom.

"I renovated the Lincoln Bathroom in the White House," Trump wrote on his rightwing site Truth Social. "It was renovated in the 1940s in an Art Deco green tile style, which was totally inappropriate for the Lincoln Era."

SNL's Update further mocked Trump this weekend, poking fun at his Halloween event at the White House and the fallout from the shutdown.

Most people use their 3D printers to produce small items that are handy around the house, but what if you could print furniture or huge models in one go? That’s exactly what Elegoo promises with its aptly-named OrangeStorm Giga.

The terminal is clunky and inefficient without additional customizations. If you're a beginner, you may feel that this is as good as it gets, but it's not. One tool in particular stands out and can improve your experience drastically. I outline several reasons why fzf is my favorite terminal tool.

What's better for a chilly weekend in November than a show that you can binge-watch from the comfort of your home? Netflix has a string of eagerly awaited shows slated to release this month, including the return of some of its most popular titles.

Saturday Night Live, a New York City institution, parodied the city's contentious mayoral race this weekend, which has garnered an uncharacteristic amount of national attention. The show's star-studded cold open centered on a debate between Zohran Mamdani (Ramy Youssef), Andrew Cuomo (Miles Teller), and Curtis Sliwa (Shane Gillis).

The sketch played into the public perceptions of the candidates — Mamdani as charismatic and hopeful, Cuomo as desperate and creepy, and Sliwa as a truly strange NYC creature.

Gillis stole the show, impersonating Sliwa's wild asides about his violent run-ins with shady characters in the city's past. That is, until Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson) showed up to crash the debate. And wherever you think Trump's bizarro soliloquy is going, trust me — you don't.

More people are buying dumbphones, and I support this—but having ditched a smartphone for a dumbphone for years, I know firsthand the challenges that may arise. Before swapping out your phone, first consider changing how you use the one you have.

Every year, Apple releases new versions of iOS and macOS, and a ton of new features get added to your iPhone and Mac. It's all too easy to lose track of some of the new features that have been added. You're probably not even using a Safari feature that was added more than a year ago with the release of iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia. If this is the case, however, then you're missing out, as it's one of the most satisfying features Apple has to offer.

I rarely regret my tech buying decisions, but this one power bank purchase was so bad that I can't move on from it. It's not that the product itself is bad. I didn't think clearly enough to understand that what I'm about to buy would only increase my pain instead of serving its purpose.

Amazon's Echo Show 5 is an affordable smart display, but the lock-in with Amazon's own ecosystem makes it far less useful as a smart home device than it could be. Some very clever people have figured out a way to unlock the first-generation Echo Show 5, and using this exploit, it's possible to turn it into a genuinely useful Home Assistant control panel.