Five genuinely useful things worth knowing, doing or checking in 2026. No life hacks. No ten-minute video. Just handy stuff.
AI tools increasingly charge differently depending on the model. Use a lightweight model for simple questions and save the powerful models for the difficult stuff. GitHub Copilot users can also use automatic model selection to reduce model costs.
Photos, documents, server configs and anything important should exist in more than one place. Once in a while, actually restore a file from your backup. Discovering your backup doesn't work during a disaster is a little late.
Passwords are still useful, but important accounts should have another layer. Use passkeys where supported, otherwise enable MFA and store your recovery codes somewhere safe.
AWS, Azure, Oracle, GitHub and other platforms can have free allowances alongside billable services. Set spending limits, budgets or billing alerts before experimenting. It's much nicer to receive a warning than a surprise invoice.
That Docker container, firewall rule or clever command may seem obvious today. Six months from now, you'll be very pleased that you left yourself a README with the ports, paths, passwords-not-in-the-file, and commands needed to rebuild it.