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Summary About one in three people suffer from sleep deprivation, with significant consequences for both physical and mental health. Smart tech has helped me get more and better-quality sleep—here’s how. Sleep Deprivation Is Common, and Dangerous Studies showthat around a third of adults suffer from “significant sleep loss,” which is all the more worrying when you consider the potentially dangerous consequences of getting less sleep than we need. Loss of concentration through fatiguehas been citedas a factor in 10% of fatal car crashes, and a massive 57% of fatal truck accidents....

Quick Links Summary You can sometimes fix stick drift by cleaning your controller with isopropyl alcohol, but replacing the joystick modules inside the controller is often required for a permanent solution. You can also attempt to work around the problem by calibrating or adjusting the deadzones where possible. Stick drift is inevitable on most controllers due to the potentiometers used in the thumbsticks wearing out. Replacements can be costly, so why not attempt a repair to save some money and learn a few DIY skills along the way?...

Quick Links Do you have multiple apps to install on your Android phone? If so, there are various ways to install all those apps at once—no more tapping “install” on each app individually. I’ll show you how to do that so you don’t waste time installing apps one by one. Using Google Play Store As of October 2024, the Google Play Store allows you to install two apps at once on your Android device....

Quick Links Summary If automatic updates have failed to install, you have alternate ways to manually update your Windows 11 PC. We’ll show you the available methods, so you can get the latest bug fixes and possibly new features on your computer. Let’s get started. If Your Updates Failed, Clear the Downloaded Updates First Before using alternate update methods,remove the downloaded update filesto prevent any potential issues. The alternate methods will re-download the required update files anyway, so you won’t lose anything....

Quick Links If you’ve run into a file size limitation, it’s possible to split your large files into multiple smaller files. You can then recombine these files to get the actual large file. I’ll show you various ways to do that on your Windows 11 PC. 7-Zip The easiest way to split large files on Windows 11 is by using the free and open-source 7-Zip app. This app allows you tocompress your filesand extract various archive types....

Summary Let friends and family know when you’ve arrived safely with Check In, a feature that’s designed to replace those “I’m home!” texts you might forget to send. Here’s what it does and how to use it. How Check In Works Check In was introduced in the iOS 17 update for iPhone, which, at the time of writing, iscurrently in public betaand due for release later in September 2023. You won’t be able to use the feature (and nor will your contacts) until both devices are running iOS 17....

Summary Living room audio requires more than high-quality speakers—it takes some creativity as well! To fine-tune a surround system, you need to take a room’s entire layout into account, adjusting each speaker’s position and angle, as well as shuffling furniture around to create a more balanced sound. As someone who has moved numerous times, and is never satisfied when it comes to sound, I’ve tinkered a lot in this area, and have learned a thing or two....

Summary There are a lot of good earbuds on the market, but what are the best ones to use for running? I lace up my running shoes for a little over 100 miles each month and use a lot of different earbuds as How-To Geek’s Reviews Editor. I’ve found two pairs that are my current favorites. Grading Earbuds on a Running Curve With earbuds used for work or travel, the priority is more on pristine audio quality or noise cancellation....

Summary Concerning audio equipment, I’ll rarely crane my neck for anything other than fundamental quality. In other words,how’s the sound? Rarely ever will I call attention to a feature, given features are so often nothing more than marketing ploys. Yet, sometimes they rise above the fray, and recently I switched to a new set of headphones because of two specific features. I’m Sold on Spatial and Lossless Audio The device that caught my attention was Beat’s newSolo 4 headphones....

Quick Links My Surface laptop finally started showing its age, and try as I might, there wasn’t much I could do to improve its performance. So I took the ultimate step: I installed Linux on a Microsoft Surface laptop. Why Install Linux on an Old Laptop? Linux is a “lighter” operating system than Windows. In general, it requires fewer resources to run well, and as a result, it canbreathe new life into older hardware....

macOS has a wide range of quality open-source apps to choose from, and I couldn’t do without some of them. They’re powerful and feature-rich, and a lot of them are slicker and better designed than you might expect. These are the open-source Mac apps that I use all the time. 1Bitwarden: Better Than Apple’s Passwords I’ve been usingBitwardensince before Apple introduced the Passwords app, and I’ve seen no reason to change....

Summary As a smart ring wearer, I was excited to see Samsung finally enter the market with a new wearable of its own. But my excitement quickly turned to disappointment when I noticed the large asterisk Samsung had placed on its latest Galaxy device. Introducing the Samsung Galaxy Ring Samsung’s long-awaited smart ring, the Galaxy Ring,finally launched in mid-2024to take on the market leader, the Oura Ring which isnow on its third-generation....

Summary NVME SSDs are the fastest mainstream type of storage you can install in your computer, and there are plenty of external enclosure options you can buy to use with these drives, but are external SATA SSDs actually more sensible to buy? Clearing Up the Jargon This discussion has quite a few acronyms and technical terms in the mix, so it’s probably a good idea to quickly explain the most important ones:...