Artificial intelligence (AI) can discover who you are attracted to. A computer program could generate images of faces it knew certain users would find attractive by examining brain scans. It’s part of a growing effort to build computers that can understand our thoughts. “Such a system might be used to select the content to be catered to a given user,” Radek Kamiński, CEO of nexocode, a company that focuses on AI implementation and consulting, said in an email interview....

DALL·E, a portmanteau of the names of the artist Salvador Dalí and Pixar’s WALL·E, can take any text and create an image from it. The system uses a neural network that’s been trained on billions of pictures and text examples. It’s one of a growing number of AI projects that can mimic, but not replicate, human beings’ creative output. “Because natural language is constantly evolving, and very dependent on contextual nuance, teaching a machine to understand language well enough to draw a picture is a very significant achievement,” Tamara Schwartz, professor of cybersecurity at York College of Pennsylvania, said in an email interview....

Why Is Base64 Encoding Used? The need for Base64 encoding comes from the problems that occur when media is transmitted in raw binary format to text-based systems. Since text-based systems (like email) interpret binary data as a wide range of characters, including special command characters, much of the binary data that is transmitted to transfer media is misinterpreted by those systems and lost or corrupted in the transmission process. One method of encoding this kind of binary data in a way that avoids such transmission problems is to send it as plain ASCII text in Base64 encoded format....

YouTube’s decision to change how the website uses its hashtag keywords recently was announced in a community post. Instead of offering recommendations of videos with the searched hashtag alongside other relevant content, hashtag landing pages now only will show the videos making use of that particular tag. “Under the old system, you simply added keywords, but they were no guarantee your video would be found unless you intentionally misspelled a keyword and had someone search for your topic with the same misspelling,” YouTuber John Bennardo, director of The Two Dollar Bill Documentary, told us in an email interview....

Understanding Network Routing You can think of network routing as similar to a public transportation system. The entire bus system, including all the stops, is like the network, and the stops are like the nodes. As a bus rider who must make several transfers to get where you’re going, you’re like the data that travels between each node until it reaches its final destination. When data is transferred from one device to another on an Internet Protocol (IP) network, it is broken down into smaller units called packets....

Wu is the founder and CEO of Pathrise, developer of an online mentorship and job placement platform for tech professionals. He was inspired to launch the company after seeing a lack of career services in the tech industry. “In terms of how we see the overall mission of Pathrise, I think it revolves around wanting to help people who aren’t getting access to networks or the behind-the-scenes playbook on how to succeed in the job search,” Wu told Lifewire in a phone interview....

How Many Devices Can Connect to a Router? Most home networks and public Wi-Fi hotspots function with a single wireless access point (a broadband router in the case of home networking). Conversely, business computer networks install multiple access points to expand their wireless network coverage to a larger physical area. Each access point has limits for the number of connections and the amount of network load it can handle. By integrating multiple access points into a larger network, the overall scale is increased....

If you wanted to start a blog back in the olden days, you’d have to buy a domain name, find web hosting, find a way to upload your work, then create an RSS feed so people could subscribe. Then came Blogger, which let you just write in a web browser and hit publish. That’s Outpost. It takes all the annoying parts out of making your own small media empire, so you can just make stuff....

In the US alone, sales during this year’s Prime Day are expected to total $6.17 billion. Shoppers snapped up everything from the possibly reasonable, like discounted TVs, to the more questionable, such as bitter apricot seeds. Not everything arriving in mailboxes will turn out to be a great bargain, observers say. “As someone with a closet full of items I’ve used once or not at all, I consider myself a reformed impulse buyer,” Cheryl Wagemann, a retail analyst, and editor at the shopping comparison site Finder, confessed in an email interview....

To help celebrate the season, Spotify has introduced a feature, only in testing for now, similar to Instagram’s Stories, which offers listeners a small message from some of their favorite artists. Experts believe that it could help make Spotify a more active social application and less of a passive app that people turn on and forget about. “I think Spotify should and is trying to make itself the go-to place to see stories from your favorite musical artists,” Amanda Clark, a digital media strategist for Charlene Shirk Public Relations, said via email....

