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Download WinX DVD Ripper Platinum V8.9.0 with Full License Code [Sponsored]

How-To Geek - Fri, 12/21/2018 - 18:23

It’s the year-end holiday shopping season. You are supposed to be brimming with rewards, rebates and gifts not only from brick-and-mortar stores. Especially as a fan of How-to Geek, you should have spent your Christmas and New Year more cozily. Joking aside, you are here to be treated with an exclusive giveaway of WinX DVD Ripper Platinum V8.9.0 (the very latest version that just got updated on Dec. 13) sponsored by Digiarty Software generously. Cheers!

The biggest benefit? Well, ripping DVDs with the software that is available free (in limited time) is conducive to more comfy and flexible enjoyment of movies during holidays yourself or with your families and guests. For example, you can have the movie copies prepared on your NAS, USB flash drive or external flash drive in advance, to enjoy full movies on TV while sitting on the big living room with next to no sifting through the best movie result from the online streaming apps.

How-to Geek readers can receive the FULL licensed copy for free >>

In parallel, the also-on-page Lifetime License and huge software pack for family video processing offered by Digiarty are at astonishing discounts. For some people, the 75% off cover-all multimedia software pack may be more appealing.

Visit the page to get 75% off coupon for complete software pack >>

 

What can you do with WinX DVD Ripper Platinum

Here’ an official introduction on its features and functions:

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Categories: IT General, Technology

The Best Smart Light Switches For Your Google Home

How-To Geek - Fri, 12/21/2018 - 18:00

Controlling the lights in your house using your voice is a great way to dip your toes into the smarthome world. And if you already have a Google Home, here are some of the best smart light switches to buy that are compatible with the smart speaker.

You could go with smart bulbs instead, but smart light switches are already a familiar format—no smart home lesson necessary for houseguests—and they work with your existing light bulbs. So if you know how to change out a light switch (or know someone who can help), then smart light switches can be a great way to go.

With that said, here are the best smart light switches that work with your Google Home.

Lutron Caseta Smart Dimmer Switch Starter Kit ($99)

Honestly, the best option no matter what the circumstances are is the Lutron’s Caseta line, and a starter kit comes with the necessary hub, one smart dimmer switch, and one Pico remote, which lets you control the light switch from across the room without getting up from the couch.

Lutron invented the dimmer switch and has perfected it over the years. And now you can get one in smart form. The company’s Caseta line of smart light products uses its own proprietary RF wireless protocol instead of Wi-Fi, Z-Wave, or ZigBee, so it won’t interfere with any of your other smarthome devices.

These switches can be put on a schedule or a timer, and you can even create different scenes where you can set specific brightnesses for specific switches in your house. And obviously, you can control them with your voice using your Google Home.

Perhaps the best feature, though, is that the switches don’t require a neutral wire, which isn’t always present inside of a light switch box, especially in older houses. So this makes Caseta switches a recommended buy for just about any setup.

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Categories: IT General, Technology

How to Get Refunds for Steam Games

How-To Geek - Fri, 12/21/2018 - 17:24

Steam offers a generous refund system. You can refund any game you purchase through Steam, for any reason—whether it isn’t working properly on your PC or you just don’t find it fun.

This feature encourages you to try games you’re not sure about. If you don’t like a game, you can always refund it and get your money back. It’s particularly useful now that so few games offer free demos.

When You Can Refund a Game

There are two basic requirements for when you can get a refund: You must have purchased the game in the last 14 days, and you must have played the game for less than two hours.

If you meet these requirements, Valve promises it will refund you for any reason. You can ask for a refund on a game even if you don’t meet these requirements—Valve will take a look at your request, but won’t guarantee a refund.

You can’t refund games that you purchased outside of Steam and added to Steam with a product key (at least, not through Steam—you’d have to request a refund through the original retailer). While you can sometimes save money on Steam games by purchasing Steam keys from third-party game stores, this feature encourages you to buy games through Steam if you think you might want to refund them.

If you refund a lot of games, Valve may consider this “abuse” and stop offering refunds to you. “Refunds are designed to remove the risk from purchasing titles on Steam—not as a way to get free games,” according to Valve’s policy. Valve doesn’t specify exactly what they consider “abuse”, but you should probably be fine as long as you’re not regularly buying a large number of games and refunding most of them.

