What Is The Most Expensive Piece of Sci-Fi Memorabilia Sold At Auction? |
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Source: How-To Geek
Tuesday, 30 April 2019
Geek Trivia: What Is The Most Expensive Piece of Sci-Fi Memorabilia Sold At Auction?
Source: How-To Geek
How to Create a Simple Invoice Using Excel
Whether you’re a freelancer doing work for multiple companies, or a business that plans on extending a credit line to its customers, you’re going to need an invoice. Creating a custom invoice in Excel isn’t difficult. You’ll be ready to submit your invoice and receive payments in no time.
Using an Invoice Template
Creating a simple invoice in Excel is relatively straightforward. Create a few tables, set a few rules, add a bit of information, and you’re good to go. Alternatively, there are many websites out there that provide free invoice templates created by actual accountants. You can use these instead, or even download one to use as inspiration for when you’re making your own.
Excel also provides its own library of invoice templates you can use. To access these templates, open Excel and click the “File” tab.
Here, select “New” and type “Invoice” into the search bar.
Press Enter and a collection of invoice templates will appear.
Read the remaining 57 paragraphs
Source: How-To Geek
How to Share a Static Snapshot of your Google Calendar
We’ve previously covered how to show your live Google Calendar in Outlook, but what if you just want to share a static snapshot of your calendar with someone? There’s a way to do that too.
Sharing a static snapshot can be useful if you want to share your Google Calendar with a colleague—or with your own work calendar so you can see it—but your company policies don’t allow you to synchronize with a live, non-corporate calendar. It’s also useful if you’re going to be somewhere with intermittent Wi-Fi for a while and you want to see your calendar even when you’re offline.
To share a static snapshot, you need to export your calendar and import it into another calendar program.
How to Export a Google Calendar
Exporting a Google Calendar is pretty simple, so start by logging into to your Google account and heading to Calendar. Once you’re there, find the calendar you want to share and hover over it to show the three dots.
Click the three dots and on the menu that appears, click “Settings and sharing.”
Near the top of the settings, find the “Export calendar” button and click it.
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Source: How-To Geek
Daily News Roundup: Virtual Desktops on Chrome OS are Coming Along Nicely
Virtual Desktops are coming to Chrome OS. The first glimpse of how this is going to work showed up in February, and now there’s a new video of how the feature is progressing. And it looks amazing.
As Chromebooks have grown in both feature and popularity, this is a feature that many users have asked for—myself included. Having the option to switch between multiple screen layouts for various tasks seamlessly would dramatically improve workflow on Chrome OS, and the implementation shown in the video looks great.
All that said, this is still a very early—and notably unfinished—look at how “virtual desks,” as they’re being called, will work. First off, we know that the number of desks will be limited to four. That’s understandable, especially given the lightweight hardware found in most Chromebooks. Comments on the video also note that desk switch animations or mini view haven’t been implemented yet. Again, understandable since this is still very much in development.
While we’re getting a better look at how the feature will work, there’s still a lot of unanswered questions. For one, how much of a hit is this going to have on the system—especially lower-end Chromebooks? I’ve been able to peg my Pixelbook’s 8 GB of RAM on more than one occasion with little more than a slew of Chrome tabs, so I can only imagine what it will be like when I can keep multiple apps open across several desktops.
Secondly—and probably the more significant question—when can we try it? As About Chromebooks’ Kevin Tofel points out, it’ll probably be Chrome OS 76 at the earliest. I’m just glad I keep my Pixelbook on the developer channel, as this is one feature that I absolutely can’t wait to try out. [via About Chromebooks]
In other news, Google is having a hard time selling Pixel phones, older Huawei routers were found to have hidden backdoors, Energizer’s massive-battery phone flopped hard, and more.
