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For the past few years, the European Union and its 27 member states have been debating a rule that would require phones, tablets, and other devices to have a USB Type-C port for charging and data transfer. Now the rule has a due date for device makers. Earlier this year, the EU reached a provisional agreement that established a single charging solution, USB Type-C, for electronics like phones, tablets, eReaders, earbuds, digital cameras, portable speakers, headsets, and handheld consoles....

Which Is Faster? Latency is critical with any keyboard or mouse. You want your input to be reflected onscreen as quickly as possible—especially if you play games dependent on twitch reflexes, like first-person shooters. According to Razer, USB-RF offers lower latency. The company told us while Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices can achieve latency as low as 1.3 ms, USB-RF beats that at a flat 1 ms. The Razer spokesperson even told us the difference in speed is why they only offer USB-RF devices....

The Curves adjustment layer is one of the most important tools in Photoshop. It’s the best way to adjust the brightness and contrast of your images. If you want to get good with Photoshop, you’ll need to master Curves. If you aren’t familiar with adjustment layers, you’ll want to learn about them before reading this article. So check out our guides to layers and adjustment layers before continuing–and if you’re new to Photoshop, you should also check out our 8-part beginner’s guide before continuing....

Botnets are networks made up of remote-controlled computers, or “bots.” These computers have been infected with malware that allows them to be remotely controlled. Some botnets consist of hundreds of thousands — or even millions — of computers. “Bot” is just a short word for “robot.” Like robots, software bots can be either good or evil. The word “bot” doesn’t always mean a bad piece of software, but most people refer to the type of malware when they use this word....

LAN games are a time honored tradition wherein you can connect to people directly on your local network and enjoy low ping times and multiplayer fun, but what if the computers refuse to communication with each other? Read on as we solve a fellow reader’s LAN woes and get him back in the game. 99 percent of the time when a user has a connectivity issue that doesn’t involve loss of the entire network connection the problem can be traced back to a firewall rule....

Are Your AirPods Waterproof? AirPods were the first true wireless headphones that Apple released. Officially, both generations of AirPods are not waterproof. In fact, they don’t have an official water-resistance rating either. RELATED: How to Use Your AirPods and AirPods Pro: The Complete Guide Waterproof and water-resistant are two different things. Waterproof means that it’s impossible for water to get inside the device. Most consumer gadgets are not waterproof. Water-resistant, on the other hand, means that a device is sealed in such a way that it can prevent water from getting in for a certain amount of time, or until it reaches a certain depth when submerged in water....

iCloud’s All-or-Nothing Approach You can enable Desktop & Documents sync by launching System Preferences (System Settings) and clicking on Apple ID followed by the “iCloud” section in the sidebar. Next to “iCloud Drive” will be an “Options” button, which you can click. Under here you can toggle iCloud Drive for “Desktop & Documents” folders at the top, plus other apps like Shortcuts, Automator, and Maps. With this enabled, launch Finder to see that both the Documents and Desktop folder now appear under the “iCloud” section of the sidebar, beneath your “Favorites” and above the “Locations” section which lists drives and mounted disk images....

You get what you pay for. And, while you will save money in the short term by buying a cheap Windows laptop, you’ll pay for it in time, frustration, and ultimately money when you have to pay to replace or fix the laptop after it breaks. It’s great that cheap Windows laptops exist, but let’s be honest: They’re not great. If you can afford to spend more on a laptop, you should....

What Are NFTs? Non-fungible tokens are a type of asset that exists purely in digital form. Like cryptocurrency—to which it’s pretty closely related, something we go into in our full explainer on NFTs—record of ownership is kept in a blockchain and a digital ledger. Unlike cryptocurrency, though, NFTs are one of a kind: non-fungible means that they’re not interchangeable with each other. This makes each and every NFT unique, in contrast to cryptocurrencies where each unit or coin can be exchanged for another—much the same goes for real-world currencies, too....