Valve notes that refunding a game purchased before a sale and buying it at the lower sale price isn’t considered abuse. So, if you purchase a $60 game and it goes on sale for $30 a few days later, you can refund the game and purchase it at the lower price—as long as you’ve played it for less than two hours.

Your refund can be returned to the same payment method you purchased the game with, or to Steam Wallet credit you can spend on Steam. Read Valve’s Steam refund policy for more specific details about how the policy works.

How to Refund a Game

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Categories: IT General, Technology

PSA: Update Game Consoles Before Giving Them for Christmas

How-To Geek - Fri, 12/21/2018 - 16:00

The last thing you want on Christmas Day is for your kids to be unable to play the game console they’ve waited so long to enjoy. Read on as we highlight why you need to pre-game your console gift giving experience.

Why Do I Want To Do This?

If you’re not a gamer yourself, you might be curious as to why we’d recommend unpacking your child’s game console and setting it up just to turn right back around and repack it for them to open on Christmas Day.

RELATED: How Your PC Could Replace the Gaming Console in Your Living Room

Unlike the game consoles of today the consoles of yesteryear, ranging from the early first-generation game consoles like the Magnavox Odyssey right up to fifth-generation consoles like the Sony PlayStation, had hard-coded firmware that rarely (if ever) received any update.

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System you bought back in the 1990s is still running the same operating code that it shipped with (and most likely still plugging along just fine despite 20 years of no updates). Game consoles were simply designed differently back then because there was no easy mechanism by which they could be updated.

Starting with the sixth-generation of game consoles and the introduction of over-the-network updates for the original Xbox game console suddenly updating your game console became a thing. That thing has proved to be persistent element of modern gaming and the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii, and Switch all feature over-the-network updates as do many handheld gaming platforms like newer versions of the Nintendo DS product line (so, in fact, the tips in this PSA also apply to portable game devices too).

Not only do the game consoles themselves need updates but the games we play on them need updates (and often need to be downloaded in the first place before we can even begin to update and play them).

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Categories: IT General, Technology

The Best Novelty Ice Cube Molds For Quirky Cocktails And Drinks

How-To Geek - Fri, 12/21/2018 - 15:00

Ice cube molds don’t have to be the same old tried and tested format to be worth purchasing. We’ve checked out the best quirky novelty ice cube molds out there for the perfect Christmas gift.

We already looked at the best practical ice molds available for those that take their drinks super seriously, but how about if you just want something fun for the holidays? Or to form molds for your own homemade chocolate or ice cream? There’s a whole wealth of great options out there, so we’ve picked out some of our favorites. Sure a perfect sphere might be the best way to scientifically cool your drink without watering it down… but it lacks the character of a bunch of Darth Vader heads or U

Don’t forget to pop them out of the tray carefully so their unique shape doesn’t get damaged along the way. Running a little warm water across the back of the mold goes a long way towards wiggling them free with the more delicate features intact.

Set of 8 Star Wars Silicone Ice Trays ($23)

Who doesn’t love Star Wars? This set of 8 Star Wars Silicone Ice Trays has shapes resembling the Millennium Falcon, R2-D2, a Stormtrooper, Darth Vader, and the Death Star. My personal favorite? Han Solo in ice form rather than carbonite.

Buy on Amazon 3D Skull Flexible Silicone Ice Cube Mold Tray ($12)

Nothing says festive cheer like an ice cube shaped like a skull. Ok, so this 3D Skull Flexible Silicone Ice Cube Mold Tray might suit Halloween more so than Christmas but if your loved one likes something a little different and less cutesy to their ice cubes, then this is the ideal solution.

The tray forms four giant ice skulls of 2.36 inches in size, so they’ll melt good and slow in your drink. They look pretty impressive too.

Buy on Amazon Cat Lover’s Kitty Shaped Silicone Ice Cube Tray ($12)

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Categories: IT General, Technology

What Is Composition In Photography?

How-To Geek - Fri, 12/21/2018 - 15:00

Photography isn’t just a technical pastime; it’s an art. While it’s important to understand how to control your camera, it should be so you can capture the kind of photos you want, rather than so you can take boring, if technically correct, photos.

