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PC games offer seemingly endless screens of graphics options to fiddle with. Each involves a trade-off between graphical quality and performance, but it’s not always clear what each option does. In addition to toggling these settings from within games, you can generally force them from your graphics driver’s control panel and enable them even in older games that don’t offer such modern settings. Resolution RELATED: Why You Should Use Your Monitor’s Native Resolution...

When you’re first starting out in Stardew Valley, it might be challenging to figure out how to make more money. Here are five ways to generate more income for you and your farm in Pelican Town. Fish Whenever You Can Fishing is one of the best ways to get a lot of extra income, especially when you’re just getting started and don’t have a lot of resources yet. All that’s required is patience, good reflexes, and a fishing rod—which you can obtain for free from Willy early in the game....

Backups on Windows can be confusing. Whether you’re using Windows 7 or 8, you have quite a few integrated backup tools to think about. Windows 8 made quite a few changes, too. You can also use third-party backup software, whether you want to back up to an external drive or back up your files to online storage. We won’t cover third-party tools here — just the ones built into Windows....

Even though the two companies managed to agree, Google is providing YouTube TV users with a $15 discount for a month for the inconvenience of losing Disney channels for a brief period. In a Tweet, YouTube TV said, “We’re happy to announce that we’ve reached a deal with Disney and have already started to restore access to channels like ESPN and FX, and Disney recordings that were previously in your Library....

While doing our regular security audit of all the accounts tied to the HTG site, we noticed something interesting: Inside your Google account settings there is a list of any site or app that you’ve given access to, and the list might surprise you. Time for a checkup! There are, of course, plenty of valid reasons why you might need to give apps or web sites access to your account, or at least parts of your account....

The FBI isn’t happy about the latest versions of iOS and Android using encryption by default. FBI director James Comey has been blasting both Apple and Google. Microsoft is never mentioned — but Windows 8.1 uses encryption by default, too. The FBI doesn’t seem worried about Windows 8.1’s default “device encryption” feature. Microsoft’s encryption works a bit differently — Microsoft holds the keys and could hand them over to the FBI....

Are unexpected shutdowns as harmful to Linux as they are to other operating systems? Read on as we investigate the effects of catastrophic system shutdowns on Linux file systems. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader User208554 is curious about Linux file structures and concerned about an app/installation he’s working on:...

How do websites remember your preferences for them (or desire for none), and what about the touchy subject of cookies themselves? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post seeks to shed some light on how cookies work and the information they store for a confused reader. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. Photo courtesy of Pedro Vezini (Flickr)....

When reviewing different flavors of Linux, you’ll frequently come across phrases like “Ubuntu is based on Debian” but what exactly does that mean? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader PLPiper is trying to get a handle on how Linux variants work: So, what exactly does it mean when we talk about one version of Linux being based off another version?...

Cookies can be useful when you’re in control of them. Today we’re taking a look at how you can control cookies by blocking them except for when you want them to enhance your user experience. Why Would I Want to Do This? A cookie is simply a small file that a web site places on your computer to store information. The process itself is totally benign, and can even be helpful—cookies do useful things like store your shopping cart information between sessions, save you from the hassle of logging into a site every time you open and close your browser, and other helpful time savers....

Your account picture is what you see on the Windows sign-in screen and the Start menu. Windows assigns new user accounts on Windows 10 a generic profile picture, but it’s easy to change that to any image you want. Here’s how to add a little flair to your account. Unless you’re using a Microsoft account that already has a picture associated with it, Microsoft set your profile picture to the default user picture for Windows—a generic silhouette of a person....

In Google Sheets, if you want to link data from multiple cells together, you don’t have to merge them. You can use the CONCAT, CONCATENATE, and JOIN functions to combine them in one cell. These functions range from the simplistic (CONCAT) to the complex (JOIN). CONCATENATE offers the most flexibility, as it allows you to manipulate the linked data with operators and additional content. How to Use the CONCAT Function You can use the CONCAT function to combine the data from two cells, but it has limitations....

You’ll find the new video editing features in the Photos app. After you’ve made sure that you’re running iOS 13, iPadOS 13, or higher, open the Photos app and then open the video that you want to edit. Here, tap on the “Edit” button. You now are in the video-editing window. From here, tap the Crop button found in the bottom row. You’ll see a freeform frame around the video preview....

App Platform is a new Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering from DigitalOcean. It lets you push code to production without configuring any infrastructure. App Platform connects to GitHub and GitLab repositories to automatically build and deploy your projects. DigitalOcean launched App Platform in October 2020, saying it wanted to “reimagine” the PaaS concept. App Platform is a fully-managed solution that supports most popular languages, provides an automatic HTTPS certificate and offers horizontal and vertical scaling....

Malware, adware, and pushy software installers all love changing your browser settings, giving you new home pages, default search engines, and obnoxious toolbars. It’s easy to forget to uncheck these options while installing software. Reverting browser settings changes typically isn’t too difficult. However, you often have to do it by hand — even if it’s a legitimate program, uninstalling it probably won’t restore your preferred home page and default search engine....

Chromebooks are built for the internet, which means you’ve probably connected to lots of Wi-Fi networks in the past. Sometimes you might not want a Wi-Fi network saved anymore, and that’s where “forgetting” a network comes in. When you connect to a Wi-Fi network it’s saved on your Chromebook. Every Starbucks and hotspot is stored for easy connection later on. But sometimes you just want to use a network once and never connect again....

So you’re using Windows 8 on a desktop or laptop. Microsoft goes out of their way to make this more awkward, scattering the tweaks you need to turn Windows 8 into a serviceable desktop operating system all over the OS. We’re gathering together all the tips you’ll need to reduce the annoyances of Windows 8 when you’re using it on a traditional desktop or laptop without touch, making this conversion as easy as possible....

Windows 8 infamously removed the Start Button, and then Windows 8.1 brought that button back — but maybe you are the kind of person that got used to it being gone. So now you can remove it again. The only thing you’ll need to do is go download the StartIsGone application from WinAero, unzip it, choose the right version for your platform, whether x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit), save the files somewhere safe, and then run the application....

If you spend any time in the Terminal at all, you probably use the mkdir command to create a directory, and then the cd command to change to that directory right after. However, there is a way to do both of those actions with one command. You can run two commands at once on the command line manually, but we’ll show you how to add a line to the ....

Even if you’re not bent on heavily modding Minecraft, every player should install Optifine. Today we’re going to dig into the guts of Optifine and highlight all the ways you can use it to optimize your Minecraft experience whether you’re on a powerhouse gaming rig or an old laptop. Why Use Optifine While we wouldn’t devote an entire lesson to a single gameplay-tweaking mod, we can’t stress enough how great Optifine is and why you should install it and seriously configure it....