Going Down

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

The iPhone has included a real-world magnifying glass called "Magnifier" since iOS 10. Still, it remained relatively obscure until iOS 14 when it received significant upgrades such as a new interface, hideable controls, a customizable toolbar, improved filters management, mult ...more

The space on your phone is extremely valuable, so getting the most out of your screen real estate can help you out when multitasking or for just making your device feel bigger. One thing that is often overlooked when it comes to saving space on the screen is the keyboard. We' ...more

Google doesn't get enough credit for it, but they definitely make some of the best phones for rooting and modding. Heck, if you want to replace the entire operating system on a Pixel, you can do it pretty easily. It all starts with the bootloader. On Android, the bootloader i ...more

If you need to capture a still image of some high-speed action, Burst mode is the way to go. Burst shots take photos in rapid succession, providing a range of pictures to choose from and ensuring that at least one great shot comes out of it. You might notice, however, that you ...more

The Home button on an iPhone does a lot. That's not necessarily news for anyone who's ever owned an iPhone with a Home button, but what you might not know is that it's capable of so much beyond the standard everyday functions. So if you have an iPhone 7, 8, or the new SE model ...more

It's finally here. After years of rumors and speculation, Apple unveiled the new iPhone SE on April 15. While it doesn't have a 4-inch display like the original SE, it's the smallest new iPhone you can buy today, with the chipset of the iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max. So, w ...more

Recovery mode and download mode are useful for modding and they can come in handy in a pinch. Booting into recovery mode to do a factory reset or wipe cache fan save your Galaxy S20 from a soft brick, and entering download mode lets you install firmware with utilities like Odi ...more

Back in the earlier days of Android, you were able to connect your phone to a computer, and it would mount automatically. This meant once the USB connection was made, your internal storage would pop up on the computer and you could go about your business. But recent versions o ...more

Google has started to release a Go line of Android apps. These apps offer a minimalistic version of their major app counterpart. So far, we have Go versions of Maps, Photos, Gmail, and more. Who are these apps for and why would you want to use them? Here's a quick overview of ...more

You don't need to delete an entire thread in the Messages app to get rid of a couple of texts on your iPhone. With a few taps, you can remove unwanted iMessages and texts, as well as storage-hungry photos and videos, to de-clutter a conversation. And in iOS 13, the process is ...more

Normally, when you scroll down a webpage in Safari on your iPhone, it automatically hides the bottom toolbar and minimizes the top Smart Search field. But as soon as you scroll back up, they both reappear, which can be pretty annoying if you don't need them. Apple's iOS 13 upd ...more

Apple's Reminders app has always been an underrated yet useful productivity tool for iPhone. It's not as powerful as many third-party to-do apps, but it makes it easy to keep track of a few basic tasks, and it's integrated deeply with iOS, macOS, and watchOS. In iOS 13, it's e ...more

When you're gaming on your Android phone, does it sometimes feel "slow" and you can't figure out why? That means a drop in performance, which is when the frame rate dips, causing some noticeable stutters and lag. There's not really a way to know what's wrong unless you made th ...more

The Pixel 3a runs smoothly out of the box already, but installing a custom kernel can supercharge your experience even more. From fine-tuned CPU tweaks for boosting performance or battery life to adjusting the display colors for your screen how you want, ElementalX kernel can ...more

When it comes to digital security, one of the best ways to protect yourself is to use two-factor authentication. Most apps these days support it, including Facebook, a site where the more privacy you can muster, the better. However, of the two 2FA options available for Faceboo ...more

You can mod every aspect of your phone's software with root, but if you want to make changes at the hardware level, you'll need a custom kernel. If you've looked into custom kernels before, one name undoubtedly kept coming up: ElementalX. It's easily the best custom kernel out ...more

The main draw for Google's Pixel series is the software. It rocks a clean version of stock Android instead of a heavy OEM skin like TouchWiz, it gets frequent prompt OS updates, the camera software is downright amazing, and it has perhaps the most fluid UI of any phone. But an ...more

We often take for granted how reliable our iPhones are — so much so that many of us get panic-stricken at the very rare event where our device freezes up as a result of a buggy app or an update gone awry. Because of this, knowing the basics of troubleshooting is a handy skill ...more

The iPhone XR has touched down alongside the XS and XS Max, and it utilizes tried and tested materials found on the iPhone 8, while being molded in the same vein as the iPhone X. The budget-friendlier flagship comes with its own set of design elements to set it apart from its ...more

Performance and stability improvements, as well as new features, are just some reasons to install iOS 12, but new changes mean new battery health challenges. It can be difficult to boost battery life while taking advantage of everything this update has to offer. Luckily, there ...more