- Google reported “lower than expected” Pixel sales: Smartphone sales are down overall this year, but it seems that Google is taking an even harder hit than expected. One analyst even went as far as comparing Pixel sales to Windows Phone. Ouch. [Android Police]
- Backdoors in Huawei routers: Vodafone Italy says it found “hidden backdoors” in Huawei routers that allowed the Chinese company to access users’ home networks and Vodafone’s fixed-line network. The now-patched backdoors were discovered between 2009-2011; there was also no evidence of breached data. [Bloomberg]
- Energizer’s big bet on a big phone: Remember the ridiculously huge Energizer phone announced back in February? Well, unsurprisingly, it completely flopped on Indiegogo, only grabbing about one percent of its goal. lol. [The Verge]
- Netflix will need ads…according to advertisers: Because that’s exactly what advertisers would say. [Tech Radar]
- Moto’s new RAZR foldable breaks cover: A new supposed leak shows off the rumored RAZR foldable Motorola has been working on. And man, it looks…pretty good. [Engadget]
- Vudu is getting OC: Original content is coming to Vudu next year, according to a new report. The best part? It’s all going to be free with ads. Well, free is the best part. Not the ads. [MacRumors]
- Anki is shutting down: No more toy robots for us. :( [Axios]
- Alexa is getting support for Spanish: Right now, Alexa can only speak English. Starting later this week, she’ll also speak Spanish. Good. [Digital Trends]
- T-Mobile-Sprint merger delayed: The Justice Department is still in deliberation, so it pushed back the dealing to July 29th. Maybe one day we’ll let the two become one. For the good of humanity. [Android Police]
- Apple kills Aperture: Apple announced that Aperture will no longer work in macOS versions after Mojave. Makes sense—it’s been out of development since 2014. [MacRumors]
- Burger King does the Impossible: The company announced that it’s bringing the Impossible Whopper—a totally meatless burger that is said to taste like, well, meat—to all BKs by the end of the year. Wild. I’m gettin’ one. [Vox]
In a bit of interesting science news, scientists have found that “water worlds”—exoplanets completely covered by one huge ocean—are not only common in our galaxy, but have more water than initially imagined. We’re talking massive amounted of water here; potentially thousands of kilometers deep. Of course, water worlds are still technically hypothetical is it were, but this new research, paired with computer simulations, show that planets that were previously thought to be gas with thick atmospheres are actually water worlds. Neat. [Gizmodo]
Source: How-To Geek
How to Turn Hardware Acceleration On and Off in Chrome
Google Chrome comes equipped with hardware acceleration, a feature which takes advantage of your computer’s GPU to speed up processes and free vital CPU time. However, sometimes driver incompatibilities can cause this feature to misbehave and disabling it could save you a few headaches.
What is Hardware Acceleration?
Hardware acceleration refers to when a program uses a computer’s hardware in support to perform some functions more efficiently than capable in the software. The hardware was designed to perform some functions faster than software running on the CPU alone.
In Chrome, hardware acceleration utilizes your computer’s graphics processing unit (GPU) to tackle graphics-intensive tasks, like playing videos, games, or anything that requires faster mathematical calculations. Passing off specific tasks gives your CPU a chance to work tirelessly on everything else, while the GPU handles processes that it was designed to run.
While this does sound great in most cases, sometimes hardware acceleration can cause Chrome to lag, freeze, or crash—it could even cause your laptop’s battery to drain a lot faster. As everyone’s computer is slightly different, the issue could lie in the GPU or driver associated with it. If you suspect hardware acceleration is the culprit, the best thing to do is to disable it and see if that fixes the problem.
How to Turn Hardware Acceleration On or Off
By default, hardware acceleration is enabled on Chrome, so let’s look at disabling it first.
Fire up Chrome, click the menu icon, and then click on “Settings.” Alternatively, you can type chrome://settings/ into the Omnibox to go directly there.
In the Settings tab, scroll down to the bottom and then click “Advanced.”