Here is a technically perfect, awful photo. It’s well exposed, there are good shadow and highlight details, the colors are accurate, and it’s thoroughly and completely boring.

And here is one of my favorite photos that I’ve taken this year. It was shot with an old film camera, so the quality isn’t perfect. There are a few development artifacts, and it’s a little soft. But it’s a much more interesting image than the photo of my light switch.

Now, this is an extreme example, but it’s a point that holds across all areas of photography. There is something more to photography than just technical perfection. It’s more than just taking photos of pretty places or people, and it’s what separates art from snapshots and good photos from bad. The word for that something more is composition.

Composition Is How You Place Things

Composition, at its most basic, is how you place your subject (and everything else) in your image. While it’s rare that you’ll be able to physically position buildings and trees where you want them to be, your choice of focal length, aperture, and where you stand all drastically change how different things will appear in the frame.

RELATED: What Focal Length Should I Use For My Photos?

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Categories: IT General, Technology

Why Your PC’s UEFI Firmware Needs Security Updates

How-To Geek - Fri, 12/21/2018 - 13:40

Microsoft just announced Project Mu, promising “firmware as a service” on supported hardware. Every PC manufacturer should take note. PCs need security updates to their UEFI firmware, and PC manufacturers have done a poor job of delivering them.

What Is UEFI Firmware?

Modern PCs use UEFI firmware instead of a traditional BIOS. The UEFI firmware is the low-level software that starts when you boot your PC. It tests and initializes your hardware, does some low-level system configuration, and then boots an operating system from your computer’s internal drive or another boot device.

However, UEFI is a little more complicated than the older BIOS software. For example, computers with Intel processors have something called the Intel Management Engine, which is basically a tiny operating system. It runs in parallel to Windows, Linux, or whatever operating system you’re running on your computer. On corporate networks, system administrators can use features in the Intel ME to remotely manage their computers.

UEFI also contains processor “microcode,” which is kind of like firmware for your processor. When your computer boots, it loads microcode from the UEFI firmware. Think of it like an interpreter that translates software instructions to hardware instructions performed on the CPU.

RELATED: What Is UEFI, and How Is It Different from BIOS?

Why UEFI Firmware Needs Security Updates

The last few years have shown over and over why UEFI firmware needs timely security updates.

We all learned about Spectre in 2018, showing the serious architectural problems with modern CPUs. Problems with something called “speculative execution” meant programs could escape standard security restrictions and read secure areas of memory. Fixes to Spectre required CPU microcode updates to function correctly. That means PC manufacturers had to update all their laptop and desktop PCs—and motherboard manufacturers had to update all their motherboards—with new UEFI firmware containing the updated microcode. Your PC isn’t adequately protected against Spectre unless you’ve installed a UEFI firmware update. AMD also released microcode updates to protect systems with AMD processors from Spectre attacks, so this isn’t just an Intel thing.

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Categories: IT General, Technology

Chromebooks May Soon Be Able to Dual Boot Windows, Here’s What We Know So Far

How-To Geek - Fri, 12/21/2018 - 11:04

Chromebooks have always been great if you can do your work with web apps (and now Android and Linux apps). But most people still find themselves keeping a separate Windows machine for specific tasks. That might change soon. 

The “AltOS” feature first started appearing in Chrome OS commits back in April. Those first commits revealed Windows support, leading us to believe that Google intended to let users boot both Windows and Chrome OS on the same machine. All of the commits so far reference “Eve”, the codename for the Pixelbook’s motherboard.

The next round of commits showed up in September. This gave us the icon that may be used when the Chromebook boots to a different OS, as well as some of the keyboard combinations users will have to press to boot to the alternate OS. There’s no telling if these key combos are just for Google’s internal testing, or if it will survive until the feature is on consumer devices.

That brings us to today. Google appears to be continuing its work on letting Chromebook users install Windows 10 right alongside Chrome OS. There appear to be some caveats, of course, the main one being storage. About Chromebooks’ Kevin Tofel states that Chromebooks will likely need at least 40 GB of free storage to dual boot Windows, because Windows needs room for the OS itself and space to download updates. This excludes most Chromebooks under $500 since the machine will need to ship with 64 GB or more of internal storage at the very least.

