Technology

Siri has a bad reputation among many, but it’s perfectly usable for most tasks, and if you’re knee-deep in the Apple ecosystem it doesn’t matter how much better a competing digital assistant is because everything ties into Siri. That means that you’re going to need to use it, and that’s pretty easy to do when you know how. Let’s jump in.

Just as is so often the case, this process starts in the Settings app. Launch the app and scroll down before tapping “Siri & Search.”

Beneath the “Ask Siri” heading you will see three toggles. We’d suggest turning them all on:

• Listen for “Hey Siri”: This lets you use the phrase “Hey Siri” to get the digital assistant’s attention.
• Press Side Button for Siri: This lets you press and hold the side button on iPhone X models or the home button on older models to activate Siri.
• Allow Siri when Locked: This lets you invoke Siri via either the side/home button or voice while your iPhone is locked.

You may not like the way Siri sounds by default, but there are multiple voices to choose from depending on the language selected. To start, open the Settings app and tap “Siri & Search.”

Tap “Siri Voice.”

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A gaming PC needs a gaming mouse. OK, OK, it’s true: you can play PC games with a crusty old mouse if you want. But they’re certainly more fun with a shiny new “gaming-grade mouse.”

If you’re just getting into PC gaming, or you’re an old hand looking for a competitive advantage, these are the best options on the market as of late 2018. Logitech’s flexible and surprisingly affordable G502 Hero gets our pick for most people, and we’ve also chosen Logitech’s reliable designs for wireless and budget gamers. But if you’re looking for something specifically for shooters or MOBAs, or you need an ambidextrous mouse for a left-hander, we’ve got you covered for these picks as well.

The G502 Hero will meet all of the needs for most gamers. It uses a segmented body design that’s comfortable, while still giving you access to many more buttons than either a standard PC mouse or a more streamlined “shooter” design. (The extra bindable buttons come in handy for games like Overwatch, where you have multiple weapons, abilities, and ultimates to juggle.) Two rocker buttons and two DPI adjustment buttons, plus the usual two thumb buttons and a “sniper” button for temporary sensitivity adjustments, give a wide array of options without making them overwhelming or hard to distinguish like an MMO mouse.

On top of that you have an frankly insanely powerful 16,000 DPI sensor, adjustable weights in the bottom housing to change feel of the mouse in your hand, and RGB lighting (if you really must). All that for about a $75 street price, handily sliding in beneath some of the more exorbitant gamer mice prices out there. For doing an admirable job with any game and fitting into most players’ budgets, the G502 gets our top pick.

Razer probably has the best marketing of any of the PC gaming accessory suppliers, and it tends to be a bit…much. But in the case of the Basilisk, the company’s boasting is entirely justified. “Shooter” mice tend to focus on essentials, with two big, thumb-friendly buttons on the side (typically bound to melee and throwables). The Basilisk has this, plus a subtle and removable “sniper button” for temporary sensitivity shifts.

Its position at just a little reach for the thumb is ideal, and unlikely to be hit by accident in the heat of battle. The mouse’s scroll wheel can be micro-adjusted for smoother scrolling or more “clicky” operation, an excellent feature for gamers who bind weapon selection to the wheel.

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Excel’s FREQUENCY function lets you count how many times values fall within specific ranges. For example, if you had the ages of a group of people in your spreadsheet, you could figure out how many people fall into different age ranges. Let’s take a look at how to calculate frequency distributions and, with a slight modification, frequency percentages.

Excel’s FREQUENCY array function lets you calculate a dataset’s frequency distribution. You provide the numerical dataset (that’s the actual cells you use as your source), a list of bin thresholds (that’s the categories into which you’re sorting data), and then press Ctrl+Shift+Enter.

So, how might you use it? Well, here’s a quick example. Say you’re a teacher with a spreadsheet that shows all your student’s numerical test scores. You could use the FREQUENCY function to figure out how many students got an A, B, C, D, or F. The numerical test scores are the dataset and the letter grades form your bin thresholds.

You would apply the FREQUENCY function to a list of student’s test scores, and the function would count how many students got which letter grade by comparing each test score to the range of values that define the different letter grades.

