In 1987, two brothers, Thomas and John Kroll, began work on an image editing software, which was eventually acquired in 1988 and released to the world in 1990 by Adobe. That software was Photoshop 1.0, initially exclusive for the Macintosh platform. Over the years, Photoshop b ...more
Smartphone games are getting pretty good these days, but they still can't beat the retro appeal of a good emulator. I mean, who wouldn't want to have their all-time favorite console and arcade games tucked neatly in their front pocket? Classics ranging from Super Mario Bros. t ...more
Unruly customers. Crazy exes. Horrible bosses. When you need proof of insanity or just want it for your records, recording a phone call is a must. Problem is, it's not the easiest thing to do on an iPhone — but it's completely possible. Even though there are plenty of legit r ...more
Stop! Do not pour that leftover wine, coffee, or bacon grease down the drain. And those herbs that have been in your fridge so long they've literally turned on you? And what about when that recipe only calls for two tablespoons of heavy cream, a quarter cup of tomato purée, or ...more
Apple's latest mobile operating system, iOS 9, may not be the huge overhaul that iOS 8 was, but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of new features. In fact, there are a ton of subtle changes that you may not notice right away. Here's a rundown of all the coolest new feature ...more
Ironing is a serious chore: hot, unpleasant, and frustrating all in one, but necessary if you don't want to look like you crawled out of bed just before work. While you might only turn to your flatiron when faced with wrinkled clothing, this little appliance packs the power to ...more
Seldom in recent history has a cyber security event caused so much media stir (maybe because it happened to a media company?) and international relations upheaval. Cyber security breaches seem to take place daily of major corporations, but the Sony hack seems to have captured ...more
Holidays are a time for good food and good drink, but more often than not, we substitute good drink for, well, cheap drink. However, cheap wine doesn't have to be bad. As the international wine industry grows, it's becoming more common to find decent bottles on the cheap, and ...more
Fall is my favorite time of year, yet I cringe every time it begins. Why? Because it seems like every business is in a frenzy to start the Christmas shopping season the day after Halloween ends. For those of us who are fans of pumpkins, that's a buzzkill. It used to be that y ...more
You can find chili peppers in practically every cuisine. From the sweet Italian variety to the spicy Thai bird's chili and the smoky Mexican chipotle, peppers are ubiquitous and universally loved. But if you find the range and scope of these little fireballs overwhelming, you' ...more
Bad news, guys. The shelf life for liquor leftovers does not apply to your two-buck chuck. While an opened bottle of your favorite whiskey will stay respectable for ages thanks to its high ABV (which makes it inhospitable to outside elements), an opened bottle of merlot will s ...more
Though many students spend four years of high school learning a foreign language, most of us probably retained very little. Chalk it up to the carelessness of youth, but chances are you've since been in situations or places that left you wishing you paid more attention in clas ...more
Chrome, Firefox, and Safari all provide built-in features that allow you to save your username and password for your favorite sites, making the process for entering your credentials a breeze when you revisit them. While this automation does make your life a little easier, it ...more
Unless you're vegan or lactose intolerant, butter is an indispensible ingredient. However, butter is no one-trick pony. It can take many forms that make it even more versatile and useful in the kitchen. Clarified butter has many advantages over regular butter—but there are cer ...more
Gatorade: its popular red flavor can stain the whitest fabric, and its sweet taste is oddly refreshing after breaking a sweat. If you've ever participated in a sport, you probably spent halftime at games and practice breaks chugging the stuff. Though it made its name as a spor ...more
Only a handful of food products are impervious to spoilage—dried rice, salt, sugar—but even among those, honey is unique in that it remains edible without any preparation necessary. It's like this: if you came across honey in an Egyptian tomb, as archaeologists have, you could ...more
Each day, we read about another security breach somewhere in our digital world. It has become so commonplace that we hardly react anymore. Target, J.P. Morgan, iCloud, Home Depot, and the list goes on and on. Those are just the big ones that get reported in the news. Millions ...more
I love me some salad, but I'm also kind of a big baby when it comes to eating them. The greens have to be perfectly crisp and fresh, which is why I'm such a nut about storing them properly, including rethinking how I use my refrigerator, using a paper towel or dry cloth to wra ...more
The beauty of a grilled cheese sandwich is that even a mediocre one still tastes pretty good (I find the same is true with pizza). However, chefs and cooking pros have come up with some great tricks that will turn a regular grilled cheese sandwich into something sublime. Once ...more
Everything you thought you knew about cooking pasta is wrong. When I took cooking classes in Italy, they taught me to bring a large volume of salted water to a rolling boil, add a drop of olive oil so that the noodles wouldn't stick together, and wait several minutes until it ...more
