If your house is already decked out with a ton of smarthome products, your next addition might be some smart smoke alarms, but are they worth buying in the first place? Here are some things to keep in mind. Smart Smoke Alarms Don’t Necessarily Offer Better Smoke Detection One reason you might think smart smoke alarms the better choice is that they somehow offer improved detection of smoke over non-smart smoke alarms....
The History of Carrier-Sold Phones In the early days of cellular devices, there was only one real option for buying a phone in the US: from your carrier. This involved getting a phone for a small payment—$50 or $100 in most cases, or even free for the “non-flagship” handsets of the day. In return, you’d sign a two-year agreement with your carrier saying that you’d stick with them. Seems great, right?...
What Is 5G? 5G is an industry term for a new wireless cellular network that supersedes the previous 4G LTE standard, just as 4G supplanted 3G. 5G stands for “fifth generation”—it’s the fifth major version of mobile phone technology since the origin of cellular phone networks in the early 1980s. Under ideal conditions, 5G is designed to be much faster than 4G LTE technology for devices such as smartphones. But mobile carriers also aim for 5G to provide fast mobile internet for other devices, such as connected cars, smarthome gadgets, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices....
FireWire, also known as IEEE 1394, is not a cable you usually find these days. Popularized in the early 90s, it was the competing standard to USB for a long time, not unlike Thunderbolt is today. Offering much faster speeds, even faster than USB 2.0, FireWire a connection you’ll usually find on older external hard drives and digital cameras. FireWire 800 vs. 400 FireWire has two versions, and unlike USB 2....
Android gives users a whole lot of customization options, some of which are useful for everyone, while others are just for power users. One of these lower level settings is the Access Point Name—better known as the APN. The APN is something most users won’t need to worry about. You pop your SIM card into your phone, maybe reboot it, and it connects to your carrier’s network. You’ll be able to make calls, send messages, browse dank memes, and other important things....
Windows 10’s May 2020 Update launched on May 27, 2020. Code-named 20H1 during development, this is Windows 10 version 2004. It’s much bigger than Windows 10’s November 2019 update but still feels like a collection of useful improvements. This post is up-to-date with the features in the final release. We originally published this article on Aug. 28, 2019, and we updated it throughout Microsoft’s development process. How to Install the May 2020 Update Right Now You can head to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update to find the update....
Update to Get the Latest Features You probably want to get started taking pictures with your new camera and downloading games, but many of your device’s best features may be hidden behind a software update. Even if they’re not, these updates add stability and security fixes so it’s a good idea to get them installed as soon as possible. Connect to your Wi-Fi and head to Settings > General > Software Update to update your device to the latest version of iOS....
RELATED: How to Safely Remove a Drive on Windows 10 Use the System Tray The most common way to safely eject your USB drive is by way of the System Tray. In the System Tray, click the “Up Arrow” icon to expand the menu. Next, double-click the “USB” icon. In the sub-menu that appears, select the “Eject ” option. The text that appears will depend on which type of USB you’re using....
Google Is Cutting Off Nest Access for Third Parties Recently, Google announced it would wind down its Works with Nest program. Works with Nest allowed products from other companies to control the Nest—your garage door opener could tell your thermostat to turn up the heat for instance. If a company wanted any form of integration, it would need to move over with Works with Google Assistant. That program doesn’t allow for direct control of Nest; instead, you’d set up routines to do the work....
Available USB ports on laptops are at a premium even if you have few things to actually plug in, but what do you do if you are using wireless accessories and need those precious USB ports for other uses as well? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post looks for answers to one reader’s USB port dilemma. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites....
Plus Apple goes all in on Arcade, I/O sessions show what Google has cooking this year, Outlook.com was hacked, and a whole lot more. Here’s your Monday roundup of the biggest stories from the weekend. Google Location Data is Helping Police Find Witnesses and Suspects Over the weekend, the New York Times broke a fascinating story about how police are using location data kept by Google to find both witnesses and suspects related to cases that they’re having a hard time cracking....
AdwCleaner just got better. The latest version of the free Malwarebytes tool can now remove manufacturer-installed bloatware on Windows PCs. We already loved it for removing potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) like adware and browser hijackers. We’ve loved AdwCleaner for a long time, since before Malwarebytes acquired it back in 2016. It’s a great way to remove toolbars and other adware from your PC. Now, it’s even a great way to remove preinstalled junk you probably don’t want on a new PC....
Google Inbox is shutting down, and Gmail doesn’t sort your emails by the date the way Inbox did. Happily, you can re-create the feature yourself with a little bit of hackery. Blogger Jeff Atwood was complaining on Twitter about potentially missing Inbox’s automatic date grouping, which doesn’t exist in Gmail. Jerome Leclanche pointed out that you can make something similar in Gmail. This is a great trick that solves the issue entirely using Gmail’s multiple inboxes feature....
You Can Use Multiple Extenders (But You Shouldn’t) Wi-Fi extenders offer some relief when you find your home Wi-Fi lacking, but they’re not without shortcomings. While a single extender deployed so you can watch YouTube videos on your back porch without eating up all your mobile data is a fine and reasonable use for a Wi-Fi extender, increasing the number of extenders just creates headaches. All the disadvantages of a Wi-Fi extender, such as latency, congestion, and the complexity of multiple concurrent networks in the same airspace, are effectively multiplied by using more than one extender at a time....
COPY –link is a new BuildKit feature which could substantially accelerate your Docker image builds. It works by copying files into independent image layers that don’t rely on the presence of their predecessors. You can add new content to images without the base image even existing on your system. This capability was added as part of Buildx v0.8 in March 2022. It’s included in version 20.10.14 of the Docker CLI so you should already have access if you’re running the latest release....
Whether you have a wired printer connected via USB, a wireless printer on your Wi-Fi network, or a Bluetooth printer, printer setup is easy on Windows 11. Windows can automatically install printer drivers, too. Adding a Printer on Windows 11 First, make sure your printer is powered on and plugged in if it is a wired printer. If it is a Wi-Fi printer, make sure it is connected to the same network as your computer....
Aside from manually changing the screen brightness, you can have Windows change it automatically in a variety of ways. Windows can change it based on whether you’re plugged in, based on how much battery power you have left, or using an ambient light sensor built into many modern devices. How to Adjust Brightness Manually on a Laptop or Tablet On most laptop keyboards, you’ll find shortcut keys that allow you to quickly increase and decrease your brightness....
When collaborating on files in Google Drive (Docs, Sheets, and Slides), it’s easy to lose sight of who’s working on specific parts of a project. With Google Drive, you can assign tasks to another collaborator on your team. Fire up Google Drive and open a file you currently collaborate on with other people. For this guide, we’ll use a Google Docs file, but the process is virtually the same for either a Sheets or Slides file....
Have you ever paused a presentation to talk to your audience, but found them distracted by what was still on screen? You can black out (or white out) a presentation anytime you want with a simple keystroke. Part of being a good office professional is giving presentations that don’t bore your audience to death but also don’t distract them from the message you’re delivering. Sometimes you want the audience to focus on you and what you’re saying—or watch a practical demonstration....
Can’t get your Mac to boot, even into macOS Recovery mode? Whether you’re replacing the hard drive or have a corrupt recovery partition, sometimes Apple’s repair tools won’t boot, which makes it hard to install a fresh copy of macOS or access other utilities. We’ve shown you how to access your Mac’s recovery partition, but if you’ve had a total hard drive failure, there’s no partition to boot. You might think this means you’re screwed, or that you need to make a bootable USB key in order to install macOS again....
