This article has been updated to reflect changes in Google Chrome while still providing the same “open with pinned tabs” function. Choose the websites that you want opened as pinned tabs each time and pin them using the context menu for each tab. Click on the “three dot” menu button in the upper right corner of your browser window and click on Settings. Alternatively, you can copy and paste “chrome://settings/” into the address bar....

Ribbon Hero Note: You’ll need to download and install Visual Studio Tools for the Office system 3.0 runtime if not installed already. After you install Ribbon Hero and open a supported Office app, the first time you’ll get a verification message warning…we’ve tested it and it’s safe, so you can go ahead and let it install. You’ll need to verify it the first time you open Word, Excel, and PowerPoint....

Windows Live Essentials is a bundle of nice free apps for Windows. Most of these programs, such as Mail and Movie Maker, were included as features in previous versions of Windows. Now these apps have been unbundled from Windows, ideally so they can be updated more frequently than Windows itself is. The latest version isn’t fully ready for prime-time yet, but if you’d like to get started with them, you can download the new Beta today and try out the new tools for yourself....

Is IPv6 Faster? There’s a bit of debate surrounding this question. On paper, IPv6 should be marginally slower. The header size is much larger, due to IPv6 needing 128 bits for the source and destination addresses compared to IPv4’s 32 bits. Overall, IPv6’s header size is nearly doubled. This isn’t really an issue in practice though, since IPv6 is not just an increase in address size—it greatly simplifies the handling of traffic, and in some cases can lead to actual performance increases due to bottlenecks in IPv4 infrastructure....

Integrate Google Calendar with Chrome DayHiker is a handy extension for Google Chrome that can help you stay on schedule in your browser. Desktop applications typically can keep you notified easier with popups or alerts, but webapps require you to visit them to view your information. DayHiker takes the best of both, and can make your Google Calendar work more like a desktop application. To get started, open the DayHiker page from the Chrome Extensions Gallery (link below), and click Install....

They’re among the best mirrorless lenses available from top manufacturers, so bear in mind that they’ll be priced accordingly—but we’ll recommend budget alternatives where appropriate. Advances in mirrorless SLR technology mean that even your standard 50mm f/1.8 lens is miles ahead of the one you got for your first DSLR. Nikon and Sony’s standard primes, in particular, yield great images. The lenses here are even more advanced. When shopping for a lens, think about what you shoot....

Most laptops these days don’t come equipped with great webcams. Even Apple, who is responsible for putting less-than-stellar cameras into their Mac products, has told users to just use their iPhones instead. While this option is fine for the iPhone/Mac owners who want to fiddle with getting this upcoming feature to work, the rest of us are stuck with the subpar solutions built directly into our PCs. This is why products like dedicated webcams have become so popular, especially in the age of remote and hybrid work and education....

When you delete a file in Windows, Ubuntu, or any other operating system, it doesn’t actually destroy the data stored on your hard drive, it just marks that data as “deleted.” If you overwrite it later, then that data is generally unrecoverable, but if the operating system don’t happen to overwrite it, then your data is still stored on your hard drive, recoverable by anyone who has the right software....

One of the unique features is the several extra camera angles you can watch. You will be able to view these while they are at a commercial break as well. You can pause, play and navigate through the action DVR style. The video is actually very crisp and you can adjust it based on the type of broadband connection you have. There is a bandwidth meter in the left hand corner where you can determine the connection and video quality....

The Xiaomi 12T Pro was just revealed as the company’s new flagship smartphone, complete with a ridiculous 200MP camera as its main rear shooter. It uses Samsung’s ISOCELL HP1 sensor, which is able to use pixel binning to produce 12MP images (combining 16 pixels in one), 50MP images (combining four pixels in one), or full-fat 200MP pics. The specifications themselves are pretty par for the course for Android flagships, carrying a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 and up to 12GB of RAM, but the big news here is the camera’s absurd pixel count....

Most modern smartphones have several rear cameras designed for different purposes. You might be familiar with wide-angle cameras and macro lenses, but some phones have also have a “depth camera” or “depth sensor.” But what exactly is a depth camera, and does it really matter? What Is a Depth Camera? Depth cameras, also known as Time-of-flight (ToF) cameras, are sensors designed to determine the difference between the camera and the subject of an image — typically measured with lasers or LEDs....

What Is Cyclomatic Complexity? Cyclomatic complexity basically measures how much your code branches. Every time there’s an if statement or other control block like a loop, cyclomatic complexity goes up, since the graph will look more and more like a tree. If you imagine your code as a series of actions (functions, method calls, variable assignments) connected via control flow, you’ll get an abstract graph that you can use to better understand the complexity....

What Is File Integrity Monitoring? File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) is the act of continuously scanning and tracking system files for changes in their contents, both authorized and unauthorized, and logging them. FIM’s importance, however, lays in its ability to send out alerts whenever a file change or modification is unauthorized or suspicious. For example, if a file was accessed through a new IP address or by an unidentified user. FIM technology is rarely limited to monitoring local or stationery files....

Google Maps is arguably one of the best services to have been created in the internet era. It’s stuffed to the brim with helpful features, including real-time traffic congestion information. Where exactly is Google getting this data from, though? What Do the Colors Mean? Traffic congestion is represented in Google Maps with three colors: Green, Orange, and Red. As you can see in the image at the top of the article, roads have those colors overlayed on top....

Many DOS applications use white text on a blue background as the default colors. Why is this the default color choice? The answer, like so many things in technology, is because of its history. You’ll often find this same color scheme on many Windows and Linux applications that run in character mode. To understand why applications adopted white-on-blue, it helps to first recall how DOS applications displayed text on the screen....

There are, in fact, things that can slow down your phone. A really old and worn battery can make a phone feel sluggish. Updating an older phone to a current release of iOS can really show you how long in the tooth the hardware has become. Stuffing your phone’s storage full of unused apps and undeleted blurry photos will do the trick, too. But among the many legitimate things that will slow down a phone’s performance, you don’t need to worry that your massive collection of tabs in Safari is contributing to the crunch....

The story is similar to what has happened with smartphones. Some people have turned to “minimal phones” as a way to “disconnect” from all the distractions that come with smartphones. The phone isn’t really the problem, though, and neither is your smartwatch. RELATED: How to Use a Smartphone to Disconnect You Are in Charge There’s one thing that’s important to understand when discussing the topic of gadgets being distracting. Your smartwatch is the same as your smartphone, tablet, and computer—it’s a tool....

“That must have been before my time,” we love to say, as if we’re wheeling the person into an old folks home. It’s always a disheartening experience. A poor guy is talking about some old television show or band with unbridled enthusiasm, lost in a nostalgic reverie about this thing he likes so much, and the younger person has no idea what he’s talking about. They stare like a confused dog turning their head back and forth, and remark, as if thrusting a dagger, “That must have been before my time....

So whether NASA outright invented the thing or sunk a lot of time and money into improving an existing thing, here are some of the ways the space agency has improved our lives. Cellphone Cameras It’s tough to pick a particular thing to top a list of everyday things that NASA invented that have an ongoing impact on our lives, given the sheer breadth of things the agency has been involved in over the years....

The new Acer Swift Edge carries a 16-inch OLED display, yet despite its massive footprint, it manages to weigh just 2.58 pounds — making it lighter than Apple’s new M2-powered MacBook Air, which is already an extremely-light computer. It’s also just 0.51-inches thin. Acer promises that this is the lightest 16-inch laptop out there. This makes it easy to carry despite the fact that it has a large display. The display itself has a 4K resolution, supports 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, and gets as bright as 500 nits....