Telemarketers can be as terrifying as a villain from a horror film. Your phone rings with an unknown 800 number, and you immediately fill with a sense of dread. There's no way to get them to stop calling; you imagine the number appearing on your phone at all hours of the day a ...more
As great as the Internet is, it is not without its dangers. Hackers at any time may be breaking into your online accounts and compromising your sensitive information. Last year, hackers broke into Facebook, Gmail, and Twitter and made off with 2 million stolen passwords. It's ...more
Although your friends might roll their eyes every time you talk about playing Clash of Clans, Call of Duty, or Candy Crush Saga, your excessive gaming habits might actually be making you healthier than everyone else. I've got your attention now, right? Read on for 8 insanely ...more
For the novice cook, fungi can be weird because, well, they're fungi. However, if you've been afraid to get acquainted with mushrooms, you've been missing out. Vegetarians love mushrooms and with good reason. Their rich, savory flavor comes a close second to umami-rich meat. ...more
Cold brewing tea and coffee are all the rage, and for good reason: they're idiot-proof. I, personally, am a total dunce at brewing coffee. It either ends up strong enough to peel paint from a car or so weak that you can see through it. Meanwhile, I have friends who inevitably ...more
It was the star of the show, but now that Android L has been released for preview to Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 owners, there's a lot that Google didn't tell us about their latest mobile operating system, rumored to be called Lollipop. First off, if you haven't already installed the ...more
Many of the beauty products you buy at drug and department stores are loaded with potentially toxic ingredients like parabens, while their active ingredients are made of things like glycolic, lactic, malic, and alpha hydroxy acids and retinoids, which are all derived from food ...more
Marinades are among my all-time favorite tricks as a cook for several reasons. They're easy like Sunday morning, they let time do what it's supposed to, which is work for you, and you get a huge return for relatively little effort on your part. In a pinch, I've used store-bou ...more
Welcome back, my fledgling hackers! A short while ago, I did a tutorial on conducting passive OS fingerprinting with p0f. As you remember, p0f is different from other operating system fingerprinting tools as it does not send any packets to the target, instead it simply takes ...more
Welcome back, my apprentice hackers! As many of you know, I have been hesitant to adopt the new Kali hacking system from Offensive Security. This hesitancy has been based upon a number of bugs in the original release back in March of 2013 and my belief that BackTrack was easi ...more
The advent of a new Nexus phone begins with the bigwigs at Google partnering with a manufacturer, then selecting that manufacturer's flagship as the model for the new Nexus hardware. Samsung's Galaxy S and Galaxy SII were the base for the Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus, respectivel ...more
My first encounter with a phablet was late last year with the AT&T version of the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, having never touched or even seen its highly-acclaimed and pioneering predecessor. Initially, I was a bit overwhelmed by the enormous screen and taken aback by the dated st ...more
There are few apps on my iPhone that I visit on a daily basis, and one of them is Drippler, the discovery and news app that tells you everything you need to know about your device. I've actually been using Drippler on my iPhone since it was released back in March of this year ...more
There's a lot of cool features rumored to be included in next year's HTC One 2 (M8), the follow up to the flagship HTC One smartphone, including a fingerprint scanner, Android 4.4 KitKat, and Sense 6.0, but it's just too far away to get really excited about yet. Besides, that ...more
Attention all veterans and active-duty military personnel—this coming Tuesday, November 11th, is Veterans Day, that time of year where the whole country thanks us for our service. For the most part, a simple thanks will do, but some folks like to go above and beyond and give u ...more
One of the biggest problems in data security is authentication of data and its source. How can Alice be certain that the executable in her inbox is from the venerable Bob, and not from the not-so-venerable Oscar? Clearly Alice wants to know because if this file is actually sen ...more
To steal a quote from Mean Girls, Halloween is the one night when a girl can dress like a total slut and no one can say anything about it—but why do girls get to have all the fun? Why can't guys use the day to be good looking? Scary good looking? Well, use one of the followin ...more
The integration of technology into automobiles is becoming more and more widespread each year. Tesla's Model S features a 17" display in the middle of the dash with navigation, music control, and even an Internet browser. Mercedes is working on incorporating Google Glass into ...more
It may not be as large as the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, but the Galaxy S3's screen size is still big enough to make iPhone owners cry themselves to sleep. The 4.8-inch AMOLED display with 720 x 1280 pixels makes the GS3 a great mobile companion—and an even better portable gaming ...more
You'd think the ability to block calls from certain numbers would be built in to most phones by now, but that's certainly not the case with the iPhone. After dropping a few hundred bucks on a device, it'd be nice to be able to choose who you want to talk to, but beyond screen ...more
