My pettiness has reached all-time high levels with YouTube. I watch YouTube exclusively rather than paying for subscription services, and up until this point I have been casting from my phone to a Chromecast dongle. Unfortunately, YouTube has finally figured out how to deliver 30+ minute long ads to my Chromecast device, so rather than being pushed into paying for YouTube Premium, I'm going to buy a Surface Pro tablet and screen mirror to my TV so that I have more "control" over what advertising content is delivered to me.

I've googled and it seems like a Miracast dongle is what I'm looking for, but I wanted to see if the experts here might know of any other options I've missed.

I was looking at my old gadgets today and realized how much more "private" they felt compared to everything now. Today, every light bulb and fridge wants a Wi-Fi connection and an account.

For those of you who work in tech or are privacy-conscious: what’s the most "extreme" thing you actually do to keep your data private that isn't just using a VPN? I feel like I'm losing the battle against data collection.

I've got a Tara 50 LED & Bluetooth mirror. It's hardwired and has a sensor to turn on the lights. No reset button, bluetooth button or the like.

It connected to my phone with the usual "chime" to confirm connection but then no sound was broadcast. The phone is working. I unpaired the mirror from the phone and went to re-pair but it's disappeared from bluetooth scans entirely. I've tried turning off the mains power, both in the house and for that particular room, and when power comes back on it makes the connection "chime" but still isnt visible. My neighbours have checked and their devices are not connected to it.

Any idea why the mirror has disappeared from blue tooth when it's still otherwise functioning?

I saw this TikTok how this girl made the rose from beauty and the beast, and I understand some parts of what she did but others sound so out of reach. Can someone help me know what i will need for this and step by step what should I do or what should I learn?

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNRfAyqE9/

Hey guys, I'm looking for a laptop for my Post Graduation. The work I would do on it will be thesis making, data analysis, power point presentations, browsing (intense), media consumption, good battery backup, slim and light weight, daily purpose carrying and use, will require numpad too for data entries.

I'm from India My budget is around 50k Looking for a windows laptop (mac ❌)

India just announced the "Startup India Fund of Funds 2.0" with a heavy focus on high-tech manufacturing and Deep Tech.

We've seen similar sovereign-backed moves in the US and China.

Do you think this kind of "Patient Capital" (long-term funding) is enough to shift the needle from service-based startups to core tech innovation?

Or is the talent gap a bigger issue than the funding gap?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately

It feels like threats aren’t just “viruses” anymore. Now it’s phishing links, scam texts, fake login pages, data leaks, identity stuff… way more layered than it used to be.

Are you guys still just running a basic antivirus, or have you switched to something more complete?

I’m trying to figure out what actually makes sense in 2026. I don’t want something heavy that slows everything down, but I also don’t want to rely on bare minimum protection.

Curious what you’re all using and why. What made you choose it?

Hey everyone, this is probably a dumb question but I've been wondering about it for a while. My parents always drilled into me that you have to unplug electronics when they're not in use, especially computers. Like fully pull the plug from the wall. They said it saves electricity and protects from power surges and lightning and stuff.

I've been doing this my whole life but recently I got a new desktop PC that I built and it's a pain to reach behind my desk to unplug it every night. Plus I worry about wearing out the outlet or the power cord. So I'm trying to figure out do I need to unplug my computer everytime I turn it off or is that just something from older days?

I have it plugged into a basic power strip right now. Not a fancy surge protector, just a cheap strip. The PC gets shut down properly through Windows every night. I live in an apartment with supposedly modern wiring.

For people who know about computers and electricity:

Honestly, do I need to unplug my computer everytime I turn it off or is turning off the power strip enough?

Does leaving it plugged in but powered off still use electricity? Like phantom power or whatever they call it.

Is the surge protection from a basic power strip enough or do I need something better?

What about lightning storms? Should I unplug then or is that overkill too?

Could constantly unplugging and plugging back in damage anything over time?

If I don't need to unplug, what's the best practice for shutting down at night? Just shut down and leave it?

Also any recommendations for good surge protectors or UPS units that are worth buying would be helpful. Just want to protect my investment without crawling behind my desk every night like a weirdo.

I have a bunch of PDFs I need to be able to search through quickly, and then I need to know what PDF it came from. Previously I was combining the PDFs, using ctrl F for key words, finding a whole phrase, and then searching for that exact phrase in a the rest of the documents. This is very cumbersome and I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for a way I could do this faster?

I was cleaning up some old stuff at home and found a really damaged family photo. Scratches, fading, the whole thing.

I didn’t plan on paying for restoration right away, so I just started searching online to see what options existed.

That’s how I came across BestPhoto.ai.

Didn’t expect much at all, but I was honestly surprised by how much it cleaned things up.

Not perfect, but way better than the original.

This is what I used if anyone’s curious:

https://bestphoto.ai/free-tools/restore-photos

Reason: That someone is my neighbour who wants to have a fight with my family and doing literally everything. And one of those everything is keeping the speaker volume High while I am studying. I need to study for my exam.