If you round scores to the nearest tenth of a percent, these ranges would apply:

F <= 59.9 < D <= 69.9 < C <= 79.9 < B <= 89.9 < A

Excel would assign a score of 79.9 to the C range while a score of 98.2 would fall into the A range.  Excel would go through the list of test scores, categorize each score, count the total number of scores that fall into each range, and return an array with five cells showing the total number of scores in each range.

The FREQUENCY function requires two arrays as inputs: a “Data_array” and a “Bins_array.”  Arrays are simply lists of values. The “Data_array” needs to contain values—like the numerical grades for students—that Excel can compare to a series of thresholds defined in the “Bins_array”—like the letter grades in that same example.

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Audible is awesome. For $15 a month, you get your choice of any audiobook in the collection; for $23 a month, you get two books. But what happens if you download a book by accident or waste a credit on one that sounds like it’s being narrated by Gilbert Gottfried huffing helium? Well, the good news is that if you’re not happy for any reason, you can return your Audible purchases. Here’s how.

Like most of Amazon’s returns policies, Audible’s policy is incredibly liberal. There are a few things to bear in mind, though:

• You must be a member of Audible to return audiobooks.
• You must return the book within 365 days of purchasing it.
• You will be refunded in the same way you bought it; if you paid with a credit, you get a credit back.
• You can return a book even if you’ve listened to it.

Audible’s returns policy is designed so that you feel comfortable trying a random audiobook or different narrator. It’s not so that you can use a single credit to listen to ten books. If Amazon thinks you’re abusing the returns policy, you’ll be unable to return books, customer care will contact you, and your account may be suspended. We don’t have any hard numbers on how many returns you can make. But, if you’re regularly buying audiobooks, listening to them, and then returning them, Audible will notice.

Go to Audible’s web site and log in to your account. For some reason this only works on Audible’s desktop site, not in the mobile app.

Click your name at the top right of the page, and then click “Account Details” on the dropdown menu.

On your account page, click the “Purchase History” option.

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Standing desks are a great way to take care of your back, but they’re not always easy on your wrists. If you can’t find a comfortable spot for the keyboard on your standing desk, then we’ve got a keyboard tray for you.

There’s a lot of different keyboard trays on the market. Most of them claim to improve your typing posture, but you need to get the keyboard tray that’s right for your particular standing desk. Otherwise, you’re going to put your wrists through even more strain. For example, you would only want to put an under-desk tray on a standing desk, not on a regular desk with a riser. You know, because bending over to type would be a pain.

That’s why we’ve taken the time to find the best keyboard trays for every kind of standing desk. We’ve even considered two standing desk converters on this list, in case you’re frustrated with your standing desk, or just now considering what it’s like to own one.

Let’s start small. If you already have a standing desk or keyboard riser, then there’s a good chance that you don’t need a dedicated keyboard tray. But it couldn’t hurt to grab an ergonomic, tilted keyboard stand for just $15. This tilted keyboard tray by First-Rate Acrylics is made of a durable plastic that should handle your violent keystrokes with gusto. It’s 17″ wide, which is enough space for your average keyboard, and it has a long rubber foot to prevent slippage.

Again, this product isn’t going to convert your regular desk into a standing desk. It’s just going to increase the ergonomics of your standing desk or keyboard riser. It’ll take up a little bit of desk space, and it can’t hold your mouse, but we’ve covered some options that can do those things.

If you have a smaller standing desk, then you’re probably not looking for a flashy keyboard tray. An under-desk styled keyboard tray is great for economizing desk space, and it keeps you from standing too close to your desk. The retractable, under-desk keyboard tray by the Stand Up Desk Store is a simple, affordable keyboard solution for your standing desk. It’s more than big enough to fit your average keyboard, and you should have enough space to fit a mouse on it too. This keyboard tray is installed using clamps, so you don’t have to worry about damaging your desk with any holes.

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RAW images contain a lot more data than JPEGs. If you’re using a DSLR or mirrorless camera, you should be shooting with RAW most of the time—it makes the most of what your camera is capable. You can even shoot RAW on your iPhone. There are, however, a few situations when you don’t need to shoot—or even shouldn’t shoot—RAW.

