Even though there are many Linux distros especially aimed at children, this article will focus on how to get your current “adult” distro kid-safe, complementing a previous Make Tech Easier article. Offline Control An important aspect of kids’ computer usage is the amount of time they spend in front of the screen. A limitation and control of kids’ computing time is vital to avoid future addictions, and let’s face it, kids need to play with real toys, exercise, and so on....

Since you’re going to have to deal with maintenance sooner or later, it might as well be sooner. That way you’ll prevent any small problem from getting any bigger, and the following tips can help. 1. Keep Your Computer Dust Free This first step is pretty easy to follow. All you have to do is make sure that your computer is dust free. If you let your computer collect too much dust, the dust will work as an insulator, turning up your computer’s heat....

Control Your Music Player I think it’s safe to say that virtually everyone has used their laptop to listen to music. Whether you love iTunes or have a fondess for another music player, there is one persistent problem affecting your music enjoyment. In order to skip to a particular track, you would have to stop what you were doing and switch to iTunes. Fortunately, the Touch Bar renders this unnecessary. When you listen to music on your Macbook Pro, you’ll notice that the standard music controls are residents of the Touchbar....

Once you’re dealing with a codebase of even moderate size, code changes can be hard to spot across revisions. They can also be hard to remember. You know you updated a method in one of the files that updates the database, but which one was it? You could read through the files manually, but that could take a while. Using “diffs,” either using the diff command or tools built into IDEs or editors, can help you spot differences between revisions....

For the most part, the debate revolved around whether social media companies like Twitter and Facebook are abiding by the law or whether the law should be adjusted to fit inside the context of current times with the power these companies have to direct the discussions of their users. To fully understand why Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 is such a big deal, it’s important to explore what it is, what it discusses, and why it came into being in the first place....

Read on to learn all you need to know about Cyber Monday, including what it is, how it differs from Black Friday and whether you can expect to bag a deal. What is Cyber Monday? Cyber Monday is the name used to refer to the Monday that follows Black Friday. The importance of Cyber Monday has certainly dropped over the years as Black Friday has evolved and become more of a week, or even month, long event....

What Is Google AdSense? Google administers the AdSense program as a means for publishers to distribute text, image, and video ads aimed at specific audiences. People who are browsing a blog about home improvement may be more likely to buy a new lawnmower than someone reading about celebrity gossip, so Google AdSense delivers targeted ads on the most receptive webpages. Advertisers don’t have to manually search out the best locations on the Internet to purchase ad space; they can just trust Google to do so for them....

If you’ve just bought your first camera or are in the market for one, you’ve probably come across the term ISO. But, what is it and how does it affect your photos? Read on to learn everything you need to know about ISO on a camera. What is ISO on a camera? ISO refers to a camera’s film or sensor’s sensitivity to light. The lower the ISO value is, the less sensitive it is to light, while the higher that number is, the more sensitive it is to light....

All that being said, let’s talk about the benefits and the downsides of it. Liquid Cooling’s Pros And Cons Liquid cooling is primarily known in hardware enthusiast circles for its great cooling performance which allows people to get more out of their hardware, especially CPU and GPU overclocks. Let’s take a moment to talk about those. Increased cooling performance. Keeps your system from overheating and allows your components to more comfortably stretch out to their full capabilities, since they aren’t being throttled by high thermals....

All Around View There are essentially two ways you make a 360º image: 1) a single photo with a very wide angle lens or pair of lenses, and 2) by taking a lot of pictures and stitching them together. In recent times there have emerged a range of cameras which have super wide angle lenses of 180º or greater, which is a wider angle of view than you can even see with the human eye (in most people that amounts to around 160º-170º)....

Gmail It may come as a surprise that Google, the world’s biggest advertiser and tracker, does not scan your inbox as part of its targeted ads program. It actually did for quite some time but ended the practice in 2017 since the data they gather from email is relatively redundant to their other sources, and users probably found email-based advertising a little creepy. However, Google does scan your email for security threats, high priority notifications, calendar events, and some of the other features you might enjoy, like Smart Compose....

Why Is Device Encryption Missing In Windows 11 Home? In order to understand why Device Encryption is missing for some users, we first need to dig in to sleep mode and Modern Standby. Sleep mode, when enabled, allows users to wake up their computer quickly. This eliminates the need to boot from scratch. When the computer enters sleep mode, it is locked and encrypted. To encrypt data in Windows 11 Home, Microsoft uses BitLocker – but not the full version with the advanced features, as that’s reserved for Windows 11 Pro....

And the story isn’t over: it might take a few years to completely mitigate the damage, regardless of how much effort software manufacturers like Apple and Microsoft make to patch their systems. How the KRACK Vulnerability Works To understand the Krack vulnerability (as it’s called in the media, short for “Key Reinstallation Attack”), we first have to know how WPA2 works. To authenticate a device on the network, both the router and the device go through a four-step process, known as a four-way handshake....

Note: This is not the official PPA for WingPanel, but some kind soul who has created it for us to use. To get it running, press “Alt + F2” and type wingpanel. At the moment, WingPanel is very minimal and doesn’t come with any configuration option. It will display whatever indicator-applets you have placed on your Gnome panel, but it doesn’t allow you to add/remove any applets. Nor does it comes with an option to exit the app....

1. LZ4 LZ4 is the compression tool of choice for admins who need lightning-fast compression and decompression speed. It utilizes the LZ4 lossless algorithm, which belongs to the family of LZ77 byte-oriented compression algorithms. Moreover, LZ4 comes coupled with a high-speed decoder, making it one of the best Linux compression tools for enterprises. 2. Zstandard Zstandard is another fast compression tool for Linux that can be used for personal and enterprise projects....

1. Citable Citable helps you turn your Google Sheets into a bookmarks tool and makes gathering research into a spreadsheet a breeze. Once you install the extension, find and select something you want to save, and then click the Citable button. Citable copies your target text, its link, the site URL, author profile, and any tags you choose to add, and stores them all in a Google Sheets spreadsheet. You can use this to create a bibliography for your next research by importing the Citable notes into Zotero or other citation apps....

It’s not the most obscure suggestion, but the official Kindle ebook reader app is a continuation of the hardware device, so that Kindle books can be read across multiple platforms. A big part of the Kindle app’s appeal is that you can bring up your notes, view your libraries, and continue reading between multiple devices. The Kindle is the trendsetter and driving force behind modern ebook reading. As such, you are able to customize the layout in terms of backgrounds, font types, and accessibility options....

Alternative dialog Find & Replace for Writer This is an improved version of the default Find & Replace function. It has functions such as searching for blocks of paragraphs (rather than words or phrases), multiple searching and replacement in one step, searching for objects according to their types and many more. Bookmarks Menu BookmarksMenu allows you to add bookmarks to your favorite (or frequently accessed) document. clker.com openoffice.org addon Clker....

In case you are wondering what utilities you should choose from the list of 100+ small software, here is a basic list of some of the most useful NirSoft Utilities that every Windows user should have. Note: Windows antivirus software may find some of the NirSoft utilities as potentially unwanted software or as a trojan. You can safely ignore those cautions. 1. CurrPorts As the name suggests, CurrPorts is a network monitoring tool that can display currently active TCP/IP and UDP ports on a local computer....

1: You Probably Paid Too Much For Your Graphics Card My rule of thumb is: If I can get an average of anywhere between 25-30 frames per second from my games, my graphics card is fine. People obsess compulsively over the frame rate their cards deliver as opposed to focusing on hitting a sweet spot and sticking with it. The most difficult thing for most people to accept is that their investments were in vain....