People who know that I am a professional hacker often ask me what they can do to make their computers and personal information safe from people like me. The answer, of course, is that nothing will make you completely safe, but there are a number of measures any computer user c ...more
Like most Android devices, the Nexus 7 suffers from its fair share of battery gripes. Nobody wants to see that dreaded "connect charger" warning pop up on their screen. NOBODY. Yet it probably happens to you every day nonetheless. What can you do about it besides charge, charg ...more
Apple's password manager, iCloud Keychain, lets you securely save important login credentials for apps, websites, and services that sync up across all of your Apple devices — iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac. One of its biggest highlights is that it can create strong password ...more
There's a little-known secret in the world of microwave ovens that even the manufacturers don't care to tell you in their manuals. And once you know it, you'll never go back to using your microwave as you used to. Some microwave owners have figured this "hack" out on their ow ...more
With the holidays over, a lot of people with shiny new Google Homes are getting their first chance to explore the new Google Assistant. Before the Google Home's release, the Assistant was only available for the Google Pixel and Pixel XL, or in a text-based form with Google All ...more
Two-factor authentication has been around since iOS 10. It's a handy option that adds an extra layer of security to your iPhone and makes its almost impenetrable security even stronger. This feature has remained intact in iOS 11 and iOS 12, and thanks to the straightforward na ...more
If there are people you just don't want to talk to, or texts you want to stop recieving, you can use the MCleaner app for iPhone. This app has a white list of approved numbers and a black list of disallowed numbers. You can even choose to let in phone calls from one number whi ...more
Open Microsoft Office Excel. Across the top notice letters (columns), along the sides are numbers (rows). The columns and rows can be extended by highlighting sections and right clicking and choosing the high of the row. You can also select to add a border, and change the orie ...more
Over the years, we've seen security breach after security breach, as well as high-profile data scandals where collected personal information was misused by companies. Apple makes customer privacy a priority, so there have been few issues to worry about when it comes to its ser ...more
Threats to your privacy and security are everywhere, so protecting your data should be the highest priority for anyone with a smartphone. However, one threat many people overlook is the company who supplies the operating system your Android phone runs — Google. Google offers ...more
The volume buttons on the side of your iPhone can do more than just adjust the volume levels for media, ringers, alerts, Siri, and other sounds and voices. You can use them to perform different actions in certain apps and even create custom actions using the Shortcuts app. It' ...more
On your iPhone, your phone number and Apple ID email address are the default ways in which somebody can contact you on FaceTime. While you can't remove your phone number as an option, you can withdraw your Apple ID email account. More importantly, you can add any other email a ...more
Sometimes, doing the right thing is way more difficult than it should be, like trying to return a lost smartphone. Despite having the best intentions, it's often hard to track down the rightful owner, especially if the device is armed with a passcode. On the other hand, there ...more
While there are many ways to see the exact battery life left on your iPhone, you can take all the work out of it by making your iPhone verbally tell you the current percentage every time you start or stop charging it. Best of all, this trick works whether you use wired or wire ...more
Unless you've been living under a rock or ignoring recent news headlines, Ashley Madison, the dating site for married people (or individuals in a committed relationship) has recently been hacked. Millions of their users are shitting their pants, and for good reason, as all of ...more
Voicemails are like chores for me. I have to listen to them, but never really feel like doing it. When I finally do, most of them get deleted right away, but every so often they'll be one I save and listen to over and over again, whether it's a cute birthday wish from grandma ...more
The new iOS 14 for iPhone arrived Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2020, alongside iPadOS 14, and there are a lot of features to uncover. Improved widgets. Better home screen customization. Exciting Messages improvements. New abilities in Camera and Photos. There's so much here that it'll ...more
Your voice is the key to unlocking many features on your iPhone. For example, you can ask Siri to send a text message to a friend, add items to a list, run a custom shortcut, or turn on your lights, but Apple does not allow you to unlock your iPhone with a Siri voice command. ...more
Are you tired of endless rows and columns of apps on your home screen? Before iOS 14, your only option was to hide apps in folders, uninstall them, or use some sort of elaborate workaround. You could hide a few stock apps easily enough, but that's it. Now, in the latest versio ...more
For some of you, whether or not to delete Facebook is a daily struggle. One reason you might not have pulled the trigger on your Facebook account yet could be because of Messenger, which provides millions of people with different devices an easy way to communicate with each ot ...more
While it doesn't come with any iPad models out of the box, the Apple Pencil is perhaps the best iPad accessory you can get. It's a powerful writing and drawing tool with an intuitive design and user-friendliness that makes it easy to take notes, draw sketches, mark up document ...more
Learn to do the Electric Slide. This video came from a wedding of the instructor Debbie Johnson from Just4KicksDanceSchool. This goes through all the steps and she calls out the numbers, then the music comes. This is an oddly shot home movie.