Lack of access to computers, internet access, and tech training leaves many children at a lifelong disadvantage. Nonprofits are working to address this education inequality with programs ranging from training in game development to basic computer use. One example of this kind of program is a new pilot program in Georgia that will use game-development software to teach computer science. “So many students come from disadvantaged backgrounds that don’t have a chance to learn something like this,” Mete Akcaoglu, a professor of Georgia Southern University whose team received a grant for the program, said in a phone interview....

“With the tech giants fully backing the royalty-free Matter protocol, this may be the start of a dominant standard that can help deliver smart home device interoperability,” Daniel Walsh, the owner of the website Smart Home Perfected, wrote to Lifewire in an email. What is The Matter Protocol? According to the announcement, Matter is the unified IP-based connectivity protocol created by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (formerly known as the Zigbee Alliance) to provide secure Internet-of-Things ecosystems....

How to Access iPhone Files From a Windows PC When you plug an Android phone into your Windows PC, you can access its internal storage directly through the file explorer. If you try to do the same thing with your iPhone, you’ll find you only have limited access to iPhone internal storage via the Windows file explorer. You can use that method to retrieve photos from your iPhone, but nothing else....

Finding Your Own Friend Code Take note of your friend code so you can share it with others you want to add as friends by following these steps. Registering a New Friend You can add up to 100 friends on your Nintendo 3DS Friends List. You can also add a saying that your friends can see when they view your Friend Card — be clever, funny, inspired, or express your current mood here, just about anything (but don’t be rude)....

How to Create a Hulu Profile on Mac or PC You can add a profile to Hulu on your desktop or laptop by logging into the streaming service with a browser and following the steps below: How to Add a Hulu Profile on Smartphones, Roku, Apple TV and More Adding a profile to Hulu is easiest on a Mac or PC, but you can also do it on most handheld devices that support the streaming service....

How to Add Perspective and Dimension With Cast Shadows Like drop shadows, cast or perspective shadows add interest to elements on the page. They work to anchor elements on the page, tie components of a composition together, and add a touch of realism — even when used with unrealistic objects and clip art. Cast shadows add perspective and dimension. The first step is to identify an imaginary light source. Unless you are intentionally creating a fantasy world that breaks the rules of light and shadow, cast your shadows using a reasonably placed imaginary light source based on reality....

How Streaming Video and Buffering Work Streaming devices “buffer” video. This means they stream video ahead of what you are watching so it plays continuously. At least that’s the idea. When the video catches up to the point where the file has been streaming, there might be a delay. This means it will pause, and you’ll see a rotating arrow, spinning circle, or loading message on your TV screen. Once the video stream catches up, it plays again....

Back up or Copy Your Windows Mail Email Filtering Rules To create a copy of the filters you have set up in Windows Mail: Why Risk Losing Work You Can Save? If you carefully built a system of mail filters in Windows Live Mail, Windows Mail or Outlook Express that automatically sort and organize your incoming and outgoing messages, you certainly don’t want to lose these filters. If you back them up, you can transfer your Windows Mail or Outlook Express mail rules to another computer or restore them in case of data loss....

Block Pop-Up Ads in Google Chrome The process for blocking pop-up ads in the Google Chrome web browser is similar on Chrome on a Mac, PC, iOS device, or Android device. Block Pop-Ups in Chrome on a Mac or PC Block Pop-Ups in Chrome on iOS Devices Block Pop-Ups in Chrome on Android Devices Block Pop-Up Ads in Microsoft Edge These instructions apply only to the new Microsoft Edge Chromium-based browser on Windows....

How to Cancel Hulu on the Web The easiest way to cancel a Hulu subscription is through the Hulu website: Hulu works hard to keep you an active subscriber, so it will provide additional offers to keep you around. If you still want to cancel, select No, Cancel Subscription, and your Hulu subscription will end. How to Cancel Hulu on iPhone and Android While you can create a Hulu account on an iPhone, you can’t unsubscribe using an iPhone....