RELATED: How to Take Good RAW Photos

Occasionally I’ll get roped into taking photos at a Christmas party or family event. These aren’t high-quality portraits; they’re just snapshots of—normally, drunk—people. The only reason I’m asked is that people know I have a good camera. Once you get a reputation as a photographer, this will almost certainly happen to you.

When I get badgered into one of these events, my go-to is to set my camera in aperture priority mode, put a flash on my camera if it’s needed, and then wander around doing my own thing, occasionally shooting photos. It’s one of the few times I deliberately shoot JPEG because it means that at the end of the night, I can drag all the photos into a Dropbox (or whatever) folder without even looking at them, and send them on to the organizer. They get all the photos, and I don’t have to spend a few hours working with them in Lightroom.

When you shoot a burst with your camera, all the images get saved to a buffer before being written to the storage card. The size of this buffer is one of the main things that limit how long you can shoot a burst. Since JPEGs are much smaller than RAW files, most cameras can store more JPEGs in their buffer and thus shoot longer bursts.

RELATED: Why Does My Camera Slow Down or Stop Shooting Bursts?

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Forget buying a dedicated graphics card, pretty soon you’ll be gaming without one. At least, if you’re part of the 90% of people who still game at 1080p or less. Recent advancements from both Intel and AMD mean their integrated GPUs are about to tear up the low-end graphics card market.

There are two reasons: memory and die size.

The memory part is easy to understand: faster memory equals better performance. iGPUs don’t get the benefits of fancy memory technologies like GDDR6 or HBM2, though, and instead, have to rely on sharing the system RAM with the rest of the computer. This is mostly because it’s expensive to put that memory on the chip itself, and iGPUs are usually targeted at budget gamers. This isn’t changing anytime soon, at least not from what we know now, but improving memory controllers allowing for faster RAM can improve next-gen iGPU performance.

The second reason, die size, is what’s changing in 2019. GPU dies are big—way bigger than CPUs, and big dies are bad business for silicon manufacturing. This comes down to the defect rate. A larger area has a higher chance of defects, and one defect in the die can mean the whole CPU is toast.

You can see in this (hypothetical) example below that doubling the die size results in a much lower yield because each defect lands in a much larger area. Depending on where the defects occur, they can render an entire CPU worthless. This example isn’t exaggerated for effect; depending on the CPU, the integrated graphics can take up nearly half the die.

Die space is sold to different component manufacturers at a very high premium, so it’s hard to justify investing a ton of space into a much better iGPU when that space could be used for other things like increased core counts. It’s not that the tech isn’t there; if Intel or AMD wanted to make a chip that was 90% GPU, they could, but their yields with a monolithic design would be so low that it wouldn’t even be worth it.

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1. Ticket to Ride
2. Settlers of Catan
3. Puerto Rico
4. Race for the Galaxy

Think you know the answer?

So you just got an Amazon Echo, either from the recent sales or the holidays. Let’s take a look at how to set it up and some useful things you can task your Echo with.

Simply put, the Echo is a voice-controlled virtual assistant that lets you control smarthome devices, check the weather, play music, get news updates, and more.

RELATED: Which Amazon Echo Should I Buy? Echo vs. Dot vs. Show vs. Plus and More

There are a handful of different Echo models that you can choose from. The main Echo is the $99 version which comes with a decent speaker for the price. There’s also the cheaper $50 Echo Dot on the lower end (which comes with laptop-quality sound in a smaller package), and on the higher end is the $150 Echo Plus, which has a built-in smarthome hub and a slightly better speaker than the $99 model. You can also get Echos that have screens on them, like the Echo Show and Echo Spot.

Before we set the Echo up and play around with it, though, let’s take a quick tour of the physical device and its buttons. In this guide, we’ll be setting up the regular Echo model, but setting any of them works pretty much the same.

As far as physical manipulation goes, there are three things on the Echo you can mess with: the microphone button (which toggles the listening feature on and off), the action button (which, when tapped, summons Alexa without having to say anything), and the volume buttons. On the Echo Plus (and the previous-generation Echos) there’s a volume ring around the edge, rather than volume buttons.