The latest round of commits also mentions how the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) will handle multiple operating systems without compromising security, though there isn’t any real user-facing information just yet. This isn’t something the end user really needs to care about anyway, but they’re critical steps in making sure Dual-Boot will work properly and securely.

Right now, it appears Google is still only testing this feature—codenamed “Campfire” and likely to be officially named “Dual-Boot”—on the Pixelbook. There’s a precedent for new features coming to Google’s own devices first. Google has offered other features like Google Assistant integration on the Pixelbook before making it available to other Chromebooks.

Of course, you may have been able to dual-boot Windows and Chrome OS in the past, but it was hacky at best and involved installing custom firmware. This newer method will presumably just require a toggle in the Settings menu.

While we should see dual-booting with Windows come to the Pixelbook soon, there’s no telling when (or if) the feature will come to other Chromebooks. When Android and Linux app support rolled out, some reasonably modern Chromebooks didn’t get those because they used an old kernel version. There’s a chance the same thing will happen when it comes to Windows support.

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Categories: IT General, Technology

How to Gift Music, Movies, and More from the iTunes Store

How-To Geek - Thu, 12/20/2018 - 22:00

You’ve undoubtedly bought music, movies, TV shows, and audiobooks off of iTunes before, but it was likely for yourself. If you’re wanting to buy something from the iTunes Store and gift it to someone else, here’s how to do it.

RELATED: How to Remove DRM From iTunes Movies and TV Shows

The process for gifting digital content in iTunes is surprisingly complicated, mostly because it’s not intuitive how to get there.

The first thing you’ll want to do is open up the iTunes Store app.

From there, either browse and find the piece of digital content you’re looking for or hit the “Search” tab at the bottom of the screen.

At the top of the screen, type in the title of the movie, song, album, or whatever it is you’re looking for. In my case, I’m looking for a specific audiobook by Dale Earnhardt Jr. to give to my mom.

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Categories: IT General, Technology

The Best Gifts For Avid Readers And Book Worms

How-To Geek - Thu, 12/20/2018 - 21:00

When you need a gift for the book lover in your life, it’s tempting to buy them a bunch of books, but there are plenty of more original ideas that you can also pursue. Here are some of the best gift ideas for avid readers.

Like any hobby, it’s nice to have other gifts than simply get the obvious choice. Sure, you can buy a games lover an extra game, but it’s nice to have related and supplemental gifts that compliment your hobbies. That’s what we’ve focused on here, with a variety of differently priced ideas so they’ll suit every budget. Plus, there’s room for one very key gift idea.

Here’s our pick of the bunch when it comes to gifts for the avid reader in your life. If you get to the end of the list and you want even more great gift ideas for readers, check out our favorite 8 products for book lovers (that aren’t books).

Kindle Paperwhite ($100)

If, somehow, your loved one doesn’t already own a Kindle Paperwhite, then this is the perfect opportunity to buy them one. It’s the thinnest and lightest Kindle yet, so it’s easy for everyone to hold and take with them. The 300 ppi glare-free display reads like real paper, even when you use it in bright sunlight. A built-in light means there’s no time of day where you can’t enjoy reading something on this device. It’s waterproof too so you won’t have to worry about using it on the beach or in the bath. This Kindle works with Audible, so it’s ideal if you want to dip into audiobooks.

There’s the choice of 8gb storage or 32gb but we’d stick with 8gb. It’s good for most people, and still offers enough room for you to store audiobooks as well as traditional tomes too. The book lover in your life is going to adore this.

Buy on Amazon Reading Clip Light ($6)

For the book lover who prefers a physical copy than a Kindle version, light can be an issue. After all, it’s useful to be able to see what you’re reading! The Energizer Clip Book Light is an inexpensive solution. Simply clip it onto a nearby surface and it recreates natural reading conditions for your eyes. It has a compact design, as well as a collapsible neck, so you can easily store it in your bag when traveling.

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Categories: IT General, Technology

Steam’s Winter Sale Arrives To Take All Your Money

How-To Geek - Thu, 12/20/2018 - 20:23

Steam’s Winter Sale is finally here with thousands of PC games on sale. It’s practically a holiday tradition at this point. The sale lasts two weeks, ending on January 3, 2019.

