Technology

NVIDIA made a splash as the first major press conference of CES 2019. In addition to a new and mercifully cheap addition to its top-of-the-line RTX graphics card family, the company announced RTX-series chips for gaming laptops. Both will be here before the end of the month.

The RTX 2060 card is based on the same Turing GPU as the RTX 2070 and 2080 cards that debuted last year, but with a much more attainable price. At $350 for NVIDIA’s self-branded card (a bit higher or lower for tweaked designs from partner manufacturers like Gigabyte and EVGA), it’s less than half the price of the most expensive option, and this model will be making its way to the interior of many a gamer’s desktop PC. It should also be a popular option for pre-built models. Even more frugal cards, undoubtedly including 2050 and 2050ti variants, should come later this year.

NVIDIA says the RTX 2060 is more powerful than the GTX 1070ti (first released in November 2017) for most modern games. It comes with 6GB of GDDR6 RAM and can handle five gigarays of computation per second. It will be available starting on January 15th.

In addition to the desktop side, NVIDIA also pulled the wraps off of the first laptops to feature RTX-branded chips. Laptops from major manufacturers with RTX 2060, 2070, and 2080 GPUs will begin hitting the market on January 29th. These include both standard models and those with NVIDIA’s Max-Q technology, allowing for thinner and more power-efficient designs with some extra special sauce in the thermal management. 40 RTX-packing laptops are in the works, among them 18 Max-Q laptops, including an update to the popular MSI G65 Stealth Thin, which Review Geek recommended highly. Expect RTX cards to be limited to the most expensive laptops, at least for the first few months.

The biggest draw for the RTX line of desktop and mobile cards is ray tracing capability, an option for super-realistic lighting and reflections. Early RTX buyers were discouraged at the performance hit in brand new games when RTX lighting was enabled, often driving games down below the magical 60 frames-per-second mark even on massive powerhouse desktops. NVIDIA’s been working on the problem and says that improved drivers featuring DLSS (Deep Learning Super-Sampling) on more compatible games will boost that performance.

According to the presentation, DLSS should close the performance gap to within one or two frames per second of the game running with RTX disabled. DLSS combines upscaled sampling with NVIDIA’s proprietary AI technology to smooth out the rough patches of the GPU-intensive ray tracing process. We should see more games support it at launch as RTX ray tracing becomes standard on new high-end PC games.

1. Internet Explorer
2. Firefox
3. Safari
4. Netscape

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New for 2019, Lutron has unveiled a fan control smart switch as part of the existing Caseta product line. It will be available starting in March for $80, with a matching Pico remote priced at $42.

Currently, Lutron Caseta offers smart dimmer switches, on/off switches, and plug-in outlet switches, but users will now be able to add their ceiling fans into the mix by controlling their fans remotely from their phones (or by schedule), as well as the option to control the fan speed.

The switch looks very similar to Lutron’s existing Caseta dimmer switch, with the only real difference cosmetically being the small fan icons on the on and off buttons. So they should fit in perfectly with your existing Caseta-filled home.

The only downside is that your ceiling fan must be one that’s controlled by an on/off wall switch, as that’s what gets replaced when you install the fan control smart switch. It will also require a neutral wire for installation.

Your Apple Watch might be pretty durable, all things considered, but like all devices with glass screens it lives a dangerous life. Keep your Apple Watch screen scratch free with these great screen protectors.

We’ve looked at a mixture of screen protectors for the Apple Watch Series 4 and Series 3. After all, while it’s great to have the latest technology, the Apple Watch Series 3 is still a great device and often available for much less than the newer Watch.

Here are the best Apple Watch screen protectors for every budget and requirement.

The JETech 2-Pack Screen Protector for Apple Watch is a screen protector that focuses solely on the flat area of your Apple Watch. That means it doesn’t cover the full screen but it covers the important part.

It’s made from high-quality 0.2mm thick premium tempered glass with rounded edges. It promises to resist scratches up to 9H which works out harder than a knife blade—finally, a watch that can live as dangerously as you do. Despite such protection, you still get the same level of responsiveness on the touch screen as you did before. For $7, it’s a bargain for two screen protectors as well as a cleaning cloth.

Film protection is a decent alternative to glass protection, depending on what feels most comfortable for you. The RinoGear Apple Watch Screen Protector 6-Pack means there’s plenty of room for readjustment as you have multiple different screen protectors to get things just right.