Atari—it's the home gaming console officially responsible for starting the trend of sleepless nights and malnutrition amongst kids and adults alike. If you think Call of Duty is addicting, try playing Space Invaders in the '80s on the old Atari 2600 (voted the second greatest ...more
A spare key is one of those things that never seems like a huge deal until you need it. If you've ever lost your keys, had them stolen, or locked yourself out of your house or car, you know how difficult and embarrassing it can be trying to get your door open. So, how would y ...more
There are quite a few flaws with Apple's mobile products, and one that drives me crazy is their reliance upon iTunes for all your music syncing needs. If you want a song on your iPhone, you pretty much have to use iTunes to get it on there. Either that or buy it directly from ...more
Over the past several weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of test driving Samsung’s next big thing, the Galaxy S4. After putting the GS4 through its paces, I have a clear picture of what this device is capable of. I’ve covered the features of the device before, and now I’ll tell you ...more
Hello there, people. Today, I am going to show you how to extract the essence from a useful plant, using either alcohol or olive oil. This is how you take a plant and turn it into a useful (and preservable) medicine. For those of you who know nothing about herbal medicine, let ...more
If I were to lose access to the entire internet for the rest of my life, one of the websites I would miss the most would have to be Wikipedia. Wikipedia has ended countless arguments, informed me of how old and single some of my favorite actresses are, and helped me brush up o ...more
UPDATE (February 26, 2014) Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 1123 with a 295-114 vote decision. The ruling repeals the 2012 Library of Congress (LOC) decision that limited the ability to legally "unlock" your smartphone (see below). This decision reins ...more
Many people find Steampunk problematic for a whole host of reasons, not least of which is the glorification of an era of Western history that featured institutionalized slavery, racism, sexism, elitism, and many more -isms. Today, Steampunks frequently get accused of subtly o ...more
Tea has been around for thousands of years, and as a result, tons of customs and ceremonies have sprung up around its consumption. Some cultures take their tea plain, while others put things in it. Sometimes there are special tea-holding vessels, other times not. Maybe there w ...more
Say whatever you want, but Steampunk is primarily a maker culture. Consider that Steampunk has existed since the 1960s and yet more or less languished in obscurity until approximately 2005, which is when it made the leap to costuming. That costuming was what provided the leap ...more
While Apple keeps the Pro and Pro Max iPhone models nearly the same this year, there are still a few differences between the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max. Knowing them may help you decide which Pro model to get. Usually, the Pro Max has better camera specs than the Pro ...more
Aside from the addition of bedtime sleep schedules five years ago, Apple's Clock app has largely been ignored with each new iOS software update. But that just changed with Apple's iOS 17 software update. With the updated Clock app, you can finally set more than one timer to ru ...more
While Google's generative AI wallpapers for Android won't be out until the fall, you can take advantage of emoji backgrounds and cinematic wallpapers on your Pixel smartphone right now. Throughout its history, Android has earned a reputation for giving its users the freedom t ...more
To the end user, mobile apps are sometimes expensive. To the developers, those costs are justified for all the hard work put into making the apps. Sometimes app creators will meet in the middle by putting their apps on sale or giving them away for a limited time to gain more t ...more
So now that we know what the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro and their respective mini and Max versions are all about, you've probably made your decision on whether or not to upgrade (or swap over from Android) during this cycle. If you've been hesitating on pulling the trigger o ...more
Apple released the second Release Candidate for iPhone on Friday, May 21. The new update, build number 18F72, comes four days after the company seeded the first 14.6 RC to developers and public testers, and two days after the first beta for iOS 14.7. Apple released this updat ...more
Apple pushed out the Release Candidate for iOS 14.6 on Monday, May 17. The 18F71 build includes new features and bug fixes, including an option to unlock your iPhone with Voice Control. It comes just hours after Apple announced Spacial Audio and Lossless Audio playback for App ...more
The march of Amazon to insert itself into nearly every retail arena continues with the e-commerce giant's latest move to launch its own brick-and-mortar beauty salons. However, this new initiative isn't limited to simply facilitating transactions at real-world locations, inst ...more
The Metaverse, or AR cloud, has been a sci-fi dream for decades, but only recently have companies begun to actually develop the technology to build it. With its latest funding round, Epic Games is suddenly a front-runner in this pursuit. Likewise, smartglasses are another of ...more
This week, Google showed off some wild new and innovative AR experiences that showcase the WebXR protocol for browser-based AR content, while 8th Wall applied its own web-based AR platform in service of Captain Morgan. Meanwhile, other brands, including Hulu, Coinbase, and Ra ...more