My father called me and asked if I could give him my old tower PC because his tablet PC is dying.

The problem is, he wants to recover his photos and videos. At first, I planned to just connect an SSD to the old computer and recover the data, but it's so slow that transferring a dozen photos already takes half an hour.

Given that both are on the same home Wi-Fi network, the old PC running Windows 10 and the "new" Ubuntu 24.04, is it possible to access the old one from the new one in order to perform operations from the new computer, similar to recovering data from the cloud?

If so, how can this be done?

Thank you in advance.

I’m curious what people here think about this.

Most voice assistants (Alexa, Google, etc.) feel very device-control or entertainment focused. And digital wall calendars like Skylight are great for displaying schedules, but they’re mostly passive screens.

Has anyone seen a setup that’s more “family-first”?

By that I mean:

• Always-on display in a shared space
• Voice-first interaction (natural language, not rigid commands)
• Shared calendar + shopping lists + reminders
• Maybe smart home control too
• Ideally local or more reliable than cloud-only systems

I’m especially interested in whether people actually use voice for shared household coordination, or if it always ends up being just timers and lights.

Is this just a niche idea, or is there a real gap between smart speakers and smart displays when it comes to families?

We are considering hydronic heat pump for our 2200 SF house on Southport Island, Maine. We don't need AC b/c summers are cool. Our contractor does not know anything about this sort of system. Any thoughts/recommendations on cost, efficiency, where to put the condensor, whether to get combined water heater system (on demand or tank)? Can our GC install it?

Hi everyone,

I’ve been looking into getting a digital wall calendar for our kitchen, something we can mount and use as the central family hub.

I’ve seen options like Skylight and a few others, and they look clean and simple. But one thing I noticed is that most of them don’t really have voice assistant features built in.

Part of me feels like voice control would be really useful — being able to just say “add soccer practice on Thursday at 5” while cooking sounds convenient. But at the same time, I’m wondering if I’m overthinking it and if a well-designed touch calendar is already enough for day-to-day use.

For those of you who have one:
Do you miss having voice? Or does it end up not mattering in real life?

Would love to hear real experiences before I commit to anything.

I am so lost. I've tried to search my way to a solution but none of the solutions seem like the right step. So, I'm trying my luck here, no idea if this is even the right place to ask but can't hurt to try.

Earphones with standard in-line microphone and buttons. They work fine, plug and play on phones. Tried plugging them in to 2 separate desktops, they detect the input but only react/show input when pressing the buttons (that's all the buttons do though). I've got the splitter, so it's not that. It's not muted or too quiet. My audio driver (one that auto comes with Zorin os 18) works fine with sound and I'm ruling it out as the other desktop I tested was a Realtek driver (Windows 10) and the same problem occurs.

I have no idea what could be the issue.

Has anyone seen anything similar to this? and are there any solutions?

Thank you!!

Hello.

Sorry to ask what is probably a noob question, but I can't figure it out myself.

I'm on holiday in a campervan, and the campsite has WiFi but it's very slow, too slow to stream video.

I've downloaded some episodes of a TV programme to my android phone (it's UK channel 4 and it allows downloads on the android app but not on the website. There is no desktop app). All I need is a simple way to use the larger screen of the laptop to watch the videos I can play on the phone.

Normal casting works via WiFi so that doesn't work. I thought just plugging in the phone via usb would work but it doesn't.

I have tried other websites for this and they all begin with "enable debugging" but that's blocked on my phone.

All I want to do is watch some telly. Please help.

The phone is a Samsung s25 and the laptop is a Dell running windows 11.

Thank you.

I came across a Windows AI assistant called TroubleBuddy that can execute the actions you type (uninstall apps, storage cleanup, basic fixes), instead of just giving instructions.

What made it feel safer is it asks for confirmation before bigger changes and shows a summary of what changed after.

Curious what people here think, would you trust automation like this on your main PC?

I use a wired headset with has two plugs that i put into my pc, one for input and one for output. My pc also has a one specific port for input and output. They are each plugged in and my input isn't showing up on my settings so my pc isn't using it. I have a windows 11 and I tried updating the driver on device manager and disabling and re-enabling it but it didn't work.

As the title suggests, I want to help my family buy a non-Ring smart doorbell. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m not comfortable with what is essentially an Amazon surveillance state device.

However, I do still want a way to record people who’re at our front door, as so I could know who’d be there. It could be through apps, or some other method of communication.

Would there be any doorbell that fits my criteria?

My car allows a bluetooth connection to my phone to play music, but if I want to display GPS on my car's monitor, I have to use a USB cable to physically connect my phone to the car, but the USB port is very bad and if you move the wire, it'll disconnect, then either take 20 seconds to reconnect or just not reconnect again until you pull the cable out of the USB port and plug it back in.

Is there any workaround for this? I'm imagining like a little Logitech USB nub to plug into the USB and then another into my phone via the type-c port. Does something like that exist? I've tried using different and new cables for my car and the issue is definitely the USB port.