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Surprisingly, Docker does not work out of the box with Linux’s “Universal Firewall,” or UFW. They both modify the same iptables configuration, and this can lead to misconfigurations exposing containers that weren’t supposed to be public. Here’s how to fix it. Why Doesn’t Docker Work With UFW? UFW is intended to be a very simple firewall. The problem is that both UFW and Docker try to modify the same underlying firewall rules, and this conflict requires extra setup to sort out if you want to run UFW and Docker together....

Windows 8 has a new File History backup system that replaces Windows 7’s backup tools. However, Windows 8 still contains the Windows 7 backup tools. They’re particularly useful for creating full system image backups. These tools are considered deprecated and probably won’t be there in future versions of Windows. Microsoft would prefer you use the File History and Refresh features instead. Accessing the Windows 7 Backup Tools The Windows 7 backup tools are hidden and won’t appear in searches for “backup” or similar phrases....

Duet ($9.99) has been around for years and has steadily gained new functionality. After you install it, just plug your iPad (or iPhone) into your Mac and start using it as a secondary display. If you want more features, you can subscribe to Duet Air ($1.99 per month), which lets you use your iPad as a wireless display. The Duet Pro subscription ($3.99 per month) enables Apple Pencil support so you can use your iPad as a drawing tablet (one of Sidecar’s best features)....

Mac keyboards are fairly renowned for their simple but elegant functionality. Not only are they highly customizable, but OS X contains an option that let you use the function (fn) key to access the actual function keys (F1, F2, etc.). We’ve made it clear that it is easy to make the most of Mac keyboards. You can customize keyboard and application shortcuts to bend the system to your will. You can use it to quickly jump from virtual desktop to virtual desktop, and if you go between OS X and Windows, you can remap your OS X keys so they work more like Windows, and vice-versa, so as to avoid confusion and incorrect key presses....

Yesterday Microsoft announced the release candidate of Internet Explorer 9, which is very close to the final product. Here’s a screenshot tour of the most interesting new stuff, as well as answers to your questions. The most important question is should you install this version? And the answer is absolutely yes. Even if you don’t use IE, it’s better to have a newer, more secure version on your PC....

The Task Manager in Windows has always been a useful place to view and manage running applications and services. It’s been redesigned for Windows 8 and now displays much more information and also allows you to perform basic administrative tasks. With the added functionality, you may start to use the Task Manager more often in Windows 8. We will show you how to add the Task Manager to the Taskbar and to the Start screen in Windows 8 to allow for quicker and easier access....

They’re there, lurking in your image files. But have you ever wondered what are image channels are? And what do they have to do with RGB and CMYK? Here’s the answer. The channels panel in Photoshop is one of the most disused and misunderstood parts of the program. But images have color channels with or without Photoshop. Read on to find out what color channels are, what RGB and CMYK are, and learn a little bit more about how image files work....

Snapchat announced today that it has released a web version of Snapchat, available at web.snapchat.com, which can be used to message and call friends from a desktop or laptop computer. It’s only officially compatible with Google Chrome right now, but it does support Chat Reactions and Chat Reply. Lenses, the augmented reality filters for videos and photos, are coming “soon.” Play Video Now that Snapchat is officially available outside of Android, iPhone, and iPad for the first time, it’s much closer to Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and other cross-platform messaging services....

If you’re just getting started with Android, its customizability can seem a bit daunting. We’ll walk you through customizing your Android home-screen, taking advantage of widgets, and getting third-party launchers with more features. The screenshots for this article were taken on Android 4.2. If you’re using an older device, the exact process will look a little different, but you should be able to follow along anyway. Wallpapers & Live Backgrounds To set a wallpaper for your home screen, long-press the screen....

We’ve been told many times how important backups are, although we may not realize it until it’s too late and our data’s gone. You can backup your PC’s data to external media, but free online backup services provide useful redundancy that could save your data. We’ve discussed cloud computing previously, or running a web or internet-based application from a major provider like Google or Microsoft, but the “cloud” could also be used to provide an offsite location for your data backups....

You might have noticed assistantd and assistant_service while using Activity Monitor and wondered what they are. Well, don’t panic: these process are both part of macOS, and help make features like Siri and dictation possible. This article is part of our ongoing series explaining various processes found in Activity Monitor, like kernel_task, hidd, mdsworker, installd, WindowServer, blued, launchd, backup, opendirectoryd, and many others. Don’t know what those services are? Better start reading!...

So What is the Kernel? A kernel is the lowest level of easily replaceable software that interfaces with the hardware in your computer. It is responsible for interfacing all of your applications that are running in “user mode” down to the physical hardware, and allowing processes, known as servers, to get information from each other using inter-process communication (IPC). Different Types of Kernels There are, of course, different ways to build a kernel and architectural considerations when building one from scratch....

A few days ago, I got a strange Facebook message from my uncle. It was clearly out of character for him, so I knew something was up: his account had been compromised. Here’s what to do if this happens to you or someone you know. Let’s Talk About Getting “Hacked” The term “hacked” gets thrown around a lot—pretty loosely, to be honest—and has become the popular term for any time an account becomes compromised....

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite alternatives to Window’s native file explorer. Now we’re back to highlight your suggestions, tips, and tricks. Reading the comments it becomes readily apparent that if you’ve taken the time to replace Windows Explorer with something else then you’ve really done your homework. Readers were quite passionate about their favorite Explorer alternatives. Shawn Murdock gives us a detailed run down on why he loves XYplorer:...

Once a week we round up some of the emails we’ve answered and share the solutions with the rest of you; this week we’re looking at overheating laptops, upgrading to a bigger HDD, and grabbing ringtones from YouTube videos. How Can I Cool My Laptop? Dear Hot Pants, My year old HP laptop has become scorching hot to the touch. I haven’t had any heat-related shut downs yet but given how much hotter it feels than it did even six months ago it seems like one must be around the corner....

Once a week we round up some of the questions that come pouring into the Ask HTG mailbox and share the solutions with the rest of you. This week we’re looking at installing a second optical disc drive, awesome iPad RSS applications, and how to thoroughly remove apps in Windows. How Can I Install a Secondary Optical Drive? Dear Burning, I’ve been looking at refurbished computers to replace our 5+ year old Dell....

AWS’s billing is notoriously complicated, and misconfigurations in your network can lead to excess data or resource use that can pile up unnoticed. AWS provides many solutions for debugging your bill before it hits your wallet. What Is Cost Explorer? AWS provides a lot of services related to billing, but the most useful is the Cost Explorer. While the main billing home page provides a general overview of your bill, Cost Explorer allows you to drill down into exactly what you’re paying for....

Here are the options for the extension. You can quickly customize how Hide Tabbar works to make it fit in nicely with your other keyboard shortcuts. If you love the idea of an auto-hide feature, then you can enable that as well with a custom time setting. As you can see there are a lot of keyboard shortcut combo options available. We decided to experiment and shorten things up a bit more on our system by setting the “hide tab bar trigger” using only the Page Up Key without a combo (which worked perfectly well)....

You’ve built your Docker image, pushed it to your registry and started a new container in production. Everything’s working as you head home for the day but you’re met with outage reports when you come back next morning. Your container’s still running but it’s not serving requests. This scenario might be uncomfortably familiar to operations teams that work with Docker. Here’s how to use Docker’s health check feature to get accurate data on the availability of your services....