Good portraits are one of the hardest things to shoot with your camera’s kit lens. No matter how hard you try, you just won’t be able to get the images from an 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens to look like the kind of portraits that you see in magazines or online. This is because the maximum aperture of your kit lens is just too narrow to get the shallow depth of field needed to blur the background to nothing....
Transparency Mode on the AirPods Pro and Max The AirPods Pro is Apple’s first pair of noise-canceling earbuds. Active noise cancelation (or ANC for short) uses microphones to monitor the ambient noise around you. The earbuds then do their best to mask these frequencies or “cancel” out the noise. Noise-canceling earbuds are usually of the in-ear variety since a better seal with your ear means that less noise will get in passively....
Yes, RAM Speed Matters Every program you run gets loaded into RAM from your SSD or hard drive, which are comparatively much slower. Once it’s loaded, it usually stays there for a while, being accessed by the CPU whenever it needs it. Improving the speed at which your RAM runs can directly improve your CPU’s performance in certain situations, though there is a point of diminishing returns when the CPU simply can’t churn through more memory fast enough....
It’s easy to focus on how Windows 8’s new interface doesn’t feel at home on a traditional desktop PC or laptop. But that’s only one part of Windows 8 – the Windows 8 desktop includes a variety of useful improvements. If you’re a desktop user, you owe it to yourself to look over the improvements and consider upgrading. If Microsoft hadn’t removed the traditional Start menu and added a new interface, we’d all be considering Windows 8’s desktop an upgrade....
We’ve covered using Google Drive on Linux with third-party software, but why bother jumping through those hoops? You can use a cloud storage service that officially supports Linux instead – several of Google Drive’s competitors do. Google may be leaving Linux users out, but other services like Dropbox, Ubuntu One, SpiderOak, and Wuala don’t ignore Linux users. They even offer more storage and other useful features, such as local encryption of your files....
Microsoft’s new Outlook.com is the successor to Hotmail – all Hotmail users will eventually be migrated to Outlook.com. Outlook.com is a modern webmail system that offers some useful features, including some not found in Gmail. If you have a @hotmail.com address, don’t worry – you’ll be able to use Outlook.com with @hotmail.com addresses, too. To get started with Outlook.com or create an @outlook.com email address, head over to Outlook.com....
You’ve got questions and we’ve got answers. Today we highlight how to master the new Office interface, USB boot a computer with outdated BIOS, and snap windows to preset locations. Learning the New Office Ribbon Dear Where the Hell, I feel silly asking this (in light of how long the new Office interface has been out) but my company finally got around to upgrading from Windows XP and Office 2000 so the new interface it totally new to me....
Be Inc created BeOS in the mid-1990s as a super-modern operating system, but it failed to catch on. Over 20 years later, the open-source Haiku OS project is picking up where it left off, and there’s a new beta release available. The Haiku project has been developing an open-source continuation of BeOS for years, based partially on some BeOS code, but much of it has been built from scratch. Haiku R1 Beta 4 is now available, as the first major release in a year and a half....
The Pi Shortage Pricing Changes the Equation If the Raspberry Pi was consistently in stock and selling for the MSRP, the pricing for the Raspberry Pi 4 boards would range from $35 for the base 1GB model up to $75 for the 8GB model. That sweet $35 price point is one of the best things about the Raspberry Pi and exactly why the Pi has become the foundation of so many projects....
A critical remote code execution vulnerability has been found in log4j, a very popular logging tool used by most of the industry. It’s extremely severe, affecting nearly every server running Java, and is very simple to exploit, so you will want to update and mitigate the issue ASAP. How Does This Work? The bug, tracked by CVE-2021-44228, likely affects almost any Java application using log4j, which is quite a few considering how ubiquitous it is....
But is the extra cost worth it? In this article, we’re going to break down the main benefits and drawbacks you can expect when debating if you should add a touchscreen to your laptop or desktop, and give you all the data you’ll need to make an informed decision about whether or not the technology is right for you. A Big Hit to Battery Life One of the first, and most notable drawbacks with touchscreen PCs and laptops is that, even if you’re not using the touch features 100% of the time, the device will still pull down a considerable amount of extra power from your battery to support the capacitive screen....
Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-drive grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader Yoosiba wanted to know if hard drive orientation matters: What change in longevity, if any, does the orientation produce? Let’s dig into the responses to see. What impact on a hard drive does a vertical position have? Does it affect the life? Is it more prone to errors?...
Once a week we round up some great reader tips and share them with everyone. This week we’re looking at syncing folders from Android to Dropbox, GPS tagging your photos, and using your Android or iOS device as a clinometer. Sync Your Android Media with Dropbox Steve writes in with the following tip: We’re all for redundant backups and you’ve certainly pulled it off here, Steve. Nice tip! GPS Tag Your Photos After the Fact with GeoSetter Mark writes in with a photography trick:...
Of course, there’s the question of whether you want a Facebook camera in your home, but as long as you’re comfortable with that, this is an absolutely absurd deal. You rarely come across a relatively new gadget for $180 off the regular price. The Portal Plus supports Messenger, WhatsApp, or Zoom to chat with people. The inclusion of Zoom lets you expand beyond just Facebook-owned messaging apps. The person you’re speaking with doesn’t need to have a Portal for you to chat with them either....
Photolithography Transistors are now so impossibly small that manufacturers can’t build them using normal methods. While precision lathes and even 3D printers can make incredibly intricate creations, they usually top out at micrometer levels of precision (that’s about one thirty-thousandth of an inch) and aren’t suitable for the nanometer scales at which today’s chips are built. Photolithography solves this issue by removing the need to move complicated machinery around very precisely....
Apple’s Launchpad is a handy way to quickly launch apps on your Mac. By default, it usually sits in your Dock, but it can be removed. If you need Launchpad and can’t find it, it’s easy to add it to the Dock again. Here’s how. Launchpad was first introduced in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion back in 2010. If you have an older Mac that you’ve upgraded—or if you’ve removed Launchpad by dragging off the Dock—you might not see Launchpad where you expect it....
Maybe you’ve always wanted more of yourself. Or maybe you’ve always thought you could be your own best friend! Regardless of your reasons, here’s how to duplicate yourself with some clever photograph tricks and either Photoshop or GIMP. Taking Great Source Images The best way to get good source images is to take your own. This is best served by using a tripod, a static location, and manual camera settings....
If you’ve run the ls command in Bash, you’ll notice that the directories and files you see are colorized according to their type. You can customize your own color scheme to choose different text colors, background colors, and formatting like bold and underline. How This Works The color scheme is stored in the LS_COLORS variable. To view your current color scheme, you can tell the Bash to print the contents of the variable:...
If you’re an RSS subscriber, you’ll soon notice that we’re making a few changes. Why? It’s time to simplify our system, while providing you a little more control over which articles you want to see. The point, of course, is that people like different things, and that’s OK. What’s not so great is getting complaints—Linux users are always whining about Windows posts, and Windows users are whining when we write Linux posts....
RELATED: What Are iPhone Shortcuts and How Do I Use Them? Stop Doubling Up on Notifications To disable this somewhat annoying notification, make sure to uncheck the “Notify When Run” toggle when finalizing setting up your notification. This is in addition to the “Ask Before Running” option, which allows automations to run without any prompt from you. If you already have some automations set up, you’ll need to edit them by launching the Shortcuts app, tapping the Automation tab, then tapping on the automation you want to edit....
