I built a gesture-controlled desk buddy with an $8 ESP32 and Grove sensors
…For now, it sits on my desk, tells me the temperature, and I can wave at it like I'm conducting a very small orchestra. And that's more than enough to…
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I added these MCP servers to my local LLM stack, and one of them replaces a $249 paid tool
…To give you an idea of what it can do, I asked my local LLM to fetch the XDA home page and tell me what it can see on the page. The…
I used NotebookLM's free version for research work and realized I never needed the paid tier at all
…Back then, it was called Project Tailwind and there was no telling if the tool would ever make it out of the lab. Like all other Google Lab experiments, the tool was…
I wrote a script to run Claude Code with my local LLM, and skipping the cloud has never been easier
…The way it handles tool integration, file edits, and permissions just feels more polished to me, and I've had better success with local models like Qwen3 Coder Next with Claude Code…
FireWire ran external hard drives at full speed when USB physically couldn't, but it still lost
…Windows had FireWire drivers, but they weren't as mature or as well-integrated as on macOS. USB had better native support across more hardware manufacturers and peripherals. Once Intel threw its…
I asked Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini to build a packing app, and saw who actually understood me
…be in the color palette and the theme, which I asked GPT to exercise full control over. Now, since I'd made the cats an integral part of this entire thing, ChatGPT…
I tried Replit, Lovable, and Claude Code to build the same app — here's the only one worth using
…and you could tell it was vibe-coded. It had that classic look that every vibe-coded app ends up with these days, and I think this is something Replit and Lovable…
I paired a Raspberry Pi with an ESP32, and it unlocked projects I never thought of before
Jeff Butts May 22, 2026, 11:00 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…
Your cheap USB-C cables will fail with USB4
…USB-C is the product name, which only tells you what connectors are used. USB4 certification doesn't equate to maximum power delivery and vice versa. Make no assumptions and try to…
I replaced my entire Proxmox backup strategy with one tool, and I haven't thought about backups since
…backups, and this tool gets that Fast recovery changes how safe your lab really feels Anyone can claim they have backups because backup jobs are completed overnight. That does not tell you…