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It’s common wisdom that deleted files can’t be recovered from solid-state media, only from traditional mechanical hard drives. But this only applies to internal drives — USB flash drives and external solid-state drives are vulnerable to file-recovery attacks. On the one hand, this can be good news — you can recover files you accidentally deleted from such drives. On the other hand, other people can recover your sensitive deleted data if they get access to these drives....

The news is full of reports of “spear-phishing attacks” being used against governments, large corporations, and political activists. Spear-phishing attacks are now the most common way corporate networks are compromised, according to many reports. Spear-phishing is a newer and more dangerous form of phishing. Instead of a casting a wide net in hopes of catching anything at all, the spear-phisher crafts a careful attack and aims it at individual people or a specific department....

App Nap, added to macOS back in 2013, is not a feature that made headlines. So there’s no shame in admitting, three years later, that you still have no idea what it does. To summarize: App Nap puts programs you’re not currently using or looking at to “sleep”, blocking them from using system resources, especially the CPU, until you focus on them again. If you have 20 windows open, only the things you’re currently using should be using system resources and battery life....

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve probably heard someone mention the social network/chat app Snapchat. Depending on how you measure things, it’s now more popular than Twitter and Pinterest, with only Facebook and Instagram having more users daily. The difference is that most of Snapchat’s users are millennials and teens, so it’s flown under the radar of a lot of older internet users. Snapchat is a photo sharing app and social network, where you can send disposable photos and messages called Snaps to your friends....

As smartphones become increasingly indispensable fixtures in our lives it’s only natural to both want to take them where water is present and protect them from that water at the same time. Read on as we show you how to properly protect your phone from the hazards of a day at the beach. The world is a scary and wet place as far as smartphones (and all our other personal electronics) are concerned; you’re more than justified in wanting to protect your phone especially in light of how many water-related activities you have lined up this summer....

Not all Wi-Fi networks are created equal. Wi-Fi access points can function in either “ad-hoc” or “infrastructure” mode, and many WI-Fi-enabled devices can only connect to infrastructure-mode networks, not ad-hoc ones. Wi-Fi networks in infrastructure mode are generally created by Wi-Fi routers, while ad-hoc networks are usually short-lived networks created by a laptop or other device. But it isn’t always so simple. Infrastructure and Ad-Hoc Modes Explained Most Wi-Fi networks function in infrastructure mode....

Laptops aren’t as easy to upgrade as desktop PCs. In fact, newer laptops are becoming harder to upgrade — but you still may be able to upgrade your laptop with more RAM or a solid-state drive. It’s generally a bad idea to buy a laptop with plans to upgrade it later. Buy the hardware you need to avoid headaches later. Some laptops can be upgraded fairly easily, but do your research here....

Apple isn’t the first manufacturer to put two cameras on their phone (LG, HTC and Huawei all beat them to it), but Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus is the first to really make a splash. But what’s the advantage of this shiny new two-camera setup? Let’s have a look. The Camera Specs The iPhone 7 Plus has two 12 megapixel cameras, side by side. The first is a wide-angle camera similar to the camera that has always been on iPhones....

What It’s Called You are absolutely not imagining what you’re seeing. Most movies and TV shows these days are filmed at 24 frames per second, but video in higher framerate is much smoother. This is often known as the “Soap Opera Effect”, because back in the day, television soap operas had low budgets and used low budget video cameras instead of the full fledged film cameras their better-funded television counterparts were using....

Upsides of Using a VPN Router To understand the pros and cons of using one, it’s probably best to go over what a VPN router is, namely a WiFi router with VPN software installed on it. It’s that simple. Instead of having to connect each device on a network to the VPN separately, you just install it on the router, and every device that connects to the router will automatically use the VPN connection....

If you’re new to Macs, you might have noticed that there are no scroll bars in Finder windows, webpages, and so on. This can be difficult (and annoying) to get used to but, thankfully, you don’t have to. Scroll bars vanished in OS X Lion (10.8), and they can really throw a user at first because they only appear when scrolling. This might at first lend a cleaner, more refined look, but it doesn’t really enhance OS X’s usability....

There are a couple of ways you can approach this. First, you can use a live wallpaper app that automatically changes to match the time of day. The other method involves a bit more setup, but it also allows you to use specific images. We’ll cover both below. RELATED: How to Change Windows 10’s Wallpaper Based on Time of Day How to Use a Live Wallpaper The apps we’re using in this guide are live wallpapers, meaning they dynamically change, rather than just displaying a static image....

If you use an Android phone or tablet, you know that your Google account is tightly integrated with the experience. The default account will decide how you’re logged in to many apps, especially Google apps. We’ll show you how to change this. While it’s easy to add multiple Google accounts to your Android device, setting one to be the “default” account is cumbersome. The default account is whichever account you signed into when you first set up the device....

Your Discord status shows whether you’re busy or AFK. You can change it on the Discord website, the desktop app for Windows or Mac, or the mobile app for Android, iPhone, or iPad. Change Your Discord Status on Windows or Mac To change your Discord status, you’ll need to be signed in to your account on the Discord website or the desktop app for Windows or Mac. The Discord interface is the same for Windows and Mac....

This process is similar whether you’re using Windows, Android, iPhone, iPad, or another operating system. macOS provides a menu bar icon for controlling the VPN connection. RELATED: What Is a VPN, and Why Would I Need One? Use a VPN Client (The Easiest Thing) Note that some VPN providers offer their own desktop clients, which means you won’t need this setup process. All of the best VPNs—StrongVPN for advanced users, and ExpressVPN and TunnelBear for basic users—offer their own desktop application for connecting to their VPNs and selecting VPN server locations....

You may hide columns, rows, or cells in Excel to make data entry or analysis easier. But when you copy and paste a cell range with hidden cells, they suddenly reappear, don’t they? You might not realize it, but there is a way to copy and paste only the visible cells in Microsoft Excel. It takes nothing more than a few clicks. Default Copy and Paste With Hidden Cells in Excel By default, when you copy a cell range in Excel that contains hidden cells, those hidden cells display when you paste....

Make a Self-Grading Quiz in Google Forms Visit the Google Forms website and sign in with your Google account. Click “Blank Quiz” at the top of the page to get started. Your quiz will display with a default title and a description box. Click to change the quiz title and optionally provide a description. On the top left, you can name your quiz file differently to make it easy to spot on the Google Forms page....

The low-tech approach to this situation is to pull up the photo on your phone and compare it to paint chips at the store. That certainly can work, but it’s not an exact science. For a more accurate color match, we’ll need to go a little deeper. RELATED: The Different Types of Paint (and When to Use Them) Define the Color The first thing we need to do is define the color you found in a digital image....

The new MacBook, first released in 2015, makes a chime sound every time you plug the MacBook in, just like the iPhone and iPad. But the MacBook Pro and Air don’t–unless you enable this hidden feature. While this feature is only enabled by default on the MacBook, PowerChime.app–which causes the sound–is present in macOS on any Mac. All you need to do is run a single command to enable it....

We’re Going Down Sometimes you just have to go for the reboot or the total shutdown. If you’re working on a GUI-less server or you’re on an SSH session to a remote computer, the command line is your only option. Linux and Unix-like systems such as macOS provide several commands to shutdown or reboot your system right from the command line. The commands you can use are: shutdown reboot halt poweroff...