What is there to even say about Steam’s sales at this point? If you’re a PC gamer, you know how awesome they are. If you’re new to the whole PC gaming scene, you’ll find thousands of games on sale—from big-budget AAA blockbusters to awesome indie games you might not find anywhere else.

The sales should stay the same for the whole two-week period, so you can buy games whenever you like without waiting for a bigger sale. Steam advertises different sales on its front page every day, with some of today’s front-and-center deals being the Assassin’s Creed franchise for up to 67% off and zombie parkour simulator Dying Light for 60% off.

As usual, some of the sales on older games are especially huge. For just $2.99, you can own Valve’s Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, and Portal. That’s about 75 cents per game.

There’s also an “extremely cozy cottage” you can visit once per day for some free digital items. Steam’s website says these are “of varying usefulness,” and they include normal Steam items you can keep forever and other “knick-knacks.” Any knick-knacks will expire on February 2, 2019.

If you’re buying games from Steam, remember Steam’s awesome refund policy. If you don’t like a game or it doesn’t run on your system, you can get all your money back as long as you’ve played the game for less than two hours. You have to initiate a refund within the first two weeks after purchasing a game, however.

RELATED: How to Get Refunds for Steam Games

Other sites are competing with Steam’s winter sale, too. If you have Amazon Prime, Twitch Prime is giving away a bunch of free games, including Hotline Miami and its sequel. The Humble Store is giving away LEGO Lord of the Rings until December 22. And GOG has its own big sale, if you like your PC games DRM-free.

Categories: IT General, Technology

Windows 10’s Next Update Makes the Start Menu Less Terrible

How-To Geek - Thu, 12/20/2018 - 18:57

Windows 10’s default Start menu is a cluttered mess, but it’s about to get better in the Windows 10’s next version. That release is codenamed 19H1, and will be released sometime around April 2019.

Just look at that new Start menu in Insider build 18305! Sure, it’s not perfect—you can still see Candy Crush Saga and other similar mobile games if you squint—but at least they’re buried in a tile folder. The Start menu now has a simple one column layout with much fewer tiles pinned by default and much less junk. You can also uninstall many of these apps completely in the new update.

This is just for new Windows 10 PCs, new user accounts on existing PCs, and fresh installs of Windows 10. Microsoft will leave your current Start menu layout alone “because [they] want everything to be exactly as you left it before you did the update.”

If you’re wondering whether the new layout is really that much more simplified—well yes, yes it is. Here’s the default Start menu layout for a new user back in the April 2018 Update:

Yikes. Bring on the update!

This isn’t the only new feature in the latest insider build, which is packed with cool stuff. We love the new Windows Sandbox feature, which will let you safely run Windows applications without worrying about malware or junk files that will get scattered across your system.

RELATED: How to Use Windows 10’s New Sandbox (to Safely Test Apps)

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Categories: IT General, Technology

The Best Christmas Gifts For Retro Gamers

How-To Geek - Thu, 12/20/2018 - 18:00

What do you buy an avid retro gamer? So glad you asked! Read on to find out more about the best gifts for the retro gamer in your life.

It’s often tough to know what to buy a loved one so it stands to reason that you focus on one of their key interests. For retro gamers, you can’t really easily hop onto eBay and buy them a bunch of old games. For one thing, it’s pretty expensive but also you might end up buying the wrong titles or for the wrong platform. Instead, buy these retro gaming related items—you won’t wipe out your bank account, and they’ll still appreciate the effort you’ve put into thinking of them.

Here are the best gifts for retro gamers.

Super NES Classic ($80)

Ok, so the Super NES Classic is the most expensive thing we’ve included here, but wow, does it offer value for money. The device offers 21 classic SNES games including Super Mario Kart, Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting, Zelda: A Link To The Past, Super Metroid, and basically everything you loved from your childhood. It also tosses in Star Fox 2 which was never released for the SNES.

It’s fun for all the family but especially for retro game lovers. It comes with two wired controllers and it’s powered by USB, so it’s pretty convenient to set up. Want more options for retro game consoles? Check out our treatment of the topic here.