Despite a rocky start with plenty of feature disparity, the Google Assistant now provides a pretty consistent experience regardless of what device you're using it on. Be it Android, iPhone, or Google Home, the AI behind the Assistant is virtually identical — including its quir ...more
Let's say you receive $10 from a friend through Apple Pay Cash via an iMessage. You could spend that money in the App Store or at any retailer that supports Apple Pay using your Apple Pay Cash card. If you'd rather save it or use it for bills, it's easy to transfer that money ...more
Check it out: you save more dough (ba dum bump) when you order a large pizza than with any other size. Why is this true? NPR reporter Quoctrung Bui's engineer friend pointed out that a medium pizza was twice as big as a small one, yet only cost slightly more. Less Money, Mo' ...more
Fortnite's long awaited arrival on Android has ramped up excitement among gamers who are installing the beta version in astounding numbers. With so many midrange and budget devices running Android, however, it's important to stay on top of your device's performance to ensure s ...more
A huge chunk of my life revolves around my computer, and whenever I'm on my laptop and get a text message notification on my phone, I find it extremely distracting to stop whatever I'm doing to hunt it down. That's why I'm a big fan of text messaging via my computer. While we ...more
Remote Desktop gives you access to your Windows 8 PC or device from wherever you are to run your applications and access your files remotely. Left an important document on your work computer? Want to run a legacy x86 desktop app from your Surface? You can use Remote Desktop ...more
Amazon is slowly trying to gain as much influence in the tech world as it has in the consumer market, and with the Amazon Fire HD 7, they have their eyes set on taking on the "budget tablet" space. For the amount of money you spend on the Fire HD 7, you get a pretty decent ta ...more
From booting into Fastboot mode with a single command to installing mods without root access, there's no shortage of reasons to use ADB. The catch, though, you had to be tied to a computer with a USB connection. However, a new feature in Android 11 finally allows you to run AD ...more
Android has released a new application called ezNetScan, which is a free app that scans the wireless network you're connected to and gives you a full log of all of the devices connected to that network. This isn't new for smartphone users, let alone Android users. Fing has bee ...more
While iOS 11.3 doesn't have as many new features as iOS 11.2, there's still a lot to love about Apple's latest update for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, even if some of the best features we were expecting didn't make the cut. Apple released the iOS 11.3 beta on Jan. 24, and ju ...more
Hashes are commonly used to store sensitive information like credentials to avoid storing them in plaintext. With tools like Hashcat, it's possible to crack these hashes, but only if we know the algorithm used to generate the hash. Using a tool called hash-identifier, we can e ...more
Apple wants to support the advertising economy, but its primary focus of late has been user privacy and security. In Safari, cross-site tracking, which lets content providers track you across websites and apps to show you more targeted ads, is disabled by default. However, con ...more
This year's big iPhone update, iOS 12, aims to solve many of the issues that arose during iOS 11's controversial, buggy tenure. With that in mind, it may be tempting to jump on board the new software immediately and leave iOS 11 in the dust for good. Here are some reasons why ...more
It starts innocently enough, with a nosy friend hovering over your shoulder to see what you're texting. Somehow, that doesn't satiate their inexplicable thirst for curiosity, so the first chance they get, they're rummaging through all of your super private photos—even though y ...more
If you use Microsoft Excel on a regular basis, odds are you work with numbers. Put those numbers to work. Statistical analysis allows you to find patterns, trends and probabilities within your data. In this MS Excel tutorial from everyone's favorite Excel guru, YouTube's Excel ...more
Apple has been in hot water ever since the news that the company slows down iPhones with older batteries. The iPhone maker is now in damage control, offering customers a large, $50 discount on battery replacements. The question for you, though, is does your iPhone need a batte ...more
With the Android platform on a large amount of mobile phones today, chances are you have one. Sometimes messaging on the phones can be a little confusing, but there's a simple explanation for texting your friends and family. Best Buy has answers. The Best Buy Mobile team expla ...more
When it comes to resistance to the elements, Samsung seems to believe in the old saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." They've carried over the IP68 rating under IEC 60529 that was first found on the S8 all the way to their tenth-anniversary flagship, the Galaxy S10. While ...more
There's always an iPhone in our list of top phones for privacy and security, due in large part to advanced security measures like Face ID, consistent iOS updates, and easy ways to prevent unwanted access and excessive data sharing. However, some of those options actually do th ...more