RELATED: How to Get the Most Out of Your Amazon Echo

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Christmas has come and gone, the paper torn off of every box under the tree, and you just scored a brand new PlayStation 4 (or Pro!). Congratulations! It is, at least in this writer’s humble opinion, the best version of the PlayStation that has ever existed—especially the Pro. Let’s make the most of it, shall we?

RELATED: What’s the Difference Between the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 4 Slim, and PlayStation 4 Pro?

So, first things first—let’s figure out which PlayStation 4 you have. There are technically three versions of the console at this point: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 4 Slim, and PlayStation 4 Pro. Clearly you can look at the box and see which one you have, and the good news is that most of the things we’re going to talk about will apply to all three version, save for some of the Pro-exclusive features, which we’ll make note of.

There are an absolute ton of little tweaks you can make to get a better overall experience from your system—everything from automatically turning on your TV when you turn on the console to taking faster screenshots. Here’s a short list of some of the best things to do—along with links that explain how to do them.

• Turn on your TV with the PS4
• Disable pop-up notifications while videos are playing
• Set the system up to take faster screenshots
• Transfer images to the system and set a custom wallpaper
• Use the DualShock 4 for gesture typing
• Learn how to quickly switch between running apps and games
• Add an external hard drive for even more storage

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg—little tweaks that just make the system a little bit better.

RELATED: Should You Use “Rest Mode” on Your PlayStation 4, or Turn It Off?

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So you scored a Google Home for Christmas. That’s awesome because this is a killer little smart speaker that can do a lot of different things—in fact, it can be a little overwhelming. The good news is that we’ve got you covered. Here are some ideas on where to get started with your new Home.

First things first: you have to set that bad boy up because it’s basically useless in the box. But before we get into that, I want to take a quick minute to address something that is constantly on users’ minds when they get an always-listening device like Google Home: it’s not spying on everything you say. It only listens for the hotword (“OK Google” or “Hey Google”), but that’s it. Nothing is recorded or transmitted back to Google until it hears those words. I promise.

With that out of the way, let’s get your new speaker set up. The first thing you’ll want to do is plug your Home up and download the Google Home app for iOS or Android.

Launch it and run through the tutorial—it’s all pretty straightforward. Once the phone finds the new Home, it will let you know. If it finds other devices (like smart lights or plugs), it will show those, too. Select your new Home device and hit “Next.” It’ll then play a sound on your new Home to make sure it’s connected to the right one and you’ll confirm.

From there, you’ll establish a room and connect the Home to Wi-Fi. After it’s all connected, you’ll sign in to your Google account—assuming you’ve set up Google Assistant on your phone, your voice settings will automatically be imported. That’s cool.

If this is the first time you’re setting up Google Assistant, you’ll be able to teach it to recognize your voice. If you’ve already set it up on another device, it can pull the voice model from there for you.

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Hey, congratulations on your new tablet! The Amazon Fire Tablet series offers, without a doubt, some of the best bang for your buck devices you can get in today’s tablet market. You’re going to love it.

As solid as it is out of the box, there are a few things you can do to make that bad boy even better. So let’s go to it.

RELATED: How to Install the Google Play Store on the Amazon Fire Tablet or Fire HD 8

By default, the Fire Tablet line ships with the Amazon Appstore. The Appstore isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s definitely a few steps behind the Google Play Store in terms of content and updates. But since Fire OS is based off of Android, you can easily sideload the Google Play Store for full access to everything Google has to offer.

The process doesn’t require a rooted device and is fairly straightforward—it’s little more than a few app downloads—so hit up this guide and get to work. You’ll be glad you did it.

RELATED: How to Use a Different Home Screen Launcher on the Amazon Fire Tablet (Without Rooting It)

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1. Apple
2. America Online
3. Sony
4. Microsoft

Think you know the answer?

Google Docs lets you suggest edits on a document when you’re collaborating with others. After you suggest an edit, the document’s owner can then accept or delete it. Here’s how it works.