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The Consumer Electronics Show happens every year in early January, and it’s hard to keep up with all the gadget news during CES. But what exactly is CES, can you go, and why should you care?

CES is the “Consumer Electronics Show.” It’s held in Las Vegas each year in early January. The first CES happened more than fifty years ago.

More than 182,000 people attend CES, with more than 4,400 companies showing off their products. That’s according to the Consumer Technology Association, which runs CES. Individuals and companies come from all over the world to attend.

The show is enormous, and it sprawls out across the city of Las Vegas. There are two massive show floors covering the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) and Sands Expo center, making up more than 2.75 million square feet of space in total. On top of that, many companies have private suites at the hotels where they show off their products by invitation only.

Sorry! Despite the name, CES isn’t actually for consumers. It’s an industry convention centered around consumer electronics, not an electronics show for consumers. It brings together everyone from technology journalists to big companies, startups, suppliers, purchasers, and other businesses.

To register and gain admission, you have to convince the Consumer Technology Association of your industry credentials.

In the past, we’ve seen people hawking admissions badges on the Las Vegas strip, trying to sell tourists on the opportunity to walk the show floor. But the convention has stepped up security recently and now prints photos on those badges in an attempt to stop people from passing them around.

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1. Ernest Rutherford
2. Albert Einstein
3. Hans Geiger
4. Marie Curie

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It’s hard to buy gifts for people, especially when you don’t know or understand their interests. But there’s a good chance that you’re shopping for a food lover. Why not give the gift of oils and spices?

Just think, the food lover that you’re shopping for probably eats food pretty often. In fact, it’s fair to assume that they’re eating food every single day—shocking, we know. That means that your food lover probably runs through a lot of their most important ingredients: oil and spice.

Oils and spices may not sound like the most exciting gifts, but they’re only boring if you buy something that’s extremely common or outside of your food lover’s interests. For example, if you buy a bunch of curry powder for somebody that only cooks Italian food, then they’re probably going to be disappointed. But if you buy a unique cooking oil with a high smoke point for a baker, then there’s a good chance that they’ll get a lot of use out of the gift.

This may sound silly, but a high-quality, pure cooking oil can make a great gift for any cook or food lover. Just think, almost everything that you eat is cooked with an oil or fat. If somebody bought you a premium bottle of olive oil, then you’d probably use it every day, and think about what a thoughtful gift it was every time.

Yes, you can blindly buy somebody a nice bottle of olive oil, they’d probably appreciate it. But maybe you should consider your food lover’s interests before buying them anything.

If they eat a lot of salads or make a lot of Italian food, then they’d probably love some premium olive oil, or even some infused olive oil. But if they bake a lot of their food (pastries, meats, etc), then maybe you should consider buying them a unique cooking oil that has a high smoke point. It could really impress them, and maybe even change the way that they do their cooking.

These are our favorite cooking oils:

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Online research is a crucial skill, whether you’re working on an academic paper, writing a blog post, or just trying to learn something new about your houseplants. But it’s not always easy when you’re tackling a complicated or niche topic.

Organizing your information can help you save time, and it can save you from forgetting or misremembering anything that you’ve learned from your research. You should keep a link to every webpage that you visit from the start to the very end of your research. It’s best to write down a little bit of information for each link so that you remember why you saved them and what kind of information that you could take from them. You should also save any PDF’s or images related to your research because you can use them as valuable primary sources.

If you need to organize a lot of data across multiple devices, consider using a note-taking app like Evernote, OneNote, or Google Keep. They’re all great for keeping track of web pages, PDF’s, photos, and whatever else you need for your big project.

If you’re just trying to knock out a short essay or learn something about DIY woodworking, then you probably don’t need to grab a dedicated note-taking app unless you already use one. You might find it easier to cut and paste web pages into a Word or Google Doc file and save any PDFs or images to your local or cloud storage drive. Just make sure that you keep your files organized and take notes for all of your sources.

In the end, you’ll probably only use a handful of the links that you save. But if you’re publishing a blog post or writing an essay, you need to be able to double-check and cite all of your sources. Otherwise, you might end up creating a lot of extra work for yourself later.

When researching, it’s tempting to dive straight into the first exciting thing that you find. But you should try to start as broad as possible. Otherwise, you might miss out on some fascinating pieces of information and end up with a poor understanding of your topic.

