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Microsoft just announced Project Mu, promising “firmware as a service” on supported hardware. Every PC manufacturer should take note. PCs need security updates to their UEFI firmware, and PC manufacturers have done a poor job of delivering them. What Is UEFI Firmware? Modern PCs use UEFI firmware instead of a traditional BIOS. The UEFI firmware is the low-level software that starts when you boot your PC. It tests and initializes your hardware, does some low-level system configuration, and then boots an operating system from your computer’s internal drive or another boot device....

Drag and drop is a new feature in Eye Control, an accessibility feature that lets you control your PC with your eyes without any additional software. You need a supported eye-tracking device for this. Now, if you do have one, you can perform a mouse drag-and-drop action with just your eyes. The latest release features improvements for taking control of notifications, too. Now, when a notification appears, you’ll see an option inside that notification to disable notifications for the app or go to its app notification settings....

Many computer users were trained never to turn their PCs off by pressing the power button on their desktop PC’s case. This used to cause problems in the previous millennium, but it’s now perfectly safe to shut down with the power button. This is especially useful on Windows 8, where there’s no obvious power button unless you know to look in the charms bar or the hidden Windows Key + X menu....

What Are Permanent Christmas Lights? Christmas lights look lovely, and who doesn’t enjoy the look of homes festively lit in warm whites or multi-color strands? But not many people enjoy balancing on ladders, clipping lights to gutters and eaves, and all with the thought at the back of their mind that they might spend the holiday season banged up after taking a spill off the ladder, Clark Griswold-style. But yet, if you left your Christmas lights up year-round, they would not only look unsightly, but they’d also wear out quickly....

Here’s how you can get the most out of your HomePod. Rename and Customize Your HomePod By default, your HomePod takes the label of the room to which you assign it when you first set it up. However, if you’d like to give it a specific name, you can do so via the Home app for iPhone and iPad. To do so, download the Home app if you haven’t yet, and then launch it....

Originally, iFixit discovered a small microcontroller within the iPhone 13 that caused Face ID to stop working if it wasn’t transferred from an old screen to a new one. Unfortunately, moving this chip was a difficult process that would be beyond the scope of repairs most small shops could perform, thus making it impossible for them (or anyone looking to DIY their screen repair) to do it themselves. Apple-authorized repair shops have access to software that can make a phone accept a new screen and keep Face ID working, but that’s only a small handful of shops....

Can You Double Up on Surge Protectors? One surge protector that is plugged into another is connected in series, which means power flows from one protector to the other. The only additional protection that plugging one surge protector into another could provide is redundancy. That is to say, if the first surge protector happens to fail, the second will still be functional. You do not gain the ability to absorb a greater amount of power in the event of a surge....

Spend enough time on photography websites, and sooner or later you’ll run into an article telling you how essential calibrating your display’s color is for your photography, but it is really? Let’s find out. What Is Color Calibration? Not all monitors display colors the same. Some panels are “warmer” (more yellow) or “cooler” (bluer). In the image below, you can see a warm whiteish color and a cool whiteish color; it’s not perfect, but it should give you an idea of the difference....

That headline sounds dramatic, doesn’t it? Honestly, it reads like one of those clickbait titles you see on Facebook or maybe YouTube, but this is the true story of how my father died, and how the new Apple Watch might have saved his life. How It All Started Just after Christmas in 2013, my father had a stroke. It ended up being relatively mild, but it put him in the hospital for a week....

USB-C is becoming the standard for connection among laptops and mobile devices. But if your laptop or desktop PC is lacking in ports and you don’t want to replace it, you’ll need an alternative. Here are a few. Adding USB-C ports to a desktop computer is pretty straightforward: you can use a standard PCI-E expansion port to add a new card with fresh new ports, or replace some bay drives or the PC case itself if you want those ports on the front of the machine....

Web browsers normally save your private data—history, cookies, searches, downloads, and more—and only delete it when you ask. If you are constantly clearing it, you can have any browser automatically clear private data when you close it. Note that, if you set your browser to automatically clear your cookies when you close it, you will have to log into the websites you use each time you open your browser. Clearing cache files will cause websites to load more slowly after you restart your browser....

Open the “Safari” app on your iPhone or iPad and then tap the URL bar. Here, enter a URL and then press the “Go” button on your keyboard to open the website. Repeat this process to open all of the websites that you want to bookmark at once. If you already have the websites open, tap the “Tabs” button, and close any webpage that you don’t want to bookmark....

The sun sets depressingly early during certain times of the year, and this can have a big effect on your mood. What if you could control when the sun rises and sets with a fake natural light window? We’ll show you how to tackle this DIY project. Why a DIY Natural Light Window? If you live in a location where there are extended periods of darkness, you know how important natural light can be....

What Is Subnetting? Subnetting is a way to break a large network into smaller, connected pieces. Each piece is called a subnet. You might choose to organize your network so that your sales team uses one subnet, HR use another subnet, customer support use yet another subnet, and so on. There are significant benefits to this. The first has to do with security and control. Without subnetting, everything is one big “flat” network....

How to Connect Alexa to Wi-Fi Next, plug in your Echo or other Alexa-powered device to a power source and look for a pulsating orange light. A pulsating orange light indicates that your device is in Setup Mode and looking to connect to the nearest available network. Using the app, select your home’s Wi-Fi network and follow all of the onscreen prompts to bring your Alexa-powered device online. If you see a light color other than orange on your device, it isn’t in Pairing mode....

If you send emails to the same group of people regularly, you can cut down on wasted time by creating an email list to use in Gmail. While it’s not inherently obvious, here’s how to generate a mailing list. Create an Email List Using Google Contacts In typical Google fashion, all of the contacts you see and access in Gmail are managed by a separate Google app: Contacts. To create a contact list that you can use in Gmail, you have to visit the Google Contacts web app....

Tab Hover Cards in Google Chrome help you discern tabs from one another when you have numerous pages open. The feature is enabled by default, but if you don’t like it, the pop-up card can easily be disabled using a Chrome flag. Starting with Chrome 78, Tab Hover Cards will appear when you rest the mouse cursor over a tab. The hovercard is essentially a larger preview box that now shows the title and URL of the page....

How to Disable the 90Hz Display To begin, swipe down on your home screen twice to move past the notification shade and into the quick tiles section. Tap on the gear icon to open the Settings menu. Alternatively, you can swipe up from the home screen to open the app drawer. From there, locate and select the “Settings” app. Scroll down and tap on the “Display” option. Select the “Advanced” button to expand the menu....

For those who don’t know what Steam is, it’s an online platform by Valve where you can download and play thousands of games, and also discuss them with the community. Steam is also great for Linux users because you can use Proton to play Windows games on Linux. The Proton compatibility layer is changing the gaming landscape on Linux, and you can take advantage of it by installing Steam on your system....

Almost every other app is getting dark mode, so why should Instagram be left out? Instagram does offer dark mode and we’ll show you how to enable it on Android, iPhone, and web. RELATED: Dark Mode Isn’t Better For You, But We Love It Anyway Enable Dark Mode in Instagram on Android On Android, if you have enabled system-wide dark mode, Instagram automatically adapts to that and uses the dark theme....