Read the remaining 11 paragraphs
Source: How-To Geek
How to Use the FTP Command on Linux
The File Transfer Protocol is older than most of our readers, but it’s still going strong. FTP doesn’t have the security of a modern protocol, but you may need to use it anyway. Here’s how to do it.
Warning: Don’t Use FTP Over the Internet
Let’s make this clear right from the outset: The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) dates back to the early 1970s and was written without any regard to security. It does not use encryption for anything. Login credentials like your username and password, as well as the data you download or upload, are transferred in clear text. Anyone along the way can view your secrets. However, FTP still has its uses.
If you’re transferring files within your network, you should be safe–as long as no one on the network is packet-sniffing and eavesdropping on any sensitive documents as you transfer them. If your files aren’t confidential or sensitive in any way, moving them around your internal network with FTP should be fine. Linux has the standard ftp command line program to deal with precisely that scenario.
But definitely don’t use the ftp command to access external resources across the internet. For that, use the sftp command line program, which uses the secure SSH File Transfer Protocol. We’ll introduce both of these programs in this tutorial.
To clarify just why you never want to use FTP over the Internet, take a look at the below screenshot. It shows the FTP password in plaintext. Anyone on your network or between you and the FTP server on the Internet can easily see the password is “MySecretPassword.”
Without the encryption, a malicious actor could modify files you’re downloading or uploading in transit, too.
The ftp Command
Assuming you have a valid account on an FTP site, you can connect to it with the following command. Throughout this article, substitute the IP address in the commands with the IP address of the FTP server you’re connecting to.
ftp 192.168.4.25
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Source: How-To Geek
How to Customize the Taskbar in Windows 10
The Windows 10 taskbar works much like previous Windows versions, offering shortcuts and icons for every running app. Windows 10 offers all kinds of ways to customize the taskbar to your liking, and we’re here to guide you through what you can do.
We’ve taken a look at customizing the Start menu and the Action Center in Windows 10. Now, it’s time to tackle the taskbar. With just a little bit of work, you can tweak the taskbar to get it running just how you like it.
Pin Apps to the Taskbar
The simplest way to customize your taskbar is by pinning various apps and shortcuts to it so that you can access them more quickly in the future. There are two ways to do this. The first is to open the program, either from the Start menu or an existing shortcut. When the app’s icon appears on the taskbar to indicate it’s running, right-click the icon and select the “Pin to taskbar” option from the context menu.
The second way to pin an app to the taskbar does not require the app to be running first. Find the app on the Start menu, right-click the app, point to “More,” and then choose the “Pin to taskbar” option you find there. You could also drag the app icon to the taskbar if you prefer doing it that way.
This will immediately add a new shortcut for the app to the taskbar. To remove an app from the taskbar, right-click the pinned app and choose the “Unpin from taskbar” option.
Pin a File or Folder to Taskbar Jump Lists
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Source: How-To Geek
Monday, 29 April 2019
Geek Trivia: Who Appeared On The Largest Denomination Of U.S. Currency?
Who Appeared On The Largest Denomination Of U.S. Currency? |
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Source: How-To Geek
Geek Trivia: Who Appeared On The Largest Denomination Of U.S. Currency?
Who Appeared On The Largest Denomination Of U.S. Currency? |
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Think you know the answer? |
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Source: How-To Geek
How to Make Tri-Folds in PowerPoint
While Microsoft PowerPoint is almost exclusively used for presentation purposes, it’s also a great application for creating interesting and visually appealing brochures. Here’s how to create (and print out) a tri-fold using PowerPoint.
Making Tri-Folds in PowerPoint
Good news—there are templates! This is the quickest and easiest way to accomplish your goal, as there are several different tri-fold templates available for download online. Browse through the template library, select the one you like, and download it. Once you’ve downloaded it, go ahead and open it up and you’ll be greeted by two slides.
These slides contain boilerplate text and images, but the layout is exactly what you need for a tri-fold brochure. All you need to do is replace the content with your own. Let’s use the first column of slide two as an example.