When it works, Android's Smart Lock feature is incredible. There's no need to enter your PIN when your phone "knows" it's in your hands — just unlock and go. But Smart Lock, particularly its Trusted Places feature, can be finicky sometimes. Most of Smart Lock's features are r ...more

Apple's goal with iOS 12 is to smooth out the problems with its famously flawed predecessor. Of course, change isn't for everyone, and by iOS 11.4.1, Apple had a pretty stable thing going. If you're not digging all the bugs and new features included in iOS 12, here's how to do ...more

Many of us rely on our smartphones for all our media needs. Now more than ever, we're using Bluetooth connections to play audio over speakers, headphones, car sound systems — the list goes on. If you own a Samsung smartphone like the Galaxy S9, there are a number of Bluetooth ...more

While I love Spotify, I don't like it devouring my data plan when streaming music away from a Wi-Fi network. If you have the foresight or time to download Spotify tracks for offline playback later, great. For those of you who like to listen to your music more randomly like I d ...more

Going out to dinner on a Saturday night can be more trouble than it's worth when you find yourself waiting for hours on end just to be seated. Thankfully, Google Maps has some very useful data that can save you from a headache the next time you head out to your favorite restau ...more

From veteran modders to casual tinkerers, booting into either recovery mode or download mode is something every Galaxy S9 owner should know about. These two pre-boot menus serve a very important purpose — recovery mode is the go-to solution for soft bricks, while download mode ...more

After spending a good portion of 2017 teasing us with images and bits of news, Lenovo, in a partnership with Disney and Lucasfilm, has finally released its Mirage AR headset along with the Star Wars: Jedi Challenge game collection. Let me preface this hands-on experience by l ...more

Apple's iPhone 8 and iPhone X announcement went about exactly as the rumors predicted. Really, there was only one surprise — the fact that all of the new models will support the Qi wireless charging standard. Wireless charging itself wasn't unexpected, but seeing Apple use a ...more

Aircraft equipped with ADS-B are constantly shouting their location into the radio void, along with other useful unauthenticated and unencrypted data. In this guide, we will make an ADS-B receiver using a Raspberry Pi with a software-defined radio (SDR) dongle, which we can us ...more

Niantic has gotten themselves into a bit of a mess regarding their hit game Pokémon GO recently. The company hosted a fan fest in Chicago earlier this month that ended up being a complete disaster. It was Niantic's first live event which likely had the company shaken after al ...more

If you are a frequent poster on Facebook, then uploading your photos and videos in HD is essential for your viewers. There's nothing worse than realizing that the Boomerang you just uploaded is grainy and probably won't get any views. So that's why, when I found out that you ...more

This week, augmented reality spawns in the world of online role-playing games with a soft launch down under from an indie game developer. Meanwhile, in Asia, another startup wins a coveted award for its AR headset. Finally, an established player in the mobile AR touches up its ...more

There are a ton of new features in iOS 11, but some of the best ones, in my opinion, are in the Camera app. They're not huge features, but they're much appreciated to anyone who's ever taken a Live Photo or portrait, or even to those who've needed to scan a QR code quickly. W ...more

The reveal of Apple's new ARKit extensions for iPhones and iPads, while not much of a shock, did bring with it one big surprise. By finding a solution to surface detection without the use of additional external sensors, Apple just took a big step over many — though not all — s ...more

Apple's iOS might be user-friendly, but it's a bit restrictive when it comes to personalization, so you can really only change the look of the home screen by either jailbreaking or exploiting glitches. While there isn't a jailbreak for the current version of iOS, there is a gl ...more

Engineer Anthony Levandowski has officially been kicked off Uber's driverless program by a judge as the company's legal war with Waymo continues. Uber's former autonomous vehicle lead was barred from developing Uber's driverless tech as a result of a court mandate on Monday. ...more

Pot, weed, bud, herb – whatever you want to call it, the green earthy treat makes everything way more fun. Now that marijuana is legal to some extent in more than half of all US states, we thought it was high time to showcase some apps that enhance your experience with the con ...more

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 (or Galaxy Note8, depending on how you like it) is one phone which couldn't possibly have bigger shoes to fill. Samsung's latest flagship has officially been announced, so it's time to decide whether not it's capable of filing the void left by the fai ...more

Jailbreaking gives iPhone users almost unfettered access to their devices, offering a slew of customizations, new features, and improved apps that you just can't get elsewise. Unfortunately, Apple has clamped down hard on the latest iterations of iOS, making jailbreaking extre ...more