Is there a button, or piece of information, you wish you could add to the Touch Bar on your MacBook Pro? You can, and we’ll show you how to do it. We’ve shown you how to add or remove icons to your Touch Bar, sticking with Apple’s own customization options. There’s a surprising amount of choice there, but it’s not infinite, meaning you’re out of luck if you want trigger scripts or replace keyboard shortcuts using Touch Bar buttons....

How to Add a Friend on the Nintendo Switch There are two ways to add a friend on the Nintendo Switch: send a friend request using someone’s friend code, or accept a friend request sent to you. Additionally, you can search for friends locally using Bluetooth. RELATED: What’s Included with a Nintendo Switch Online Subscription? Once you’ve added a friend on the Nintendo Switch, both of you must have purchased a Nintendo Online Subscription to play any games online....

Ever wish you could use tabs in your favorite apps? Thanks to macOS Sierra, you can. If you can open multiple windows with an app, there’s a good chance you can combine them into one, just like you do with your browser. RELATED: The Best New Features in macOS Sierra (and How to Use Them) Finder added tabs a couple of releases ago, and that was nice, but Sierra goes further by supporting tabs in way more applications, including many third party ones....

If you’re having trouble starting your Windows 11 PC, it might help to reboot into safe mode, which temporarily disables drivers and features to make your PC more stable. Here’s how to do it. Note: the process to enter Safe Mode on Windows 10 is very similar, but the interface looks a little different. How to Enter Safe Mode at Boot With Windows 7 and earlier, you could typically start Safe Mode by pressing a function key (such as F8) just after turning on your PC....

You can do all kinds of great things to make your home look, sound, and feel just how you like with the Home app. If your home has color-changing light bulbs, here’s how to pick the right color for your mood. After a somewhat slow start, HomeKit is starting to show some of the promise we always knew it had. Its logo is now starting to crop up on the boxes for smart home products from many manufacturers both large and small....

Chromebooks, Chromeboxes, and other Chrome OS devices allow you to set a proxy server through which you can route your traffic.This may be required to access the Internet on some networks—for example, on business or school networks. RELATED: What’s the Difference Between a VPN and a Proxy? Generally, you’ll use a proxy if your school or work provides it to you. You could also use a proxy to hide your IP address or access geoblocked websites that aren’t available in your country, but we recommend a VPN for that instead....

RELATED: How to Make Your Car Smarter with an OBD-II Adapter Next, you’ll need to log into your Automatic account to give Alexa permission to talk to your car. Enter your email address and password for your Automatic account and click Log In. After this, you can ask Alexa a few things about your car. Here are the commands that work with Automatic. “Alexa, ask Automatic where my car is....

Unlike Word where you can easily get the document’s character count using a tool in the menu bar, you’ll need to use the LEN function if you want to get a character count in Excel. Here’s how to use it. How to Get the Character Count of a Single Cell You can use the LEN function to quickly count the number of characters in a single cell in two different ways....

Have you ever wished that Windows displayed the full date instead of the short date format in the Windows 7 Taskbar? With this easy tutorial, you will have Windows displaying the date exactly how you want it to. To get started click the bottom right corner of the screen where the time and date are displayed in the system tray. When the pop-up dialog opens, click on the “Change date and time settings…” link....

If you’d like to allow certain people to call, FaceTime, or message you when you’ve enabled Do Not Disturb mode, activate your iPhone’s Emergency Bypass option for those people. We’ll show you how to do just that. When you enable Emergency Bypass for a specific contact, they can reach out to you even while you’re on DND mode. You can enable this feature for phone and FaceTime calls and text messages separately....

You’re watching a movie late at night. Your family is asleep. You can’t hear the dialogue during a key scene, so you turn up the volume, only for an unexpected explosion to wake up the entire house. Isn’t there some way to prevent this? If you own a Roku Premier, Premier+, or Ultra, the Night Listening feature can level out audio levels for you. This makes explosions softer and conversations louder, so that you don’t have to constantly change the volume when explosions are too loud....