RELATED: How to See Recent Changes to Your Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides File

When you’re viewing a document in Google Docs, you’re doing so in one of three states:

• Editing: This view means you’re directly editing the document.
• Suggesting: This view means the edits you make show up as suggestions.
• Viewing: This state gives you a nice clean view for reading or printing.

If you look up at the top right of the document window, you’ll see your current state. If you see “Suggesting” then you’re good to go. If you see “Editing” or “Viewing” then click that button and then click the “Suggesting” option.

If you don’t see the option to suggest edits, you may need to ask the owner to give you the proper editing permissions to do so.

RELATED: How to Create Shareable Download Links for Files on Google Drive

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It’s easy to get excited about something and post it on social media for all your friends and family to see, and maybe even the rest of the world. But there are some things that you shouldn’t post online, even if it might seem obvious.

Whether it’s for a concert or a sporting event, it’s generally not a good idea to post a photo of the ticket on your social media accounts.

This is because pretty much all tickets these days use a barcode that gets scanned at the gate to permit entrance into the event. It’s easy to copy these barcodes from a photo and then use them to create a duplicate ticket.

Someone can take that photo of your ticket and use it themselves to gain entrance into a game or other event. So think twice before sharing that beloved golden ticket online.

This one seems obvious, but apparently, it happens more than you might think. Don’t believe me? This now-defunct Twitter account gives you the proof.

I know that it seems exciting enough to share a photo of your new fancy credit card (yay for rewards and cash back!), but anyone can use all those numbers on that card to purchase something online. Worse yet, it can be the beginning of full-on identity theft.

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Microsoft has seen its share of issues as of late, and now a seemingly simple patch is causing serious issues to certain laptops running the 2016 Anniversary Update. The update was originally released to prevent a zero-day attack on IE.

Per Microsoft, this was the issue being fixed:

A remote code execution vulnerability exists in the way that the scripting engine handles objects in memory in Internet Explorer. The vulnerability could corrupt memory in such a way that an attacker could execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the current user. If the current user is logged on with administrative user rights, an attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could take control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.

In a web-based attack scenario, an attacker could host a specially crafted website that is designed to exploit the vulnerability through Internet Explorer and then convince a user to view the website, for example, by sending an email.

The security update addresses the vulnerability by modifying how the scripting engine handles objects in memory.

But now that fix is causing a pretty big problem of its own: it’s preventing certain laptops from booting. The affected machines are part of a pretty small bunch—only Lenovo laptops with less than 8 GB of RAM running the 2016 Anniversary Update (1607)—but it’s still a pretty bad problem to have.

Fortunately, there’s a way to bypass the failed boot by restarting into the UEFI and disabling Secure Boot. It’s also noted that if BitLocker is enabled that you may have to go through BitLocker recovery after disabling Secure Boot.

On the upside, Microsoft is working with Lenovo to correct the issue and will release a fix sometime in the future. I just wouldn’t count on it before the end of the year. Until then, be careful when updating devices, especially if they happen to be Lenovo laptops with limited RAM.

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MicroSD cards are becoming more widely adopted, on everything from action cameras to phones to video game consoles. But you probably shouldn’t use one in your dedicated camera, at least not if it doesn’t have a MicroSD card slot.

Why? It’s all about the “sleeve,” the little plastic adapter that comes with almost every single MicroSD card sold at retailers. It’s handy if you need to read the contents of the MicroSD card on a laptop or desktop with no dedicated MicroSD slot, but it isn’t designed for constant use. It is, frankly, cheap, and it’s probably slowing down the write speed of your camera.

Let’s step back a bit. Modern cameras deal with huge amounts of data: 15+ megapixel images, as well as HD and 4K video at 60 frames per second or higher. Full-sized cameras, unlike smartphones, don’t have much in the way of internal storage—they have to write it all to a flash storage card right away. The more images and video you’re taking every second, the faster you need your camera to write data.

That’s why the “performance” of a memory card is so important: those extra labels like “Class 10” and “UHS-3” all deal with the maximum amount of data the card can handle for reading and writing at any given moment. When you buy a speedy and expensive MicroSD card, the card itself can handle that data throughput without any problems, but the same can’t be said for the SD adapter sleeve that came in the package.