If your mechanical home button or capacitive navigation keys are on the fritz, doing something as simple as navigating your phone's interface becomes a tedious chore. In this situation, some users have turned to root mods that enable Android's software navigation bar to solve ...more

You just sat down, coffee in hand, and the day is ready to start. Now that you have taken a few sips, let me pose a question: What is living in that coffeemaker of yours? The answer might make you dump that coffee down the drain pronto. Extremophiles are rugged microbial indi ...more

In my days as a hardware tech, I often came across motivated do-it-yourselfers who watched a video or two on how to repair a phone and thought that they'd give it a go. More often than not, they failed miserably and damaged their phones (and wallets) even more in the process. ...more

With all of the bare-bones setup out of the way in our Mac for Hackers series, your Apple machine should be ready to run a significant amount of pentesting tools. We can pull tools from GitHub and compile them, we can pull dependencies or tools from Homebrew, we have both Pyth ...more

This is the very first article in my series on setting up a Mac for hacking. In this series, I will be operating under the assumption that you have a clean install of macOS (previously OS X). If you aren't starting with a clean installation, there may be a few differences, but ...more

Apple released Portrait mode for the iPhone 7 Plus in the iOS 10.1 update, which creates a simulated bokeh effect that blurs out the background and makes the subject pop out in the scene. It's still technically a beta feature since Apple does have some kinks to iron out, but i ...more

It seems like everyone is getting in shape these days (or at least trying to improve their fitness), and as a result, there's an endless supply of fitness trackers and smartwatches hitting the market. This is all very wonderful, unless of course, you're broke and can barely af ...more

The internet, as I understand it, is a wonderful, magical place where people congregate to share memes and viral videos. Well, okay... there's a lot more to it than that, but let's just focus in on the good stuff. Yet viral videos are terribly fleeting, as is the nature of th ...more

When Microsoft release an update to the HoloLens Development Edition at the end of May, there were a bunch of cool new features added in. Among them: New voice controls that make working in the HoloLens operating system much easier. There are tons of new ways to interact with ...more

The VLC Player app for Android has a really nice feature that allows you to adjust brightness and volume by sliding your finger up or down on the left or right side of your screen, respectively. It helps keep you immersed in the video while you're in full screen mode, since yo ...more

Pretty much every note you save on your computer, phone, or tablet can be uploaded to your cloud and viewed on any of your devices. But what about those notes you write down on actual paper? Well, those notes can also be cloud-friendly, thanks to the Rocketbook Wave. Video: . ...more

We already know that Samsung's Galaxy S7 is one of the most versatile smartphones ever made, complete with edge-to-edge displays, water resistance, and a huge battery. But what's versatility without durability? How much punishment can the Galaxy S7 take? Let's play a game of S ...more

When you delete a file, Android doesn't actually remove it from your storage drive—instead, it simply marks that space as empty and pretends the file doesn't exist anymore. But deep down inside, the file that you originally wrote to that location is still physically there, at ...more

I've been doing tutorials on Rasberry Pi and I would like to thank everyone that have both read the tutorials and gave me feedback on how well I'm doing. But now I've decided to take a small break and start a mini series that I'm hoping to be at least five tutorials. This does ...more

Yes, I understand some people may consider this a repost. However, I have been searching for this answer for 3 weeks and after reading numerous reddit post, Kali Forums post and Null byte post I finally have gotten it to work for me. I would like to compile and share this info ...more

Up until the last 15 years or so, watching the commercials during the Super Bowl was arguably more exciting than the game itself. Super Bowl XXIV featured the San Francisco 49ers blowing out the Broncos, 55-10, in the worst Super Bowl beatdown of all time. The game might not h ...more

Getting cool new features before everyone else is just plain fun. To be on the bleeding edge can require a lot of effort at times, since the fastest way to get an update is to find it as soon as it leaks, then get to work on sideloading the new version. Luckily, there's an eas ...more

When your cat goes missing, chances are it's just chilling in a cozy spot under the couch, or maybe even hiding from you. So it's okay to not freak out just yet. Cats love to hide as if they're spiders, and even their hiding spots are similar. You can find them in corners, on ...more

Just last month, Microsoft announced plans to take away a huge chunk of storage from the free tier of their OneDrive cloud service, and users are understandably quite upset. At the same time, they reneged on an offer to give Office365 users unlimited OneDrive storage, and inst ...more

The notification light on phones and tablets is slowly disappearing. The once staple feature is now only found on a few devices, and a bevy of other notification systems have sought to fill the gap. The most popular of these systems is Ambient Display, which has grown in popul ...more