That’s why you should try to find a lot of information on your topic, more than you think that you’ll need. A good way to start broad is to search Google for general terms related to your topic. If you’re researching the difference between sunflowers and tulips, then you should learn a bit of information about each flower before going deeper.

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1. Sir Patrick Stewart
2. Sir Terry Pratchett
3. Sir Ridley Scott
4. Sir Francis Drake

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Only Windows 10 Professional users can pause Windows updates today, but that’s about to change. Windows 10 Home users will soon be able to pause updates for up to seven days.

This feature should arrive for everyone when the next release of Windows 10, codenamed 19H1, is finished. It should be released sometime around April 2019. Paul Thurrott first noticed this change, and it’s something Microsoft didn’t mention in any Windows Insider blog posts.

Of course, there’s a limit: You can only pause updates for seven days at a time. To do so, you’ll just head to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update. There’s now a “Pause Updates for 7 days” option here, and it works on Windows 10 Home.

Windows 10 won’t install any updates while it’s paused. However, when you unpause updates—either when the seven day period expires or if you click the “Resume updates” button—Windows will immediately check for updates and install them.

This isn’t a way to permanently avoid updates. You can only avoid them for seven days at a time, and then you have to update. But that’s still a huge improvement, and it means you can tell Windows not to bug you about updates for a while. If you’re on a trip or busy with something, you can get a respite from updates for up to a week. That’s huge!

Windows 10 Professional users still have more control, including the ability to pause updates for up to 35 days instead of just seven and other options to delay feature and quality updates. But Windows 10 Home users finally have more control over updates, too.

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Slideshows are, more often than not, accompanied by a great deal of speaking, so it’s no surprise that you might sometimes need to pause the audio during the presentation. PowerPoint allows you to do so with the click of a button.

Unless your presentation is intended for viewing without a speaker (like a slideshow full of images for an audience to observe during a wedding), there will likely be a point when you need to pause the audio to answer questions, speak longer on a subject than intended, and so on. Luckily, pausing audio is extremely simple.

Open up the presentation with which you’ll be working. Go ahead and insert your audio if you haven’t done so already.

Once you’re ready, begin your presentation. To do so, select “From Beginning” in the “Start Slide Show” section of the “Slide Show” tab. You can also hit the F5 key.

On the slide that contains the audio file, you’ll find the audio icon.

If you hover your mouse over the audio icon, a progress bar for the audio file appears, along with a volume slider and play/pause button. Click the pause button to pause the audio.

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2018 Christmas is gone, but the holiday shopping season isn’t. It is still a decent time to find amazing sales and even giveaways. As it happens, there is a real good deal. During the event, all How-To Geek readers are eligible to score a giveaway license of VideoProc to unlock all features in version 3.2.0. Not only that, but there’s also around 55% off lifetime license which supports lifelong free upgrade and tech support.

VideoProc is a one-stop HD and 4K video processing program developed by Digiarty Software – the company which creates well-loved WinXDVD family of products. Although this is the debut on How-To Geek, VideoProc is a full-fledged program integrated with fully hardware accelerated video processing (e.g., transcoding, resizing, and editing), DVD conversion, video/music download, and screen/webcam recording.

Download VideoProc V3.2.0 with full license code >

Apart from above mentioned deals, Digiarty also holds “Win Your Holiday Wishlist” activity with prizes including GoPro HERO7 Black, DJI Spark drone, Canon EOS M100, Bose QuietComfort 35 wireless headphones II, and $400 eBay Gift Card. Visit the page below to win 2 items of your choice:

Win Video Gears: GoPro, Drone and More >

You can watch the following video to learn more about this holiday wishlist giveaway.

In the video, there’re also 4 simple yet useful tips to help process and edit GoPro videos with VideoProc. But this doesn’t mean that VideoProc is only for GoPro footages. It can read and process videos shot with smartphones, tablets, action cameras, digital cameras, drones, and other devices of all brands.

Let’s dive deeper into the features of VideoProc

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Microsoft has been busy adding new tools to Office over the last few years, and Forms is one you’ll find useful if you want to create a survey, poll, quiz, or questionnaire. Let’s take a look at how it works.