Buy on Amazon The Nostalgia Nerd’s Retro Tech ($16)

Nostalgia is an understandable driving force behind retro gaming. The Nostalgia Nerd’s Retro Tech is a great book for bringing all those lovely old memories back to the forefront of your mind. It looks back at the arrival of home computers as well as games consoles, with a plethora of screenshots to make you feel nostalgic.

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Categories: IT General, Technology

How to Force Outlook to Download Images (If You’re Sure It’s a Good Idea)

How-To Geek - Thu, 12/20/2018 - 17:24

If you receive an email that contains linked images, Outlook does not download those images automatically by default. You can change this behavior if you want, but there risks to doing so. Let’s take a look.

To be clear here, we’re not talking about messages that contain images as attachments or about message into which the sender has inserted images (since those work pretty much like attachments). We’re talking about images that contain URL links to images that are hosted online.

When you get a message that contains images, Outlook prevents the download of those images and shows you a message at the top of the mail.

The reason for this is that Outlook has to download these images from an external server, which means that the server (and therefore the sender) will know that your email address is “live” and being monitored.

This isn’t a problem for legitimate senders like friends, or businesses for which you need a live email address (like PayPal, Amazon, and so on), because it’s fine for them to know your email works. Even here at How-To Geek, we include a tracking pixel in our newsletter so we can remove people who never open or look at our messages because we actively try to make sure we don’t spam people.

But for real spammers, it’s a different story. If they know your email address is active, then you’ll become a bigger target for spam and phishing emails. After all, an account that is known to have a human looking at it is much more valuable for a scammer than an address that might never have a human look at it.

However, even worse than spammers knowing your email address is monitored by a human is the possibility that the images contain a virus or malware. It’s a well-known attack vector, and it relies on people downloading the image to their computer.

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Categories: IT General, Technology

How to Automate All Your Christmas Lights

How-To Geek - Thu, 12/20/2018 - 16:00

It’s that time of year when the fall directions come down, and the festive Christmas decorations go up. If you’ll be hanging a bunch of Christmas lights around your house, here are several different methods for automating them, so that you never have to worry about turning them on and off manually.

RELATED: Smart Light Switches vs. Smart Light Bulbs: Which One Should You Buy?

Keep in mind that you don’t need to have the fanciest smarthome products to make this happen, but you’ll have a bit more flexibility as far as what you can do if you already have a smarthome hub. With that said, let’s get started.

The Cheapest, Simplest Option: Outlet Timers

If you just want your lights to turn on and off at a certain time every day, you can’t go wrong with some basic outlet timers. They’re cheap, and you can buy them pretty much anywhere. This two-pack is just $11 and is great for low-power, two-pronged appliances like Christmas lights and lamps.

They’re the simplest solution for Christmas light automation, as you just set the times you want the lights to turn on and off, plug it in, and you’re off to the races.

For Advanced Automation: Smart Plugs

If you want to do anything more than what an outlet timer provides, you should get a smart plug instead. You can program your lights to turn on and off at specific times, but unlike some outlet timers, you can also choose certain days to control your lights at different times. For example, on the weekends, you may want your Christmas lights on for longer than during the week.

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Categories: IT General, Technology

The Best Card And Dice Game Stocking Stuffers

How-To Geek - Thu, 12/20/2018 - 15:00

Not every tabletop game has to take up a huge amount of room on your game collection shelf. Some are small enough to fit into your Christmas stocking and that’s exactly what we’re looking at – perfect stocking stuffer gifts for your card and board game adoring loved one.

Given the size constraints, it makes sense that almost all of these are card games, but as any self-respecting tabletop fan knows — you can have a ton of fun with a gripping card game. There’s a little room for a couple of entertaining dice games too. In each case, they won’t break the bank, and they’ll fit snugly into your Christmas stocking more often than not.

Here are the best card and dice games for your Christmas stocking stuffer needs.

Love Letter ($12)

Love Letter sounds quite cute but it’s actually incredibly devious. Players compete to deliver a love letter to the Princess before their rivals. Sounds charming, right? It’s actually full of risky behavior and sneaky deduction. Players must deflect the letters coming from their opponents in a bid to get there faster.

