MakeUseOf

Your phone's hotspot is more reliable than you think and better than most public networks

Oluwademilade Afolabi — Fri, 01 May 2026 17:01:17 GMT

I do a fair amount of writing from places other than my desk, including cafés, lounges, hotel lobbies, and co-working spaces for which I've paid a day rate, mostly because of the Wi-Fi. Finding a reliable connection was practically part of my workflow. I'd walk into a room, scan for networks, and decide where to sit based on signal strength. Simple enough, and it worked until I started questioning what I was actually getting versus what I just assumed I was getting.

A $15 contact sensor turns your smart plug into something actually intelligent

Jonathon Jachura — Fri, 01 May 2026 16:30:17 GMT

Smart plugs are one of the better smart home purchases you can make — inexpensive, easy to set up, and immediately useful for anything with a power cord. Most people plug something in, set a schedule, and leave it there. But a timer doesn't know if you're home. It doesn't know if a door just opened or if anyone's actually in the room. It fires at the time you told it to, no matter what's actually happening in the house. Pairing a smart plug with a cheap contact sensor — the kind that registers when a door or drawer opens or closes — is one of those smart home mistakes worth correcting early. The Ring contact sensors cost around $15. The routine takes about three minutes to build. What you get back is a plug that responds to your home instead of a clock.

I used one Linux command to see exactly what my apps were doing to my system

Afam Onyimadu — Fri, 01 May 2026 16:00:20 GMT

My laptop's fan ran a bit harder than usual for a few days. It was consistent even when only my browser and text editor were open, and nothing visible seemed to trigger it. Using htop showed normal CPU and memory usage, but I knew something was off.

8 sci-fi/fantasy shows to get deliriously excited about in May

Dan Selcke — Fri, 01 May 2026 15:30:19 GMT

It's a new month, and that means a new wave of intriguing sci-fi and fantasy TV shows to watch. You don't really realize just how much new TV is coming your way until you sit down and list it out. You may not be interested in all of these shows, but odds are that a few will appeal to you.

I replaced my cloud storage subscription with a NAS and the setup took one afternoon

Robin John — Fri, 01 May 2026 15:00:18 GMT

I’ve had enough of watching my money disappear into cloud storage subscriptions — that was exactly what I thought one Sunday afternoon while going through my monthly budget app. Don’t get me wrong, I still need storage. But paying that much every single month just doesn’t sit right with me anymore.

I used Claude and NotebookLM together for research and realized they're solving completely different problems

Abhijith N Arjunan — Fri, 01 May 2026 14:30:18 GMT

Research assistance is one area where I rely on LLM-based AI platforms more frequently. Compared to other uses of generative AI, using AI chatbots to help you structure your research and identify connections in your notes creates less tension, especially in academia. These days, however, I don't use as wide a variety of AI tools for research.

I switched from Samsung to iPhone and now I understand why Galaxy users stay loyal

Digvijay Kumar — Fri, 01 May 2026 14:00:18 GMT

I had been using Samsung phones for years and never seriously considered switching. But at some point, I wanted to see what the other side felt like, so I picked up an iPhone and used it as my main phone for a few weeks. I expected to adjust quickly. Instead, I spent most of that time missing things I never knew I depended on.

I had 500 orphan notes in Obsidian — here’s the exact system I used to link them all

Saikat Basu — Fri, 01 May 2026 13:30:18 GMT

When I say 500 orphan notes, I'm being dramatic, but only slightly. The actual number was a bit less, though it felt like more when I opened Obsidian's Graph View for the first time and saw dozens of isolated dots floating like soccer balls in space. Each dot was a note with no links in or out. Just ideas stranded in the dark of my Obsidian theme.

This tiny earbud mistake ruins the sound, and too many people ignore it

Amir Bohlooli — Fri, 01 May 2026 13:00:17 GMT

Wired audio is making a serious comeback, and it’s not just about nostalgia. If you spend your day hopping between video calls and deep-work playlists, you’ve likely realized that Bluetooth devices are riddled with compromises — especially on a platform like Windows. I reached a breaking point after realizing that my Bluetooth earphones would always sound mediocre during calls. It doesn't matter which brand you buy or how powerful your Bluetooth adapter is; the protocol itself forces the audio into a low-bandwidth.

This open-source AI app cleans out my inbox, and doesn't steal my data

Shaun Cichacki — Fri, 01 May 2026 11:00:17 GMT

It doesn't matter if it's for work, business, or pleasure; I have way too many unnecessary emails clogging up my inbox. I've had the same email address for over a decade, and one of my biggest faults is forgetting to unsubscribe from newsletters and companies I may once have been enamored with. In an increasingly busy digital world, the last thing I want to do is sift through roughly 20,000 unread emails that I may or may not need in the future. Plus, I don't feel like getting scammed by someone in my emails, either.