Forms is an online-only tool that’s free to use, though you will need to sign in with a free Microsoft account. You can export all the responses to the form into Excel (also free to use online) for viewing, filtering, and reporting. If you’ve never used it, open up the Forms site and click either the big green “Get Started” button in the middle of the screen or the “Sign in” link in the top right. Sign in to your Microsoft account or create yourself a new account.

Once you’ve done that you’ll see a splash screen if you’ve not created a form before, which you can go ahead and close.

Forms is pretty intuitive to use, but there are some bells and whistles hidden away if you know where to look. We’re going to keep it simple by creating a basic questionnaire, so click “New Form” to start.

This opens a blank form. Click “Untitled form” and type in a name for your questionnaire.

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The iPhone and iPad are great for consuming news, whether that’s current affairs or the latest on your favorite sports team. The iPad, in particular, is ideally suited to kicking back and reading, and we’re going to tell you how to make the most of it.

With the App Store filled to the brim with new apps for your iPhone or iPad, it can be difficult to know which to download and in some cases, buy. With Apple offering its own news reading app, Apple News, do you even need to try a third-party solution at all? We’d suggest that yes, you do, and we’re going to tell you about some of the apps we use to keep up to speed on what is going on around us, across many different categories.

Some of these apps will be free, and some will require a fee. We’ll let you decide whether reading news is worth paying for.

Let’s jump in!

Feedly is an app and service that gained a lot of traction when Google closed down its Google Reader RSS service a few years ago, and with good reason. A free Feedly account gets you much the same functionality as the erstwhile Google Reader, and there are apps available for the iPhone and iPad that make reading a pleasurable experience. You can add your own sources of news, and Feedly will also offer up some suggestions if that’s something you’re into.

A free Feedly account gets you access to news from up to 100 sources as well as the iPhone, iPad, and web apps, with ads inserted into your feeds. If you want to get rid of the ads, as well as add unlimited sources, consider the $5.41 per month Feedly Pro subscription. If you read a lot, it’s worth it, and there are lots more features thrown in, too.

Download Feedly from the App Store

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If you have an Echo Show or Echo Spot, it can be paired with a compatible Wi-Fi cam to bring up the video feed on the display. If you’re in the market for a Wi-Fi cam and want it to work with Alexa, here are the best ones for the job

If you’re already knee-deep into the Amazon smarthome ecosystem and want to start equipping your home with Wi-Fi cams that are compatible with Alexa, you really can’t go with Amazon’s own Cloud Cam.

There’s really nothing too special about it compared to the competition, but seeing that it’s Amazon’s own concoction, you’ll know right off the bat that you’re getting the best seamless integration with it and your Echo devices.

It’ll work great with your Echo Show or Echo Dot, and it comes with night vision, And two-way talk. Plus, as with all cameras on this list, it’ll record in full 1080p HD.

It comes with 24 hours of video storage, but if you need more than that (as well as some more advanced features, you can upgrade to a subscription that will give you person detection (as opposed to just typical motion detection), as well as motion zones.

It’s a bit more expensive, but if you’re looking for Wi-Fi cam that you can set outside, Logitech’s Circle 2 is a great option.

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A sharp photo is one where the subject is in focus with clear lines, crisp details, and no (unintended) blurring. It’s generally a sign of a high-quality, technically excellent image. Here’s how to make sure you always take sharp photos.

RELATED: What Does It Mean for a Photo to be “Sharp?”

I’ve explained in detail before what makes a photo sharp, but now we’re going to look at the practical side of things. To recap, sharpness is a combination of:

• An in-focus subject
• A static camera
• The properties of the lens you’re using

The photo above is an example of a sharp photo I took. Notice how you can see every one of Kat’s eyelashes. Now, let’s look at it in the real world.

One of the major factors affecting sharpness is the properties of the lenses you’re using. One of the reasons professional lenses cost so much more (and are so heavy) is that they’re designed to be as sharp as possible—and that takes a lot of work. If you’re trying to take a super-sharp shot with an old, cheap lens, you’re going to struggle; the lens isn’t capable of resolving the details clearly.

Similarly, your camera has a limit on how much it can resolve. If the details you’re trying to capture are projected smaller than the pixels on the sensor, then they won’t show. Here’s another portrait with a close up on the model’s eyes.

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Google Drive has a pretty bad spam problem, and it seems Google doesn’t care. Spammers can share files that automatically appear in your Drive, and there’s no way to stop it.