As you can see, we have three parts here—the header (1), some descriptive bullet points (2), and an image (3). Replacing the header and bullet point content with your own is easy. All you need to do is click the respective text box, delete the boilerplate content, and input your text.
To replace the image, select it and then right-click it. Click “Change Picture” from the menu that appears.
Read the remaining 19 paragraphs
Source: How-To Geek
Chrome for Android Has Dark Mode–Here’s How to Turn it On
The Chrome desktop browser recently got dark mode on both Mac and Windows, but it’s also available on Android. It’s not quite as straightforward as other platforms, however, as it’s currently tucked behind a flag. Here’s how to enable it.
First things first: you’ll need to make sure Chrome is updated in the Play Store. The version should be at least 74, which you can check in Settings > About Chrome. If you don’t have 74 yet, this won’t work. It’s rolling out in stages through the Play Store, but you can also sideload the APK if you’re not into playing the waiting game.
RELATED: How to Sideload Apps on Android
Once everything is updated, fire up Chrome and type the following in the Omnibox:
chrome://flags/#enable-android-night-mode
Tap the dropdown, and set it to “Enabled.” Hit the button at the bottom to restart your browser.
Once Chrome re-opens, tap the menu button and jump back into Settings. There should be a new option called “Dark Mode” in the root menu.
Read the remaining 7 paragraphs
Source: How-To Geek
How to Disable Outlook Add-ins For Troubleshooting
If the Outlook client starts behaving oddly, one of the first things to do is see whether add-ins are causing the problem. Here’s how to disable them so you can tell if they’re the issue.
What are Add-Ins?
Add-ins are extra bits of functionality that software providers create to hook their application into Outlook. You can install add-ins yourself by opening Outlook and clicking Home > Get Add-ins, which will show you some of the add-ins available to you.
However, most add-ins are installed automatically when you install a piece of software on your computer. You may never use the add-ins, or even be aware that they’re there, but they aren’t (usually) malware or anything nasty. They’re intended to make it easier for you to use a product. For example, when you install Adobe’s Acrobat PDF reader, it installs an Outlook add-in that lets you make PDFs out of emails.
There’s usually no need to remove add-ins, but if Outlook starts behaving oddly—especially if it freezes, crashes, or refuses to open—then disabling the add-ins will tell you if they’re the problem.
How to Disable All Add-Ins
Troubleshooting is all about finding the cause of a problem. The best way to do this is to gradually narrow down the possible issues until you’re left with just the cause of the problem. In the case of Outlook problems, this means disabling all the add-ins and, if the problem goes away, re-enabling the add-ins one by one to identify which one is causing the problem. This is particularly true if Outlook is encountering problems at startup.
The easiest way to disable all of the add-ins at once is to open Outlook in Safe Mode. This disables all the add-ins but doesn’t change anything else, so if one (or more) of the add-ins is causing the problem, everything will work as expected in Safe Mode. There are several ways to open Outlook in Safe Mode, depending on what version of Outlook and which version of Windows you’re using. There are a couple of methods that generally should work across all the combinations of supported versions of Outlook and Windows, but if these don’t work then search online for your particular combination.
Method One: Hold the Ctrl Key While Launching Outlook
This works whether you click an icon on your taskbar, desktop, or from the Windows menu. Hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard while clicking the Outlook icon (or double-clicking if your icon is on the desktop). A confirmation message will be displayed.
Read the remaining 25 paragraphs
Source: How-To Geek
Daily News Roundup: New Chrome for Android Attack Spoofs the Omnibox
There’s a new Chrome attack on the horizon, and man, it’s a doozy. Dubbed the “Inception Bar” by the finder, it replicates Chrome’s Omnibox, essentially giving attackers the potential to take control of Chrome completely.