It’s a quick game to play through, only taking about 15 minutes, but you and your loved one will be keen to play more than once. It’s quick to pick up, and incredibly fun too. It’s also the perfect size to slip into a stocking.

Buy on Amazon Zombie Dice ($9)

Always a popular choice for game fans and newbies alike, Zombie Dice is super simple and super portable too. Its 13 custom dice represent zombie victims and you have to throw the dice in a bid to work out whose brains you eat. A shotgun blast ends the turn and passes play over to the opposition.

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Categories: IT General, Technology

How to Send High Quality Photos Online

How-To Geek - Thu, 12/20/2018 - 15:00

If you want to send high quality original photos to your friends and family, then there’s really only one good way to do it: with a cloud storage provider. Social networks like Facebook and Instagram don’t store the original files; they reduce the quality, so pages load faster. Even good, dedicated photo services like 500px do it.

This isn’t an issue if you’re just posting photos so people can view them on their smartphones or computers, but if you want them to be able to print the images, you need to give them high-quality files.

RELATED: Why Do Photos Look Different When I Print Them?

What Counts as “High-Quality” Files?

The photos your smartphone camera—or any proper camera—can take are far bigger and of higher quality than social media sites can handle. If every image on your Instagram feed were 2 MBs and 12 megapixels, you’d burn through your data cap in no time. The thing is, these, high-resolution, 2 MB files are exactly what you want if you’re going to print them, set them as your desktop background, or do anything except view them in the correct size box on social media.

Here’s a photo of mine I uploaded to Facebook—it was 2.7 MB and 5166×3444 pixels. When I downloaded it from my Timeline, it was 74 KB and 860×640 pixels. You could barely print that on a postage stamp!

In general, when we talk about high-quality files, what we mean are the original photos straight from your phone or camera or, if you’ve made any edits, a saved copy in full resolution. If you shoot RAW, you can send exported full-resolution JPEGs; full-size RAW files can be a bit unwieldy, especially if the other person doesn’t have the apps to deal with them. These are the kind of files from which they’ll be able to print nice prints.

RELATED: How Big of a Photo Can I Print from My Phone or Camera?

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Categories: IT General, Technology

How to Use Windows 10’s New Sandbox (to Safely Test Apps)

How-To Geek - Thu, 12/20/2018 - 13:40

Microsoft has released an Insider Preview Build that includes the new Windows Sandbox feature. If you’re on the Fast track, you can download and start using it today.

What is Sandbox?

In short, Windows Sandbox is half app, half virtual machine. It lets you quickly spin up a virtual clean OS imaged from your system’s current state so that you can test programs or files in a secure environment that’s isolated from your main system. When you close the sandbox, it destroys that state. Nothing can get from the sandbox to your main installation of Windows, and nothing remains after closing it.

RELATED: Windows 10’s New Sandbox Feature is Everything We’ve Always Wanted

How Do I Get It?

Currently, the only way to use Sandbox is to join the Windows Insider program and put your PC on the fast track for updates. You shouldn’t do this on your main PC. The fast track is potentially unstable and can lead to data loss, crashes, or other nasty surprises. Since Microsoft has trouble releasing stable versions of Windows outside of testing, you should keep the Insider builds to a non-production PC.

Once you have installed Insider build 18305 (or higher), installing and starting Sandbox is a simple process.

Step One: Make Sure Virtualization is Enabled

First, you’ll need to make sure virtualization is enabled in your system’s BIOS. It typically is by default, but there’s an easy way to check. Fire up Task Manager by hitting Ctrl+Shift+Esc and then head to the “Performance” tab. Make sure the “CPU” category is selected on the left and on the right, just make sure it says “Virtualization: Enabled.”

If virtualization is not enabled, you’ll need to enable it in your PC’s BIOS settings before you continue.

Step Two: Turn On Nested Virtualization if You’re Running the Host System in a Virtual Machine (Optional)

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Categories: IT General, Technology

Geek Trivia: The Glyphs In What Video Game Are Directly Translatable to English?

How-To Geek - Thu, 12/20/2018 - 09:02

The Glyphs In What Video Game Are Directly Translatable to English?
  1. The Legend of Zelda
  2. BioShock
  3. Final Fantasy
  4. LEGO Star Wars

Think you know the answer?

Categories: IT General, Technology
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