Update 1/4/19 10:10 AM CTS: Google got back to us with a statement saying that changes are coming to Drive’s sharing features and they’re “making it a priority.” Here’s the statement in full:

“For the vast majority of users, the default sharing permissions in Drive work as intended. Unfortunately, this was not the case for this user and we sincerely apologize for her experience. In light of this issue, we are evaluating changes to our spam, abuse, and blocking features that will prevent this kind of activity from taking place on Drive. In the interim, users who are experiencing similar issues can remove themselves from the folder, and the folder should not reappear in either “My Drive” or “Shared with Me” unless they revisit it.” — Google Spokesperson

Google Drive’s sharing system is the problem. Since it doesn’t offer any sharing acceptance, all files and folders shared with your account are automatically available to you in Drive—they just show up. To make matters worse, if you only have “View” permission, you can’t remove yourself from the share. It’s a mess. And to make matters even worse, this is far from a new problem, but Google still hasn’t done anything to fix it.

Here’s the scenario: a spammer (or anyone else) shares a file or folder with you. This file or folder immediately shows up in the “Quick Access” area of your Drive, as well as in the “Shared with you” section. You can’t stop this from happening—you don’t have to accept the share; it shows up whether you want it or not. The good news is that the files aren’t automatically added to your Drive, and are thus not downloaded or synced automatically to your devices.

Now, you can right-click on the item and choose “Remove” to prevent it from showing up in the “Shared with me” section, but it will continue to show up in the Quick Access area and search results. If you accidentally open the file or folder, it will be added back into your Drive on the web.

There are a few scenarios in which this is a pretty big issue. The first, as mentioned earlier, is for spam. Users can (and will) get bombarded with crap they don’t want—all the time.

The second issue may be even more common: when you don’t want to be part of a shared file/folder any longer. Since there’s no way to remove yourself from the share, you’re stuck with it. This can be especially troubling if the shared file or folder is from an ex with whom you no longer have or want contact.

1. Playstation
2. NES
3. Atari 2600
4. Sega Genesis

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The next version of Windows 10 will support passwordless Microsoft accounts. Microsoft will just text a code to your phone number when you sign in. It’s all part of Microsoft’s stated goal: “a world without passwords.”

This feature is available now in Insider build 18309. It will be stable and available to everyone in the next version of Windows 10, codenamed 19H1 and available sometime around April 2019. Passwordless logins debuted for Windows 10 Home back in Insider build 18305, but are now available on all editions of Windows.

Here’s how it works: You can now create a Microsoft account without a password. Instead, you just provide your phone number. When you sign into Windows 10 with that phone number, Microsoft will text you a code that you enter on the sign-in screen. After that, you can use Windows Hello to set up a PIN, fingerprint, or face login method. You never have to type a password—your account doesn’t even have one! And you don’t have to enter a code sent via text every time you sign in, either. You only have to receive a code on your phone when you sign in on a new PC.

To use this feature on the latest Insider builds of Windows, you’ll need a Microsoft account without a password:

If you don’t already have a password-less phone number account, you can create one in a mobile app like Word on your iOS or Android device to try it out. Simply go to Word and sign up with your phone number by entering your phone number under “Sign in or sign up for free”.

This latest build also features a streamlined PIN reset experience for Windows Hello and improvements to the Narrator.

RELATED: Windows 10’s Next Update Will Make Your PC Faster, Thanks to Better Spectre Fixes

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The Developer tab is not displayed on the Ribbon in Office apps by default, but it’s easy to add and gives you access to advanced features like macros, ActiveX controls, and form controls to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Visio. Here’s how to set it up.

When would you need the Developer tab? You can use the Developer tab to:

• Write or run macros
• Use XML commands
• Use ActiveX controls
• Create applications to use with Microsoft Office programs
• Use form controls in Microsoft Excel
• Work with the ShapeSheet in Microsoft Visio
• Create new shapes and stencils in Microsoft Visio

Once you add the Developer tab to the Ribbon, it will remain visible unless you clear the check box or reinstall a Microsoft Office program.

In this example, we’ll demonstrate how to add the Developer tab to the Ribbon in Word. However, the steps are the same in Excel and PowerPoint. Note that you will have to enable the Developer tab in each app separately.

Open the “File” menu.

Click “Options.”

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