Found by developer James Fisher, the Inception Bar is an incredibly clever phishing attack that leverages the fact that Chrome for Android hides the Omnibox—that’s what the address bar on Chrome is called—as you scroll. Once you scroll down the page a bit, the Omnibox is hidden, and it’s automatically replaced with the spoofed bar. And it looks incredibly convincing—it can even lock the real Omnibox in an overflow container, preventing it from re-appearing once the Inception Bar is in place.
While it doesn’t look like this attack has been found present on the web (yet), Fisher built a working proof of concept on his site, which you can check out at the link. Once you visit the site, scroll down the page a bit, and right after the Omnibox disappears, you’ll see the spoofed Inception Bar—complete with a fake URL—appear in its place. The bar doesn’t work at this point (as it’s just a proof of concept), but it’s not hard to see how with a little bit of additional code it could become a very realistic clone. It’s also worth noting that this is still buggy—closing Chrome and reopening it will display both bars, for example.
Fisher notes in his post that he doesn’t see an easy way to fix this issue, which makes a lot of sense. Since the website itself is generating the faux bar, it will be incredibly hard for the Chome team to find a way to combat the issue.
As for possible ways for users to prevent encountering this issue should it become a legitimate problem, the first one is easy: use a different browser. Any page with the code to generate the Inception Bar will still do so, but it will be hilariously obvious because other browsers don’t use Chrome’s Omnibox. It’s also worth reiterating the fact that this only works on Chrome for Android—Chrome for iOS uses a different interface that prevents this from being any sort of convincing attack. [via Android Police]
In less terrifying news, Apple talks about why it pulled screen times apps from the App Store, Zuck built his wife a nifty “sleep box,” Facebook will be a necropolis in 50 years, Spotify hits 100m subs, and more.
- Apple cracks down on screen time apps: Apple has its own screen time system built into iOS. Recently, it started pulling competing products from the App Store, but the company’s Phil Schiller says it’s not about competition—they were misusing enterprise tools. Interesting. [AppleInsider, 9to5Mac]
- Zuckerberg built his wife a “sleep box”: Zuck said his wife Priscilla has a hard time sleeping—if she wakes in the middle of the night and knows the kids will be awake even in just a few hours, she stays awake. So he built her a box with a subtle light; if the light is off, she knows it’s okay to go back to sleep. If it’s on, she can go ahead and get up. All without looking at a lock, so she doesn’t have the anxiety associated with knowing what time it is. How sweet. [Zuck on Insta]
- Facebook will be a necropolis in 50 years: Researchers have concluded that it will take about 50 years for Facebook’s dead users to outnumber the living ones. It’ll be like Colma, California—where the dead outnumber the living by 1000:1—but online (okay, maybe it won’t be that extreme). [ZDNet]
- Spotify hits a hundy mill: Spotify announced that it now has 100 million paid subscribers. Rollin’ in that dough, y’all. [The Verge]
- TurboTax and H&R Block are hiding free filing from Google Search: Tax filing software wants your money, but it only recently became apparent how badly they really want it—TurboTax and H&R Block were reportedly hiding the free filing tier from Google search results. That means users who were eligible to file for free ended up paying, and that sucks. Shady crap. [ProPublica]
- Apple thought about buying Intel’s smartphone modems business: According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, Apple was considering gobbling up Intel’s smartphone modem business before the Qualcomm settlement. [WSJ]
- Google has stopped publishing distribution numbers: For years, Google has been sharing Android’s monthly adoption numbers. But for the last six months, it’s been totally mum, and that’s troubling. [XDA Developers]
- Nubia built a fan-cooled 8K gaming phone: Have you ever been so deep into a gaming session on your phone that you needed an 8K display and fan-cooling alongside the built-in liquid cooling? Boy, do we have the phone for you. [Engadget]
- Distracted driving penalty fees have risen 10,000%: Distracted driving has become more of an issue over the last ten years than ever before, and as a result, insurance company penalty fees have jumped nearly 10,000 percent—from $2 to $290. Good. Keep ’em coming until people stop texting and driving. [Digital Trends]
Speaking of distracted driving charges, it’s time to talk about the best story from the weekend: a man spent 13 months and thousands of dollars to prove that a hashbrown is indeed not a phone.