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun and Mr. Excel, the 14th installment in their joint series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll l ...more
If you didn't already know, Apple is giving away their newest operating system, Mavericks, for most of your computers. While the folks over at Microsoft surely despise this tactic, those of use Mac users still running Snow Leopard surely do appreciate it. While one free thing ...more
Everything you post on social media lives there forever — even if you delete it. Just ask anyone that's ever posted something stupid. Instagram does not provide built-in tools to save or download images and videos from other users, but there are workarounds. Third-party tools ...more
Apple's iOS 16.3 update for iPhone had impressive new features, but iOS 16.4 might impress you even more. The latest iPhone update was released on Monday, March 27 — a day earlier than Apple Music Classical, Apple's new classical music streaming service — has at least 30 more ...more
If you've ever heard software piracy terminology being discussed, I'm sure the term KeyGens came up. KeyGens is short for key generator, which is a program that exploits algorithmic faults in software by generating software license keys that appear to be genuine. Normally used ...more
The alt rock band Train has been around forever - lead singer Patrick Monahan is 41 - and has had exquisitely popular hits like "Drops of Jupiter" and "Meet Virginia," but it wasn't until "Hey, Soul Sister" that they gained international recognition, even from the younger Just ...more
The day I picked up my iPhone 5S was a very exciting day. I had taken all the correct steps in backing up my old device so that after a quick restore-from-backup (which turned into half an hour), I was right at home on the new hardware. Having such a speedy, new fingerprint s ...more
My kids found an old Spoke-Hedz three digit lock, and wanted my help to crack it open. One of the first things I noticed was that it doesn't function like a normal code lock, where one half of the lock will open, or the lock itself separates. In this lock, the locking bail ext ...more
Samy Kamkar, the security researcher known for the MySpace Worm and his combination lock cracking skills (using an online calculator), is back—and this time, he's after your credit cards! Well, not really, but his latest project, dubbed MagSpoof, can spoof any magnetic stripe ...more
As we reported first here on Gadget Hacks, the Google Pixel and Pixel XL have unlockable bootloaders, with the exception of models purchased from Verizon. This means that once the TWRP custom recovery is installed, you can flash ZIPs and even root your device in a few taps—as ...more
If I were a math major, I'd probably be rolling in dough somewhere in Silicon Valley right now, but since multiplying numbers and figuring out tangents gives me panic attacks, I went the English route... pays much better. Still, I never would have graduated if I didn't pass a ...more
There's a known issue affecting some Nexus 5 users where the speaker volume is fairly low. This could be attributed to a manufacturing defect, which you could possibly fix with a hot needle, but if your built-in speakers and headphones seem muted, don't take your Nexus apart j ...more
I'm an Android user. Over the course of the past seven years, I've owned ten different smartphones—all of them powered by Android. This isn't due to some blind trust in Google or some unfounded hate for Apple, either, because I've always made sure to get my hands on each iPhon ...more
If you have a good food processor or blender, there's no reason not to make your own nut butters, whether you like almond, cashew, sunflower, or the perennial classic, peanut. Not only can you control the taste, sweetness, crunchiness, and oiliness of the butter, you can also ...more
Trying to get rid of an ex or clingy friend? Just want to keep telemarketers from calling you all the time? You can use the iPhone app iBlacklist (for jailbroken iPhones) to create a list of blocked calls for your iPhone. Blacklisted phone numbers will not be able to send you ...more
The war on dehydration is a commercially burgeoning marketplace. An increasingly sophisticated consumer population hoping to conquer everything from 26-mile marathons to vodka shots is deconstructing every functional remedy in the fight to quell the effects of severe dehydrati ...more
When you're in a bind and need an internet connection for your laptop, look no further than your iPhone. Using the Personal Hotspot feature in iOS, you can share your iPhone's internet connection with other devices by way of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or even USB. Don't Miss: Increase ...more
Although the Galaxy Note 9 is an amazing phone, many members of the Android community won't even look at it. This isn't just because of the Samsung Experience skin, but the large amount of bloatware that comes with this device. However, with a little work, you can remove all o ...more
Once again, Samsung has certified its flagship Note series with an IP68 rating. With this rating, the Galaxy Note 20 and 20 Ultra have some degree of dust and water resistance. The IEC standard 60529 lays out a series of tests created by the National Electrical Manufacturers ...more