The sleeve should technically be able to handle the same speedy data transfer as the tiny card—the electrical contacts are basically just miniature extension cables. And indeed, some of the sleeves I’ve tested can score the same on drive speed tests as the unaided MicroSD cards that they’re housing. But when used with a high-performance camera, the extra steps in the writing process slow down the performance.

A practical example: my Sony Alpha A6000 can shoot six 24-megapixel images per second. At high shutter speeds, it sounds like a little plastic machine gun. But that’s an enormous amount of data, somewhere between 20 and 100 megabytes every second, depending on the contents of the image and the quality setting. When the relatively small memory buffer of the camera’s own hardware runs out, it needs a super-fast SD card to take full advantage of the hardware’s capabilities.

My go-to card is this SanDisk Ultra SDXC. It’s rated for 80MB/s read speed—SanDisk doesn’t advertise the write speed, but testing it on my PC gives me results of around 40 MB/s. With the camera’s shutter speed set below the shots per second maximum, it takes about five to six seconds of maximum speed shooting before the camera has to slow down to keep writing, about 55-60 images.

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With Chromebooks getting thinner and thinner, most of the port selection is narrowing down to just USB-C ports. Thankfully, these aren’t restricted in any way, and you can plug in your current accessories with one of these great hubs!

One issue with USB-C ports on Windows laptops is that manufacturers may not allow for all of the capabilities. You could see USB-C included for data transfer, but the laptop will require a proprietary connector for charging and HDMI for video-out. It’s frustrating, and it makes buying a USB-C hub for a Windows laptop that much more work.

Fortunately, Chromebooks don’t have that problem. Google has a hand in developing the motherboard that goes inside each Chromebook and Chromebox, mainly to make it easier to provide seamless updates. The other benefit is if you see a USB-C port on a Chromebook, know that it works for charging, display-out, and 5Gbps data transfer.

I’ve used all of these USB-C hubs with a Chromebook at some point in the last two years, so I know first hand that they’ll work for you!

This hub is great to stash in your bag, just in case you need to connect a USB-A thumb drive, two-factor authentication key, or whatever else. You don’t get power passthrough or display-out with this hub, so look at the other options if those are important to you.

You get four USB-A ports, perfect for connecting your existing accessories. That may be a bit overkill for most uses, but it’s better to have too many ports on your hub than not enough. And with the low price and compact design, this one is perfect to keep in your bag so you always have it handy. This hub comes in black or space gray, though the latter is $5 extra.

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I used to be a big fan of Facebook. It was where all my friends shared interesting links and posted photos. Unfortunately, it’s now a wasteland, filled with older relatives and that weird guy I met in 2011. Everyone’s moved to Instagram.

The problem was that my default procrastinating behavior didn’t change. If I was waiting for a train or had three minutes to kill, I’d—barely consciously—navigate to Facebook and start mindlessly scrolling past posts that didn’t interest me. It was energy sapping, but it was a hard habit to break. If you’re in the same situation, here’s how to kick your Facebook addiction on your iPhone.

The first step (and this goes a long way on its own) is to delete the official Facebook app from your phone. If you want to access Facebook, you can use the mobile site. This makes it a little trickier for you to open Facebook and start scrolling automatically.

For a lot of people, this is all that’s necessary. That one small extra step is enough of an obstacle that they only use Facebook when they want to. The website is also that bit slower than the app, which makes the experience even less rewarding. If, like me, this isn’t enough, then read on.

In iOS 12, Apple added Screen Time: a feature that tracks how much time you spend using different apps. You can also use it to set limits on how much time you can spend either on social media as a whole or just using Facebook.

If you just want to spend a bit less time on Facebook—and it works with both the app and the website—then you can set a Screen Time limit. Screen Time will alert you when you get close to your limit and, once you hit it, stop you from opening the app or visiting the website—although you can get around this by just tapping Ignore Limit. So, it might not break your addiction, but it at least will make you more aware of how much time you’re spending on it.

RELATED: How to Use and Configure Screen Time on Your iPhone or iPad

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1. Egg Nog
2. Caroling
3. Candy Canes
4. Santa

Think you know the answer?