Jason Stiber received a $300 distracted driving ticket for eating a McDonald’s hashbrown while driving. An officer mistook the breakfast food as a smartphone and gave Stiber a ticket. But he fought it in court, which revealed that the office was on the 15th hour of a 16-hour shift and his judgment may have been subpar. The case was overturned. Absolutely amazing. [The Washington Post]
Source: How-To Geek
How to Delete Synced Information in Chrome
When you sign in to Chrome using your Google Account, a whole bunch of your personal information gets saved and synced across all your devices, but what if you want to delete everything stored in the cloud? Here’s how to remove your synced information.
RELATED: How to Turn Syncing On or Off in Chrome
How to Delete Synced Information
If you’re already signed in to Chrome and Syncing is turned on, fire up Chrome, click on your profile picture, and then, click “Syncing to.” You can also typechrome://settings/peopleinto the Omnibox and hit Enter.
Under the People heading, click on “Sync and Google services.”
Next, click on “Data from Chrome sync” and a new tab will open.
Read the remaining 21 paragraphs
Source: How-To Geek
Sunday, 28 April 2019
Geek Trivia: Which 1980s Film Was Criticized As Being A Feature Length Commercial?
Which 1980s Film Was Criticized As Being A Feature Length Commercial? |
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Source: How-To Geek
Saturday, 27 April 2019
Geek Trivia: If Alexander Graham Bell Had His Way, We’d Start Telephone Conversations With What?
If Alexander Graham Bell Had His Way, We’d Start Telephone Conversations With What? |
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Source: How-To Geek
Friday, 26 April 2019
Geek Trivia: What Was The Deadliest Airship Disaster Of All Time?
What Was The Deadliest Airship Disaster Of All Time? |
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Source: How-To Geek
How to Generate Random Text in Word
Sometimes, you might need some boilerplate or filler text in a Word document. One solution is to head over to a lorem ipsum or dummy text generator to create that text. Alternatively, you can create the text yourself directly in Word.
Generate Random Text with the Rand Formula
If you want to use random (yet coherent) text as filler content in your Word document, you can use the random content generation formula provided by Word. There are, however, a few notes to make when using this function, depending on how much text you need.
The first method is to simply type in the following formula:
=Rand()
This will automatically generate five paragraphs, each containing three sentences.
You can change how much random text Word generates by filling in what’s between the parentheses. To do that, you’ll use =Rand(x,y), where x is the number of paragraphs and y is the number of sentences in each paragraph. For example, if you want seven paragraphs that each contain four sentences, you’d use the following formula:
=Rand(7,4)
There is a maximum amount you can input at once, though. However, you can just reuse the same formula as many times as necessary.
Generate Lorem Ipsum Text with the Lorem Formula
If you’re feeling a bit more old school, Word can also generate Lorem Ipsum text in the same way. And even if it’s not the tradition you’re after, Lorem Ipsum text has its place. When you use readable English text (like that generated by the rand formula), it can be a distraction if what you want people looking at is the design of a document.
Read the remaining 11 paragraphs
Source: How-To Geek
How to Add or Remove Your Phone Number in Messages or FaceTime
If you have an iPhone and a Mac or iPad, you can link your phone number to your iCloud account to send and receive calls and messages from the same number on both devices.
Add a New or Existing Number on iOS
You’ll need to make sure your devices are signed in to the same iCloud account for everything to sync correctly.
The process is the same for all iOS devices, but you’ll need to enable your existing number on your iPhone first. On your phone, open the Settings app.
Tap on the category marked “Messages.”
Make sure you’re signed in and have iMessage turned on. Scroll down and tap “Send & Receive.”
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Source: How-To Geek
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