In the past two years, the push for consumer privacy has taken a significant turn, with companies like Apple paving the way by offering better, stronger options for consumers. Features like App Tracking Transparency, mail privacy, and the private relay system are all great examples of how Apple is working to make consumer privacy a heavy focus across all of its devices. This push, experts say, is significant because it forces other tech companies to follow suit or risk falling behind in consumer opinion....

Then dedicated accessory sockets showed up on the scene, and all of that went out the window. These 12V accessory sockets look like cigarette lighter sockets, but they aren’t, and the differences are important. Accessory Sockets Aren’t Cigarette Lighters After decades of cigarette lighter sockets playing double-duty as accessory sockets, it’s only natural to wonder what, if any, difference there is between these two components. While this might seem complex, it’s not....

The keyboard alternatives arrive as a recent study claims that handwriting is better for the brain than typing. Apple recently added Scribble with its release of iOS 14, a feature that uses handwriting recognition to enter text on iPads. Meanwhile, a bunch of tablets have recently been released that focus on handwriting, such as the electronic paper-based reMarkable 2. “Handwriting has traditionally had a number of advantages over typing,” tech analyst Ross Rubin of Reticle Research said in an email interview....

As part of an amendment to the Nordic kingdom’s 2009 Marketing Act, the new regulations require that all retouched photos used for advertising or marketing (including promo posts on social media) be labeled as edited. The Norwegian law covers all social media channels and applies to brands and influencers posting for commercial purposes, even in cases where just a filter was used. “I think, for the most part, adults understand that most images they see are retouched....

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy until recently. Seeing people accept me for who I am without me having to pretend or be something else because I saw it work for other people,” she said in a phone interview with Lifewire. Floskeee is, before anything, comedic relief in the most literal sense of the phrase. Her community of “roasting trolls” puts the joke before everything else. A little irreverence goes a long way here, but like most comedy, this lively streaming star’s infectious personality comes from rocky beginnings....

How to Add a Footnote in Google Docs Footnotes provide more information about a particular part of the text, like a citation or additional details, without clogging up the body text. One way is from the desktop website, through the Insert menu if you want complete control over what to include in the note. Here’s how it works from the mobile app on Android, iOS, and iPadOS: How to Add a Properly Formatted Footnote If your footnotes need to abide by a certain formatting style, the Google Docs website has a built-in option to not only do that but also grab the URL you need for the citation....

How to Make a Partial Backup of Your Computer If you only care about keeping specific files and folders on your computer backed up, you can automatically save all of these to an external hard drive at a regular time interval of your choosing. How to Make a System Backup of Your Computer If you want to make a complete backup of your entire Windows 10 system, this is called a “system image....

How to Find Your Current Backup on MacOS Because of the complexity, we’ve broken down what needs to be done before moving your iPhone backup to an external hard drive into multiple steps. First, you need to know where the backup is stored on your Mac. It’s not hard to find. How to Move iPhone Backup to an External Hard Drive Now you’ve found your backup, you need to move it to your external hard drive....

How to Bi-Wire Bi-Wire Details There are some potential benefits to bi-wiring, although it’s not guaranteed due to the subjectivity of sound. However, before you start, you’ll have to make sure the option even exists. A speaker must have separate terminals (two pairs of binding posts) for the woofer and midrange/tweeter. They’re sometimes marked by the designation “high” and “low.” Other times, they’re not marked at all. If you’re unsure, it’s recommended to reference the owner’s manual for further information before attempting to bi-wire any speakers....

How to Adjust Who Can See Your Facebook Posts in a Browser Here’s how to adjust the relevant privacy settings if you’re using the browser version of Facebook. How to Hide Yourself From Searches Using the Facebook Mobile App It’s also easy to modify who can see your posts if you use the Facebook mobile app for iOS or Android. Adjust Your Visibility Using Facebook on the Desktop Facebook allows you to set boundaries on who can find you, send you messages, and access your Facebook profile....

Fortunately, you don’t need a special message blocker to do so; you can block texts on iPhone and Android using settings built-in to those devices. However, the method you need to use to block numbers is different depending on the app you use to send messages. Another way to stop a number from texting you is to log in to your carrier’s website to access your account and set up message blocking....

The phones, tablets, and gizmos that can be delivered straight to your door vary in subtle but delightful ways from the ones you can pick up at Best Buy. It’s sometimes hard to tell exactly what you are getting and the warranty service might be sketchy. But the uncertainty can be half the fun, some say. “Gadgets from overseas come a lot cheaper than the stuff made home, therefore you can find pretty good deals at low prices,” Zohar Gilad, the co-founder and CEO of InstantSearch+....

How to Buy Games for Quest 2 From the Headset in VR If you’re already in VR and you want to get into a new game fast, the best way is to buy a game through the Quest 2 storefront. You can access the store at any time by pressing the Oculus button on your right Oculus touch controller and selecting the store icon from the Toolbar. As long as you’ve already added a payment method for Oculus purchases through the mobile or desktop app in the past, you can purchase games directly from the Quest 2 store without leaving VR....

Calculate Sample or Population Variance Excel provides functions to calculate variance and supports add-ins that enable regression analysis. Variance indicates how widely a set of numbers diverges from the average of the numbers. When comparing variance calculations, the higher the variance, the more widely distributed are the numbers in a data set. A variance of 0, for example, indicates that all the numbers in the selected data set are the same....

How Do You Change How Long Your Snapchat Messages Last? By default, a message is automatically deleted after all recipients have read it and then exited the conversation. There are two steps you can take to make messages stick around longer: change the chat settings so messages auto-delete after 24 hours, or manually save messages you want to keep longer. Change Your Chat Settings Change the Delete Chats setting for any conversation you want to stay for 24 hours....

How Do I Display the Clock on the Echo Spot? In addition to the audio commands the Echo Spot understands, the new Echo Spot and Echo Show provide a visual interface and camera that lets you watch videos or video chat with friends and family. When it’s not in use, it can show the time, the weather, or any number of built-in widgets. Like its predecessors, setting up your Echo Spot starts by turning it on....

How to Change the Default iPhone Ringtone To change your iPhone’s default ringtone, follow these steps: Whenever you get a call, the ringtone you selected will play unless you assigned individual ringtones to callers. If you’ve set a specific ringtone for an individual, that ringtone plays instead. Just remember to listen for that sound, and not a ringing phone, so you don’t miss any calls. How to Create Custom iPhone Ringtones Want to use a favorite song as a ringtone instead of one of the iPhone’s built-in sounds?...

How to Change the Startup Sound in Windows 11 & 10 It’s easy to change system sounds in Windows 11 or pick different sounds in Windows 10 because Microsoft provides a tool built right into the OS. Changing the startup sound is a different thing entirely. Fortunately, however, since we know where the Windows startup sound file is located, we can replace it with a different file that we’d rather use instead....

How Do I Get to My Router Admin Page? To access your router’s settings, log into your router’s admin console from a web browser: How Do I Log Into My 192.168 1.1 IP Address on My Phone? You can access your router’s settings on your phone using a mobile web browser. Just follow the steps in the previous section. However, if your router has a mobile app, there might be a more convenient way:...

Like most things in the technology world, your motherboard software (BIOS) occasionally gets updated, sometimes to fix bugs and other times to add new features. As part of some hardware troubleshooting processes, especially those that involve new RAM or a new CPU that won’t work correctly, updating BIOS to the latest version is a good thing to try. Below are six different methods for checking the BIOS version installed on your motherboard:...