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Modular Cables Aren’t Universal Many cables inside your PC are standardized. Fan headers, Molex drive connectors, the 24-pin Molex header for motherboard power connections, and so on all use a common standard. The way individual wires are laid out in the cable and the connector is referred to as the “pinout.” If you’ve ever seen a diagram of any sort of plug that labels the individual pins, sockets, or contacts as “+5V” or “GND” you’re looking at a pinout diagram telling you which part of the connector does what....

Every electronic device you own—your phone, laptop, mouse, keyboard, and every other piece of tech—has a unique serial number. But are those numbers best kept private, like passwords, or is it alright if someone else sees them? What Is a Serial Number? A serial number is a unique identifier assigned to a device during the manufacturing process. It’s not necessarily a number—serial numbers can contain letters and symbols as well as numbers....

Late to the Party LTTP stands for “late to the party.” It’s taken from a widespread idiomatic expression that means being involved in or aware of something later than other people. LTTP can be typed in both the uppercase “LTTP” and the lowercase “lttp.” This acronym can be used in two ways. First, it can mean that you’re late to a popular or significant cultural moment. For example, you’re LTTP if you haven’t watched any of the movies in a blockbuster franchise, or if you’ve missed the latest dance trend....

Composability and Inversion of Control Composable code is often an aim and effect of Inversion of Control (IoC) strategies. Techniques such as dependency injection work with self-contained components that are passed (“injected”) into the places where they’re needed. This is an example of IoC – the outer environment is responsible for resolving the dependencies of the deeper code layers it calls. The concept of composability encapsulates the specific pieces you can provide and how they’re integrated together....

Reels is a new feature on Instagram that allows people to create 15-second videos á la Vine and TikTok. But is Instagram Reels just a TikTok clone? Easily-digestible, short video clips are certainly not new on social media. TikTok is the latest platform to use it, and it’s become incredibly popular. Now, Instagram has jumped on the bandwagon with Reels. Let’s take a look at how the two apps compare....

Apple also announced macOS 11 Big Sur for later in 2020 and the transition to the company’s ARM-based silicon chips in upcoming MacBooks. RELATED: What’s New in macOS 11.0 Big Sur, Available Now Widget Support Widgets have been available on the iPhone since iOS 12, but they’re now breaking out onto the smartphone’s home screens. Once updated, users will be able to not only drag widgets out of a Widget Gallery and place them anywhere on their home screen, they’ll also be able to resize the widget (if the developer offers multiple size options)....

The Catch: Many Vintage Computers Need Repair Before we begin, there are some “gotchas” you should know about buying vintage computers. Unless a machine has been shown to be in working condition, don’t buy it, because the older it is, the less likely it is to work as soon as you get it. That makes an “as-is” purchase risky for people who don’t have the technical background to repair or recondition a vintage PC....

You turn on your computer one day and Windows refuses to boot—what do you do? “Windows won’t boot” is a common symptom with a variety of causes, so you’ll need to perform some troubleshooting. Modern versions of Windows are better at recovering from this sort of thing. Where Windows XP might have stopped in its tracks when faced with this problem, modern versions of Windows will try to automatically run Startup Repair....

Borderlands 3 Released late in 2019, Borderlands 3 is the latest in the massively successful looter-shooter franchise. The game retains the cel-shaded stylized graphics but is packed with modern visual features. It also scales incredibly well, and if you’re conservative with the in-game settings, Borderlands 3 is perfectly playable even on the M1 Air. We started off with a 50% resolution scale of 2560×1600 and the “very low” preset, while using the “smoothed” framerate limit setting....

Connect Some USB Devices The Nintendo Switch has a USB Type-C port on the bottom of the console, mostly intended for charging and connecting to the included TV dock. However, the port also works with many USB Type-C accessories, and even some USB Type-A devices with the proper adapter. The dock has its own full-size USB ports, but you don’t have to dock the Switch to try USB accessories. You can use most USB Ethernet adapters with the Switch, which can be handy in situations where a Wi-Fi connection is unreliable....

Deepfakes make it possible to manipulate videos and GIFs. The technology has become so easy to use, you can now create deepfakes right on your phone. That’s right—you can now easily insert yourself into a meme. It’s also an impressive demonstration of how easy it is to create a deepfake. Swapping a celebrity’s face out of a viral GIF and replacing it with your own is now simply a screen tap away....

Google Meet Is Best for Small, Quick Meetings Both Google Meet and Zoom allow you to make large-scale video calls with up to 100 participants for free (for a limited period of time). That’s about all they have in common, though. In April, Google introduced its enterprise-grade G Suite video-conferencing service, Google Meet, to the general public. Anyone with a Google account can create or join a Google Meet call. Up to 100 participants can join a call, and the free plan allows 60-minute meetings (the time limit has been suspended until September 30, however)....

How to Add a Contact in WhatsApp on Android If someone hands you a business card and you quickly want to get the conversation started in WhatsApp, add them as a contact directly in WhatsApp. When you do this, the person’s information will be synced to your contact book (and to Google, depending on your settings). To do this, open the WhatsApp app for Android, go to the “Chats” section, and tap the “New Message” button found in the bottom-right corner....

How Does Wireless Charging Work? It might not seem like it, but wireless charging is actually a very old technology. Electric toothbrushes have been using it since the 90s, and it was first included in phones in the late 2000s. To understand how you can add it to a phone, let’s take a look at how it works. Wireless chargers use magnetic induction to transmit energy. Essentially, a magnetic field is created between the coils in the wireless charger and the coils in the phone....

Ubuntu doesn’t use a separate /home partition by default, although many Linux users prefer one. Using a separate home partition allows you to reinstall Ubuntu without losing your personal files and settings. While a separate home partition is normally chosen during installation, you can also migrate to a separate home partition after installing Ubuntu – this takes a bit of work, though. While Installing Ubuntu Creating a separate home partition while installing Ubuntu is easy....

Why Make a Throwaway Account? Facebook requires that each Quest 2 user must have a Facebook account. This creates three distinct types of Quest 2 users. The first is someone with an existing Facebook account who may have no problem linking their Oculus account and sharing their VR content with their friends, families, and followers. We aren’t concerned with these folks, so it’s the remaining two kinds of Quest 2 users that are the subject of this article....

Whether for business or a family tree, it’s easy to create an organizational chart using SmartArt in Microsoft PowerPoint. Let’s get started. Head to the “Insert” tab and then click “SmartArt.” In the Choose a SmartArt Graphic window that opens choose the “Hierarchy” category on the left. On the right, click an organization chart layout, such as “Organization Chart.” When you’re done, click “OK.” Click a box in the SmartArt graphic, and then type your text....

Creating and using custom AutoText entries for frequently used phrases is a great way to speed up the content creation process in Microsoft Word. And the good news is you can set up these time-savers in just a few clicks! How to Create a New AutoText Entry To get started, highlight the text in your Word document that you’d like to use to create your new AutoText entry. Press Alt+F3 to open the “Create New Building Block” window....

The subject and body of a received email are at the whim of the sender, but you can change the subject line to something better or add notes to the body quickly and easily using Microsoft Outlook. Have you ever forwarded an email to yourself or created a new task instead of marking an email for Followup just so you could add notes to it? Maybe you’ve dragged an email into OneNote or Evernote so you can write a little context around it?...

Have you ever wanted to use an app in full-screen mode on a Mac? Or maybe you’re stuck in full screen and don’t know how to get out. Luckily, switching modes is as easy as clicking a little green button. Here’s how to do it. How to Enter Full-Screen Mode on Mac Macs have had the ability to run apps in a special borderless full-screen mode since Mac OS X 10....